Time
During the past WE which was quite rough, and in which my friends seriously freaked out some random people, I woke up with a hang-over on Sunday to realize that the clocks had changed. In Europe. Not here, Meaning there's a 7 hour difference now. F**K :-(
If I have to make a call to Europe now, I'll have to wait untill 4pm untill I get somebody on the phone. Nice.
Complaining about this did achieve a result though. Somebody informed me of the very odd trivia fact that all of China lies indeed in 1 (that is ONE) timezone. This stupidly big country only has 1 timezone!!!!!!!!!! And it's Beijing time. Good for me, crap for everyone else.
Can you imagine living all the way in the west of China, sun rising at 3am, and going down at 1pm. Must be nice for your body clock.
Maybe this is why Chinese people all wear pajama's on the street, they're sleep walking.................
Rohit delivery service
Thanks to Rohit, I now have Venco drop and stroopwafels, straight from Schiphol. I already had some Hagelslag, so tonight my healthy balanced diet looks like this. :-)
Can you tell I like driving?
OK, the thing is tiny, but it's the only gasoline fun I've had in over 2 months. Top speed was about 30 kph, but as soon as you got of the main trails, the bumps made sure I spend some time in the air. Infinately more fun than the horses.
Pics from the Beijing WE
On the way over. Schooltrip ;-)
Johan (My boss)
And before:
And after...............
Beijing (part 2)
Straight after the dinner experience, I was off to Beijing for a work-shop/team building exercise. Now that I've come here twice, I can safely say that my absolute first impression seemed to be te right one. I was not in Asia anymore. Moscow was more like it. Or the backstreets of Warsaw. Communism, it seems, is the same everywhere in the world. Wide boulevards, depressing dark grey architecture, parks, BIG roundabouts, all hark back to the golden days in which Marxism was still something people tried to follow. Shanghai (luckily) never fell victim to this due to its foreign influence and atmosphere during the last century and a half, but as the seat of power Beijing adjusted to the political forces admirably.
One very cool thing was an artist colony Dushanzi (sp.?) which is housed in an old factory complex near the office. The buildings are something to see and the writings on the wall hark back to the golden days of Chairman Mao. Also very very funny to see old machines on exhibition which were made in............. Engelsdorf. There's a name you don't see often anymore.
Went to a restaurant in the complex, and the scene was still the same. Awfully trendy mixed with communistic architecture.
The service level was at a laughably bad level, and living in Shanghai my expectation are not that high to start with.
But in Beijing they take it further: The taxi drivers will piss and moan about anything other than a 100km drive and the receptionists at the hotel will just flat out ignore you. The real China experience then. ;-)
Shanghai is a lot better is every aspect, with convenience stores open 24hours a day, clean and fast taxi's, English widely spoken and just a lot more of a out in the open atmosphere. I couldn't have landed in a better city.
One thing that Beijing does have are the major tourist attractions. Whereas you go Shanghai to get drunk, you go to Beijing because of the sights and sounds of China. The team building on Friday afternoon was especially good, because it involved horse back riding in the mountains. Next to the Great Wall of China. Try finding mountains in Shanghai!
The horse riding was quite nice, even though my bollocks have turned a nice shade of purple by now (day after). The icing on the cake was a 30 min. dune buggy ride though. Pics were taken and will be posted up here. For dinner was a roasted lamb. One thing I'll give them; it was fresh. Very fresh. As in 3 hours before it came to the table nicely roasted, it still had a pulse. Authentic farmer experience. But the food was nice, and the icing the cake was still to come.
It was a team building, right?
So when we got stuck in a traffic jam, we played 'killer' (card game) for 4 hours as a team. When the bus broke down (twice) the guys (not the girls) pushed it to get it going as a team. And when somebody rammed our bus, we got the bus driver to calm down.................. as a team.
Very usefull ;-) But all in all it was a very memorable day.
Taste of Home
It's suprising just how much food can mean to you when you start to miss it.
I am a big Chinese food fan normally, but as anybody who has lived here for more than 1 week can attest, Chinese food in the US or Europe had nothing to do with the stuff they cook here. Chinese food in Holland for example is nothing but Indonesian food. Guess what, I should've moved to Jakarta..........
Some Chinese stuff is OK, but all in all, it' s not for me. I was therefore really happy when the monthly goodbye dinner was in a newly opened (or not even completely open, we were a test audience) Scandinavian place. My boss and I know the chefs, plus the place offers the first Absolut Icebar in Asia. Plenty of reasons to go then.
All I can say is: after 2 months of rice, crappy pizza's, watery noodles, snake and egg rolls....... a roast beef with small fried potato dish suddenly seems like a 3 Michelin star meal. Tasted like it too. Wonderful. Truffles, salmon and actual (not sugared to within an inch of death) bread were a feast for my taste buds. Nothing but compliments.
The love of a man goes through his stomach. :-)
So now we have established that I do indeed miss the food in Europe. OK,k I admit it. What I miss most of all are:
Decent beer (Like Leffe, Duvel, Zywiec, Chimay). They cannot stretch further than Paulaner, Guiness and Carlsberg here...............
Some dishes of my mother's making. Sauerkraut, and Boerenkool (Dutch) mostly.
Filet Americain. Don't ask me to explain it, it’s great.
An Italian Pizza.
Specksuppe from the “Pig” in Adenau.
And all kinds of junk food from Holland. Wokkels/Nibbit etc.
But most of all, a decent glass of milk, wholegrain bread and some Gouda. A simple man's breakfast. Decent dairy? Here? Forget about it.
Rohit, I'm really looking forward to the cheese you're bringing :-)
Skype!
I am on Skype now :-)
So come on friends: Give me a ring. I'm 'nastorteboom' (as usual)
Hope to hear from you!
A few pics of the WE (more to come)
Jani and I in Cloud 9, the bar on the 87th floor of the tower seen below. It is the highest tower in China. Me and my Vertigo needed more than a few drinks, I can tell you that!
National Science Museum
Doing nothin'
After an exhausting 5 day weekend in which I did absolutely f**k all, I’m now looking forward to this WE, starting in a day and a half.
I’ve got a friend from Finland coming over (Jani) and we’re planning to do some major partying. Now that my flat-mates are gone (praise the lord) I can finally have friends over. :-)
The past WE was spend playing PS2, watching DVDs, and just plain avoiding going into town because there did seem to be 80 mill. people walking around the streets of Puxi (the old centre). Luckily Pudong (the Brooklyn of Shanghai) seemed to be very very empty. So I had a look at Century Avenue, an architects’ wet dream.
Rohit and I (together with Katrin and Sandra) also managed to get into the Shanghai Talk newspaper. Pretty funny seeing your picture in print. I’m getting famous already. So, I’ll give you a picture of a gay-ass building, and a bigger report next week.
On a more serious not; I’m beginning to miss Europe quite a bit. Particularly one part of it: Being able to drive. It’s getting to me quite a bit now and I cannot wait to be able to have a nice car again (like my dearly departed GTI) and hoon on the back roads somewhere in the hills of Western Germany.
Do I hear somebody offering me a well-paying job in Cologne?
