Post date: Jun 8, 2011 11:39:16 AM
Day 1:
Waking up to the alarm, I turn it off, stretch, and go right back to bed. Not exhausted, but tired enough and just can't be bothered to get up. Another Mars Bar™ for breakfast means a little longer in bed. Worth it today.
I head downstairs for 08:50, when the taxi is meant to be there, and completely forget about talking to the hotel clerk regarding the deposit, and difference in deposit price and final price. I've just done the maths of it all and whoever heard of a deposit being more than cost of a stay (by between £150 and £400 depending how I was going to pay it).
The taxi driver turns up, with my name written down on paper this time, and I get in the car… Is this going to be a repeat of yesterday?
Turns out no. He indicates pretty much all the time, and only twice made me flinch with getting too close to other cars (general drive by everyone is still horrific by UK standards, but is bare-able). On the other hand we did pass by at least three accidents on the 20 minute journey in.
Towards the end I think he took some back-roads to the lab, as the main carriageway was choked up. If not, well I don't know. He couldn't speak English (seems common round here), so I couldn't ask. At least this one was pre-paid.
Work.
This went as expected, just a normal day in the (air conditioned) office. It's not a bad lab here. Very few distractions, a good mix of 220V and 110V sockets. Air conditioning (can I mention that enough?). And of course the Air conditioning (obviously not).
Coming up to 13:00. Feeling a little tired, but that could be the food I've just eaten. The engineer here seemed surprised I went for the chinese food rather than western alternatives, he did offer to get me a McDonalds or something. Also seemed a little surprised when I picked up chopsticks as well. Eating was different from any of the chinese restaurants in the UK, very much a case (as Chun has said before) of use the chopsticks to get food to mouth by any means necessary. The food was also much more greasy than I expected. I'm guessing this is also why the rice was a little dry?
End of the working day, decided this could, maybe (probably not) be interesting enough to whack on my website.
Or at least it would if I could. China has blocked google sites because it lets people host 'obscene' content (yet it allows Tumblr…)
Might actually have a look into getting round this then. I've heard TOR might be an option. This hasn't felt like a full working day. It might be the very late start, or the lunch break only lasting as long as it took to eat the food… but it feels good.
Got given more (fresh) food to eat while I was waiting for the driver to become available to take me back to the hotel. That's dinner taken care of at least.
Back to the hotel, and I can't find anyone who I spoke to yesterday about the deposit. The staff can't either. Sod it, their fault, I tried.
Spent the rest of the evening catching up with fiance and news from back home (tech and otherwise)