AlBulushi

Hi All, I am new to Beijing, nearly a month now. It is an awesome city and very kind people. There are very good restaurants all over the place. Still trying to settle and know more and get time to go around. People here are very social, very kind and can get along with anyone and everyone. The biggest barrier is the language as majority of the people don’t understand a single word in English. However, if you are lucky you may end up meeting people who do. Taxi drivers do not speak English too and since all the places, buildings, hotels, etc have their own Chinese names, whatever names you mention in English is a waste of time because they wont understand it. So you need to ask your receptionists or colleagues to write for you names of the place you want to visit in Chinese and you can show same to the taxi drivers. Another problem is that the taxi drivers look like being afraid of taking foreigners. Many of them just say No No No, which means he is not taking you or anyone else, but you may find him stopping few meters away to pick other passengers. They may see talking to a foreigner is a waste of time where there are plenty of Chinese passengers available on the street. People here say the Chinese language has 2000 to 3000 characters/symbols which need to be memorized in order to create more than 100,000 words. Many names cannot be interpreted to Chinese, probably including your name. If you reside here, you will get a Chinese name which might be pronounced completely differently than your given name. You can take it as an opportunity to have a nice Chinese nickname. International calls very expensive from China. You can use Viber or Tango or other Apple/Android software to make calls for free over the internet. This is the best t communicate with family and friends outside China or even within China. If you like to make phone-to-phone calls at very very cheap rates, you can use Rebtel (http://www.rebtel.com/u/02324523418). With Rebtel, you don’t need any software downloads and you can even set a refill value using your ATM or credit card where it tops up your balance when drops to 1$ by a value you set every time. Once you subscribe to Rebtel.com (free), you will get 5 minutes of international calls credit for free too and you can call anywhere in the world. Good Luck. Regards, Humaid AlBulushi AlBulushi@Omanex.com