D-2

In two days the most awaited sport event of the year will be happening in Beijing.

The event will be taken place mostly in Beijing, which is around 1300km from Shanghai or about 2 hrs with plane or 9 hrs driving but you won't believe all the security measures they have implemented for this event here in Shanghai.

1. No liquid allowed for air travel has been implemented since min. 3 months ago (see this post)
2. X-ray machines and dogs check all luggage going in and out of China
3. The government has imported millions of "explosive residue detection kits" from US to swab all incoming and outgoing passengers in order to see if they have been recently in contact with explosive materials
4. All bags must pass security control in the subway stations
5. All shops and vending machines located in subway stations are closed for a month without government compensation to shop owners (imagine if they try to implement this in a capitalist country!)
6. The government removes the business license of many small Chinese manufactures if they don't meet certain environmental standard (resulting unfortunately major price increase in China)
7. The government enforced "no free plastic bag" regulation when shopping in any store in China, also in spirit to be more environmental friendly (in Germany is only applicable for shopping in supermarket, but not when you shop for clothes in the mall!)
8. Gasoline stations are only open before 9 am and after 7 pm at night because the government banned trucks traffic into the city during the day time (imagine the long queue every night!)
9. And last, yesterday my friend told me that the government will ground all Chinese airlines traveling any places on earth for a period of 5 hours before and after the opening ceremony! (Thank God I am flying on Saturday!!!)

Another blogger wrote, and I must agree to his words, "Almost all of the action is taking place in Beijing, hundreds of miles from here, but from the frantic security tightening around town, you’d think Osama Bin Laden was coming to officially open a new Mosque here in Shanghai."

I'll be glad when it's all over!!

Complaint to China Post!

This is a complaint to China Post!

It has been a while since I came back from Germany but I haven't managed to post this in time.

I was really upset in the last visit to Germany as my credit card was blocked by the credit card provider.

I was in a finance conference with other financial officers of our subsidiaries worldwide. It was held in an exclusive resort and spa in Bad-Herrenberg. When it came to hotel billing settlement time, the receptionist lady told me that my credit card was blocked for use. Immediately I was confused as I don't remember using the credit card a lot in the last weeks. In fact, I rarely use my credit card in Shanghai as I have only a German credit card, which I reserve it only for either emergency or holiday purposes to avoid loss in conversion rate and the overseas charges. I have of course tried to apply for a local chinese credit card but soon realized that it is almost impossible for a foreigner to have one. Don't ask me the reason why. After 15 months living in China, I have learned that some things should remain as a mystery.

Anyway, I was lucky that I still have my debit card from my German bank so I can pay my hotel bill without embarassing myself by borrowing money from colleagues around the world (remember, it was an international Finance conference!).

After the conference, I called my credit card provider just to learn that the credit card was blocked because the replacement card* was returned back with a remark of 'address unknown" from China Post! Being German as they are, they immediately blocked both current card and the replacement card for security purposes.

For those of you who don't live in China. China is a new emerging country in the world economy. The country is at the moment the only country in the world that has surplus economy. The country enjoys long time benefit for being a Low Cost Country and has focused its main activities with export to US and European market. I bet you money that you'll find chinese made product in the shop next door.

However, little that you know that the country has faced serious problem with foreign language ability. In the offices in Shanghai, you will find only the managerial level has acceptable foreign language skill. The staffs level have still difficulties communicating in English. Outside of the office, eg. taxi drivers or shop owners, speak either very little English or none at all. If they do speak English as they claim, they can only express the general word and not your specific requirements. Easy example is when you shop for clothes. They can only say that the clothes are made of good quality (read: expensive!) but you can't ask them if you have to handwash the material or dry clean, let alone to explain if it's made of cotton or polyester.

In China Post, they have special department which their daily task is to translate every address in the envelope into Chinese characters so the post delivery man can understand. But imagine they will translate millions of international letters every day and perhaps one of them, like my replacement card, is sort of slip in the translation process and here I am stucked with the bad situation. So far, it is not my first experience with missing mails. I have never received christmas cards sent by my friends last year also and only God knows which other letters I have lost as well.

I strongly suggest China Post to educate their staffs with minimum English or at least to read the normal Pinyin** to ensure safe arrival of our letters in China. Afterall, we, the foreigners, have copped up also with our other limitations in here.


Notes:
*apparently my card will be expired in October so they sent in advance the replacement card to my shanghai address (which is my billing address).

** all international letters have chinese address written in Pinyin (romanized mandarin based on its chinese pronounciation)

Summer has arrived!

We went for a walk around the French Concession yesterday and soon realized that it was a wrong decision! Summer has arrived in Shanghai and temperature raised up to 38 degree on day time and around 35 degree at 8 pm last night. It will be like this for the next 3 months so you might want to reconsider your travel to Shanghai!!

We have a temperature measure in our apartment window and it records 40 degree at the moment. So definitely we will stay inside!! We are lucky that we have planned to travel to Germany this week where the temperature will be 10 degree lower! Yay!!!

News from Shanghai Daily here

It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

It's the most wonderful time of the year

with the kids jingle belling

and everyone telling you "Be a good cheer"

It's the most wonderful time of the year

It's the hap-happiest season of all

with those holiday greetings and gay happy meetings

when friends come to call

It's the hap-happiest season of all

I tend to be overly sensitive during the christmas time. Happens to me every year and it will pass when the season is over.

This year, I miss a lot the christmas season in Germany. This is the time of the year when we normally go to the christmas market to buy our advent wreath and drinking gluehwein in cold and sometimes snowy December weather.

My favourite place was to hang out nearby the ice skating ring so I can enjoy a glass or two of gluehwein while listening to the christmas carols and the people chattering happily. I would also enjoy the smell of fresh pines and fresh baked cinnamon cookies in the air, llistening to the joyous laughter of children, the jingling bell and watching the people busy fullfiling their christmas shopping list.

In China, things are completely different. I bet not a lot of people know about Christmas. In fact almost all companies will work on Christmas day, including mine. Some malls will try to put up Christmas tree (of course made of plastic-look-alike-pines) and play Christmas songs, but still you are missing the true atmosphere.

So we decided to decorate our apartment with four green and red candles as replacement for advent wreath as I won't accept plastic made wreath and I am not allowed to mail order the original from Germany either. Jorge has put out the christmas lighting in our balcony last week and he bought also some poinsetias home.

We have also some christmas shopping list for his family in Mexico. We played Christmas songs whenever we are at home. We tried to do as much as possible to feel like christmas.

And last night, St. Nikolaus came to my desk and left a chocolate in there. Just what I need!

The world's 50 most expensive big cities

During my browsing activities in the internet today, I came across an interesting articles about the world's 50 most expensive city provided by Mercer Consulting based on the cost of living index.

Moscow maintains its position to be the world's most expensive city for two years in a row, even more expensive than London. Seoul follows in the third rank, more expensive than Tokyo (I would have thought it is the other way around), follows by major European cities.

Then, also to my surprise, Shanghai emerges in number 26, sharing the same place with Madrid, which, according to Mercer's survey, is far beyond Munich and Frankfurt, Germany's most expensive cities, who are currently sitting in rank 39 and 40 respectively.

Complete list can be read here

Oktoberfest

If there is anything I miss from Germany, one thing for sure is the Oktoberfest in Munich or Canstatterwassen in Stuttgart. For those who are not familiar to Oktoberfest (and I hope that I explain it correctly to avoid complaints from my dear "Bavarian" friend!), this is beer festival held annually in Munich which was first started on 12th October 1810 to commomerate the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig (later King Ludwig I) and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. Due to its growing popularity, the mayor of the city of Munich decided to continue this festival as yearly tradition. They also decided, however, to move date of the Oktoberfest earlier in Sept (starts normally around third week of Sept and last until the German Reunification Day on 3rd October)


In Shanghai, Oktoberfest is celebrated in all Paulaner's restaurants. Paulaner is one of the famous beer brewery from Munich and they have 3 restaurants here in Shanghai with one brewery house where they brew their own beer in here. To celebrate this festival, they brought one of German band (also said to have played for the Paulaner's Oktoberfest tent in Munich this year) and a lot of people showed up wearing traditional German clothes, singing and dancing German's volksongs. It's unbelievable to see how many Germans are living in this fast growing city.


One downside of the good old jolly Oktoberfest is of course the morning after. So we are soon off to a relaxing & pampering body massage!


Update: I actually asked my German friend at the office today and he told me that there are about 100.000 Germans are registered in the city of Shanghai today.

Chinglish

If you live here in China, you will sometimes find yourself trapped in Chinglish conversation. It can be a simple spelling error or grammatical error or vocabulary mistake which can unfortunately lead to total misunderstanding.

Here are some samples of Chinglish photo that I met so far.
















A German guy makes a good compilation for Chinglish, you can find it here

But ok, just to be fair to the Chinese, you will find this language problem everywhere in non-English speaking countries. In fact, I found also a German-English in one of the restaurant in Lake Konstanz.

Short trip to Germany

Weather was so bad when I was in Germany last week. It was cloudy and rainy and cloudy and rainy and most importantly, no blue sky whatsoever. It was quite dissapointing but at least I didn't have any problem with the air travel. The metal pin I carry inside of my shoulder didn't beep in the security check, neither in Shanghai airport nor in Frankfurt. I also managed to extend my residence permit in Germany :-)

I had a 2 days workshop in the Black Forest with 80 other finance people worldwide. I met again some Brazilian friends that I used to work together in UK. I brought them some of bags from chinese fake market and in return I have brazilian coffee and chacaca, the most important rum to make caipirinha! *slurp*

I had also a dinner with the old smarties colleagues. To my surprise, about 15 people showed up and we chatted until late at night. So many changes and stories to tell. It was really a fun night.

I didn't get to make picture but a colleague emailed me 2 pictures from the workshop.