Workin It

Most of this post was actually from Tuesday, but it's pretty difficult to blog from here, especially with all the blocks they're putting up because of the 20th anniversary of the breakup of the Tiananmen Square protests. So, here's a big mish-mash of stuff from the last couple of days...

Tuesday was our first day of work, and what a day it was. We showed up at our office building this morning with no idea where to go or what to do. It’s a pretty modern-looking 12-story building made of reflective black glass called the Foreign Languages Mansion. There are skinny little guards outside and a revolving door that whooshes you into an expansive gray lobby with a coffee shop, an electronics store, a wine store and the elevators.

By the way, has anyone ever seen an elevator that wasn’t made by ThyssenKrupp? Ever? Just wondering. It’s even in Microsoft’s spell checker. Those guys must be billionaires...

We got to our floor and luckily ran into the woman who met us at the airport, so we had an escort. We were shown to our little cubicles, introduced to the other two interns (AppStaters!), and given little ID badges. Then, no kidding, we were told to surf the Internet and have fun.

ID badges. They have to be swiped everywhere. You swipe it to enter the building. You swipe it to go to lunch. You swipe it when you go to the bathroom. You swipe it when you come out of the bathroom. No matter where you are, somebody knows because of that badge. Every time you swipe, it beeps. Beep. Bathroom. Beep. Front door. Beep. Break (beep) room. Beep beep beep. The cacophony is worsened by the pop-song ring tones everyone has on their cell phones. I must be working with the most popular people in China, because every minute Beyonce or Fergie or Pink or Jay Z lets me know that someone is calling someone in my office. Beep...

They can further figure it out our whereabouts from all the cameras in the building. I feel like we are the most-watched people in the world. Sitting at my cubby, I have a camera in the ceiling at my 12 o’clock, two at my 3 o’clock, two at my 5 o’clock and one right behind me. Every time my ear itches, I think about whoever’s on the other side of those black half-spheres in the ceiling. If my cheek itches, I scratch my beard with great pride, because I know that faceless overseer is beardless and is likely brimming with jealousy. Aside from that, I do my best to hide as often as possible.

I haven't had much work to do yet, so I've spent most of my time at the office applying for jobs for when I leave in December. If I leave this stint in China without a job lined up, it's gonna be a sad state of affairs.

Yes, I know this post consists of two different font sizes, but there isn't anything I can do about it. My screen is garbled...

Lunch is fun. There's one word I can use to describe the lunch experience here: communist. We get free lunch, as do the other people who work for the state. We eat in this enormous room with 15-foot ceilings and white walls and white floors and stainless steel lunch trays. The flourescent lighting reminds me of Tom Hanks' office in "Joe vs. the Volcano," if you've ever seen that. There's two or three pictures on the wall to break up the monochrome, but they're all 8x10's, so they don't do much. The food is good though, although I normally don't know what it is when I scoop it onto my tray. At the end of the chow line is a three-foot-tall vat of soup. We have these ladles that are about four feet long to scoop soup into our delicate little bowls. It's a very difficult process, kinda like using two-foot-long tweezers to pull out a splinter.

So today is Thursday here, but probably still Wednesday for all of you. I gotta head to work. More tomorrow...