Starbucks is broken

"A medium brewed coffee" I ask. Starbucks chappie turns around to look at the coffee urn and then back to me. "It's empty" he says. "No more coffee".
He asks if I'd like something else. I come up with the crazy suggestion of making more coffee, after which he turns around and pours me a coffee.

Me pointing at a Pagoda

This is the six harmonies Pagoda. It was built originally AD 960, but this isn't it since it fell over in the early 1900s due to people stealing the lucky stones from which it was built. This one was built in the 80s. At the top I could smell solvents the likes of which I had never smelled: some sort of restoration.

Escalators

Here's the bottom of the Pagoda. There is an escalator so you don't have to bother with all them stairs.

We should have those at the Tower of London. It wouldn't look crap at all.

Slept with the intern

Darren was a last minute addition to the weekend jaunt, so we had to share a bed. He was interning at work. Felt a bit odd coming out of the shower to see a 19 year old asian lad laying on the bed in his underwear.

Here we are having Indian food, just before the belly dancer came on:

Some pictures of Hangzhou

A Budha, a roof, some fish and a Pagoda

These are not their names

These are the three people from work that I went with to Hangzhou. Darren, Jenny and Ronnie. These are not their real names. They have other Chinese names, but also have an English name to make things easier. I should get an American name as "Martin" is sometimes a little difficult for people in my daily life back in the US.

Off to Hangzhou

A few weeks ago I went to Hangzhou: a lovely little place about an hour outside Shanghai. It is the capital city of Zhejiang province. That means very little to me, but that's what I read

We started in Hongqiao railway station. It is bloody huge. Must have been 10 thousand of the little buggers milling around. We took one of those high speed trains. Bit of a change from sitting on a bench for 36 hours on a train from shanghai to Canton. That was a month after David Hasselhof sang while the Berlin wall fell.

Taxi-napped

We get into a taxi without having the address immediately to hand. We get 20 yards down the road and the taxi stops, someone gets in the front seat and we all drive away. Presumably towards the address given by our recently acquired passenger.

Not really sure what to do, I started yelling "ting" "ting" which means stop and 200 yards or so down the road he let us out.

Martin goes to a gay bar

So we ended up in a gay bar called Eddy's. The owner wanted to see how big my hands were and also my wife's (The owner assumed that the chappie I was with was my wife).

My wife told Eddy that we had been together for four years. 
I then realised that when the owner said hands there were actually implied quotes: "hands".

Off script

Lunch at 24KTV which is a small bar with about 20 Karaoke rooms hidden around the back.

It has a lunch menu, but it's in Chinese. There's also a normal more expensive menu in English.

I point at the 28Y item on the lunch menu which was a burger last time I was here and at soup number 2 which was apparently not translatable.

Another chap tries to be more specific with his soup and points on the English menu for the soup on the Chinese menu that he wants.

His soup arrives first. Then I get my ham sandwich and pumpkin soup.

20 minutes later nothing else arrives.

Turns out he just ordered soup.

Lesson: Don't involve another menu in the ordering process.

This is a classic "off-script" scenario.

First day at the China work

This was a few weeks ago. 

Bit jet lagged after flying 15 hours or so, so got into work early. Eight O'clock. No one there. After figuring out the lifts (separate post) I found some closed doors. Ten minutes later, the cleaners let me in.

Here's the wee little sign outside. I wasn't about to get involved in any tail-gating. No sir!

Yes, I bought tea to China

And the BBC and a blue cup

Jenga art museum

So went here with Doug. The China art museum. It is really really big. like a giant pub jenga but full of art.

My Favourite piece was this lovely watercolour of China's successful "tomic bomb explosion":

Wait 5 minutes

Also, every morning when I order coffee they say "Wait 5 minutes" while they get the filter, grind the coffee and brew a fresh batch of coffee. There must be someone who gets the last coffee before me. Do they wait until someone asks for coffee and then remember they're Starbucks and that that's what they sell?
Every morning.

Starbucks

So every morning I go to Starbucks and ask for a coffee. Initially, I thought they had an exotic type of coffee called "blue coffee" which I had every day for about a week. Then I realized they were trying to say brewed coffee. Doesn't taste as good now

Anything with a 4 (or 13 sometimes)

So the Chinese have this thing about the number 4 (sì). Apparently it sounds like the word for death (sǐ), so they just skip them. I'm on the 36th floor, but really on the 32nd floor 'cause they skipped 4,14,24 and 34. At work, we're adding the floor below the 15th to animation. This floor below is of course 12!!!!!!!

In Shanghai with Doug

VPN

Never heard of this until I came to China. Now it's 4-5 times a day.
The Chinese government has this thing called the Great Firewall of China that renders google, this blog, BBC unusable. Unless you have a VPN service, which most of the Chinese seem to have. Mine seems to be mostly working now. It's a way of your computer pretending it's somewhere else. Today I'm in England. Sometimes I'm in Japan. Other times I'm in China, but I'm always in the same room.