Little Details

Hello again,

so after a few more days of studying and going around Beijing, I have collected a few more experiences to share with you:

Money

In China they use yuans has money, where you will find almost everything is done with bills/notes, almost no coins. (10 yaun = 1 Euro) and you will find the bills go to 1 yuan or even 50 cents of yuan. So you have bills of 5 cents of euro. Incredible number of bills brings something to the market: Counterfeit.

We received the following message after a few days here. "Counterfeit notes are a problem in China. Very few Chinese will accept a Y50.00 (5 Euros) or Y100.00 (10 Euros) note without first checking to see whether or not it's a fake. Notes that are old, tattered, or torn are also sometimes hard to spend. You can exchange notes for new ones at the Bank of China. Counterfeits, however, will be confiscated. Local Chinese have a variety of methods for checking notes, including checking the watermark, the drawn lines (more distinct in fake notes) and color (more pronounced in counterfeit notes). The texture of a fake note also tends to be smoother than authentic notes. Examine large denomination notes if they are given to you as change by street vendors; they could well be dumping a forged banknote on you. One note: There have been cases where even the cash machines can also give counterfeit notes".

Toilets

I don't know if you've ever been in China, but they mostly only have holes in the ground when you need to go to the bathroom. When I say almost, it's because 1 in 100 toilets is a normal seating toilet. Now, the other day I asked a chinese where to find the normal (for me) toilets. He brought me a chair with a hole in the middle. :-)

I could only smile. You've probably seen the image Dani has posted a few days ago with this chair.

Sun

On sunday was my first sighting of the Sun and the Blue sky. The city is very polluted and some days it's difficult to breath due to the extreme temperatures (about 35 degrees every day) and extreme humidity, which has put everyone in here sick at one point or another. The sky is grey most of the time, and yesterday I was reading the local news (no, not in chinese) and the estimate is 3.5 million cars in Beijing by beginning of 2008. The government wants to stop traffic for 2 million cars on the last month before the Olympic Games, and clear the skies. Now that will be a challenge.

Driving

If you ever used a bicycle, and suddenly was put in your hands a car but you would continue using the rules of bicycles, I would say you have just arrived in china. There are no traffic lights although they are there, there are no zebra passage for people although they are there, there are no blinking lights for change of directions, because they don't exist in bicycles, and the size of a car must be the same size of a bicycle in the minds of the chinese taxi drivers, because I always think we are going to crash, normally against buses. But in all this mess, there is a normality. Don't ask me to explain. It just works.

Tjai Tje from Beijing,

Ricardo

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Tomorrow I will have noodles for breakfast...

Hi Everyone, here I am again. :-)

Ok, so for those of you who hope to get a really nice breakfast in China, I tell you, these guys eat a lot of noodles in the morning. It looks great, but my stomach did not see the joke and complained a bit this morning. :-(

And I have been tempted to buy these crepes they make here on the streets, but because normally you find puppies and rabbits being sold next to it, I have not fully taken the courage to ask.

Ah, I also learned my first chinese words with the students around here. So repeat after me:

Ni Hao - Good Morning
Ni Hao Ma? - How are you?
Che Che - Thank you
Tchi Tche - Bye Bye
Cha - Tee
Ye - Salt
Po Hue - Portuguese

I also went the center of Beijing and I can tell you, do not enter the subway on rush hour. It's 40 degrees inside, people sweating, all really next to each other, like a sandwich, I felt like I was the ham or something, and the 50 guys next to me were bringing the bread. But I really like the city. It's dirty and hot and foggy and dusty, but at the same time it's vibrant, active, shows power and brut force to win and they really want to show their best. Ask something to a chinese and they will go to incredible lengths to help you.

I found a part of Darmstadt in here: Next to the university there is... imagine what is big, has a lot of products inside, comes from the land of Bush and normally in Germany locates itself next to an army base... Yes, it's Walmart.

I have been already 3 times to Tai-chi at 6 in the morning. I have to go at that time otherwise the chinese disappear at 6h30. So after that, I go for a little run because Tai-chi is really not very active.

Another thing is that it must be because they only eat noodles and veggies and no really big hard food like in Germany, and so I have seen a lot of nice girls, but a bit small so it's getting hard finding a girlfriend around here, I guess I'll just have to concentrate on my studies and let life take its course.

Work is starting to push, the lectures are now only in the morning, after lunch we have our project, I have chosen "Space Traffic Management" since it is not my area and it touches a lot of issues that I never had time to study or work in. Basically it focuses on Space Debris, De-orbiting of satellites, Space Tourism, Space Weather and Mitigation issues on satellites. If any of you has any good information to share on any of these points, now is the time to say :-)))

After the project time that finishes around 18h, it's dinner time... at 18h until 19h. half an hour later starts the panels, basically a group of people talking about a certain subject. The other day it was Space Entrepreneurs: Creating New Markets. And we had 5 entrepreneurs: one canadian for laser pointing products on satellites, one british for registration for launches of geo-stationary satellites, one chinese for satellite launching (56 launches, 0 fails), one american astronaut from NASA that now started a company for orbital-flights for space tourism, and one american that sends ashes of famous dead people to space and started this 25 years ago, and has a contract with NOAA to send satellites to L1 for prediction of Solar Winds (space weather).

And that's it.

Tchi Tche,

Ricardo

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First Impressions

First of all I want to thank Dani for letting me write on his great blog and report on my experience here in Beijing. He's been a great friend and don't forget, tomorrow it's his birthday :-)

So a few days ago I landed on this chinese city by the name of Beijing. And here are my First impressions.

The city is huge, full of life everywhere, and you can sense a dynamic on the economy that is not normal, it's like if everyday something big was happening in town that elevated the status of the economy.

One of the first myths to be broken: Bicycles. Yes it's everywhere, yes there are millions of them and most of them are quite old, rusty and dirty, but the most amazing is Cars. It seems like everyone in this town wants one. The ads are everywhere for cars, even elevators, toilets, ice cream shops... There are now around 3 million cars in Beijing, and the growth is at 2 thousand new cars on the streets everyday. Yes, everyday.

The organization of ISU has been great, we are in the Beihang University, one of the top Universities in China and we are staying in the dorms of the Athlete's Village, 10 buildings of 15 stories each. I'm on the 10th floor. It's good conditions, and we are 3 in each room. But now the chinese students are also here with us, but instead of 3 in each room, they are 12 in each room. I mean, they can really squeeze chinese people everywhere.

Another curious thing about the dorms is that all the beds are high on the ground, so like a beliche (portuguese word) but without the lower bed, only the one on top. And for I don' t know which reason, everywhere there are Big signs saying "Warning: Don't fall from bed". Even the campus director told us this today. :-|

Another figure is the Campus. It is enormous. Yesterday I went for a run around the campus in the morning and saw how big this thing really is. Not only all the facilities of the University are here, but the dorms as well. And there are at present 40 thousand students here now. Yes 40. But the biggest number is not that. It's that this University is only for related subjects of Aeronautics and Aerospace. Needless to say that the Chinese Space Agency (CASC) here in Pekin has 70 thousand employees. And that 300 thousand chinese work directly on the Space Industry. Now imagine this country's Space Industry in 5 / 10 years time. :-0

During my run, and this was at 6 in the morning, the life outside was already at full speed. The temperatures are around 35 everyday and the humidity is huge, so it's hard to do most of the things, that's why life starts early. I don't even want to imagine August. That's going to hurt. But during my run, I found hundreds of old people doing exercise everywhere. They have all the facilities here, most of it is brand new. They do all kinds of sports, running, walking, volley, ping-pong, badminton, but specially Tai-Chi. I did 5 minutes just to try, but I have to learn the moves first. After 5 minutes they took out swords, so I thought it was time to move to another place.

Our facilities for the classes are all brand new, we are the first people in, and are really amazing. The main building is so big and so tall that you feel really tiny when you enter it. The way of the chinese of saying "We are here to conquer"

The people are extremely friendly, although it is not easy to find people speaking english. Since I arrive, I feel like a rock star. The chinese are always starring at us, the foreigners, and never look away. Then they come and ask if they can take us a picture, or sometimes, they just take a zillion pictures. Then they come with friends to show what they have just discovered, this tall guy with a funny face, coming from this distant planet called Portugal. The best way to react, to give them your biggest smile. :-)

And one last story to finish my first report of events, is that there are no restrictions whatsoever, except one: That all men cannot walk with flip-flops, or show the fingers of the feet. That's forbidden. :-( So I can't use my Hawaiian Flip-Flops.

Cheers to all and send some news please,

Ricardo

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