May 11 &12: WuDuKao district, My first class, Beijing Real Estate

Ok, first and foremost apparently there was a pretty big earthquake today (May 12) in China not too far from where I am. Let it be known I am fine, safe, and was completely unaware of the disaster. You can all breathe easier now.

Albums "May 11" and "May 12" in http://picasaweb.google.com/jdorrian2334 are the photos that apply to this blog post. I've added some witty captions to some of the photos. I'm confident that if you know me and my sense of humor you will chuckle. I am also confident that if you don't know me that you will probably think I am an arrogant jackass. I'm fine with that.

May 11

So Jon and I wanted to get to the WuDuKao area which we knew was not far from where we were staying, and after wandering around for awhile and unsuccessfully locating it we decided to ask for directions. Two initial attempts failed. Attempt #3 was directed towards a security guard of some sort that absolutely did not understand what we were saying, but a gentleman wandering by saw that we had a map and correctly assumed we needed help getting somewhere. He spoke OK English, but he was from a different area of China and was not very familiar w/ Beijing... BUT his brother-in-law who was supposed to meet him in 5 minutes was a Beijing native and should be able to help. So we waited for 5 minute and his bro-in-law showed up in a car, and via our middleman translator it was confirmed that this guy knew how to get where we wanted to go. And he offered to give us a free ride. What a nice old man. Here is a pic of Jon in the backseat of his car sitting next to me. And here is another pic of the nice old man after he dropped us off.

Alright, so we have arrived at our destination and we're psyched to do some exploring. WuDuKao is the "student neighborhood" as there are about 10 universities surrounding it. We're excited to potentially meet some English speaking folk, other 20 and 30 somethings, and pinpoint some watering holes we've been reading about. We accomplish all of those things quickly. We have a brief discussion w/ two girls about what exact denomination a certain Yuan coin was because they were confused. Jon didn't know. I didn't know. Glad we could be of service ladies.

We find an establishment called Lush (http://www.lushbeijing.com/) that we have read good things about. So we have lunch there and relax with a beer and as you can see from the photo album Jon needed to settle his stomach with some strawberry flavored tobacco drawn from a huka. It definitely smelled good, but I get my fix from the pollution and smog here, no need for fruity tobacco for me.

Anyway, we meet these two girls sitting at the table next to us. They are sisters (Marielle and Shauna) who are from Montreal and Marielle has been living here for almost 1 year. We picked Marielle's brain for 45 minutes, asking her questions, recommendations, etc. She was very nice and gave us her phone number to call her if we needed any more info. Thanks Marielle.

After exploring WuDuKao for a little while longer we headed back to school. We went over to the business building to try and poke around a bit because I wanted to locate the classroom that I had class in on Monday 5/12. In the photo album you will see a dozen or so pictures of the architecture, landscaping, and signage around the business building.

Gotta get to bed @ a reasonable hour... it's a school night ("Aw man, c'mon Mom 30 more minutes...")

May 12

9am - Advanced Finance. I knew prior to coming here that John Wingender, a professor from Creighton University in Omaha, NE, would be teaching this class, and I had a copy of the syllabus, but that's about it. It turns out that there are approx 60 grad students in this class and only about 3 or 4 Americans. I would say 80% of the class is Chinese, I know there are a couple of people from Spain, 1 Russian woman named Sveltana, a Brit, and I am sure a few other countries are represented. I was surprised at the lack of American representation, but I guess it doesn't matter any which way.

This class is going to be great. Prof. Wingender is extremely engaging, quite funny, very smart, and has a positive energy about him. Picture a sturdy (not fat) looking midwestern guy with a shaved head who enjoys making fun of himself as much as he enjoys making fun of his students. From what I can gather he is also at least semi-friendly with Warren Buffet. He mentioned he is out to dinner w/ him a couple of weeks ago. That's pretty cool, I wouldn't mind being buddies w/ the most brilliant value investor and richest man in the world. Long story short, I am looking forward to this class.

Apartment shopping - see photo albums for pictures

So, a 2 bedroom apartment is going to cost about 1/3 the cost of the campus hotel we are staying in, so I think I am going to have to leave Daichi and Hiroshi high and dry in room 212. Sorry guys, sayanora! This apartment shopping experience was a tad frustrating and obviously the communication barrier had something to do with it, but by the end of our day we think that we worked something out with Vivian our rental agent. We checked out some apartments, some sorta crappy, 1 super nice, and we think we are going to get the 2nd nicest place we saw. It's in the right neighborhood up in the WuDuKao by a key subway stop, bars, restaurants, and other univerisities... We're going to try and lock it down tomorrow, Tues 5/13.

This also means I am going to have to buy a bike so I can cruise to my campus in 10 mins rather than walk 30-40 mins. Yup, I've been sucked into the bike culture in less than 72 hours. You can't stop the bikes, you can only hope to contain them. Once I have my wheels I'll be sure to have ample pics of my Pimped Out Ride.

Note: If anyone has any suggestions for the format, layout, or any other aspect of this blog just email me or leave a comment.

Note II: Every Chinese person at some age or another picks an English name to use. It's pretty awesome. Sally, Vivian, Vincent, Tony, Cedric, Ellen, Wendy and the list goes on and on. I think Cedric is the least fitting name that I've encountered so far. The TA in my finance class is visually the biggest pointdexter-nerdy type you could imagine and he is Cedric. I mean personally when I think "Cedric" I think envision a 325lbs offensive lineman for the Redskins. Cedric the TA is the polar opposite of that.