Day 13 in Beijing

Today is Friday, the 27th November, my last day of work for the week, wooohoooo!!! Today is going to be a really rushed day for me. As soon as I finish work I have to go home as soon as I can, shower, pack for SH and get back to the Beijing station (which is right behind my workplace) by 8.15pm.

Our train is not until 10.09pm but we have to board onto the train at around 9.30pm. There are four of us travelling together, Marta, Arthur, Jordan and myself. Marta will meet us at 9pm at Beijing station, and the rest of us will be around 8.15pm at the station to have dinner together.

I finished work at usual time, and unbelievably, this is the first time I experienced traffic jam in Beijing. Normally the bus I ride will take around 45-50minutes, but this is the first time I took the bust right after work. I got onto the bus at 6.15pm and man, this is such a bad traffic condition. I was aiming to be home by 7pm but until 6.50pm I was only at Yonganli Street (which is about 2 or 3 stations away from work). This is just insane. Eventually I didn't get home until 7.45pm.

I felt terribly sorry for Arturs who should be waiting for us at the station from 8.15pm. There's no way that I can contact Arturs because he have this very interesting philosophy that he told me when he called me. He doesn't use cellphone in China!!!!!!!! Can you believe this?? He told me that he decided to give himself a break and be off the instant contact networks. He usually communicate via email, or he will call friends from his skype account, or he'll use payphones to call friends when he's out. So hence, I have no way of contacting Arturs and tell him that I'll be late. sorry >_<>

As soon as we briefly introduced ourselves, Arturs started selling us the idea of not using a cellphone in China, immediately, Marta, Jordan and myself yelled out 'no way, that's impossible for me'. Arturs' point was that if we don't rely on instant messaging, then we have to rely on timeliness and therefore everything should actually improve, however, we just don't think it's realistic, especially we are all foreigners in China.

We started waiting in the line to go into the train station. Our train is at platform 2, level 2. Inside the train station there are lot of shops for food and gifts. Jordan and I each bought some snacks and water, Arturs went to KFC to buy his dinner. This is where our interesting discussion all began. Arthur, (after chatting with him on the train) was a professional sportsmen (in running), studied in a Unviersity in the States, and he obviously dislikes fastfood, especially KFC (but he had no choice due to the limited time we have at the station); whereas Jordan, who LOVES chicken, strongly defends the his favourite KFC. Artus is Latvian and he represents AIESEC from the USA. He also introduces himself as Arthur (english name) but I personally like Arturs better, more unique, haha! Marta is Polish and she represents AIESEC from Poland. Arturs is matched to a kindergaten for ET, have about 3 hours lunch breaks daily; and recently started teaching at a local university (more conversational english for local university students). Marta is matched to a Chinese windmill company working in the HR department (sourcing international talents for the company). Both of them have been in China for quite a few months now. Arturs is leaving China before Christmas so this will be his last chance to travel far outside of Beijing. Marta is staying until end of Feb 2010 but she may or may not continue to work for the company. Not too long after we started chatting we already became quite comfortable with each other. We were sharing some snacks, talking about sports, about China's life so far, about travelling China, about our own AIESEC LCs, funny and scary experiences in China and many more. Other passengers around always looks at us, because we are such a weird combination and we only spoke in English! This is something that I had to get used to, look Chinese but speaking native English at times. Shanghai here we come!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!