Guilin

We've arrived in Guilin and we already fell for a tout who managed to take us to a restaurant which sold us pijiu yu (beerfish) for three times the going rate.

Unfortunately we were dumb enough to order without asking for the prices in advance, as the dishes advertised outside were all moderately priced. Hell, did this get on my nerves! I REALLY should know better by now!

For the more curios of my readership: We paid 200 Yuen (~33 CHF) for a fish, noodles, some beef and a beer. While this would still be moderate for a two-person meal in Switzerland, it still bugs me, as it's vastly overpriced for China...

But let's talk about the more positive things: Guilin is a beautiful place! The lake with the illuminated towers looks really great at night. And we've even found a nice place that serves excellent coffee and small meals.

A skyline like.no.other

To quickly forget about the Lufthansa hassles, I took Ursula downtown to Puxi last night so she could get a first glimpse of the city. Slowly she seems to realise what made me come here in the first place. We had a few drinks in the Capitain's bar before heading back to element fresh where we got my favorite - the teriyaki salmon salad!

Sneak Peek

Urusla finally wanted to know what this Shanghai craze is all about. So she decided to join me for the October holiday. She arrived today at Pudong international airport with both bags missing (thanks Lufthansa!). Now we've had to postpone our scheduled flight to Guilin in the hopes that LH manages to find and ship our bags to Shanghai by tomorrow.

Rusty old man

The Economics quizz went quite well, I guess. Let's see once we get back the results. However, I'm definitely no longer used to this school-like test taking thing. It felt rather otherworldly to me. But I guess I'll get used to it again sooner than I'd like to ;)

Facing the Economics Quizz

Tomorrow we'll have our first quizz in economics. The quizz is some kind of multiple choice short-exam to make sure people reviewed the material up to this point. It will count 10% towards the final grade.

Some people have become rather busy reviewing lecture notes and stuff. I don't really understand what for. It seems all common sense to me. Maybe they're trying to memorize formulas rather than to understand the concepts. But then again maybe I'm the one not getting the point here. I'll let you know tomorrow after the quizz...

October holiday approaching

The October holiday is getting closer with blinding speed! The last hurdle will be an economics quizz on Thursday before I can finally let go and hop on a plane to Guilin. I plan to spend the week with Ursula in this most beautiful region of China. We'll then top off the unspoiled, pure nature experience by going to Shanghai's Formula 1 race on Sunday, Oct 7.

A hairy Sunday

This Sunday the international club organized a road trip to the neighboring town Yangchenghu where we could taste the most hyped local delicacy: Freshwater hairy crabs.

The act of getting there and back was an experience in itself. We spent about 3hrs in traffic for the 60km distance each way. Sunday seemed like China's most popular driving day to me, although I was quickly told that traffic during rushhour was actually much worse.

The crab, however, was really excellent and didn't really care how long we had been on the road. Although mean voices said that the crab was as excellent as the town was ugly, which, in my personal opinion is a gross overstatement - no crab on earth can ever be that excellent...

All in all the excursion was an intense experience (especially with the mud-snail-appetizer beforehand) and it presented a well deserved and longed-for diversion from the daily homework routine.

Thanks International Club!

Ambassador President

I've been elected president of the student ambassadors for section 2. People keep congratulating me, although nobody's got a clue yet what this position is all about. Let's hope it doesn't involve too much work ;-)

The reason I volunteered was basically that I wanted to ensure that the information Wiki I had kickstarted will find its way into the regular information/application process and not die a premature death.

A Really Bad Day(tm)

On one of the first days here we were warned about life in China that initial euphorism would soon evaporate and that our mood would reach an all-time low after two to three months before recovering back to normal.

This alone not being enough, one of the long-time expats at our school said, that even after having lived years in China, he would still feel like killing everybody around him once every few months.

Now guess what, yesterday I found out why: I went to Carrefour to buy a clothes drying rack. Lucky me, it was on sale for only RMB 159 instead of 249! Unfortunately at the cash register, I realized that they had charged me the full price, i.e. 90 RMB too much. As a responsible customer, I complained and asked for the situation to be rectified.

Well, to make a long story short: It took roughly 6 people and 1.5 hours of waiting time to refund me the 90 RMB (15 CHF).

This not enough, some time earlier at the bank: In order to change CHF (which were already sitting on my bank account) to RMB (which would continue to sit on my bank account) it took me 1.25 hours of waiting in line at the local branch.

No wonder I had almost killed the guy at the campus cafeteria when he figured I'd have to wait for 30 minuts until the kitchen would be able to prepare my food...

The math myth (revised)

Last Wednesday I posted a story about the math test results rumour (see here). Turns out it wasn't very far from the truth.

MBA office this week sent out email to the poor bastards who failed the test and will have to take additional math lessons. Those students who passed the test, however, were never informed about their success. People who didn't listen to the grapevine carefully might still be afraid of having failed the test as they were never informed otherwise.

Interesting concept. Maybe once I pick up chinese logic, it'll occur cristal clear to me?!

I've moved

That's right. On Saturday I moved all my stuff to the new apartment and I've been sleeping there ever since. Pics will follow, as will the HORROR STORIES associated with getting it cleaned, repaired and equipped.

Improv star

On Friday there was the welcoming party where I had signed up to do a little improv show. Guess what: WE DID GREAT! Some people even went up to me after the show to tell me how cool they thought the stuff had been.

It wasn't my achievment, though, since I had a great team: Erika and Jordana helped me out. Erika had some acting experience already and Jordana is just a natural! To be honest, they probably did much better on stage than myself...

First we did a Stop-and-Go which went very well. Then we did some puppeteering stuff with puppeteers picked from the audience. [Side note: I could have killed the guy who was controlling me, as he constantly did "funny" things such as sticking my middle finger out or picking my nose, etc]

Pictures will follow as soon as I had a chance to upload them (you know, the workload...)

The heat is on...

Workload has increased dramatically, which is why I will only be able to write once or twice a week, and much less so, edit photos to be published here. I know, you'd like me to publish more infos, but hey, don't complain to me, complain to the guys who give us all the assignments!

Nokia does it again

To those of you who have been making fun of my old Nokia cellphone: Prepare to shut up! I got myself a shiny new cellphone. Nokia has introduced a new model which was finally worth the wait. No need to rush though, it's not yet available in Europe...

At less than 10 mm thick, sporting a camera, bluetooth support and an FM radio, I can hardly find anything to complain. Mine even sports a built-in chinese dictionary ;-)

After years of producing ugly, bulky, feature-laden bricks, Nokia seems to have finally found back to the path of enlightment. Buy some shares, guys, 'cause this phone is guaranteed to become a runaway success!

Improv show approaching rapidly

In a moment of mental incapacity I signed up to do an Improv show at the 07 Welcoming party. Back then the date of Sept 7 seemed far away, but now the deadline is rapidly approaching. I've found two courageous co-students who don't mind to make a fool out of themselves and we've been practicing tonight quite a bit. We're far from perfect, but I guess we'll somehow manage to pull a good show. We'll see...

Home sweet home

This is Paolo, the friendly Italian fellow who will become my flatmate for the next 12 months. Today we finally signed the rental agreement for our new appartment.

We had been visiting loads of places until we finally fell in love with this one. Even though the kitchen looked rather filthy and the refrigerator smelled very bad (the owner had cut power without opening the doors first) we instantly recognized this diamond in the rough.

We should be able to move in this weekend, provided that the cleaning works out as we have demanded. And yeah, we will closely watch the cleaning procedure, you can bet on this one!

I'll post some pictures as soon as we're ready for the house warming party.

The math myth

A few days ago I made a joke to someone that the results of our initial math test had already been announced by email, i.e. those who had passed the test would already have received a notice telling so.

Funny thing is, the joke seems to have turned into a rumour which is spreading like a bush fire. And some OEGs (overly eager guys), who - as everybody else - have not yet received anything, seem to be short of panicking by now ;-)

Chinese jogging

Today I started my own personal workout program. I went jogging for half an hour while listening to a Chinese lesson on my iPod. Generally the whole thing went quite well, except for the fact that I would have been supposed to actually speak after the guy in my headphones. However, being stuck on the running machine in the gym, with several other people working out next to me, I experienced some kind of "speaker's block" and all I achieved was some kind of humble mumbling...

Maybe I should have a few beers before working out next time, just to loosen up a little bit?

Code of conduct

Last Friday, the entire student body of the 2007 intake has formulated its own unique code of conduct.

CEIBS CODE OF CONDUCT

1. Every student is a CEIBS ambassador and has the obligation to proudly represent the CEIBS community.
2. Show initiative and actively participate in CEIBS community by cooperating, helping and sharing.
3. Make learning enriching through healthy and constructive competition.
4. Be ethical and act with integrity at all times.
5. Be socially responsible and contribute to your community.
6. Respect students, teachers and school, accepting differences and promoting mutual understanding.
7. STUDY HARD, PARTY HARDER.

The comittee had actually aimed for eight items, as eight is the lucky number in Asia. However, they somehow got stuck after the seventh and my suggestion 8. Under all conditions always remember item 7 was not received with much enthusiasm...

Easy peasy

Today was the first lecture day.

Some overeagerly hard working students already tried to spread panic by claiming that one would have to prepare homework for certain sessions and they started to solve some exercises listed as homework for the first lecture. What a weird thought though, solving the assignments before the lesson! Makes the professor kind of redundant ;-)

There's not much stress yet, as the first lectures in each course consisted mainly of administrative issues and a short overview of the course. Let's see how the week develops...

Medical check

We had our medical check today. Every foreigner who applies for a residence permit in Shanghai has to go through this procedure...

Let me tell you one thing guys, if you ever thought of China as being an unorganized, underdeveloped place, think again. The four of us arrived at the hospital and within one (1) hour we got administratively registered, photographed, interviewed, measured, x-rayed, ultrasounded, chest-listened-to, palpated, sight-checked, EKG'd, bloodsampled and billed.

Never ever have I encountered a medical factory - oops, I meant facility - which was as highly organized and efficient. Their computer system even fed the customer data from initial registration down the line to the billing place, where a box displayed the customer's name and balance and a synthesized english voice spelled out the amount due.

Critical reflection

Oops... I'm not entirely sure, but I might have overshot a little bit... After one week, everybody on campus seems to know my name... The (all abundant ;-) girls greet me at every walkway corner...

Maybe I should run a low profile for a couply days and let things cool down a bit?

Flowers for Ursula

Before leaving Switzerland, I was strongly encouraged to send bi-weekly flowers...

However, I cannot really do this, since pricing levels of the Swiss flower delivery service would simply double my living costs over here.

But luckily, they got virtual flowers on their website, and they even come for free!!!

I'm feeling guilty

I'm feeling sooo guilty as I'm badly lagging behind with my posts. So much has happened the last few days that I barely had the time to unload photos from my camera, much less to comment on them. But I promise I'll catch up on it this weekend and I'll backdate all the articles, so the blog will appear in order. Hence, make sure to check some of the older posts too or you'll miss out on some seriously cool stuff...