I am writing this from my hotel room on the 7th floor with a view of the hills surrounding Beijing. Admittedly, I do have a room mate, a Dutch guy called Wout, but he's pretty chill and he's got a shift right now so I have the room to myself. Moved in, unpacked, borrowed a suit from the hotel because I've been too stingy to buy one so far. Finally having settled in here, with at least a reduced degree of uncertainty of the future, is very nice. I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into this job and learning a lot. I've already had a week of shifts, but I've mostly been getting to know the hotel and the staff. I am a Management Trainee, along with the two other foreign staff here, Wout and Nicole. But I'll be working in the front desk department, mainly doing checking in and out, and handling questions and complains. My mentor, Shaun, says shift managers are nicknamed toilet paper by the hotel staff: because we clean up the shit. For example, when someone is accidentally booked into a smoking instead of a non-smoking room (like last week), and you want to make sure they're not too pissed off at the same time as not automatically giving them a free upgrade. The staff are great, really friendly and mostly speaking to me in Chinese. It's wonderful how not being an English teacher helps with that. Nanni, my supervisor, even offered to take me clubbing some time, and Simon from the concierge desk gave me the card of a nice bar he goes to. My project for the duration of my stay here will be to improve the Guest Experience Index (GEI). People give us feedback according to a survey, and we get a number for satisfaction relating to different areas of the hotel. At the moment, we're 0.5 lower than target, and it will be my job to produce a report recommending changes and hopefully improving that statistic. Sounds like I might get to tell people what to do, and yell at them if they don't. Fun!
I got sick at the end of the week, because I didn't get enough sleep, and I went out on Wednesday night until far later than I should have. I blame Rupert and Annie coming to visit, and forcing me to take them out to all-you-can-eat-and-drink teppanyaki and then stay out until 4am clubbing (pictured). Completely not my fault. On the plus side, it was awesome having a total of 8 Adelaideians together in one place, I don't think I will see that again until I get back. Speaking of which, I have a more-or-less confirmed date: February 6th. I might need to get my visa extended until then, but 14th of January would be the earliest return date. Their normal management trainee program is for one full year, so I had to stay here for as long as possible for it to be worth their while. Unfortunately I'll miss Christmas at home, but this is really going to be a valuable experience, so I may as well make the most of it.
Being here is a big change from Tsinghua, though. One constant over the past month and a half has been goodbyes. I made far more truly good friends there than I realised I did until it came time for people to leave. One of the awesome things about going overseas like this is that you meet great people, and become great friends, until it becomes one of the crap things about going overseas like this: you have to say goodbye so soon. I fully intend to visit North America and Europe in the near future to see all the great friends that I have accumulated after having lived overseas for over a year in total. Miss you guys.
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