Sunday morning,
I found out that my company's laptop has an embedded mike...Cool..so went on with a yahoo messenger voice session w/ sophie and hugo. Even far far away I could hear Hugo’s charming voice and he could hear his dad saying ”shh... shh… shh…”
Went to the gym, had a nice breakfast, by noon I was ready for my 2nd day. My goal was to arrive to Shenzhen, that’s where I’ll be staying for the next 2 weeks. So I had to take the MTR again to Kowloon, then the shuttle bus to Hung Hom to take a train to Lo Wu. At first glance, it looks complex, but the adventure was quite similar to the journey of an American traveling to Paris and using subways , RER to go to the suburbs..
Their transportation system looks familiar except for the Chinese characters all over the place. Arrived to Lo Wu, everybody has to go through the customs, HK citizens, foreigners, etc..Once u passed the customs…this is it..u arrived into no mans’ land…nobody speaks English, nothing is written in English..
Everybody could recognize the big tourist in town. So a man approached me, asking me If I needed a cab. He took my luggage, another man was w/ him..they brought me to the 5th floor..i started to get a bit worried when I was by myself w/ 4 others guys in some rusty elevator. He put my luggage in his car which wasn’t a cab ..That’s where I start to asking myself “wtf?”
I had the address of my hotel written in Chinese, he starts to show me the price he wants me to pay on his cell phone…HK$400…wtf?
“No way, Jose!” then I find myself trying to explain him I need a receipt first of all. But what’s the point.. we don’t understand each other..So now the price went down to 350, 300, after arguing for a while, I leave the cab, spend 10 minutes trying to get my luggage off this trunk. Then I go back to the 1st floor w/ 5 guys in the elevator…they didn’t give up.. needless to say, I was a “bit” worried.. I was afraid I wont see anytime soon my hotel room.
Retour a la case depart, I get another guy @ the taxi booth, same deal, he takes my luggage, make me walk til his car…wasn’t a cab of course..his price was HK$150, fuck it..i took it.
Basically when u arrived in Shenzhen u have to go through “tranchees” of illegal cab drivers before finding an authentic red cab.
Arrived to the Sheraton, I was relieved…for a few minutes, I’m finding out they’re using another currency ..stupid tourist that I was..HK$ is for HK only, back in the rest of China, they use RMB (chinese Yuan)…u learn everyday.
I was able to pay the “cab” w/ my HK$, it’s a tiny bit more expensive that RMB. Oh well, went to the room. Relaxed a bit,.. found out the swimming pool was in renovation…I won’t say “Thank u mark” this time…The place is quite remote; he takes me ½ h to get to work.
Monday morning,
I meet Defu Chen, my contact in China, he works for the same company, he lives in Shenzhen. He’s the only English speaking person I know at that point.On our way to Huawei, we have to go through several checkpoints. Not everybody is allowed in the city. You need some authorization from the government. Of course, they don’t check every car, if any. Huawei is quite big w/ several buildings, arrived @ the R&D building, had to wait 20 minutes @ the reception for our huawei contact. Everyday u have to go through this security process.
The campus is so big, they have shuttles to go from one building to another.
In the lab, I meet Xiao Bing, a developer that doesn’t really speak English, who I’ll be working w/ for those 2 weeks. Lunch time..it’s noon..everybody go for lunch @ noon sharp. It’s buffet style, u get to eat kinda everything…it’s quite good actually and there’s everything.
Nap time @ 1pm, people sleep @ their desk, some have their own sleeping bag. 2pm, back to work, I didn’t took a nap, maybe next time. Went back to the lab and made sure my computer was beeping once in a while to wake them up.
We left @ 6pm, and went w/ defu to a nice restaurant, had to touch some huge glass ball to open the heavy metal door. Had some fried pigeon, slimmy mushrooms, didnt try the chicken feet soup, liked the very spicy lamb, some local Shenzhen beer called Kingway… I also tried some papaya soup w/ chicken and shark fin…very good.
To be continued...
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