February 2006 Archives

Plant box + snow in Shanghai
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Yes!!! After waking this morning (feeling a touch worse for wear), my bleary eyes came across the view from our apartment.

Its been snowing!

Shanghai looks 100% better.

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Technorati Tags: Shanghai, China, expat, flickr

IMG_2092.JPG
See more images by timbeckenham at flickr.

Despite my situation of a foreigner living and working in a country where I speak the common tongue extremely poorly, it appears that most of the time I spend discussing the topic of language and learning, almost all of this is spent explaining English & its uses to my work colleagues. I work in *very* big company, world-wide, and English is the language of this business. We also recruit locally as preference, so almost all of my colleagues have learnt English as their second or third (or fourth) language. I'm constantly amazed how quickly my work-mates have adapted to this environment. Not by osmosis, but by sitting down on weekends and thumbing through Chinese-English dictionaries and using various computer translation tools to sort out some of the complicated English terms (business, science, corporate wankwords) that is sent their way. I have enough problems learning the corporate wankwords and filtering their meaning, but in a second language? I'm super impressed.

So, during the day I field a lot of queries about 'which word is most appropriate', 'what does this mean', etc. etc. Its part of my 'duty' in the group to help out in this area. But everynow and then, you really get a weird query, like this text message I receive a few nights ago...

"Do you know what is the meaning of rhombus?"

My life is never dull, but geeky. And not surprisingly, I knew the answer...

Wondering about the photo? Nothing to do with this entry, but its cool. Its from our mountain trip to Huangshan over the CNY holidays. I'll eventually get around to writing more about this soon. Check out more of these photos on my flickr set page.

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Technorati Tags: Shanghai, China, expat, flickr

the haircut
See more images by timbeckenham at flickr.

I got a haircut yesterday. A REAL haircut. The type of cut that, after experiencing, you just have to say - that's a REAL haircut.

There was a little confusion at the barbers to what I REALLY wanted in my usual 6 weekly trim. Just a little short on the sides, and a little less shorter on top. Once I realised I received the 'reverse mohawk', there was no return.

I hadn't had a problem at the barbers I sometimes frequent - a real 1950's throw-back barber with marble floors, foot-pump seats, cut-throat razor shaves (if you want it), and the smell of Brill-Cream in the air. A true glimpse of the past.

Looking to the present, I now possess a haircut that looks as though I resorted to hair-loss as a measure to remove nits.

My friends have been supportive of my new look - with both Lin's and Lozza's fetish for newly cut hair being revealed, and my realisation on how cold it actually is in Shanghai right now.

My skull feels exposed.

I think I will grumble away for the next few weeks until I can fashion some type of hairstyle.

In the meantime, I've created this list of positives from this experience...

Upsides of looking like a criminal...

• easy to get service in banks
• less time to get ready in the morning
• don't have to worry about cow-licks
• people want to run their fingers through your 'hair'
• dropping (a hat) size
• less overheating of my noggin
• I know now how to order a 8-blade all over my head in Chinese
• no more mullet prone hairstyles (a real and ever-present concern in China)

Things are looking up.

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Technorati Tags: Shanghai, China, expat, flickr

Ma la Bong Fu
See more images by timbeckenham at flickr.

We recently returned from a Chinese New Year trip to Huangshan in Anhui Province of China. I'm going to write a more detailed entry soon, but here's a little snippet of what we encountered on our first night away from Shanghai.

After arriving at our hotel close to 10pm, and feeling hungry, we made a straight line to the closest restaurant. We were ushered into a local haunt not far from our lodgings and proceded to order from memory. No English menus in Huangshan! One disk every expat knows is 'Ma La Doufu' or 'Spicy Tofu'. Its delicious, made with chilis, small shreds of pork and silken tofu. However, we weren't quite prepared for this restaurant's variant - Ma la BONG fu. Why Bong Fu you ask? We all picked it straight away that it didn't taste right, and wondered how to describe it. Lin, speaking out loud described it as tasting '... earthy, no, like dirt. Hey, it tastes like bong water'.

Ma la doufu (tofu) with stinky tofu? Yuck. I don't recommend it.

Ma la doufu will never be the same for me.

This isn't quite what you expect when you order a meal in a Chinese restaurant, but there you go.

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Technorati Tags: Shanghai, China, expat, flickr