The cold, the waiting, the cold, friends?
Winter has hit Suzhou. It's not terribly cold - 40-50s F - and it probably won't snow at all, but the air is very dry and heating businesses is low priority. At work, they've cut back heating to save energy. I suppose it's the same for the grocery store I went to the other night. The checkout girl had her winter coat on and was obviously wishing for her gloves. Too bad they didn't close the door, it may have helped keep some heat in.
Relative humidity is about 20% which makes skin, sinuses, eyes, everything painfully dry. Time to buy two more humidifiers :p
It's been 5 weeks since we sent GP's paperwork to Beijing for immigration. I checked with the lawyer and neither of us have gotten a case number receipt. The lawyer called and found that there was a huge influx of applications just before the filing fee increased, so the normal 4 week wait is about 15 weeks. We'll check again in 2 months. Blech. Good thing we started early.
On the health front, I'm getting a sore throat. It probably matches the other sick people in the office. The ones who cough on me >:^( I'm going to hand out copies of "Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten". Rememeber what you learned? Wash your hands after using the toilet, cover your mouth when you cough, don't spit in the hallway at work on the carpet, don't push in line. There should be a TV channel just with this.
There is a new engineer at work, a young, Swiss guy with a Taiwanese wife. Sounds like instant friends. We will show them around Suzhou on Sunday and teach them all the good places to go and not go. I hope we finally met someone for dinner and mahjongg. Last night I met another possible friend at the foreign food store. She was buying a case of beer, dozens of cherry tomatoes, and a case of milk. Turns out she and her husband moved to Suzhou about a year ago from the Toronto area. And, she made it official: she agreed I sound like a Canadian.
Relative humidity is about 20% which makes skin, sinuses, eyes, everything painfully dry. Time to buy two more humidifiers :p
It's been 5 weeks since we sent GP's paperwork to Beijing for immigration. I checked with the lawyer and neither of us have gotten a case number receipt. The lawyer called and found that there was a huge influx of applications just before the filing fee increased, so the normal 4 week wait is about 15 weeks. We'll check again in 2 months. Blech. Good thing we started early.
On the health front, I'm getting a sore throat. It probably matches the other sick people in the office. The ones who cough on me >:^( I'm going to hand out copies of "Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten". Rememeber what you learned? Wash your hands after using the toilet, cover your mouth when you cough, don't spit in the hallway at work on the carpet, don't push in line. There should be a TV channel just with this.
There is a new engineer at work, a young, Swiss guy with a Taiwanese wife. Sounds like instant friends. We will show them around Suzhou on Sunday and teach them all the good places to go and not go. I hope we finally met someone for dinner and mahjongg. Last night I met another possible friend at the foreign food store. She was buying a case of beer, dozens of cherry tomatoes, and a case of milk. Turns out she and her husband moved to Suzhou about a year ago from the Toronto area. And, she made it official: she agreed I sound like a Canadian.
Labels: China
posted by Matt aka Maxiu at
8:00 AM
1 Comments:
Those damned midwestern vowels. At least you're not excruciatingly passive-aggressive like the real Canadians are.
Funny, though. I'm finding that residents of B.C. have similar dialects to people in eastern Ontario. And did I mention I get CBC on Seattle cable? Its fun with beer.
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