Dear internet user,

Dear internet user,

We wish to congratulate you over your email success in our computer Balloting .This is a Millennium Scientific Electronic Computer Games in which email addresses were used. All participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from over 100,000 company and 50,000,000 individual email addresses from all over the world. It is a promotional program aimed at encouraging intern et users; therefore you do not need to buy ticket to enter for it.

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MR. PATRICIO CARLOS

TEL: +34 634-138-556
Email: libertygroup@luckymail.com or liberty_group@hotmail.com

Congratulations once again from all our staff.

Mrs Hector Palmira. (Secretary)
Euro Milliones Board.
Madrid, 2rd July. 2009.

Building collapses in Shanghai

At around 5:30am on Saturday June 27, an unoccupied building still under construction at Lianhuanan Road in the Minxing district of Shanghai city toppled over. One worker was killed.  According to information, a 70 meter section of the flood prevention wall in nearby Dianpu River could have had something to do with this building collapse.

It is not breaking news, but the high-resolution photos are really amazing... http://cache.daqi.com/view/2617990.html

Note: since access to Blogger keeps blocked in China, uploading pictures remains a difficult and time consuming task - start the proxy filter, bear the substantially slower connection that it brings... That is why I am not writing so often lately, and if things don't change, this blog will be put on stand-by until better times - in the meantime, why don't you follow me on Facebook? www.facebook.com/hoolioh

 

Building collapses in Shanghai

facebook Julio Herrero Pino 27 June 16:49 Building collapses in Shanghai To hoolioh.swinger@blogger.com   Julio has shared a link to a note with you. To view the note or to reply to the message, follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=556215527&k=R2M5Y55XPVXM5BD1QB66XSTRVSK If you do not wish to receive this type of email from Facebook in the future, please click here to unsubscribe. Facebook's offices are located at 1601 S. California Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94304.

Twin models

As the 20th anniversary of the Tiannanmen incidents passed yesterday, we're experiencing here an information blockade as I've never seen before. Youtube, blogger (I can post via email, but I can't access my account), FLickr, BBC, NBC, some even claim that Hotmail doesn'twork either... Probably Facebook will come next.

 

Anyway, life goes on and 20 years ago we lived a very good and enriching life without the Internet, therefore it is time to get away from the computer and enjoy family and friends!! We took the twins to a photo session for a casting, and you can check out some of the pics here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=97571&id=556215527&l=7bffbf1ec3

A Day at the Movies (as an extra)

For the umpteenth time, Blogger has been blocked in China. It can be some days, or it can be months, as it is still the case with Youtube. Certainly this is not helping the Chinese government to gain supports from other countries, but do they need them anymore, once the Olympics are gone? Anyway, I can't access my own blog and I can't publish anything other than text, but still I can do so by email... Please if any of you reading the blog ever access to my page in Youtube, some people are asking me to upload more chapters of Españoles por el Mundo, maybe you can reply to them telling them that I am in China and that I cannot open Youtube, nor even to reply messages (and once you're at it, pls also let them know that I don't have any more chapters, they should look em up at TVE website).

 

Anyway, yesterday Sunday was an interesting day. I was called on Saturday evening to participate as an extra in the shooting of a Chinese movie, and seeing that the weather was rainy and I had not better plans for Sunday, I accepted. Waking up at 6:30 to be at Xujiahui at 7:50 turned out to be the toughest challenge of the journey, but a small sacrifice anyway. A bus picked us up to drive us to the Shanghai Film Park (http://www.sfs-cn.com/images/hsdy/filmpark/index.htm), a place I had always wanted to visit but never had the chance to do so (when I was managing the Movie Club at CEIBS I always tried to organize a group visit, but we maver made it).

 

The place belong to Shanghai Film Studio, one of the three biggest media and entertainment groups in China, and in its more than 4,000 sqm it hold reconstructions of places such as Nanking St. in the 1930's, old Suzhou creek, traditional Chinese houses, European style buildings, churches, ancient Chinese villages... We were actually shooting indoors, in a set, but since we arrived at 9:30am, and our scene didn't start until 4pm, we had plenty of time to discover all the hidden places in the Park. We were about 40 foreigners, from countries such as Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Turkey, USA, France, Russia or Moldova, and then twice or three times as many Chinese, all dressed in old elegant costumes.

 

The movie is called Dongfang Yu (东方雨), it is a spy movie set in Shanghai 1940's, directed by Liu Yunlong 刘云龙 and starred by himself and megastar Fan Bingbiing 范冰冰, with whom I took a picture that you can check, together with others, here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=94451&id=556215527&l=87ca31370e. My part was a ballroom dancer during a music scene, and I managed to overcome my natural clumsiness thanks to the skills of my dance partner, Angela from Colombia.

 

We were paid enough, we were provided decent food, coffee and I even got a free haircut! But most of all we had a great day and mde good friends :)

May update

Things happened during this last month here, starting with me losing my job, something that we all knew that had to happen sooner or later in this complicated times. The company was forced to cancel the project due to the lack of financial resources and clients, and I was the first one to let go, since my salary amounted to one third of the monthly budget. Obviously this is not the best of times to look for a new job, companies are not hiring and there are loads of candidates out there, but nevertheless it is a great opportunity to refocus my career and apply only to jobs that fulfill my expectations (my last appointment, to be honest, was not even close to what I want to do i life, even though living in Maanshan was a great experience and I love the city).

So, while I look for a new position, I have plenty of quality time to spend with the twins, that are sometimes the naughtiest lil ones, but on average are sooo fun to be with! Julito loves his dad's food: cheese, pizza, sausages... while Nicolas is more his mum's, white rice, noodles and so on. You can check out some pictures in the facebook album:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=44005&id=556215527&l=5c43970398

And pictures of their first visit to a fast food chain, clicking on the picture below...


And I am also dedicating more time to social networking, i.e. the Spanish Association www.casaespanashanghai.com. We are growing steadily, and are planning to have our own place in the near future. The questions arising are: where to get the money? and how to develop a social place i.e. Spanish Bar within a non-for-profit organization? Surely there have to be some capitalist partners making money behind, but without losing the essence of the organization. We'll see, for the moment we are working on the first General Meeting and the first open elections to choose the board, in some weeks...

I've also bought three new bonsais, two red maples (acer palmatum, or in their Chinese name hong feng) and one Japanese white pine. I will put some pictures sometime later, I am so happy with my bonsais! THe problem is that here it is easy to find bonsais, but difficult to buy the material and tools required to care for them: concave pruners, sealing paste, akadama... So I have to improvise for the moment...

I'll follow up later!

Busy week

This weekend I had little time to relax after a busy week, with institutional visits, Chamber of Commerce meetings and appointment with the Spanish consul among other duties. Weekends are ment to be spent with the family, and so even though the weather wasn't nice we drove to the Shanghai Kid Expo, an event mainly targeted at Expat families, where international schools, hospitals, sport centers and so on had activities in their stands for children to play.

Needless to say the twins are still too young to enjoy these kind of events, but nevertheless they played with block pieces and slides, I enjoyed seeing some farm animals, and we met three other Spanish couples on the spot. Shanghai is a big city but for us laowais it is like a small village, we always gather in the same places.

And as a souvenir of our visit to the Kid Expo, we got this picture:

China no es la solución

Ya hace algunos meses que en la Casa de España en Shanghai estamos recibiendo un goteo incesante de emails de gente que quiere venir a China a trabajar, pero con la reciente emisión del programa de TVE Españoles en el Mundo en Shanghai ha habido una avalancha, con unos 15 emails recibidos en solo un día. Esto lo achaco a informaciones incorrectas y falsas euforias, que paso a explicar a continuación:

Informaciones incorrectas: son muchas, demasiadas para comentar aquí, aunque la que más afecta para que la gente decida liarse la manta a la cabeza y venirse aquí huyendo de la crisis, es la del precio de los pisos en Shanghai: en realidad está en unos 2,000 €/m2, muy lejos de lo que se dice en el programa de 25,000 € por un piso de 150 m2. La razón de tal equívoco pueda radicar en que se tradujo al momento de una ayi (asistenta del hogar, literalmente significa tía). Y en China cuando se habla de cantidades altas no se utilizan los miles (qian), sino los diezmiles (wàn), por lo que 2,500,000 serían 250 wàn. Después hay que convertirlo a euros, que los europeos acostumbramos a hacer quitando un cero (aunque el tipo de cambio desde hace ya varios meses está a mucho menos), con lo cual Verónica se debió liar... Es imposible comprar un piso de 150 m2 en Shanghai por menos de 250,000 euros.

En cuanto a la falsa euforia, es lógico que cuando te entrevistan para un programa de televisión que va a ver toda tu gente, prefieras mostrar la cara bonita que los problemas. Por ellos todos salimos hablando del éxito y de lo bien que se vive aquí, pero los televidentes deberían tener en cuenta que este programa tiene más de 60 horas de grabación, que se han editado para caber en 53 minutos. Y nunca van a sacar a alguien quejándose de lo mal que se está aquí, las dificultades para hacer negocios, para conseguir una licencia, la de empresas que están cerrando y amigos que están en el paro (y aquí en China, "en el paro" significa sin cobrar desempleo, sin seguridad social gratuita, sin educación gratuita...).

Venir a China a la aventura es muy arriesgado y de ningún modo aconsejable, sobre todo por el tema del visado, ya que cada 1-3 meses van a tener que estar saliendo del país para renovarlo, y las empresas no contratan en Shanghai a gente sin permiso de trabajo. Además está la complicación del idioma (sin saber chino pocos te contratarán - por qué creéis que los españoles que salían en el video eran todos o estudiantes, o empresarios? No había ningún empleado...), la inexperiencia (hacer negocios en China no tiene nada que ver con lo que conocemos en occidente), etc...

Esto es lo que trato de hacer entender a gente que escribe a la Casa, parejas con niños de pocos años de edad que, al estar los dos en el paro, preguntan si es buena idea venir aquí a montar un restaurante de comidas caseras... Venir a China a la desesperada es altamente arriesgado, y puede acabar siendo dramático.

Celebrities...

Aunque es totalmente irrelevante, sigue sorprendiéndome la capacidad que tiene la televisión de llegar a todo el mundo. Resulta que aparezco con mi familia en un breve corte en el programa de nueva emisión "Españoles en el Mundo" de TVE1, y lo ve todo el mundo! Y eso que solo avisé a mi familia más cercana de la emisión...

A pesar de reconocer que mi perfil era el más atractivo para el programa (español, casado con china, con gemelos de un año nacidos en Shanghai, 4 años en Shanghai habiendo estudiado, trabajado y fundado la Casa de España en Shanghai) la productora del programa tuvo que desestimarme por haber sido protagonista de una de las partes del programa de Telemadrid Madrileños por el Mundo (quienes dicho sea de paso les han denunciado por plagio de formato). Así que les insté a publicar su llamamiento en la página web de la Casa, y así fueron captando amigos cercanos, como Justo, Germán o Verónica, que a su vez les remitieron a otros conocidos como Ion y Sara. A los únicos a quienes no conozco son a la socióloga y al estudiante, que deben ser los que menos quieran relacionarse con la comunidad española por lo que he visto del programa.

Pero Lucía y Raul, presentadora y cámara, no quisieron dejar pasar la ocasión de mostrar la "evolución" de la familia Herrero Hu, desde el programa de Telemadrid con una embarazada Jenny, a la familia seminumerosa con Julito y Nicolás, y vinieron a casa a cenar en Año Nuevo Chino. Nada más aterrizar en Shanghai ya les saqué a tomar algo y ver el impresionante skyline de Pudong de noche, en el bar del Captain Hostel, junto a Justo y a otro amigo de paso, Pablo Hernández (de Elda, hermano de Pedro y Natalia). Si al final resulta que en la otra punta del mundo estoy más en contacto con la gente que cuando estaba por allá! Hasta va a venir Ignacio Gil, uno de mis mejores amigos del instituto, con quien perdí contacto en la universidad (hará ya casi... 20 años?!!!).

Gracias Facebook :)