Nu Jävlar!

Lantern day pastry. mm

So finally the new year is over and life is back to normal. The festival ended with the lantern festival on Thursday. Traditionally you eat some kind of pastry, which is in my opinion super tasty! Yum! Slimy not so sweet sesame dumplings!  (We got some from work, we had a competition and my buddy won and gave these to me.) Since this is the last day of fireworks people went nuts. This has gone from being cultural fascination, through fear and frustration and finally to sever annoyance. I hate the fireworks.

I have now managed to get the gym card for the condo, and well, it ain’t fitness first but good enough. There is a pool, tennis court, squash room, but I have to bring my own towel and water bottle! Outrages. I have not exercised in two months, I could hardly run for 20 minutes at my normal pace. Relocation rocks!

Ghost street

I have started making new friends! I kind of got sucked into the irish community, so now I know loads of irish people. I even went to watch a rugby game, totally incomprehensible. I also had dinner with a local beijinger which was nice last week. We had hot-pot at a really nice restaurant street called Ghost street. Yesterday I went to a charity dinner and listened to a woman doctor who is trying to improve health for the rural parts of China and raise awareness of HIV/AIDS. It was very enlightening to hear about their struggle and all the issues that need to be overcome. I also met lots of new interesting people (still no bankers! :).

Last week on the way to work a random girl came up to me on the buss and started talking. She also works in the science park, so now I have a new buss-friend. I often get the question: so do you go to church often? First I didn’t understand the question because people are not freaky religious here like they are in Spore, but then I realized that they think I am American. So apparently that’s what Americans are known for. In Beijing Swedes are known for IKEA. And ping-pong. Overall people are very friendly here and it’s very easy to chit chat with anyone! 

Work is also getting more intense, and I have a new interesting project! We have had a major reorganization at work, so basically now everything is back to normal. Exciting times!

View from Bookworm (where I do the Sunday blog). It has been kind of smoggy lately.

All and all life is good and gets better day by day. There is so much to tell so skype me! Beijing is never boring, always some wonderful/ less wonderful craziness.

Back to work

It's been kind of quite around cny, everybody is gone and it's hard get things done. Now people are coming back to work, but some may be gone for one more week. It is a big holiday. I started working, but there is almost no one in the office. Oh I have finally got my papers and everything is in order, I can stay! It's also really papers with several red chops, not the Singapore high-tech green card with fingerprints. 

The fireworks has been going on constantly and I am a bit tired of it. My colleague told me that so far six people has died and innumerous was injured from them. I'm not surprised, you see uncles stumble around lighting shady firecracker boxes with cigarettes everywhere, someone must get hurt. He also told me that last year the CCTV tower got torched because of the fireworks. I didn't know that was the reason, crazyness!

What else...I might be going to the st. Patricks ball in mid march! It's apparently a big occasion, sort of the cny for the Irish people. So a dress needs to be made! Jehooo!

Today it's snowing again, it's really beautiful!

Sött och Salt

Of course not everything is perfect. A lot of things are good and different and I have only been here for one month but there is a couple things that is quite difficult.

The language and culture. These go hand in hand. This is hard. Most young people speak some English, but you can't take that for granted. I will never forget when I was here for the interview, I was staying in this weird palace like hotel close to the work. I was totally exhausted after the interview and I needed to book a taxi for the airport, I was leaving super early in the morning. I assumed that "taxi" was a commonly known word. It wasn't. But the front desk girl was super sweet and helpful, she called a friend who helped me explain what I wanted and 5 am the taxi arrived! Even in the convenient store here the staff don't speak English. Taxi and in some stores they most likely don't speak English. You have to be very creative, notes written by colleagues, charades, sign language...If you don't understand the language you can't understand the culture and vise versa. So language course is on the agenda. I have taken courses in Singapore but it didn't exactly help. I know people say that you don't need to learn Chinese, and most people go through this "want to learn Chinese" phase and then give up.

Friends and family. I miss you, and it's really hard not having you around to fika and chat with. I think and hope that Beijing is going to be a interesting place to find new friends, at least I haven't met a single person saying they work with banking or logistic! There seem to be a lot of creative people and I look forward to meet them. But I miss you alot.

Work

The year of the rabbit. And miss Kitty.

The reason why I am here. After two years in Singapore it was time to move on and I got a really good job offer at a pharmaceutical company here in Beijing. It's actually the same company that my best friend's husband worked for when they were living here. They are also the reason why I even considered coming here, if I hadn't visited them I wouldn't even known of or fallen in love with this city. So I'm not that adventurous, even though my colleagues may think I'm a bit of a strange girl for coming here. There are not many westerners working at the company here in Beijing, we are three. Another swede and a danish lady. Most of the people have been abroad, in the states. Some have studied in Japan, Singapore, Taiwan so the crowd is very international. Although the organization is very scandinavian, we work strictly 40 hours week and we seem to have kind of a flat organization, which suits me fine.

I have been very well taken care of, I even have my own assigned buddy who makes sure I have lunch and teaches me all the things I need to know outside and inside the office. My room mates are super sweet and cool and teaches me useful greeting phrases such as "Have you eaten today"! They were very concerned for my footware not being warm enough so one of my roomies took me to yashow to get me some uggs. I feel very lucky I got this job.

Photo-time

Every year they have a New Years Party, and I came just in time. And of course I had to perform, so me and the other swede were 'encourage' to sing a traditional song from our home town (we are both from Stockholm) so Abba it was!

There were a lot of other performances and they were really good! Well at least they looked really talented,  I could understand maybe 0.5% of the whole evening and felt like the most boring person in the world. I also had the misfortune to end up at the table with all the people who doesn't speak a single word of English.


I hope next year I will have learned more Chinese so I can understand something. Although I was very disheartened when I saw my other Swedish colleague staring blankly in the air during most part of the dinner. He has been here for over two years.

Dinner

Food

bbq section

I like to cook, I am not super good at it but I like to. Finding food that I want to use and crave for is not that easy. Actually it is harder than I thought it would be! In Shangdi, where i first stayed, there was a big mall with a supermarket in the basement, with all sort of things you could need. Well maybe not the things I am used to; the seafood section was more like a trip  to the zoo: several types of fishes in big aquariums, a big tank with turtles of different sizes. What do you do with a turtle? Fry it up with some onions on turtle tursday? I don't know how to cook this stuff, yet. It is pretty amazing though. Some of the supermarkets are a bit like wet markets.



So I found my expat places to get what I need,  but you have to pay for it. There is a particular expensive one called Ole. I remember my friend wrote about a pack of cherries for over 200 rmb. I found them too, wonder if it is the same cherries they've been trying to move since back then.

Mellanmål! Tonfiskröra on rye!

The most expensive lentil soup ever

Holidays

Because of the cny we are off work for 9 days! wohoo! Ok we have to work one weekend and two days are actually a weekend so it is more like 5 days off, but it is very welcomed. I have the chance to get stuff done: go to ikea, exploring the neighbourhood, get a gym card etc...Ikea is just the same here: by passing the entrance you have spend 1000 rmb (kr) on värmeljus and servetter by default. I am waiting for my 20 boxes of Singapore stuff that is being shipped here right now, although customs will probably not release my things until end of the months. gah.

I have been walking a lot, which I really enjoy! The weather is perfect for strolling around, not too cold or hot and very sunny. Yesterday was a bad smog day, but otherwise it has been good! There is a lot of mighty boulevards in Beijing, not so much cosy alleys. They say that Beijing is a city of politics and you can really feel it. It is also a city of contrasts, new v old.

(oh btw my tumour on my foot has disappeared. It must have popped from all the walking! hurra!)

Sanlitun

Soho

Cherry blossom (fake)

Why not

Old man on bike in my neighbourhood

My house

The end of the Tiger and beginning of the Rabbit

Chinese New Year is a big thing. It is one of the most important celebrations of the year. Many people go back to their families, meet and eat. Pretty much like our Christmast, and likewise most of the cities shut down, so right now it's pretty calm and quiet on the streets. Well, apart from the fireworks. So I was told  fireworks were banned in Beijing for a while, and apparently people are making up for lost time: new years eve was i n s a n e! Fireworks everywhere, car alarms going off all the time! It was very beautiful and frightening at the same time. And the celebration (with firecrackers) goes on for another week or so, I am not sure. Seems like it slowed down a bit though.

I was lucky and happy to be invited to my co-worker's family on new years eve. Most people are not very traditional but the older generation seem to be. We made dumplings and had a lot of traditional food, my co-workers mother in law made all the dishes, she was super sweet and nice! They have been living in Beijing for generations and also in the hutongs, which is kind of rare I guess. I learned that there is a lot of dis-similarities between the Singapore CNY and Beijing, which of course have to do with geography. So my ways are apparently south-chinese haha. I am so glad my co-worker invited me, it was extremely kind!

Co-worker and dumplings

Yesterday I went to a Sping roll event. We got the chance to visit a museum in the hutongs were the owner told us a little bit about the traditions and showed us old tools. There are so many ocd things around cny. It was very nice to get the chance to see an auntie in action in the hutongs, she made very tasty spring rolls! Traditionally you eat them on this particular day, and they should contain specific things such as leeks and been sprouts.

Old school man and hot pot

Pretty wood carving details (and huge flat screen)

Ingrediences

Spring roll making