My Chinese Life

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Last night I took the next step in my Foreign Service Officer candidacy — the language assessment. I was, I’ll admit, ludicrously nervous — after all, my entire candidacy rests on my experience in China — but I think it went quite well.

Unlike the full-up language exam (Prince Roy has a good account of his experience with the real one), this test was to determine if I spoke at at least the S-2 Limited Work Proficiency level. Thus, the English-speaking tester explained to me, the exam takes no longer than 30 minutes, but could be much shorter (if, I presume, you show that you’re clearly either above or below the target level). Given that my exam only lasted about five minutes, I’m hoping for the latter.

The test started with the examiner asking my name, where I was living now, and what I was doing in Shanghai. She asked about the economic situation in Shanghai and I tried out some vocabulary about 次贷款 (sub-prime loans) and 通货膨胀 (inflation). She then asked where else in China I had lived, and what I thought about air pollution in those places (in which I included the line 不过北京的空气污染还是最可怕的 (”however, Beijing’s air quality is still the worst”), after which discovering that she was from Beijing — ごめん！！). At this point the English speaking tester came back on, said that the exam was over, and wished me luck with the Board of Examiners (BEX, which will determine whether or not my candidacy will continue).

My wife (who was listening through the door) said I didn’t sound like a total retard, so I’m hoping I just proved that I was at least an S-2 speaker in the first five minutes and they decided not to waste any more time on me. I won’t find out the test results, but if I pass the BEX and get invited to the Oral Interview I’ll be happy.

Fingers crossed. Now, more hurry up and wait.

Last Wednesday was crazy hair day at Praxis Language, apparently.

For the last 4+ years, my Chinese name – given to me by Amber, my first Chinese tutor in Hangzhou – has been 毕威杰 (Bì Wēijié). 毕 fits my surname nicely, but I’ve never much liked 威杰 as my given name – when I was first learning I had problems getting the first tone to second tone transition correct, and now I just don’t think it fits me very well (I guess I’m not 威风 or 杰出 enough).

With the upcoming move of the Praxis Language offices we’ll all be getting (I presume) new business cards with the new address and phone numbers, and I decided it was time go shopping around for a better name. After some misfires (the “randomly open the dictionary and point” method generated 毕鸿蛤 – “great clam”), I found a name that both sounds nice and fits me well.

毕崭

崭 (zhǎn) means both “towering (over)” and “excellent,” and sounds a whole lot like my actual name, John. It’s short and simple, has an easy tone transition, and sounds cool. It’s a name I can be happy with.

The last few weeks have been great.

• My wife (and unborn child) underwent their 大排畸 exam, during which the doctor counts all the baby’s fingers, toes, arms, legs, and organs and makes sure everything is where it ought to be. 微屁孩儿 passed with flying colors.
• We found a new apartment that is less than 10 minutes from our new office, just on the north side of the Suzhou River. 3000 RMB/month, two bedrooms, well-furnished, cool landlord. We’re moving on Sunday.
• Members of new LanguagePod teams have started working, and they’re all amazing people. French and Italian have been added to the mix of office languages.
• The Foreign Service Institute sent me an e-mail on Monday asking me to schedule a telephone Chinese test. I assume that they wouldn’t waste time testing someone who didn’t pass the written exam, so… yay!
• My wife and I have decided to start learning Korean, and we have a tutor coming tonight for our first lesson. 아녕하세요!
• The weather has been incredible lately.

Seriously, the last few weeks have been great.

I’m way, way behind the curve — living in China has a way of putting one there — but this “mobile internet” thing is starting to make sense. My phone, a cute little Dopod S1, has a big enough screen to make browsing the internet reasonable, and mobile versions of a number of popular services — including Gmail, Google Reader, and Twitter — give me something to actually do while I’m online on my phone.

The key, though, is using this connectivity for good, rather than just wasting time (and money, as China Mobile meters my bandwidth). I’m getting a lot more reading done in cabs, on the subway, and while waiting for people, and now it’s just a matter of getting more/better sources of information and hooking them up in a mobile-friendly way.

I went to Paul in Xintiandi for lunch today with Erica and Amber. We were sitting outside chatting when a person with a camera came up, pointed to Amber, and asked “OK?” Amber, being the amiable sort, agreed (though what it was to which she was agreeing was not immediately clear), at which point she was swarmed by camera-toting people snapping her photo, paparazzi-style.

Very bizarre.

Amber then said that when she first came to Shanghai her and a friend would write haikus about the strange things that happened to them during the day and share them, so we decided to write our own to commemorate the lunch in which the paparazzi attacked Amber.

My contribution was:

Spring in Xintiandi
French bread warms the cool noon air
Paparazzi swarm

Amber wrote:

psuedo stardom trapped
poppy seeds and commotion
no black bodyguard

Erica wrote:

pastries and repose
frenzied bulbs bring swift chaos
dreams of fame are squelched

We’re awesome.

I woke up early this morning and headed out to the US Consulate facility at the corner of Huaihai Road and Urumuqi Road to take the Foreign Service Officer Test. I signed a non-disclosure agreement so I won’t talk about the details, but I think I did pretty well — at very least, it felt that way. Taking the test on a computer instead of pencil and paper makes a huge difference, particularly on the essay section.

8-10 weeks for the results, they say. Fingers.crossed = true.

From Michael Bloomburg’s Op-Ed in today’s NY Times:

WATCHING the 2008 presidential campaign, you sometimes get the feeling that the candidates — smart, all of them — must know better. They must know we can’t fix our economy and create jobs by isolating America from global trade. They must know that we can’t fix our immigration problems with border security alone. They must know that we can’t fix our schools without holding teachers, principals and parents accountable for results. They must know that fighting global warming is not a costless challenge. And they must know that we can’t keep illegal guns out of the hands of criminals unless we crack down on the black market for them.

One would certainly hope so, but…

I’m glad he’s not running as a third party spoiler, but I think he would have made a good candidate.

How is it that when your wife’s pregnant everything you see is about babies?