I started my first day of work on Monday. I have to hop the same fence to get to work as I do to get to the train station. Vincent (Yongcheng), my native host, met me in the lobby and walked me to MS. The Microsoft building is quite big, and I was shocked to find that my badge worked on the door here too.

I set up in a cubicle, shared with 3 interns (it’s bigger than it sounds, I have a lot of space). Went to my first meeting, it was conducted in English. I was shocked at the number of buzz words they dropped during the meeting (“let’s take this offline” and “who owns the experience?”. It felt a lot like Redmond from that regard.

Lunch was in the basement, where they have 3 restaurants and a cafeteria. The cafeteria is almost like Redmond’s, where the food is bad just not over priced. The restaurants however are very good. Also in the basement is laundry service, a grocery store, a hair salon, and a sports club. They try to make it easy to never have to leave the office here.

After work, we picked up my brother and went out to some of the most delicious, spicy food I’ve had. My brother and I both love spicy food, but I was not prepared for just how spicy they eat here in China. It’s incredible. My brother is very tired of the bland Mongolian cuisine (Mongolian bbq places in the US are most definitely NOT authentic), so he was very excited for the spice. We had to drink a lot of beer to wash the food down.

One other funny point: I was asked by several of the people if I had been bored all weekend. I asked what they meant, and they said, well, since it’s hard for foreigners to get around, I must have been trapped in my hotel room the whole time. When I explained what I had been up to, they were shocked to find that I knew the subway system, had explored Tianamen, hutongs, the markets, and had eaten very well with no guide at all. It is VERY hard communicating with most people here, as English is very hard for Chinese to learn (just as Chinese is very hard for English speakers to learn).