Guanxi (关系)

The last time I had to do a recommendation for a person for a job was years ago, at King Soopers, one of my high school friends listed me on his application at Kings.  So this was direct, the store secretary called me to her office, asked about my friend, I described him and that was that.  Relationships here are much more complicated.  So I eat lunch with this girl Brenda sometimes.  I know her because the office where she works is in the same building that I live in.  She sent me an e-mail requesting I try to find a person who fits a certain job description.  She had gotten that request from a friend of hers.  So anyone I recommend is twice removed.

The position says it wants a native English speaker, with a degree, (living in Beijing) who is very technologically savy.  Every native speaker I know is either a teacher (already has a job) or is a student (doesn't have a degree), except Evan.  Evan is someone I met through my Chinese teacher through another job thingy.  So relationships here are like "my cousins's best friends' uncles's co-worker".  I have been told that if you have the right connections, you can get anything done.  

Haircut

So....I just got my haircut for the first time in China, and I gotta say I am really really happy.  First of all, I've been growing out my hair for the last few years.  I loved the long look, and decided to see how long I could let it grow out.  But my last haircut was in June or July (I think), so 5 months without a haircut, and I was having terrible split ends.  So I decided I really needed to get one done when I was here.  The hair-parlors here are different than those in the US.  Pretty much every shop you go to (and there are a ton of them) are run and owned by men.  Think very pretty Chinese boys, with perfect hair, very appearance oriented.  The first time I saw it, I was shocked and it was very difficult for me to get over the impression that they were gay.  One of the things that is different over here is work expectations.  Jobs that are 'supposed' to be for women in the US (nurses, teachers, hairstylists), are filled by men here.  So Enoch went with me (as acting translator) to get my hair cut.  This is the first time my hair has been cut by a guy.  This is also the first time a hair stylist has sat down while cutting my hair.  But in his case I kinda don't blame him.  Right when I thought we were finishing up he was only halfway done.  He did my hair in 3 different layers, sprayed each one dealt with my tangles (I felt sorry for him!) and cut off a good two to three inches.  Then he used a blow dryer to blow dry my hair. I thought he was done.  Then he spent another twenty minutes doing detail work on the back....seriously took quite a long time, and I'm not sure why.  Then he went back at it with the dryer.  I'm not complaining about the length of time, I love it when people play with my hair, so I was eating it up.  Had a small conversation with him about the pink, and where I was from....yep.  I think that's all I have to babble about. ^_^

A good example of before the haircut

After haircut, Don't know if you can see the difference, but I sure can feel it!

Posting a correction, Yaohui informed me that I was mistaken.  Most nurses here are girls too, not guys!  My mistake!

Play Practice

My Character in the play

So I am going to be in a play in two weeks.  I only have one scene and 7 sentences (one in English, one in Japanese).  I’m excited for it though.  Its called 未完待续, and I play one of the death characters (there are 4 deaths). Its interesting because they made my character specifically for me.  I’m not like the Chinese deaths, I am like the grim reaper.  But they took the scythe directly out of a Japanese anime called Soul Eater.  Also, one of my lines (Sayoonara) is in Japanese.  I am very familiar with Soul Eater because I cosplayed the character that had the scythe (the scythe I made was bigger and much more sturdy than the one here, but the one here is really good too).  So I am practicing memorizing lines in Chinese...hopefully my tones aren't too bad.  

This is me as Maka at NDK last year!

Well so play practice is going on all this week.  And I discovered that most people (including me) go directly from class to practice without eating dinner.  Which makes my irresistable urge to feed people rear its ugly head.  Last practice I brought some breads, apples and oranges.  Then I left the room so I could focus on practicing my lines.  I was a little sad cause I had pulled all the food out of my back pack and no one was touching it, even though I said it was for everyone.  When I came back into the room, the first thing I noticed was the smell of oranges (if you've seen me eat an orange/clementine you know how I felt).  I was really happy cause the group had scarfed most of the food down, and people thanked me too.  One of the guys (his English name is Jessie, I still don't know his Chinese name) came out when I was practicing the lines...he was worried about me feeling anti-social or something. He thanked me for the food, and told me I should come back into the room cause it was colder in the hallway.  I told him no, I wanted to do well on the lines.  But when it came time for me to say them I totally blew it.  Not the lines but my performance...I was not pretending there was an audience, I was way too quiet and my body language was all wrong.  So I'll definitely keep coming to rehearsals to practice.  I want to get this down perfectly.  ^^