Clogged urinal

So I broke the toilet but how the hell do you clog a urinal? Well I did it! And here is the proof. I just couldn't get it to flush and after my last toilet episode I decided to walk away and not mention it to anyone. It was still like this three days later.

The Mayor

After being in the City of Taixing for 24 hours I found myself getting ready to meet the mayor and his entourage. The company that I am working for has a fairly large construction project under way and the mayor wanted to come and check it out. I was put out front as the big white show pony that I am. We were all in suits waiting for him to show up in the Taixing heat. (Taixing heat is a little different then regular heat due to the pollution) Note: Taixing is one of the most polluted cities in the world. Eventually the cars show up and the mayor comes out. Right away I am introduced and I give my Ni Hao to him which blows his mind. He asks me if I can speak Chinese and I say a little bit. Then he breaks into his local dialect and starts speaking a mile a minute and ends his speech with a Hao ba? To which I answer Hao. He then walks on to be greeted by my Laoban and to take the tour. His Right Hand Man sidles up to me and tries to get the conversation flowing but I really could not understand his accent. It was harsh and he spoke quickly. I had to smile and nod and eventually he walked away from me. From that point on I was simply there as a quiet member of the group walking up and down shaking hands with the engineer and his workers. After the tour we all went to the restaurant. It was one of the nicest restaurants in the city and we had the back room. It was a very dramatic back room with a self serve bar and a bathroom attached. It had card tables and sofas and a huge hand carved table in the middle of the room set with elaborate place settings. There was a lot of art on the walls and many of the classic trifold Chinese shades around the room to block off the different sections. It was pretty cool.

To make a long story short..........When it came time to eat the mayor wanted me next to him. i of course obliged and he then asked me if I wanted red wine or north wine? I told him either was fine. He seemed to not believe me and asked me if I was sure I could handle the north wine. I said of course. Everyone went ooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh at the table and I was served a little jug of clear alcohol. The alcohol tasted like sweet vodka which was actually quite nice but the funny thing was that they served it in a jug that was about the size of both of my thumbs and the shot glass that they used to drink it with was so small that my baby finger couldn't fit it. The style of drinking in this area of China is to always cheers with someone when you drink. As it turned out, I became a target to try and get drunk. The mayor's right hand man decided to do three cheers with me in a row and everyone thought this was great. Then he wanted to drink the rest of our jugs together. I said okay and everyone said oooooooooooohhhhhhhh be careful you will get too drunk. i said no its okay I will be fine. The total amount of alcohol that I drank during this show down was about 3 ounces of alcohol. I honestly felt nothing from it but the mayor's RHM had the reddest face I have ever seen and he needed to sit down. There were others that tried to get me drunk, but of course I have some experience with holding my liquor and this group certainly was not up to the challenge of bringing me down. By the end of the meal I was pretty much sober and every other guy at the table was red faced and slurring their words. I shook the mayor's hand at the end and told him that I really hoped we could do it again. He told me that he looked forward to our next meeting. I told his RHM that the next time he wants to drink with me he needs to bring a bagel.

It was a little surreal to be at the table with no one speaking English and the food being hard core. I ate turtle cartilage, which was not as good as it sounds and some other things that were equally not as good as the sounded. But overall it was a great time and invaluable insight into the way deals are done here.

That is all for now........

I broke the toilet (don't read if you are not interested in hearing about my poo issues)

So I arrive in Taixing after a 4 hour drive from Shanghai and I meet everyone very briefly. With my bags still in the car, I am taken to my office (which kicks ass but I will tell you about it in another post) I sit down and try to settle in for a few minutes when one of my new co workers offers me a cup of coffee which I accept and enjoy, despite the fact that it was instant. After about 5 minutes of settling in I relaxed enough that I needed to deal with all of the Chinese food that I had been eating thus far on my trip and went to the bathroom which had no toilet paper. I asked one of the office workers where I could find some and he went on a 10 minute search for some toilet paper. When he gave it to me I went into the ladies bathroom and he freaked out. He said, "No no no you cannot go, it for lady!" I said, "It is for ladies and foreigners because it has the only western style toilet in the building." (Western style toilets are the sit down ones). He asked one of the female office workers if it was okay and she said okay. I assured her that I would be careful with the toilet. I went in and needed to rush to get my pants down as this was going to be my first movement since I arrived in China. I sat down and the entire place echoed with the crack of the toilet seat. I had to go to the bathroom so badly that I couldn't really do anything but settle in. I could feel the pieces of the toilet digging into my bum but I really couldn't do anything in fact, when I was done I needed to pick the small pieces of plastic out of my bum.
Now I needed to make a call; either I could close the lid and walk away and pretend that it wasn't me (which wouldn't have worked as I was the only person who had ever used the toilet) . Or i could own up to it and deal with it like a man. I decided that honesty was the way to go. I tracked down the General manager and told him that I had a problem in the bathroom. He followed me and asked, "You don't know how to use?" I said, "No, I know how to use but I destroyed the toilet." I showed him and it took him a minute to figure out what had happened. Then he started to laugh which attracted people to the bathroom. They of course asked what happened and Mr. Bang told them. Pretty soon everyone was there and we were all having a laugh. Everyone expect me who was nodding and saying, "Yes, yes I totally broke the toilet." It was pretty embarrassing as you may be able to imagine. I eventually went back to my office and tried to stop sweating for the next 15 minutes.
Then I had to rush off for a meeting with everyone in the entire office building which lasted 3 hours and I was required to make a speech regarding my goals and hopes for the company...........................

Time Difference & Chinese Meetings (A Crash Course)

It is 5:30 am and i have been up since about 4 am. I did get up at around 1 and talked to Mun on Skype which was good. Skype is the best invention since peanut butter. It is incredible how I am able to see munny and talk to her for free! Mom just got hooked up as well which has been great to keep her informed. It really is like having them in the room.

Just so you know.........these postings are showing up in Toronto time so this one will be around 5:45 pm on Saturday but I am actually posting them 12 hours ahead in Shanghai time.

Yesterday I was to be ready at 11:00 am for my first meeting with all of the managers of the Shanghai plant. I was ready at 10:30 and I laid down to read until the phone rang. It didn't ring until about 12:30 and I had fallen completely asleep. I tried to wake up on the 20 minute drive to the meeting but was still pretty groggy when I got there.
The meeting was in a hotel room on the 27th floor of a big hotel and when I got in the elevator the bellboy pressed the button and sent me off by myself. I got off the elevator and realized that there were about 50 rooms on the floor. Luckily, the door to my meeting was wide open so that when I walked by Mr. Kan saw me and waved me in. The room was smoked filled and there wasn't a window or a fan on. There were 7 managers in the room with Mr. Kan and I was quickly introduced and the meeting returned to its previous state of having each of the mangers discuss the current situation in their departments while everyone else slept or played with their cell phones. I sat there trying to grasp the situation for about and hour then out of nowhere Mr. Kan explains who I am in Chinese and asks me what I have to say. I forgot every single Chinese word that I had ever learned. I was like, " Um dui bu qi, uh wo bu zi dao ................" I also started to sweat profusely. It was brutal. I asked Mr. Kan what i should talk abouit and he said that maybe I could introduce myself. So I did my basic intro of my name and my experience in Taiwan and how I was now studying My IMBA in Toronto. Then one of the managers asked me where I studied Chinese and I was able to have a conversation with him and I stopped sweating and finished speaking. It was tough. then we broke for lunch and I ate with Mr. Kan and we discussed the meeting style and it turned out that I had some relevant experience to contribute to the second part of the meeting so during the second half of the meeting Mr. kan called on me to contribute to the conversation. I was very careful to not say too much as I really didn't understand the situation fully and I didn't want to piss anyone off.

This may have been the most stresssful day of my life and I new it was going to be when I woke up. My Chinese is going to need to improve very quickly. Hopefully today will be less stressful.

That's all for now............................................

Early mornings

Luckily I remembered how every time I flew back to Taiwan from Toronto, I would undoubtedly wake up at 3 am and not be able to get back to sleep for the first week or so. I have packed enough books to keep me busy and I am in the process of plowing through Salem's Lot by Stephen King. This book has been on my shelf for the past 15 years and I felt that it was time to deal with it. It is not a bad book and things are just starting to heat up now. I am currently waiting in my hotel room for the breakfast service to open up downstairs. It is a very standard Chinese breakfast with sweet bread and egg mixed with the little silver fish. In truth it feels a bit like home after being around it in Taiwan for so long. I do miss my coffee pot a little but I saw that there is a Starbucks not too far away. At home i only drank a Starbucks coffee once because is seemed like the least appetizing option available, then I get to Asia and Starbucks is my best friend. Anyway, I will survive on tea until I can track down a coffee pot and some decent beans.

I ripped on air Canada in my last post and the domestic flight from Toronto to Vancouver was brutal but the flight from Van to Shanghai was great. I had a nice comfortable seat with lots of leg room! Each seat had a standard wide screen TV with movies on demand. I have never been so comfortable on a plane in economy before. i couldn't really sleep so I watched about six movies back to back. When we landed I walked out and checked out every sign being held up for my name. It was not there. I said to myself, " Here I go, let's make this happen." I found out that gate 10 was in the other terminal and that I had to take the free bus. When I finally found the bus, loaded my gear and got to terminal 1, I started to unload and with tow of my bags still on the bus the driver took off. I yelled so loud and punched the bus. I nearly knocked the thing over! I grabbed my bags and headed in to gate 10. i then had to do the walk of shame back towards the gate to check out all of the signs there being held up by anxious people waiting for the person they have been sent there to pick up so that they can get on with their day. I unfortunately was not able to help any of them out. My guy was not there! Okay get out the numbers I was given, call the first number, out of order. Shit. Call the second, its ringing, my new boss picks up. The driver realized the mistake and went over to the other terminal. I waited for about 30 minutes and then there was Uncle Wen ready to take me to my hotel. The hotel is nice enough but I was too tired to really care. I hadn't slept in 24 hours and I smelt of airplane. I took a quick shower and waited for Mr. Tan to show up. he was very nice and brought me fruit. I slept all night from 7:40 pm to about 1:30 am then from 2:30 am till about 9 am then from 10 am till about 4 pm.

I had my first meeting for work at 5 pm yeaterday and it went well. We went over the job description which is a monster. I could be here for the next 3 years and still not complete it all, but I am glad that it will be a challenging summer. Speaking of challenging.........nobody speaks English. This is going to be great in the long run, but my Chinese is going to need to improve a lot very quickly. I am going to have a meeting today with all of the managers at the plants that I will be working at and then I have the next day and a half to myself. I plan on finding a shop that sells Chinese books with simplified Chinese in them.

That is all for now..........................................