Now, FOUR Years in China

I was looking at my restaurant reviews that I did when I first arrived. It was a pretty sorry looking list. We were such noobs when I wrote those and my whole mission at that time was to find a decent burger.

In the past year and a half, we’ve been exposed to some amazing restaurants and have been treated to some new ones.

My mission in the next few weeks is to create a hypothetical 5-day holiday in Beijing which includes a combination of dinner and lunch spots. These are the restaurants that we have taken visitors to. It should span a range of quality, price, and ease.

This week, Beijing Olympic Committee launched the online ticket website for the 2008 Olympics and I impulsively signed up for tickets. It’s interesting.

http://www.tickets.beijing2008.cn

You don’t actually buy the tickets when you check-out of the store. You are creating a list of desired events. The purchase date occurs in June. Based on demand for various events, you are either issued the tickets outright or put into a lottery if the event has a greater demand than supply.

Pricing and ability to reserve more than one ticket is based on the perceived demand. The following is a list of prices for the Opening Ceremony:

¥5000.00 - A
¥3000.00 - B
¥1500.00 - C
¥800.00 - D
¥200.00 - E

The ‘A’ level tickets cost about $650 USD. and they only allow one reservation. If I don’t get the ‘A’, then I’m in the drawing for the ‘B’ etc. I’m actually hoping that I don’t have to pay for ‘A’…it’s a bit steep. The other scary prospect is that this is just one ticket..what about the rest of the family?

I have to go through and do the same for them as well and cross my fingers that they get tickets too. I imagine that there will be a lot of creative trading happening in July.

Along with the opening ceremonies, I reserved tickets to the mens and women’s mountain bike events and the mens track & field final events. If I get all my 1st choices, I’ll be looking at almost $900 USD.

Your identity is verified with your passport. I can envision ticket brokers using their friends and family’s passports overwhelming the system. They do say that 70% have been reserved for China residents. Apparently we’re in that pool…yea.

A couple weeks ago, on a Lufthansa flight to Munich, I selected a CD (on the personal entertainment system) to listen to and it crashed my system.

After a 10 minute reboot, everything was fine. It looked as if it was downloading an update or something. Then, about 2 hours into the flight, the flight attendants announced that they needed to reset the system. After another 10 minutes, it came back up but no movies. They reset it again and the black-screen of death reappeared. Finally, after about 2 hours of no movies, it rebooted once more and everything was fine.

Here’s a photo of the screen…..

http://img87.imageshack.us/my.php?image=0402071324bk4.jpg

The funny part is what was displayed….

“Windows CE Boot Loader, v2.7
Partnumber: 231F-HAX-L16-04
(c) 2002-2004, Rockwell Collins”

The previous blog entry was absolutely an April Fools joke. I didn’t intend for anyone to actually believe it but I had tons of responses congratulating me etc. There is talk of a 3rd year here which I’ll announce when it is formalized.

In reality, there almost no amount of money that would make me stay here that long.

Some of my closest friends knew that I was negotiating a deal with my employer (a well known personal computer maker who also makes a very popular audio device) for an additional year in Beijing.

Today, they delivered 2 contracts. One for 1 year and was written according to the terms I proposed to them last January. The other contract offered an almost 150% increase in salary, double the housing allowance, 2 business-class tickets to the US each year for summer break and xmas holiday, an allowance for a full time driver (w/ car), and a performance bonus which would really take the sting off of moving to the bay area when we re-patriate. The downside of this contract is that it is for 5 years. This is clearly a case of a corporation dangling a sell-your-soul-to-the-man-carrot. All things considered though, Beijing isn’t that bad and the school is really great, so this afternoon, I signed it and sent it back.

Lisa is looking forward to house-shopping but a little apprehensive about spending so much more time in Beijing. Considering the fact that she doesn’t self-medicate, use anti-depressants, or therapy, she could easily last the 5 years without a major breakdown.

Last May, I made a post about the nightclub scene in Beijing titled Clubbing in Beijing along with my confession that I have a kid-like appreciation of electronic dance music.

That post was in response to seeing Paul Oakenfold, who by many measures is probably one of the top 3 DJs in the world. If you don’t know anything about DJ-ing at this level, it’s not about playing others music…it’s about creating their own music through original composition combined with remixing their own compositions with other’s original compositions. Get it? What’s even more impressive is that they remix this on the fly and will imperceptibly modify the “energy level” of the music to keep a “connection” with the audience and keep them on the dance floor.

Last week, I was treated to #1 - Paul Van Dyk who did a 3 hour set at club Banana in downtown Beijing. It was a spectacular show despite my being exhausted from a tough, sleepless week and then going progressively deaf between 1 and 4 am as the Paul’s, smooth and hypnotic trance music reached massive, convulsive, pulsing crescendos. Like riding a roller coaster or spending the day on a boat, the feelings stay with you for a day after the event.

The crowds were pretty thick and moving around the club was nearly impossible. I shoved my way onto the dance floor just long enough to get an up-close sense of it all. The floor had at least 3 inches of spring and when the crowd was bouncing in sync, I had visions of the Tacoma narrows bridge collapse.

This was the largest crowd of westerners I had ever seen in one place. There were groups of Chinese there but even they (remarkably) have personal space limits and opted to stay far from middle of the club. There was even a whole room full of Chinese playing a dice game which is popular in the bars here. It seemed like a waste of 100 RMB when other clubs, who aren’t headlining a superstar-DJ are only charging 30.

If you do a search for “Holiday in Cambodia”, you will probably find at least a 100 or so blogs by people who have recently visited the impoverished, war-torn country. Depending on your age, the title may seem simply boring, but for those of us in our mid to late 30s, it rings back to the 80’s Dead Kennedy’s song of the same name.

Yes, we actually had one of our best vacations in Siem Reap Cambodia. Just google Ankor Wat and you’ll see the very-cool temples which were featured in many Discovery channel episodes and even in the movie Tomb Raider. It’s almost impossible to convey why it’s such a cool place (actually it’s painfully hot…but it’s worth it). It’s become an international cross-roads between the UN and other countries who are helping them rebuild themselves. It’s a blank canvas.

While the temples are the big draw for tourists, the downtown manages to carry it’s own weight with a selection of charming, diverse and sometimes quirky restaurants. For example, we had some of the great mexican food there at a restaurant owned by a guy from Arizona. Actually, Cambodia has had a good share of back-backers over the years and it’s in the transition point that many quirky towns go through before they become upscale destinations.

The fact that Cambodia has become vacation-worthy is an example of how the world can change as quick as we change. After all, it’s one thing to reflect back on the days when you listened to such a subversive song, it’s another when your 8 year old daughter is actually singing it…in Cambodia.

Another Chinese New Years has past. And again, it’s impossible to describe the volume of fireworks without being here. You don’t hear pops and bangs…you hear a constant low level rumbling painted with a hissing similar to the sound of radio static. In other words, the volume of explosions within an audible range proportionally overtakes silence.

I didn’t have the (illegal) commercial mortar-ball fireworks this year like I did last year but I bought a few “shows-in-a-box” which are pretty good. Fortunately, some others brought the big ones and treated us to some chest-pounding, car-alarm triggering explosions.

It’s always fun here during this time but when people are still rattling your windows with these at 4am, it get’s a bit old.