I've made it through my first and second day of work at SBB Shanghai. The office is a 15-min taxi ride away from my hotel, or about a 45-60min walk, as I found out last night. The taxi ride costs a little less than US$2 so that's nice for the mornings, and it's been nice out at night so I can take a walk back to my hotel, however it is a pain lugging my laptop back and forth everyday.

The office is on the 3rd floor of a 28-floor building. Here are some views from the office, which has LOTS of windows, which is very nice!

  

There are between 20-30 people in the office, I want to say, most everyone is Chinese except for 3 others besides me, 2 guys are from the UK and the other is from Australia. Everyone has to speak English to work for SBB, so that works for my benefit, although most everyone converses in Chinese (or is it Mandarin? i'm not sure). Anyway, I am covering Korean news while I am here. It's a  little harder than work back in the US, obviously because of the language barrier, but it's harder to find info I guess. I spend a lot of the day cruising the internet looking for certain information, then making some calls and trying to get someone to talk to me in English, but today that didn't work very well. At the end of the night I help with the first draft of editing, just cleaning up the Chinese reporters' English so Russ can do the real edit and get it ready for publication.

This is the office "gong" I guess you would call it. I've only heard it hit once, to get everyone's attention and to introduce me! It sounds super sweet:

What did I learn today?  Korean automobile producers are exporting more in the first quarter 2008 than Q1 last year despite the slowdown in the US and western European economies. Fascinating, I know!

Shanghai is a very modern city. LOTS and LOTS of lights.

 
I've been trying to figure out what the "fashion style" is here right now, but I think I may have come to the conclusion that you can wear just about whatever you want and it'll be cool. There's people with super tight jeans on, skirts with tights on, dresses, flare jeans, flat shoes, heels... you name it and you can pretty much find someone wearing it. I heard that Shanghai wants to try to make itself known as a fashion center like Paris and New York (?), and it is a pretty posh (word usage? borrowed it from my UK mates) place.

Pedestrian cross walks mean nothing here! You have to wait for the green light (or most people do anyway) but even when you got it, you really have to watch out. Taxis especially like to just gun it through a cross walk, so it's the pedestrians jobs to get out of the way. There are sooooo many bikes and mopeds too!  In some places they have their own lanes, in other places they are just on the street with the cars, taxis, and busses. Today I saw a bus come soooo close to smashing this guy on a moped. Busses and taxis don't really slow down, they just start honking so that means get out of the way! The bus was honking but they guy on the moped couldn't go anywhere so the bus had to slam on its breaks!  That one almost freaked me out!

Last night for dinner I had what I like to call "toilet bowl soup." That's not what it was supposed to be, but that's sure what it tasted like.

I found cans of diet pop at this foreign food store, and they cost 36 cents each!!! Can't beat that! I thought I was getting a bargain by drinking the pop in my mini fridge for 86 cents, but boy was the hotel ripping me off, and they don't even have diet!

I won't be traveling for work really, unless they can get me in for a visit at Chinese steel mill or service center. I'd really like to make it to see the Great Wall of China, but I think it's kind of far away. Maybe I'll see if I can get a weekend tour or something. I would really like to see an ancient Buddhist temple, so I'm going to look into that too.

As far as China being a Communist country.... I guess I don't know what it means to be "Communist" really. Shanghai sure seems like any other western city I've been to. There are a lot of rich people here, but along with them I've seen a couple bums rummaging through garbage cans. As much as we think "commies" use propaganda against their people, I think our gov't does the same. We're supposed to think things are so bad in Communist countries, but so far I haven't seen anything to give me that suggestion. I was told by my Australian coworker that I should not talk about Tibet or Taiwan, as they are still "parts of China," and I have to admit I don't know as much about either situation as I should, but just as the Chinese gov't doesn't want to let those territories go, wouldn't it be the same for the US? I don't think we'd be happy if California decided it wanted to be its own country (which hey, it could happen!). To be honest I'm pretty ignorant about this subject so I don't even know if I'm using the right analogy, but hopefully I can befriend someone here and get their feelings on the subject without being rude, ya know?  Tomorrow after work I think I'm going out for a drink with this girl in the office called Mini (she is really tiny!!) and whoever else wants to come, so that should be fun.

I think I've finally figured out how to say "hi" (title of this entry-literally means 'how you') and thank you (sounds like shi-shi), but I still don't feel comfortable with my pronounciation. I think they'll get the point anyway! I still don't know how to say goodbye, so...peace, dearhearts...