China Tales Vol III

China Tales – Vol III – The FAST Track!! – Work | Masti | Racing and Dandiya!!

Nihao to all of you from a Windy/Wet/Stormy/More Wet/ Potentially Typhoonic Shanghai ☺

First and Foremost – Today is 8/10/2007 exactly a month after I reached Shanghai. If someone said somewhere that Time Flies… I would tell him that Its like a spacejet!, It dosent fly, it zooms!!!....

PS – I wrote the above and the below few lines on 8th!, but I am finishing it today!, With a lot of updates and changes!!

Thank you so much to whoever replied to my E-Mails!, Loved my Immaturish Writing ☺, Saw all my pics (am sure the girls saw the guys in my pics and vice versa for the boys!), and people who commented/wrote on my wall on Facebook ☺ ( my first finding here!, discovered yet another networking site!, and it is good, better than our loved orkut!)

So, for the ones who are lousy and don’t want to read this Exciting | Full of Adventure | Thoughtful | and Loooooong Email, here are some quick Links which will give you a sneak peak into whats happening with my life here! –

General Pics – Shanghai -
Trip to Hangzhou !! –
F o r m u l a O n e –
Videos –


Alright, so sit back, take your cup of coffee, stop looking outside the mirror, take a break from your CAT Studies, CA Audits, Boring WorkPlaces!, and enjoy the following updates from yours truly! –

So, continued from ChinaTales II (wow… this goes like a series!), I have settled down perfectly here. With Work, Food, Friends!, Adventures!, Fun… everything… I know this is still an initial phase, but its really important for anyone and everyone who goes to a new environment, a new place to find the right kind of people and places around you. I am lucky atleast I have found the right kind of people!....

Lets talk about Shanghai and China on a whole now… No doubt its one of the most vibrant places you would ever come across, full of energy, people, enthusiasm, life, party, etc etc. You can make the mistake of comparing it to Mumbai for some reason but its way beyond any place in India. The amount of money that the Chinese people and government have put into building this place is not even funny. One of the examples of it is the new Financial Center – Which would be by all means the second tallest building in the world (Tallest in China), one can argue that China is such a huge country, with so much space, so why should a city go on building huge buildings and skyscrapers ( for ppl who don’t know, Shanghai has the most skyscrapers in the world). Well, you may call it a concrete jungle, but that’s the way it is. It’s the Chinese way of saying that we are better than the best. Whatever you tell us, we will still keep growing, and slowly but surely overtake everyone of you outside!. For testimony just see the Pics I have taken from the Bund (River Side).

But, as with all BIG Cities, this is a concrete jungle of some sort. Sometimes it looks like a soulless city to me. People are just here to earn money, spend more money, earn more more money, spend more and more money.. and the cycle goes on… I agree all of us are aspiring to do that too, but we have our own ways of doing it. But Shanghai and China as a whole are progressing blindly at times. Every where you see there is some construction or the other, you can make out from the faces of people how stressed and unhappy they are with lives. You go to a metro at 830 in the morning and there are tons and thousands of people, you come back at 9 in the nite and there are the same number!... well they do work hard, but question is…do they live enough!. I would try and find that out for sure!.

Conclusion – Shanghai is a dream city, but it obviously has the flaws that a commercial capital has!

Something about the Chinese People! – There is a general impression about Chinese that they are really serious and indirect. And I think that’s true. By the limited interactions I have had with them, I do believe they are very serious (atleast the ones I have met), BUT they have a lot of fun among themselves, they kindof stick together and are hesitant in mixing up with foreigners, maybe because of language issues and a lot of cultural differences. I was told that nowadays they do put a lot of pressure on their kids to perform in studies, as they see it as the only way to combat the pressure and competition, which is so much like India. We were having a discussion among ourselves at a lunch and their was only One Chinese Guy among us explaining the Education system and Business Scenario of China, and how the Kids are made ‘bookworms’ since almost childhood! Reminds a lot of us of our childhood isn’t it?

Moving on from the serious stuff now!!.. ☺

Its amazing the kind of friends I have made here!. Picture this, in one week they gave me a nick name ! ( Nikruuuuuuuuuuu), we have been for more dinners/Shisha outings / Chillouts than I would have gone with friends back home (because everyone is new here.. well almost.. hehe), and its not that I am ‘always’ sticking to my Indian friends here, we are 6 of us living in one house and atleast me, bence (Hungarian) and Sam(Half British, Half Iranian) are the best buddies!, Talking about Life, Girls, Parties back home, business, pulling each others legs all the time. For the first time I went for a Youth Music Concert with a lot of ROCK Music (Faithless was the main attraction for people who know them), so in the middle of Shanghai, in a park there were more than 5000 Youth, enjoying, dancing, singing, drinking ☺, it was an amazing evening !...


Switch to Sunday – Race Day!, I have been wanting to write about this experience since a long time now!. We were a little sceptical if we should go or not, because we were 1000 % sure we wont get tickets, and even if we get they will be too highly priced!. But we took a chance, and then went there 4 hrs before the race to ensure we can get tickets. After a lot of negotiations with the black marketers (everything will remind you of going for a cricket match outside an Indian stadium), we finally got the lowest cost tickets for the worst places for 150 RMB ( Appx – 825 Rs), and they were not even tickets!. We found a guy who gave us some special passes which we hung around our neck, we got in and he took it back!, so we were almost without any proof of how we got in there!. so the place was a grass place, no seats, you can stand and watch the race, hardly see any cars etc.
Just a day before we met some Swedish – American people at a downtown supermarket and just exchanged numbers as even they were going for the race (its amazing how foreigners ‘network’) with each other. So we just call them up after getting there, and they called us outside the grandstand (it’s similar to clubhouse in cricket), so that we can meet and sit together somewhere. Even they had the same cheap tickets. There was an old guy in the group and he was like, just follow me and we might get into the grandstand. Initially we were scared. What if the police catches us or something!, But luckily (and I cant even say how lucky we were !), we just walked smartly from a gate which had no police to check tickets!!!! (how bizarre is that!), there were ppl checking tickets on the left and right gate but not here!). So we walk in, go up 6 floors, go inside and take a seat!, and no one even asks us anything!(maybe because we were lead by a white American wearing his country flag).

Trust me it’s a once in a life time experience watching a formula one race from the Grandstands!. The noise of the cars zooooooooming across is deafening! But the excitement is amazing, we all wanted Hamilton to win, but that wasn’t to happen, but the atmosphere, people, and the whole kick of watching a race from a place for 150 bucks (the price of grandstand tickets is more than 4000 RMB)!!! Was so amazing!.

Its not even funny how fast the weekends pass here, lazily get up, go for some food, come back, watch movies, series, talk a lot with flatmates, go for parties, and sleep at 3!, weekends are the best times for sure!.

I started watching Prison Break finally !, and am soon finishing season 1. Its so gripping man!, I have made a LOT of goals for myself for this 1 Year, and one of them is to watch as many movies and tv series as I can!.

Moving on with the ‘party’ scene!, DHL threw a Oktoberfest party last week. Its so nice to be a customer of a company like DHL!. They invite you to their events and lets you have alcohol for free!. But more than that, it’s the networking opportunity that these events provide. I met the Vice Presidents and the Key Account Managers of DHL for IKEA, Electrolux, Wal Mart, Special Olympics team etc and it was so amazing talking to them. The Key account manager for Electrolux in DHL had promised us to invite us to the Beijing Olympics (he works out of Beijing), and will host us there ☺

And finally I went to the Dandiya Night organised by the Indian Association. It was so nice to see 150 Indians together after a long long time!. I danced till I was dead!. Trust me, for almost 4 hours non-stop I was dancing to garba tunes, I had my dandiya partner as chandni(she was the only girl in my group who knew a little bit of dandiya)!, so had a ball of a time there!.

What else?!!?

Have been a little tight on finances this month because of the fun!. But I am sure I will manage!. Work is so damn amazing !! – Last two weeks, my immediate boss went to her home in Russia for a holiday and our ultimate boss went for a business trip. So I had the whole responsibility to handle the operations of the Ocean Freight. It is a very challenging Job of managing shipments, making sure people do things on time, the formalities are met. The toughest part is to make a lot of Chinese people understand simple things (ya atleast ppl in the supply chain business in china speak English)!. I had my first conference call last week with suppliers from US, HK, factory buyers from US, and me and our boss. So the job is not at all a stupid internship where you have to do a lot of data analysis and look at the comp screen the whole day!. It has a lot of challenges, external communication, decision making, networking etc etc involved!. So so far its been satisfying!

I think its been enough for this mail!.

People must have closed the window by now, or have fallen asleep!. I bet on that!
For those who haven’t, let me have a test – write back the following to me :

‘ We love your mails Nikruuuuuuu ☺ ‘

Hehe, that was so selfish of me!

Anyways, its time for me to say good bye!. I am planning to write more about business in china, work culture here, the good and bad things about living here, and a lot of other things in part IV, so watch out!

Hope you all are studying hard, partying harder, working a lot!, best of luck to the CAT givers, hope the 98 percentile in the mocks are now flowing in!

So, Zhai Chien (bye bye!)


Urs, today and forever!

Niks☺