The Job

Despite having planned to spend my first month or two learning chinese, I found myself immediately involved in a major new project.. working with a famous american company. On the friday before my first day at work, I was called to go to work, where my boss and I spent the day talking over the project, he then asked me to spend the weekend coming up with the story for the series, and the unenviable task of solving many plot holes that had surfaced. Fortunately, I managed to come up with a solid story for the series, and I must give props to Guy, Jane and Ross who helped out a great deal with some of the holes.

This picture is a quick concept painting for one of the characters, but more so to propose the art direction to my boss, and eventually the american company working with us.

My first official week at work, was slightly bewildering as I was placed at a desk in the studio, with 4 large binders full of comics. My task for the week, read comics! No matter how much I enjoyed this past week, I had a nagging feeling of guilt that I was doing little, enjoying it and being paid to do so.

Met an english speaking writer who works on the desk next to me, seems to have incredibly similar opinions on film/music/politics/religion and art. He describes to me everyday how infuriating it is to be a writer in China, where ‘freedom of expression’ is not as the term suggests.

Next week’s work is creating a powerpoint presentation for the studio to help them understand the characters I have been ‘researching’ in the comics.

The Apartment

Hi again, been a while since my last post but ill attempt to keep it as short as possible. The day after (or maybe a couple of days) my last post, I moved to Jing An district which is where I am living now. I live on the 4th floor, in a 2 br apartment, which as I mentioned in a much earlier post is situated right next door to a school.

On arrival, Jane’s dad showed me around and explained the various appliances. We then found the shortest route to the tube station, and I finished up doing a bit of shopping in the supermarket underground.

Unpacked most of my stuff and got the air con blasting out some 28 degree heat, although the weather is warmer than in the UK, almost all the housing has no central heating, so its all down to the air con and some valued sunshine in the morning.

That evening, I was milling around cleaning the entire place top to bottom and I had a knock at the door.. strange seeing as Jane was still at work and I certainly wasn’t expecting any relatives or friends to drop by. It turned out to be the security guard of these apartments who had gawped at my arrival just a few hours earlier.

She rambled off a bunch of chinese to me in some haste, which I of course replied to with “my chinese is very bad” (in chinese no less).. luckily my next door neighbor across the hall had heard the commotion and managed to translate for me.. “your air conditioner is on fire” after thanking her I sprinted and turned off the air con.. looking out the window I found that my machine had been smoking the neighbor’s smalls which had been drying on the clothes line.

The next morning, a couple of repairmen arrived and clambered out the window to fix the machine, the one climbing outside had a minimalist safety harness on, the other end of which was handed to his colleague who merely held it in his spare hand whilst sipping at a Kenco gold and watching the football that I’d put on to entertain them.

Last but not least we come to the question I had posed to Jane when she first found this fantastic place for such low rent… “why hasn’t it been taken yet?” .. the answer to which I woke to the first morning in my apartment. An incredibly loud voice boomed over the rock gig speaker set up.. which preceded a song that is played on repeat for at least 10 times. Shuffling across the floor like the undead, I peered out the window to find approximately 100 students lined up military fashion, doing stretches to the command of the mc. This starts at 7.30am and goes on for 30 mins every morning, which as terrible as it might first seem.. isn’t all that bad seeing as I get up at 7.30am for work… I will record the song for a future post, or maybe have loop endlessly when you visit the site.. so you too can enjoy the hit sounds of my neighborhood.