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Am going to Guangzhou to the semiannual China Toastmasters conference where we’ll learn all kinds of great new techniques of making bread.  In May, it was held in Shanghai.

Will be going by train – 22 hours. Nice!

Follow my twitter for updates along the way. Should arrive Friday 11AM or so.

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 started with my 2nd speech at Toastmasters to post the speech I presented on my Website. Last night, I presented my 3rd speech. The topic was in regards to Beijing Traffic – I presented some ideas on how Beijing could improve what is becoming a disaster.

As a disclaimer, I am not an expert in the field of traffic management, nor have I studied the ideas presented in my speech. I’ve only experienced first hand the degrading state of Beijing’s traffic over the last 5 years, primarily as a driver, but also user of the public transit system. And I’ve only experienced bits and pieces of these ideas in different cities around the world (as specified in the speech) and have mostly liked what I’ve seen. Also, this is a 7-minute speech, so I couldn’t go into a lot of detail… I could speak for hours on this topic…

And here it is… (comments please!)

Unless you’re lucky enough to live within walking distance of your office or school, I am sure you all experience the daily grind of transit during rush hour. Roads are chalk full of cars. The subway system is not expansive enough. Buses are overcrowded… And it’s getting worse every day!

I am going to present you with my “4-Point Plan for Traffic Harmony”. These strategies are used by several cities worldwide and I see no reason why they can’t be implemented here in Beijing!

1. Curb Auto-sales by instituting a license plate quota system

1,000 new cars enter the Beijing road system every day. That’s about 360,000 new cars a year. Beijing already has over 3 million cars – with the road system already swelled, new measures must be taken immediately to slow the car population explosion.

Cities like Shanghai and Singapore have a type of vehicle bidding system where the city places a limit on the number of new cars allowed each year. For example, Singapore imposes a limit of 3% of the current number of cars. The price of purchasing a license will depend on market demands. The price goes higher as more bids are made. People ask themselves “Do I really need a car?”

2. Introduce Congestion Zones

Singapore and London are two examples of cities who have instituted downtown congestion zone fees. Each car is equipped with a device and stored-value card and each road entering the zone has overhead sensors that, as cars pass under, deducts an amount of money from the car’s stored-value card. This follows the “pay-for-use” concept and those who contribute to congestion more end up paying more. This added fee will encourage drivers to think of alternative routes or transportation methods, or provide them with a smoother ride should they decide to pay the fee.

3. Introduce Public Light Buses

Part of the problem that causes congestion on major roads is the high number of large buses. These large buses are slow, especially when accelerating. Hong Kong has an excellent bus system that combines large and small buses, called “Public Light Buses”. These are small buses that only hold 18 people and generally follow a shorter route than their larger counterparts. And because they are small, they are able to drive faster. Beijing can add several thousand of these to the roads, also creating new routes in the process. Passengers will also enjoy greater comfort while traveling due to the 18 pax limit.

4. Introduce Carpool Lanes

Beijing already has many bus lanes where access for normal vehicles is controlled by time of day. The city can take this one step further by introducing “car pool lanes”. The idea is cars can only drive in these lanes if they have 2 or more people in them. It would make sense to add these to major roads such as ring roads, boulevards, and expressways. This has the added benefit of discouraging single drivers.

To wrap up, I have presented 4 points that will no doubt greatly improve the city’s traffic situation. They are:

1. Curb Auto-sales by instituting a license plate quota system
2. Introduce Congestion Zones
3. Introduce Public Light Buses
4. Introduce Carpool Lanes

I am confident that with implementing all 4 points swiftly, we could see a real change in the traffic situation for the better, and we won’t have to wait until 2012 when the current Subway expansion plan is realized.

You all now need to go out and petition the Beijing Traffic Bureau to implement these points at once!

I tried to add a little humor to keep the audience interested, and I seemed to have gotten good response. Obviously I didn’t give the speech word for word – I actually, while on stage, changed the intro and made it a story instead of just dry commentary.  I also made the ending a bit more dramatic.  I’m such a dramatic person…

Last night I was “Toastmaster” of our Toastmasters meeting – meaning, I lead the meeting. And one of the responsibilities of the Toastmaster of the meeting is to give an intro speech and set the “theme” for the meeting – although it’s rare everyone else follows the theme.

I feel the theme I selected is important for everyone, and decided to post the speech as a blog entry. Enjoy.

Some of you may know that last week I moved into another apartment. I had been in the old apartment for about 2 yrs and figured it is time to move because our landlord was giving us a lot of trouble, first she raised the rent and started to send people to look at the apartment without even telling us. We concluded that our landlord was simply out of touch with reality. What really confirmed our deduction was when it came time for the actual move.

First, she would not allow the wuye to give us the slip to allow our moving truck to leave the complex until she had someone look at the apartment, probably to make sure we weren’t steeling anything! Of course, this refusal came on the day of the move. Apparently us telling her several days beforehand didn’t help at all. So, that delayed us a bit.

Second, when we first rented the apartment, our landlord provided some furniture in addition to the furniture that I owned. She provided a Sofa Bed, or Shafa Chuan. The Sofa and Bed, however, are mine. In the first contract we had, the two words were together, written as Shafa Chuan. When we went to sign the 2nd year contract, she rewrote it, and we didn’t realize she conveniently added a comma, so now the contract wrote that she provided both a bed and sofa. So, this was a big discussion that ultimately had me dig through our boxes to find the old contract! (This is one reason why I never ever through away any paper)

Finally, she insisted that she send us the security deposit only to an agricultural bank account, no other bank. Even after we offered to pay any transfer fee, she still refused. So, we had to spend over an hour in line one day to open the stupid bank account…

After all of this, my girlfriend and I were pretty angry and we wanted to do something to make us feel better. I thought about “conveniently forgetting” a package of extremely stinky cheese that would work like a time bomb – give it a few weeks, the apartment will stink like nothing else!

After thinking about this a lot, eventually we decided to not do anything. We both feel we did the right thing – let’s be realistic here — the landlord would probably not learn from this- she’ll always be greedy and mean. Looking back, we would probably regret this as well.

For me, knowing that I didn’t have do this ultimately makes me feel better. I know that she will eventually get what she has coming to her as life generally works in a circular motion. (Bad Karma) You get when you dish out.

So, next time you are confronted with a situation where you could react in a negative way, think about it beforehand and try just letting it go. Take the moral high ground. People in the wrong will always eventually have their day.