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..........................................
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