A follow up to the pilot

 I'm always looking for ideas on what to post here so please the more comments and ideas you have let me know.  Yesterday I was told by one of my faithful readers  (yes Chip you are getting another shout out here!) that "the writer sure paints a lousy picture of life in China.  It would be interesting to hear a follow up from you and what you think about his perspective."  Good idea and here goes...I'm going to do this in bullet point form to keep it simple I think...

• Money can be made/saved living in China, yes that is true.  But nothing like it was 5, 10 or 20 years ago.  Now the cost of living in Shanghai as an expat is actually more than living in NY as an expat.  While I don't pay for my apartment I will tell you the rent is more than $4,300/month.  Food is astronomical.  A future post will showcase the cost differential on food but to give you an idea a box of imported cereal costs about 80-90rmb or $13.50!!! I never throw out a box until it is completely gone, regardless of if it is stale or not.  Going out to eat at a western restaurant is another jab in the pocketbook to say the least.  Definitely equivalent to NY or Chicago.  The items that are cheaper are service items - taxi's, cleaning lady, haircuts, repairmen, etc.
• I agree completely that you are out of your element living here.  Culturally it couldn't be more different, language wise, good stinking luck as I've tried that route and found it incredibly challenging.  Not to mention being 7,000 miles from friends and family.  Sometimes that is tough but sometimes it's what it should be a wonderfully eye opening adventure.
• From a job security standpoint I think it really depends on the industry and company.  In my case I think I'm lucky.  I would say my job security is much higher than an equivalent in the US.  If they want to let me go they need to find someone willing to relocate, understand the culture, be willing to live here, etc.  Additionally for most expats I know our job functions have no limits.  We do everything under the sun because we are the face of the US company and that is expected of us.  Whereas in the US the jobs are more regimented (not saying they are easy just less hats to wear on a daily/hourly basis).
• Cleanliness.  Well I completely agree with the writer here.  It's gotten better and Shanghai is far cleaner than many other cities in China.  But I see little kids out with their parents walking on the sidewalks routinely using them as bathrooms.  The spit, yes it is everywhere.  Outside sure.  Inside, why not?  In an office?  Ok but try and spit it into the trashcan versus on the carpeting...but not always.  How about the long fingernails on men?  I will never understand this and it disturbs me beyond belief!
• I love the comment on the one rag rule for cleaning.  I don't know if it is true but I do recall my apartment in Shenzhen.  I bought all the cleaning supplies, some got used the first month by the cleaning lady and when I moved home 10 months later the bottles were all 3/4 full!  I think she cleaned with the one rag (probably brought from her home) and just used tap water to clean everything, no cleaning solutions at all.
• Sun?  What is sun?  Yes we have seen it for a few days now but per my previous post we saw the sun for 5 hours TOTAL in the 2nd half of February!  
• Fake alcohol is rampant in China with some estimates saying as much as 80% of all liquor sold in China is fake!  No wonder I wake up sometimes with a splitting headache after only having a couple of drinks.  Far better to stick to the bottled beer.
• Hotels I completely disagree with him.  The nice hotels in China and all around Asia are PHENOMENAL and usually present a very good value, especially outside of the big cities.  A nice 5 star hotel in Shanghai costs probably $250 a night.  Outside in 2nd and 3rd tier cities, probably $100/night.  Even many 3 star hotels in China are equivalent to some of the 5 star in the US.
• Communication varies based on the city.  Shanghai you can always find someone speaking some amount of "Engrish" and in my office most speak and write well.  Do they all understand spoken English, well that is a different matter altogether.

I absolutely love some of the old culture here and the simple life many people appear to lead.  Riding a rusted out bike that is literally falling apart but they have a smile on their face going to work early in the morning.  Probably headed to a job that is menial but it supports the family.  Or the street vendors serving food to the masses early morning and in the evenings.  Not all of it is clean or healthy but it doesn't stop the crowds.  The old school streets with lots of bicycle repair shops, mini hardware stores, diaper stores (yes diaper stores), and all the other shops that make up a community.  In my eyes China is about the people, hard working, loyal, friendly even if they can't communicate.  Yes it's bustling and nobody smiles or says hi on the streets like they would in Chicago but heck with 25 million people here you would never stop saying hello.  It's an absolute adventure day in and day out.  It's allowed me to see the world and I wouldn't give that up for much.  


As a friend of mine who lived in China about 10 years ago told me before I moved to China the first time, she said she "never felt more alive than when she lived here.  It was like her head was on a swivel plate 24/7 taking in the atmosphere."  Well that pretty much sums it up.  It's not all good but all in all I'm enjoying the ride!

An American pilot's take on life in China

This is somewhat long but I think it is a good read on the challenges of living/working here in China.  This comes from the perspective of an American pilot who is flying for a Chinese airline in China.  I agree with lots of it but I must say that reading about the flying part of it does scare me just a bit.  In any event here goes...

I'm the 1%! ....and I pay less taxes than Mitt!

Yes its true. You can make oodles of money here in China. I as a E190 driver make more than any wide-body captain in the US, and
I have over 18 weeks paid holiday a year plus normal days off.

But there is a natural economy to this and its not the gleaming diamond you think. Your vision is of your life now, today, as it is, with all its comforts, cleanliness, proximity to friends and family, in a system you are familiar with, where everyone speaks your language and understands your culture.

This is my second contract overseas and I can tell you why we make this kind of money.

We have less job security and no seniority list. If there is any hiccup we are the first to go. We are the outsiders and the locals always remain. We have no pension. This is not a permanent gig. There are some longer term contracts but the company has no interest in keeping us on payroll any longer than necessary.

Kids pee on the street 10 meters from a bathroom, people spit everywhere, I see have seen people laying a nice brown heap on the sidewalk. I live in a country that not only has cornered the market on plastic toy exports but all the super infectious germs resistant to antibiotics. A place that routinely is polluted so heavily that you can stare directly at the sun without squinting.....if you can see the sun. A place where purple industrial waste lays meters from farmland. An economy so self driven that it mirrors Dante's Inferno's passage where no one can escape because everyone pulls each other down to get ahead.

A place where there are three kinds of alcohol. Fake, not so fake, and almost real. An underground that reuses cooking oil into infinity and buys bottles from authentic international places to re-bottle them with fake hooch. Unless you pay 3x what it costs normally you are not really drinking alcohol and even then that is not a guarantee.

The chemicals in everything you eat is life shortening. A country where just the simple task of getting to Facebook requires special "tunnel" program to circumvent the great firewall of China. Initially for 2-3 months you will heave all the colours of the rainbow until you are used to the bacterias of the East. Cleanliness is next to Godliness and most Chinese don't believe in God so they don't believe in Ajax either. One rag to rule them all cleans your bed, your floor, your toilet, your dishes.....in that order. The best overnight hotels are in comparison with the worst ones you have ever stayed back home.

There is bare minimum communication. Almost no one outside of Shanghai and Beijing speaks even broken English. Hong Kong does not count because lets face it....that's not Mainland China. Even fewer people read English. None of my ground crew speak English. Sure you can get the sucky sucky but there is a target on your back for you passport and your money. The first questions asked are...Are you single, do you have children, do you want children, where do you work, how big is your house, how much money do you make. Really, after what is your name these questions are the immediate follow up.

I have a 3 man cockpit in an E190 to keep me going through to 16 hours or more every day. I get holidays but even when I am off half the month I am burning 80 or more flying hours in two weeks. There is no 30/7 rule here only 100/month. Routinely the pilots time out at 1000 hours per year. The delays in summer mimic EWR. The ATC outside of Shanghai and Beijing barely speaks English and on runway 27 it is normal to be flying a 090 heading, off any charted approach on vectors, and have the controller say..."cleared for the approach". You are ATC. My ICAO English examiner could not understand what I was saying.

Your F/Os while smart are 200 hour wonder pilots. And when I mean 200 hours I mean they just checked out and this is their first jet airplane. The last thing they flew was a C421 for 40 hours. In my initial sim the F/O who didn't speak English did not give a call about my speed during takeoff roll. The sim tech put in a windshear and airspeed had stagnated and I had already transitioned to outside reference before V1 above 100 knts. The F/O said nothing. As we overrun I shoot a glare to the F/O and he says something in Chinese. The translator says "He says he is sorry he never saw this situation before"

Your FOM makes no sense-----Its all Chinglish....

"The regulation of using checklist is the valuable experience of what had
happened before with high cost and scientific treasures summarized from
the bloody accident. The operation of checklist is used to standard
behavior, strict operation, detailed procedure, and it is the valuable
treasures of preventing mistakes and important tool of assuring flight safety."

The check-rides are old school. Multiple failures. I've had my RAT out single engine with a multiple hydraulic, screen failure, anti ice failure, decompression, Electrical malfunction all at once with an F/O who does not speak English. I've flown V1 cuts IN THE AIRPLANE to 500 ft circling patterns with a hood. Engine failures at 400ft and securing the engine by 1000ft is challenging and can be done but not when you need a translator to get it done. You make your own procedure and get it done by 1000FT. People add weight to takeoff performance when clearly the English says SUB or Subtract. But they don't know English.

Line Check Airmen can be old school military to completely not knowing a damn thing about the SOP. There are good pilots but few who can fly or know SOP.

The medicals are extremely difficult overseas. Everything from balance tests, blood tests of more than 45 criteria from white blood cell counts to blood sugar levels. Vision, periphery, depth, puffer, grip tests, EKG, EEG, brain scans, ultrasounds, reflex, ears nose throat tests, and many other probes. Half the people don't make it past the medical.

Many people leave after the first few days unable to cope with the culture shock. This is not Hong Kong or Shanghai. This is Mainland China where people smoke in hospitals and there is no such thing as pedestrian right of way....even on the sidewalks.

Most importantly you should never bring your kids here unless you appreciate them eating arsenic. The pollution is terrible. It is beyond terrible. Its hazardous. The US Embassy advises no to go out side for any period of time many days of the year in my city. Where the distributors know that imported food is in demand they counterfeit everything and even that imported Sunkist label is a knock off. Marriages crumble with the distance, children are seen twice a year and those who do commute back and forth age so quickly you encourage them to double up on life insurance.

Expats drink a lot to deaden the loneliness and pain. I've seen people who didn't drink put away a 5th a week.

There is no Meetup group or speed dating. This is make your own a la carte.

This is just the tip of the iceberg and I have mentioned almost nothing about the real cultural differences.

It could work out for you. You could marry that stripper and everything will work out. But the odds are you are looking at a disaster on your hands and that my friends is why I make more than the most senior Delta captain who comes home to his family every week.
China does not have the experienced captains that take 10 years of training to mold out here. And in all Asian countries its about 10 years. With foriegners reluctant to move here because of all these and other difficulties I am a drop of water in a desert.

Maybe that's why everyone called me a drip when I was younger.

Awesome spring weekend!

Well it looks like spring is finally showing it's beautiful face.  This weekend has been two days of relatively clear skies and warm spring like weather.  Temperature now around 4PM is 66 degrees which feels wonderful!  The forecast for the rest of the week is also looking up with clear skies and consistent upper 50's being estimated. 

You might ask why would anyone care about this?  Well it does tie into a little blurb I read in a local magazine.  Here is what it said:  "If Shanghai's seemed especially gloomy these past few weeks, it's not your imagination.  While we've enjoyed some sun recently, the spell of showers starting in February was the longest in more than 30 years.  The Shanghai Meteorological Bureau reports that in the second half of February, Shanghai got less than five hours of sunshine TOTAL, the lowest amount since 1972."

I'm just glad to have read that and found some proof for what I had been feeling, it certainly made it tough for a while to be in good spirits when we never saw the sun.

New Hire (continued)

A few weeks ago I put a post here about a new hire we had coming on board.  Essentially his former mother in law or maybe it was just the mom of his former girlfriend called our office and told us not to hire him.  In any event while I listened to the claim there really isn't much to do.  That's a personal matter, in fact one that may be in the past and had no bearing on his job offer with us.

Well late this past week I was in a meeting when I was interrupted by our HR manager.  Originally I was attempting to tell her to give me a few minutes but she pushed the issue so I listened.  In essence this woman had called our office, gotten the HR manager and told her she was waiting for us in the lobby of the building.  We were expected to come down immediately or she would come up to our office.

So myself, the HR manager and our local GM all went downstairs to discuss with the woman.  Hopefully one way or another this would be the end of it.  Unfortunately when we got down there she was nowhere to be found.  Our lobby opens to a shopping mall but that doesn't open until 10AM so there isn't much place in the lobby to hide.  We looked around further but no success.  Then we headed back up to our office spaces to make sure she didn't go up there.  She wasn't there.

Bottom line I think we have a very unstable mother her who is just looking for attention.

The stuff I deal with!

Chips anyone?

Anyone need any chips?  This is an actual bag of Japanese Dorito's.  I'm not sure what it all means, nor why in the world anyone would want to buy them. 

Catching up in Singapore

OK last post on Singapore folks I promise.  One thing that was very cool about heading to Singapore last weekend was the chance to catch up with old and older friends so to speak.

Thanks to social media giant Facebook, I got a message from one of my high school buddies who lives in Singapore.  I played soccer with this guy and went to school with him for two years.  However the last time I saw him was 1991!!!  He lived in Hong Kong for 4 years and then the last 18 months in Singapore.

Then on Sunday after the race I met up with a friend of mine from my days in Kansas City.  He went to Singapore for a 6 week contract, now it is 4 years later and the contract is finally coming to an end.  He and his wife are planning a two month vacation - Japan, China, NORTH Korea, and then Thailand.  There is a possibility of another month in Vietnam.  The final month or two will be spent on vacation but also looking for work allowing them to stay someplace in Asia another few years.

All in all it was great to see people so far away!

Stephen (KC buddy) and I in Singapore after the race.

Singapore 70.3 Photos

Here are some photos from the fun in the humidity this weekend.  AKA Singapore 70.3...

Out of the 2 lap swim and heading for transition 1 (meaning swim to bike).

Ahh the fun of a nice flat bike course!  Wish all courses were like this. 

They did a great job of blocking off roads so it was not only flat but nice and safe.

And heating up on the run in the sun!!!!

Singapore 70.3

Well folks like always I tend to pick the tough races.  I mean what better way to prove to oneself that you just love the pain and misery associated with a tough race? 

Yesterday was the 70.3 Singapore race.  For those of you who don't know what the 70.3 stands for it is the total distance in miles of the race.  1.2mile swim (1.9k), 56mile bike (90k) and 13.1mile run (21.1k). 

The swim took place in the sea and wasn't bad.  My time wasn't good but between a lack of swim training and the fact that the current kept blowing me all over the place I was actually happy with my time.  Then for the bike.  It was a lot of fun and a perfect course for me.  By that I mean it was FLAT!  If I was in excellent shape I would have just opened it up and laid on the gas 100%.  But overall I was happy with the bike portion finishing that just under 3 hours. 

Which brings me to the run...and about 11am.  As you can see in this article below about the pro side of the race, it kind of got warm.  Can you say ambient heat of 102 degrees????  When you figured I started the run at 11am and it took me a super slow 3 hours, I was pretty much running in the dead of the heat!

All in all I finished the race right at 7 hours (still 30 minutes faster than last July in Jeju, South Korea).  I was hoping for a time of about 6:25 going into it.  But the lack of training really just proved you can't do one of these races without putting in the necessary time in advance. 

ironman703singapore.com/
http://ironman.com/events/ironman70.3/singapore70.3/hot-stars-hot-weather-and-hot-racing-in-singapore#axzz1pVUYPFgH

My Birthday

Well yesterday was my birthday.  Nothing too exciting. The not so big 39.  Next year could be more interesting.  So yesterday was a customer visit and then they joined me and a few colleagues for lunch.  It turns out they had planned a bit of a surprise and had this cake delivered to the restaurant.  Lunch was at a placed called Din Tai Fung which makes amazing dumplings that I could eat (and do eat) tons of!

One thing that was not thought of was forks!  So we ate the cake with chopsticks which was actually easier than one would think.

Last night was completely nothing, I spent time breaking down my bike and getting it put in the box for my trip to Singapore tomorrow! Thanks all for the birthday wishes!

"If you can train here, you can race anywhere!"

That is the quote of the local Shanghai Triathlon Club.  While I haven't really joined them for training or races, I'm on their email distribution lists and hear that quote over and over.  It really makes sense when you consider the heavy air pollution, congested city streets making running difficult and biking near impossible/suicidal, the lack of swimming pools or lakes and the freezing/damp/rainy winters combined with the intensely hot/humid summers. 

So it's with that mindset that I'm now 1 week away from my first race of the year.  I'm doing a half Ironman in Singapore next Sunday, the day after St Paddy's day (guess I will have to hold off having a Guinness or 10 until the 18th!).  As usual my training has been less than stellar over here.  What with 5 colleagues from the US in the past 2-3 weeks, the month long rain spell and everything else it has been brutal!

On the positive side I got out yesterday and biked 30k and followed that up with a 10k run.  It was the first outdoor bike ride since last fall and it felt good to be out there. 

Given my lack of preparation, I'm going into this race treating it as a very long training day rather than a race.  The course description leads me to believe that this race is well suited for me.  Other than temps expected in the upper 80's (I'm used to the lower 40's right now) the course does play to my strengths.  Both the bike and run are supposed to be flat and fast.

In any event that's enough for this weekend...don't forget to change your clocks over there for daylight savings! 

View from my new apartment

A couple of weeks ago I did indeed move to a new apartment.  It was not fun looking for places but I finally found one that I am thrilled with.  It's a single building, meaning not a large compound, with no extra facilities (gym, pool, clubhouse, etc) but the apartment itself is very cool.  Until I get settled a bit more I will have to share just the photos that I took today from the deck.  I'm on the 10th floor with unobstructed views.

In fact the dome like structure you see across the street in white is brand new, they are still finishing the landscaping around it.  It's some sort of theatre/concert hall that is built into the ground, supposedly to give amazing acoustics.  While that is great, I'm more happy about my view and the lack of noise.

Taken with a fish eye lens put onto my iPhone.

A bit of a panoramic view

The view off to the right but still from my balcony

International Women's Day

So how many of you in the US celebrate "International Women's Day?"  And by that I don't mean that you've heard of it, but how many get gifts or time off because of it?

I honestly don't think I had heard of it really until moving to China in 2008 for the first time.  I guess most of the rest of the world celebrates it to some degree, all certainly celebrate it more than Americans.

Well for now the 3rd year in a row I've had to give the women in our office a half day of work on this holiday.  That wouldn't be so bad except 85% or more of our office is women!  In fact to make matters worse we had two guys in our office who worked this morning but never came back to work after lunch.  Unless they've had a gender change that I hadn't heard of I can't figure why they didn't work today. 

I'm all for holidays, vacations, etc but between the Chinese holidays that are on weekends and then if you get certain days off you have to make them up during a different weekend and Women's Day 1/2 day of work, I simply don't get it!

Future employee

I thought I would share an email I received today to give you an idea of some of those things that happen here, make me scratch my head and say over and over "you can't make this stuff up."  This is from my HR manager regarding a person we have hired who is starting next week.  I removed his name and put "future employee" instead.  

To top it off I've spent the last 3 days working here with two people from our New York office, being our COO and the CFO.  The CFO just started the beginning of this year.  Since our NY office doesn't have an HR department, he unofficially has that role too.  So needless to say with them in town my time is preoccupied and a bit stressful.  I passed the email to him so he could see why in fact we need an HR department here.  Enjoy the story.  

Nolan,
I received a call from the future employee (Nolan: name removed) girlfriend (or ex-girlfriend)’s mother’s call this morning, complaining his issue with her daughter. She said (future employe) made her daughter pregnant but he does not want the baby and asked her daughter to do an abortion. She said (future employee) has bad ethics and no virtue. And why (future employee) left the former company is because he cannot stay there, because she has gone to (future employee's) old company to talk to his manager about this issue and defamed his reputation. So (future employee) cannot stay and find a new job. And she even told me, if we hire him, she will still come to our company to talk to me and GM. She asked us not to hire (future employee) and will try her best to let (future employee) lose his job, as she claimed ‘(future employee) is a person with no virtue or ethics’….

I also did a reference check to (future employee's) former company; their HR said his performance is very good. When I tried to explore his personal things based on the phone, their HR did not want to talk about it.
I have talked to Paul about this at noon. We both think it is (future employee) private things. We have no right to interfere with his personal issue. But we both have a concern: this woman, the girl’s mother, probably will come to our company to ‘talk’ to us, which will have a really bad influence on the company. People will gossip. Therefore, I also called (future employee) to get his personal things done, not to let this influence the company or his job. (Future employee) claimed it is slander.

Maybe it is too funny or ridiculous to foreigners: a mother involved in a relationship made the things so complicated: the boy lost his job, and the girl has no fame…What’s the good point to let everyone know this poor story?

Please advise. We ignore this, or give him up. I know you are very busy and don’t want to bother you. But it is emergency. (Future employee) is supposed to be on board on Monday.

There is lots in this story that doesn't add up but two things stand out.  Firstly how in the world the mother found out he was coming to work with us?  Secondly, he wasn't fired from the previous company unless it was in the past couple of weeks, since we know he was employed when we made him an offer.  My ruling on the issue was that this is a private matter and our offer still stood.  If the mother comes to our office to complain we will simply call the police...or I have an alternative to that.  That being we have US person here running our quality control department.  He's about 50 years old but still is a power lifter and has a very deep voice.  I'm sure if the mom got out of control that Kevin could handle most anything!