Probably like 1 or 2 servers. Try to get quake big over there. There's like a trillion chinks but none plays quake? BULLSHIT.

Also, i fucking love the chinese dresses, so damn sexy. Nice 1 man

when i went on holiday there you had to ping 80 to korea/japan :x

rocketboy?

hes playing UT3

good riddance

cold =(

truth.

Sick man. Congratulations!

I've been to China, was Beijing though. Probably tops my list for where I've been. So much to see! Loved it! =D

hf with censored internet over there

no snake porn there :C

you can use a proxy to access youtube/facebook/bbc if its still blocked

and then police arrests u and puts in jail, where other prisoners violate ur ass on a daily basis...

edit: gl tho and take care! :D

lol xD

Yep, just pay for a VPN.

sif im paying

.

#care

Have fun in the city of love. And gl with learning cantonese, impossible if you ask me ;)

Btw, you are working for a chinese or a foreign company?

hong kong company~ depends which way you look at it :P

study wise ill focus on mandarin and try using it around since all/most should speak mandarin and if they dont then they should be on holiday from hk and speak english~

yup, you should only learn the essentials for cantonese like "ass", "tits", "fuck" and "need food" :>

or " need tits ass fuck and food"

one sentence winnar !

Basically the same, just randomize the order of words for immediate success!

and toilet paper on top

Support the local language man!
Good luck

Pretty cool stuff, Macau looks pretty interesting.

Take lots of pics and be sure to journal on here..

if ESR isnt blocked xD

Chinky: Tianaman Square: Ching Chong China Man: Slinty Eyed having mutha fucker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-nXT8lSnPQ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censors...c_of_China

I'll do everything I can to help that firewall let you visit :)

P.S.
get a job in Shanghai, but take it and rid yourself of that midlands accent before its too late. Plus UK sucks now anyway so go for it!

only response i had SH resulted in early rejection once they realised their company visa policies~ (they wouldnt be able to get me one)

not many jobs available for fresh graduates when you dont speak the language~

be thankful they let you know before wasting12 months of your life!

I lol so hard...

HF being exploited.

what's he doing ... goldfarming in some MMO for some 14 yr old American kid ?

what will be your job over there?

developer~ not sure yet (get contract tomoz)...they wanted java & sql experience but i fucked up the software design questions pretty mega...they were lapping up plsql talk from my placement last year though~

what is this, i don't even


can you not put together a couple of sentences to explain your job 5 fucking thousand miles away from your home?

what part of "get contract tomoz" (specifying my role where i can then contact them for further clarity) dont you get? :P

in general terms ill be fucking around with software...fixing or creating

always good to be in china for that ;)

Sounds fulfilling. :(

ill be fulfilling...about 600 million chinese girls! BOOM! HIGH FIVE!

be careful of STDs!

sif china has STDs =P

http://www.medhelp.org/posts/STDs/Unprotected...ow/1239402


waiting for new post by 'dirdwasdumb21' gogogo :P

non-hookers ;p

here's hoping you are kidding... i know some people who went to china for a year and they would certainly disagree.

true, STD danger level is pretty high there

I'm surprised by this when you consider that the smartest 25% of people in China outnumber the entire population of the United States of America.

I'd assume by that statistic they'd have at least a million people who can do Java & PL/SQL and speak better English than you!

Obviously not.

I was speaking to this mandarin Chinese chick who was telling me about these massage parlours.It's kind of like a modern day health spa except you can get a full body massage. Sounded good, I'm not doing it justice with my description but dang I'd be hitting that up for sure.

have you ever had the privilege of conversing with a call center in India?

Chinese are much, much worse.

English is (one of their) official languege(s) in India, but not in China.

exactly. And even the many of Indians are still difficult to understand.

Now imagine China.

He's Chinese, I think he can imagine it quite well :)

got a point there :P

because the ones who speak English well, don't work in call centers usually.

granted, but you suppose the Chinese who speak the best English will necessarily look for a job programming java?

lol, java & sql ... doesn't exactly sound difficult to me at first sight :-) ...
probably input masks and saving the data to db ... tbh. can't imagine the chinese get someone from england for easy coding stuff ... could understand if you do represent them in the western world as consultant but not as normal java/sql coder ...

grats!

No QL server in China, but there is something else...

Hookers should be enough fun, why QL?

Ł550 per month :P
i will get to play badminton though $$$

I'm not sure how 550 quid is worth in China, but it shouldn't be a too small amount?

basic graduate wage...rent = Ł100-250 depending on quality/if i share with someone...no idea of other costs yet; bus should be 10p per time~

That price seems fair enough, and you will have a life to enjoy ;)

That place will get hot in summer though, be prepared briton!

i spent 3 weeks in 50°C+ in cyprus and it didnt bother me at all...i think ill be ok :P

Edit: well i guess if i have work i wont be able to wear shorts & tshirt~ :f

the end of ESR STARS huh

youre just jealous you werent apart of the magic :P

The hookers angle is perfect, I could only imagine a person with your taste in television paying for sex.

lawl xD
you forget...the kind of shit i watch is what the girls love

So you are the gay friend?

zing

wow anime freak who wanted a jap/korean girl ends up with a chink and moves to communist chink land

EPIC FAIL

1. anime is shit
2. did not want korean
3. dumped the chink

koreans are hot, you fucker. Japs look like little girls. Chinese are meh..

koreans are aggro and all want plastic surgery
600 million are "meh"?

edit: and theyre fucking dog eaters man! i love staffies :<

about plastic surgery.

I heard some chinese actually get leg extensions in a very painful procedure O.o

I heard the Koreans like getting their cheek bones chiselled/sanded down.

ye i watched a documentary where some girl was having it done xD
some have their eyelids changed too to make them look more western

Maybe they're just big gattaca fans.

good point.


I mean I'm considering tattoing my face cause I live Braveheart :D

What will happen if someone addicts to avatar...

I AM WILLIAM WALLACE!
awesome movie

you are leaving UK for 550pounds per month? per freaking month?

My rent in the UK was about the same as that, ironically.

and he doesn't even know what he's going to do.

yeah, that's the best
"I move to china" and "but don't what I will do there" :-))))

also "some company".

It is actually not that bad for payment. If he stays some time longer the wages will rise to normal laowai level. I did an internship in northern China for 6 months and got around 3000 yuan including an apartment and I could live with that. Though you wont have that much fun in HK downtown or in Shanghai ;)

an internship is hardly the same as a job.
I mean the average intern in Germany gets less than 550 pounds.

But yeah, it's not like he needs to be saving for a house at 21. So he can basically call it an extended internship, take the experience and the plus on the CV and get a well-paid job later.

average grad job outside beijing/shanghai is 300-450~

well-paid job, outside of China ;)

wut

I meant to say, that if you do that job in China now, get experience and put it in your CV, once get back to Europe you have good chances to get a job that actually pays well.



Btw. you should consider learning xiangqi. It's a great ice-breaker, since very many Chinese know it, often play it in parks and such and are usually excited to see a long-nose play it.

Do you play it?
I find it way harder than normal chess

Haven't played a game in over a year, but I used to be quite active, yes.

I wouldn't say that either game is more complicated than the other, after all, if only depends on the opponent.

But xianqi is more aggressive and open, it also has way more sacrifices of pieces vs. position, while in international chess you have to really know your openings and when to switch to attacking (can'z put it in better words).

For me, xianqi just fits my style of playing games much better, so in a way it was easier for me.
Doesn't mean I didn't get raped hard, when I had the honor of playing Lu Qin in a practice match :P

The CPM of the chess world?

kinda.

It's got cannons and elephants, so it's better than international chess by default!

I always found this game more interesting :P

yes i want to play it with a yieyie in the park o:

matter of personal preference, really.

for me chinese chess > international chess > go


Also the first two are better for having a miniature version for travelling ;P

true, go feels more flexible to me, more possiblities. But it all goes to personal taste ;)

sif i wanna leave

we'll see :)

if i lived in the uk then id get about Ł1600 per month and pay Ł400 per month on rent (25%). in zhuhai id get Ł550 and pay about Ł150 on rent (27%~)...

unless youre talking international holidays then theres not much difference~

edit: and its not about the money...even if i went for 2 years id come back with 2 years more experience and probably at least conversational level speaking in a different language...which is uncommon in the uk where everyones too lazy to learn anything besides english

I think a foreign languege is compulsory for high school and uni students?
Anyways i am trying to learn Spanish...

its only compulsory here for 3 years of high school...most of the time thats just a choice between french/german

ok, lets forget about money. i somehow don't get those figures of yours.
i doubt china is a good and useful reference in europe. wouldnt it be better to go in any other eu country for experience you are after? germany,spain or russia for instance since you try to learn new language. not to mention ping advantage if you pick germany.

work experience is work experience regardless of country...
lol@spanish/russian...have no (serious) interest to learn german & QL ping is not high on the list of requirements =)

work experience is work experience regardless of country...

this is a bit naive. whenever you will need work experience as reference you will have competition. unless you are in construction business china experience most probably wont do it.

some companies in china: ibm, intel, nvidia, microsoft, oracle...they all become shit when the location is china?

its like saying software engineering experience in india means nothing despite the fact so much is being outsourced there..

you say it like i actually plan to work in europe afterward anyways :d

both regions are merely exploited by those companies for their cheap workforce. whole topic is actually pointless since you plan to stay there. so, have fun and enjoy there :)

Take it anyway, the expereince will be interesting and look good on the CV. Most people don't have much money before they 30 anyway.

yea i guess...im at Ł12k savings from working last year rent free & stealing off unis...ok for 21 i guess~ especially when you convert it into chinese rmb xD

Doesn't sound that much, really depends on the neighborhood and size of the apartment

Get a decent looking Asian chick this time.

last was $$$
fo

You're getting sex traffic'd I hope you realise.

theyve seen me on webcam...im sure they wouldnt be choosing me for sex trafficking :P

You're getting sex traffic'd I hope you realise.

People criticizing this. Why?

its dird man

if dird cured cancer i would criticize him for not curing it sooner

Ł550? Weird, I'm from "3rd world country" and I have Ł1000 per month :) Still I would like to work in China for Ł550 too, life exp. and cool trip I guess...

/foppa from motherland

its a grad job
id make more teaching english with nothing besides the fact im native english :/

teach english on the side a bit? Couple of hours per week?

dont really wanna...wage is ok and will be spending most the time praccing mandarin
i might language exchange with someone at uni tho...apparently students learning to teach mandarin will do it for free for extra prac

Are you sure the wage is okay? You realise you can't just live like a local, right?

It's happening to me right now: being an expat in a different culture where you don't even speak the language means tons of added costs, not to mention if you hang out with the expat community, and you will, they will go to the more upscale places and you'll want to travel and...

Props to you for having the balls to do this, but honestly that salary sounds a bit of a stretch. You probably can't even get a flight home with a full month's salary.

the wage is fine...its above average for a grad..
the company will send a shuttle bus to/from work (save on transport), rent is Ł100 for ok, Ł150 for better...

i wont hang out with the expats since most are english teaching jews that go clubbing and spread their aids each weekend (i hate clubs)....hanging with them wont help my mandarin either
instead im gonna do clubs (badminton & anything else good) at work, badminton at the local uni and meet locals that way...will be easy to find people willing to language exchange...a little english but not constant like the lazy english teachers

flight is 400-600 so 1 month will cover it most of the time~...ill take Ł4-6k for travelling around but wont be using that for daily living costs (apart from the first month without wage). supermarkets have prices so its just buying things like clothes etc that arent...i can ask people at work what the prices generally are for things to make sure im not getting screwed

ill probably get screwed a little but its Ł100 above the typical grad job in that city~

what you dont get is that im not a big spender...i dont like clubs & not a big fan of drinking so my costs are pretty low

If I were you I wouldn't make just that many plans before I even arrived but be prepared to have to adopt.


Also, if your contract has arrived yet and you haven't done so yourself, I would check for hours per week, if you have to work on saturdays/sundays, how many vacation days you get and how overtime is handled.

Cause if you have to work long hours all the time and just want to sleep on your few days of, money and other plans don't matter too much!

"that many"? study, play badminton, avoid foreigners...3 = many? :P

yup :]

wise words, always plan ahaed, and considering the worst

please elaborate on where you are, what you de and what living there is like :)

I'm living in Ankara, working in IT for the embassy here and in Istanbul (also supporting commercial missions in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Iraq).

Life here is comfortable but dull, and it's supposed to get worse during the winter. It's a city with a population of five million, but there's really not much to do on a weekday other than drinking terrible coffee at a café and going to the gym (I'm hitting the gym five times a week, that's how bored I am). I came here with low expectations and knowing it wouldn't be anything like Barcelona or any other big European city, but I still managed to get disappointed. I haven't met a single person yet who likes it, the expat community is depressing because of this and even the locals hate their city and prefer Izmir, Istanbul or any other place in Turkey.

The city comes to a halt at about 10 o'clock, except on weekends. The nightlife is reduced to a handful of bars with retro music and a couple of clubs with live bands that play mostly current hits. If you are into techno, for example, you are out of luck: there's literally nothing here. I heard metal is huge here, but since no one I know likes it I haven't checked it out yet.

The food is okayish, but very basic and lacking variety. It's just home made fast food and about three or four weeks in I'm pretty sure I tried everything there is when it comes to Turkish food, including the nasty stuff like kokoreç. I wasn't intending to ever cook during my stay here, but now I find myself cooking dinner every day and going to the other part of the town to be able to buy some non-Turkish ingredients.

This wouldn't be much of a problem if there were enough foreign restaurants, but the offer is reduced to about four overpriced Chinese restaurants (that do decent Japanese and terrible Thai too), two South Asian ones (really awesome and frequented mostly by foreigners) and some upscale Italian ones that aren't even that good. The Turks I've met think Turkish food is awesome and are not really interested in other cuisines, which might explain the lack of options here and how Turkish cooks manage to fuck up even the most simple dishes that aren't a kebab.

People are, generally, really nice, but the vast majority do not speak English. I thought the lack of English speakers was bad in Spain, but here I'd say it's even worse. My intention when I came here was to try to mix with the locals, but I've given up, at least for the time being (I hang out with some Turks, but always among expats).

I'm taking four hours of Turkish lessons a day until January, but I'm still unable to speak anything other than the basics and I don't think I'll be able to have a normal conversation during my one year contract, mostly because I'm not motivated to follow up on the lessons knowing I could spend my time learning a more useful language.

What I was telling Dird is that I made my calculations of how much I'd spend and how much I'd be able to save and, even knowing that I wouldn't be able to live like a local, I was off by a wide margin. Since I need to live near my office, I'm living 20 meters from the most posh street in Ankara, which means things around here cost up to five times more than they'd cost in a normal neighbourhood. Also, because the city is so boring, you need to get out on weekends and you'd think being a big city you'd be able to fly for cheap to the Middle East, but it's either expensive or just impossible.

Hanging with expats also means spending much more money, because they tend to be quite wealthy with expensive habits, especially in a bureocratic hellhole like Ankara.

I can't complain: I live well, I can save money, there's nothing really bad about the city (other than there being nothing good about it) and luckily next month I won't be here much and I'll be able to stay a lot in Istanbul Cyprus and Egypt, but the amount of money they'd have to pay me to stay here after my contract expires would have to be completely unreasonable.

Fake edit: apologies for the wall of text, I got into the complaining mood :P

learn your marhaba & stop complaining :P
digiturk is awesome
stay away from cyprus its shit...

why would you need to live right next to it? thats bs man you could have caught a dolmusch~ if you wanted

I have to admit that a big part of the reason I'm so bitter is because I was expecting to be sent to a city with a radically different culture (I wanted Asia or Africa), hopefully learn a useful language and live in a lively and interesting big city, but those three things are quite the opposite of what I'm doing here.

I need to live close because public transport is not reliable, there are constant traffic jams during peak hours and because apparently it snows hard during the winter and the asphalt is so slippery you can barely walk (the whole city is a hill and when it rains cars have lots of troubles to move).

About not hanging out with idiot English teachers and so... I don't know, I'm not exactly a social person but sometimes you just need some human interaction outside your group of close people and knowing you won't be able to have it with the locals, at least for a few months, I'm sure you'll have to turn to whatever idiots who speak English you can find.

Any way, best of luck for you in China. I've met people who lived in that part of the globe with even less money and managed to do just fine, but that kind of life is hard and not for everyone. Also, you can always try to move to Shanghai, I've heard they hire people for all sorts of positions if they are native English speakers. Hopefully next year I'll be able to move around there :P


Cyprus is shit? I think it will be fine. I'm going there just to relax a bit and drive around the island now that it's the low season and there will be almost no tourists.

i made lots of .cn friends at uni..a lot ill meet/visit when i get there
ill make more when i get there by going to the right places (badminton.. similar interests etc)...many locals wanna prac english..would be the same if you tried places besides bars~
like in cyprus i went to a uni about playing in heir bmtn club~

don't apologize, I'm actually grateful, I love reading write-ups like this!


Turkey fits perfectly cause my company may win a huge contract there and I was wondering if I should see if I get on board with it. My company does the usual expat bonus + paying rent and income tax in the foreign country thing. So it would be a really good deal money-wise.
It would in the area of Ankara, too. Have you travelled around the country, how is the landscape?


Anyway thanks again for the writeup, will help a lot when I make my decision :)

I haven't travelled anything and I haven't even been to Istanbul yet. I've been busy since I moved, but starting next month my plan is to visit all the interesting places in Turkey and the Middle East. I don't see myself staying for more than two consecutive weekends here from now on.

For what is worth, everybody here says the rest of Turkey is awesome, from the coastal cities like Izmir, Trabzon or Antalya, to the landscapes of the Capadoccia, to the chaos of Istanbul. Apparently during the summer there's an infinite number of great places to go for a weekend getaway and being in the centre of the peninsula you can go pretty much everywhere by car.

Now don't get discouraged by Ankara, as I said there's nothing too bad about it and it's a comfortable place to live. If you get paid well and you can travel often you won't have problems adapting, because this is pretty much like any European city, but it's not exactly the place any 20something would like to live in, it's more of a city for a married couple if you know what I mean ;P

Also, there is no pork. I thought I wasn't going to miss it but the fake sausages and fake cold cuts are disgusting and only make you crave for some of the real stuff :P

ok then I guess I'll wait how that project comes along and see how I could fit in and decide then.

About the pork, you can try to go to big supermarkets like Carrefour to buy some. They had it in Tunesia, for example. Of course, you will have to prepare it yourself.
Related to that, we had a Turkish intern here last year, and on his last day he hoped there would be pork in the cafeteria, because he figured he wouldn't get it again in a long time.

When I asked why he eats pork, he said he figured Allah wasn't going to put him in hell with rapists and murderers for eating pork :P


/e

oh and for me food, would probably be one thing to consider if I were in dird's position.
I mean I love Chinese food and will try different stuff, but after just a week in China on a vacation, my frineds really started to miss eating bread. So despite getting great Chinese food for free, we ended up going to an overly expensive Pizza Hut just to get something bread-like.

But I suppose it should be possible to get bread in supermarkets by now.

Nah, I already tried the biggest supermarkets in the city, including a big Carrefour, and I haven't been able to find pork yet.

It's the same with the Turks here, I haven't met anyone who refuses to eat pork. A friend of mine brought some jamón to a party and the Turks went crazy about it :D

For me the lack of bread is not a problem, I'd rather have no bread than so much bread as they have here. The different kinds of Turkish unleavened bread are great and I always end up eating too much white bread, which is not healthy :P

Although lol@china smelly, red, shit, dirty country, gl there - atleast you do what you want to do :)

nice. i'd love to do something crezi like that, though it looks like i'll be stuck at school for at least a few more years

hey. that's my internal monologue!

weren't you attending uni?

If so, it usually it a perfect time to do an internship in a foreign country. There are several organisations which can help to set something up.

don't forget the bumbag

shits a must...especially after reading "Using a razor to get a wallet out of a hip pocket on a bus is a favorite tactic" !!!

"shits a must" (c) Dird

Get call in the morning from someone purporting to be from a Chinese company offering you a job.

Accept offer.

Travel to China.

End up in human trafficking ring being bought by a wealthy, homosexual Middle Eastern oil tycoon.

in this case the joke is on the wealthy, homosexual Middle Eastern oil tycoon.

Pics or it never happened!

wont start until july so will take a while :d

You'll just be able to see West Brom get relegated then before you move? Nice.

sif

Chinese girls are ugly... yes all 700 million of them.

Chinese have gender? WHAT TH- . . .

creepy

incredible.. :D

you win my love yet again dird <3

lock up your children

You going to see the Alright Wall of China?

its out the way meaning a whole day spent...why spend a day just to see a wall? didnt last time and dont plan to now

Heh you're like a young Pilkington.

dont say that, im already thin on top :x not cutting the back/sides in a hope itll encourage the top but no luck so far =[

let's try to set something up, so he gets to eat toad :)

could be worse

Have you seen An Idiot Abroad with Karl Pilkington? The Chinese eat way more disgusting things than toad. Scorpion on a stick. Yummi!

Yes, I have and I thinks it's an awesome series. But scorpion on a stickl isn't that bad.
I mean I have tried some grilled African insect, once, tasted a bit like fishy wood.

Worst, as in most nightmarish, food I have heard of was when my cousin told me of his trip to Korea.
They were served, seafood and among it, squid with a bowl hot sauce.

Doesn't sound bar, until he saw that the squid was alive and moving. And then came the tricky part. You are supposed to put it in the hot sauce so it would form a ball. Cause otherwise the tentacles might stick to the inside of the throat.

I'd rather have the grilled scorpion, thank you very much.

You both need to watch Bizarre Foods (http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Bizarre_Foods) to learn the real meaning of disgusting.

watched the slideshow and I'd say grilled scorpian, direed insect and living squid would fit right in.

I'm also pretty sure that I've had fried jellyfish and shredded goose feet. But it's difficult to say as it was a buffet :P

I've eaten a sheep's head multiple times.

with eyes or without?

Without. I've eaten salmon eyes though. They don't taste all that great.

Also: Whalepenis.

Hah no. Did eat some whale the other day though. Suck it hippies.