Love at First Web Site

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Hello
At the moment I'm at Beijing train station. I went up to where the scalpers were at the beginning of the line and asked one guy about going to Harbin, and he was just like 'dou mei you le' so yeah not even the scalpers have any...? Then I tried to go to the online train ticket black market, xiaoshitou.com, and the page doesn't come up, I'm assuming coz it's overloaded... Anyway my Beijing friend is going to get tickets to go on the ninth, but I don't want to go with her anymore and just want to go now so I think I will try to fly, then eat 30c meals for the rest of my trip. Sounds good.
Anyway I will search my lonely planet for alternatives , maybe I will go spend a week on Taishan, becoming one with the Dao, etc.
Peace out!
Lizwa

PS You can post blogs but you can't read them... nice... someone behind me just shouted out "She has a BLOG!"... China...

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

All of the stuff in this article is soooo true! http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html
Take this for example:

I remember when I had been studying Chinese very hard for about three years, I had an interesting experience. One day I happened to find a Spanish-language newspaper sitting on a seat next to me. I picked it up out of curiosity. "Hmm," I thought to myself. "I've never studied Spanish in my life. I wonder how much of this I can understand." At random I picked a short article about an airplane crash and started to read. I found I could basically glean, with some guesswork, most of the information from the article. The crash took place near Los Angeles. 186 people were killed. There were no survivors. The plane crashed just one minute after take-off. There was nothing on the flight recorder to indicate a critical situation, and the tower was unaware of any emergency. The plane had just been serviced three days before and no mechanical problems had been found. And so on. After finishing the article I had a sudden discouraging realization: Having never studied a day of Spanish, I could read a Spanish newspaper more easily than I could a Chinese newspaper after more than three years of studying Chinese.

Friday, January 11, 2008

The Sound

The voices from a 10-year-old blockbuster on it's 7th repeat blaring from a commercial tv station. The shaw... shaw.... shaw... of cars rolling quickly along the main road at the end of the street. The click click of the mouse as Kuba reads the Polish online tabloids.

The Taste

Pizza-garlic soaked into my upper lip and the dirty after-taste of the world's favourite habit. A sip of beer has been unremarkable.

The View

Kuba's cheek alternated with his eyes, the ceiling, or Zorro through my knees as we lay together on the loungeroom floor.

The Touch

Kuba's shoulder in my left hand with my right arm awkwardly positioned under my body. His soft and Brut-ed cheeks. Softer than mine, which are dryer.

The Mood

On the balcony I sit alone while Kuba is inside. We're not talking, but we're in each other's company. I begin to realise what his leaving will mean. I had forgotten how anxious I used to feel when alone for more than an hour, and it has occurred to me that this may come back. I go back inside and press my lips against his cheek and tell him I'm sucking as much juice out of him as possible in preparation for his departure.

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

And here are a couple more.

Hello! I've started packing up my room and sorting through my stuff and found a CD with 'the first photos I took on my digital camera!'. And here they are:

Monday, January 07, 2008

In other news!

The receptionist at TIC emailed me at my hotmail address today asking what to do with a package that I sent before christmas which has been returned. How cute. I should charge them consultation fees, by the minute.
In other news, I'm leaving the country temporarily in a couple of weeks, and the Kubster is leaving the country probably for a long time, possibly also in a couple of weeks. But he wants to come back and apply for PR later. You get 50 points when a family member is already a permanent resident. High five to Marcin!
In other news, I'm all ready for my big appointment with Centrelink tomorrow. Yay! Can't wait!
Also, being unemployed is like being a kid during the school holidays again. You kind of just find stuff to do like writing belatedly to penpals and doing things you never got around to doing like contacting people you haven't spoken to in a while. Wow. It's a great feeling. As for the budget, I ingeniously spent $2.10 on breakfast this morning which consisted of a V8 poppa and a bread roll from Franklins. Noice.
In other news, I'm moving out of Newtown just before I go to China. I'm reasearching ways to stay there longer but it's not looking good. And I really should keep going with this degree.
Speaking of which, I'm doing my next 6 subjects at Sydney Uni so I don't have to live in the eastern suburbs (BOOOORING) or travel back from there at night.
Rose-cin came back from Townsville yesterday and Vanja is back tomorrow. Yay!
Yesterday I saw The Darjeeling Ltd which I quite liked. It moved India up on my destination 'priority list' whatever that means. I'm a bit stressed out about cash for my trip but mainly because I don't want to end up calling my "Money doesn't grow on trees"-espousing parents while I'm there telling them I can't afford to get back to Shanghai or something. But should be good.
Liza

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

My First Foray into the World of Sales and Marketing
It was last week at TIC and I was in a newsagency browsing the mags. I decided to find our plug in Vogue Living. It was in the Japan special double spread, and the single sentence was "TIC have a special tour to Japan which goes to these places etc etc... call this number etc", with a picture of Mt Fuji in the background. That was put in for free after one of the mag's journos was delighted with the Asian food hamper I sent her. So what I have learnt is that not everything is black and white in business. It's not about prices per word or prices per centimetre. It really is about relationships - who your friends are, or better, who your "friends" are. I was also chuffed to see real evidence of my hard work. This is what I wanted out of marketing, and I got a bit of it. I always wanted to be behind the scenes, and I finally got a taste of it.

On that note, I called a temping agency today, and said I was after short-term assignments, and that I had just been working in sales and marketing. The consultant, always on the lookout for new recruitees for permanent positions, told me there were some marketing roles going. I thought to myself 'as if it would be that easy' and quickly told her I only had 6 months experience. She finally put me through to the temping department.

Sunday, December 30, 2007

2007-2008 Summer Non-Ratings Period Repeats

I've got to say I was a lot more inspired when I was in Taiwan. Must have been all that iced green tea.

Ask Gretel
Dear Gretel, I'm a Taiwanese internet gamer and I have forgotten what life is. Every day I go straight from my International Trade 101 class to the internet cafe up Lane 3 where I play a stupid game where there's this cartoon guy who walks around collecting things and walks across grass alot. I often fart quite badly when I'm sitting at the computer and I spend pretty much all day in this stenchy fart-filled cafe. There's this foreigner sitting at the computer next to me. I stared over her shoulder for a prolonged period of time, because hey, she's a foreigner, and saw that she was typing emails at hotmail. I tried to read what she was writing but then she started staring back at my computer and that's when I realised how annoying it was. My question is, Gretel, how do I stop farting when I'm in an internet cafe? What is the proper way to manage one's bodily functions when seated inside an internet cafe?
Mind-numbed,
Billy

Dear Billy,
You have what is commonly referred to as "Internet Gaming Obsession Disorder And Related Flatulence". If you remember who your mother is, or what it feels like to be at home with your family instead of falling asleep in front of a computer at 11pm every night, she would tell you that you should watch your farting habits no matter how much time you spend in one place. You may feel like you live there, but the people seated at the computers beside you are not your brothers and sisters, with whom you feel you can let one rip and have a good giggle over it. Remember these tips for tomorrow: Did you eat egg today? Did you spend the required amount of time in isolation following a large serving of curry? When was the last time you ate alot of fruit? I recommend keeping a Fart Diary. That way, you can manage your gaming sessions around your eating habits. If that doesn't work, whenever you feel like one is coming, go to the bathroom, and let it out there. You will find that these are the standards of behaviour in all the best internet cafes and your fellow computer users will be grateful. You never know, that foreigner sitting next to you may one day strike up a conversation with you and before you know it, you will be fluent in English.
Good luck,
Gretel

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Dude I was just amending my resume to send in with my app to enrol at Sydney uni, and discovered that the resume I have sent out to 5 or 6 people in the last week was bloody riddled with mistakes. Obviously that's the last thing you want to happen when the jobs you are applying for are all about attention to detail. I used to have excellent attention to detail. It got me promoted to 'Back Order Girl' at the bookshop years ago. But when you're surrounded by people who don't have it, you start wondering what the use is of even trying, if the place seems to run fine without it. Then you decide that you may as well save a few seconds every day by skimming over things instead of checking, and then it's just a slippery slope. It's kind of like forgetting how to spell after being immersed in Chinese characters for so long, where that part of your brain that you use to spell atrophes from disuse. I never knew I had attention to detail until it was pointed out; I assumed everyone knew how to spell, and that everyone did things properly. But it is in fact not the norm, and you allow yourself to be dragged down just because you feel like there's no point. This is why I sometimes desire to work for a huge elite/ist company like PwC where I could only improve rather than get worse. These companies are where people can spell and use apostrophes properly and take good presentation for granted.

I'll tell you what. I am really fucking sick of eating humble pie right now. Dude, I've had enough of this fucking pie. There's just so much admin you can do before you just say fuck I'd rather go on the dole and be real genuine loser than listen to one person tell me about 'consistency' while another person spells 'Asian' A-i-s-a-n on a flyer advertising the product of a company that specialises in Asian destinations. If I sound too big for my boots, I don't give a shit, it means they're too frickin small.

In conclusion, I feel ambivalent towards all the retards out there who I blame for making it necessary to be screened for retarded-ness every time you apply for a job that you could do after half your brain has been pulled out through your nose, but then again, without retards, people like me would never be managers, because we wouldn't have any retards to actually manage.

I'm sick of the food chain. It's time I made my own!!

Friday, November 30, 2007

Christmas is in the air! I'm going down to Katie-wa's for christmas. Handed in my leave form today. Can't wait. High five!
One of my best friends in primary school Mandy is on facebook now and it's very nice because I haven't spoken to her since I was in Taiwan.
Speaking of Asia, Maryann who I studied with at Tunghai is going to be in Shanghai when I'm there, and is going to come to Shaolin temple with me! Yay! Unfortunately I'll be 'ronery' in Beijing as long as I'm staying the same hostel as I did last time, I'll be fucking sweet. This time, it'll be new hutongs, new bars, new dumpling restaurants, new cultural relics in the form of Qing dynasty coins sold at markets to devour at my leisure, until I head up to Harbin. My language exchange partner Rongrong is going to come withme, (she has also invited me back to her hometown) which should be wonderful too. In her hometown, Baoding, there is a restaurant that serves the dished that were only allowed to be eaten by the governor of Beijing province (back in the imperial days) and forbidden to the common people. Should be good. If I fly down to Lhasa I will only have 5-6 days there which is not enough to explore the rest of Tibet, so I don't know if it will be worth the expense, and if I should wait till I can spend much more time there. Last time I went, I had absolutely no plan, but this time, because I'm arranging to meet everyone I know, I've had to lock in certain dates and I'm worried that I'm always going to be under pressure to follow my itinerary and catch the pre-booked trains etc. Ah well, should be good. When I finish my degree, I'm going to go on THE trip. Maybe the trans-Siberian, or a more southern route through India and the middle east. Rajasthan looks fucking awesome.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

In the news today - the temporary police powers awarded after the Cronulla riots are going to be made permanent. Police will be able to eavesdrop on people without a warrent.

Also in the news, people's Lonely Planet books have been confiscated at certain border areas of China because the map in the front of the book shows Taiwan as a separate country. Mine, the 8th edition I bought in 2004, has intentionally, I suspect, covered up Taiwan with a label pointing to one of China's highlights, so they have been able to avoid the matter entirely. It's funny how none of these issues have changed since my Taiwan jaunt. The issues are still the same, people are still arguing the same things. Bloody maps mate. I'm thinking of doing a Chinese Studies masters in Taiwan one day, but what they hell are they going to teach? I brought back a historical relic from Taiwan. It's a book on 'Chinese History', but after 1949, it focuses entirely on the GMD in Taiwan, and pretends the mainland doesn't exist - nothing about China under the commies - cultural revolution... Mao... Great Leap Forward... the China that we know. I wonder if that book will be a collector's item one day, for it's absurdity, in our eyes. In fact, doing that masters could in fact be a research project in itself. Will have to think about that further. And then there was the guy at the Chinese consulate making a point of my Taiwanese visas - I feel like I'm revisiting my own past. I have been home for three years now and hardly think of my time there, or what I spent time thinking and talking about while I was there. I feel like when I left Taiwan, I left all those thoughts behind.
Actually it's all been a bit weird this week- last night I had dinner with people from highschool as a kind of reunion. When people metioned the names of people I couldn't actually remember, I realised how long it's been since I was 17 and finishing highschool, cooking up the dreams that would shape the years to come. This year I've been so focused on driving forward that I never think of the past in any of the detail it deserves, but this week I'm assessing my experiences, and if or how I've changed, how Taiwan changed me, how the most unexpected things have happened, the friends I've made, what I've learnt about the real world, and my first serious relationship. I did the living overseas dream and I'm desperately trying to get excited about a new destination, but nothing will ever feel the same as it did sitting on the plane to Vietnam in 2003 knowing I was finally fucking off for a year for the first time. Like your first E I suppose - it will never be as good as the first. When your dreams become a reality you have reached a certain goal, and you then need new ones to try for, but have already done all that you thought you wanted to do.

In other news, I'm going on a 'business trip' to Adelaide on Tuesday for one night. My boss, the national sales manager, didn't want to go, so I suggested as a joke that I go instead, and as it turns out, it is no longer a joke. I'm going Qantas too. It's for the SA launch party of our new brochure. Then on Wednesday night straight after work, I'm going to the Sydney launch party at the zoo. So, Tuesday, go to work for one hour, fly to Adelaide, maybe squeeze in a few churches, go to launch party, fly back to Sydney on Wednesday morning and go straight to the office, work, then go to Sydney launch party. My! What a high-flyer I am!

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Applied for my visa today. It was only going to be 30 bucks so I decided to upgrade to a six month double entry to keep my options open. The guy at the counter flicked through my passport and was delighted to find 3-4 Taiwanese visas stuck inside. He called his supervisor over to get a squiz as well. I really hope they don't decide to reject me, because I've already frickin bought the ticket. Maybe I could sue.
Then I called the tax office to ask why I just got this huge bill. They explained it and I politely asked them if they could transfer me to the debts department so I could arrange a payment plan. 13.75% interest ain't too bad. The amount's not that huge. I would pay it now if I wasn't going to China. But then again, if the Chinese consulate decided I'm a spy for the Taiwanese, and refuse to give me a visa, I'll be able to make the ATO's day.
OK so it's already 11am, I've got 13 hours left to study for this exam. Luckily I polished off the hardest topic last night, so I've only got relatively easy stuff to learn now. Notice I don't use the word revise, because that would be wrong. I'm looking at all this shit for the first time.
OK what else can I do to procrastinate now? Can't eat - no food. Can't have a coffee - already had one. Can't go for a walk along King St - I would never forgive myself. Fuck, I may just have to start studying right now.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

After a hectic two weeks at work I have come to the realisation that I absolutely must become my own boss, sooner rather than later.

So today, while I have been studying for an exam for the degree that will help me get my business loan one day (degrees are only good for joining a big company, and that!), I have been trying to think of something I could do. After running that whole Asian gift basket project from start to finish, I reckon I could sustain myself by doing that as my own little business. Something that needs minimal, small-scale start up capital like a few grand. For the first few years I would live off the same income I'm on now, but once I start collecting professional services firms as clients, the sky's the frickin limit.

Ok so here's the plan:
Work in an existing company for 6 months to learn how this little industry works. Then leave and become the happiest woman alive knowing that I'll never again be spending 40 hours a week doing typing and data entry and other boring crap on a crappy wage so that the general manager can sit around merely telling everyone else what to do all while earning 750% of my salary. Early in the peace I realised I was not the office type; the last two weeks have really drummed it in. I'm not interested in the pecking order. I believe if you have half a brain, you fucking deserve to go straight to the top and skip all the shit before it. Because I didn't go to an exclusive private school and don't have the right connections, this will never happen. So, the only way to be THE boss, is to be the only person in the goddam company.

Other ideas:

Full-time satirical cartoonist: will need to work on that
Buy cool shit overseas and sell it at Paddington markets for inflated yet still wonderfully competitive prices
Come up with a new self-help philsophy and make millions -unlikely - heavily saturated market

Once I'm fucking huge, I will hire someone with no brain to be my lackey, slave, and unquestioning orders-taker/follower. He/she will preferably have an eye for aesthetics, so that I can trust them to arrange my lovely gift baskets or whatever when I'm on holiday in Mallorca.

Sound good?

Saturday, November 10, 2007

I had the most amazing China clothes buying session.
1. Bright pink corduroy pants, on sale
2. Long sleeved black top from Vinnies (with pink Chinese characters on it - to go with the pants)
3. A turtle-necked woollen (50%) jumper from Vinnies. Not only does it fit properly, but later when I got home I discovered it was Elle brand. Noice.
4. A 35% wool grey and black jumper, also on sale.
5. A 100% lambswool cardigan, Charlie Brown, which will neatly go over both jumpers when I'm in Harbin, because it's a size 14. From where else but Vinnies.
6. A wool dress that can go over jeans for when I'm strutting my stuff along the Bund where it's a lot warmer than Harbin
7. And finally, a plain pink t-shirt, to add to my collection of t-shirts which I will wear underneath all the woollen stuff which I can't wash because they all require handwashing.

I'm a genius. Just need socks, one more pair of woollen tights for Harbin, and travel diary, and bob's your frickin Uncle. Or Aunty. I had coffee with Kate and Shane at the airport today and we saw a tranny shouting at the lady at the check-in desk. What we gathered was that they wouldn't let him fly because he didn't have a visa, and he wouldn't tell them his return date. He was going on about how he doesn't have to tell them, and said something about how he's an 'at risk' person. Not sure what that means. Anyway, security came, explained to him who was boss, and as he stormed off, shouted "child molestation!" indignantly. So I'm thinking they must have asked him if he was a child molester or something. I theorised that he was on his way to meet his Bangkok tranny boyfriend/girlfriend and didn't plan on coming back. Maybe he was going to start up his own tranny/child brothel (Bangkok Special) and shit would go down if he didn't get there on time. Who knows.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Procrastination
By Jessica Jujubes

Purple is the colour I turn when I think of cost benefit analysis
Really freaked out by a deja vu I had at work today. Haven't had one in years.
Oh fuck my reign of glory at work is officially over as the emails pile up and I remain helpless.
Cunt should not be a swear word.
Roast dinners are few and far between especially because luke-warm ones are $10 in food courts.
All my clothes are on my floor.
Silly me had to pick a course with compulsory finance subjects in it.
To tell you the truth, I actually don't mind it. It all makes sense, but there's alot of shit to remember.
I will probably have to take a full day off before the accounting exam.
Need to pluck my eyebrows. Think I'll do that now.
Am going to have a shower next and get into my pj's.
T again? I'm so over T right now.
I has also made a come back. Welcome back I.
Oh my god I'm so out of the Summer Heights High loop.
Nearly December. Then it will be January... then three weeks till I fuck off for a whole month!

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Well what a hilarious 3 days it's been.
Was unexpectedly on 60 Minutes then I made a debut appearance on ACA. I'm all class. I'm just glad it wasn't for being a conman. People at work have been telling me they saw me on tv, and to tell you the truth I am bloody loving the attention! LOL. When they interviewed me on Sunday I prayed that they wouldn't use it, and even considered asking them not to. Then this morning my boss comes out and says he saw me on ACA last night and I'm like OH NO. I spent all day shitting myself wondering which part they used eg the part when they asked me if the debate will affect the election and I said "well I think people will be doing their reading before then" coz I really fucking did not have an opinion on anything. Anyway it's on the ACA website so I got to look at it when I got home from work and well hey it's not that bad.
Fi also interviewed me for an article she's writing for Election Tracker and that was exciting too, she was asking quite serious questions and I saw the real journalist side of her for the first time. HIGH FIVE!
Work was good today, I managed to get the new brochure launch email out which took hours of editing by all the powers that be. And because it was a new email program we're using, the ecommerce chick in marketing had to do it, and she was getting frickin annoyed at all the changes we were making. So that sucked having to go tell her to change things over and over again. Then she disappeared to a meeting for about two hours and I sat there waiting for her to come back. Then she got back, but she was eating her lunch. I watched and waited till she ate her lunch (mind you this is all because my supervisor told me to GET THE EMAIL OUT NOW!) then pulled up a chair and sat with her at her desk and told her everything that needed to be changed. The chick who sits opposite her was chuckling behind her monitor because she knew how annoyed the other chick was and how uncomfortable I felt annoying her even further. Anyway it finally got sent out, and my supervisor said well done, I did a good job. Dude, that's what I live for. Within five minutes of sending out the email to our priority agents, the phone lines went crazy.
I also sent out a press release to journos and trade publications and we got a hit, our new Japan brochure cover is going to be in TravelTalk. (I think that's a magazine). Press releases are interesting, because you have to send an email out to each individual journo personalising it with their name and that takes a while.
As for the promotion, the chick that was going to take the job temporarily until the end of Feb (good timing for me - I would have been able to slot right in after I got back from China) isn't taking the job anymore, so they are now advertising the position and asking everyone to register their interest. So no, no special offers. But I'm going to let them know I'm interested anyway. You gotta be in it to win it. At first I was thinking Oh fuck, why haven't they offered it to me? And got all paranoid that they didn't like me, but then I got that positive feedback from my supervisor and thought nah man it ain't personal. The thing is, they actually need someone to do my job, and if I moved into that job, they would have to not only train me all over again, but also train the person taking my job, AND who would only be doing the job for two months more anyway. Ah well. See this is what happens when you get carried away with things you've only heard through the grape vine.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Ok word on the street. During my review on Monday last week, my boss tells me there may be some opportunities coming up in the marketing department. I feel optimistic, but don't get too carried away with the idea. I suspect someone is leaving, probably the girl who doesn't seem to like her job much.
Today my suspicions were confirmed. I went on a trip to the vending machine with her, and she told me she resigned on Friday. (Which means my boss already had an idea she was going to resign.) She also told me - word on the street - that they were thinking of offering me the job. Now, I'm trying not to get carried away, but all I can seem to think about is the day I ring everyone up and tell them I got a promotion. Coz that's what it would be! The Big P. And possible the Big P R. A combo of the two would be fantastic.
Over and out!

Sunday, October 07, 2007

The hot day snapped like an uptight flatmate with PMS into a cold and windy challenge to the senses. It had been an intense preview to summer in early spring, but the weather itself was moody and punished Sydney-siders with a wintry Saturday afternoon.
As my companion bent over the pool-table at the Coopers pub to take a shot, an old man with a white beard stopped behind her and air-slapped her behind with the kind of filthy grin on his face that you would only expect from your genuine run-of-the-mill Dirty Old Man. It pains me that using that word, often used in jest, no longer sufficiently describes what we encountered there at the pub.
I looked around. Ahead of me at the bar, was a man in his 60s sitting alone with a beer watching the sports on the big TV screen. To the back left, more men in their 60s were seated around round tables looking up to watch the TAB TV screen. I then came to the firm conclusion that it was us who did not belong there. How do you complain to the manager about one of his regular customers harassing your friend? You don't. You leave, and never go back there again.
It was Newtown. A suburb of young socialist feminist anarchist politically correct students and you feel hurt that you trusted such a population mix not to let you down in such a way. The newspaper said Newtown was a place for people from all walks of life. It was my mistake believing it was a student festival every day of the year. To my list of students, yuppies, lesbians and goths, I added the men in their 60s who inhabit Coopers and who I could only reluctantly describe as dirty old men. Breaking laws they perhaps were unaware existed, or perhaps didn't care to acknowledge, the bitterness of 40 years of women's rejection of them speaking through their behaviour towards the opposite sex right up until the last couple of decades before their death, when hope had already been dead for years.

Friday, September 28, 2007

The sales meeting is over now. :-( Was a great three days. Had minimal work to do during those three days which I occasionally popped out of the meeting room to do. Met all the other Business Development Managers. So professional. I love this company. Got to see my sales graphs up on the big screen for everyone to admire (?) and today everyone said well done for picking the restaurant that we went to last night. Whoo! During one of the department updates I heard the scathing remarks about one of the staff who are leaving soon. They weren't nice about it. I got paranoid that if I kept stuffing up, they would one day celebrate my departure in the same way. One of the powerpoint slides had a list of points the department head was making, and one of them was simply: "Bye bye [that staff member's name]". OK so not 100% professional. He then continued on to talk about how the guy kept stuffing up and costing the business thousands of dollars etc. I was surprised at how bitchy it was. I mean, what if he was just making honest mistakes? I was quite taken aback. Imagine if they had a powerpoint slide dedicated solely to demonstrating how glad they were to get rid of you? At the national sales meeting? Then I felt bad because when I first started, I personally found that guy to be a snobby bitch so it turned out that he was the only one I pointedly didn't acknowledge and smile at whenever I walked past, while I pretty much smile at everyone. (A little too much I think - nerves, compensation for shyness, whatever you want to make of it). I wonder if they're treating him they way they actually talk about him, or whether they're nice to him? I really don't know what would be worse...

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

I'm taking some time off from the Kuba factory. When I turn around and look at my bed I feel a little scared about going to sleep in it alone. Ah well. Back to the drawing board I suppose.
Work was good today. Tomorrow is the first day of a three-day national sales meeting which should be fun as I'll get to meet some of the people I've only known over the phone and via email.
I ran out of things to do today but was relieved as I had time to sort out stuff on my desk and change some images on that website I update. What a highlight.
George wants to come to China but wants to go to Tibet so now I'm thinking how I could manage going to Tibet and Beijing and Harbin in one month. I would probably have to fly everywhere which is not an option so I think I will have to stick with my original plan. Oh, the trials!
Back to Kuba. I think I'm ronery already.
Had lunch with Vanja today, she was in the city stopping people in the Strand to do market research interviews.
Me so ronery. Oh I had an idea for a video today. That's something fun to do.
Ciao.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Well here I am in my room chilling for the first time in what seems like well maybe a week.
Kuba's birthday was yesterday and we had cake etc at Rose's dinner party on Sunday night.
I was dreading going to work on Monday because I decided I didn't like it anymore but it's been sweet. This chick who never used to say a word to me now makes chit chat with me in the mornings and even smiles. Progress. Last night in my marketing tute there was no group presentation so four of us stood up and gave a talk about our jobs and what we do etc. I'm not the best public speaker and I ended up like one of those people who couldn't finish a sentence properly eg "We're actually a boutique company - we're premium, high quality, small, and expensive, so yeah, we're a boutique company" etc. You get my drift. I was totally upstaged by the next person. You know the Big Pond ads with the dad telling his son about the great wall of China? Well, the next person was the account manager for that campaign, and she spoke as confidently and as eloquently as someone who would bloody deserve that job. Fuck. The next guy was a vet and offered some really interesting insights into the vet business. Eg customers can't be segmented into income brackets, because it all comes down to the individual relationship of the owner and the pet. Eg a rich guy might replace his dying dog with a new one even though he can afford to give it surgery while a poor family will love their dog so much that they'll make huge sacrifices to save it. And then there was an interesting guy from Sri Lanka who worked for a non-profit organisation of 12 people. Anyway lots of people asked me questions and I somehow managed to answer them which was nice. Should make up for my failure to hand in homework for the past two weeks.
In other news, I'm officially flying off to China. Just for a month, but should be enough to forget about the real world for a while. I got an email from Adam an American friend I knew in Taiwan and turns out he's moved from Shenzhen to Shanghai so we'll be able to meet up when I get there. Also Maryann another American friend I knew in Taiwan (they both went to UMass and already knew each other before Taiwan actually, but weren't friends!) is living in Beijing at the moment and has offered me her couch. Yay! Should be able to afford the accommodation in Harbin now!! Winter is Harbin's busiest time for tourism because of the Ice Lantern festival and it will be about 20-30 bucks per night. I also want to climb Taishan which along with going to Shanghai I didn't get to do last time for various reasons. Sweet. Now I can't believe I wanted to go to Thailand. If I wanted to go to the beach I could get on a bus and spend $1.40.
Oh I also bumped into an old UNSW uni friend at uni last night and it turns out Harbin is her major city. The poor soul is specialising in finance. Anyway I'm going to hotpot with her on Friday. Dude hotpot seems like the new black these days. Glad I'm in on it! Speaking of the new black, I check facebook at work (naughty naughty) but only when I have a few minutes to spare.