Today begins a long Chinese holiday, called May Day and The Worker’s Holiday. Workers worked through this past weekend and yesterday, but will not have to return till next Monday. Of course, workers in the service industry don’t get this luxury.

So, I won’t probably hear any more about my potential job leads for a week, so I’m continuing to view new employment posts each day. Even though businesses are supposedly closed, job postings keep appearing.

I went to the big electronics store near my apartment this afternoon to try and buy an extra battery for my camcorder. Some kind of promotion was taking place that involved huge gaudy inflatable things outside the store. Even though the big 2-level store was crowded inside, there seemed to be more employees than customers. My search for a battery was unsuccessful, probably because the camcorder is so old. I wish terrorists would focus their efforts on electronics companies that profit my making one-of-a-kind batteries for their products, and those printer cartridge executives, they all deserve to go.

In the evening, I started watching yet another addictive mind-numbing TV series, “Heroes”, on DVD, which I purchased a few weeks ago. Simon was supposed to meet me at my apartment at 8 o’clock, but was running late and got lost. I took a taxi to meet him at the Microsoft building a few blocks from my apartment about 9:30, then we returned and ate some dinner at the Muslim restaurant in the alley. That’s become my favorite place to eat over the past few weeks, cheap, close and usually tasty.

I taught Simon how to play Texas Hold Em’ in my apartment and then won $1 from him. We walked to the nearby bar called Pepper Farm, at 1:30. The server heard us speaking English and asked Simon to translate a page of Chinese characters into English, but offered no discount for the service. We returned to my apartment after having a drink and some fries. The subway and busses were not running at the late hour, and Simon didn’t have any money for a cab, so he asked if he could stay and watch “Heroes” on my computer till the morning.

Wednesday: 5-3-07

Simon continued watching the DVD “Heroes” on my laptop till after 10AM this morning, then went home. Reading news online afterwards, I noticed that the President Bush recently signed a new national day of observance into law, called Loyalty Day. The day will be celebrated every May 1st and is intended as a time to reflect on the US and democracy. The timing of this seems to be more than a coincidence, considering China celebrates a similar holiday, May Day, on the same date every year. May Day, also called The Workers Holiday, is meant as a time to think of the workers that support the communist government. So, the holiday Cold War has begun.

Having lunch at the Muslim restaurant in the alley, I noticed a French guy dining there whom I remembered sitting in the exact same place last night. Sure enough, same guy, and he remembered me too. It’s rare to see other foreigners in the alley, especially ones I recognize. The guy told me he’s in China to shoot big buildings with lasers, but for structural mapping purposes rather than evil ones. His Swiss friend arrived a few minutes later, who had also been sitting at the restaurant last night. The friend heard us talking about jobs and said he has a friend who knows of something I might be interested in, so I gave him my number in case he’s right, but it’s probably just going to turn out to be another ridiculous English teaching job. This seems to be the case when anyone refers any job here.

I received another phone call about the acting job in which I’ll be a French general on Chinese TV. The part will now be shot tomorrow night, between 9PM and 6AM. If business didn’t operate so strangely around here, I might be suspicious about meeting a van full of unknown individuals at a subway stop at night and driving out of the city.

Like strange crime stories, then check out “Warehouse banking”

Reading some other articles on the Internet, I happened to come across one about historical violent cults in China that have tried to overthrow the government, one of which I happen to be reading a book about. This religious group, called the Taipings, took whole cities under his control in the 1800's and the leader claimed to be the Messiah. Despite reading this book on and off for the past couple months, I never considered before now that this history is part of the reason that today's government is so cautious of religious groups(remember the Falun Gang in the 90's?). China is constantly bashed in the media for its intolerance of religious groups, but what's the real difference between this and the US's War on Terrorism? After all, China has been around as a country for thousands of years and has dealt with "terrorist" scenarios that entire time, but yet, it still exists today. Is its continued existence maybe due at least in part because it has learned effective ways to deal with such problems over the centuries. Sure, the government has changed hands during these centuries, but lessons have still been learned and these lessons have been passed on to future generations. Considering how much the terrorist scenario has changed the US in just the past 5 and a half years, just imagine how thousands of years of such fear could change a people beyond their wildest imaginations, especially in a time were changes can instantly take place on a global level.

I don't defend unrestrained restrictions on freedom, but I know we also need to keep an open mind about possible methods to get humanity through to a time when we are not all stuck together on the same planet.

That’s Chinese whiskey talking, just two glasses with Coke, good stuff for $3.50 a bottle.

Thursday: 5-3-07

I walked around some dirty alleyways this afternoon filming the footage I posted on the site today. Stopping in a small shopping center, I purchased two pairs of shorts, smokes and a necklace with an authentic large brown beetle imbedded in it. Shorts are in preparation for predicted temperatures in the mid to upper 90’s by early next week. The bug necklace was just an impulse buy. I thought it might make a good gift, but now I want to keep it after noticing the beetle glows in the dark.

In the evening, I took the subway to the Military Museum to get started with my acting career. A large dirty van arrived at 9:15, with its tattered seats so close together that nobody couldn’t sit properly. Four young Chinese guys were inside and we had to wait for another foreigner to meet us. That other foreigner was a Cuban guy nicknamed Hobi, whom had accidentally been waiting at the wrong subway exit.
The rest of the night was a mysterious adventure lasting until 6AM. The ride to the set took about an hour as we drove into the country and the van kept stopping at small unknown businesses. At each stop, all the Chinese guys went into the business and conducted some unknown activity. There were at least 4 of such stops. The journey included backing down a freeway exit ramp and doing a U-turn in the middle of a highway, causing a gas tanker to slam on its brakes.
Eventually, the road turned to dirt as we drove into a forest. I joked with Hobi that they were going to kill us, then we noticed studio lights set up on a small hill. This was the set of the documentary and about 50 people were scattered about the small hill, about half of which were carrying swords and dressed in traditional Mongolian robes and ponytail wigs. Hobi and I were given an oversized military uniform that fit over our clothes, then left alone for a few hours until we were needed on the set. This forest was one of the many planted by the city of Beijing over the past couple decades, so the trees were all in perfect rows and the ground was as sandy as a beach.
In emails about this job, the contact person had told both Hobi and I that we would be able to sleep in a hotel until the crew needed us, but our hotel turned out to be a bed of sand, and nobody spoke any English. Luckily, Hobi spoke much better Chinese than me and was able to translate what I didn’t understand. During our hours of waiting, he told me that he’s a chemical engineer that makes $100 per month in Cuba working for a state owned nickel mine. The government sent him to China two years ago to further his studies and learn Chinese. Getting to go abroad, especially to Europe or Asia is a rare treat for Cubans because the $2800 price tag of the plane ticket is far out of mostly anybody’s price range. The Cuban government pays all of Hobi’s expenses.
We were finally needed for filming off-an-on starting at 3AM. Between shots, I rested in a comfortable sandy hole on the hill, which must have been dug to simulate a bunker for battle scenes. Resting in the hole, I thought how the contact person hadn’t lied about the hotel after all, he’d just misspelled “holetel”. The hole was a favorite resting spot for all the cast and crew, but there was only room for one.
I was involved in 4 scenes, all of which involved sneaking through the woods with other soldiers or battling Mongolians. A thick acidic-smelling smoke was produced for the set all night long, which looked quite eerie floating among all the bright lights. Understanding specific instructions from the director was often a problem, so Hobi had to help translate often. One scene in particular took me several times to get right, causing the director and all his staff to laugh hysterically on my third failed attempt.

At 5:30AM, one of the guys who had originally picked Hobi and I up in the van handed us both $25, our payment for the long nights work. We left the set as the crew dismantled it under the rising sun.

Friday: 5-4-07

After arriving home from my overnight acting job early this morning, I slept till after noon, and that’s about it for the day, as I only left to have lunch at the Muslim restaurant in the alley and to pick up dinner from KFC across the street. Johanna came over in the evening to use my computer to copy some pictures to CD for her sister, who will leave China on Sunday morning.

Saturday: 5-5-07

I met Johanna and Maria(her sister) at the subway station at 8AM, headed to a tiny mountain village on the western outskirts of Beijing. The village was 90km away, so the subway only took us about 1/3 of the distance. Getting off at the last stop of the Red Line, dozens of people were harassingly offering rides to the village, which is a popular tourist destination. We planned on taking a bus, but the bus was overcrowded, so we let a man drive us in his van for $4 each. There were three other passengers in the van also.
The ride took about an hour and a half as the highway wound through the mountains. The driver very often used the three words of English he knew, “OK”, “Thank You” and “Oh yeah”. He spouted these words out randomly dozens of times, along with peace signs and other hand gestures.
The road leading into the village is gated and requires a $2.50 entrance fee to pass through. There were indeed lots of tourists, but mostly local ones, not foreigners. The whole settlement only consists of a couple hundred small structures, almost all of which are built from stone. Walking uphill from the main street at the base of the mountain, the passageways between the buildings are only about 3 feet wide and also paved with the same kind of stones that the buildings are made of. The steep inclines of these narrow stone passageways and the spectacular views makes for a great experience.
First of all, we ate at a small outdoor restaurant, staffed by a woman who had surprisingly great English. But, the food was pretty bad. During the meal, a group of Chinese tourists asked to take pictures with us. Men crowded around Johanna and her sister while women crowded around me. The Chinese people act as if Maria is some kind of freak, due to her 6-foot height, light complexion and long blond hair. People are always staring and I even caught a young man secretly taking pictures of her with his cell phone on the subway platform.
We spent about two hours exploring the village after lunch. Many of the residences have been converted in to small restaurants with one or two tables. Old faded Maoist graffiti still can be seen on some of the walls. Old coal mine shafts are located at the upper section of the village. A scenic trail is located on the mountain facing the village, which we walked for some more great views. Tiny brown lizards scattered everywhere with each step.
Our driver waited the whole 3 hours for us, a sure sign that we probably overpaid. I’d asked the other passengers what their price had been on the way here, but the driver had understood the words “how much” and quickly instructed them to say $4 each. I’m pretty sure I saw them all hand him just $1.25 each at the end of the trip. I suspect the same thing happened on the way back. The other two passengers also said $4 each, but they were overly-discreet about handing over the money at the end of the trip. It’s all just like one big anti-foreigner cult around here when it comes to prices. Most of the Chinese will lie for each other in this way unless they are personal friends.
Coming back into Beijing, Maria was attacked by a mob of curious subway passengers, like she was some kind of celebrity or something. They kept speaking to her in Chinese even though it was obvious she spoke barely a word. Instead of traveling all the way back home, we got off the train two stops early in order to visit a large marketplace. Here I separated from the girls and bought a pair of sandals and sunglasses. As usual, nobody had the shoes I wanted in my size. Back on the train, Johanna and Maria just happened to be there again, even in the same car.
I went to the Sanlitun bar area to meet my American friend Paul at 10 o’clock, whom I met at a bar my second week in town and hadn’t seen since. We met tonight at the Bus Bar and spent the evening between this bar and another in the same parking lot, called Nanjie. These two places are nice because beers only cost about $1.25 and the crowd is diverse, kind of like the Beijing version of PK’s(bar in Carbondale).
Paul and I ended up hanging out with a couple Canadians during the second half of the evening. At 4:30, we walked to a Mcdonalds for breakfast with a guy named Andy, whom I’d also met at the Bus Bar my second week in town. I think that Andy is the bar’s DJ and he claims to live there, but I’m not sure if he was joking. I’m also not sure of his nationality. His personality somehow reminds me of Rainman, but in a good way.
Paul and Andy smoked cigarettes in Mcdonalds and nobody stopped them, so I lit up too. A few tables had people sleeping on them. An employee told us not to smoke halfway into our second cigarette.

Sunday: 5-6-07

I took a cab home from the night out at 5:30AM as the sun was rising. After sleeping till 12:30, I traveled to a job interview on the northeast side of the city. Normally, I would travel to that area by transferring between subway lines, but I took a different route today that requires no transfer. The line that passes near my apartment, Line 13, can be taken all the way to the northeast side, but this is a 40 minute ride that loops far north into the city. Despite the longer travel time, not having to transfer at the terribly crowded Xizhimen station is nice.
Exiting the subway at the Dongzhimen station, nobody on the street or even cab drivers recognized the address I was looking for. Getting there required calling my interviewer and having her tell a cab driver where to take me. The interview was in a small room on the 5th floor of an office building in a small alley. There were five women in the small room, which is the office of a real estate company started 6 months ago by one of the women. That woman’s name is Holly. She’s in her mid-20’s with very good English. The business has never employed a foreigner before, but Holly thinks that it needs one since most of its clients are foreigners. I thought that the job would only entail meeting clients to show them apartments, but there are apparently also some other tasks that I don’t completely understand. If I take the job, I may also have to use the internet to somehow find suitable clients and apartment for them. I’m a but suspicious that this might not be what I’m looking for, but I’ll have to learn more before deciding that. If all went well, then I could potentially make a good income with little work.
Holly asked that I sign a contract today, which basically stated the commission rates along with basic rules, including a clause that says I won’t start my own real estate business in Beijing within two years of working for the company unless I pay $2000. Ha.
Holly was very talkative and excited. Only one of the girls in the room didn’t speak English. About this girl, Holly said, “She doesn’t speak English, so you will be more useful than her, but don’t tell her that”. This wasn’t the only strange comment made during this “interview”.
Traveling back home, I ran into Johanna and her sister AGAIN on the subway. This also happened by accident yesterday. Once was quite a coincidence, but two times is extreme. Maria was supposed to leave on a flight this morning, but it was rescheduled till tonight.
Back home, I bought a cold noodle salad in the alley for a late lunch. Johanna came over again in the evening after her sister left, then we ate again in the alley and watched part of the movie “Night at the Museum”.

Monday: 5-7-07

My friend Randy and I hid a container at a really cool secluded location in the woods two years ago and registered its GPS coordinates on a website called Geocaching.com. This site exists for that purpose and there are thousands of such containers hidden all over the world. I’d discovered the interesting location when hiking with Gretchen about 5 years prior to hiding the container there. It is 20 minute hike from the end of a tiny dead-end road in the countryside near Gorham, IL. Before hiding the container there, I’d visited at least a dozen times and never seen a single other person. Now dozens of people have come to find the container and have recorded their experiences on the Geocaching website. Many have also left pictures of themselves and the area with their posting. So, what’s in the container? Just small knickknacks, like keychains, etc.. The rules of Geocaching are that if you take something from a container, then you should also leave something. So, the original contents of the container are no more.

Check out the record of the cache here. Click the here to see all the pics….and if you have a GPS, see if you can find it…..

I met Johanna in the Chaoyang district after her first day at work at the Finnish embassy. We planned to walk over to the massive Chaoyang park nearby, but she was running late and we decided there would not be much daylight left by the time we arrived there. So, we returned to Wudaokou and both rode my bike to the western-style buffet restaurant near my apartment. I pedaled and steered the bike while she sat on the rack over the rear tire. This is a common way for Chinese people to ride, but most Chinese people are smaller than us and I almost crashed once. We made one stop before dinner, to buy DVD’s.
This was our second visit to the buffet, called Big Pizza, and again, the only positive part of the experience was the food. The place was crowded and the staff uprooted us from a roomy booth, saying it was reserved. Some of the food was a bit stale, and people swarmed to the serving area each time something fresh was brought out, emptying some pans within a minute. The hardest thing to get hold of was chicken wings.
Next, we walked through the alley looking for medicine to fight Johanna’s oncoming cold. I had thought a pharmacy existed here, but I was wrong. At the supermarket, I did buy some things that will hopefully counteract an unknown smell in my bathroom.

Tuesday: 5-8-07

Yet another job interview today, at an agency that hires business English teachers for corporate clients. On the way to the interview, I stopped at two printing companies to have more copies of my resume made, but the Microsoft Word file on my USB drive would not open. This is a common problem when opening English-language Word files on computers with Chinese operating systems. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Just another example of how the simplest of tasks aren’t so simple here.
The interview was held on the east side of the city on the 20th floor of an office building, which required a subway and bus ride to get to. The small office was overcrowded and not in particularly nice condition. The job I applied for is to teach English to bank employees. Three young women took me into a conference room and asked that I give them a 10-minute sample English lesson. I’d prepared some news articles about banking to discuss during this lesson, but they would also not print from my USB drive. The articles had about banking issues surrounding North Korea and Venezuela, and I discussed what I remembered from reading them earlier, explaining things like the concept of “nationalizing” an industry. After that, I introduced some bank terminology like “overdraft” and “PIN”. The women seemed mildly interested and had some questions, but they must have been faking it.
After the lesson, I was asked to return to the lobby while the women discussed my performance. They emerged a few minutes later to say that all was good and that the hardest part of teaching was getting students to speak. They said they will call in the next few days with some kind of job offer. After so many disappointing job interviews and offers in the past weeks, I don’t have a lot of hope for this, but we will see.
Outside the building the interview was held in, I nearly ran right into three guys carrying some of the biggest shotguns I’ve ever seen. They were making an armored truck delivery and had been standing just on the other side of non-translucent strips of plastic that hung over the main entrance of the building. In a country where publicly-owned guns are illegal, I assume that not too many potential robbers are willing to try and rob any armored trucks like this one.
The temperature was nice and cool today and it lightly rained in the evening. The past couple days have been about 90, this was a nice change. The touchy finger-operated mouse pad on my laptop computer drives me crazy, so I went to the nearby office supply store to buy a new one today but couldn’t find what I was looking for. Just after dark, I walked to meet Johanna on the street halfway between our apartments, but we somehow walked right past each other.
Having dinner at the Muslim restaurant, we ran into that Swiss guy David whom I’ve met there twice before. We also met his friend. After the meal, I bought Johanna some memory-erasing ice cream to calm her down, then we watched some more South Park on DVD.

Wednesday: 5-9-07

I filmed myself visit a tailor, small hardware store and Mcdonalds today, then later uploaded this video of it. The tailor visit was to pick up a shirt Johanna had dropped off there last night. The shop is actually in the parking lot of my apartment building. The hardware store visit, in the alley, was to buy a broom to replace my old frayed one that collected dustballs. Eating lunch at the Muslim restaurant in the alley would have been more interesting for the video, but it wasn’t open yet.
I spent nearly the whole day doing maintenance to my website and adding new features. What started out as a plan to just clean up some files turned into adding an attachment upload feature to the message board, then that turned into integrating a photo gallery system with the new attachment upload feature. It just seemed pointless to have the upload feature without a gallery for all the uploaded files, otherwise they would have just been lost within individual message board postings. The gallery will be a bit more complicated than the upload feature, so it will probably take quite a few more hours to finish tomorrow, but without a job, who cares.
Having dinner again at the Muslim restaurant with Johanna, that Swiss guy David was there again. He was talking with a Chinese girl and I overheard her say that yesterday’s rain was fake. She claims that the city sends up airplanes to seed the clouds this time of year, in the hopes of combating the annual springtime dust storms.

Thursday: 5-10-07

Nothing I had to do today. No job interviews, nothing. So, to make lunch a little more interesting, I ate at the small café across the street I’ve been to 3 or 4 times before, called “Over There”. They took their “No Japanese” sign out of the window since the last time I was there.
I continued working on upgrades to my website, but eventually gave up on the photo gallery idea after spending another couple hours unsuccessfully trying to get it working correctly. I watched the movie “Children of Men” in the afternoon. Johanna briefly stopped by in the early evening to pick up some things she had left here. Eating dinner in the alley, I saw the Swiss guy David at the Muslim restaurant for the third night in a row, eating with two friends. Later, I watched another movie, “Conversations with God”.

Friday: 5-11-07

Strange activity is always going on in the apartment above me. What sounds like puppies can be heard crying and humans can be heard bouncing things on the floor, singing, screaming and having sex. They throw trash out their window sometimes, which lands on the ground near my window. This morning I awoke to find piles of turds and pee-stained newspapers on the ground, probably from the puppies. These may be some of the same people that I’ve seen selling puppies on the sidewalks by the subway stations.

I got two calls about jobs this morning, both no good. The first was from the agency where I interviewed earlier this week. They wanted me to teach English to employees of a 4-star hotel, which would have been OK if the classes were not just one hour per day and the hotel was not a one-hour commute away. The second call came from a woman working in a kindergarten. She said that we had spoken on the phone some time ago, but I had no recollection. A teacher had called in sick today and she wanted me to come immediately to substitute. Dozens of kids were screaming in the background and I said I was busy.

The BLCU campus near my apartment is now walled oasis of green foliage. Brightly colored flowers adorn the tree-covered streets and pathways. I took a Mcdonald’s lunch there and bought a Beijing city newspaper, then sat at an outdoor table in the grass translating. It took about one hour to figure out the caption of a single photograph, so I could probably read about one issue per year at this rate.
A woman called again from the kindergarten that had called earlier. That teacher who called in sick must have quit, because now the school is looking for a full-time teacher. The job pays $1000/month is 24 hours per week teaching on weekday mornings from 9-1:30. Now that I’m getting so desperate for a job, I might be willing to try something like this. If she calls back, then maybe……
Back at home, I received an email from a guy who is starting an English-language entertainment website about China. He’s looking for foreigners living here that can do some writing for the website. I hadn’t yet done any work for him because he isn’t willing to pay any money till the site starts bringing in an income. But, his offer today might be good. He wants me to get a free massage and write 1000 words about the experience. We will see.

Sitting outdoors having dinner at the Muslim restaurant by myself, the beautiful Chinese girl named Catherine showed up and joined me. She is a friend of David, whom I met at the same restaurant several days ago and have seen there every day for the past 4 days. Catherine was waiting for David, but David didn’t arrive for about 15 more minutes. During that time, she gave me a small Olympic pin as a late birthday gift. She’s a junior at a Beijing university studying international relations, and she got the pin from doing work with the Beijing Olympic Committee.
When David showed up, the three of us continued sitting together and Catherine started joking about eating babies. She says that they are juicy and tasty. She also joked that America should have crucified the Statue of Liberty when France failed to support the war in Iraq. Hehe, I love this girl.

Checking the employment ads online today, I came across the following, posted by a female Chinese college student:

Why life is so difficult for me?Why i say that?coz so many things happened to me.I felt really tired now.But i really need to earn some money to help my family.I don't know why life is difficult for me since i was a little girl.But it is true,it is the real life.Well i really wanna do something for my parents,i really want to help them.but as a univerisity student what i can do for them?
can you imagine in order to save 1 RMB(12 cents) for me my mom would like to stand hunger?can you imagine she works 10 hours just earn 8 or 9 RMB($1.25)?At that time i really feel bad about that,i should do something for her.
So who would like to give me some ideas about how and where i can find a part-time job during the SUMMER VACATION?or some other kind of job that i can do during the weekend?since i'm a junior student.My major is MIS(menagement information and information system)and my minor is finance.My ORAL English is fluent.so i have no problem to communicate with the native English speakers.Because i had lots of language partners during the past 2 and half years.
after i come back home and find out that my parents are much older then the winter holiday because they must do hardest job to earn little money.so i really want to help them
So are there some one would like to help me?(i won't do lawless things or sexual service)
if you are really mean to help me please email me,really thank you for that.if you just want to have some fun,please don't interupt Thank you
Thank you for reading.
And have a good day.
carey

I watched the movie, “White Noise: The Light” in the early evening, then Johanna came over later and we watched some more South Park episodes.
Random Thought: Johanna mentioned a few days ago that someone gave her a kind of wine made out of horse milk…….

Saturday: 5-12-07

Johanna and I left on an what was planned to be an overnight urban biking trek this morning. Since we live on the northwest corner of the city, the original plan was to ride northwest into the countryside, but a 20MPH wind was blowing out of that direction. Tomorrow’s wind was forecast to be relatively light, so I decided the best plan would be to ride with today’s wind instead of against it. We headed east through the under-construction Olympic Village and stopped for lunch at a KFC. Riding on into the northeast corner of the city, the area was much poorer but was also dotted with luxurious golf courses and upscale apartment complexes. It seems odd to build such things in an area where the main transportation artery is a narrow road filled with potholes, but the developers are probably planning ahead on a time when the roads will be improved. This is probably their only option now since so little undeveloped space is left except for the city’s outskirts.
On one of these narrow crowded roads, we came across a group of very young boys extending sticks underneath the tires of passing vehicles. The boys were no older than 8 years old and had made a game of getting cars to crush the sticks. This obviously made many drivers uncomfortable and nearly every one of them blared their horns, but the noise only got the boys more excited. The kids focused most of their stick crushing efforts under the giant wheels of dump and cement trucks, which have the loudest horns.
Our next stop was a vast green driving range, where we decided to hit golf balls for one hour. Surprisingly, Johanna was the one pushing this activity, as she had never hit a golf ball before. We paid $10 to share a single position on the range, which puts it at about the same rate as an American driving range for one hour of use. My golf skills are virtually nonexistent, but Johanna learning how to hit a bill still relied on me teaching her. She was never able to hit anything more than 50 yards, but she was able to consistently hit balls at least. The range had slots for about 50 golfers and only about 1/3 of them were full. All of these customers were Chinese people.
We rode our bikes on for the rest of the afternoon and ended up traversing a loop that covered the entire northern edge of the city, at least 20 miles. We decided to come home instead of finding a hotel when we realized how close we had come back to home already. We had a map with us, but could never follow it for long, so our main method of navigation was the sun. Biking for these hours, we constantly passed between areas that were developed and ones that were not. But it was also clear that nearly every area was under development as whole blocks of slums were being leveled to make way for things more modern. The contrasts are amazing. With today’s high wind, the poor areas were even more of a contrast as walls of dust enveloped the dirt streets full of horses and bicycles. Johanna and I were both completely filthy by the time we returned home.
In the evening, we had a meat stick dinner in the alley and watched the latest remake of the novel “Pride and Prejudice”.

Sunday: 5-13-07

Very lazy day, only leaving the apartment to buy lunch and dinner. Taking a long nap in the afternoon after getting up late. Watching a movie and having drinks in the evening. I spent an hour talking with a new friend during dinner at the Muslim restaurant. He’s a friend of the guy David I met there and I can’t remember his name. He has a group of friends that regular have poker tournaments, so I hoping to win some money soon….

Monday: 5-14-07

I saw a guy slam his phone onto the subway tracks this afternoon. He was standing on the platform and unexpectedly threw a 100mph fast ball. The phone exploded into pieces and the guy ran away. So, I think everyone was wondering, was he angry at the phone or the person on the other end. The reason for this afternoon’s subway trip was to meet Johanna and get a free massage in exchange for writing an advertisement.
Johanna met me at the Guomao station, near where she works at the Finnish Embassy. This is an area of business development where some very interesting new skyscrapers are being built, including one that consists of two towers angled towards each other. Johanna’s coworkers have scared her by saying that this angled building is the first of its kind in the world and that it will come crashing into the Embassy building if the calculations are just slightly off. Considering she’s across the street on the upper floors of one of the largest buildings in the city, I think she has little to worry about. If the angled building is so sensitive, then what if a bird lands on it?
Sometimes local people try too hard to help foreigners. We were not really even lost, but a young guy on the street just grabbed the map out of Johanna’s hand and told her the same directions over and over. I’ve seen people get mad at such behavior, but you have to be nice.
Today’s massage was arranged by a guy I met online who was looking for writers for his new Beijing entertainment website. My only payment for writing this article was a free massage. I just brought Johanna along thinking she might get a free one too. The massage business, called Dragonfly, was just a 15 minute walk from the subway station.

Here’s what I wrote for the advertisement:

Dragonfly Massage

Many of us don’t associate dragonflies with relaxation, but a chain of elegantly designed massage parlors staffed with blissful masseurs is quickly changing that perception; in China, Europe and even the Middle East. Beijingers now have the option of experiencing this phenomenon at three locations, including the one that this writer recently visited on South Sanlitun Road on the first floor of the Eastern Inn. This branch is owned by Lawrence and Jilly, a very friendly young husband and wife business team. After randomly visiting a Dragonfly location in Shanghai last year, they were so impressed that they returned to Beijing to build one of their own.

And have they ever done a wonderful job of it.

My girlfriend and I arrived a bit early for our appointment and spent the time at one of the many nearby restaurant patios sipping drinks and enjoying the beautiful spring evening. This quiet tree-lined street and its outdoor café’s offer a wonderful way to relax before, after or both before and after having your massage at Dragonfly. But I must warn you, after such a massage, having a drink in this heavenly environment may put you into a coma.

Lawrence and his “boss”, Jilly, met us in Dragonfly’s beautiful lobby and we all spent a few minutes casually chatting about the operations here. The business offers a wide variety and high level of service that is unmatched in Beijing. All masseuses and masseurs must have at least two years experience or attend the company’s private school for 3 to 6 months before beginning work, ensuring the highest quality of service each and every visit.

Taking a tour of the facilities, we were even more impressed, as they are like a palace fit for an emperor. Special attention has been made to make sure every aspect of the design is soft and pleasant. This plush interior is accentuated by candlelight, background instrumental music and vast fountains that provide the constant sound of trickling water. And this was just in the common area where basic massages are given to individuals. No area was spared this attention to detail, as more fountains even grace the hallways leading to the bathrooms. Truly setting Dragonfly apart from the competition are its 3-hour massages designed for couples in the romantic “Crystal Room”. This magnificently decorated private room offers all the amenities of a luxury hotel and is the ultimate experience for couples wishing to reinvigorate their love life. Other areas of the beautiful facilities include private rooms, more couples rooms, group rooms a second common area for manicures or pedicures.

Dragonfly’s menu of services is extensive, even including specialized massages such as “Happy Landing”, “Weight Control” and “Hang-over Relief”. Just to be clear, “Happy Landing” is aimed at easing jet lag. As for manicures, pedicures and waxings, customers may also choose from an equally extensive variety of types, all of which are done with the utmost professionalism.

So, after the tour, it was time for my girlfriend and me to really get to know what this business was all about, in the form of a one-hour foot and shoulder massage. Seated side-by-side in elevated plush recliners separated from the rest of the room by white silk curtains that reflected the candlelight, we let the staff work their magic as we let ourselves drift off to another world. I feel that I could have been abducted by aliens for the whole hour without even noticing, as the hour passed in the blink of an eye as my masseuse worked her hands gently but firmly. The perfect fluidity of her movements showed her devoted professionalism and true passion for the job. There truly is no other place like this.

From personal relaxation to a romantic experience with your significant other, Dragonfly surely is the premiere location to experience massage in Beijing. For more information visit the company’s equally well-designed and visually-pleasing website at www.dragonfly.net.cn. If you are an embassy employee, then don’t forget that every Tuesday is “Embassy Day”, when you will receive one free hour of service for each hour purchased. Event sponsorship and catering is also available, when staff members can be sent out to provide services such as manicures or head and shoulder massage.

Dragonfly is about more than just massage, as they have created an environment that is just as relaxing as the massage itself. And considering the wonderful quality of the massage, that’s saying a lot.

Walking back to the subway station after the massage, about two hundred couples were dancing on the street to music emanating from small boom boxes. This was spread out along a couple hundred meters of sidewalk and different kinds of music was coming from each radio. So, each area was for a different kind of dance that went with the kind of music being played. This must be some kind of public dance club.
I finished watching a great movie back at my apartment, called “Little Children”.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/05/reminder_monday.html

Tuesday: 5-15-07

Another interview today, this time with a staffing agency that finds employees for tech firms. Not that I really have any marketable tech skills, but the position advertised was for an English “language expert” to assist with the development of speech recognition software. No special tech skills were required. It seemed like a longshot, but I’m desperate now.
The interview was only a couple miles away, so I rode my bike. Stopping at a Mcdonalds for lunch, I asked a man for directions who struck up a conversation and offered assistance in finding work. He claims to work for a bank and have lots of foreign businessman friends that may be able to hire me. He asked for my phone number and seemed legit, but we will see.
This was my first time in the area where the interview was held, call Zhongguancun, which is yet another vast stretch of luxurious office towers, including one of the largest if not the largest building in the city, the Sinosteel building. This building also consists of a beautiful massive plaza, which is the center of activity on the street.
Finding the New Logo International Building, where my interview was held, turned out to be a big problem. After riding my bike around looking for nearly an hour, I called the business and found that the operator knew no English. She didn’t seem to know the person I was looking for, so I eventually gave up and tried another number. What I thought was an alternative phone number for the business was actually the phone number of an English teacher staffing agency I applied for last week, but I didn’t realize this at first. I had just confused the numbers stored on my phone. I was transferred to a man who had no idea what I was talking about as I described who I was. Then, all of the sudden, he claimed to know and had me give the phone to a cab driver so he could tell him where to take me. Just a couple minutes into the cab ride, it hit me who I’d actually been speaking with and I got out. This is pathetic, but English teaching agencies are so desperate that they are willing to pull stunts like this.
It now seemed that there was no hope of finding the place today, but someone named Denny called a few minutes later and asked if I was on my way to the interview. He gladly told another cab driver where to take me, this time to the correct location. The building’s four towers were connected in unique ways by walkways on the upper floors, which was the only thing setting it apart from the many other office buildings on this street. On the third floor, the office doors required a security card to access, but the only people on the other side were several window washers. One of the washers went to get a woman that let me in, but the woman didn’t speak English and at first had no idea what I was looking for. Eventually she understood and let me into an adjacent room where a few people were working at computer cubicles. This is where I found Denny, a small young guy wearing very casual dress clothes. After a brief introduction, he had me fill out an application and take a short linguistics test on a laptop computer. The short test contained mostly terms that I had never heard of. After filling out the application and just a small portion of the test, I told him I must not be qualified for the job. In typical style here, he said, “No problem, just copy the answers from this sheet”. So, he handed me an answer key and I put those answers into my own words. Next, he took me to a small office room and gave a basic interview.
The job is with Microsoft and may provide decent pay with health insurance. After my test and application are sent to Microsoft, then a manager may call for a second interview. We will see. Leaving the interview, the traffic was so bad that I got stuck in a bike jam for several minutes.

Back at my apartment in the evening, a man came to the door at 9:30 carrying money and a form in his hands. He requested about $8 for some kind of fee that I didn’t understand, called a “(something) sheng fee”. I got out a dictionary but couldn’t find the words to describe the fee anywhere, but I paid it anyway since the guy seemed to be going door to door collecting it from everyone. Later, I watched the movie, “Black Dahlia”.

Wednesday: 5-16-07

Ordering lunch at the small sandwich café across the street, the cashier said “mei you” every time I picked something from the menu, meaning that it wasn’t available. After unsuccessfully picking 4 things, I finally asked what was available. My choices consisted of only about 4 things on the whole menu. This situation is not limited to this restaurant, it happens all the time.
My next plan was to get a haircut from the barber who cuts hair under the subway bridge, but he was nowhere to be found. In the evening, I met Johanna at her old apartment to help her pick up the last couple things she had left there, some food and horse milk wine. Yes, horse milk wine, somebody gave it to her. She rode back to my apartment on the back of my bicycle and complained about my driving the entire time.
After an alley dinner and a visit to the supermarket, we tried to watch the movie “Thank You for Smoking”, but the DVD failed in the middle.

Thursday: 5-17-07

The job situation gets more pathetic every day. I went to the investment company this afternoon to have a pre-meeting about a business trip they wanted me to go on over the weekend. The boss was running nearly an hour late, so I was asked to wait. While we waited, the employee Cindy went over some trip details, including the fact that the trip has now been moved to Monday and Annie will not be going. I was really hoping to travel with Annie because she’s a friend and her English is a lot better than the other girls. The jobs depends on good translating. Having the trip during the week means that I could miss out on several job interviews.
This may or may not be a very good business decision, but I decided not to go on the trip or ever work for the company again. I can deal with the kinds of problems I mentioned above, but this along with some disturbing information I’ve recently learned about the company was enough to drive me away. The rumor online is that they do not really finance startup companies but just charge these startup companies large fees to apply for financing that they will never receive. The rumor is that no company has every actually been granted financing and that federal agents may be investigating. This might all just be a bunch of crap, but considering the fact they pay me to lie, there may be some truth to it. And the last thing I want is to have to answer to some agents. But, a more real possibility is that I might never get paid for my work, so I’m definitely out of this business for good.

After leaving the meeting, I walked around the area waiting for Annie to get off work so we could go have dinner. There is a park near the office with tens of thousands of roses in full bloom. Roses are the park’s theme and there are even huge statues of roses. Needless to say, it smelled really nice. But, the day was hard to enjoy because of the fierce wind, which was easily gusting to 50MPH. On the way to the office the streets were littered with branches and I even saw half an entire tree laid across a parked car. The biggest problem was the blowing dirt, though.
Annie and I took a bus to a subway station, then took the subway to Tiananmen Square. The plan was to take a walk before dinner, but the wind was getting quite cold as the sun went down, so our walk only lasted about five minutes. We had the dinner at the 365 Inn, across the street from the hostel I lived at for my first 2 weeks in the city. The vegetarian pizza is surprisingly better than the meal lovers.
Back outside, Annie was freezing to death, so we got a taxi. It dropped her off at the subway and took me back to where my bike was parked at the investment company. Riding home meant going directly against the terrible wind for 30 minutes. Miserable. The wind should die down by the end of the month.
Back at my apartment, I did some basic research online and found that the investment company most likely really is a scam. When typing its name into Google, only a few pages are returned, one of which is a warning to potential clients on a message board. They claim to be a big multi-national organization based in Washington D.C., but the website is poorly made and all the pictures contained within it are of the Beijing office. One of the people in the pictures is actually the girl named Cindy that attended the meeting with me today, and she was even wearing the same shirt that’s in the picture! What really makes this bad is that rich clients are not the only ones being scammed here. I’ve attended meetings when old men with missing teeth have come in trying to promote inventions that they’ve probably worked their whole lives on.
One regular procedure during meetings and business trips is for the company to show its registration certificates to clients. Some of these certificates are in English and have Condoleeza Rice’s signature on them, which is surely forged. This is an elaborate scam and the only way it has possibly gotten this far is through corrupt government officials turning a blind eye.
I could be totally wrong about all this, but I don’t see how. Just so this blog comes up in searches of the company, let me state its full name: American Frank International Investment Company.

Friday: 5-18-07

How do I get my mail? How do I pay my electric bill? These basic questions still need an answer. Until today, I thought mail was left in a small case in the corridor of my building, but today I noticed hundreds of pieces of mail inside a little box attached to a building near the main gate of the complex. Every complex has a committee of residents that run it, making sure maintenance issues are taken care of and ensuring the security of the complex. These committee members can often be seen sitting around the main gate chatting with each other, as I think most of them are retired. They are apparently also in charge of mail, but I was unable to find any of my mail in the box.
I took a very long subway ride to the Chaoyang district to meet Johanna at her workplace at noon. I still have not received a new debit card in the mail, so she was going to let me borrow rent money until it arrives. Unfortunately, her bank card would only allow her to withdrawal half the money I needed. My rent is actually paid up until the 10th of June, but the real estate agency that owns the apartment has been calling and saying that it must be paid a month early.
Later in the evening, we watched the global warming documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth”. Since the star is Al Gore, I thought it might be more of a political bashing than a documentary, but the context was actually very good and political bashing was kept to a minimum. After watching it, all I could think is, “I better get rich in case this actually happens”.

Saturday: 5-19-07

Johanna and I went out for an afternoon on Lake Houhai today, having lunch at a lakeside restaurant seated outside in big plush red chairs. We rented a 4-person electric boat that had a top speed of about 2MPH, spending an hour cruising all over the lake. There are two sections of the lake which are connected by a narrow passageway under a small bridge. There were so many boats on the water that passing under the bridge becomes a bumper-boat experience. Men were dipping nets into the water from the shore and catching dozens of eels. I steered the boat to the edge to try and grab an eel by hand, which quickly sent Johanna into hiding at the back of the boat. But, I only spotted one eel and didn’t catch it.
After returning home by myself, Annie sent a message inviting me out to dinner, but I declined because the dinner was going to take place far away and I didn’t feel like another long subway ride. I later had dinner at the Muslim restaurant and sat outside for a bit talking with David, Catherine and Catherine’s sister.

Sunday: 5-20-07

Food poisoning. I’m pretty sure of it. After feeling sick yesterday evening, I woke up in the middle of the night in an awful state. I slept most of the day today due to feeling cold and weak, not leaving until 5 o’clock to buy a bit of food and some more credit for my cell phone. Most of my time awake was spent watching the movies “Altered” and “Bobby”. It seems that half the movies I purchased during my last visit to the DVD store don’t work.

Monday: 5-21-07

Today was a new day, completely free of food poisoning or whatever caused my 24-hour unpleasantness. I exchanged my last few week’s worth of empty bottles for 85 cents and made some purchases at the supermarket and another small store, including a kitchen rug and a “Nike” hat with a bill that’s way too long(40 cents). There is a small shop in the alley that welds metal and the employees never wear protective glasses. Of all the many welders I see working all over the city on a given day, only about 60 percent wear eye protection. If you’ve ever stared at a weld for a few seconds and seen a white spot in your vision for the next hour, then you know how important eye protection is.
I had a sandwich, yogurt and a pear for lunch, the first meal I’ve eaten at home in forever. I’ve been thinking lately that my apartment is like a roomy but dirty prison with Internet access. There are bars on all the windows and a barred gate that closes over the front door. The door gate locks with a key only, so it is possible to completely imprison someone in here. Without tools, a prisoner would never stand a chance at getting out unless they screamed until someone came to rescue them. I must by duct tape……
I started reading a book last night that I brought with my from the US, called Almost a Revolution, written by one of the Tiananmen Square protest leaders who fled to the US in 1989. I took the book outside to read in the courtyard this afternoon and made sure to remove the dust jacket before doing so. That dust jacket has a big colorful picture on the front of students overtaking monuments on the square, and I really don’t want all the many retired people in this apartment complex gossiping about me. While such literature is still officially banned, it is very unlikely that any police would bother to mess with me, but I still don’t know how the old people would feel about it.
Speaking of the old people, a woman retrieved rotten fruit and a three-week old cake I threw in the garbage this afternoon. A watermelon slice and two pears had mold growing all over them. So, when I went back out with some old meat to throw away, I just took it right to the woman and she was grateful for it. The people that live here constantly go through the garbage looking for anything salvageable, so I usually just set such things to the side rather than throwing them in, but my concept of what is salvageable has not fully developed yet….
In the late afternoon, I went to the Llama Temple subway station to meet Johanna. Arriving 30 minutes early, I spent some time browsing by a small but magnificently landscaped park full of flowers and fountains. One thing that the Chinese definitely are good at is parks. Johanna and I met today to have a Chinese lesson with a teacher she hired off the Internet. The teacher is named Julin and she met us at the subway station, then took us by bus to her apartment. The bus driver had terrible road rage and regularly cussed at bikers and pedestrians while regularly slamming the brakes very hard. One stop was so abrupt that it looked like the passengers were doing the wave as they all fell down.
Julin gave us our 90-minute lesson in a tiny bedroom of her apartment. Her phone kept ringing during the lesson, but she was a good teacher and the price is only about $5 per hour($2.50 each). She played us a Chinese love song, in which one of the lines directly translated to “I will love you for several minutes”, but Julin said that the more accurate translation is more like, “I will love you forever”. Julin would not show me how to write the swear words the bus driver had been using earlier, which was a bit disappointing.
After the lesson, Johanna and I had a buffet dinner at a Big Pizza restaurant, which serves all you can drink beer, a concept that would never work in the US. Instead of taking the bus back to the subway, we walked for about 45 minutes. Riding home, I was sitting next to a Czechoslovakian girl who was taller than me with big green eyes, named Tanya. She was studying from a Chinese textbook and had a big smile on her face the whole time. I asked how the Chinese was going and we struck up a conversation for the rest of the ride, in which I learned that Czechoslovakian government banned the movie “Borat”.

Tuesday: 5-22-07

I awoke this morning to the sounds of falling water outside. Looking through the windows, this water was falling from the sky. Rain! Real rain. Not like the few sprinkles I’ve seen over the past months, but a real downpour. There were even puddles on the ground. The rain continued all day nonstop, really an amazing sight.
I dressed up and walked out with an umbrella at 3 o’clock to meet a guy about an English teaching job. On the phone, he had said the job was at the Beijing Forestry University, which is right next to my apartment, so I instantly was suspicious when he asked to meet me in a rainy parking lot of the BLCU campus. He pulled up in a small gray car when I arrived, a tall thin man of about 60 years old who called himself Mr. Wang. Inside the car, I learned that the job was not at the campus of the Forestry University, but that Mr. Wang was an agent that placed teachers in many different locations. He detailed three separate locations that he wanted me to teach at, and the salary was just average. One of these locations was at the offices of the largest oil company in China, called Sinopec. About this Mr. Wang said, “The company will provide you free transportation to the site in a very nice car, a Honda”. Ohhhhh, a Honda, well it didn’t matter that he lied to me in the first place. I was sold now. Not. I politely got out of the car almost sure I would never call Mr. Wang again, or answer any of his phone calls.
I went out on another job interview adventure in the late afternoon, going all the way to the area where Johanna works to investigate a company that had offered me $1200/month to teach at their office for 25 hours per week. It was still raining when Johanna met me at the subway station nearest to her office at 5:30. Despite the fact that this is supposed to be one of the nicest areas of the city, the streets were still flooding. Police officers had set bricks and boards in the largest puddles to help the people deal with the situation the best that they could. A whole crowd of people and the officers started laughing when I stopped to take a picture of several people stranded on a small board.
Johanna and I walked 20 minutes to the location of the interview, arriving early enough to have dinner at a nice restaurant first. The location was a large luxury apartment complex that consisted of two towers connected by a small shopping mall and some restaurants, called The Great Mall. Johanna waited after the meal in the shopping area while I attended the interview on the 15th floor of tower A. None of the doors on that floor had any kind of label except for a single letter. Calling the person whom I was interviewing with, he told me to knock on door “F”. Behind the big wooden door “F” was the interviewer, named Shawn, and two unknown woman, all Chinese. The building appeared to be designed for apartments and not businesses, but this particular apartment had been completely converted into a small but very nice facility for teaching. At the entryway was a desk and the company logo in big letters behind it on the wall. The rest of the apartment was separated into classrooms by frosted glass walls and doors.
I went into this interview skeptical about the hours, teaching afternoons and evenings 6 days per week, but Shawn unexpectedly changed my attitude. He was a young guy in a wheelchair that seemed uncommonly sincere and happy. His head seemed a bit large for his body and it constantly had a smile on it. He didn’t attempt to shake my hand and I didn’t see him move his hands during the entire interview, so I assume they don’t work. The school is brand new and about to open for the first time on May 25th. It’s the newest addition to a chain of schools in the city with the same name. Taking the job would mean I would have to move, but I’m seriously considering it unless another promising job interview tomorrow with a brand new American-owned school comes through. $1200 per week is more than I’ve been promised by anyone else.
After the interview, Johanna and I took a cab back to her apartment so I could try and help her with wireless internet problems she’s been having with her laptop. Two of her three roommates were home, American girls, but they were too busy talking with each other for me to even ask where they were from. Listening to them speak in the kitchen while I was sitting in Johanna’s room, their voices sounded so typical of American girls as they constantly used the words “like” and “totally” over and over again.
Working with Johanna’s computer for an hour, I couldn’t figure out the problem, so I agreed to take it home and have a closer look there. She offered to pay my cab fee back to Wudaokou since it was still raining and I had come out of my way to look at the computer.

Wednesday: 5-23-07

What a day! I had an interview on the northside of the city at noon today. The company sent a small plain car to pick me up. In it were two people that worked for the company, an older driver named Mr. An and a younger guy named Denver. We drove only a short distance to the office, but the area was much more peaceful. It's close to the mountains and vastly undeveloped except for a few fairly nice apartments and businesses, including a sprawling business park for big software companies like Oracle. The air is clean and the streets are quiet. Much better than where I live.
The company is called an English training center and cultural exchange center and they are planning on building a widespread network of American-staffed schools and centers in China and the US. Since they are just starting out, the offices are now temporarily set up in an apartment building next to where their first school is set to open in a few days. Even though the office is temporary, it still has a touch of class and is well furnished.
After waiting for a few minutes, I was introduced to the mastermind behind this business plan, a fit well-groomed man who appears to be in his 50's, named Joe. He's from California and has spent his life developing businesses all over the world. The interview was quite fascinating as I learned more about him.
It seems that all my interview struggles finally paid off, because I definitely met Joe at the right time. He just hired an American to help manage this operation as it develops, but the American just disappeared after a few days and has not been seen since. With the first school set to open shortly, Joe was in great need of a replacement for the missing person. The job does not include a great deal of money at first, but Joe promises that I will make more as he does. I think its in my best interest to be patient with Joe. The job includes an apartment by the school and Joe wanted me to get started right away since opening day of the school is so near.
I got back in the little car with the driver, another employee named Johnson and Joe, then headed to my apartment to pick up my things and move them to the new apartment. We dropped off Joe at some location where he needed to run an errand, then went on to my place, where Johnson helped me quickly pack my few possessions and the driver loaded them into the car. It was the quickest move of my life, all done in less than two hours. Luckily I have not accumulated too many things yet.
The new apartment is total luxury compared to the old one, as it’s about twice the space in a brand new building. Most of the units are empty and my apartment has only ever been lived in for a few days, by the guy who disappeared. The furniture appears to all be used, except for a brand new refrigerator, but that is certainly not a problem. There is even a washing machine permanently hooked to a water source, much better than the broken one at my old apartment that I had to roll into the kitchen for every use. The floors in every room are shiny white marble and the neighborhood seems wonderful.
Johnson and I carried my things into the apartment, then locked it up and went right back to the office. I used the internet on an office computer until Joe returned and asked that I walk back to the school with him. Johnson was there and he said that the guy who ran away might have run away with the wireless DSL modem from my apartment, so we walked back to the apartment to search all the drawers and cabinets for it, unsuccessfully. There happened to be a guy from the phone company working nearby who was able to give me a new one on the spot.
I spent the next couple hours at the school chatting with the Chinese employees, giving a little girl a test and having dinner. The little girl, Katy, has signed up for lessons and we needed to determine what level she should be placed at. She’s a typically shy 9-year old and could understand basic questions like, “Where do you live?” Her reading level was also at about the same point; a good foundation at least. She was able to guess the spelling of my name with just a bit of help. I ate dinner with all the employees on the front patio of the school. Such dinners will be free every day I’m working. Joe likes everyone to eat on the deck together as a form of marketing, so passersby see the activity.
Joe and I went back to his office after the meal to review children’s material. He has a whole cabinet full of it, much of which he imported from the US. Our main topic of discussion was how much material we could fit into an intermediate-level children’s class consisting of 30-total hours. Next, Joe decided to have the driver take us to the foreign-language bookstore on Wangfujin Road, one of the main tourist/business strips near the city center. The trip took about an hour, then Joe and I spent a half hour browsing through the store’s extensive collection of teaching materials in search of anything geared toward American English. He was worried that anything by British publishers would contain British English. Our cart of purchases included tapes, CDs, books and a poster.
We next walked to a shopping mall to have tea and muffins at a Starbucks. Much of Wangfujin Road is a pedestrian area closed off to normal traffic. Work crews had torn up vast sections of the wide tile walkway and were still hard at work. Joe and I walked back to where the driver was parked at 9:30, then Joe was dropped off at home and I was taken back to my new apartment. The next few hours were spent beginning to arrange the apartment and reviewing some material that Joe had given me. This job is going to be much more than full-time for a long time, but I feel certain that working hard for Joe is going to be more than worth my while. I know I’ve dealt with many scams over the past few weeks, but Joe is definitely the real thing. I’ve never been so relieved to face so much work, but I’m sure it will get exhausting at times and I will have to remember that I’m making a small amount of money only temporarily. I do trust Joe on this. Hopefully I don’t get let down again, but I doubt it.

Friday: 5-24-07

I moved everything but my bedding in to the new apartment yesterday, so I had to sleep on a bare bed last night, using some t-shirts for a pillow and a sweatshirt as a blanket. I couldn't sleep past 7. Using my new shower for the first time was a pleasant experience, as there are 4 heat lamps mounted on the bathroom ceiling and the water pressure is good. There really isn't a "shower", but just a shower head mounted on the wall and a drain in the floor, but that's ok because the bathroom is big and there's lots of showering space. The temperature is also adjustable, unlike my old place, which could only be adjusted from the kitchen.
Going out into the apartment complex in search of breakfast, I discovered a decent-sized supermarket on the first floor of the building next to mine, just feet from my door, where I purchased some Chips Ahoy and a sleeve of potato chips. Vegetable vendors were setting up outside the store, so I purchased two apples from them.
Looking out the window back at my apartment, turkeys started wandering into the south courtyard, black ones and white ones. There were headed towards chickens surrounding a makeshift structure made of what looks like left-over and discarded construction materials. Strange noises were coming from the structure and I later realized thats because dogs and a monkey are caged in there. A large aquarium is also set up nearby, which is full of gold fish. It would seem that this is the neighborhood zoo, taken care of by all the people who live here. The area where this big apartment complex sits used to be just farmland a few years ago, but the government developed it and gave all the farmers free apartments along with monetary compensation, essentially making them rich in comparison to what they used to have as farmers. Looking at the "zoo", it seems that some of the old lifestyle habits still remain. The sprawling apartment complex remains mostly empty except for the farmers, so they kind of rule the area right now. They lounge around the courtyards playing games and socializing. At least one of them slowly roles around on a brand new 4-wheeler.
I spent the next hour reviewing the teaching materials the boss(Joe) and I had purchased last night, as he had instructed me to. He had also instructed me to show up at the school at 10 o’clock and "hang out". I stopped back at the supermarket on the way there to buy a phone cable that could be used later when hooking up my DSL internet access. A scraggly black dog burst into building and kept trying to push its way past an employee that was guarding one the supermarket's gates. The dog was repelled several times but eventually got in, then walked out a few minutes later following closely behind a woman, presumably its owner. Dogs.
I have my own small office at the school with a computer and Internet access, which I cleaned up to kill time while waiting for boss to show up. He took me to his office so we could review the materials we purchased last night, along with some other material he already had. An accountant came into his office while we were both sitting there watching a Little Mermaid sing along DVD. I really got a kick out of thinking how a Chinese person must think about walking into a room where two Americans in suits are watching a Little Mermaid sing along.
For lunch, I had a 40 cent bowl of noodles at a restaurant right next to the school, sitting with two of my female coworkers. The employees at all these adjacent buildings know each other, so it's like one big family. My afternoon was quite uneventful, as Joe had instructed me to just stay at the school so my American face would be present to any potential customers that passed by, which is an important part of this kind of business. The biggest excitement of the afternoon was watching two of the female employees drain the water from a fountain in the lobby that contains goldfish. Two out of three goldfish had died and they forgot to remove the remaining one before draining the water. It was one of those fat white goldfish with a big red ugly growth on its head that looks like a brain. The fish survived and they put it into a bowl. Watching it swim around, I decided to touch the red growth, which is actually pleasantly soft, probably almost cuddly if you were another fish.
The girls asked me to help them pick some things from the menu of the restaurant next door for dinner. The boss is always calling one of the waitresses there “Donkey Girl” and today I learned why. Because the restaurant specialized in dishes made from donkey meat. Before the meal, Joe had me return to his office to talk more about developing lesson plans. After the meal, Joe and I had to test several students to determine what level of classes they should be placed at, both adults and children. Joe and I had each student come to us one at a time as we sat in one of the small classrooms. One little boy came in and said, “Oh No” upon seeing two foreigners waiting there for him. A little girl just looked away and stared at the floor when I pushed a book onto her desk and asked her to read a few words. Some of the adults were at about the same level, but not as shy about it.
The night didn’t end till midnight. Joe and I went back to his office to continue making lesson plans for the upcoming classes, which start tomorrow afternoon when I will teach a beginning level English class. The most time consuming part of this was making photocopy packets to give the students. The offices small copier/scanner/printer is not a business machine and can’t handle much work. The employee Johnson was there to help us out. As soon as we get more organized we will start having somebody else do this on professional equipment.
I rode in the car with the driver when he went to take Johnson and Joe home. The driver took me by my old apartment to pick up my bedding, but upon arrival I remembered that the keys were in my new apartment. So, for tonight, I took the cushions off the sofa and chairs and used them to soften the bed a bit, which worked quit nicely.

Friday: 5-25-07, First Day of School

I took my laptop to work today because I still haven’t been able to get the DSL connection in my apartment working. The instructions are of course in Chinese and I’m at no level to understand technical talk. There is an extra Ethernet cable in my office to connect laptops to the internet. The boss Joe came and asked that I follow him to his office at noon so we could continue preparing materials for the lessons I’ll be teaching. We had already figured out what material we want to cover over each of the two 15-day classes, but hadn’t yet finished breaking it down into a detailed daily plan. This part of the work is really quite simple and just requires getting all the right info into folders that will be given to each student at the beginning of each class. Despite the simplicity, trying to coordinate the work between two people was confusing both of us and I think we started to get on each other’s nerves for a while. But, we patiently reviewed the plan and of course eventually got it done peacefully.
I had donkey noodles(noodles with donkey meat) for lunch at the restaurant next to the school, then went back to my office and reviewed what I would be teaching to an adult class tonight, the official opening class of the school. “Donkey Girl” came into my office a couple times and sat down while I worked. She’s the waitress at the donkey restaurant next door. She’s 18 years old and full of energy, not shy at all. When I don’t understand what she’s saying, she speaks just about 2 inches from my face, but I don’t know if that really helps so much. She thinks she’s fat and has bad hair, but she actually has just about average looks.
Continuing to work with Joe in the afternoon, we put more folders together and sent the employee Johnson to have some teaching posters framed. As usual, everyone ate dinner together at exactly 5 o’clock on the front patio of the school. A little girl came in to take a placement test at 6:45. She rolled her eyes and sighed when she saw that two foreigners would be testing her. She continued to look angry the whole time and barely uttered a sound.
My class of five adults started at 7 o’clock. We all first took turns saying our names and pointing at where we lived on a map. There are 3 large maps on the walls in every room, of China, the US and the world. Next, I played the class a 30-minute video about “the present tense”. The video goes really slow and has intentionally been made really goofy, but it’s effective and the students gave it “thumbs up” when I motioned for them to give an up or down. In the first part of the video, a man and woman are dressed like a queen and king as they are filmed slowly doing simple things like eating, drinking and sleeping. In another part, aliens fly over the earth and talk about a man working in his garage and basement???
We had a 10-minute break after the first hour, then spent the last hour reviewing the pages of material in the folders that were given to each student before class. With such a detailed plan to follow, teaching is really quite easy and I actually enjoyed it for the first time.
The students lingered in the lobby and spoke with us a few minutes after class, then I went back to Joe’s office with him to make some copies from a book that I’ll use to teach his 5 year old daughter tomorrow. She’s one of two offspring from a marriage to a Chinese wife.
I finally arrived home at 10 o’clock and couldn’t sleep, so I walked to a market to make a couple purchases and spent some time cleaning my apartment. It appears to have been lived in very little, but has accumulated some dust from sitting unused.

Saturday: 5-26-07

Fireworks started going off in the courtyards of my apartment complex before 8 o’clock this morning and continued for at least an hour, the result of a wedding ceremony. The procession included 6 or 7 identical black Audi’s decorated with balloons, ribbons and flowers. Fireworks are traditionally exploded at weddings to scare away evil spirits.
There is not much traffic in my area, but it’s not exactly quiet either. The mini-“zoo” outside my window often erupts in dogs barking and the monkey howling. There are several men who play with some kind of yo-yo-like device that emits a strange low-pitched humming noise. The yo-yo’s are about the size of softballs and the men can do some amazing things with them. It actually becomes a physical sport.
The boss Joe brought his daughter, Lili, to the school at noon so I could teach her for two hours. Not surprisingly, the daughter has about the same energy level as the father. Keeping up with her was a constant challenge, but I did my best at channeling her hyperactivity into a learning experience. For example, when she wanted to draw all over the dry erase markboard, we drew objects and she made up a story to go with them, learning some new words along the way.
I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in my office downloading children’s songs on my laptop and burning them onto a CD. This disk will be played in class for the kids to sing along with. After dinner, the staff celebrated the employee Denver’s 23rd birthday. A new children’s class started at 6 o’clock, which consists of five kids and was taught by me. Most of these kids appear to be between 8 and 10 years old, 2 boys and three girls. The youngest student, a little girl named Tina, sat in the front row and was always the first to speak out. Two girls sitting in the back were the quietest. The class lasts 3 hours and we get a break after the first and second hours. During classtime, we watched two videos, went through workbook packets and finally played some hangman. The kids all seemed to be familiar with the game.
After class, I had to have a talk with Joe about my future working for him. Seeing how he works 18 hours a day 7 days a week, I just couldn’t see how I could ever really a career with him, as we had discussed at my initial interview. I don’t mind working like that for a while, even a few months, but I can’t do it as a career. Joe was very supportive of my decision to speak with him and assured me that he knows other people are not happy working as he does. He said that I will go to a 5 day a week 8 hour per day schedule and start helping him with the administrative side of the business once we learn how to efficiently run this first school. Considering the scope of his plans, I thinks its well worth my while to stick around, keep working long hours and see what happens.
I took a cab to my old apartment at 10 o’clock and met Johanna there. We packed the last of my things into a backpack and returned to my new apartment in another cab. It had asked a person on the street to write down the address of my new apartment complex before leaving it, but the cab driver didn’t understand this. I’d anticipated this and had drawn a crude map during the first cab ride, but I couldn’t follow it. The driver finally stopped and called a couple people about the address, but couldn’t get an exact answer. Driving on, I noticed some familiar sights and was able to direct the driver home.

Sunday: 5-27-06

I showed Johanna the facilities where I work this morning and we bought a bit of food from the supermarket for breakfast. Seeing her off at the bus stop, it was really evident that this relatively isolated community is like a small town. The employees at the school and the waitress from the donkey restaurant were all outside waving at us as Johanna got on the bus. I really am starting to feel at home here already.
I went to my office at 11 o’clock and spent the morning and early afternoon finishing up the children’s music CD project I started yesterday, which involved listening to all the songs to make sure the printed lyrics were right and making a list of the tracks.
Three dirty kids showed up in the lobby, the children of working class people that live in the area, no older than 8 years old. They hung out for well over an hour and chatted with the staff. More kids were soon to follow and the front patio became full of them. Joe directed me to use the opportunity to take some promotional photos of the kids all standing underneath the schools logo. The kids got more excited with each photo and were soon climbing all over me and fighting to be in the foreground of the picture. Taking these pics gave me the idea of making a promotional video for the school’s website, which Joe was very supportive of. I’ll enjoy this first chance to use my hobby in a real-life business situation.
The staff had tonight’s dinner in a restaurant a few doors down from the school. The temperature has been quite hot the past few days and most of the businesses here don’t have air conditioning, including the school. But, Joe was personally involved in the school’s construction and made sure that adequate vents and fans were installed in every room, so the conditions have not really been bad. He has told me several amusing stories about his battles against Chinese construction methods, like when he had to introduce sandpaper to an experienced worker for the first time. There of course are very effective work crews out there, but they are apparently far and few in between.
An American named David came to teach tonight’s children’s class. He appears to be in his early 30’s and has some prior experience teaching, so I sat in on an hour and a half of the class to observe his methods and the children’s reaction to them. Even the most shy kids had warmed up to him by the end, kids that I made comparatively little progress with last night. I think I learned some things.
After the school closed at 9, Joe and I talked about plans as he walked to his office and back to the bus stop by the school to catch a taxi home. I must say that he’s a great motivator, because I’d been feeling pretty negative about the job before talking with him last night. I really do feel like this may be a once in a lifetime opportunity to make a very important connection.
Back at my apartment, I used my washing machine for the first time, which unlike the one at my old apartment, actually works right.

Monday: 5-28-08

Haircut this morning at a barbershop near the school, where my hair was thoroughly washed before cutting. Chatting with the barber and other staff, they already knew I was a teacher at the new school. Just like a small town. The total price of the wash and cut was just $1.25. My job tasks today included planning out the school’s upcoming promotional video and finding some 4th of July signs online. The school strives to promote all aspects of popular American culture, so I proposed to Joe the idea of displaying some 4th of July decorations and information. He may want to take the idea further, having a BBQ on the 4th and using the empty field across the street from the school for a fireworks display.
Two American’s came in for interviews today, a young male pianist from Massachusetts and a young female student from California. The girl, named Thea, was quite pretty and joined us for dinner.
A woman brought her 4-year old son in to enquire about signing him up for English lessons. He went out onto the front patio and peed on the steps while his mother spoke with the staff. Nobody made any attempt to scold him.
The second night of my adult class began at 7 o’clock. Teaching is quickly starting to go more and more smoothly with the adults, but the kids are going to be a bit more of a challenge. Joe invited me back to his office for a quick glass of tea after the school closed. He’s been telling me the last two nights about his first big business venture, when he built a vibrating neck pillow sales empire at 19-years-old. He started selling the pillows independently and ended up with over a hundred employees a year later. Coming from a family with a business background gave him big ambitions even at a young age.

Tuesday: 5-29-07

My tasks at work today included making an MP3 soundtrack for the school’s sound system and searching the Internet for software to make the school’s student access computers accessible by password in 30-minute increments. The MP3 idea was mine and password idea was my bosses. Right now, the sound system relies on the employees playing a stack of regular audio CD’s. So, the plan is for all the CD’s to fit onto a single MP3 CD, plus some other music that my boss asked that I find to add. Since the plan is to develop this school into a franchise, having a standard playlist of American music makes sense.
My coworkers Annie and Mandy invited me to have lunch with them at the donkey restaurant. After dinner, Joe presented me with 5000 sheets of freshly printed student material to organize. We had no office supplies for filing, so the driver took me and Johnson to a nearby office supplies market to purchase 50 manila envelopes. I spent the next couple hours sorting through the papers in the main office. The idea is to have each day of each class’s material in a single envelope. Developing a simple, easy to imitate system is important since we wish for it to be easily copied by future franchise schools.
A middle aged American woman from California came in for an interview in the evening. Just before going home at 9 o’clock, Joe invited me to have some snacks and tea with him. So, that’s my day, all work.

Wednesday: 5-30-07

Mosquitoes attacked all night long. How they got in is a mystery because the apartment seems to be well sealed. I had planned on getting up at six and traveling to pick up my bicycle at the Wudaokou subway station, where it has been parked for the last week, but decided to sleep in after being kept up so long.
I worked in the main office from 11-4 today continuing to sort through the 5000 sheets of class material Joe presented me with yesterday. It’s not done yet, but mostly. The material for the level 1 intermediate children’s class and the level 1 beginner adult class is all sorted into 30 manila envelopes. Hopefully somebody else gets this job next time.
Returning to the school at 4 o’clock to prepare for tonight’s adult class, the power went out because the staff forgot to charge the meter(the meter works on a card payment system). One of my coworkers asked me to borrow $12 to get it turned back on. I think they didn’t want to ask my boss because he got really mad at them last time they forgot to pay the bill. So, I guess they will casually ask him for the money soon and pay me back.
My adult class didn’t want to leave when the time was up. They would have sat there for hours asking me questions had I started to pack my things up like I was about to leave.
A middle age man was in the lobby inquiring about lessons as Joe and I were about to leave. He seemed really serious about enrolling, so we stopped to give him a brief test and try to close the deal, which I think worked. Joe’s sales tactics are interesting to watch, and they usually work. Of course, it does also help that he happens to be a foreigner.

Thursday: 5-31-07

I got up at 6 o’clock this morning in order to get to Wudaokou and back before I was supposed to be at work. Traveling by bus at the early hour was convenient because there was little traffic. Normally, buses are terribly inconvenient due to all the traffic jams. A bus took me directly from my new apartment to within a 20 minute walk of Wudaokou, where my bike had been parked at the subway station for over a week.
The walk gave me the perfect opportunity to stop into a Mcdonalds for an Egg Mcmuffin breakfast value meal.
The dust on my bike appeared to have been accumulating for a couple months rather than a week. The air was clear today due to a light rain falling, which turned into a rather moderate rain about halfway into the ride, nearly soaking me. The traffic was full-force by this time and I passed about 1000 cars during the 40-minute ride.
I wanted to stop somewhere and buy shaving cream and have a key made, but the rain just drove me home as quick as possible. It seems that shaving cream and locksmiths are nowhere to be found around my apartment. Even the medium sized supermarket doesn’t have any shaving cream. And locksmiths are normally located in every alley working off the backs of their bikes. So, in some ways my new area is not very convenient.
Arriving to the main office at 10 o’clock to pick up some blank CD’s, Johnson asked that I install my version of the web development software Dreamweaver on an office computer so he could work on the company’s website. I had thought he was a computer expert, but after helping him set up the software, I think he’s actually at about my level.
Much of the workday was spent finding more children’s music online, many hours of it. An adult student named Kelly came in for the 3rd or 4th time to complain that my class is too hard for her. She can actually read most of the material, but she is always zoned out during class, just staring at the floor and stuff. I tried to tell her that it’s normal not to understand everything, but she still looks worried, and I’m almost sure she’ll be back again next week to worry some more.
There is a face-recognition picture search engine supposedly coming out in a few weeks, called Polar Rose. I’ve been thinking for the past couple years that such a technology was on the way, but not this soon. The company is based in Sweden and has received about $5 million in venture capital to develop the technology. The beta version is set to be released soon, which will work as a plug-in for Internet Explorer and Firefox. I feel that we are going to be hearing a lot about this in the coming years because of all the dirt it will dig up. Just image how many pictures you have been in during your life that you have either forgotten about or didn’t know about. There’s surely at least a couple floating around online somewhere. The question is, how well will Polar Rose actually work. They say very well, but we will see. There have already been considerable delays in the release.
In the early evening, I went back to Joe’s office with him, John and Denver to eat some cookies and try to help Johnson solve a problem with the website. Joe and I bought the cookies at the supermarket, a whole bag of what appeared to be freshly made(but a bit stale) for $1. Back at the school later, Joe came and listened to the music I’d downloaded today, so I listened to yet more children’s music.