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!

We've Come A Long Way Baby!

September 2nd marked our two year anniversary in China. To recap, over the past two years we:

- have gotten used to seeing people in the street who are wearing pj's at 3PM, spitting pretty much everywhere (including right in front of us), and parents cradling their children over plastic shopping bags and encouraging them to "take care of their business".

- realized that Chinese traffic laws actually make sense. Bigger is better: trucks before cars before motorcycles before bikes. Pedestrians, of course, rank last, and always have to make way.

- made it through hundreds and hundreds of DVD's of old movies, new movies, bad movies, and all manner of television series.

- started out at internships making $2-3/hr and then made like the Jeffersons and "moved it on up", not exactly to the East side, but we managed to get real jobs with companies that didn't consider using Google as "consulting". Oh, and we now have air conditioning and heating that actually works!

-wrote 154 blog entries.

- visited 9 different countries and territories (China, Japan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, plus Hong Kong and Macau).

-ate many strange foods: animal parts ranging from pig ear to stomach, intestine, duck neck, "smelly" tofu (why anyone would eat a food with a name like that we have no idea), and durian, possibly one of the worst smelling and tasting fruits of all time, to the point where it is restricted from being eaten in many public places.

-had 34 different visitors.

-undergone 1 major surgery performed by a local Chinese doctor.

- spent many more hours at the "Fabmo", or fabric market, than we care to remember, ordering over 16 suits, countless shirts, costumes, jackets, pashminas and a mountain of silk products. And of course we may have supplemented our wardrobes with a few knockoff brand name items here and there. Zach in particular couldn't resist the $65 Armani suits!

- had our bodies pounded and massaged for somewhere in the range of 150 hours.

-seen more Broadway musicals in Shanghai than Zach saw during his 5 years living in NYC.

It's been a wild ride, and we've enjoyed every minute of it. We hope you've enjoyed reading about all of our adventures, and we look forward to recording plenty more as we enter our third year in the 'Middle Kingdom'.

Thanks to all of you for reading!!!

Kill a Chicken to Scare the Monkeys

So the title has nothing to do with the theme of the blog entry, but was a saying I heard in my management meeting today. It is apparently a very famous Chinese saying, and has something to do with giving a strong message to the employees, but it just made me giggle.

Anyway, the real theme of this entry is two of our favorite things, visitors and vacation!

We had the pleasure of hosting Adam and Lilly for a weekend at the end of last month. They are friends from San Fran, and were visiting China and stopped in Shanghai to visit us. It was great to see them, and Lilly, who's originally from China, put Zach and I to shame with her bargaining skills. We were impressed!

At the beginning of the month, we headed back to the States for a week at the Tomaszewski cottage on Stone Lake. The cottage is in a town that is pretty much the complete opposite of Shanghai, it's small, very green, and not crowded at all. Located in La Porte, Indiana, our trip was highlighted by trips to Dairy Queen and Steak n' Shake, and finding out that the local movie theater prices have actually gone down (!) since our last visit. When was the last time you saw that?? Evening shows are $1.50, and matinees are $1. Our friends Kim and Elizabeth also joined us at the cottage and we spent one morning out blueberry picking. It was fun, but we only lasted about 20 minutes in the summer heat before we called it quits. We will never again take blueberry pickers for granted!

We also spent some time in Flossmoor with my grandparents and they are doing great, and splitting their time between Flossmoor and Florida in the winter. My grandfather just turned 89, can you believe it?

After a week of stuffing ourselves with all our favorite American foods it was time for me to return to Shanghai. Zach spent another week out in California visiting friends and family and ate lots of burritos and his other favorite Californian foods! He also got to spend time with family members, and even walked the Golden Gate Bridge with his grandmother. He could barely keep up!

So now we're settling back into our China lives, and happy to finally be over jet lag. Next weekend is a trip out to Hangzhou with my company. They mentioned something about a water park? I'm sure we will have some interesting pictures and stories to share about that!

ON SALE NOW!

Tiffany turned 31 on July 21st and what better way to celebrate than with a frenzied end-of-summer-sales shopping spree in Hong Kong? And Tiffany even got to buy some things, too!


We enjoyed a very relaxing weekend at the Four Seasons in Hong Kong, and explored all the efficiencies of the island city. It is relentlessly hot and humid right now, so we really appreciated the hermetically sealed shopping environment. The hotel is connected to the famous IFC Mall, which is also connected to the high speed train that brings you in to the city directly from the airport. Pretty much the only time we went outside was to go for a swim in their refreshing infinity pool, which overlooks the Victoria Harbour (that's how they spell it there, all British and everything) that separates Hong Kong island from Kowloon and the mainland.

Here is Tiffany showing off the chocolate birthday cake that the hotel staff sent up. Our room had an unbelievable view of the water. Please also note the beee-yuuu-teee-full flowers next to her. Who's a great boyfriend?? or husband, now, is it?

Hong Kong has a great ferry transport that takes you between the island and Kowloon running constantly throughout the day. It'll cost you something like 20 cents for one of the most scenic rides in Asia.

Here we are relaxing by the pool after our massage. It was very tiring trying to keep up with the busy birthday pampering schedule! As you can see, my hair is suffering as a result.

Birthday dinner at Felix, a Philippe Starck-designed restaurant at the top of the Peninsula Hotel. If you ever get a chance, you should check out the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong. It has a really grand entrance and when you enter, you feel like you've stepped back in time, warped back to the 1920's or 30's or whenever the peak of Hong Kong's colonial era was. Soaring ceilings are held up by massive white columns, huge glass chandeliers hang from high above and shimmer softly to the classic songs being played by the live jazz band.







Oh, and the low, marble stone toilets in Felix are pressed right up against the floor to ceiling windows, which gives one a sort of gleeful vertigo while "taking care of business".

Our friends Kevin and Melissa were in Hong Kong, too, and met up with us for a tea and crumpets dessert. If crumpets means cheesecake, anyway... I know we had tea at least.

It was great to see them since they've moved on from Shanghai, with Kevin taking a job at a Hong Kong law firm and Melissa relocating with the US Consulate to her new position in Bangkok.

What a great way to take a break from the madness of Shanghai! A fun, birthday weekend in peaceful, orderly, quite proper Hong Kong.

Don't Mess With The White Girl

We share a hallway with one other apartment. Being extremely conscious of the environment, I often turn off the hallway lights, particularly during the day when there's plenty of sunlight. I also have harbored a secret hope that this custom will curb the child discipline habits used by our neighbors, which entail them putting their 3 year old child, who has a penchant for screaming, in the hallway until he stops. While our walls are thick, the front door is not, so the child (who I like to refer to as 'the evil one') can be heard through our entire apartment. I've been known to open the door and give him the 'evil blue-eyed stare', which is usually pretty effective in getting him to pipe down (and is probably instilling quite a fear into him of tall, pale faced women).

One day, after returning from work, I routinely turned off the hallway light as I entered my apartment. Less than a moment after entering, someone started frantically beating on my door. I opened the door to a woman that got in my face and proceeded to scream at me in Shanghainese (now I know where her son gets his expansive lung capacity). She kept gesturing at the light switch, indicating that she was not happy that I had turned off the light. If she had been able to speak English, or had approached me in a less aggressive manner, I would have tried to either explain or mime to her that the light isn't really necessary during the day, and that energy conservation is both economical and environmentally-friendly. But this lady was looking for a fight, so I gave it to her. I don't consider myself a screamer or aggressive, but this lady really pushed my buttons, so the two of us yelled at each other for a good ten minutes. I have no idea what she was saying, or really what I was saying for that matter, but it was loud and I used vocal chords I'm not sure I knew I had. After ten minutes of screaming and getting nowhere, she started making hand gestures for what I assume meant you're crazy', at which point I called her the only Mandarin swear word I know, the number 250. I was taught this word meant crazy, not in a 'girlfriend, you so crazy' way, but in a very mean, 'you need to be institutionalized' way. Once I called her that, she gave me a look of death and went back into her apartment.

The next day, I received a call from our building's property management desk informing me that a formal complaint had been filed against me for turning off the lights in the common area. After some explanation, the service person agreed that the lights would be turned off during the day, and kept on at night.

So now, whenever I pass our neighbor in our hallway, she gives me nasty looks and starts calling me what I assume are mean names that rival 250. I just give her a calm stare, and try to be the bigger person (not hard to do, considering I've got a good 5 inches on her and could take her if I needed to).

Not an actual photo of my neighbor, but you get the idea...

Making a Name for Herself in Shanghai

We were lucky to have our friend and bridesmaid Elizabeth DeLion travel all the way from Chicago to celebrate our 2nd anniversary with us in Shanghai this past week. Well, she did stop in Vietnam, Cambodia and Hong Kong on her way here, but we like to think that the highlight of her trip was sitting down with us on July 3rd and watching the wedding video for the first time. Well, first time for her, probably about the 50th time for me and Zach.

Elizabeth braved the heat and humidity and hit all the usual Shanghai spots, the museums, the parks, the Bund, and most importantly, the shops and markets! She managed to outfit herself with plenty of new school outfits, just in time for her first day of PT school next month.
















We also had fun navigating her through Shanghai Cuisine. Her favorite dish? The famous Shanghai Xiaolongbao (soup dumplings) from Din Tai Feng. We left plenty of comment cards filled with pleas to open an outlet in Chicago.




We braved the rain to snap an evening shot on one of the restaurant rooftops on the Bund.





After almost a week of hanging out with us in Shanghai, Elizabeth moved on to Beijing to check out the Great Wall and other Chinese landmarks. Thanks for making the trip Elizabeth!

Beach Escape - Hainan, China

Tiffany, Meredith and I took a much needed break from the heat and noise of Shanghai in the summer with a weekend getaway to Hainan, an island along the southern coast of China. We spent a relaxing weekend reading along the beach and sleeping on the heavenly soft Marriott beds.



China doesn't have much in the way of beach vacation spots, which could be partly due to most Chinese having a severe aversion to the sun, but who knows, and so Hainan is like the Hawaii of China, but with no crowds.















Of course Meredith learned from the Chinese about covering up in the sun. Tiffany of course learned that if you are going to be in the sun then at least apply sunscreen heavily. I, unfortunately, didn't learn anything and happily swam around the entire first day and got burnt to a crisp by that afternoon.

The beaches were absolutely pristine and the water was warm, and the waves weren't too big as we were in a bay protected from the ocean.



The Marriott had a nice Vietnamese restaurant - here Tiffany can barely hold back her excitement for the food, and for the waitstaff, which actually responded happily when she asks for a glass of water, versus the usual cold, crusty Shanghai service she is used to.

Here Tiffany and Meredith pose in front of the Marriott, a huge, colonial-style building with a big, outdoor balcony for enjoying afternoon cocktails with the ocean view.


And the view from the balcony...



It was nice to see the blue sky and know that those white puffs were clouds and not pollution....
















Tiffany and Meredith alternated the entire day between reading for the first 15 minutes of each hour and dozing off for the next 45 minutes. Could not have been happier, too!