I started going to the office this week for 1/2 days. I'm still not totally comfortable with leaving Sydney alone with the ayi. Although I have to admit that this is really my problem more than it is Sydney's. I'll write about the ayi situation in a separate post since I don't have time right now. (Someone expects a new post when she gets to the office in the morning and it is already 8:03am, Dallas time:).
We have 2 offices, one in HongQiao (which is about 15 minutes or so from my apartment) and one in Zizhu Business Park (which is about 1 hour from my apartment). The HongQiao office is basically all conference rooms for meetings with customers so that they won't have to pack provisions to drive out to the main office. I plan to work from this office in a couple of months, once I get acquainted with everyone in the main office. However, there has been discussions that we are going to give up this office since it is too expensive.
The Zizhu office is part of a 5 building business park in the middle of nowhere. Every single taxi driver I have used so far did not know how to get there, and everyone of them has gotten lost. I have the business cards of several people in the Zizhu office to call for help, but I can never get anyone before 9:15am. Our office hours are 9-6 but apparently, like everything else in Shanghai, it is only a suggestion. My company has shuttles picking people up at various points in Shanghai but I am not on the route and there is only one pick up per location. It is more convenient for me to take a taxi there and back.
My ayi starts work at 8:30am, and I go outside of my complex to hail a taxi. No easy task, my friend. Since everyone else is looking for a taxi for work, there is a bit of a wait -- about 15-20 minutes. Stop the eye rolling, please, because it is worse than it reads. It wouldn't be too bad if it wasn't 95 degrees here, and humid, and the air is polluted. I'm not going to lie to you. Between waiting in the heat and humidity, and the stale cigarette smell in the taxi, I don't smell great when I get to the office. But it's not a problem, as you will see why below. The taxi ride costs me anywhere between 80-90RMB (US$10-11), and it usually take me about 1.25 hour - 1.50 hours to get there because we always get lost.
My company is currently building our own office building in Zizhu and we are temporarily residing in the developer's office building. We expect to be in the new building in November. In the interim, we are stuck with a very limited space. All of the offices and cubicles are occupied so the company found a space between 2 offices and had put a desk there. And voila, my office.
I would have taken more pictures of the office, but when you work for a technology company, walking around with a camera taking pictures is just asking for trouble.
I am as far away from the front door as you can get. There is a community printer and copy machine for each floor. Unfortunately, the printer to which I am connected is close to the front door. When I visited the office in April to get set up, I voiced my concerns to HR about being in the middle of a hallway since I spend a lot of time on the phone and much of what I am discussing is confidential. (Plus, I tend to get loud when I don't get my way. I'll just have to go into a conference room for calls). My bigger concern is that what I print is also confidential. HR's answer to my concern about the printer was "Maybe you print and go fast to get paper." Ok. Fine. This may be an opportunity to get some exercise and lose some weigh, especially since IT can't seem to connect me to the printer so that I print and go fast to get paper only to find no paper on printer. Then I go fast back to my desk to call IT. I bet that I've already lost 3 lbs this week. I don't know for sure because the scale that I bought last week is broken.
There is a cafeteria in our building. I've eaten there once last year when I visited and remember that the food was ok. But a lot of expats do not eat there and my friend and colleague Sam thinks that they cook everything in lard. The expats (even the senior management) goes next door to a convenient store, Lawson, to buy sandwiches for lunch. The office is too far from anywhere that you can get a decent meal. Sam brings a big bag of fruit every day and he grazes on them throughout the day so that he doesn't have to eat lunch at the office. I've checked out the sandwiches at Lawson and it doesn't look too appetizing. I've been working until 1 or 2 this week and then head out to lunch in town. When I'll be working there full time, I may have to bring my lunch.
The bigger, and more entertaining, problem with this office is that you have to fill out a form for everything. Sam needed a pen and he had to fill out a form. I had my assistant send me a package of office supplies from Dallas so I didn't have to mess with forms. However, she forgot to pack pads of paper for me so I had to fill out a form. Ok. Fine. But then I learned that they have to order the pads so that I would have to wait 2+ weeks for them. Not Ok. Not fine. I went to the grocery store after work today and bought myself a couple of notebooks. Other employees actually wait the 2+ weeks for their office supplies.
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