June 2006 Archives

Our nation's World Cup dream is over. Australia fell foul (pardon the pun) of a poor refereeing decision, and that was enough for Italy to progress to the next round. A lot has been said about this game and the decision. I'm of the view that the result really sucks, but at the same time I hold a conflicting feeling in tradition with my renowned ability of pragmitism (or fence-sitting as it has been alternately described) in which I also realise that is the difference between beauty and tragedy of any sport is a knife's edge, and this time the Socceroos got cut up.

The good part about finally qualifying for the World Cup party is that other nations might actually start seeing soccer/football as part of our culture, and that will attract more interest from other international teams to play Australia. That's what the fan in Oz & around the world wants to see. That is the core reason that there's been so much support and enthusiasm from people for this World Cup. Our nation has again jumped on the bandwagon, we liked it, many of us want to stay there, but will our high expectations and short attention spans cause us to jump onto another one in a few months time? Hopefully Soccer Australia can maintain & increase support for football in Australia and also capitalise on the success of the national senior mens team.

Well done Socceroos!

What a hectic weekend (and last week). I'll write more about my weekend in Hong Kong later this week when I get the chance, but I really enjoyed my time there. It was certainly a refreshing change from Shanghai.

Its been really hectic recently. Most of it is self-inflicted; I tend to swamp myself with activities when I'm feeling depressed about things. The last few weeks hasn't been an exception to this. Our trip to HK definitely brightened my mood (and lightened my wallet).

Tonight I'm off to watch the Socceroos take on Italy in the World Cup's Group of 16 match. Can our boys upset the fancied Azzuris? There's a chance - I've got some good faith that they seize it.

Yeah, that might have not been the best idea to get away from Shanghai's warm muggies (wtf???). Linda will pop down to HK to renew her visa for the coming year, so we thought why not see some of what HK has to offer. My reason to go is to have a look & enjoy a tiny weekend break. I haven't visited HK since coming to China - but I do remember some sweet times when my family visited there in 1986 (excluding my sister's asthma attacks & bronchitis in the chilly winter temperatures). I'm looking forward to it. My friend JM recently popped back from a small trip to HK, and he quipped

"... its nice to go somewhere normal to decompress from Shanghai...".

I think I'm due for some decompression.

During this past week, I've made 2 trips to the Huashan Hospital's Foreigner's Clinic. About 3 weeks ago, I twisted my left knee at Ultimate training. It has felt sore since then, and I got tired of the 'wait and see' approach to healing and thought I'd do something about it. With the help of my company's nurse (yep, there are some perks of working in Shanghai), I had arranged to meet one of Shanghai's top orthopaedic surgeons, Prof. Yu. I arrived at Huashan Foreigner's Clinic, filled in a few forms as usual, bumped into a few American interns spending their summer break working at Huashan, and waited. I was introduced to Prof. Yu, and after a pretty personable chat with him, we got down to the diagnosis part. My initial examination didn't last too long - essentially after a few minutes worth of prodding and some extensive note-taking, I was introduced to the queue for MRI machine. At this point, I remembered why medical insurance is a good thing. The MRI scan at Huashan costs between RMB1900 and RMB2200, and despite this being China and everything 'should' be a little cheaper than back home, all I can say is that I'm glad that my insurance covers the entirety of any treatment at Huashan Hospital.

I returned to the hospital this Friday afternoon for my MRI. The company I work for is a renowned manufacturer of such products, so imagine my pride as an employee to encounter one of our models in use in the radiology/imaging department at Huashan Hospital. Given all the hoopla about these highly-engineered medical marvel-machines that my company makes, and my complete lack of prior knowledge to how these things work in real-life - I soon had my world shaken yet again. I was shocked to discover how big, noisy, and clunky these machines were in real-life, and I fully appreciate the stories of people enduring 20 minutes (or more) in these units without moving. I had the short sharp version, I wouldn't like to be placed inside these machines for 30 minutes or so. Not really the 'cool-breeze, margarita in hand' experience I had been led to imagine.

Besides a couple of tiny leg twitches, my time spent in the tube was uneventful. I then popped off to Tima Harbour Cafe on Zhenning Lu for an afternoon coffee & to catch up on some work. I bumped into a few people in real-life and virtually while enjoying a quiet end to my working week.

Unbelievable: The Socceroos stun Japan.

Read the full story at The Sydney Morning Herald website.

Australia 3 - Tim Cahill (84min, 89), John Aloisi (90+2).
Japan 1 - Shunsuke Nakamura (26).

Yep. I'm on the bandwagon. Linda & I caught up with Desiree & JM last night to watch the match at the "That's Amore" Restaurant on Taikang Lu. Why? Italian restaurant, Italian fans, red wine & a big screen. Great atmosphere and a good find by JM (as usual).

I think I'll be going back there to watch some more matches. Partly because our satellite TV is now blocked not working.

Dan & Linda: Caojiadu Flower & Plant Market
See more images by timbeckenham at flickr.

Well, its not really news or anything noteworthy. But we live quite near to a pretty cool Flower & plant market located on the north-eastern corner of Changshou Lu & Wanhangdu Lu. The area around this intersection is known as Cao Jia Du.

This market was opened as a replacement for the famed Jingwen Flower & Plant Market which closed late last year.

Anyhow, its a cheap cheap, cheap place to buy flowers and big indoor plants. If you're missing oxygen while living in Shanghai, I'd recommend several indoor plants to help scrub away the pollution. If like me and you don't have one of those fancy expat family buses, each stall has friendly tricycle delivery guys can bring your massive plants to your apartment. What prompted this little tidbit? Well, I think Linda really wants some more indoor plants to kill spruce up our apartment. ;)

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I'm seriously considering my future direction right now. It isn't an easy situation I find myself in, nor a situation I feel very comfortable in dealing with. Nor is this a usual light-hearted topic that most people expect from yours truly. But its my blog, and I can't be @rsed about being cautious about this anymore.

The big carrot that lured me to Shanghai appears to be going sour. What attracted me to China was a position that was geared towards applied research in an area my background was tailor-made for. It promised to be a position where I could do some really cool work, explore ideas, and also promised to expose me to new areas of industrial and commercial businesses. This would add some great experience to my background and would hopefully help break open doors within the company, or further afield in my discipline. The big catch was that the job was in Shanghai and that I'd be receiving local wages. I weighed it up, and saw that the opportunity to push out some great work was worth it. Many things have happened at my work place since joining - many of which have made or forced me to adjust my expectations about my position. A lot of these adjustments I've struggled to deal with. And this has lead to a great deal of disappointment and regret over a combination of items that centre around my choice to join my employer and how I've dealt with situations where there is a large 'disconnect' between promises that were made to me and the reality I am faced with. Most of this I have optimistically put down to poor communication between all involved. When I am in a pessimistic mood, it feels like my job description and all the information I sought about it (6 interviews people!) was an outright embellishment. In my case, I am finding it difficult to trust my employer as several key factors that drew me to the position have been pushed out, repeatedly delayed, or victims of a change of project direction. Coincidentally the negatives of the job haven't dissipated. I really feel that a lot of the problems have been amplified by my adjustment to corporate life which was delayed/impacted by a 'home-run' project run by a new & inexperienced team in a new facility, attempting to complete a highly-demanding schedule. I can handle that (surprised?). What I can't seem to reconcile is how all the negatives on the project appear to have impacted on all the attractive (& promised) opportunities that drew me to Shanghai. Needless to say my motivation for my work has hit a complete low. My efforts to try and rectify this have waivered between (1) suck it up and take it like a man approach that got me through the last 6 months, (2) do enough to get through the day and maybe it will be better tomorrow, (3) take it up with management and watch their true new plans unfold, and (4) see if I can re-centre my aims to fit in with this. In all four situations, I feel like I've been kicked in the proverbials by Roberto Carlos.

Most of my close friends know that I take disappointment very heavily. In fact, I dwell, stew and muster over it. I take it in and make it my sick-bedfellow. I carry it silently for quite a while until I flip out and fall into some kind of funk based around regret, depression and embarrassment. This tends to repeat itself until the situation clears itself up, or I walk away from the problem (usually after a few cycles of the former). For me, it feels like I've been in this cycle for over 12 months now (after being in another one for probably 3+ years). I'm sick of this reaction I have. I've tried to take positive steps by talking and approaching management about this, but to this point my 'complaints' have not yielded much positive outcome. In fact, I'm starting to get quite a different story about my career and the progression that is expected in my company. Not what was outlined to me earlier. Taking a healthy positive step to rectify my problems has opened another can of worms that has at least shed some light on the true state of play in my business as far as my aims (novel research, interacting with marketing, look & see experiments with purpose) are concerned. It wasn't very enlightening nor encouraging for the next 12-18 months (a time which almost corresponds with the end of my contract). I haven't taken this news well. I'm now going through another funk cycle.

One good thing is that I recognise this depressive cycle I face is one that is self-limiting. It really does box in my potential. Its painful for me to admit this openly, but I am my own worst enemy & I usually add to my own problems further by pushing an agenda in a blunt manner and not taking hints. These days I can still be quite blunt, but I am far more adept at recognising all the hints. In this situation, I'm seeing them, I've weighed up the situation, and have decided that its time to fight for what I want. How much fight do I want to put in? Well, that's to be decided.

It is easy to say just quit and walk onto the next thing. That has several ramifications. I'm really heavily involved in mulling over any potentials. Its my nature to do so. What really motivates me to keep trying is that I couldn't stand walking away from anything that I didn't try what I could to make it better. Humans are strange animals. I've been repeatedly doing these things over the past 10 years not letting go of the bone when many other people have just walked away or been able to move on. I know I'm currently not like water with its ability to flow around obstacles. This is something that I'm working at right now to give more flexibility in the way I approach and deal with things. However, I'm more than aware that in many ways I'm more like a rock that tends to sit around (and not do much), but also stubborn, hard to dislodge, and doesn't move too far away from its position (or point of view). I really feel like I'm in a situation where I can't stand being the rock any further because the turbulence around me is wearing me down. I'm also faced with the burning reality that my current quest to become more fluidic is a way in which I could easily compromise my dreams and goals for my time in Shanghai.

One thing to frame this rant is this. This situation really irks me is that I couldn't understand how this position should have ever come about.

Tags: blog, China, Scientist, Shanghai

Scooter Commuter
See more images by timbeckenham at flickr.

This past weekend was predominantly spent inside. Linda and I were both feeling the effects of a tummy bug of unknown origin and decided to stay low. Oh Shanghai! What have you done to us? As a result, I don't have too much to write about here - our weekend was spent either lying down, in front of the couch watching TV or DVDs, reading books (Linda) or the entire internet (Tim). Our spirits and health lifted by Sunday afternoon/dusk so we ventured out to our friend D&L's place to have a light dinner followed by night ping pong. I took this shot during our taxi ride over to D&L's place. There are a million photos of Chinese motor commuters and other street life posted on Flickr, so I decided to add a couple more. For this photo, I played around with exposure time and white balance to minimise intensity of bright light sources. For this shot, I just liked how the picture's tones blended into each other, with the major contrast being the scooter guy's shirt. I didn't frame it so well, but the tonal effect is what I'm most happy with.

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Technorati Tags: Shanghai, China, expat, flickr

Our balcony view at night
See more images by timbeckenham at flickr.

There hasn't been too much else going on for me right now other than work & career planning. I can't really write too much about this on blog, but at least I can write about the view from 'our balcony!!!'.

I'm of the firm conviction that any outside space is considered a luxury in Shanghai. When we found our new apartment, we were delighted to see it had an outside space. The trade-off we faced for such a good apartment was that it was located on the lower levels of an apartment building of 30 floors. It is definitely not good for insects & mosquitos, but throw in a relatively quiet neighbourhood, a consistent breeze, some soft-cushioned chairs and my insect-avoidance worries are somewhat dulled.

This photo is best viewed in large format over on Flickr. I took this shot using a 4 second exposure, the railing of our balcony and a steady(?) hand. I think it illustrates how much light is available during the evening in downtown Shanghai, but also how all these light sources of different colours can combine with the angles presented by buildings to produce a colour palette. Shanghai's city buildings & their lights are also contrasted by the night sky, which is also drawn out by a long exposure. The high level of light pollution in Shanghai is important here so the low-level clouds are drawn out.

But that's what I think.

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Technorati Tags: Shanghai, China, expat, flickr