After 4 weeks of constant whining I`m pretty sure everyone wants to hear good stuff about China and about what I`m doing here.

I have two topics that I will address in this week`s rant.

1. Perks of working in a big company.
2. Perks of traveling to “slim fit” country

So let`s start with the first one:

Sports and other activities:

On my first day at the office my boss gave me some sort of a tour around the complex. (we`ll call it an orientation but it wasn`t as elaborate). So at 12:00 he said … “let`s go to lunch!”. OK, I got up from my computer, checked to see if I have the wallet on me and followed everybody out of the office to the next building.

While walking up the stairs to the red building (next to our green building) he said “We get free lunch and dinner at 12:00 and 17:30, but it`s not the best food in the world”. “Right ON!” After lunch he showed me the chill-out area. One floor with a pool table, two ping-pong tables, a darts board and 4-6 tables for mahjong or poker. We can only use this area during our lunch break or after work hours. Fine by me, I said.

That first day I went to the ping-pong tables, and everyone was over-friendly wanting to play against me (at first), just to see if I can play or not.

I can play! And, just like everyone else, I have my good days and my bad days; it just happened to be a “good day” at that time and I caught them by surprise.

Here everyone plays ping-pong. I think it`s something that you have to do to prove your family that you deserve college money or something! (I`m joking, of course, but I haven`t seen anyone not knowing how to do it)

I kept going there almost daily for 30 minutes to stretch my arms and legs. At first I was wining, then they called-in reinforcements and the new guys got medieval on my ass. I have never seen anyone play like that in my entire life. Curved balls that feel like they have a mind of their own; the backhand is deadly most of the times (I guess they practice that way more than regular stance) and not to mention alternating top-spin and back-spin with ease. Disturbing, to say the least!

The good thing about playing against better players is that I hone my skills at a rapid pace, and I`m loving it! (McDonald`s)

The 3rd week a package got to our office front desk; my boss opened it and threw me a bag from inside. It was my new basketball equipment.

“You`re playing tomorrow!”
“What? How come!?”
“Don`t worry, they have girls playing in the other team; you`ll be fine!”

I haven`t played in 6 years but hey … I guess I can remember the basics overnight.

And that`s the only thing that I remembered. ) Because I was kinda lame, and after 20 minutes they ACTUALLY assigned me to defend a girl for the rest of the match. OK, no hard feelings … I`ll get better!

And if I`ll have time I`ll be able to join the swimming team on Fridays or attend dancing classes on Fridays and Saturdays.

I love the fact that we have so many possibilities; Too bad everyone is working extra hours almost everyday.

That reminds me about an article I read on Lifehacker

Why “We need to work extra hours” is almost always a bad idea

And on this bombshell I`m moving to the next chapter!

“Slim Fit” Sunrise:

I do love this city because everyone is slim and they all look healthy. Everywhere I look, people try to express themselves through fashion and most of the times they actually nail the outfits.

I`m not saying that everyone should be on the cover of Vogue. No. But they do try to follow the trends and the good part is that all the clothes JUST FIT! Rarely I`ve seen someone burst out of what they are wearing.

But the best feature – LEGS

If you`ve got a pair … show them! I think they teach this in school or something. Because everyone is rather short here, women tend to wear high-heels or platforms. Both acceptable in my opinion unless they are designed by Willy Wonka or Pikachu. In which case … we have a problem! But most of them stick by what is known to be “sexy as hell” – the stilettos.

Can`t go wrong with that!

And they pair the stilettos with (usually) a short skirt or very short pants. I do love the combination and it works best if you have beautiful long legs. (skinny legs are not beautiful, and we have seen plenty of those too)

This “long legs” craving is solved by putting on a shorter skirt or even shorter pants. Works all the time.

In between these two articles (pants and stilettos) there`s usually an area (leggings or stockings) where they can go wild!

I`ve never thought about all the design possibilities and the Shanghai experience was an eye-opener for me. Striped, wrinkled, cut, teared, dark, light, gradient and all of the above combined … they attract attention, and if that`s what they want, then it works flawlessly.

And the switch from heavy thick clothes to the mini-skirt and stilettos happened in a weekend.

That`s when we figured out that spring / summer is knocking on the door.

And for every picture I took, there were 15 other gorgeous women that I missed. So, I`m sorry I “couln`t catch`em all”.

Make sure to check the Picasa Album for more pictures from this series and other street shots. You can also leave individual comments there in case the Facebook comment system frightens you.

See you next week!

I`ll start this week`s letter from where I left off last Sunday,

Part 4. Job

The first day I was supposed to get to work at 10:00 for the orientation. At 9:20 I got out of the subway station and I was on to work. I had the address written down on a piece of paper, in Chinese and I had full trust invested in the Google Maps solution to my problem. So with those two in hand … what could go wrong?
Well … for starters … EVERYTHING.

So I get to where I taught the place should be, and there was no sight of a nice fancy architecture building in sight. So I start asking around. For 25 minutes I was sent back an forth in between two major streets by people that had no idea where my address was.

Eventually I cracked down and phoned the number on my paper, next to the address. In my head I was calling the contact at the immigration company. In reality I called my soon to be boss. He was the contact number written on the paper.

Told him where I was (not far from the actual place) so in 10min he was there to pick me up. I was still under the impression he`s the guy who handled our papers for China, so the conversation that followed was pretty awkward for him, as he had no freaking idea about was I was rambling about … and (of course) I taught that he knows all about it.

We finally get to the office, and he puts his phone on his desk. That`s the moment I figure he`s not leaving very soon, so he must be working there. The puzzle was complete.

I was assigned to a 2 people team project the first day. Nothing hard, some pavilions with the concept already set. (the Tangram) The thing that scared me was the deadline. At first they said it has to be done in 12 days. But after 2 days the deadline moved to the end of the week (less than 3 days) … so I freaked out a bit. Thursday afternoon (the day before the deadline) we got a memo that said “meeting cancelled, deadline next week”. So I got a good night sleep on that evening.

UA China is a big architecture company that`s focused on residential architecture. It`s their moneymaker. It covers more than 70% of the business. The rest of ~30% is public buildings. That`s where I step in. The company is split into 8 divisions. Seven of them have 40 employees each and they just do residential. We are the underdogs. Our division had 5 people the first day I got here, and now we are 8. And I`m the only westerner here. It`s pretty cool because I get to learn Chinese faster than other people. It`s not that cool because they only speak Chinese. They all understand English at least at a basic level, but it doesn`t come natural to them to speak it. My boss is at the same time a co-worker in this division so everything is really nice so far. As long as my English is at a slow pace, everyone is happy.

Fortunately for me the company offers lunch and dinner on the house. Not the best Chinese food in the world but some days is really good so I forget about the bad ones. Also in-between meals we get fruits, every day different fruit and then repeat… We had some fruits that I had no idea how to eat, and made a fool of myself but that`s ok. It was bound to happen. I was bound to be the group`s entertainer.

The offices are always kept clean and we have almost everything we need … except internet access.
Coming from 10+ years of daily internet access, I found this thing to be a little disturbing, and I must say I found it hard to get used to. Searching for Sketch-Up models is out of the question now, and I have to get around by using the offline library. Music now has to come from my iPhone, and I can`t access MixCloud anymore. And the worst part: if I want to research something online I have to move my ass to the only internet enabled computer in the office. It has only Internet Explorer … IN CHINESE ! Then i have to figure out how to get the information down using only google.com.hk and then send it to my computer via the intranet messaging system. (and it doesn`t work all the time). It`s not very productive and it will take some time to adjust to.

Part 5. More about the food

By now we have learned to figure out what dishes are vegetable based and which have meat. We also figured out where to eat when hungry and poor, and how to stay away from spicy food.

At work I get two meals every day but overall they have room for improvement. Rarely we get something that` s drop dead tasteful and usually it ends in a heartbeat. We eat a lot of vegetables (known and never seen before) and there`s rice every meal.

The soup is not that great either. We could easily convert every Chinese to our style of making the soups.
Most of the time the noodles come in a lot of “water” with some meat in them, but the probability of that meat being bone-less is so small, that I rarely order them. So fried noodles it is then!

Shanghainese food is supposed to be sweet and sour but I hardly ever tasted it so far. I`ll have to keep an eye out for it.

Part 6. The Fake-Market

Last weekend Irina needed to buy a large suitcase to travel with abroad so we headed to one of the fake markets.
It`s no different than our regular market except people are desperate to sell something. They throw themselves at you in hope you`ll actually buy something. They even carry children in their arms just to soften you up.

A lot of foreigners visit the fake market and we stand out like elephants at the zoo; so it`s because of this most of the sellers know a few words in English. How else are they going to scam the people looking for a bargain?

Rules at fake-markets

Rule #1: Go when you don`t need anything at all. It will make you a better negotiator.
Rule #2: Always have small bills. This way you don`t have to wait for change.
Rule #3: Ask the price of the item and offer 10-15% of what you hear. You`ll make them drop their price to half of what they first asked.
Rule #4: Don`t buy the item just yet. Start walking away slowly like you don`t care. They will come after you with a lower and lower price. When satisfied with the price, buy it.
Rule #5: Never pay more than 25% of the original asking price. There`s always someone with the same item that will sell for less.

Top Tip: Never buy electronics that cost more than 20Y. Not worth the trouble.

In the next letter:

Part 7. Getting by with just the iPad
Part 8. Photography with whatever I have on me
Part 9. Why we miss Romanian (European) food … and what to do about it.

Until the next time, you can check the Picasa Album of the trip. If the weather is good I will update it 3-4 times / week, and it will build up to have more pictures than what I post on the blog.

See you soon!

The first shooting for 2012 deserves a blog post, so I`ll try to be short and to the point.

As you probably know Europe was under a massive snow storm. We (in Bucharest) got hit pretty hard, and we had to stay in the comfort of our apartments for a few days. That was fine by me because I took advantage of the overcast and shot with beautiful window light for almost 5 hours. I was actually happy that I only took one strobe out of the bag, and I only used it on a couple of photos.

The photo-shoot  was awesome and I would do it again any (cloudy) day.

Catching up on stuff.

I finally managed to get done a big batch of photos for the Dear World project. First thing: Share with the whole World. Second: get some sleep!

The project is pretty simple: ask people to send messages to the world by writing them on their body.

Alexandra Sandu and Ioana Toma are also working on this project. It was brought to our country by GRASP

Hello again,

I guess you`re wondering what`s got into me with this fast followup entry… Searching through the latest photographs I came across one with a cat and I realized again how much I love furry animals. But…

The biggest problem for me is that Jo is allergic to cats. Her eyes start swelling up just like in the cartoons and there`s no anti-allergic in the world to prevent that from happening. So, when I see a cat I immediately feel the need to pet it and scratch it behind the ears.

Disclosure: I like dogs even more (heck I even have one back home in Bacau) but I don`t like the little ones that you can keep in the apartment; for me a dog has to have at least 70punds (35kg). You`ll see at the end a picture of my dog, a Romanian Shepard Dog. Now that`s a dog … but not for the Bucharest / apartment lifestyle we`re living right now.

But enough chit-chat, `cause you`re here for the pictures:

And to further proof what I wrote above:

And Elly, my trusted companion. She`s almost 7 years old (about 50 in human years) and 90 pounds (45kg). She sheds 3 garbage bags full of hair in the springtime.

See yah!

Hi folks,

Trying to keep up with the university`s never-ending projects I spend less and less time taking photos. Post-processing is just a beautiful dream. I`ve had 2 weeks of vacation for the Easter holidays and, frankly, I have no clue when they got by.

I spent them in my hometown eating, sleeping and playing Modern Warfare 2 (`cause my laptop has become sluggish and my formed desktop is still keeping up with technology). Doing all these things without leaving the comfy chair (yep … I fell asleep @ the computer), I didn`t have much time for photos. But I`ll show you 1-2 pictures just to keep you posted.

So, your`s truly, my beautiful Jo, CS and Partagas Presidentes.

This man came at the Church @12:00 to listen to the ceremony, but he was the only one without the candle. He caught my eye.

And to top things off, I`m going to post a picture of a good old friend (with whom I get together 2 times/year). She will hate me for that, but she will get over it, hopefully. In case you`re wondering, her boyfriend is giving her a hard time.

I have some pictures from an assignment for the “gypsies should get to college too” movement and some from a wedding that took place last weekend but I can`t find the time sort them… so it might take a while.

Take care everybody.

Hi guys and gals! Long time no see.

I was thinking of kicking Spring off with some nuttier pictures.

About a week ago, Ioana and myself threw a party and to spice things up a little bit I told everybody I was going to take some pictures `cause I had a funky background idea spinning outta control between my ears. To make things more interesting Ioana came up with the idea of a theme party. One thing led to another and we got ourselves a Alice in Wonderland Party (mostly because it was the movie premiere).

The people in charge, your`s truly and my lovely Jo.

And few of the brave ones that stood before my camera:

I wish ALL the people invited could have made it to the party, but unfortunately 3 of them had important stuff to get done before the week-end. I stored the background so I can use it again when we all gather for the Easter Holidays so some of you, close friends, that wish / need to have such kind of pictures of yourself … i`ll just say: it can be done!

I hope I`ll find the time to keep the blog updated.

Until the next time,

Take care everybody!

I`m writing this entry hoping that it will cheer everybody up including yours truly. The past two weeks have been like Purgatory and Hell. The worst part is that “it ain`t over yet”. The good part is: “only two more weeks to go”.

I`ve been shooting to much with my Leica in the past 5 months. And by shooting I mean: “not using my digital counterpart that often”. It was about time to use it again `cause the camera hardly got any use in the past two months.

So, Dec 17th, school, drawing exam. Everybody was tired and no one wanted to be there, especially for an exam. I guess they were all dreaming about snowboards and show-ball fights, Christmas and presents, food and sleep. Never forget food and sleep!

But I took their pictures anyway:

I won`t write their name, `cause it`s not that important for you.

Click the pictures for the slightly larger version.

Most of all, enjoy, and share with your family and friends. I`ll take some more on the next occasion.

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