Joel's World!!!!

Relocation

2008-01-26T00:22:00.002-08:00

I moved out of my friend Frank's on Wednesday and into a place near Dongzhimen. It's working out really well since a friend happened to be leaving for a month in the Philippines, so I'm paying for his rent for a month and staying in his room. I'm living with a French guy and a Chinese girl. It's a really nice place, it's incredible what you can get when you split the cost with housemates. I took some pictures but I'll have to post them in a few days since I left the USB cable to my camera at Frank's.

Although this isn't quite as close to the center of the city as Frank's, it's still pretty good. We're right on the loop line. It's hard for me to get oriented, since I'm so used to being way out east near the fourth ring, and now I'm right on the second ring, and it's confounding that I have to go east instead of west to get to some of my old haunts. It's almost absurdly luxurious.

I registered with the local police station, as I'm required to do as a foreigner. It was a bit of trouble, since the guy whose room I'm taking over hadn't registered and he's been here for quite a long time, and they didn't have the apartment in their database and I couldn't explain why. They also assumed that I had arrived a week earlier based on the date stamped in my passport, and gave me a warning for not registering within 24 hours. I was thinking of arguing, since actually I did register within 24 hours of moving in, and theoretically I could have been staying at a hostel for the last week, but I figured it would be best to just shut up and leave. Now I have a fancy little warning with a red stamp on it, hard proof that I am bad.

I'm trying to be patient about gigs coming my way. I've been meeting everybody I could and telling everybody I'm back and available. My friend Shauna actually got me invited to interpret on screen for some Holland film crew who were going to go around doing some travel documentary in the city on Friday, but the invitation only lasted for about 5 minutes, until the director realized I was white, and then they called me back and apologized for the misunderstanding. My boss from the Kite Runner, Ken, might be coming back in a couple of months for some shoot, but he's not sure yet. A bunch of people are going down to Shanghai for a movie with Gong Li and John Cusack, and I sent my resume in for that. I also talked to the production manager for some Australian production shooting north of Beijing for 5 weeks, but I was feeling particularly exhausted when I met him and didn't really make an effort to be impressive or enthusiastic, so that's probably not going anywhere. Anyway I'm sure something will come around soon enough.

I am paying a lot for food though. Inflation is really quite something. And I'm getting a good deal with this room right now, but everybody is talking about how the landlords in Beijing have gone out of their collective minds this year with the Olympics coming up, and somehow imagine that they can either quadruple rent prices in August or kick out their current tenants to make room for the onslaught of foreigners that will be coming through. I just can't imagine that there will be that much demand. And how are they going to get people to stay in these apartments for two weeks? Are all of the landlords of Beijing going to swamp the international airport terminal waving laminated flyers like the cheap hotels around the train station? The thought makes me nervous. But it's still a while until August.

I think I'm going to transfer my blogging efforts over to my website at www.peacefulrise.org, which is not censored in China. It has a handy little RSS feed which you can subscribe to through your browser or other favorite RSS reader so you don't have to have your inbox clogged with my spam. Look there for my next post!

Day One in the Jing

2008-01-16T17:18:00.001-08:00

Alleyway
Originally uploaded by arewethereyet

My first day back in Beijing was blessed with beautiful blue skies. I posted some pictures on Flickr, although there seem to be some censorship problems with the site for me so I'm not sure if I'll keep using it. But then again my blog is also still censored.

I was very productive on my first day. I got a new phone number and a bank account. Liu Shaochun (the special effects props guy) called me and said that Ken was talking about coming back for some production in February or March. Xu Ke (my old roommate) invited me to spend the spring festival at his family's in Hunan. By freak chance, I ran into the behind-the-scenes cameraman from the Kite Runner on one of the new subway trains (what are the odds?), and he gave me his card and said he'd be in touch. I met up with a bunch of other translator friends for dinner. It's been a long time since I ate in a smoke-filled restaurant. Quite a different feeling.

I ate a beautiful breakfast in one of these alleyway hole-in-walls, of steaming baozi, soy milk, and hot salted radish. I wanted to take a picture but couldn't quite bring myself to take out my camera.

Today I'm having lunch with Andy, who I think will be able to get me some day jobs with his production company. I feel pretty good, I think things are going well.

j/k lol!!!!111 (a brief update)

2007-08-12T19:05:00.000-07:00

So, I'm not going back to China just yet. I got a job for a little thinktank in Harvard Square, thanks to one of my classmates from Oberlin, who I ran into completely by chance when I went to play wiffleball down the street one Tuesday night, because kung fu was closed that week. Go figure. I'm writing a paper on journalism in China, which isn't particularly exciting for me, but which is exciting for my bosses, who are paying me, so that's good enough for me. Hopefully once I get through this paper, I will think of a more exciting topic, and maybe, perhaps, will genuinely enjoy my job. At any rate, I'm looking for another apartment. I was thinking of moving out to Allston with my friend Pat, but it's too hard to find a two-bedroom apartment for a reasonable price, and on second thought, it's actually pretty convenient being out in Davis on the red line. I'm scouring Craigslist for available rooms, and this time I will make extra sure to check for pee-stained mats in the bathroom before I sign a lease.

Kung fu has been going really well, which is mainly the reason I'm trying to convince myself to shutup and stay here. I got promoted to brown belt, which means I get to lead exercises, help teach, and learn the secret touch of death. I also came back from China with the most uncomfortable tension in my legs, which I felt was making me walk funny with my feet turned out, and I seem to have finally worked some of that out.

I still feel pretty lame about hanging around here, and I'm a little concerned that secretly harboring such pent-up hatred for my housemate for such a long time is causing me to become schizophrenic, but God works in mysterious ways and whatnot, so until next time, it's cheese and ice-cream and hotdogs for me.

Essay: Why Am I Leaving Again?

2007-04-22T18:07:00.000-07:00

It's been a month and a half since I lost my job at Diesel, and I've decided to return to China.

When I came back to the States, I didn't really know what I would do, but I figured I most likely wouldn't come up with any ideas, and just go back to Beijing. But I decided I wanted to try sticking it out for a while and seeing what possibilities I could explore while supporting myself in the States. When my friend Sarah recommended I come work at Diesel, I thought it would be a good way for me to get out of the house and meet some fellow Americans, and get an idea of what kind of jobs would be worth pursuing around here. Well, actually, I don't think I even really wanted to think that far in advance. I just wanted to take a bit of a break from thinking and just make coffee and sandwiches for a while. Of course that was cut short, so I've been forced to reconsider my future at a bit of an accelerated rate.

What I've decided is, I'm ready to go back. I know I wanted to prove to myself that I could make a living for myself in the States, that I'm not a hopeless expat who's just running away from home. But I also wanted to experience living in the States, not being special, and being poor, so that I could appreciate China better when I went back. Being unemployed and living in this apartment with two strangers has certainly given me that. And when I look at what other people my age who stayed in the States are doing, for the most part they're either in some tedious office assistant or research assistant job, and are mostly looking at going back to school already. Of course I love all of my friends here, but I don't envy any of them their jobs. Except for maybe Masha, who lives in magical Google-Land. And there is no way I am ready to go back to school.

Then there are my few friends with China backgrounds who are working in the States. They live in D.C. I wouldn't mind living in D.C., and I've certainly applied to enough jobs with various government agencies.

My job search strategy has essentially consisted of two tactics: I look through Craigslist for any job in the Boston area that catches my fancy, or I search through a number of forums and locations on the keywords Chinese, Mandarin, or China. Lately I've been thinking, though, I don't actually particularly want to get a job in the States that uses my Chinese, because using my Chinese just makes me frustrated at how bad it's become, and makes me wish I were back in China. But other than a China job, I can't think of any one thing that I really particularly want to do here.

Last month, my family was generous enough to buy me a trip to this aptitude testing center. The results basically said that I would be very good at and enjoy foreign language, journalism, and consulting. They said some other things too, but if I just look at these suggestions, they basically tell me to go back to China and pursue writing opportunities and take another look at market consulting firms. I had already been looking into these fields in my last job search in Beijing, so I think I was on the right track.

Of course, I still completely reject a careerist view of life, and by no means am I talking about committing myself to one of these two fields. I'm interested in taking any interesting opportunities that come to me, so I'm going to go back to Beijing, where interesting opportunities come to me.

The immediate problem is next three months' rent, and how to save up for a plane ticket, my cellphone cancellation fee, a visa, and still have enough for cushioning for a month or so of settling down in Beijing. I'm signed up with one temp agency who hasn't offered me work in the past week, and I'm waiting to hear from another agency that provides temp services to Harvard. I still have a wad of Chinese cash sitting in a safe deposit box that I can change in an emergency, but hopefully I can at least keep myself afloat so that I can hold on to that money for when I get back.

It's nice to have a goal. And I'm trying to remind myself to enjoy the air and the grass here in the meantime.

Going home

2006-12-09T00:38:00.000-08:00

So yesterday morning I met up with the 4 American special effects crew on this new movie and got in a van with them to go to Yi Xian, which is where they will be shooting. I explained to them up front that I had not signed on for the whole shoot, and was actually hoping to meet them first and see what I was getting into before I decided. Anyway, we passed through the town of Yi Xian, which was a complete dump, and then continued on to the middle of nowhere, which is where the shooting locations and housing are. The housing they had arranged for the foreign crew was this miserable little tourist resort, which was the best you could get in the area, and which was not even as good as my hotel in Kashgar. When the special effects guys expressed their dissatisfaction, the location manager suggested we take a look at the accommodation for the Chinese crew, in order to gain a greater appreciation of their high class treatment.

Then we drove around more dirt roads to look at 3 shooting locations, and while we were in the van to the second location, the head of the special effects crew asked me what I was thinking. I told him I was thinking of going home and fixing bikes for a while.

Long story short, they found another translator to replace me immediately, and I got back to Beijing that night and went to the wrap party for Kite Runner. Today I collected my pay for my one day of work, and bought a plane ticket home. I will be flying into New York on the 18th, where I will be staying with Seb and Jenny? Then I will come home for some Hannukah/Christmas fun. I'm thinking maybe of going to the DC area around New Years and visiting more people around there, and then maybe ending up in Virginia for MAGFest on the 4th? Jared?

In the meantime I am going to party all week and try and figure out what I'm doing with all of the things sitting around in my apartment.

My next project

2006-12-04T19:44:00.000-08:00

So, now The Kite Runner is almost over and I seem to have agreed to join on with another movie, starting immediately. My original plan was to take a well deserved break, hang around in Beijing until the 20th, fly home and then decide what I want to do next. But the special effects crew for this movie is coming over for a scout starting this Friday and will be here for a couple of weeks, and I thought I should at least meet them and see if I like them. They will be going home for Christmas, which will allow me to at least take a break for a couple of weeks, and then I can decide if I want to stay with them on the movie when they come back or not.

I'm leaving for a town a couple hours away from Beijing soon to finish up the last two shooting days on Kite Runner, after which I am scheduled to come back and immediately travel to Hebei with these American SFX guys. I will not pass go, I will not collect my pay, and I will not attend the China wrap party. But whatever, the thought of getting onto a movie with all my favorite Hong Kong stars is too tempting, even though I know it will probably only be fun for about two weeks.

Either way, I do plan to be home starting on the 20th, I just have to meet these guys first and see whether my ticket will be one way or round trip.

Some photos

2006-10-26T06:36:00.000-07:00

Take a look at some pictures Dagan took at my flickr account.

Wintertime in Kashgar

2006-09-24T03:21:00.000-07:00

I'm too tired to spend much time writing about what I've been doing, but here are some pictures that Dagan took of the alleys we dressed last week for a day of shooting. (This is not real snow.)

It's fun working on the set and following the team around. It's like being in a making-of like you'd see on a DVD.

I'll hopefully get back with more pictures and more to tell later. I think basically you will all have to wait until the movie comes out and I can watch it with you and ruin it with my commentary.

How I came to have a cooler job than the last one

2006-09-01T06:43:00.000-07:00

I've been looking at a few odd jobs on the classifieds on That's Beijing, and I had a phone interview with some guy from an online clothing store for a position for "Procurement Specialist" which I think must be a scam, because he didn't call me back after I explained my confusion about how there's actually nothing for sale on his website. I also met with Carl Crook, who is in fact a really interesting guy, but didn't have any particular ideas about jobs for me. And I had a little translation deal which I lost when I was undercut by a poor Chinese person. This all turned out for the best, though, after I met with some friends I made through the hiring I had done for J&J.

Like I mentioned before, everybody in this circle of film people knows each other, and these friends had happened to hear that they were short a translator on The Kite Runner, and suggested that I give this girl Sherrie a call, who was working on the movie and I had called in to interview for J&J earlier. So I called her, and she gave me the number of the production coordinator, who actually called me before I had the chance to get home and dial her number. She gave me a brief phone interview, explained that they needed a translator for the special effects prop people, thought I was an overseas Chinese from my accent, and had me in the next afternoon. I met the Chinese SFX propmaster, who is a pretty chill Beijing dude. He brought me into his workshop where his crew was standing around making fake pomegranates, and I chatted with them for a while. I went back to the production office, and the lady gave me told me I was hired and I should come back the next day at 9 am to meet the foreign SFX supervisor, to whom I am to report directly.

The past two days I've been following him around trying to prepare everything we need to get on the truck to Kashgar by Wednesday. We need snow, smoke, bullets, rocks, blood from public stonings, glass, blood from sodomy, wind, all fake, and everything that goes along with it, including people and equipment. I have to understand how every special effect we do works, and what everything is made of, because I have to communicate this all between the two languages.

The office seems to be full of professional, capable, and friendly people, who are understanding and patient with me. We have a private catering service, and fruit and drinks sitting around for the pickings all day. Right now we have a driver to take us around Beijing, and I guess after the 10th it's off to Kashgar to shoot!

Also of note is that despite the fact that the office is way the hell on the other side of the city, there happens to be an air conditioned express bus which runs directly between there and my house.

To sum up, it's pretty much absurd how well everything just happened to work out, and I'm trying to be wary of getting too giddy about it until I figure out what's the catch.

Change in Plans

2006-08-24T01:02:00.000-07:00

I quit my job.

This is all I have been talking about lately so I will just sum it up briefly. On Saturday I went to my boss' place to put in some extra hours and mark up the script for VFX and SFX. This was to be the beginning of my long-awaited training. But the producers were coming in the next night and there was a lot of preparation that had to be done, so I actually spent the entire day fussing with my boss' little notebook computer to get the new schedule and translate and send it out, along with a whole bunch of little emails. I did this all sitting across from her in a coffee shop with an unstable internet connection, while she sat there making phone calls and lecturing me off and on for how poor suited I was for the film business. She insisted I work in front of her that day, because she said I would waste time making mistakes and asking questions if she wasn't there. It was so tedious to work on her computer with no mouse, no Chinese input, and unstable internet that it took me the entire day until 9 pm to get this stuff done, when it would probably have taken me two hours at most in front of an office computer. Out of the whole day, we spent five minutes going over the script. She had me buy a yellow and green marker, and as I read through the script out loud, she would tell me when to mark a section yellow (for VFX) or green (for SFX). It was obvious how to do it after the first minute, because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell that when the script reads, "What the young master does next defies the laws of physics," you're going to need a goddamn effect.

She also told me at one point that day, during a lull in her phone calls, that I am not suited for the film business, and that I should do a more slow, relaxed job. She emphasised the point my tapping out a short message on her phone to show how quick she was.

The following night we went to meet the American producers at the airport and bring them back to their apartment. They struck me as a nice couple of guys, and I thought I came off well enough myself. But the next day Mou told me that they told her that they found me unacceptible, and I was not to be allowed to do any more work on production, or have any more interaction with the producers. She said that I wasn't forceful enough about carrying their suitcases from them and didn't jump high enough when I was supposed to run down and get keys to switch their rooms. She told me that from now on, I would continue to send emails and do phone calls with other parties, but not with stuff related to production. I told her that I was going to leave if that was the case, and she said that was fine, and it would be best if I left at the end of the month.

Yesterday when I got into the office the first thing I was assaulted with was a phone call from Mou telling me that there was another big mess that was my fault, and she didn't have time to talk about it at the moment, but that she just wanted to let me know that it was my fault because I didn't notify her of a change in the new schedule. I just sat there dumbfounded for a minute, until it clicked in my brain that my sole purpose in the company as of this week was to be her scapegoat for everything that was going wrong. And things were going wrong. All sorts of things were supposed to happen and either didn't, happened late, or were less than perfect, and as the "production coordinator," I was to take the blame. If something production-related didn't go smoothly, it was because of Joel, who is a "baby in diapers, who is still in training." There were a few things I was responsible for that went wrong because of communication failures between me, coworkers, and Mou, and other things that went wrong which had a way of becoming my responsibility after the fact. And I realized that what it boiled down to was that Mou has a mess of a company which doesn't function right, and she could just keep telling the producers that it was all Joel's fault. She had even told me and my coworkers that that's what she would do, because we are her little soldiers, and if we die, that's fine, but if she dies then the whole company is gone.

What's more, she even brought in a guy who I had interviewed a few days ago to replace me last minute. It wasn't as if he could just pick up everything and replace me instantly, because he didn't know who was involved or what needed to be done. She brought him in just to show the producers that I am expendable, and she can bring in capable people at the flick of a wrist.

Anyway I decided it would be best if I stopped taking bullets for Mou, and I left Wednesday after lunch. What was particularly funny was when she told me that I couldn't just leave, because "That's illegal!" "Illegal?" I said, "I don't even have a contract! None of this is legal!" On the other hand I am just praying that she doesn't take my words to heart when the end of the month comes around and I try and get my salary from the accountant, because I'm not sure what I can do if she refuses to pay.

I know I didn't do well at the company, but I don't think it's because I'm an incapable person, but because I can't do well when I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do. It was just an ugly situation and I am glad to be clear of it.

Also, I sent an email to this British guy, Hugh, who I had helped out with when he came here to work on the shopping channel, and told him that I would be more than happy to provide any China-related help he needs. He promptly responded about a deal he might get, in which he needed help training Chinese sales guys for an American company, and which would involve a "reasonable amount of money." I am all ears.

I guess if nothing else comes up soon, I can always tutor English for quick cash. My visa is extended to February 2007, which, as I told the residency registration office today, is for purposes of "market research." We'll see what happens!

Language of the Winds

2006-08-15T23:07:00.000-07:00

... is a translation for a colorful Chinese phrase for "rumor."

Below is an interesting article which states that after the ongoing battle between Jackie Chan and Jet Li for the coveted role of "Monkey King" in this movie, with Jet Li coming out as victor, it turns out that actually Jet Li will be playing an entirely different role of a bad guy. What's more, according to a "leak" from "inside sources," Peter Jackson will direct the movie:

http://stardaily.com.cn/view.asp?id=214187

Considering I just read the latest version of the script which came out on Tuesday and I'm currently dealing with hotel arrangements so that the producers and director can meet with people in Beijing next week, I'm either completely out of the loop, or this news is a bit off the mark. And I don't even know where they get the numbers about the movie's investment and Jet Li's profit share...

Anyway my job can be pretty interesting sometimes, and horribly tedious at others. I'm supposed to go through the script with my boss some time soon and mark it for any visual effects we're going to need. I think that will be a good combination of interesting and tedious. Either way, it looks like I will just try and stick things out for the forseeable future. I gave my passport, residence registration slip and graduation certificate along with 1,000 RMB to some guy the other day, who promises to give me a 6 month multiple-entry business visa with no questions asked. I'll owe him another 1,430 RMB on delivery. This is all quite a bit of money to pay for the luxury of living in China with questionable legality, but I think it was either that or fly to Hong Kong and find a "travel agent" who could provide a similar service.

The hiring part of my job is turning out to be an interesting learning experience for me. I've found that the people who have turned up through classifieds ads are generally not worth my time, and that all of the good people come through word of mouth, recommended by a friend of a friend. There turns out to be a whole network of bilingual production coordinators who go from project to project, and once I met one (and told her I'd have her meet the producers) she's just been giving me name after name of very qualified people. Most of the good people I've talked to all worked on The Painted Veil and MI3, and a lot of people are unavailable right now because they're working on The Kite Runner. I don't know what it's like in America, but all of the business we do here is really just based on connections. And I'm happy to be knitting myself into this web.

Well, now it's 2:35, and I've been waiting around for our office meeting which was scheduled for 2. I think I will prepare, in the rare case that this meeting actually happens.

If FOX News says it, it must be true

2006-08-02T23:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2006Aug01/0,4670,JackieChan,00.html

Also, I just got a fat wad of cash today. So I guess I'm keeping afloat. It kind of distresses me when I think of my income in terms of the number of things I could buy in a month. Like, I can get 200 blocks of sharp cheddar, or 300 iced coffees, but I can't have both. Really my two big worries right now are buying a visa (once I figure out what semi-legal channels I can go through) and buying insurance at the end of the month, which will probably eat another large chunk of my precious American money.

To cope with these problems, this Saturday I plan to go with Geoff to bar which has all you can drink for 50 RMB before 5pm or something like that, after which I'm going to go to some random guy's housewarming party where I will charm every stranger there with my drunken antics.

My computer is slower than a Beijing bus at rushhour in the rain

2006-07-19T20:13:00.000-07:00

Let's see, what have I been up to.

I am getting tired of posting to a blog site which is banned in China. I thought I might try switching back to my old Livejournal account, since I saw how good the picture capability was at Jenny's blog, but I couldn't find a feature to post updates to a listserv, and I don't have a camera anyway.

Yes, I've been feeling a bit poor lately since I had to pay for six months worth of rent up front, and I have been spending money on random things that my apartment needs. I bought a wireless router so that I wouldn't have to drag this ethernet cable all the way into my bedroom, but I still can't configure my wireless card to work under Linux so it's a waste of money for now. I could go and buy a wireless card that works under Linux, but actually what I really want is a Macbook. I think my boss should buy me one, or at least buy one for the office for me to use, but I think she would find this humorous. She wishes I had a laptop which I could use for business, though, so she really should get me one. I have the impression that this is what they do in real companies. Unfortunately I have no work permit and still have the feeling that neither I nor the company actually exist.

I've been meeting all sorts of random people who do work for our company, and when I inquire about their relationship to the company, I am told that it is very complex and I would do better to not ask. The other day I was told to go represent my boss at a meeting with a President Wang. Nobody was inclined to explain to me just what company he is president of, or what the meeting was going to be about. Unfortunately I had decided to wear shorts and sandals to work that day, and as soon as I met Mr. Wang he asked me why I came to work dressed so casually. But there was nothing to be done, so I just followed him around to this meeting, which turned out to be a tour of office space for rent in the adjacent tower, which we apparently have our eyes on. He kept dropping me hints during the following hour or so that I still had a lot to learn about Chinese culture, which I take to mean that the sight of bare legs and feet is offensive, especially when they are hairy. Oh well. Today I am wearing a shirt and pants, and a pair of slimy-feeling dress socks which I bought at Carrefour, two for the price of one.

President Wang seemed to be a pretty interesting guy though, and he seemed concerned that I was living all alone in my one-bedroom apartment and offered to take me out clubbing in the future.

This goes against my better judgment, but for your gratification, I feel I ought to mention that I've been dating a girl for the past week. I only bring this up to explain that I have in fact been spending a good deal of my time in a social manner, and to assure my relatives that I am not entirely abnormal. That's all I'm going to say about this at this point, though, and please don't ask me about it, because I won't tell you.

In other news, my boss has been in Taiwan for almost two weeks now, making it nearly impossible for me to get anything done at work. There's quite a lot coming up next week, when these guys from England will be coming over to meet with us on a few projects including: our planned shopping channel on China Web TV which we will probably hook up to a 3G mobile advertising platform, some kind of profitable copyright protection association for the China music industry, and a deal on herbal facial masks. Then the LA crew for the big movie are coming over on the weekend to begin their month-long location scout, which should be very exciting, assuming I don't screw up the airline tickets for them. The cigarette thing is apparently being pushed back a week or so since Mou still isn't back from Taiwan.

In the meantime, I may decide to play a game of Go online today. After I get back from lunch. And take a nap.

You are a peasant if you don't smoke Furongwang

2006-07-07T06:21:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been doing all sorts of stuff at work, but what I spent most of today working on was translating the storyboards for this advertisement we're doing for Furongwang cigarettes. It's amazing, I have always believed that advertisements are bullshit, but now that I am taking a hand in producing them for cigarette companies, I really see that in fact they are total bullshit. But man, do I want to start smoking Furongwang...

Mou took me to a meeting with their company on Tuesday. She said that it was for me to learn something, but I think it probably had something more to do with her liking to have handsome foreign boys accompany her on business events. We sat on one side of a conference table in a dimly lit room (we turned the lights off so we could show our presentation), and the cigarette guys sat on the other side, chainsmoking Furongwang cigarettes. It was hypnotizing. The boss kept smoking these things, kind of gazing off into the distance, and telling us about the kind of a man who smokes Furongwang. Furongwang is not just a flagrant symbol of wealth and status. It shows the successful character of a scholarly aristocrat, a man whose magnanimity and refined bearing show through his modesty.

Mou's concept presentation was that there would be one of these such men playing a game of Go against himself, and that his refinement would be shown through the inner struggle and final victory of the game. The cigarette guys didn't like the idea of Go, they thought it was too cliche. In the storyboard I translated today, he played chess.

I produced a perfectly horrible translation of the storyboard for the second concept, which Mou called a "sediment" piece. This is one of these Chinese words which does not translate well. Unfortunately it was used in all of the catch phrases and captions throughout the piece, and finally I lamely decided to translate it as "gain." I worked through my translation a few times until I finally decided that it might be passed off as something written by a native English speaker. I gave both versions to Mou, who will send it to a few directors to see what they think.

I can only hope that my efforts spawn a whole new generation of lung cancer related deaths.

And now... the weekend!!!

My First Job

2006-06-29T19:18:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm at work now.

I interviewed with City Weekend on Monday. It seemed like a really cool job. Basically my immediate responsibility would be to develop a big network of contacts so that I could figure out what was going on in the city. They asked me how I would go about doing this, and I thought of anybody who I could contact, and who they could point me to, and what random social networks I am a part of... They seemed most concerned with the fact that I am more or less new to Beijing, since they were really looking for someone who could bring their own information and contacts into the job with them. But other than that, I think they still seemed interested in me, and I thought the interview went really well.

That evening I was feeling poor as I waited by the bus stop to meet up with Nick for Dairy Queen, when I got a call from Geoff. He checked to make sure that I was okay with the salary terms we had talked about before, and asked me to come in the next day. I felt less poor as I ate my ice cream.

Actually I figured I would just be ironing out the details with the boss when I came in, but she wasn't there, and Geoff started off by loading me down with all sorts of information about what projects I would be working on, and I was like, Woah! I don't remember accepting any job offer. But I spent the morning reading through materials about the company, and finally got to talk to Mou after lunch. Apparently she was confused that I still wanted to discuss specifics with her, since she thought I had come in to work that day. So I brought up insurance and visa renewal with her, both of which she basically said she couldn't help with. She told me what a hassle it is to get a work permit for a foreigner if you're something other than an English training school, and how absurdly high the tax they have to pay on me is. As for insurance, it sounds like I have to wait until the end of my three month trial period before I can get her to provide me with any benefits. Although this isn't exactly ideal, I figure it's acceptible for the time being. I just need to figure out some way to renew my visa at some point before the end of August, and will probably either have to just buy an insurance plan once my current one runs out, or go without it for a while.

I've been doing the best I can to learn about what exactly I'm supposed to be doing at this job, but it's a little hard since Mou is always busy or away. She left for Hunan yesterday on a bid for an advertising case and won't be back until the weekend. This is all complicated by the fact that Geoff and Jasmine are leaving soon, and I think I will more or less have to take over what they're doing. I've been learning about this Jackie Chan and Jet Li movie that we're coproducing, which I've been drooling over. It's also being produced by Bill Badalato, who did Top Gun, and Johnny Lee, who did Rumble in the Bronx. The martial arts director did Crouching Tiger and Fearless. I am apparently responsible for doing various coordination between us and Chinese and American parties who are involved. I have a bunch of casting information, the script, and other random documents and promotional materials for investors and distributors. I also called up the guy who I guess is Jet Li's producer the other day to ask if he had shown this script for another project, Shangri-la, to Jet, and to ask what Jet thought of it. This is all pretty weird. As for something more concrete, I translated an ammendment to a contract the other day, which made me feel useful.

We're in pre-pre-production right now on these two movies, so my work will be limited to the office for the time being. But Mou says that as we move to pre-production and into production, the work becomes more and more on-the-spot and physical.

As for now, I've been at work for an hour and a half this morning and so far I have done little more than write this blog. I hope I get into the swing of things soon.

My sweet crib

2006-06-24T18:44:00.000-07:00

Finally moved into my new place. I spent the last three days pretty solidly looking for housing. The first day I made an appointment with this agent who usually finds housing for ACC alumni. I figured she would be good since Meghan had recommended her, and Jin Laoshi brought her up the other day. She took me to see four places that day, and was very cordial and paid for my water and transportation and all, and offered to take me to a peach orchard sometime, but her houses were dumps. The first place was a joke. She said, "I figure you'll want a cheap place, so let's go see this one first, I'm sure it will be right for you." We took a bus for half an hour to get there, on the north side of Chaoyang Park. We walked off the main street a ways, past one of those big trash piles which naturally accumulate in public spaces, and down this little alley with squat shoddy brick housing. I waited for ten minutes while she fiddled with the door to the courtyard, which we finally had to get some old lady inside to open for us. The courtyard turned out to be less of a courtyard and more of just a corridor between these little houses. The one she showed me was filthy, had two bedrooms with moldy beds, a sink in the bathroom with a single lever which was almost inaccessible because of a pipe which ran across the wall above it, a midget size toilet, and if I remember correctly, no sink in the kitchen. The centerpiece of the house was a big shiny TV in the middle of the living room. She explained that, thanks to falling real estate prices, this place could be mine for only 1,600 RMB, a great deal cheaper than the 4,000 RMB it used to go for. According to my calculations, this means that the foreigners to whom she rents have become only a bit more than 50% less stupid.

For some reason (it must have been the heat) I didn't thank her for her time right then and go home, and followed her to three other places. The next one was the only one worth considering, a comfy flat on the south side of Worker's Stadium for 2,000. It was old, though, with the screwed up Chinese kind of plumbing where you have to adjust the water for your shower in the kitchen before you get in, among other backwards features, including a fridge in the foyer, a washing machine in the hallway, and again, a midget size toilet. The next was "convieniently located" on Sanlitun bar street, so that I could be jeered at every time I came home. The last was just unremarkable, crappy, and over 2,000 RMB. The lady loaded me up with water and iced tea and sent me on my way, where I would consider in what kind of poverty-stricken housing I would like to spend my next six months.

My intention was to spend the next day looking for individual posts by landlords on some online housing classifieds, but the site which I had found before had mysteriously disappeared, and the rest of the sites seemed to be either filled with posts from middlemen, or not have anything that I was looking for. I got fed up with this fairly quickly and went over to a 我爱我家, "I Love My Home," which I figured must be good since you see at least two on every block, and told them what I was looking for, including my price range. Somehow everything they were suggesting to me was either just at my price limit or higher, and they were very pushy. Anyway I figured I would just humor them and go see a place for 2,000. They asked me if I wanted to bike or take a cab over. I opted for a cab. When we got to the apartment, the lady turns around and says, "That's ten kuai for the cab." I expressed my incredulity, and we went up to see the place. It was much nicer than anything the lady had shown me the day before, in that it was clean, all of its appliances were in sensible locations, and it felt spacious. I said I liked it and would consider it, to which the agent told me that I had better make my decision before somebody else took the place. We took the bus back, and I decided I would probably not see this agent again.

That night I met up with Nick for dinner, started feeling antsy, and ran over to the agency to tell them that if they could talk the landlord down to 1,800, I would take it and pay all six months up front. They called him up and talked him down to 1,900. I tried to get them to point out to him that the refridgerator was a piece of crap, and that I wouldn't pay more than 1,800, but they blew me off, and, like a foreigner bargaining in China, I accepted their price.

The next day I paid the agency fee of a month's rent, biked over to the apartment and signed the lease. Actually I read the lease over carefully first, and made them change a clause which was blatantly not in my favor. It initially said, "If the apartment or something in it is broken or needs repair because of use, the lessee will be responsible." I had them change it to "because of improper use." Thank you, Sun Laoshi, for your tedious Civil and Commercial Law class, now I may avoid being completely screwed in this deal.

Yesterday I toted an envelope with 14,100 RMB to the agency to pay for the lease and pick up my keys. It was a wonderful bonding moment where the landlord and landlady told me I should find a Chinese wife, promised to treat me as their own son, and said that I should address them as Uncle and Auntie (which I suppose is less silly in Chinese than it sounds.) I brought my small luggage over to the apartment, where I discovered that cockroaches were also thrown in for free.

I spent the entire afternoon wandering through the Liulitun area looking for the police station where I was supposed to register my residence, and by the time my feet were completely brown from the dust, I discovered that the Liulitun police station was in fact not in Liulitun, but on the other side of the fourth ring road, closer to my place. It was getting late and I needed bedsheets, so I took a bus over to the closest Carrefour, where I spent a blissful few hours buying slippers, soap, and sheets. My bed is now a plush paradise, patterned with big pink and purple flowers.

Now I have much less money than I did before. I am still keeping my fingers crossed on this job with Vertex. Geoff pretty much told me that he wished he could get me the job, but I have to wait until bosslady gets back from Shanghai to hear anything more. Well, either I'll get it or I don't. I've been waking up at 7:30 every morning, either because my habits are becoming healthy in my old age, or I'm going mad with anxiety. On the other hand, beer is one kuai cheaper in Beijing than it is in Nanjing. I took a walk outside my place last night once I had finished decorating my bed, and found a little alley just around the corner with a long row of hole-in-the-wall restaurants, with noodles, baozi, jiaozi and your standard fare of stirfry. I stepped into the first and grimiest, had a jiachang doufu and a beer, and decided that for 1,900 RMB and cockroaches I still couldn't have been ripped off that badly.

Today I will move the rest of my things over from Wang Jiangbo's place. I'd kind of like to be at frisbee in an hour, but I guess that might be a bit impractical today. Tomorrow I am scheduled for an interview with City Weekend, where I am supposed to present them with printed copies of my writing samples, which still haven't materialized...

Back Again

2006-06-20T06:09:00.001-07:00

It always feel so bizarre to come back to Beijing. The city has changed so much since when I was in school here, but it still feels like I just left yesterday. I met up with my old teacher Wang Jiangbo when I got in on Sunday morning, and he was kind enough to let me drop my tons of luggage off in his kitchen, which he apparently doesn't use anyway. We had brunch, wasted a bit of time scouting out housing around his block, and I bought toothpaste. He is always busy with work though, so after we got back and took naps, I packed up a day bag and went to meet up with my friend from Nanjing, Fred, and his friend from Beijing, Nick. We met up with some more friends who had also just come up from Nanjing and had dinner and drinks, and I managed to weasel my way into crashing on Nick's floor that night. And the next.

Yesterday I came back to my old school to see if they could get me a cheap dorm room for the week while I figure out something more permanent. I happened to run into a service lady who recognized me from four years ago, and told me that my old program director and head Chinese teacher happened to be there. I ran upstairs and had a little reunion with the director, Jin Laoshi, who was surprised and delighted to see me. She told me to come in the next day, and promised she would help me meet up with her real estate agent, and also get me in touch with some other alumni who were working in Beijing. She also hooked me up with a really cheap room in the ghetto foreign students' dorm on the other side of campus, where I seem to have a super-single for the moment, since my Mongolian roommate of one day has apparently gone back to Mongolia.

Today I bid Fred goodbye, took a shower and got down to business with my email and phone. I'm scheduled for an interview with a Beijing magazine, City Weekend, next Monday, although they asked me to bring printed copies of my writing samples, which I am not sure actually exist at this moment. I also got in touch with this guy Geoff, with whom I had had a nice phone interview two weeks ago, who works for Vertex, a film and media production company. He asked me to come in to the office on the spot. The office was in a fancy building, with an impressive modern looking reception area. I was greeted by one of their Chinese staff, who gave me a brief screening interview just to make sure that I was not completely turned off by the idea of a 9-6 job. Then I met Geoff, who led me into the boss lady's office. She was introduced to me as Mou Dong, which I suppose would be President Mou in English. It was fairly evident from her demeanor that she wasn't strictly a mainlander, and she soon told me that she was originally from Taiwan, and had lived for ten years in the States. The interview started off in Chinese, but she kept breaking into English, and I followed suit. She seems like an interesting lady. A bit of an intimidating presence, but then again there probably isn't much that isn't intimidating to an interviewee fresh out of school. She didn't seem particularly concerned with my qualifications and experience. The questions she asked me included: Why was I interested in the job? What area was I interested in most? (Uh, I dunno, says I.) What is my sign? (Ahh, Pisces, You like to do a little bit of everything, hmm? Answers she.) Do I like physical or mental work? Other than this, she spent most of the time telling me that the film business is hell. She compared joining her company to signing up for the army. There are three stages of work in this line, pre-pre-production, pre-production and production. The first two are somewhat safer, a good learning environment, where there are no bullets flying by your head, and if you make a mistake, at least you don't die. But once you get into production, you have to do it right. It would start off with lots of desk work, but as I learned, and was allowed to work on production, I would have more and more direct and physical interaction with the filming and producing process.

She explained that her intention was to scare me away from the job, but of course I didn't flinch. I told her that I like feeling useful, and would rather have a job that includes the possible extra shift now and then, than a stable and lucrative 40 hour-a-week job at Netscape where I basically don't do anything stimulating. The way we left it was this: I was to talk to Geoff some more, and discuss pay with him. I'm not quite sure how to take this, but I am getting the idea that the decision is more or less in my hands. Anyway, I left her office, and chatted with Geoff. He said that I would probably make what he is making, 6000RMB during a 3 month trial period, but that I should feel free to express my needs to Ms. Mou. This sounds maybe a bit low, but acceptable. I don't think I am likely to find a more interesting entry level job with such huge potential for development, so I plan to email her expressing my interest as soon as I am feeling more coherent.

I'm meeting with Jin Laoshi's real estate agent at 10am tomorrow to look at apartments. I think she has two single bedroom places for under 2000RMB in the area. I told her that I could probably sign a six-month lease.

Well, this has been a pretty exciting day. Oh yeah, and I had a bowl of zhajiangmian for dinner, in the old food court where I used to eat every day. It was completely rennovated, and the noodles were not as good. I ate them while I installed a new Beijing number in my cell phone. When I was in a cab this afternoon, I added an "r" sound onto the end of "lukou." And so it begins!

Testing the listserve

2006-06-20T06:09:00.000-07:00

Just set up this listserve for my blog... testing to see if this gets sent automatically.

To Beijing

2006-06-16T00:19:00.000-07:00

I took a trip out to Shanghai on Wednesday to interview with Pacific Epoch. They do technology and media research, and needed an editor. It sounded like it might be an interesting job, and a good way to learn about an industry while getting some experience under my belt, but it looks like it's just going to be mostly tedious proofreading. They had me edit some sample articles, and the way it worked was, they had their Chinese staff pick out some news items from Chinese sites, and write brief English summaries. I was to fix the English, and make sure that the summary contained all the important information and no irrelevant information. The problem was, their English was so atrocious that in some cases they actually conveyed the exact opposite meaning of that intended, so for every article I had to go back and read the original Chinese in its entirety and write my own summary. That in itself is fine, and I'm glad for the opportunity to use my language ability, but for them to give me this broken English is just a waste of my and the Chinese staff's time.

Anyway, when I came back to Nanjing, I just booked myself a ticket up to Beijing. I'll see if this place makes me an offer, but if they don't, I don't think I will be too sad.

I bought a big peasant suitcase with the red white and blue to dump all of my bulky clothes in. I always like to travel in style.

Graduation now, more later.

Restarting

2006-06-12T00:53:00.000-07:00

A couple months after deciding not to renew my domain name this year and letting my website die, I decided I actually kind of like having a blog. Also, I apparently had registered an account with this site in 2002, and I guess it didn't work at the time, since my posts were all something to the effect of "GRAHHH! WORK GODDAMN YOU!" Anyway, I just dusted off my old username, and here we go.

This is my last week at the Hopkins Center in Nanjing. My plan right now is to catch a train up to Beijing before they start demolishing my room, stay with a friend for a few days while I look at apartments, get a place, and look for a job. I'm sort of waiting to hear on a job or two right now, but I probably shouldn't hold my breath.

Hopefully this blog will be less stupid than my previous websites. In addition to brief updates on what odd corner of the third-world I am lurking in, I'm planning to post pictures that my digital camera wielding friends pass on to me, like this one, which was taken two nights ago at our favorite all-you-can-eat-and-drink Japanese restaurant:

This may or may not be better than Yahoo! Photos, which Sucks! Dick.

Well, good luck to me!