cdrum

I posted on Google+ earlier today that I’m “Doing my bi-weekly bean cooking. First batch: Orange Lentils. Second batch: Black Beans. Will write a blog post later.” Well, here’s the blog post. And, to my friend Vincent, yes, you’re probably right… “hmmm.. wouldn’t that increase your carbon footprint?”

I did two batches of beans that I’ll be freezing and eating for the next 2 weeks or so. First, a batch of Orange Lentils (seasoned of course), and second, a simple batch of Black Beans – plain.

Tumeric Orange Lentils

I added about 400mL of Lentils, and about 2 times that of water. Tumeric powder, Chinese Five Spice, Coriander powder, Cumin powder, black pepper, and tons of garlic.This batch will give me enough for 18 meals!

Boring Black Beans

These are exactly that – boring, but flexibly useful.

Dried, and then frozen, these should last about 2 weeks.

Pretty much like back in Beijing! I was in gastronomical heaven for dinner tonight.

First, the important details so you can find it. They have a few locations! We were at the one with the “check mark”. This “Si Chuan Kingdom” sounds interesting at Outram Park. I’ll need to check those guys out!!!

Chong Qing La Zi Ji!!!! AHHHH. Unfortunately, it was a little over cooked. But we’ll try it next time!

Gan Bian Si Ji Dou (Gan Bian Bian Dou). A true classic. Could be spicier – we’ll ask them to put in the peppers next time.

The restaurant’s name sake. Ma Po Dou Fu. Excellent here!!! MMMMMmmmmmm…

And, the best Chinese dish, ever – the Gong Bao Ji Ding. I give it a 8 out of 10. But, it did have the Huajiao – something I’ve had a hard time finding here in Singapore.

Now, if I could only find a Xinjiang restaurant here…

At first, we were pretty happy that Melanie’s new company in Singapore selected, what we thought, was a reputable relocation company with a “Customer-Focused Approach”.  Crown Relocations is a company both of us have heard of, and while we haven’t used them before (my long distance moves in the past were usually handled by Santa Fe), we thought it would be a relatively painful process.  The Beijing side of the relocation generally went without a hitch.  The Beijing-based staff were very helpful and courteous and seemed to genuinely want to accommodate our realistic needs.

The folks in Singapore, however, don’t seem to be interested in accommodating our, what we believe are, realistic needs.  First, I quote from their Website (2) (3) some of Crown’s customer-focused goals:

1. Maintaining a professionally attractive organizational culture is one of the core philosophies of the Crown Worldwide Group
2. Crown is committed to delivering high quality service seamlessly and remaining focused on continuous quality improvement
3. …guarantees that relocation professionals will always be informed and their employees will quickly settle-in and become productive in their new working environment

Melanie gets a call yesterday (Wed) from the Crown people in Singapore saying our shipment has already arrived in Singapore.  Wow, only 4 weeks! The guys in Beijing estimated 6 weeks.

Since Mel has been busy working since she arrived on the 7th of July and I just arrived 3 days ago on the 27th, we haven’t had a whole lot of time to find an apartment. So, time to kick apartment search into high gear!

Any way, Melanie was in Taiwan on a short business trip until last night, but the Crown folks needed her passport to provide a copy of her China visa to Singapore Customs to prevent being charged 3% import tax. When I told the guy who called yesterday Melanie would arrive late Wednesday night and wouldn’t be able to handle this until Thursday (today), he seemed a bit concerned and proceeded to ask me if I could reach her somehow to expedite the visa. I said no (knowing she was busy in Taiwan and didn’t need this to deal with).

Mel returns to Singapore and calls Crown today.  They say they need the Chinese visa copy and that the container has essentially cleared customs.  He asked for a delivery address.  Well, we don’t really have one yet. (no apartment!) And it’s not possible to have everything delivered to her aunt’s place where we’re staying now. (that’s about 18 cubic meters of junk, by the way).

I started looking for apartment options today while Melanie was juggling work and dealing with Crown. The Crown guy called her several times this morning asking where to deliver the things. Mel asked if Crown could hold onto the things for a while. The Crown guy then proceeded to tell her that past Friday (tomorrow!) they would charge a SGD45 per day charge.  This certainly puts undue pressure on us as we don’t want to be pressured into choosing an apartment just for the sake of it.

It seems to me that it would be “Customer-Focused” for Crown to offer a free week or so of storage.  What if the receiver, Melanie in this case, was on a longer term business trip and couldn’t deal with this? This is similar to the Cable company who says the technician will come by your house between 10AM and 4PM.  How the heck are you supposed to accommodate that? It’s their job to service you, not your job to wait for them and work around their schedule. Back to Crown, I think a week of storage is not too much to ask. This provides a little more flexibility to their customer, us, thus enhancing our satisfaction and likelihood of recommending them to our friends for future relocations.

Come on guys, them telling us today that our stuff is ready and we need to have it delivered by tomorrow before they start charging us storage fees… that’s just ridiculous. It’s not consumer focused and reflects poorly on them as a company. They have a very clear business objective to make as much money as possible while screwing their customers in the process. Companies can get away with that for some time, but it will come back to haunt them. Hopefully.

My favorite line thus far is “sorry for any inconvenience caused”.  No you’re not. Seeing that arguing with them was going nowhere, we decided to look into self-storage options so we can at least receive our goods.  Lucky for us there’s a self-storage company right here in Toa Payoh (where we’re staying). It’s called StorHub and we went there during Melanie’s lunch break and booked a 146 square feet storage space. It’s about less than a third what Crown would charge for a month period of storage, and we have 24-hour access to our stuff.

It seems this StorHub company wants our business as they are quite flexible in accommodating our needs.  They had a room for us essentially immediately. Even though we prepaid for 2 months in order to lock in the discount they provided, we can basically cancel any time and they will prorate our refund after the first month. And we can extend past the initial 2 months easily, no need for prior notice.

This isn’t over. Trying to negotiate having Crown deliver our stuff on Saturday instead of tomorrow as Melanie needs to work. And we’re going to forward our complaints to the highest level possible. It probably won’t do anything, but it’s best not to just bend over and take it…

So, for the first time in 6 years of living in Beijing, a friend from back home has visited!  (Yes, Derek did visit Shanghai on a business trip 2 years ago and I went down to see him, but that doesn’t count!   Jason braved the H1N1 Swine Flu control measures, his temperature was checked some 3 times before getting out of the airport, to visit me (well, he came to see Beijing, but I’m here, so I take that as he’s here to see me!

Another first for me yesterday was we went to see an Acrobatics show.  In 6+ years of living here, I never went to see an Acrobatics show!  Here are some pics!

Well, today is my last exam at school.  It’s 口语, or speaking exam.  It’s only about ten minutes of speaking to my teacher.  I did well on the mid term, and aren’t too worried for this final.  I should still be in the running to get about 50% or 75% of my tuition back on Friday through my school’s scholarship program.  Weird, they just give you cash on the spot at the commencement “ceremony”.  I think other schools give you scholarships towards the following term.

Things are winding down here.  Jason leaves on the 30th of June, the movers come on the 1st of July to pack up the apartment.  Then I’m off on the 7th!  That’s only 13 days from here.  Yikes!

Singapore Panorama - Borrowed from Wikipedia

Well folks, my long stay, just over 6 years, in Beijing is coming to an end.  It is time to finish this chapter in my life (and boy, has it been an interesting one), and begin a new one.

Melanie has accepted a position in Singapore, and like a dutiful “almost-spouse”, I will be tagging a long.

Timing?  Most likely in July. I have classes to finish up here (ending end of June). I plan on traveling around China for around a month or so (at least a couple of weeks), and then I’m off.

Friends from the states who thought about visiting?  You missed your chance! (except for Jason who’s coming at the end of June). You had 6 years…

Well, it’s Monday – the day after the Closing Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Things around the city seem to be pretty much the same – the car ban is still in effect and they still x-ray bags in the subway… I imagine these measures, and many more, will remain until at least the end of the Paralympic Games in September.

The question I have now, is whether our restaurant on the Siemens campus here has green beans (bian dou) and tofu (doufu).  During the Olympics, these two items (and maybe more, I don’t know) were not available “due  to the Olympics”.   Don’t ask me where the logic is here…

I’ll check during lunch today if I can get some toufu.  Let’s see if they try giving me the excuse “because of the Olympics” again – I’ll shoot back last night it ended.  So where’s the toufu?

BTW, I am a bit late, we saw some more events since the baseball photos I uploaded last week.  On Friday, we went to an Athletics event in the “birds nest” and Sunday, we went to the Men’s Volleyball final!  That was an exciting match!  Will upload photos in due time.

On Saturday, we were lucky enough to be offered Baseball tickets (at face value) to the USA-Canada game.

At first, it looked as if Canada would beat the U.S., with a score of 0-4.  But, they must have forgotten they were playing a game because they let the U.S. score 5 runs to win the game 5-4.

For more photos, check out my flickr set.

Melanie and I went with some friends (C, H, B, and J) to Friday’s evening session of Women’s Beach Volleyball.  It was fantastic!

The picture above is from the China v Cuba match.  China was quite good (and they beat Cuba, too!).

We were lucky to all get tickets to this same event as both H and I applied using our own accounts for the tickets during round 1 of ticket sales way back in August of last year. (or whenever it was)  Sure, we weren’t sitting next to each other, but we were close enough – for the later matches, we were able to consolidate.

We missed most of the first match (Germany v Austria) because H “couldn’t find a taxi”, but we made it in time for China v Cuba, so it was fine.

For more pictures, go to my flickr site.

Melanie and I went to our first Olympic event on Saturday – Rowing.  Specifically, we went to the first day of the event.  I must thank my friend Mike, from High School, who was actually supposed to visit me here in Beijing during the Olympics, but couldn’t due to prior commitments.  He was able to give me the tickets he purchased via proxy.  Here are my flickr photos. Unfortunately, we didn’t think to bring Melanie’s good camera!

As you can see from the photo above, the weather was eh.  I think it was fog ?  But being there was certainly interesting – I’ve never seen a rowing event in person, and of course, this was my first Olympics.  There was a sort of energy in the crowed when the rowers came by.  My only complaint – the sport is a tad on the slow side.  Our seats were very near the finish line (although not directly at the finish line) and because the track is 2km long, it taks about 5 or so minutes for the boats to get into view.  Then another 2 minutes for them to pass in front and glide across the finish line.  And because we weren’t directly in front of the finish line, we couldn’t tell who won!

But certainly an experience!  Thanks Mike!

Oh, if you ever go to a rowing event, it’s way out in Shunyi – about 50+km from the city.  We didn’t do our due diligence to find that there were free buses – we paid 150 RMB for a taxi out there! Ouch!  We took the bus back, though.

Next up: Boxing!

Our department moved back to the main campus of Siemens China today (after more than 4 years at an off-site building).  I quite like being here, even though we’re only in our current building temporarily (~6 months) while our permanent building is being renovated.  You could say we’re closer to the “action” (which makes sense as we’re a corporate department – most of the people we deal with are at this main compound).

Below is a photo of my new office – this older building on the compound doesn’t follow the open-plan that many offices these day follow – instead, the space is divided into separate offices, where my boss has his own, and I share with a colleague.  I actually quite like this…

(I’m on the left)

Sadly, as a corporate department trying to save money, we won’t be able to enjoy the brand new tower, so we’ll be in the low rises next to the tower for the foreseeable future.  Below is a picture of the view out my window.  You can see (behind) the tower in the distance and the other low rises of the Siemens compound.

And here’s a picture of the (front of the) tower I took last year when I visited it under construction.