diana

Diana on KGW, Portland

Jacob Redding — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:22:12 +0000

Diana and I did a short segment on weird food in China for KGW, Portland. I'm the Portland connection and she's the superstar! ;)

Head over to her site to see the video and read the story.

Diana on CBS

Jacob Redding — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 16:24:49 +0000

Diana (of Appetite for China) was on CBS this morning. I'm so proud of her. If you missed the U.S nationwide broadcast here it is for your viewing pleasure.

Diana on KGW, Portland

Jacob Redding — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 06:34:41 +0000

Hey do you guys know this girl Diana? She runs this blog called Appetite For China. Well these days she's been on TV quite a bit showing the American television stations around the Wang Fu Jing snack street. Diana's a great writer and its nice to see people paying attention to her blog and her work.

What for her on CBS's early show (nationwide) as well as on KGW in Portland, Oregon.

Apartment found in Beijing

Jacob Redding — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 15:32:11 +0000

Today Diana signed the papers for our first apartment in Beijing, China. This confirms that for the next year we will be living in Beijing and, thus, learning Mandarin Chinese. Beijing is being overrun by Olympic fever so our apartment search was made rather difficult by landlords that are looking to "cash-in" on the once-in-a-lifetime event. Almost every single one of the apartments we looked at, that matched our picky criteria, had the rent raised either just before or during our viewing of it.

After searching for a good three weeks I gave up one day. I just had to get away from it and I needed to catch up on the other parts of my life. So while I emailed, studied and did some "work" Diana continued the tireless search. She braved the cold weather and the howling winds of Beijing and just when she thought all was lost she found it. She went into "one last" agent and asked if anything was available with our picky criteria (it's not super picky, it's just western criteria in an eastern country... ok it's picky). They had a place.

The apartment was in a brand new building in the 和平里 (he ping le) area just off the brand new 5 subway line. Of course we have both been fed the "brand new" line before and it usually means "Super old building with some new-ish type furniture that may or may not have been cleaned in the past year". This apartment was different. The apartment was so new it had yet to be lived in! She looked at it, loved it and made an appointment so I could see it.

I looked at it the next day and I had to say that "she done good". The place was cool so we went ahead with the negotiations.

Jumping straight to the point it took 5 days to get to the meeting we had today. First we had to negotiate the price down to a reasonable amount and then we had issues about appliances, furniture, etc. It took time but in the end it was worth it.

I rented the apartment in NYC so now it was Diana's turn. She rented the apartment in her name. I think it's appropriate because she did all of the work. Incidentally this is Diana's first apartment that she has a signed a contract as a sole person (i.e. I'm not on the lease). I think it's cool that she did it in a foreign country while speaking a foreign language. That's much cooler than my first dumpy apartment in Olympia, Washington.

Things are done a bit differently in China than in the U.S. Primarily that the method of payment is cold hard cash paid on the spot. To this meeting we carried over 16,000 RMB in cash with us. To put that in perspective it's over $2,000 USD (at the time of writing) or approximately two months salary for an average Beijing IT employee (it's the sector I know). It's highly customary to pay rent 3 months in advance and, on initial signing, one month rent as a deposit. Whew! That's a big chunk of change. Double, triple and quadrupled counted by two parties in two different languages.

With the amount of cold hard cash I felt as though we should have swapped briefcases under a dark secluded bridge and used pseudo-names like "Bigem" or "Swetch".

After we handed over the cash we got the key!! It's official. A lease is signed, keys handed over and we're registered at the local police station. We're here to stay!

This post does make it sound as if the process were easy. The honest truth about renting an apartment in Beijing is that the housing market is absolutely awesome.

Apartments are everywhere and at every part of the spectrum in terms of price, quality, furnishing, etc. The key to all of it is that you NEED to speak Chinese. Let me repeat this. You NEED to speak Chinese. If you don't you're a paying a "foreigner" tax. It's the hard honest truth. In fact even if you do speak the language you may still pay that foreigner tax.

When things came down to it Diana and I fully admitted to each other (and now to the world) that we paid (1) foreigner tax (2) Olympic tax and (3) convenience tax. We're foreigners and we tried really, really hard to avoid this "foreigner tax"; which, of course, isn't a real tax it's just the fact that you're only seeing higher priced apartments because of your inability to communicate and/or read the, much cheaper, Chinese postings. We found many, many, many cheaper postings on sina.com.cn (and other sites) but our Chinese just wasn't strong enough to really go direct on these websites. We simply felt more comfortable using an agent (one of the sources of the "tax"). A good agent, like we found, worked for us regardless of the language barrier. We used 我爱我家 and I'd recommend them (expensive but worth it for foreigners).

Olympic tax is hard to avoid these days. Every landlord in town knows the Olympic Games are coming and they are either (a) only signing leases until July so that they can jack up, make that hyper jack up, the rents for the events or (b) raising the rents for the entire year. Again we tried to avoid it and I do think we are missing the full brunt of it but we did pay some Olympic tax.

The final tax was a convenience tax. To be honest we were just tired of looking. The place wasn't 100% perfect. The fridge sucks and it should be replaced. We wanted the landlord to do more but in the end we got most of our requests taken care of and we gave up on the rest. You can only fight for so long. The place is "fine" not perfect but fine. After all it's just a house and we just want to live in peace now. We could have looked for another two weeks and we probably would have found a cheaper place with better furnishings and better... well we could have found something better. In the end we just said "Whatever... lets just live, it's only money and life is more than money". This isn't to say we're throwing money away just that we value living our lives over saving a hundred or so RMB.

The view from our bedroom is awesome! We can see the new CCTV being built as well as a good cross section of town. I'm hoping to make friends with the security guards so they can grant me access to the roof. It is an absolutely amazing view up there!

Now we have a home! We move in tomorrow and we're hoping to have our ADSL hooked up by mid next week (or tomorrow if I'm really, really, really lucky). Our next challenge is to decipher what the heck this notice is. I just hope it's not about shutting off the heat, or a building bankruptcy notice ;)

After that I just want to have a nice hotpot meal at home with some really nice Chinese friends whom we are indebted to.

The adventure continues!

The big 25

Jacob Redding — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 21:23:04 +0000

The cradle rocks just a little slower this year as Diana turns the big 25! Go say Happy Birthday to her on her blog and then stop making fun of me for "robbing the cradle"..

Three years folks, that's nothing!

She's 25. I'm 28, not quite old enough to be her Father or anything. Heck she probably learned how to read, speak, walk and run before I did (in a harder language none-the-less). Sheesh.. all of you!

Happy Birthday Diana.. We'll have fireworks for your birthday! In fact the whole city will celebrate your birthday with fireworks shooting over the Statue of Liberty (they love you just as much as I do!)

Now everyone go and say Happy Birthday to her

Visitors and Hiking in Connecticut

Jacob Redding — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 13:55:54 +0000

Diana's parents are in town this weekend. They moved back to China late last year and returned to the U.S to do their last US tax return. Instead of just stopping into the country, turning in their taxes and leaving they decided to take a tour. They started out in San Francisco, headed to L.A, over to Boston and now they are in New York. Originally they planned for just a few days but I think they have decided to stay a little longer; which I think is awesome.

They came bearing gifts so they can stay as long as they'd like. They brought me and Diana (mainly me.. since Diana's is much smarter than I) children's Learn Mandarin Chinese books. Yes the books were designed and intended for us by 4 and 5 year olds but I think that they are awesome. Last night Diana's mother went through one of the books with me. I felt like I was about five years old but that really isn't any different than everyday ;)

These books are awesome!

Ok now in other completely unrelated news Diana's article on hiking in Connecticut was published this morning in the Sunday edition of the Boston Globe (Travel section). You can read it online here on the Explore New England website.

Diana's umpteenth Boston Globe Article (Missing)

Jacob Redding — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 04:31:26 +0000

Sadly, this file is missing.
Diana was in the Boston Globe, again, for the umpteenth time. It was 3 days over one year since she was first published in the Globe so we made the trek from our place down to Grand Central for the ceremonial "Damn girl what are you like a writer or something". I guess she is making a go at this writing thing and well people seem to like her writing.

I only wish my job was as exciting as hers, I just write software and be super geeky for a living (and get hassled by the cops).

The video is kinda boring but eh.. watch it anyways it is only two minutes long. ;)

Diana is in the Paper!

Jacob Redding — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 00:24:00 +0000

Diana had her first major article in the Boston Globe this past Wednesday. Front page of the Food Section! I guess when she goes for something she gets what she wants.

Check out the videos below.

PDF of the Boston Globe Article

Diana's First Globe Article

Jacob Redding — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 06:27:00 +0000

Diana's first big article in the Boston Globe and she made the front page of the Food section! She wrote an awesome article on a handmade noodle restaurant.

New Pictures

Jacob Redding — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 18:12:00 +0000

I haven't taken a whole lot of photos since I moved to New York but I did take a few. I uploaded 4 more pictures in "The East Side" and 7 pictures in "Florida".

Of New York I took a picture of:

Times Square (typical traditional photo)
The L stop to Brooklyn

I love Brooklyn, I'll probably end of moving there. Although I really like Chinatown and the east village too.

Diana

Yes, a picture of Diana. Well, not quite. She's on the phone and you can only see her back and hair. I know you guys are all dying to see who this girl is (Umm.. I had pictures of her on my website for about 2 months). When I get back to New York I will setup an ambush and take a picture of her. sssshhhh don't tell her.

Manhattan Skyline

The view from Diana's living room/kitchen windows

I took a few pictures on my drive down to Florida, too. Lately I haven't been in a "photo-taking" mood so I've been leaving my camera in the car or at the house.

Ok I have to get back to applying for jobs.