Right then. It's Friday evening in Hangzhou, Friday afternoon in the UK, and I've finally - after a lengthy chain of authorisation requests which have taken all week - secured a broadband connection in the flat. As my flatmate J arrives tomorrow, this is the last time I'll have the place to myself. So what better time - especially bearing in mind my lack of e-mail access - to have a little chat with my esteemed readership?

If you're passing by, then please pop into the comments box and say hello.

(There's just one snag: the comments seem to have gone down. Typical, just my luck, etc etc. Let's hope that they're restored before bedtime, eh?)

Saturday morning update: Aha. It would seem that my comments system is blocked by the broadband service in the apartment, whereas it is permitted in the office. Typical, just my luck, etc etc etc. Sorry to have missed you all last night.

1. The green walking man at the pedestrian crossings, who - as JP has accurately observed - looks as if he is pleasuring himself from both ends.

(To help you visualise this, please imagine someone pulling a small hand towel backwards and forwards between their legs. Got that? OK, now remove the towel.)

2. The restaurant on Monday lunchtime, where the waitress wordlessly snatched my napkin out of my lap, crossed over to the other side of the table, and placed it on my colleague's empty lap. Cue fits of helpless, hysterical laughter. But that might have been the jetlag.

3. The cake shop on the walk to work. (Not the original boring walk to work, past all the huge stores - but the alternative route, along the smaller street, past all the dinky little shops. Humbler, more varied, more chaotic, more "typically Chinese".) You have never seen such surreal icing jobs; I particularly love the spiky brown monsters.

Memo to self: take photos of cake shop. Memo to readers: don't let him leave without photographing the cake shop.

4. The "Chinglish" menus, whose attempts to describe the dishes merely add to the confusion. Secretly Prepared Yellow Croakers, anyone?

(There are probably whole web sites devoted to this sort of stuff, so I shan't dwell.)

5. The moment in The Shamrock (Irish pub and main ex-pat watering hole, yeah yeah OK it's not "authentic" but we all need a social base) when the art and yoga teacher/hippy raver chick and I realise that we both know the same Berlin club promoter. Bulging eyes, open mouths and clappity-hands all round. World's a village...

6. The completion of each successive stage in my protracted battle to warm the flat. Unworkable heater in bedroom switched on: check. Annotated photo diagram of multi-buttoned air-con system created: check. Second duvet provided, to lay on top of lightweight "summer weight" duvet: check. Additional portable electric fan heater purchased: check. We'll get there eventually.

7. The range of bedroom slippers at the local mall. Plenty of choice, but a} they're all made for diminutive Chinese tootsies, not clod-hopping British hooves, and b) they're all SO CAMP! I'm not having my new flatmate walking in on me tomorrow, mincing round the place in teeny-tiny, fluffy pink, "Hello Kitty" mules. He'll get quite the wrong idea.

8. Ditto the T-shirts, which I wanted to wear in bed. (Yup, I didn't pack a single T-shirt. They're so not me. Such unforgiving garments.) All the T-shirts on display came boxed up with matching "leisure pants", in shades of citron and cerise. See previous flatmate-related anxiety.

9. Overhearing fragments of conversation in Myth, the rather gloomy restaurant round the corner which attempts Chinese approximations of European dishes. (My "steak" and "chips" were a valiant effort, and actually quite edible.) Particularly the American guy behind me, talking into his mobile:

"Listen, I haven't told you yet today that I love you. Even though our relationship is in jeopardy right now. And I've got a girlfriend."

(Frustratingly, he went a bit quieter after that. But you know there's a whole story there.)

10. The answer given by the neatly groomed and very good looking young candidate (if you like that sort of thing, bit Twink for my tastes), working for a company called Handsome - who, when asked what personal skills he could bring to our company, replied: "Being Handsome, I have a lot to offer." Never was a knuckle more hastily chewed.

Happy Christmas, everyone.

Labels: hangzhoudiary

Ah, the power of positive whinging! (See previous post for evidence of entirely typical Drama Queenery.) I feel so much better for that, so thanks for listening - and if you find me lapsing into my "The Little Boy Who Everyone Forgot" persona, then please feel free to administer a judicious slap.

(It's my least attractive persona, and one which has dogged me for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, my present circumstances do appear to be activating it in a major way.)

Someone asked what my apartment was like, and I'm pleased to report that it more than adequately fulfils the Troubled Diva standard for acceptable interior design. In fact, give or take the odd dodgy framed print, it actively borders on the stylish. All credit to JP for nabbing it for me before leaving Hangzhou last week; he knows me so well. Why, the place is a veritable symphony of clean lines, clear surfaces, sympathetic lighting and attractive modular seating solutions in exciting shades of beige. And it's huge.

However, the apartment's open-plan capaciousness also means that it never quite gets warm enough - and in the sub-zero night-time temperatures which are now upon us, that's a major issue. There's a massive aircon unit in the far corner of the sitting-room area, belching out hot air for all it's worth, but unfortunately this generates as much draught as it does heat, meaning that I can only sit comfortably on the aforementioned modular seating solutions if I wrap myself tightly in my duvet. The parquet flooring is also ice cold, making a pair of slippers the number one item on my shopping list. Which reminds me: I must let my future flatmate know about this.

Yes, that's right: from Saturday afternoon onwards, I shall be alone no more, either in the apartment or in the office (where, in terms of job function, I have been a solo act all week). Judging by his photo on the company Intranet, he looks like a friendly sort of chap; and as it will also be his first visit to China, I shall be able to graduate from Nervous Novice to Seasoned Old Hand in a matter of days.

This is a healthy development. As a Nervous Novice, I do have a habit of making a rod for my own back - but I think I shall make quite a good job of being a Seasoned Old Hand. Whereas I baulk at marching up to strangers in the office and trying to ingratiate myself into their social lives, I'm actually the sort of person who naturally gravitates towards people in my own position. In social situations, I'm often the person making sure that the quiet one in the corner who doesn't know anyone is included in the conversation. Show me a lame duck, and I'll extend a fatherly wing.

(Assuming that he's going to want to play the role of lame duck, that is. He'll probably be out playing pool with The Lads down the ex-pat watering-hole on the first night, leaving me huddled under my duvet like a spurned Craig-out-of-Big-Brother, free to explore the finer points of the latest Sufjan Stevens album, or to get to grips with that particularly chewy 6000-word think-piece in the New Yorker.)

*** SLAP ***

As for work - and you know I don't blog about work, but f**k it - it's proving to be well within my capabilities, whilst not exactly making huge demands on my time. So thank goodness for the Internet, even if all Blogspot sites are blocked from over here. (Unless they've got full RSS feeds, in which case I can pick them up through Bloglines. Still can't leave comments on them, though.)

Basically, I'm here to conduct what we call "fit interviews" with Chinese candidates for our Hangzhou office. Not to assess whether or not the candidates are Well Fit (I would never allow such considerations to etc etc etc), but to assess whether or not they would be a good "fit" for the company. So I'm not testing their technical knowledge, but determining their English communications skills and trying to get an impression of their overall personalities. The trick is to force them to deviate from their carefully rehearsed - and grammatically faultless - scripts, and to see whether they can provide thoughtful answers to some more unexpected questions. Sometimes this will be over the phone; more usually, it will be face to face. I make copious notes throughout, but what people are really interested in are my decisions: Yes+, Yes, Yes-, Hold, No.

It's a simple equation of input and output. Each day, the cream of young Chinese manhood passes before my eyes (there haven't been any women as yet, but I'm sure there will be soon), full of shining-eyed aspiration, eager to please, eager to better themselves, eager for the benefits of working for a fast-growing international company in an equally fast-growing economy, eager "to work hard, and learn new skills, and be good team member, and do my best for your company".

Each day, I hear minor variations on the same answers, to which I nod and I smile, teasing out fuller answers where required, diligently transcribing their thoughts, experiences and Personal Goals onto sheets of paper which few, if any, will ever read. Finally, as I pass the candidates on for technical tests, I review my notes and - like a lofty panellist on a reality TV talent show - cast my judgement. Their lives in my hands. Or so I like to think, in my more delusional moments.

One of these days, I might actually get round to telling you a little about Hangzhou itself; but I haven't seen a great deal of it yet, so patience. Now it's time I donned my fleece and my puffa jacket and my Gore-Tex lined baseball cap and my iPod, and braved the icy blasts of my thirty-minute walk home. I may be gone some time...

Labels: hangzhoudiary

Well, I'm here. Sitting in the Hangzhou office, about to knock off for the day, and feeling... well... more than a little displaced, if you really want to know. Hangzhou looks a lot more Westernised than I had expected: smarter, cleaner, and with lashings of Christmas tat everywhere, amazingly enough. Including around my cubicle, which was festooned with multi-coloured tinsel within a couple of hours of my arrival. They know how to make a boy feel welcome.

However, appearances only go so far. In all other respects, I am a long, long way from anything familiar. Every detail of my life here feels new, and strange, and frequently bewildering.

I thought I was prepared for this. Having made something in the region of thirty business trips around Western Europe in 2003 and 2004, I have become acclimatised to the unfamiliar, and to that Mr. Bean type of existence which dictates that I will pull any door marked "Push", order the wrong food in restaurants, and lose my keys five times a day. Nevertheless, this trip takes unfamiliarity to a whole new level... and with three weeks stretching ahead of me, the challenge feels all the greater.

Unlike my usual two day trips, I can't just breeze in and out of the country in default airport-taxi-hotel-office Eurotrash Business Wonk mode. This time, I've got to engage fully with my surroundings. I need to establish a routine, but not get stuck in a rut. I need to find ways of enlivening tasks which might otherwise become repetitive. I need to feed myself, but not simply by nipping down to the nearest Pizza Hut night after night. I need to forge alliances, both in and out of the office.

In particular, I need to get a good social life going, and not just shrink into the background - spending night after night in my apartment, iPod tootling away, necking cans from the supermarket and smoking comfort fags to pass the time. The easy option, but also by far the hardest path.

It's daunting, and I feel a lot more homesick at a much earlier stage than I would ever have expected. Residual jetlag and culture shock are of course playing a major part in this. But each day things move on, falling into place little by little. The people here are more than ready to offer help, advice and company. I'm getting a grip. I just need to keep reminding myself of this.

The pithy apercus and bon mots, and all the wry observational stuff which you're waiting for, will commence very soon. Just let me find my bearings, and I'll be right with you.

Labels: hangzhoudiary