Hello from Chaozhou 潮州

[elusivek]

Sorry for not interacting much. Life has been busy after my office move. I do need to commute by bus but it’s like a 6-minute ride across the bridge to get to the island and then I’m back to walking, so I don’t really have much time to check on messages and stuff on the bus.

Then our HR had a weird policy change. Without going into actual details, the gist of it is, we get to work less hours and we get more holidays. Like yesterday, All Soul’s Day, it’s a public holiday but not a statutory holiday. We used to only get statutory holidays (10-days yearly), but the policy change now lets us have all the public holidays (20-days yearly). And we now work 45-hour weeks instead of 50. It’s weird.

So with this long weekend, I’m off to China, went on that super rail thing and am in a place called Chaozhou 潮州. They say that’s where a lot of the good food is. So far I’m not disappointed. Last night we had 2 dinners LOL. First to a beef hot pot place (had a weird dish, don’t even know which part of the beef it was), and then went for a second dinner of raw marinated fish.

Dinner #1


Dinner #2


The hotel I’m staying at is right in front of the West Lake 西湖 so I can do a bit of walking and looking around too.

The only down side is I bought a China SIM card and it worked for a few hours, but then it didn’t work, darn it. I’m going back to that shop when I’m back in town to complain about that but it’s China, I think they’re gonna play some kind of hooky on me.

Anyway, that aside, it’s gonna be more food today!

Comments

[milhent.livejournal.com]

Office move is always a hassle, at least it is still somewhat close to your home, right?
The amount of time you work even with new policy seems like a lot to me. Here official work week is 40 hours, although unofficial unpaid overtime is normal. And in my area there are only statutory holidays - 13 days a year, but counting the ones that fall on weekends and therefore transferred to another day, it is usually somewhere from 16 to 20 days. A funny coincidence is that this weekend is a long one here as well, although for completely different day and holiday. But I can only wish that I could go somewhere, even just outside a city.

Ouch, SIM card that fails is really annoying, best wishes on getting it replaced or refunded.

All those dishes look really really strange to me. I am not sure I would have dared to try them. ^_^ Different culture.

[notte0.livejournal.com]

The office move actually is inconvenient for me. In my old office, it’s just a 7-minute walk from home. The new office, I have to go to a bus station that’s a 10-minute walk away, catch a 6-minute bus ride, and then walk another 5-minutes to the office. Le sigh.

I’m looking at another office move again that’s a 10-minute bus ride but from a bus station that’s just by my apartment building, but that will be in a year or so.

Government jobs here are 36-hour weeks and everyone wants a government job, but I don’t. It’s rigid and you have to be on time. Now I can come and go and break whenever I want as long as I complete my required work hours. The 45 hour week isn’t so bad. It’s a normal 9-to-6 with a 1-hour lunch break. I guess it’s also because the city is so small, barring bad traffic, everywhere is practically reachable within 45 minutes, so there’s no long commutes anywhere, so we have longer work hours? Maybe? I guess!

Couldn’t do anything about the SIM card. I’m not even getting into that story. It’s just crazy.

Haha, they’re actually pretty good. I was worried about the marinated raw fish as it’s china, but in the end everyone was ok.

[mores0ul.livejournal.com]

Interesting - was the raw fish similar to sashimi?

[notte0.livejournal.com]

Oh, it’s nothing like sashimi. It’s marinated and slightly air dried, and when you eat it, you mix the slices of fish with condiments, herbs, garlic, and either sauce or oil. It was good, first time ever trying that.

[foxtea.livejournal.com]

Much more adventurous than I am with fancy foods! Looks good!

[notte0.livejournal.com]

Yum yum it was!