David's Big Adventure in China

It’s been a long time again between blog updates because I’ve been working so hard on implementing the new accounting systems. I’m happy to say that we’ve successfully implemented the new systems and have completed all the accounting for the first quarter on schedule. I think that’s quite an accomplishment considering that I had no experience with the software or the industry and I was training people to use it that had no experience in either and had to do so in a language that I can only speak a little! And this was with a team that had only been working together a few months.

It’s now Monday morning (4-18) and I’m at the airport waiting on my flight to Beijing to meet my parents. They will arrive about 90 minutes after we do. Sadly, my friends Doug and Bev were not able to make the trip. My boss approved my translator going with me for the first week of my parents’ trip here to be tour guide. We will spend 4 days in Beijing then take an overnight train to Xi’an to see the Terracotta Warriors. Then we will spend 6 days in my home province seeing some sites there.

I recently went to Hechi (a medium sized city about 4 hours away from Nanning) to get my work visa. Our company is registered in Hechi so that is why I had to go there to get it. I was the first foreigner ever to get a work visa from Hechi as they had just been approved to issue them earlier this year. As part of the process for getting the visa I had to have a medical exam. The medical exam facility is probably the most efficient operation in China. I arrived just before they opened at 8 and then started hitting the exam stations one by one like an assembly line. They included urine analysis, blood analysis, ECG (or EKG?), general exam, liver ultrasound, and chest x-ray. I was finished by about 9, just 1 hour later. I went back a bit before 5 that afternoon to get my report and the total cost was 310 rmb (about $45). Amazing!

Odds and ends – I recently purchased a clothes dryer and it’s the first time in almost 4 years that I’ve had access to one. I think less than 1% of Chinese have a dryer. It sits out on my balcony next to the washing machine. An American friend told me recently that she saw shoe prints on the toilet in the Pizza Hut here recently. Apparently it was from a Chinese not wanting to sit on the toilet western style and instead used it as if it were a Chinese squatter toilet……so funny! Until next time….