Friday 29 August 2008

Third time's the charm

U know how pole vaulters, high jumpers get 3 tries before they are out? Cos the westerner's believe that the third time is always luckiest.

I will know if this is true in China.
1 month after i moved to Beijing, my new business card finally arrived. I noticed that my extension was printed wrongly, actually they printed Mountain Man's extension on my business card. Strange. So i asked for a 2nd print. This time, they got the extension right, but the address is wrong! They printed Shanghai address with Beijing extension. So really, i hope the third time's lucky.

I actually feel bad that i have to bother the admin office with so many of my complaints, like i'm a whiner, why can't i just accept what is given.... Honestly most of them are very nice and helpful, just that sometimes it's not really done correctly.

Examples of things i complain about:
  1. They got me HK medical insurance, that means in order to get my claims i need to have a bank account in HK. Like HELLO? i am not from HK why would i randomly have a HK bank account. Do they know that it will cost my money to fly to HK just to open a bank account? and it will waste their money if i cannot even claim?
  2. I don't actually have a legal chinese name. When booking air-tickets, some girl mysteriously booked my ticket under my chinese name. Now this mistake is forgivable if it's the first time they book my air tickets. But they've done it right a million times.
  3. Arriving in SH via Pudong airport (1.5 hrs away from the city) for domestic flight. Usually domestic flights shd be channeled through Hongqiao airport cos it's 20 minutes away from the city. Poor mountain man got a shock when he arrived at Pudong once. the journey to reach home is even longer than the flight itself.
Initially i thought that they were ganging up on me, but than i have also learnt that in China, the theory of cock-ups is more powerful than the theory of conspiracy.

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