Yes, it’s official now. The postman came and knocked my door very loudly this morning, maybe he knew it was an important delivery - the employment contract from Bloomberg!

Everything comes too quick for me to realise it was true. I only submitted my CV last Monday, and the people from agency called me up last Thursday saying that they wanted me to go to London for an interview on Friday - the next day! But of course I bought the ticket right away and went down the next morning. It was an opportunity and I knew I need to catch it. The whole interview went very well. It wasn’t as hard as I thought, or maybe it was Friday afternoon and they were too tired to ask some difficult questions for me. But what I didn’t expect was that after I walked back to my agency office, they called straight away and just gave me an offer! It took me quite a while to realise it was true, and the Japanese lady in the office double confirmed to me “yes, yes, yes!”. I was very excited. That was like those moments of the life that you will never forget.

I wrote a long entry in my Chinese blog to detail the whole process of my interview and everything, so just let me be lazy with the English one. But I still like to share this good news here with my friends and my blog readers! This week has been another highlights of my life since I came abroad (the others were when the I got an offer from Durham, and Jenn said yes when I asked her out for a dinner :). I sometimes smile by myself when walking alone, I am just purely happy. Getting a job in the UK for a foreign student isn’t easy, and getting a good one is ever harder. But I luckily managed to have one :)

For the next weeks I will have a real holiday while learning some job-related stuff by myself. Still need to wait until I am issued a work permit, then I will be started working in London. Oh yes, need to find a house as well. It seems a lot of things to do, but it’s all good! Now I’m just hoping to get a work permit without any big problems.

Came cross a group in facebook. It’s definitely worth to share here. It’s just some sides of life but some of them are quite representative.

1. You’re at an expensive western restaurant and don’t even notice the guy at the next table yelling into his cell phone
2. You enjoy karaoke
3. You walk backwards in the park listening to a transistor radio
4. The China Daily is your source for hard hitting, fast breaking, investigative journalism
5. You smoke in crowded elevators.
6. All white people look the same to you
7. You like the smell of the bus.
8. You find state-employed retail staff helpful, knowledgeable and friendly
9. You no longer need tissues to blow your nose
10. You find western toilets uncomfortable
11. You throw your used toilet paper in the basket (as a courtesy to the next person)
12. You think that the heavy air actually contains valuable nutrients that you need to stay healthy
13. You think a 30 year old woman who carries a Hello Kitty lunch box is cute
14. A sexual pervert is a man who prefers women to money.
15. It’s OK to throw rubbish, including old fridges, from your 18th-floor window
16. You believe that pressing the lift button 63 times will make it move faster
17. You aren’t aware that one is supposed to pay for software
18. You are not surprised to see your tap water run dark brown
19. You tell your parents their house back in your home country has bad feng shui
20. You think that a $7 shirt is a rip-off
21. You always leave tray and trash on the table when you are in Starbucks because you insisted it is the way to keep everyone employed
22. You buy an XXXL T-shirt in store when you returned home
23. You take large sum of cash whenever you go hospital in home country
24. You have no reservations about spitting sun flower seeds on the restaurant floor
25. You think it’s silly to buy a new bike when it’ll get stolen soon and stolen bikes are half the price.
26. You’d rather pay the 10 yuan for an all night stay at the internet cafe than the 30 for a taxi home.
27. You feel cheated if you don’t receive a full head and shoulder massage when getting a haircut
28. You blow your nose or spit on the restaurant floor (of course after making a loud hocking noise)
29. You no longer wait in line, but go immediately to the head of the queue
30. It becomes exciting to see if you can get on the lift before anyone can get off
31. It is no longer surprising that the only decision made at a meeting is the time and venue for the next meeting
32. You no longer wonder how someone who earns US$ 400.00 per month can drive a Mercedes
33. You accept the fact that you have to queue to get a number for the next queue
34. You believe everything you read in the local newspaper
35. You have developed an uncontrollable urge to follow people carrying small flags
36. You regard it as part of the adventure when the waiter correctly repeats your order and the cook makes something completely different.
37. You are not surprised when three men with a ladder show up to change a light bulb
38. You look over people’s shoulder to see what they are reading
39. You honk your horn at people because they are in your way as you drive down the sidewalk
40. When car accidents become a source of heartwarming humour
41. When shopping at Carrefour some laowai stares you down for catching you looking into his basket while you wonder to yourself what laowai’s eat
42. You have figured out that it is actually the Taiwanese who are running this country
43. You have a pinky fingernail an inch long
44. You burp in any situation and don’t care
45. You start to watch CCTV9 and feel warm and comforted by the governments great work
46. You think Pizza Hut is high-class and worth queueing for
47. You have learnt how to detect someone is in a hurry behind you, and now have the ability to not only walk very slowly but also grow eyes in the back of your head, so when they start to overtake on the right hand side, you automatically cut in and walk very slowly directly in front of them
48. When you are able to jump the queue because the idiot laowai left 2 centimeters between themself and the person in front of them
49. You have absolutely no sense of traffic rules
50. You start calling other foreigners Lao Wai
51. You start cutting off large vehicles on your bicycle
52. The last time you visited your mother, you gave her your business card
53. You think no car is complete without a tissue box on the rear shelf and a feather duster in the trunk
54. You go to the local shop in pajamas
55. When looking out the window, you think “Wow, so many trees!” instead of “Wow, so much concrete!”
56. Pollution, what pollution?
57. You think “white pills, blue pills, and pink powder” is an adequate answer to the question “What are you giving me, doctor?”
58. Someone doesn’t stare at you and you wonder why
59. Firecrackers don’t wake you up
60. Your family stops asking when you’ll be coming back
61. You wear out your vehicle’s horn before its brakes
62. You buy a top-of-the-line karaoke machine
63. Forks feel funny
64. Chinese remakes of Western songs sound better than the originals
65. You get homesick for Chinese food when away from China
66. You realize that smiling and nodding is Chinese body language for, “Go away; leave me alone.”
67. All the top-level government officials you befriended for guanxi purposes when you first arrived are retired and living in your country
68. After being in an accident, you tell the ambulance driver which hospital to take you to
69. Your company offers you a job in your native land, and includes regular “Home Leave” to China as an incentive
70. You think of “salad” as diced apples in mayonnaise
71. You don’t bother to take the sticker off the lenses of your fake Ray-Bans
72. You only wear a suit when you dig ditches or do home repairs
73. Your handshake is weakening by the day
74. You compiled a 3-page list of weird English first names that Chinese people of your acquaintance have chosen for themselves.
75. Your collection of business cards has outgrown your flat
76. You and a friend get on a bus, sit at opposite ends of the bus, and continue your conversation by yelling from one end to the other
77. You cannot say a number without making the appropriate hand sign
78. You like the taste of Green Tea and Chivas
79. You start recognising the chinese songs on the radio and sing along to them with the taxi driver
80. You feel insulted when you enter a restaurant and only three waiters welcome you

Maybe I shouldn’t write about this, my friends and classmates will kill me.

Last week I had a lunch with most of the teachers, lectures, professors and tutors in my department. The only reason for me being the only student in that lunch was that I was helping to set up the farewell party, so my teacher kindly invited me to join. I can’t remember how was the topic started, maybe we were talking about how to inform students by email, and I mentioned the word “Facebook“. It’s not completely new to them. They must have heard of it before from maybe friends or students. Anyway, they were very interested and started to ask questions. “What’s Facebook for”, “Why do you use it?” etc. No matter how I hard I tried to explain, I can’t get away the frown on their faces. And then suddenly one teacher suggested “Why don’t you show us this website after lunch?” I broke into a cold sweat for a few seconds, then realised “No” wasn’t a very good option.

After lunch we went back to a lecture room. A projector was set, and I was about to give a presentation to my lecturers on Facebook, a place where their students may have talked, or even joked about them. So my starting line was “Please be aware that we about to enter a very private website which may contain some very personal information”. They nodded while staring on the log-in page on the screen. At the second I signed in, I realised I’d got myself into a very wrong place. My profile picture with my girlfriend showed up, followed some party photos in which people looked seriously drunk. Also, some groups like “(teacher’s name) Appreciation Group” showed up as I scrolled down the page. The teachers looked at those contents very seriously, as if they were marking my essays. After a few clicks, I knew I was not supposed to go any further, so I finished my presentation very roughly. They still looked very curious but I guessed some of them still didn’t get the idea why such a website exists.

Actually it wasn’t as bad as I thought, but after the presentation, I had a deep thought about the privacy in Facebook and sites like that. I’m not a very active user on Facebook and I don’t normally write on other people’s wall but sent them message. I believe if someone really want to search you, it’s possible to know quite a lot of personal information, especially when you are an active member. I experienced several times when I went to a party and some people came up to me said “You are Richard, right? I thought you in Facebook”. I’ve been using the Internet for many years, and the longer I use, and less information I want to share on the web. I believe that the second you press “Send” or “Publish”, the information you send will stay there for ever and can no longer be 100% private, even it’s an email. Your future partner may see it, your bosses and co-workers may see it and even your kids. It’s not a big deal to tell your teachers that you are in Facebook, or tell them there is such a site exists. If they really want, they can dig it out anyway. But I would really be careful with the things I wrote on the Internet, no matter they are in a password protected SNS, or public blog.

There are some teachers joined already. And they added me as friends…

It’s a pity that mobiles in UK cannot be as advanced as in Japan, where you don’t send text message from your mobile phone but EMAIL. It was very efficient when you are organising events. You can just sent it through your email account (for free) and people receive it in their phone immediately!

I just found out a way to do the similar thing with phones in UK. But you need to have Firefox Explorer. Here are two ways to download it.

1.
(This is an ad from Google, I will get paid)

2. Download it through Firefox Website (I don’t get paid)

They are the same Firefox.

OK, enough commercial, Richard! Now here is the trick.

I use Orange, so go to Orange.co.uk, sign in/up your mobile account, click Send a text Message.

Then press “Ctrl+D” to add this page to your Firefox Bookmark. And “Ctrl+B” to call up the bookmark on the sidebar, find that page you saved, right click, and select “Properties”. Next, set any keyword you like in the shortcut section.

OK, it’s done! Now whenever you want to send a text message in your Firefox, just press “Ctrl+L”, type the keyword you set and then it goes straight to that sending page. It’s way quicker than pressing those tiny keyboard in your phone, right?