Welcome to take Beijing taxi

So this blog entry is going to be super random, partly because I'm making it more of a picture diary with explanations, and party because when I add pictures it adds them to the top and it's a pain to drag them down so basically I wrote the whole thing backwards. But, hey, a little chaos is good sometimes right? Sorry it takes me so long to add things. For some reason my computer wouldn't let me upload pictures forever. I'll try to write more often in the future. Please comment!! It gives me something to look forward to when I'm bored at work!





A couple weekends ago, we bought tickets to go to a party on the great wall. This part of the great wall happens to be right on the beach of the North China Sea. We had been under the impression that it would be about a two hour bus ride, but to our surprise it ended up taking a whole five hours to get there. It was definitely worth it though. We met a lot of crazy Europeans, Americans and Chinese people and got a lot of sand in our shoes. My friends and I went out to a cheap Chinese market earlier in the day and bought crazy ugly costumes with bright colored sunglasses and T-shirts with funny english on them. We ended up being the only ones dressed up, but at least we had spirit.





This guy is one of my favorites, and also is one of the most famous Beijing "characters." He's a little old man that wanders around the "San Li Tun" bar area and sells little bugs, frogs, and lanterns made out of grass that he made. He's really friendly and is always up for posing for a picture with you. On this night we bought a random wooden alligator from him and also a little grass lantern that is now hanging in my kitchen. He's got quite the winning smile doesn't he?




Chinese people have this crazy/awesome habit of "exercising" in public places. If you go to the parks in the morning or on the weekends, you can see groups of women and men singing, ribbon dancing, and fan dancing to very random music playing from scratchy cassette tapes. In this particular square, every night a bunch of people come out and waltz. They're very, very serious about it and often have fairly elaborate and obviously well practiced routines to do. If someone comes without a partner, they will dance with the air, or look for a foreigner like Brian ( to the left) to teach. Brian has since become a very good waltzer.



Hou Hai is one of three huge man made lakes that were built for the Emperors. It's a gorgeous place that has since turned into a classier sort of bar area. A few weekends ago, we found a perfect sunny Saturday and went to Hou Hai to paddle boat. You can also swim in the lake, but we decided by the color of the water that it's probably better for your health not to touch it. We went for about two hours, and all were very pleasantly cool under the paddle boat's roof, except for Nick and Ben who got a long workout paddling us around. We did manage to get in trouble by jumping out on this pretty little island to chat up some Chinese men in speedos and swim caps, and again later by daring Ben to jump into the lake . The second picture is of a poor little man who fell out of his kayak and, rather than getting any help, became the source of entertainment for a large group of people walking past on the shore. After his wife quickly paddled away in her Kayak, we decided to go over and help him by letting him climb onto our boat and then get back in is. He was a little too flustered, weighed down by his wet jeans and sneakers, and angry about his "loss of face" to be very thankful, but hopefully he'll have a fond place in his heart for Americans from now on.




This is the Microsoft building where I work. It's pretty nice and modern, but definitely not so much like the Microsoft buildings in Redmond. Instead of everyone getting their own office, it's mostly composed of large cubes. My cube has four other people in it. At the office, there is a nice selection of green tea drinks and coke products, but the highlight of the day for most of the Chinese employees is the "3:00 fruit time." At about 2:50 pm every day, the guy next to me turns around and whispers "WATERMELON TIME!!" and there is a mad dash for the kitchen , where at least a dozen melons are consumed in about 3 minutes. Also, at the same time, they fill up bins by the reception desks on each floor full of Chinese snacky things. Every now and then I can find Chineseified oreos and other good things, but one time I had the misfortune of picking up a large pack of seaweed crackers. Stay away from the seaweed crackers.

Here's a picture of my apartment building. I live on the third floor. In the bottom we recently discovered a massage place where you can get a two hour massage for 58 kuai (~8 dollars). There's also a place where you can get your hair washed and get a head, back, and shoulder massage for about 45 minutes which costs 15 kuai (~$2.50). Definitely a nice way to relax.

One of the funny things about China is everywhere you go they have things that say "Welcome to *verb*". You see it so frequently that after a while it almost sounds right. Someone, at some point, must have been like "Yes. this is definitely correct" and then the Chinese government promptly invested millions of dollars in signs and loud speaker voices that say things like "Welcome to ride subway!" Even the tredmill at my gym says "Welcome to use tredmill!"
It really makes me wonder if they are just really confident about their English and don't bother asking anyone else, or if, for example, the guy printing the signs that appear all over the new terminal of the airport reminding people to "Watch out for children and oldsters" just really didn't care as long as he got the message across. Even when I visited the Terracotta warriors in Xi'an there was a huge sign near the entrances that said "WARRIOS!" Anyhow, since so many people liked the jew's ear, I got another couple pictures from the menu in my office's cafeteria:














So I figure someone was given the job of translating this menu, and they got Sana wish at least remotely sounding like sandwich, and then itdienne is a little bit like italian, but then they just had no clue what to put for the third one so they just ended up bashing their head against the keyboard and getting "Dfjsdkf".

Bad English - aka "Chinglish" is all over China. If you're ever bored and want a good laugh go to http://www.engrish.com/.

Well that's all for now folks. I'll write more often from now on I swear. Comment!!!!

Love, Emily

And the Journey Begins..

This blog begins a little bit late in my adventure. This is my fourth week here in Beijing, China, but that just means I have more exciting things to talk about, so it's okay.

I've been working at Microsoft in the Advanced Technology Center for a group that tests the programs that are written for cell phones that run Windows- basically all those fancy phones that can check your email and browse the internet but that happen to be neither the iPhone nor the Blackberry. My project is to help the teams here start doing usability testing, which is testing that involves bringing in non engineers to play around with the cell phones and make sure the design is actually usable by normal human beings. :) It's definitely been interesting, especially since the Chinese people who work here seem to be set on sticking with automated testing (teaching computers to just run tests on programs without having a real person touch them). Also, the language barrier causes some confusion at times.

They can all speak English fairly well, but I do tend to get a few dazed looks every now and then. Chinese people have a really hard time saying V's, so when it comes to talking about Vista and Vendors, I often have to remind myself what "Wista" and "Wendors" are.

In times when I'm waiting for replies from

people and can't really move forward with my testing project, I've been maintaining a website that handles the "device library." Basically, Microsoft buys all the cool cell phones that are out there and has them in a library for people to 'check out' and use for a while so we know what our product is like and what other products are like. The person who made this website initially was a Chinese intern, who claims he wrote it in five days, and I think I believe him, because almost any button you press pops up a dialog box that says "are you sure to delete?" which catches you off guard when you thought you pressed "Check in." Anyhow, I've been combing through it and correcting the english and little things like that.

I joined a gym in the basement of the Microsoft building called "Zero Handicap."

It's very nice, but I do get a good lecture every day from the lady who cleans the locker room about how I shouldn't wear make up and should dry my hair because girls catch colds more easily.

As for life outside the office, I live with a good friend from my language program that I did in the fall in Beijing. Her name is Lauren and she goes to Rice and is here working in a Law firm, which is unfortunately all the way across the city. She has to ride the subway for over an hour every day, and although it is miserable, she brings back some interesting stories. We live in a very nice apartment that my Dad found, which happens to be about a block away from the Microsoft building. My Mother was kind enough to inform us that the name of the seizure giving color on the walls is "Chartreuse," which is a charming kind of tennis ball color. We each get our own room, and the apartment is fairly new and clean. We have only had one cockroach encounter, which is not too bad and hopefully it will not get worse.

The weather has been kind of cool, which is apparently odd for this time of year. We had a huge rain storm over the weekend where the streets nearly flooded and the cab drivers all went to hide to avoid the traffic. We've heard rumors that the government is shooting down rain clouds over the city to keep it cool for the olympics, but who knows.

There's a Walmart across the street from our apartment that is really interesting. The whole bottom floor is a grocery store with hanging roasted ducks, all varieties of Chinese buns, strange looking fruits, and even turtles, which they will immediately pull out of the water and gut for you if you ask them to. It's funny how Walmart can be so familiar and so different.

Aside from Lauren, my friend Jaimie from high school just came in this last weekend, so I've gotten to see her a lot lately. She's working for Microsoft in PR and lives really close to us. Also, my friend Nick, who I met when we were both studying abroad here in Beijing in the fall is back along with his friend, Ben, from home (Idaho) and my friend Erin's boyfriend, Vinod. It's been really fun to see them, and we try to hang out often even though they live as far as you can possibly get from our apartment.

As far as Beijing goes, it's gotten noticeably more polluted since the last time I was here, BUT they have been much better about lining up! I have seen a minimal amount of public loogie hawking, and nose picking, which is also an improvement. I find it interesting also that, when I came in high school people automatically assumed I was caucasian and even used to say I had "yellow hair", but now I've even had a few people mistake me for a Chinese person. I guess they are getting more used to seeing foreigners around. Through all these changes though, it still is a really cool city with a lot of character. It takes some getting used to, but living here becomes kind of addictive after a while. Everything is just always accessible, there are cool people from all over the world here for completely different and random reasons, and just being able to see how vastly two cultures can differ is kind of shocking and eye opening. It definitely makes you think some of our American expectations are silly, but also makes you appreciate others that you never would have noticed.

Anyway, now that I've blabbed on for a bit too long probably, I'll post a "funny chinglish" picture of the day. This one I found in a menu when trying to order one of my favorite mushroom dishes. Please don't be offended, I'm sure they have no idea what that means. Most likely they just didn't know how to translate it and typed random words.

I'll write more often from now on so keep checking! I'd love to see comments and hear what everyone has been up to this summer!

Love, Emily