Creative Group

After about a week of waiting to be placed in a working environment I was called by one of the first students I had met and he chaperoned me to my work place. I talked though the nature of the group and a short while later it was lunch. After lunch, the guy I already knew had some stuff to do so I returned to the lab to finish up the day with the rest of its members.

The group I was to be part of was a team of about 10 students all working to win as many competitions as possible. Although there was no full time management, a member of staff would occassionally come in to offer a hand. The rest of the time 1 or 2 of the students would keep the team moving although most of the members were also working on their own projects in their spare time. They had a great track record!

We participated in a multitude of competitions and I was given a key. My colleagues were also interested in my work and when I showed them they asked me to give a few talks about a some of the things I had done.

Pizza Hut Celebrity

After a short time in China, some of the Westerners I knew yearned for pizza. There was a Pizza Hut in a shopping center near our campus so we set a time to eat there. When we arrived, we found that there was quite a queue and that it would take 20 minutes to be seated. One of us stayed in the queue while a few others, including me, walked off to do various things. I was about 100 meters away at an ATM when one of the employees ran out to talk to the lone Westerner in line. They were interested in getting me, the tall white guy, to come back the next day and take part in a "party" concerning a new product.

We eventually entered and ate and at the end of the meal they came by to ensure my presence the next day. They were also interested in my one other Westerner of our group, but they had no interest in the rest as they were all ABC or something similar. They wanted white people.

I came back the next day with a couple of friends and they swept me and my white friend aside and explained the evening's activities to us. They wanted us to help introduce the product by sitting on display and eating a new pizza in a "western" way. There were three of us all together and they had each of us pretend to be from different countries. They asked me to eat the pizza from the crust first and then work back towards the center. Another person had to fold the pizza and eat it like that. My friend was asked to roll it into a cylinder and eat it in this way. We were also asked to say a few Chinese words which I could not do well at the time which just added to the mayhem.

After the oddities of pizza were over with, we were ushered to sit with our other friends. Oddly, all the other spectators had been given free pizzas and salads and other things. Our friends however had not been given much at all. The one of us who spoke the best Chinese argued with the manager and eventually got us some free pizza but certainly not enough.

Eventually they started playing games. One in particular included putting a balloon connected to a pump under someone's shirt and pumping it up until it popped. It was all quite strange and amusing.

The pizza we were advertising was stuffed crust. Sadly all their pizzas were quite bad so we tried to avoid Pizza Hut in the future.

Here are a few more pictures from the event.

Pizza Hut Celebrity

Waiting for Appointment

After having met with Ying Fantian I was told that I could move into a lab soon. However, I did not have a good way to contact people at ZJU so for a week or so I had no appointment. This was not a problem as I had only just arrived and was happy to look around Hangzhou more, settle in a little more and make some more friends. And that is what I did. I visited many of the attraction around Hangzhou and started getting a hang of the eating and shopping scene. I also made a lot more friends from all over the world, especially Korea. At this point I was not meeting a lot of Chinese people however that would change a lot in the weeks to come.

Buying a Camera

This photo was one of the first shot with my new camera. Note the exesive noise in dark areas.

After being in China for a week I realised that not having a digital camera on such a trip would be really lame. So I went out and bought one.

Usually when I do things like spending money, I set aside a short while - perhaps a matter of weeks - to decide which product to buy. I care quite a lot about this sort of thing so it was a surprise to me that when it came to buying a digital camera I would not think about it at all and just go shopping.

I told a few of the guys from the lab that I needed to buy a camera and asked if they would show me where cameras could be found. They took me to a digital supermarket which had quite a selection of products and vendors and we strolled around for a while. Realizing these people may be busy next time I could get a camera, I decided to buy one on the spot. My budget was about 6000 RMB and the products I was interested in were prosumers or something close. We looked for quite some time and in the end I decided to buy a little Panasonic.

The next day I was a little sad because it was far too noisy in most situations. After some time I worked out how to take photos that are not bad with it.

Registered Student

As a result of Ying Fantian's return to China I was able to complete my registration and formally become part of ZJU. Although I was registered as an Industrial Design student, the nature of my work there was not really clear. What happened was that I went to the office where registration would occur and they asked me questions like who are you, why are you here, why should we let you study here, who is paying for you to study etc. Of course I did not have all the answers as it was a virtually informal exchange. Ying Fantian had advised me that he could be contacted if there were problems so I presented the registration officer with Ying's phone number and a short conversation between them ensued. After about 2.5 minutes of talking the officer hung up and said, "It will be no problem" and gave me a student card which resembled a small passport. My fees would be payed by the university and I would pay the international student accommodation fee. Still no information on what I would do for the year but that was going to be sorted out later.