Chris Drumgoole

Last night, Melanie and I returned from Hong Kong.  Had a great great time in Hong Kong!  Our flight was supposed to depart from HKG at 7:30PM, for an arrival around 10:30-10:50PM.

When we got to the airport, we noticed the flight was delayed to 8:10PM - we later found out, according to the pilot, the plane was late getting out of Shanghai due to weather.  This was fine as we could spend a bit more time in this great airport.

We eventually board the plane, but then the pilot gets on the intercom and tells us due to bad weather in Beijing, we’re not sure what time we can take off - we have to join some sort of “queue”.  Yes, I confirmed with some friends in Beijing that it was raining pretty hard.

An aside: my flight from Beijing to Hong Kong landed during a category T3 storm on wednesday, so I don’t know what all the commotion is!

Long story short (ok, there isn’t much more left to the story!), we finally took off around 10:15PM (2.75 hours late) and landed 1:20AM.  Then we had to endure the horrendously inefficient and horribly designed new-Terminal 3.

Weather Gods

It seems to me, and several of my other friends in Beijing, that it’s been raining a heck of a lot more this season than it has in the past years.  And, like automobile drivers, pilots and air traffic controls don’t seem to know what to do when it rains. (In fairness, rain in Beijing is a bit of an abnormal phenomenon, so it does catch us all off guard a bit).

Could it be the powers that be are causing it to rain a bit more than usual to help in the cleanup effort of the city before the Olympics?  Who knows. But it is something interesting to think about.

I have the best luck traveling

This is the 3rd time in as much as a month that my flight, TO Beijing, has been delayed due to Weather.

1. Shanghai Hongqiao to Beijing: Saturday, May 31- Original departure time: 9:55PM; actual ~11:15PM
2. Qingdao to Beijing: Friday, June 20 - Original departure time: 9:25PM; actual ~11:30PM
3. Hong Kong to Beijing: Monday, June 30 - Original departure time: 7:30PM; actual 10:15PM

My good friend, Dr. Bushwacker, was flying back from Shanghai Hongqiao last week, also an evening flight - his flight was delayed and delayed, until finally they canceled it and rescheduled him for the following day.

I went to Shanghai this weekend to attend a Toastmasters conference (District 85P Spring Conference), and of course, to cheer on 2 of my club’s members who competed in the District-level Evaluation and Speaking contests.  Sadly, they didn’t place.

As a good friend of mine recently move from Beijing to Shanghai, I decided to extend my trip by one day to spend Sunday with him (I was originally supposed to return to Beijing Saturday night).

Shanghai is nice!

This was my 4th time to Shanghai, and for some reason, I hated it the previous times I went.  This time was different, but I’m not sure why.  Maybe it’s that I’m getting tired of Beijing after 5 years?

My return flight was scheduled to depart from Shanghai Hongqiao airport at 9:05PM Sunday night.  I get to the airport on time, we board on time.  Then the perser came on the intercom and told us our flight would be delayed 1 hour “due to bad weather in Beijing”.  Everyone sighs. People start getting up to get their books or music players from their overhead luggage.

Air China was nice enough to put on a movie (in English) that kept me busy…

After about an hour, the perser came on the intercom again, and regretted to inform us “that due to deteriorating weather in Beijing, we’ll be delayed even longer”!  I then decdied to check out just how much the weather in Beijing was deterioratin by SMSing friends in Beijing.  Pretty much, my friends thought I was nutts because the weather was actually fine.  It rained a bit earlier, but it was dry now.

These guys are pulling something!

I remember hearing from someone a while ago that there’s a law in China that if a plane is delayed more than X (I forgot what X was), then the airline would need to compensate  the passengers.  Clearly, this is a pro-passenger law.  But there are rumors that airlines, regardless of the problem, claim the delay is weather related so they can get out of compensating the passengers.  This allows time for the pilots to sober up or the engines to be fixed or whatever the case may be.

Any way, maybe half an hour later, the perser comes on again and says we’ll take off around 11:15PM.   Finally! Some good news!

We were pretty close to that estimate - we touched down around 1AM into the new Beijing Airport Terminal 3.  An improvement, but I wasn’t about to ooo and ahh at that hour (this was my first time actually traveling through this terminal).

Ok, story done.

I gave my 6th speech at Toastmaster’s last night, the project was about Vocal Variety.  I gave the speech as if the audience was actually members of another group I belong to, The Beijing Linux User Group, and that this meeting was one of our monthly meetings.

Fellow Linux Group Members.  Now, those of you who’s meeting tonight is your first, you may not know that our group has another passion in addition to Linux.  No, it’s not airplanes.  It’s not coin collecting.  And it’s certainly not Microsoft!

It’s Yang Rou Chuanr!

In fact, you could suggest the club be renamed to the Beijing Linux >> and Chuanr User Group!

One of the popular social activities our group partakes in outside of these monthly meetings is having dinner at an area Chuanr restaurant.  As leader of the Group’s Chuanr Committee, I want to tell you about a real exciting event that we’re working hard to plan.

The title of the event is: “The 3rd Ring Road Chuanr Challenge”.  I’ll repeat……

A Challenge?  You may be thinking “How on earth can you combine Chuanr, 3rd Ring Road, and a Challenge?”

Simple.  We want to make a complete circle along 3rd Ring road, stopping at each bus stop of bus route 300 Kuai (that’s 21 bus stops), and we want to sample the nearest Chuanr Restaurant to that bus station.

The Challenge is – can we make a complete circle, sample the Chuanr and other interesting dishes at each stop, all in one day?  And in the process, we’ll be rating the quality of the restaurants – from taste, to ambiance, to price.

There are 3 reasons why we are doing this event

First point: As Linux people, the love of meat on a stick is just inherently part of us.  We’re a social bunch and as we love Chuanr so much, we’ve built Chuanr nights into our social calendar.  On average, we get together for dinner twice a month to talk about Linux (among other things), drink beers, and feast on these great meat sticks from heaven!

So one day, I thought, “why don’t we take this one step further?”  It seemed the logical thing to do!

Second point: One of the goals of the Chuanr committee is to document as many Chuanr restaurants in the city as possible and provide that list of tried and tested restaurants to our membership as a service.

Normally, we have our Chuanr events on the North-Eastern part of the city – now, unfortunately not everyone in the group lives in the North-East.  So, we hope to get solid options for those who live in the South and the West of Beijing so that they can satisfy their urges of cumin and chilly coated lamb sticks wherever they are in the city and they can be sure it will be a quality restaurant.

Third point: It’s never been done before.  Really, why would it have been?  Who would be crazy enough to spend a day in between buses and small dirty Chuanr restaurants for the fun of it?  Well, nobody but us!

Does this kind of even seem interesting for you all?  I hope it does and I am sure we’ll have a good time eating the food we love, exploring other parts of the city we love, and spending quality time with the people we love.

Yes, we’re actually doing this event.  I gave this speech (well, something remotely similar) during our March meeting (I say remotely because I didn’t prepare and had a few beers before) and the event is actually scheduled for tomorrow, May 10.  !!

I’ll be sure to write about what goes on during the event, along with photos, etc.

Another similar in the pipeline: “Lao Beijing Hutong Bicycle Chuanr Tour” (Lao = Old, Hutong= alleys)

I’m hitting myself for not taking a picture, but, oh well.

In my office building, there’s a sort-of cafeteria where there are many different kinds of food stalls, and you put money on a charge card.

Well, apparently, the landlord is kicking these guys out (the whole operation) because they claim they haven’t paid rent since moving in.  After getting off the elevator, the landlord posted a big A2-sized notice stating what’s going on and how today is the last day!  They are also making announcements every 5 minutes or so informing the patrons to hurry up and get their money back.  I can tell the landlord is damn pissed!

Of course, the cafeteria management is claiming otherwise, but nonetheless, there was a mad dash to reclaim the stored money - big mash up of people at the counter, tempers flaring, kind of an interesting situation.

I got my RMB 103 back, so I’m happy.

So, now, 100+ people don’t have a job to go to tomorrow, and my colleagues and I will have to find alternative ways of getting lunch (along with the rest of the building occupants).  All around ma fan, no?

I was “Toastmaster” at my Toastmaster’s meeting last night, which means, I lead the meeting. And one of the responsibilities of Toastmaster is to give an opening speech. This is the 2nd time this year I have had this role - 2 speeches that could have been used towards my Competent Communicator manual, but, oh well… I’m also working on the Competent Leader manual, so at least one requirement was fulfilled!

As you might have guessed, here at Toastmasters, I like to talk about me. Why? Well, it’s because “me” is the topic I know most about. So, when I was thinking of what to talk about tonight, I thought about an event that happened to me last week. It doesn’t really have a theme or point; it’s more of a small slice of my life than anything else.

First, I’ll give you a little background. In China, the law states that upon arriving in China, foreigners need to register with the local police within 24 hours. This also applies to resident foreigners who move house. For those who don’t follow the law, they can be fined up to 500 RMB.

Some of you might know that I moved house in January. I knew about this requirement but kept putting it off as I didn’t think the authorities would care too much, as they haven’t in the past.

Now, finally, motivation to register my residence, my employment visa expires next month and this is one of the required documents I need to provide. So, I decided to make my way to my local police station last Friday to get my new Temporary Residence Permit.

In the past, this has been a 5 minute job – walk in, hand over the passport, photo copy of landlord’s ID, and proof of ownership, and get back the temporary residence. Done, easy. No talking required (in my case, this is important as my Chinese is terrible and the police officer usually doesn’t speak English).

This time, it wasn’t so straight forward. As it was pretty much a last minute decision of mine to go to the PSB at that time, I totally forgot that I needed to also bring a copy of my landlord’s ID and proof of ownership. Oh, and I was over a month late in registering!

I just showed up, gave them my passport and rental contract, smiled… But then the officer started asking questions! The first couple, I could answer. But then it started getting complicated. At that point, I told her I’d call my girlfriend and she could talk to her.

Long story short, the officer was asking whether my landlord even registered the apartment for rental. Of course, my landlord did not! Yikes!

I called my landlord, gave the phone to the officer, they talked a while, and I ended up having to wait an hour for my landlord to get to the police station with the relevant documents to register the apartment.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting in the police station, people are looking at me, probably thinking “what’s this foreigner in trouble for?!”

I managed to get off with an official warning letter that the officer made me sign. I am not in the “system” for breaking the law…

I have a few observations from this story. First, the authorities are really getting serious about foreigners and ensuring foreigners who aren’t supposed to be here, aren’t.

Second, it’s important that if you don’t speak the language, always have a friend or two on standby who can translate over the phone!

Expats take note!  If you’re like me who has to do a lot of the “admin” stuff yourself (because your not a delegated expat executive with a staff), such as registering at the local police station when you move, don’t delay. It’s only going to get more mafan, and cops don’t like to smile too much.

I was talking to one of the members of my TM club last night after the meeting and she made a few good points (the commentary is mine, the general ideas are hers):

1. If you have a foreign guest visit you, you are technically required by law to register that guest at the local police station. If you don’t, the same penalties can apply.
2. The authorities most likely have a hidden motive for all this added mafan, and it’s unlikely due to them just randomly deciding “hey, let’s keep track of these foreigners!” It’s clearly Olympics-driven, and one theory is they want foreign guests to stay at the overpriced hotels instead of having short term apartment rentals (there are services that are lining up apartments for visitors during the Olympics - so if you have an apartment, and don’t want to deal with the Olympics, you could go on a nice holiday and make some $$$ renting out your place). I bet they want to crack down on that stuff as these “behind-the-scenes” deals won’t be contributing to the tax revenues of the city. See? It all boils down to “bring the dollar in through the door” (or RMB in this case).

I had my first almost run-in with a Beijing Traffic cop this morning.

In the almost 5 years I’ve been riding my motorbike through Beijing, I have enjoyed an almost-invincibility / invisibility from the traffic police. Sure, I’ve heard stories of foreigners being stopped (driving either cars or motorbikes) by traffic cops for one thing or another, but usually playing the old “sorry, I don’t speak Chinese” trick was enough to get out of it.

I have seen many times when coming up to an intersection with cops directing traffic or conducting random checks on passing vehicles, the cop would slightly turn a bit so he and I would not lock eyes, thus letting me pass by.

Why were foreigners seemingly treated differently than the locals? Was it that the traffic police just didn’t care? Was it unofficial / unwritten policy to let us be? Was it a lack of confidence in their English capabilities? (because you know that the foreigner, whether he speaks Chinese or not, he won’t say a word in Chinese if he knows what’s good for him!)

Whatever the real reason, I didn’t care as it turned out to be an advantage.

The Incident

One of my normal routes to get the office in the mornings is to get onto the 2nd Ring Road at the Guangqumen bridge, drive North a bit, then get on the East-to-West expressway Tonghuihe to 4th Ring Road, then drive north ’til Dashanzi - then take surface roads the remainder of the way to the office.

(Now, as an aside, a quick reminder for those who don’t know. Officially, motorbikes, like what I drive, aren’t allowed on the Ring Roads/Expressways. I can’t count how many times cops have seen me but turn a blind eye. Yes, I know that doesn’t make driving on them right, at least, according to the law… I digress… )

This morning was no different. 2nd ring road was packed with traffic - but as I would only be on it for 400 meters before getting on the speedy Tonghuihe, it was worth the 5 minutes of mental anguish.

As I was getting onto 2nd Ring from the entrance ramp, the traffic cop who was at that entrance saw me, pointed at me, and told me to go to the side! Shit! (My papers/tax/inspection aren’t exactly up to date - something I’ve been meaning to fix) .

I stop, and wait for him to approach me. After a minute, he comes to me, points at the road (2nd ring), and says “No”, while shaking his head a bit. Then he points up the entrance ramp where I came from, motioned for me to follow him (he directed me against traffic, so he wanted it to look “official” I guess), and I did, and I drove away.

Whew!

O.K., so that could have had a few different results, but I am certainly happy with the result I had. The only annoying thing now is that route is clearly off limits, at least during morning rush hour, as I am sure that if he sees me again attempting the same shenanigans, I won’t get off as easily as I did today.

Darn the Olympics / social & economic progress / shitty city planners / “we must have a car” new middle class.

Beijing just isn’t the same anymore…

Folks,

If you’re like me, you have a sidecar motorbike, you like to drive year round. And if you’re like me, it’s because you hate taxis for a multitude of reasons - those of which I will not go into now.

But, I have a small word of advice:

During the winter, check the damn weather report for current conditions before driving to work.

Today, I didn’t. Oh my god… Pain. Pain all over my body.

When I finally got to my office (lucky I didn’t freeze to death), I checked the weather on CNN’s website, and this is what I found:

New rule: no driving in below freezing with wind more than 5mph.

Sorry to my 3 loyal readers - I haven’t posted here since December 22nd! Many apologies!

So, what’s going on these days? Well, I’ve been back in Beijing since the 4th of January. Back at work since the 7th. Melanie have been here for the last almost-2 weeks, so that’s been nice.

Oh, and we moved to a new apartment! interested to know where it is? Have a look at this Google Map I made:

View Larger Map

Hopefully it shows up. I think Internet Explorer has some issues with it, so use Firefox.

We moved on the 8th on January, and we have been busy unpacking and planning our housewarming party, scheduled for tomorrow! Let me know if I forgot to invite you. Be be forewarned, it could have been for a reason! (j/k, or am I?)

Some things we’ve been preparing:

The drinks fridge. Hopefully people won’t go home thirsty…

The “bar”. I tried to get some key ingredients for the popular cocktails…

I’ll be sure to manage my alcohol intake at this party so I can be sober enough to take photos. Rest assure, I’ll post them to flickr “as it happens”.

I got an email today in my company email box from the conference organizer that I dealt with couple of months ago (for the BCP conference).  The email was a Christmas Greetings.

It’s classic!

Go ahead, click on it to see the full size!

Imagine all the little people graphics are animated.  They’re jumping up and down (including Santa), doing whatever it is they’re doing…  My favorite is the “If you are a girl, wish you more beautiful (pic) more considerately (pic), where the first pic is of the girl nitting, presumably a sweater, and the second is of her making eggs.  “Make me eggs, woman!”

Pure classic.

And the big bunny at the bottom, well, he’s just walking in place…

But, don’t get me wrong - I like it.  It’s certainly the thought that counts!

Not sure if you’ve been following my flickr photo stream, but I posted a photo I took the other day of a notice in my elevator.  I knew it had something to do with turning off electricity as it had the “dian”, or 电 character, a date (Dec. 20), and a time range (00:00 - 02:00).  So I pretty much guessed what this was about.

Thanks to one of my few loyal readers, Ray, who can read Chinese, he translated it for me in the flickr photo comments:

Power outage from 00:00 to 02:00 on Dec 20. Affected area: South region building 1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, Kindergarten, Office building and elevator.

Well, I’m in building 7 (By the way, that’s 6 numbered buildings, and the office buildings, which is pretty much the whole complex! [almost]).

I’m a great pre-planner!

I went out to dinner last night (Dec 19) with some friends, we then had a few drinks, and left for home around 11:30pm.  Plenty of time, I thought. 10-15 mintues to get home - time to spare!  Ha!

I did get home around 11:45.  The lights in the building were still on - a good sign!  I enter my building, and low and behold - they turned off the elevators already!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Both of them!

People: remember, I live on the 26th floor.  Minus the superstitious floors, so I effectively live on the 23rd floor.  Ouch.

I managed to get into my apartment before the whole building shut down…  No TV for me…