Sep 2014. Shenyang When I first came to China in 2009, I lived the expatriate life in Shanghai, visiting restaurants catered for foreigners. When I joined BMW and moved to Shenyang in 2014, I lived like a local. That's when I saw daily life in China in a different light. There were many cold winter... Continue Reading →
Sep 2014. Shenyang No smoking. No inflammable objects. No poisonous materials. No radioactive materials. No vendors. No begging. No commercial goods. No loitering. No pets. A public notice in a Shenyang train station. No different from Singapore, where we have as many of these dos and don'ts. Plus one more. No durians. You might thing... Continue Reading →
2014 Sep. Anshan I have no idea what got misinterpreted in my hotel's address. Amusingly, China is the fourth largest country in the world, by some counts, after Russia, Antartica and Canada. The Chinese really try to incorporate English into their daily lives. Roads, public transport, hospitals, government buildings and hotels are also in English.... Continue Reading →
Jul 2014. Shenyang Two comperes addressed the audience in Chinese and English. Then there were couple of welcome speeches followed by song and dance performances in English. The highlight was a ribbon cutting ceremony with a champagne toast. A rock band played followed by an Indian dance and a Chinese ribbon dance before the program... Continue Reading →
Jul 2014. Shenyang Raising a glass with an alcoholic beverage to toast in public is rare in Singapore and Australia but for different reasons. It's not culturally accepted in Singapore because people don't drink wine there and also because there could be a Muslim on stage or in the audience and Muslims don't drink. In... Continue Reading →
Jul 2014. Shenyang I don't know why they call it the China Construction Bank. Maybe it should be called a Development Bank. I call it CCB for short. It's a bank I used for ten years in China. In Shanghai, Shenyang and Beijing. And in each and every city, God knows how many times I... Continue Reading →
A small town in Henan. 2016 There was an offer to do a one-off one-hour English class in a high school. I decided to talk about Singapore life and explain some English words in that context. The class teacher met me at the entrance to welcome me and I thanked her for the invitation. The... Continue Reading →
Shanghai. Jul 2013 We have been playing scrabble from the time when the kids were so young that they could only make two-letter words. I really like the game firstly because its absolutely fun and secondly because it has some educational value too. And we have been using the same game in Singapore, China and... Continue Reading →
One day, my 7 year-old son came home and said that his school wanted to promote reading habits and that I had to take photos of him reading on the sofa, on the bed, at the breakfast table etc, within 24 hours period. He read story books, ingredient packings, milk carton etc and in fact... Continue Reading →
This is the train station at Qin Huang Dao. The sign says "Taxi Imports". No, they are not importing taxis here. Its just a bad translation.They are just saying that this is where you can get a taxi. English is not their first language in China and the important thing is that they are trying... Continue Reading →