A new fiscal year starts in Apr. It’s been a busy month, too busy to look forward to my upcoming trip across the Pacific this Saturday.
Focusing completely on my job keeps me away other distractions. My cousin gave birth to a baby girl last month on the European Continent. She doesn’t work. While I’ve been having doubts about my job, and sometimes I can’t figure out what I’m going to do if I’m not here.
SPT is hiring. Bosses came from HK and the States for interviews, creating a sense of tension in our small and usually relaxed office. I remember having read a blog post written by an executive assistant also working in the entertainment industry, saying that In showbiz where anyone would kill for your job and even do it for free, I knew how extremely lucky I was to “just be an assistant”. Yes, and the chances are far more smaller in China.
Stop complaining. Focus. Prioritize. Get things done.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
Social network in the real world
Spring is coming. Everything is waking slowly to the warm sunshine. Business activities become alive again.
It was because of a series of coincidences that I could attend Casbaa's online video forum last week. With my boss on biz trip and another co-worker leaving, it was my turn. Formal dress and light makeup made me feel like a different person, as if they had driven away all the winter blues.
It was actually a good opportunity for me to meet new people, especially when most of them were senior corporate executives. Though I was just a junior, the fact that I was the only participant from SPE attracted some attention and it was a rewarding experience learning from and networking with them. A project manager from Microsoft doing Bing video search was glad to know about new media; a Malaysian girl from DW came to promote their programs; a young guy happened to be the translator at a Sony movie premiere last month and knew some of my colleagues… It’s not a big world.
Maybe we won’t meet again or have any connections in the future. But I’ll remember the day, unlike any normal day in the office.
Monday, February 14, 2011
局外人
春节，情人节，元宵节。二月的节日一个接一个，却丝毫开心不起来。节日只不过是给了平时不联系的acquaintance一个联系的机会。
亲戚朋友聚在一起的话题已经离不开结婚生子。我像局外人一样。不敢也不愿意说什么。
昨天大学一个宿舍的同学聚了聚。五个人，两对夫妻加上我 --- 形单影只，落寞不堪。校园里的人和事已经变得模糊，同学之间也渐渐疏离。有时候宴席散了就散了，再聚首好像也没有意义。时间总是会冲淡一切。
八零后的同龄人已经有了自己的家庭，剩下的就像罪人一样，这就是所谓的peer pressure. 面对压力，我无力抵抗，只能保持沉默。希望不要在沉默中灭亡。
亲戚朋友聚在一起的话题已经离不开结婚生子。我像局外人一样。不敢也不愿意说什么。
昨天大学一个宿舍的同学聚了聚。五个人，两对夫妻加上我 --- 形单影只，落寞不堪。校园里的人和事已经变得模糊，同学之间也渐渐疏离。有时候宴席散了就散了，再聚首好像也没有意义。时间总是会冲淡一切。
八零后的同龄人已经有了自己的家庭，剩下的就像罪人一样，这就是所谓的peer pressure. 面对压力，我无力抵抗，只能保持沉默。希望不要在沉默中灭亡。
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Where to buy new year cards in Beijing
The spring festival is just around the corner and we decided to buy some new year cards for clients at last minute. But it turned out to be a very frustrating experience.
The post office had sold out all the new year cards. Watson’s, which used to sell greeting cards some years ago, no longer sold any today. Neither did the stationery store.
Yesterday I waited 25 minutes in minus 6 degrees to get a taxi and the 2.5km journey to Carrefour took another 20 minutes due to bad traffic in the evening. Unluckily, there were only a dozen Christmas cards left on the shelf.
Today I bought all the 32 cards available in a bookstore. But it wasn’t over yet. The cards were produced by Hallmark (there was a logo on the back of each card); while Hallmark channel is one of our competitors (I work for another entertainment channel). Ironic, huh!
Paper greeting cards have quietly withdrawn from stores or even peoples’ lives. I still remember the days when we would exchange new year cards with friends in the early nineties. And every year I would pick some beautiful cards for myself. I keep them till now.
The post office had sold out all the new year cards. Watson’s, which used to sell greeting cards some years ago, no longer sold any today. Neither did the stationery store.
Yesterday I waited 25 minutes in minus 6 degrees to get a taxi and the 2.5km journey to Carrefour took another 20 minutes due to bad traffic in the evening. Unluckily, there were only a dozen Christmas cards left on the shelf.
Today I bought all the 32 cards available in a bookstore. But it wasn’t over yet. The cards were produced by Hallmark (there was a logo on the back of each card); while Hallmark channel is one of our competitors (I work for another entertainment channel). Ironic, huh!
Paper greeting cards have quietly withdrawn from stores or even peoples’ lives. I still remember the days when we would exchange new year cards with friends in the early nineties. And every year I would pick some beautiful cards for myself. I keep them till now.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
California Dreamin'
All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray
I've been for a walk on a winter's day
I'd be safe and warm if I was in L.A.
California dreamin' on such a winter's day
Stopped in to a church I passed along the way
Well I got down on my knees and I pretend to pray
You know the preacher liked the cold, he knows I'm gonna stay
California dreamin' on such a winter's day
All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray
I've been for a walk on a winter's day
If I didn't tell her I could leave today
California dreamin' on such a winter's day
On such a winter's day, on such a winter's day
I've been for a walk on a winter's day
I'd be safe and warm if I was in L.A.
California dreamin' on such a winter's day
Stopped in to a church I passed along the way
Well I got down on my knees and I pretend to pray
You know the preacher liked the cold, he knows I'm gonna stay
California dreamin' on such a winter's day
All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray
I've been for a walk on a winter's day
If I didn't tell her I could leave today
California dreamin' on such a winter's day
On such a winter's day, on such a winter's day
For the past 100 days, there hasn’t been a single drop of rain or a flake of snow in Beijing
Thursday, December 23, 2010
An unhappy ending
The last workday of 2010 is over. Finally.
2010 ends with disappoints, disappointed with Beijing, with my job.
Over the past decade Beijing has grown more and more uninhabitable.
The number of automobiles in the capital has more than doubled since 2002, reaching over 4.5 million today and far outgrown road networks. Main roads are basically parking lots even at high noon, making traveling from one place to another an ordeal.
While car industry is booming, air quality is getting worse. (Beijing is notorious for that.) Besides car exhausts, “dirty industries” in the city and nearby provinces are major contributors. Thanks to “made in China”!
Despite the poor physical environment, house prices have tripled in the past 5 years. The population is swelling. There is nothing you can do without queuing: taking the subway; using an ATM; shopping at a supermarket and seeing a doctor… The list is endless; so is the queue. What’s more annoying is that there are some barbarians who don’t queue at all.
The megacity is eating away its residents’ lives day by day. Nevertheless, these factors cannot stop people from flocking in. Regional disparities in China are excessively large and resources are allocated to first tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai. As a result, manual laborers come along and college graduates remain here no matter how hard life is.
For my job, I’m very disappointed at my boss for not keeping her promise. Ai. Let it go…
2010 ends with disappoints, disappointed with Beijing, with my job.
Over the past decade Beijing has grown more and more uninhabitable.
The number of automobiles in the capital has more than doubled since 2002, reaching over 4.5 million today and far outgrown road networks. Main roads are basically parking lots even at high noon, making traveling from one place to another an ordeal.
While car industry is booming, air quality is getting worse. (Beijing is notorious for that.) Besides car exhausts, “dirty industries” in the city and nearby provinces are major contributors. Thanks to “made in China”!
Despite the poor physical environment, house prices have tripled in the past 5 years. The population is swelling. There is nothing you can do without queuing: taking the subway; using an ATM; shopping at a supermarket and seeing a doctor… The list is endless; so is the queue. What’s more annoying is that there are some barbarians who don’t queue at all.
The megacity is eating away its residents’ lives day by day. Nevertheless, these factors cannot stop people from flocking in. Regional disparities in China are excessively large and resources are allocated to first tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai. As a result, manual laborers come along and college graduates remain here no matter how hard life is.
For my job, I’m very disappointed at my boss for not keeping her promise. Ai. Let it go…
Monday, December 13, 2010
Do we still need translators?
A few weeks ago I was helping a friend translate two college application essays from Chinese to English. The essays were about his travels around the world and they added up to 5,000 Chinese characters or so. He’d been to 40 countries and visited numerous scenic spots: the fjords of Sweden, Salamis of Cyprus, Santorini of Greece, the Bosphorus Bridge of Turkey… Many of the names were new to me, and under a tight deadline, I didn’t trouble to search them one by one. I copied and pasted the whole essay to Google translate and got a satisfying English version, which I would rate 6 or 7 out of 10. Then I corrected the grammar mistakes and trimmed some sentence structures. The essay was near perfect!
I hate to admit it but Google Translate has a bigger vocabulary than I and it’s strong in terminologies. It’s more frustrating to find that Google is able to do a better job than a translator.
For the time being, its weakness is in grammar. And the English to Chinese translation doesn’t work very well. But don’t worry. I won’t be surprised when one day Google translate replaces human translators.
I hate to admit it but Google Translate has a bigger vocabulary than I and it’s strong in terminologies. It’s more frustrating to find that Google is able to do a better job than a translator.
For the time being, its weakness is in grammar. And the English to Chinese translation doesn’t work very well. But don’t worry. I won’t be surprised when one day Google translate replaces human translators.
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