Bring out the new China

Hope you don't mind if

I'm in the back.

I talk to you like I know you.

I do know you? Oh good, this should make things easier. How's things? Did that... "issue" clear up? Hope everything's swell.
Well now, hope you don't mind if I talk to you like you know everything that's been going on in my life in the last 6 months.

What's that? You have next-to-no-idea whats been going on in my life in the last 6 months? Well...this is going to suck for you. I haven't really got the time for a grand tour. We'll just have to do the "Lost" thing, where you pick up the backstory piece by piece as you go along. Or like how I do with the "Lost" thing, which is turning the TV off and walking away. Back to things that don't take forever to get to the point. Judging by this post, is that hypocritical?

OK, so to summarize:

- October 2006: Can't find job in Japan, decide to go back to NZ.
- (Also) October 2006: Find job at plastic manufacturer in the International Sales section, entirely by chance as I am introduced by a friend of my girlfriend.
- November 2006: Enter company in the Quality Control section
- December 2006: Nearly die of boredom from checking boxes full of plastic goods and not much else for 10 hours a day.
- April 2007: Enter Sales section of company. Much rejoicing.
- (Also) April 2007: Learn I'm going to China on a business trip... for HALF A YEAR.
- May 2007: Arrive in China...

Righto, that should be enough backstory.
So I got here on Monday, and now its Tuesday, and still the gloss of novelty hasn't worn off. Although in China's case, its less of a gloss and more of a carbon-powdery thick sauce, that's probably bright brown. The place is everything I thought it would be, and more of the same. Our Chinese staff members picked us up late afternoon from Shenzhen (a 45 min ferry ride from Hong Kong), and drove us the hour or so to the hotel. When I say "drove", it was more like "scared the shit out of us". But it was hardly his fault. I mean, who's to blame when even buses don't indicate when changing lanes, people don't so much walk across the road as stop for a picnic there, and your only personal weapon (besides the barely steerable missle you happen to be seated in) is the tiny horn, which everyone seems to have an obligation to use at least 3 times a minute. Its a beautiful dangerous opera, a chaos theorician's wet dream. There are an armada of different

A man makes the bold decision to carry his entire
diaper collection across a bustling intersection on
the back of a genuine 9th century cart

vehicles, but some recurring personalities: my personal favourite is the 30-something male on a tiny moped, ugly as sin, and with more boxes strapped to the back than there is him and bike put together. I want to know if they all carry the same things in the boxes, and I secretly hope that it's lots of little round things, like marbles or oranges, so that if he crashes they go rolling everywhere. That would make my day (though probably not his).
So anyway, not dead yet after 2 days of being driven around, but I still feel that thrill stepping into a car that you might get climbing into a rollercoaster, or looking over the edge of a steep cliff. Never a dull day in Chinese commution.

I might try and make posting about China a regular thing, if I have the time on my hands, but then again maybe not. Either way, any questions?