A Day in the Life of Zach

A quick "day in the life" entry. Here I am heading out the subway escalator in the morning. It takes me about 30-40 minutes door to door in the morning. Not bad, I just had to get used to the crush of bodies on the subway. And honestly, I have noticed it getting more crowded over the last year. It's been like literally watching China grow.

Speaking of which, the most visible sign of growth has been the new construction of high rise buildings going on. Here is where I emerge from the subway, and straight in front of me is the ongoing construction of the World Financial Centre, or WFC building. To the right is an elementary school. I was just walking by today and realized the entire school had been razed to the ground. Literally I think they did it over the weekend or something.

Walking to the Credit Suisse office every morning, I pass the Jin Mao Building, which was the highest office building in Shanghai. Right next to it is a construction site for the World Financial Centre, which will be about 60 feet taller, and the highest building in the world. At least for a month or so. I think Dubai is building a tower right now as well that will be even taller. WFC, as it is known, is on the right and looks like a giant bottle opener. The opening at the top used to be designed as a circle, but the developer is a Japanese firm called Mori, and so the circle was supposed to symbolize the sun from the Japanese flag, and that caused a huge political uproar. So Mori was forced to change the design to a more square, bottle opener looking top.

This is the view of WFC on my way to work. This was back in about May. You can see Jin Mao to the right of it, which was still taller at the time. Pretty much all hours of the day and night you can see welding torches sparkling on the upper floors. It is absolutely amazing to think that this entire structure was built during our time in China. I think none of it was there when I first started work in Feb 2006.

Here's a shot of the WFC today. It has been "topped out" at this point, which means the structure is complete. Now all that remains is to finish the glass wall exterior, and all the interior stuff. It should be done around June of next year I think. We are hoping to move our office there, but they are asking about 5 times the rent we are paying now. Then again, our current office is a run down old circa 1996 building, which is ancient by Shanghai standards!

Here is my current office building, the Shanghai Stock Exchange, where every day people stand around the big stock index board and watch their fortunes rise. I think the index rose 130% last year and is up about 98% this year. Unfortunately you have to be a Chinese citizen to invest :(

This is the lobby of the building. Every time a new company lists on the stock exchange (about once a week it seems), the lobby fills up with celebratory flowers and signs and there are big signing ceremonies, balloons and such.

And here is my humble, Class B office. Our space is getting a bit tight, so they took the corner office and tore it down, replacing it with smaller desks that hold another 5 people!

Oh, and the bathrooms reek of cigarette smoke. Ever since they banned smoking in the hallways (God forbid I know), the boys have reverted to their high school ways and created an opaque, nicotine fog in the bathroom, as if the pollution outside our office wasn't bad enough!

And here is my cubicle. The cubicle walls and even my chair are the exact same color, brand and size as my cube in New York from 10 YEARS AGO. I don't know what was creepier, seeing the same replica office furniture as New York but in China, or realizing that I started working ten years ago... which, by the way, my summer intern asked me the other day what kind of music I listened to, whether it was "stuff from my era" or not. "Era?!?" I screamed. Then I made him run laps around the building in the 95 degree sticky heat for the rest of the afternoon in his bare feet. At least in my head.

And here is Fanny. No that is not her real name, she has a Chinese name. Ok, yes, she did choose Fanny as her English name... Fanny, in this picture, is about 7 months pregnant I think. Notice she is wearing her navy blue pregnancy smock. It is a very trendy and popular accessory for pregnant ladies to keep the pregnancy cover-up on every day during the pregnancy. Can you guess why? It is because it protects the baby from all the dangerous electromagnetic waves, invisible, but flying around recklessly through the atmosphere. You know, cell phones, Xerox machines, computers, you name it. At first I thought it must be a lead jacket then, but no, it feels just like cotton. But it is "special" fabric they tell me. It seems to be one of those crazy things that everyone just started doing and so you better do it too, just in case, you know.

Anyway, that is a quick day in the life of Zach and Credit Suisse!