Just another day at the office.

Well I know I said I was going to post more, but the last two weeks have been pretty hectic. I’m proud to say that more and more articles are being posted to this site called eChinacities. I guess you can say I’m a legit freelancer for them now. Getting paid for blog-like articles and articles about Nanjing is a great way to improve my writing, get some clips and make a little extra cash. My social life is improving every week so there is more and more to write about. Yay! But office life still rules most of my time, which is OK. There’s always something funny going on it seems.

I am impressed with the English ability of most of the staff in the office. Cheryl’s English is near perfect and a few other coworkers speak English very well with decent pronunciation despite never having lived abroad. Pretty impressive I think. There are a few mishaps however, and a few worth sharing here on NYAFC.

The first was back in August on the Chinese Valentine’s Day. A male coworker was in our office telling me about the holiday (don’t worry, it wasn’t a come on) and about how it is a day for love. Well, in his attempt to share that the holiday was about being loving and showing love, he says, “it’s a day for making love.” Cheryl and I couldn’t help but giggle. She quickly explained (in Chinese) his mistake and his face turned bright red. While the “making love” bit maybe true for some Chinese couples, this is not at all what he meant to actually say. He apologized and was really embarrassed but I politely said I knew what he meant and tried to ease his embarrassment.

Another funny anecdote actually happened recently. There are two versions of the Web sites for the organization - one in English, the other in Chinese. Well I don’t really look at the Chinese site because, well, it is all in Chinese. But Cheryl checks it frequently to make sure we’re not missing anything for the English site. And apparently someone missed a MAJOR mishap on the Chinese site. They love using acronyms for programs here - like AST for Ameson Scholastic Test or AECIS for Ameson Elite Chinese Identification Scheme (too bad they come up with that one before I got there - it’s a terrible name). Well they really screwed up advertising the program called American Summer School - ASS. Yup. Their latest, and by far most ridiculous, acronym is an age-old English curse word. Cheryl and I laughed all morning about it. I told Cheryl they really needed to change it ASAP, but with printed materials already distributed and the site already linked with the ASS name we’ll see how quickly they get around to it. I guess some of these people’s English isn’t as good as I thought it was.

Anyway I thought I would include a link to the latest article on eChinacities. It is about working in a Chinese office. While kind of generic and a bit more culturally sensitive than I would have liked, it’s still pretty accurate. I figured I’d help out the article’s popularity and also give the site a few more hits. You can check it out here. http://www.echinacities.com/main/ExpatCorner/ExpatsCorner.aspx?n=4551

I hope you enjoyed this small glimpse of office in China. Maybe one of these days I’ll write a post without the cultural sensitivity coming into play (but for my first “Expat Corner” article, I didn’t want it to be a complete rant... Which I could have easily done.) I could even make an entire post just on being blond in a Chinese office. Anyway, it’s interesting and different and I hope you all enjoy reading it.