Here is something you don't want to do

Here it is, Tuesday night and I am now 4 days without a Passport. Yes, that is right, I lost my passport over the weekend. I believe I was jinxed by the local authorities. We had a meeting on Thursday last week with the local government immigration folks and they informed us one of the worse things that you can do is miss place or lose your passport. The last thing he said in the meeting was that you do not want to have to get a new passport while in china. Well, sure enough, I have had a passport for probably 30 years now and never lost my passport, until now that is. Now I have to figure out what I need to do to get a new one. I am not even sure where to start. I guess pleading for forgiveness with the local police would work. At least I hope so. You see, in China, once you land here you have 48 hours to register with the local police. They want to know where you are at all times. Well, come to find out, they also want to get an updated copy of your passport, visa, work permit and residence permit every month. And yes, you guessed it, they asked for that today. What are the odds. The first thing my apartment manager asked me was did I inform the local police that I had lost the passport. I said no but I was trying to figure out what my next steps were. She then said..."oh, good luck" I am not sure how to take that.

You see, there is only two places I could have lost it. I had to take it to a mega store and show them the passport in order to get a club membership. I handed it to the person at the front desk, she took my information and gave it back to me, I think. I could not be sure once I started thinking about it. I then got the card, went in the store and did some shopping. After that, I came out, put the goods in the car and the driver (not mine but the people I was with) took us back to the apartments. I sat in the front seat. Once we got home, I took my stuff up to my apartment and put it away. I called Kathy, ate a quick bite, changed my shorts to my workout clothes and left to play badminton. I never put the shorts I was wearing back on since. Well, I decided Monday morning to grab my passport and take it with me so I could register at the Intel health clinic. Needless to say I couldn't find it. I tore the apartment apart before I went to work. I am thinking the maid probably thought I had the apartment ransacked. I left for work. I have since been trying to locate the passport. The driver went back to the store for me on Monday and ask them if they had the passport. Neither he nor I could remember if they had actually given it back to me. He called me later to say they didn't have it.

I decided to stop by the store after work and see for myself. You know, there is a bit of a communications gap here for me. They informed myself and my driver that they did not have it. I said OK and I went back to my apartment to look again and hoped maybe the housekeeper found it while she cleaned the place up. Nope, it didn't happen.

I have a good driver that is looking out for me. He decided today to go back to the store and request to view the video recording of the front desk. He was told no and that only police are allowed to. He was persistent. He went to a higher level. Well, they eventually let him view the videos from Saturday. He told me when he picked me up tonight from work that I did in fact put the passport back in my pocket. The front right to be exact. He also informed me what I was wearing on Saturday. I have since found out that they have over 80,000 cameras around the city. They know where you are!!! Well, for the third time I tore my apartment apart. I have looked everywhere including the refrigerator, washing machine and clothes I didn't even wear yet since I have been here. No luck. There is one more place I am going to check again and that is in Brian's and Barb's drivers car. It could have fallen out of my front pocket and fell on the side of the seat or under the front seat. I will look in the morning again.

If I don't find it I believe it will be good reading for another entry on this blog. What else do I have to do? I mean, it is not like I am working all the time or worse yet, going out every night and having fun right? Anyway, I will keep you posted as to how long and what I have to do to get another one. I hope I can quick enough to be able to come home for a couple weeks in the end of November.

Wish me luck

3 down, 49 to go

So here is what went on this week. work, work and oh yea, did I mention work? We have put in some time to finalize our contract with a company who will be our general contractor. Looks like it is done. We finished the schedule on Thursday and signed it. That meant that I need to get with my customers, process engineering, and inform them of how it turned out and how bad the schedule looks compared to what we wanted. The problems with the Chinese customs, the getting tools on time from our Intel sites in the states and the 4 week shutdown in February for the Chinese new year, there is some major misses to our original plans. But you know us, we are Intel and we will do everything we have to in order to hit our schedule and bring this factory up on time.

We had 3 more of our technicians land this week but I didn't see much of them. They have a week to try and get settled in to this culture and set up their personal lives here. I will be seeing them tomorrow and boy will I put them to work quickly. We have got major safety issues and training that has to happen. We continue to fight a culture that has no value on safety. We find the local Chinese folks act at work just like they do on the streets. No regard to their personal safety. My buddy and I can to the conclusion too that they walk like they drive here. No rules, no regard to the person next to you and no personal space. Wonderful people but dangerous at the same time. Again, we are Intel and we will change that behavior, even if we have to force them right? Actually, the people are very willing to change their thoughts. We are at the infant stages of getting people to realize we want them safe at all times. It is a challenge but it will be an accomplishment.

For a few nights this week it was pretty uneventful. The weather has been wonderful and staying warm late into the night. Monday and Tuesday I didn't do anything after work. Just came back to the apartment and relaxed for the evenings. On Wednesday we decided to play some badminton. This was again a fun time. I am actually getting a good work out from the games. We played for over an hours and I was spent after that. I must say though that I am getting better. I could actually hit the birdie this time without looking spastic. Thursday I just came back to the apartment and worked out and did some work in the evening. It is nice that I can actually get work done at "home" The only thing exciting to happen on Thursday was my "friend", you notice the quotes around the work friend, called me at 2:30am china time. He lives in Arizona. Now, I will not name this person, (see how nice I am Don?) but he happens to be recovering at home from some recent medical issues and he obviously does not have a whole lot to do. I guess it would not have been so bad but I had just gone to bed at 1:00 and had to get up at 5. Well, I didn't answer the skype call but it did wake me up and I was totally dazed. I wondered who the heck would be so inconsiderate as to call me so late. Well, I guess someone who doesn't have anything better to do. Anyway, when I talked to him yesterday and mentioned this episode, he informed me that he thought I was 12 + 3 hours behind him. Yea right, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Oh well, what can I say, he has been sick.

Friday night was the night of having fun. It was Wendy's (Rami's wife) birthday. The big 40. Rami put together a party together that had some good food and a large supply of actual fireworks. They are legal here in China and I am not talking about firecrackers. These were full blown in the sky fireworks. We shot them off in the street in front of the bar. I have never been that close to that amount of fireworks. The party finally broke up about 1am Saturday morning. I am not sure how I made it that long. I am not that young anymore you know. Well, I made it home and recovered the next day. Not that I had too much to drink Friday night but because my body just can't stay up that late anymore.

The rest of the day Saturday consisted of playing badminton and dinner later. We again played for 2 hours. Had a lot of fun. For dinner I actually made myself a hamburger at home. At least I think it was hamburger meat. In either case, it was pretty good. At least it didn't bark when I stuck it with a fork.

Sunday was a full day starting with going to a Chinese Christian church. It was very interesting. I couldn't understand a word of what they were saying but I recognized the hymns. The people were very very friendly and one lady even gave me a Chinese bible to follow along in. I had no idea what I was looking at but the gesture was nice. The service lasted an hour and you honestly could feel the passion for God in the place. They were very loud and responded in unison. The place was absolutely packed and it was not a small place. The only down side was that the benches to sit on were wood and very hard.

Brian, Barb, Danny and I then decided to go to the Zoo for the day. Well, that thought was quickly dashed when the sky's decided to open up and pour out some water. We were almost there when we decided to not go so we went to what is their Sea World. It was really an aquarium with a couple of animal shows. It was still raining but at least it was indoors. It was fun but not worth the 190RMB ($27.00) to get in. After that we went to eat something and then I went home and slept for 2 hours.

Tonight we found something none of knew was going to happen. There was a night parade in honor of the start of World Fashion Festival. It started at 9:00pm. Kind of a strange time but I am finding that this city doesn't start going until after 9. Well, here are a couple of pictures of a couple of floats just to wet your appetite. It is a good thing it stopped raining this evening or the light parade could have been a disaster or at least pretty shocking.

More later.

Still Surviving in China

Wow, into the 3rd week and all is well. I have not been good at staying on top of this blog. Time has just been flying by. I have been busy with both work and with fun stuff. I will try and catch everyone up on what has happened in the past week.

First, work is moving along and we continue to be very busy. Early mornings and an hour or so after the day is supposed to be finished. I have my driver pick me up at 6am. We have an hour drive to the factory. I get there at 7am and usually have a meeting with folks in Az at that time. We have been busy trying to get the project ready to go. We should actually be starting our tool install around the 12th of October. This is a week late but that is because of the Chinese holiday coming up. The holiday is China's Independence day. It runs from Oct 1st to Oct 6th. The plant will be completely shut down at that time. I then usually leave work about 6pm. My driver is always right there at the front door waiting for me. We then take our hour drive back to my apartment. Usually because of traffic it takes over an hour. I really don't mind the drive because it goes really fast. We spend the whole time practicing English and Chinese. That is going really well and I have learned so much Chinese.

I have been trying to get back into a exercise routine again. It is difficult to get disciplined again but I have been doing it. I really miss the LA Fitness racquetball gang and playing RB. I decided that I needed to do something to take the place of RB. Well, just as I was talking about that, one of my Chinese co-workers mentioned that he plays badminton. He asked me if I wanted to play. I said absolutely. I have never played before but I thought what the heck, it can't be that hard. Well, I was wrong. We played Saturday for about 2 hours. I sweat just as much at that game as I do playing racquetball. It is not just this little racket sport you play on the beach or in your backyard during a family reunion. These guys (and girls) mean business. I never knew that little birdie could go so fast or hurt so much. It was an absolute blast. My buddy and I went out and bought rackets after the games. We will now be playing every Wednesday after work and every Saturday. I am hooked. As you can see by the picture, I have a lot to learn.

I guess I should step back one night though. We had a team builder for work on Friday. This started out having on BAM (big a## meeting). This was to align all our team members on our vision, mission and goals for the next year. It was actually pretty simple, install and qualify the production tools. But, after the morning meeting we all did a great race 68. This consistent of different teams and we were all given clues which took us all over Dalian. We had to have our pictures taken at the different locations. This went on for about 3 hours. It was a lot of fun. After the 3 hours we then met at a Japanese restaurant. It was a great place to eat, but there was nothing for me to eat. It ended up being all seafood. Both raw and cooked. Not my favorite. I have adopted the "you have to try everything at least once" philosophy. So I proceeded to do that with this stuff. It was just hard when the food was staring back at you. As you can see from the pictures it was not my most favorite place to be eating. I did eat the shrimp and tasted the snails. I think all the beer helped with all of this.

This past Sunday I decided to go hiking on a mountain close by. It is about 680 meters high. That would be close to 3000 ft. There was 5 of us who attempted to hike the mountain. We started off on one side, hike to the summit (radio towers) and then down the other side. This was a great hike and took about 4 or 5 hours. Once at the top you could see where the two seas meet around the tip of the peninsula. It was a fantastic hike and very difficult in some places. There was actually about 4 Buddest Temples at different locations in the mountain as well. They were pretty cool and it makes you wonder how the heck they ever built them up there so high in the mountains. Here are a few pictures.

Now today, back to work. I am enjoying myself. The people are wonderful. The food is really not that bad after all. You just have to eat a lot of rice. I get a really big lunch at work for about $1 to $2 dollars. That is my biggest meal of the day and Intel pays for that! I am really getting good at handling chop sticks. That is all they have at the plant for utensils. I will soon be plucking flies out of the air with my chop sticks. I am learning so much Chinese and my driver is learning English quickly. The only thing that is difficult about being here at this time is not having Kathy and the boys. I miss them. Kathy will be coming over for a visit in a couple weeks during the holiday. I have some fun stuff planned during that holiday. We are going to drive north from here. I hear it is beautiful country up north. The only bad thing is that North Korea is up that way too. I hope Bill Clinton is available again, just in case.

Well, that is it. I am going to be heading off to sleep now. I will post again in a few days. Thanks for reading and I hope this is as much fun for you to read as it is for me to share.

China Life

Well, going into another week in Dalian China. What a wonderful experience so far. This past week has been interesting as I start to settle into some routines. I am actually really starting to enjoy my driver. He is really helping me to learn Chinese. It takes an hour to drive to work each day and an hour back at night depending on the traffic. What we do during the drive is teach each other our respective languages. On the morning drive, he teaches me Chinese and at night on the way home we work on his English. He is a very quick learner and already I am able to communicate pretty well with him. We started with me counting to 4 the first day. Ling, yu, du, san, chi. Then he said, "tomorrow 5" The next day we went from 5, wu, lui, qi, ba. Again, "tomorrow, 9. So, this morning I learned jio, shi. I also learned a number of words like today, policeman, traffic jam, good morning, work, wife, phone call and good. By the time I leave here I should have a pretty good vocabulary. Problem is that there will be no one to talk to with it at home.

Over the weekend I spent time with Brian and his wife, Barbabra. We went around the city and explored some of the shopping sites. We used their driver because he is very good at English and he helped explain many things about the city, tradition, how to shop and bartered for us. We started the weekend on Friday night where a bunch of us went to a place called the Brooklyn Bar. Yes, it was just like New York. The food was totally American and they have the best burgers, pizza and other American food in town. It appears the word is out to all the Americans here because it was full of many folks from Intel. The next day I decided to do some walking by myself. I walked for many miles. I ended up down by this Russian part of town. There were street vendors selling the normal tourist type stuff, but also different fruit for the locals. Here is a picture of what it looked like.

After this little stroll I decided to walk over and buy myself a local cell phone. This cost me 400RMB or about $50.00. I can now call my driver and all the folks I work with. Now it was time for dinner and I wasn't sure what I was going to do. It was actually raining and I wasn't sure about where to go. I found a place that looked clean and friendly. I was able to go in and order something that wasn't fishy smelling. It was a rice dish with chicken and an orange sauce. The dinner was very good. I ordered a diet coke with no ice and enjoyed a good meal. This meal cost me 20RMB or basically $2.60. If you stay away from the big hotels you can find meals very cheap.

Sunday, Brian and Barb came to my place and gave me an alarm clock. Our apartments do not have any clocks and I told them I was going to pick one up. They did it for me. I used it today, boy, is it annoying. It is one of those old type with the 2 bells on the top and a clanger between them. That woke me up this morning. We then decided to go and do some shopping. Their driver, Jacky, took us where the chinese go to shop for clothes. It is cheaper then most of the places around town and most of the stuff is knock offs, but you can't tell, it looks like the real thing. There is a lot of that around here. Anyway, the store he took us was about 2 blocks square and was 4 floors high. It was packed with individual stores inside. Everybody selling everything you could think of. There was one floor just for shoes, one floor for just clothes, 2 floors for trinkets and "valuable goods" Stuff you just can't live without.

After all this shopping we were getting pretty hungry. So, we asked Jacky where he likes to eat. Guess where we went?

It was very popular and it tasted just like home except they had a seafood pizza and served escargot if you wanted it. Where else but China can you get snails at Pizza Hut.

After this we did a little more shopping for a couple of hours and then we decided to meet some other friends at a very traditional tea house in China. In this tea house I found out that the girls serving the tea go to college for 3 years to learn the history of tea and how to serve it. Once they graduate they are able to go all over the world and serve tea to various people in special settings. The girl who served us was in her third year. They can also get a job at this tea house or one in Shanghai. This was a wonderful, relaxing way to just sit, drink tea and eat fruit, sunflower seeds and watermelon seeds. We had green tea this time but there were hundreds of types to choose from and they all are for something different for you body.

That was it for the weekend. Today was then the start of my second week in Dalian China.

First few days

In the past couple of days I have found the transition very different. It has been difficult at times because of the language. My driver here does not speak any English at all. Talk about difficult trying to express to him where I need to go. He is a really nice guy though. I will get a picture and post it tomorrow. I feel like royalty here in China. Working for Intel everyone bends over backwards to accommodate me. Everything is done for me. I don't even open doors on my own anymore. When I walk out the door in the morning the Bellman stands and greets me and opens the door. I have my driver waiting right at the front door. He runs around the car and takes my computer bag from me, puts it in the back seat for me and opens the door for me to get into the car. He has a bottle of cold water waiting for me each morning. He then takes me where ever I want to go. The second day I was here I had him take me to a shopping mall so I could pick some stuff up and some food. When we got to the store he ran and got me a cart. He followed me into the store pushing the cart. Stayed behind me the whole time as I walked the isles and all I had to do was select things off the selves and place them in the cart. He then unloaded the cart for me at the register and bagged all the items for me. He pushed the cart out to the car, opened the door for me to get in and he then unloaded the cart into the trunk. He drove me home, jumped out to open the door for me and then went to the Bellman to get a cart. He unloaded the items from the trunk into the cart, pushed the cart to the front door and from there the Bellman took the items up to my apartment. By the time I got up to the apartment the Bellman had unloaded most of the stuff into my apartment. All of this for no tip. What a wonderful culture. Actually I must say that Americans could learn from this culture on how to treat people. It is all about relationships and face. The people I have encountered have all been humble and kind and treat people with respect.

I usually visit the hotel bar each day for a quick beer, or as they call it pi juang. The first day I met the manager of the bar and he treated me like an old friend. He has even given me my own mug in the bar with my name on it so I can use that mug anytime I come in there. He greats me by name each time I walk in there and shakes my hand and spends time talking with me. Again, it is all about relationships.

I finished my immigrations paperwork today. I am now a working resident in Dalian China. I have my working visa and permit to work. I guess now I am officially Chinese. This was actually a very painless process.

After the immigrations process I decided to go ahead and head into work since I was in the neighborhood. I know my boss Rami has been asking about me all week so I figured I should make an appearance. I wasn't planning on staying all day but as soon as I showed up I was pulled into 4 different meetings and did not get out of work until about 6pm. I can see that this is going to be a very busy project. I am going in tomorrow morning early as well. Oh well, the easy life is over, now it is time to buckle down, dig in and get things started. I will start writing about both work and free time. We will see how this all mixes. I will let you tell me when I am too much one way or the other.

One last thing for today. I know I am going to regret putting this in writing but here goes. I have a good FRIEND, he has been going through treatment and a recent surgery for cancer. He sent me word today that the results have come back on the biopsy and they did not find the cancer in the lymph nodes. This is wonderful news and I am so happy for him. I know he is on to a wonderful recovery and will make it through all of this. He has a lot to look forward to in his long and enjoyable life. Praise the lord for the results. I will continue to keep him in my thoughts and prayers like so many people are.

Getting settled

Well, now that a few days have gone by I guess I can say I am starting to get settled. After getting my 3 bags on the airplane, 2 for free but that extra third one cost $200.00. I tell you, the airlines are sure making their money on this baggage stuff. One of my bags was over the 50lb limit as well and at least they let me move things around between the bags in order to get them all under the 50lb limit. I never realized that my underwear weighed so much. Anyway, I got it all taken care of and set off for the long flight.

First I had a small puddle jumper from Phoenix to LA. This was a really bad flight. The Cabin Attendant was really cranky and had a really bad attitude. She was the only one on the flight and made it known to everyone. Once the flight was over and we landed in LA we had to sit on the runway for about 15 minutes to wait for our gate to clear. At that time, a passenger got up to use the restroom and the flight attendant got on the intercom immediately and literal yelled at the person to sit back down and not get up again as the plane cannot taxi with someone out of their seat and especially in the bathroom. Boy, did that guy sit down quickly.

I then finally got off the plane and had to go to the international terminal. Is that LA airport ever a mess. It is dirty and run down. I got to the international terminal and to the gate. Standing at the gate, it was at the last possible gate and there were actually 2 different planes leaving at the same time at the same gate. An A and B gate. One going to Mexico City and the other going to Seoul. The gate sitting area had only 2 rows of seating for two jumbo jets. I would say about a total of ~600 people with only 20 seats. That was fun standing for one and half hours. They had good entertainment though. An employee who I think was an ex Disneyland employee took 35 minutes setting up the waiting line ropes. Disney would have been proud. After all that and no intercom, it was a made rush for loading. I made it though.

On the flight, it was uneventful. Other then the bad fish smell when they began to serve the dinner. The flight was full of people who loved fish and rice. I just had a hard time with it and decided not to eat the dinner. The guy next to me did though. Now, just to let you know, the dinner was a Korean dish and it had some fish soup broth. He didn't get much in his mouth because he dropped it and spilled it all over me. That made for a pleasant 13 hour flight. I only had 11 more hours to go. The rest of the flight was quiet and nothing more happened. I slept well on the flight. We then finally landed after 13 hours. I then had a 4 hour layover in Seoul. I grabbed a Duncan Doughnut and relaxed for a while. Made the next flight and was off to my final destination of Dalian China.

Once I arrived in China I had my driver waiting to pick me up. I walked out and there he was standing there with my name on a sign. He rushed up to get all my bags. He does not speak a lick of English. I just followed him to the car. Got in and somehow got him to understand that I needed to get to the Shangri-la resident apartments. He took me to the hotel instead. Not too bad since the apartments were just around the corner. Made it to my apartment.

It is a nice apartment. A 2 bedroom with nice kitchen, dining area and living room. I am on the 10th floor. It overlooks a nice beer garden.