Well, my life has changed a lot in the two weeks or so since my last post.
First, I went back to Vancouver on the 11th of January. The flight was not great, but it was nice to be sitting with Rae. When we got in, my parents were waiting for me at the airport. In the car, to my great surprise, my mother asked me if I wanted to go to New York on monday to join her on a contract that she would be doing at the UN secretariat.
At first I didn't believe it. It was a pretty much perfect opportunity for me and a great solution to my problems. Firstly, they offered to pay me $2000 for three weeks of work, which is probably more than I would make in Vancouver doing whatever. This also sloves my problems as to finding money to rent an apartment. Secondly, it gets me to New York before they leave and give up the apartment. It also lets me see Vincent and Roger, and hopefully Will. Finally, it is finally some job experience that I am not ashamed to put on my resume (thankfully my mother has kept her maiden name so it does not look like I am working for family).
We dropped Rae off at her house and went downtown to my building. Since I left, my parents have rented out the apartment that I used to live in (which, in all fairness is theirs, not mine) so we had to stay in a second apartment that we have in the building. Unfortunately for me, my parents were in the middle of upgrading the apartment to rent out at a higher rent. This meant that I was enlisted to paint, move furnature, steam clean the carpet, etc... in the four days that I had in Vancouver. So, for the first few days I was working so much that I didn't have any time to see anyone.
The first night in Vancouver we went to the Eatery, a funky sushi-fusion restaurant near UBC. The food was amazing. The other thing I noticed was that everyone was so well dressed at attractive. I was so used to PRC standards that it was quite distracting at first.
On sunday, I introduced Rae to the extended family. I had been quite nervious about this because I know my grandparents want me to marry a Jewish girl and Rae is clearly not. In the event, it went quite well. She talked with everyone and I think they liked her. The most important thing I got out of that afternoon is the feeling that I should spend more time with my grandparents. My grandfather is almost 95 and I should be there for him if he needs me.
Since I have to go now, I will just post some content from two emails I sent to Rae. The more or less describe my life since I have gotten to New York.
Right now I am in my new office in the UN secretariat building overlooking the river. The job we are doing here is looking at outsourcing conference services for the UN, particularly tranlslation services. It looks like we are going to be working really hard here because we have to give in a report by tuesday. My job so far has been to write up, format, and print notes. It is ok, and it is definately cool to be here working in the main UN building. Just going to the cafeteria you can see people from all over the world and listen to so many different languages.
Our boss here is Chinese. When I first met him I said "ni hao" and we had a very short exchange in Mandarin. I think he was at least somewhat impressed. Apparantly there are very few non-Chinese who can speak it in the UN organization. Unfortunately he is very busy and he will probably not have any time to talk to me one on one.
And the second email...
I have been working about ten hours or more every day and sleeping on a crappy mattress in the hallway. We will probably take a day off some time next week after the preliminary report is done. The work has been pretty interesting, although most of what I do involves data entry and manipulation in Excel or note taking during meetings. On the bright side, I do wear suits every day and the cafeteria food is good.
My boss is definately a mainlander, but he is a very high class one. His position here is "Under Secretary General" which means that he is one step down from the top (think vice-president). His English is very good and he seems very smart and on top of everything. Of course, because he is busy, and I am just an intern, I have only met with him that one time and I doubt very much that I will ever have a chance to actually talk to him one on one or otherwise.
In the last two days I have seen both Vincent and Roger. I went to see Vincent on friday night, but I took the wrong subway and instead of getting off on broadway and 116th next to Columbia, I got off on Lenox and 116th in the middle of Harlem. Since I had come straight from work, I was wearing a suit and tie. The cool thing was that even though it was 10pm (I had just gotten off work at 9... worked about 12 hours that day...) and I was the only white guy it didn't seem that dangerous. Actually, there was a lot of new construction there. Anyway seeing Vincent was cool, we had a few over priced beers in his neighbourhood and I spent an hour getting home, finally arring around 3. Of course, my parents still woke me up at 8:30 the next day...
Last night I got off work a little bit early, about 6:15 (it is 6:30 now and we have no plans of leaving...) and met Roger for dinner. He ended up getting that dream job in Hong Kong so he was pretty happy. He had more or less the same things to say as always, that people in North America, especially Vancouver, are racist, that China needs a strong government and how these are related. I told him that he was was obsessed and that his fixation on this issue was unhealthy. It was a typical, not very fun experience. Later we went for a walk and talked about other things, and it was a bit better, but I don't think I will hang out with him too much while I am here.
More later
First, I went back to Vancouver on the 11th of January. The flight was not great, but it was nice to be sitting with Rae. When we got in, my parents were waiting for me at the airport. In the car, to my great surprise, my mother asked me if I wanted to go to New York on monday to join her on a contract that she would be doing at the UN secretariat.
At first I didn't believe it. It was a pretty much perfect opportunity for me and a great solution to my problems. Firstly, they offered to pay me $2000 for three weeks of work, which is probably more than I would make in Vancouver doing whatever. This also sloves my problems as to finding money to rent an apartment. Secondly, it gets me to New York before they leave and give up the apartment. It also lets me see Vincent and Roger, and hopefully Will. Finally, it is finally some job experience that I am not ashamed to put on my resume (thankfully my mother has kept her maiden name so it does not look like I am working for family).
We dropped Rae off at her house and went downtown to my building. Since I left, my parents have rented out the apartment that I used to live in (which, in all fairness is theirs, not mine) so we had to stay in a second apartment that we have in the building. Unfortunately for me, my parents were in the middle of upgrading the apartment to rent out at a higher rent. This meant that I was enlisted to paint, move furnature, steam clean the carpet, etc... in the four days that I had in Vancouver. So, for the first few days I was working so much that I didn't have any time to see anyone.
The first night in Vancouver we went to the Eatery, a funky sushi-fusion restaurant near UBC. The food was amazing. The other thing I noticed was that everyone was so well dressed at attractive. I was so used to PRC standards that it was quite distracting at first.
On sunday, I introduced Rae to the extended family. I had been quite nervious about this because I know my grandparents want me to marry a Jewish girl and Rae is clearly not. In the event, it went quite well. She talked with everyone and I think they liked her. The most important thing I got out of that afternoon is the feeling that I should spend more time with my grandparents. My grandfather is almost 95 and I should be there for him if he needs me.
Since I have to go now, I will just post some content from two emails I sent to Rae. The more or less describe my life since I have gotten to New York.
Right now I am in my new office in the UN secretariat building overlooking the river. The job we are doing here is looking at outsourcing conference services for the UN, particularly tranlslation services. It looks like we are going to be working really hard here because we have to give in a report by tuesday. My job so far has been to write up, format, and print notes. It is ok, and it is definately cool to be here working in the main UN building. Just going to the cafeteria you can see people from all over the world and listen to so many different languages.
Our boss here is Chinese. When I first met him I said "ni hao" and we had a very short exchange in Mandarin. I think he was at least somewhat impressed. Apparantly there are very few non-Chinese who can speak it in the UN organization. Unfortunately he is very busy and he will probably not have any time to talk to me one on one.
And the second email...
I have been working about ten hours or more every day and sleeping on a crappy mattress in the hallway. We will probably take a day off some time next week after the preliminary report is done. The work has been pretty interesting, although most of what I do involves data entry and manipulation in Excel or note taking during meetings. On the bright side, I do wear suits every day and the cafeteria food is good.
My boss is definately a mainlander, but he is a very high class one. His position here is "Under Secretary General" which means that he is one step down from the top (think vice-president). His English is very good and he seems very smart and on top of everything. Of course, because he is busy, and I am just an intern, I have only met with him that one time and I doubt very much that I will ever have a chance to actually talk to him one on one or otherwise.
In the last two days I have seen both Vincent and Roger. I went to see Vincent on friday night, but I took the wrong subway and instead of getting off on broadway and 116th next to Columbia, I got off on Lenox and 116th in the middle of Harlem. Since I had come straight from work, I was wearing a suit and tie. The cool thing was that even though it was 10pm (I had just gotten off work at 9... worked about 12 hours that day...) and I was the only white guy it didn't seem that dangerous. Actually, there was a lot of new construction there. Anyway seeing Vincent was cool, we had a few over priced beers in his neighbourhood and I spent an hour getting home, finally arring around 3. Of course, my parents still woke me up at 8:30 the next day...
Last night I got off work a little bit early, about 6:15 (it is 6:30 now and we have no plans of leaving...) and met Roger for dinner. He ended up getting that dream job in Hong Kong so he was pretty happy. He had more or less the same things to say as always, that people in North America, especially Vancouver, are racist, that China needs a strong government and how these are related. I told him that he was was obsessed and that his fixation on this issue was unhealthy. It was a typical, not very fun experience. Later we went for a walk and talked about other things, and it was a bit better, but I don't think I will hang out with him too much while I am here.
More later
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