Patrick "Trick" van Staveren

Happy [belated] Independence Day, my fellow Americans.  Weirdly, I went to work on Monday!

It’s been a month in Shanghai already.  Crazy eh?  I haven’t learned much mandarin yet.  I have, however, learned how to say the Shanghaiese word for “bullshit” (but I don’t know how to type it.)  I need to get studying.

I have learned quite a bit in the last month.  Work’s been keeping me very busy, from interviewing new software developers to ordering laptops for Australia to fixing broken web servers to testing internet providers.  Trying to get to know everyone and all the things we do here.  We do a lot here in Shanghai IT, much more than I knew about.

I’ve met some cool people here in the office and people have been really nice helping me get familiar with things.  The one lady who cleans the office in the evening has been feverishly trying to get me to properly pronounce the mandarin word for “cup” which I still get wrong.

This week I got my permanent residency visa, so I’m now allowed to move about freely.  Which is good – because tomorrow I’m headed to Australia for a week!  This is the first of many visits to our office in Sydney to take care of our users there.  It’ll be nice to meet another new group of people.  We’ll be doing all sorts of things like adding a new internet connection, upgrading the phone system,  and probably hanging out and drinking some beer.  I hear tell there’s chocolate cake involved, so there must be some civilized people in Australia :)

I’ve also been looking at apartments and tomorrow I’m headed to meet with the estate agent to see about signing for one.  Details to come if I get the place…

Unfortunately I’ve been under the weather the last two weeks, so I’ve spent a bit too much time asleep.  Finally on the mend, just in time for my trip.  I’ll leave you with a slew of photos:

Yes, they have cool bicycles in Shanghai too :)

Typical traffic jam outside my window:

I went and looked at this apartment building.  It had the stairway to…um…nowhere.

A rare Shanghai blue sky!

Quite often it looks like this:

The Bund.  I went down to The Bund and snapped a few photos:

I took this one because I like the rainbow building on the right.  The lights are animated and change colors.  It’s fun!

Yesterday I learned how to type Chinese on an English keyboard. The title of this post literally says Shanghai. It’s cool: you switch your keyboard input method, type in the pinyin representation of the word/phrase and the computer translates it into it’s Chinese symbols.

I can now type all sorts of things that I probably can’t pronounce properly. Kevin gave me a book of Chinese everyday slang & swear words. I’ll now proceed to fill my brain with 废话！ You may want to take this moment to check out Google Translate to know what 放屁 I might be saying about you. Kevin gave me a book of Chinese slang & swear words written for the everyday person in China. This can’t possibly end badly.

I’m going back to Chicago on Saturday. The move over here seems like a long time away (two months) but I know it’ll fly right by. Much change ahead.

I suppose I should show you where I am at. Here’s a map of Shanghai with the office & hotel pinpointed on it. Zoom out. You have to zoom out quite far to see anywhere else in the world I’ve previously been.

View Shanghai in a larger map

Thursday was a fun day. I imported Tie Thursday to Shanghai last week by showing up to work in a tie. The team here loved it and had a good laugh. At which point I announced that Thursday March 24th was to be the first International Tie Thursday. The entire team came to work with a tie on! The only one lacking was Tom who is over from the London office and I hadn’t told to prepare for the event. Kevin came prepared and loaned him a tie :) We ended up with ten people in Shanghai, three in London and two in Chicago wearing ties on the same day. It was great.

We took a rather nice picture of the whole Chinese IT team:

Things here are wrapping up to go back to Chicago. I’m tired. Keep staying up ’till 2AM talking to people in Chicago. I’ve also run about five miles this week in prep for the Oak Park Runner’s Club 5k which is just a week away. I think I’m in shape to run 5k…

Named for Kevin, the current Head of IT in APAC at Mintel.  Whom I’ll be succeeding.  I’m moving to Shanghai in May!

This week’s been mostly work.  While it’s really interesting stuff, it’s complicated, and I’m tired.

So here’s a picture of me using my direct line to the President:

From Shanghai

Taken in a Korean bar in Shanghai. Yes, that phone is the real deal.

Also, my favorite intersection in Shanghai is right outside my window. Here’s a picture of it from overhead. At a point in the traffic signal’s cycle, all cars get red lights and pedestrians get green in all directions – including diagonally! What a cool idea.

From Shanghai

Next few months will be crazy. I’m going to be an expat. I have much to learn. And it’s going to be a helluva experience.

I ran into a pair of Michiganders this morning in the hotel breakfast.  Got spotted because I’m wearing a Western sweatshirt.  They’re out here on vacation meeting her brother who’s also an expat here.  Small world!

First day here completely on my own.  Rode the subway to see this giant shopping center, and as it turns out, it was giant.  I also found an unexpected western business in the mix – Cold Stone Creamery.  I forgot to grab some on my way out.

The Chinese love their color, and now I really appreciate it.  It’s solved a problem I’ve been after for months: why can’t I find some obscenely brightly colored socks?  Solution: China!  They love their color here, it’s great.  I now own some orange socks!

From Shanghai

I spent a fair bit of time attempting to locate a supermarket online, which I failed at. No really, a search for “grocery store” or “supermarket” gives me every last corner shop and convenience store. I decided finally to just walk down Huaihai for a while, which I later decided was probably about the Shanghai equivalent of walking down Michigan Ave and expecting to find a Dominick’s. Ended up grabbing food to go, but I did manage to buy bananas from a local shop on the street. I didn’t understand anything he said other than ni hao which means hello. But it’s a start!

Came back & relaxed this evening. Stuck my camera out the window and took some night photos of the city. It’s fairly foggy again today. The last photo is the view straight down 32 floors from my room…hope you’re good with heights :)