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b 14 20
10
CNYE in China Lite
Guò Nián Hǎo and welcome to the Year of the Tiger!
A couple cups of strong coffee and I’ve recovered from my 5th Chinese New Year’s Eve in China. Despite living in Suzhou-Singapore Industrial Park (SIP) last year as well, this was the first time we celebrated the holiday in this district. Normally I would just hit Shiquan Jie (Suzhou’s bar street) for the big event, as its location in the downtown core puts it smack dab in the middle of all the action.
Because of our pregnancy, and a newborn in our tribe, we decided to keep…
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y 10 20
09
Murder in the Hood
Murders in the news are as common as the weather report, and are rarely read with any greater attention. It is not often that they touch your life in some way, even if just remotely.
Unfortunately, such is not the case with Suzhou’s most recent homicide, as it happened only a couple hundred metres from where I sleep, and to someone I’ve (if only peripherally) very likely met.
This past Wednesday morning the bloodied and naked body of a girl in her early 20s was found in her Singha Plaza (Xīn Dū GuǎngChǎng) apartment. Despite sharing the apartment with…
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r 20 20
09
WTF, Suzhou 14th worst place in the world to work? Sissies!
A recent article in BusinessWeek featured a slideshow displaying 20 of the World’s Worst Places to Work. Unsurprisingly some Chinese cities made the list – surprisingly Suzhou was among them.
The list, compiled by New York-based human resources company ORC Worldwide, states the major reasons for giving Suzhou the thumbs down are pollution and a lack of culture & recreation facilities. Other problems included disease/sanitation, medical facilities, education facilities, and availability of goods and services.
It needs to be asked: has ORC Worldwide ever even been to Suzhou?
Granted, their list was compiled for BusinessWeek and specifically for…
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t 30 20
08
Living in China is Easy…
Living in China is easy – or so says the tag line of my new favourite Web site, 5JShop.com.
The site offers home delivery of groceries in and around the Jinji Lake/SIP area of Suzhou. Yeah, we just click, click, click and hit send and magically a man appears the next day with our groceries. Blows my fucking mind.
Now, I’ve heard of similar services back home, but have had little cause to use them. Shopping in Canada is about as stressful as a yoga class. You show up, listen to a bit of Musak,…
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p 17 20
08
Yoga lessons in Suzhou’s SIP – Maggie gets a Web site
About a week and a half ago Maggie told me she was a bit worried because there was an unprecidented meeting of a large group of “business people” at her yoga studio when she arrived to teach her class.
Turns out her fears were not unfounded, and last week the whole business closed (it was one part yoga studio and one part female beautification factory).
Details of what exactly happened are sketchy, but best I’ve been able to piece together is that about six months ago the owner of the business realized the place was going down hill (the yoga…
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l 08 20
08
Who stopped the rain?
Suzhou is green. Hell, it’s a garden city. And a great part about it, is it stays green all year round. It makes the city a nice place to look at no matter what time of year you come here.
The tradeoff is that it rains non-stop. We go from rainy season to typhoon season back to rainy season. It is a stark contrast to my days up in Dalian that, for all its brown-grassed winters, has a huge amount of sunshine.
Which makes this past week a bit of an anomaly. We’ve had almost seven days of straight sunshine.…
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n 08 20
08
Our Apartment in Suzhou SIP (video/photos)
As I mentioned a couple weeks back, we’re moving to a new apartment at the end of the month.
As it is fully furnished (I’ve yet to rent an apartment here that isn’t – though some call into question the definition of “fully”), yesterday we had to head over to the new place and meet with the landlady and realtor to make an itemized list of all the goodies the apartment comes with.
We had been somewhat nonchalant about getting it done, but the realtor impressed upon us the importance, as they’ve had landlords walk out with major appliances…
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y 21 20
08
Movin’ on up … to the first floor
Well, it’s official. Mags, Addie and I are all moving to a new apartment at the end of June.
We’ve been talking about moving for quite a while now, and with our lease up next month, it was time to either piss or get off the pot… alright, there was no pots, and I wouldn’t piss in one anyway – but yeah, it was time to make a decision.
Our current place is right downtown, and the centrality of it was a huge deterrent for me wanting to move. As little as I actually get out, it is nice being…
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