Double check your Chinese name selection
Posted: Wed, 02 Jul 2008, 02:03:30, GMT | 1296 views Share
I arrived in Shanghai at 8am Monday morning with very little sleep on the plane (I left London at 2pm on Saturday). This lack of sleep (as I found out multiple times during the course of Monday) wasn't particularly useful. The first thing I did at the airport was to get out some cash. Standing in front of the cash machine, I tried to remember the conversion rate between the British pounds and the Chinese yuan. I was pretty sure it was somewhere around 1:100, and decided to withdraw 10,000 yuan for my week's trip. The machine displayed an error, saying that the maximum it dispenses is 3,000 yuan. Fine - then 3,000 it is.
I got to the hotel pretty easily, took a quick shower, had breakfast, and went into the office. At 5pm, a bunch of people play basketball (well, it turns out) and I played basketball with them from 5-7pm - outside in the HOT AND HUMID CHINESE SUMMER SUN. I didn't die, so that was a relief. The game even injected a little life into me, so I was able to get back to the hotel and have a decent dinner and work for a while until going to sleep about 11pm. I needed to sleep, so I didn't set an alarm and woke up about 9am, had a nice breakfast and made it into the office by 10am. The sleep was brilliant.
I kept wondering why the ATM only dispensed 3000 yuan at a time, so I looked up the currency conversion rate.. where I found out that the exchange rate is closer to 1:13. So my 3000 yuan actually withdrew closer to £300. Oops. Glad I didn't succesfully withdraw £1000 like I had initially tried! (Note to self: get sleep before using ATMs).
In other random news, I was very excited before leaving London - my drivers license had a horrible picture on it. It probably would have been a good picture if they police needed to distribute it sometime for public safety, but otherwise it was pretty horrible. I can picture it being on a Most Wanted list sometime, with people saying things like "excuse me, sir, have you seen this man? He escaped from our detention center and might be in this area." So I was excited because I found out that the UK lets your replace your driving license picture if you take a new set of passport photos, enclose a cheque for £17.50, and mail it into the licensing agency. If all goes well, my new license with a cute picture will be back in my hands shortly.
Gay. There, just checking to make sure my website doesn't have a stupidity filter embedded. There's a great story about the American Family Association (aka the anti-gay group) and its website. It turns out they think the word "gay" is too gay-friendly and they prefer the word homosexual. So their website automatically filters and replaces any instance of "gay" in an article or posting with the word "homosexual". It seemed like that worked for a while, until a story about the fastest man on the Olympic track team - Tyson Gay. The website took an Associated Press article about Tyson and replaced all instances of his last name with "Homosexual" and wound up with phrases like "Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has.. In Saturday's opening heat, Homosexual pulled way up, way too soon.. 'It means a lot to me,' the 25-year old Homosexual said.." You can read the full and almost too-funny-to-be-true report on Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog.
And in a tip to anyone planning travels to Shanghai soon, (well, aside from plan for months to get a visa), the Economist has an interesting posting on Travel Tips to China. One of the tips is that if you plan to do business here, you should have a Chinese friend help you pick a Chinese name, so you can print it on your business card. But as one user commented, "if someone gives you a Chinese name, find out what it means. I found out mine meant Strongly Arrogant." Well said, friend. Well said.
Nothing else too much to report.. Shanghai's always a great place to visit, and I'm enjoying my visit again. It's always sad the visits are so short! Back to London tomorrow.