View from above

The view out of the window of my new apartment. Much cooler than the tiny inside of the place. Its expensive for how small it is but I still pay a lot less than my neighbors since my boss can negotiate like a mofo and my landlord loves me. You see he only rents to foreigners (read English teachers) and of them I'm the only one able to speak Chinese. The downsides of the place: small, rather expensive, separate power and utilities from rent, smells like mothballs. The upsides: 30 second walk from the subway (the only way I get around), around the corner from tons of places to eat/markets/shops, great security, oh and did I mention how convienent it is.

As nice as it is to have a place, today at work sucked. It started off cool with the usual document translation (including some employment paperwork I have to wade through) and I was totally cool with the market research I was working on for Central Asia. Then everyone decided as the only English speaker there that I would be able to diagnose and fix the problem with some huge machine (a hint: even with the manual I can't). Basically any time people need a question sent to a vendor about whatever machine they have I do it for them. It gets annoying since I have no idea what I'm talking about with these machines and very little idea what they do. For example, today I had to call some company in Germany to discuss the problems a label dispenser and they started asking me all these questions about the machine's settings, use, model numbers...I had no idea whatsoever.

On a lighter note, I was at lunch with my boss and he gave me the sex talk for white foreign men in Asia: if you're in Thailand and the women throw themselves at you just use a condom when you can't help it. This was on top of the earlier comments to me about how I need to be careful around Taiwanese women (he wants to screen any future lady friend). Then there was the random old lady in the elevator in my building who was able to speak English, her quote, "Oh you handsome, so many girls want to crush you!" That was when the warning my boss gave me became clear, watch out for the Taiwanese women since they all want to crush me.