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Oh. My. God. It’s just after 8pm and I finished dinner not too long ago and made the mistake of ordering another beer at my usual restaurant. Why? I was having fun playing a Texas Hold ‘Em poker app on my phone and it’s not like I have anything better going on tonight. (Did I mention before that a beer here usually comes in 0.5L sizes only? I ordered the small one and it still came as a 0.5L size!)

Normally that would not be a problem as I can hold my beer, even after one litre of it. And Suzhou is a seriously safe city plus the place I’m staying at is maybe 300-400 meters away.

But none of that is the cause of my “OMG” outburst. You see, there are all these karaoke places near by and I know a bunch of my coworkers really enjoy singing. Like REALLY enjoy. I’m pretty sure they are all part owners in karaoke joints…It’s not just a myth that karaoke is popular over in this part of the world.

Anyway, it turns out tonight’s live music at this restaurant/bar is a guy with a CD collection of karaoke hits, an electronic keyboard, and a microphone. Apparently all he knows are codependency songs from the late 70s and early 80s…And he’s the only one singing. It feels like I’m stuck in a timewarp and no matter how hard I try and drain this beer, the bottom of the glass seems further and further away! It might be a night to leave a wounded soldier upon the field of battle …

Tomorrow’s agenda: My first trip to Shanghai! Yep, you guessed it; there’s a poker match to be had 🙂 And no faux karaoke!

As the one month mark marched on by, I find my self comparing my old life in SF to my new life in Suzhou less and less. I don’t need to convert money exchange rates to determine how expensive something is and I can discuss distances in km instead of miles. I learned celsius along time ago so when I went running tonight after work with the running club I knew in advance the outside temperature of 36C rivaled that of New Orleans in the dog days of August, humidity and all! 

But what exactly are some big differences between SF and Suzhou?

• Smoking indoors in Suzhou is normal, but not at work, medical clinic, grocery stores, shopping mall, or public transport options. (I’ve not been on one of the maglev trains yet, so I only am referring to city transport options.)
• It is very clean here, except for the air. Exact opposite of San Francisco where you’d often be wondering if that pile of poop came from the human who’s in a drug induced daze or that humans pure bred dog that’s living on the streets with the owner but you never are concerned with the air or water quality.
• In SF you will walk down the street any time during the day and need to be aware of your surroundings so not to get mugged or walk into the middle of a drug deal. In Suzhou you never worry about your personal safety except when crossing the street. As a coworker mentioned today, “The traffic lights are not safe here [when trying to cross in a crosswalk].”
• Housing prices are expensive in both cities, though SF is on a whole separate level of obsurdity. 
• Public transportation, while expansive in both places, is much more reliable and convenient in Suzhou … And way cheaper! A one-way bus fare in SF was $2.25 when I left; it’s about $0.30 in Suzhou.
• Speaking about public transportation, while both systems start around the same time in the morning (6am), Suzhou’s system mostly ends between 9pm and 10pm. A few bus routes and the subway go until 11-11:30pm, but nothing passed then from what I can determine.
• In Suzhou anything that requires manual labor is extremely cheap: twice a week house cleaning for a month is roughly $100 in Suzhou whereas $100 in SF *might* cover one cleaning a month for a small one-bedroom apt.
• Food in Suzhou is still seasonal. In SF there are no seasons. 

Thats all I have for now. At some point this list will be appended. But I want to leave this post with one parting thought and something I really miss about SF apart from my friends & softball team: It’s nealy impossible to find a late night burrito stand in Suzhou!

If it weren’t for the help I received from the relocation company, I’d likely still be trying to obtain a local SIM card for my phone (which allows me to have a local phone number and use cellular data). It’s just as confusing in China as it is in the USA. The one difference, the company I went with, China Unicom, had only two plans to choose from. I paid for a few months up front (about $70 USD total for three months) and then the next bill will have to be paid online. Which means it’s time for the bank account.

The person I was working with suggested we go to ICBC (one of the three or four largest consumer banks in China). The staff there spoke fairly good English so setting up the account wasn’t difficult but there was a TON of paperwork involved. The account I opened is basically a savings account with a debit card attached to it and it came with this strange little random number generator I’m supposed to use when accessing the account online. At least I think that’s what it is for since I had to set up a six digit PIN as well.

Lots of paperwork, pictures of my passport — some of which I had to be holding as the picture included me in it — and a couple hours later add up to me being able to receive a paycheck at the end of the month! And once that happens it’s time to go apartment rental shopping!

Tonight is the weekly poker game at Ollie’s. Wish me luck!

The day finally came; after what feels like an eternity, I’m once again gainfully employed by a good company. In fact, after a four year absence, I’m back to being on the payroll for the first company I worked for out of college: Microsoft.

Yes, that’s right — the Microsoft. The one you’re thinking that is in Redmond/Seattle Washington. The one that makes Windows, Office, Xbox, and some pretty sweet Surface laptops.

But then you’re thinking “Why the heck is Richie in China if he’s working for Microsoft?” and what a great question that is! As it turns out, hiring really great software engineers is extremely difficult in the USA, especially when a lot of younger, fresh out of college students prefer to work at companies like Uber, Facebook, SnapChat (yeah, I don’t understand that app either), or Google. The old 1990s type companies similar to Microsoft, Oracle, and Cisco are fighting to get that new talent but it’s an uphill battle. Once you pass that hiring hurdle, you are faced with the issue there is a severe lack of graduates with STEM degrees (science, technology, engineering, math). And don’t get me started with the stupidness that is the visa process for hiring skilled overseas workers to legally enter the United  States. It all adds up to non-winning combination.

It turns out that in China Microsoft is one of the highly sought after companies for software engineers. With government friendly policies and offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzen, and Suzhou, Microsoft is getting those great engineers and the product development follows suit. This allows Microsoft to develop an increasing number of products solely in China, including the one I’m working on.

So what is that product? It’s a team collaboration product called SharePoint. It can easily act as a company’s internal website (or intranet, to use the technical term, not to be confused with internet) or a location where information, documents, and business logic/process can live and execute. It is employed by many Fotune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies as it fills a big need for organizations of many sizes. What’s also pretty freaking cool is that Microsoft’s intranet is powered by SharePoint! That means everyone in my company will be using the product I’m helping to develop! Pretty cool, huh?

My exact set of features that I’ll be helping to produce is still a bit in the air, but I’m sure it’ll be fun to work on as all my colleagues, Chinese & expat alike, are extremely nice and dedicated to making this product even better than it currently is.

Stay tuned!

Oh, before I forget, the blog might not be updated daily as now my M-F (or S-Th for those in the USA, due to the time zone difference) likely won’t be very interesting. But then again, I’m not quite sure how interesting this blog is to begin with! 

Another short post today as I’m completely exhausted from the trip to Hangzhou! After learning about the Chinese tradition of the toast at dinner last night, I woke up early to go run with the running in from work. Six of us set out at 6:05am … Some faster than others … And some slow like me (since when is a 9 minute mile slow???). Well, turns out the loop we were doing was about 10km, well past my usual 6km limit. That limit was hot and the next 70 minutes were spent walking back to the hotel. THEN it was time for a full day of activities, which included picking vegetables and fishing out lunch out of the wetlands — literally. Don’t worry, tons of food pictures are coming tomorrow 🙂 And yes, it was all amazing once again! The ride back to Suzhou was long as we hit traffic, so yeah … Not much of a blog post today but plenty more coming tomorrow! 再见 // Good bye!

Today was a pretty special day. My team at work was having a two-day off-site in a nearby city called Hangzhou and they invited me to take part in it!

Needless to say there’ll be lots of food and nature/landscape pictures coming soon. Hangzhou is a beautiful city, and the food…OMG!

Continuing yesterday’s post about VPNs and YouTube TV, today’s will be a bit more simple. As the Chinese government is rather strict about what information they allow their citizens and residents to access (aka, censorship), certain apps just won’t work without a VPN: Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Netflix, anything from Google, Microsoft’s OneDrive …

Even with a VPN, depending on your internet connection speed, trying to make VoIP calls (Voice over Internet Protocol) may be difficult as the audio may be choppy; video calling may be even worse!

Enter WeChat, an app from a Chinese company that works great for messaging and making voice or video calls without a VPN. The app is free for Android and iOS and is pretty easy to use, once you get it installed and configured. It’s been a while since I installed it so I don’t remember all the steps, but do be sure to connect WeChat with your mobile phone number as it’s required. Don’t worry, you can still do everything over WiFi!

In China is seems pretty normal to use WeChat for everything communications related. That can be from sendings personal txts, conducting business, or continuing a conversation with someone you just share in a Didi ride. The app, once configured, gives you the ability to show a QR code on your screen that someone can scan using their phone to add you to their contacts list. Pretty simple, huh?

There’s another way to add people to your contacts list if you’re not physically located next to them: Find them via their username. Your username acts similarly as your email address or phone number in this case. And, if you’re truly a friend of mine, shoot me a message through email, txt, or FB messenger and I’ll send you over my WeChat username so you can add me and we can chat! (I’m not going to post such personal information that can easily be spammed on such a public forum…)

So, friends, go ahead already and install WeChat, add my username to your contacts list, and let’s txt/talk/video chat away!

Today’s word of the day: 手机 (手机), meaning cellphone.

Well that put a damper on my plans for the day; waking up to a pretty good thunder and lightening storm dampened (ha!) my plans for exploring a new part of Suzhou this morning. The weather appears to be getting nicer after lunchtime, but not sure if I’ll be headed out or not just yet. Maybe at dinner time!

I ran into my first “well it works fine in the USA but not here in China” issue: My electric clippers. You see, I was going to give myself a haircut today as I’m getting a little shaggy on the sides. I plugged my clippers into the 115v outlet (using an adapter, not a converter) and turned them on. WHOAH did they make way too loud of a sound, almost chainsaw level. Guess that extra 5v isn’t good for my tried, true, and trusty clippers that I’ve owned since 1999. The $30 I paid for them in a Walgreens back in the day is more than paid off. It looks like I’ll have to find a place to buy a 115v-to-110v converter or find a new pair of clippers made to work here specifically in China.

Since a lot of my days right now revolve around foraging for food at nearby restaurants (that may or maynot have menus with pictures on them … ), I started finding websites that help you navigate restaurants with common words and phrases. One such site helped me learn today’s word of the day: 面条 (miàn tiáo) meaning “noodles”. Yes, there’s tons of different types of noodles and I’ll eventually have to learn those, but for now I’m happy with 面条! Progress, one noodle at a time!