AKA: Can I live my Shanghai life on RMB 32 (USD 4.70) a day?

We’ll see.  And here are more answers to questions you aren’t even thinking of asking.

What’s a “gudget”? A word that rhymes with “budget”.  Obviously.

Why RMB 32 (USD 4.70)? Two reasons:

• Because that will keep my monthly spend under RMB 1000 (USD 146).
• Because I tried RMB 25 (USD 3.60) a day once and I really, really struggled (jacked it in on Day 3).  I also did RMB 50 (USD 7.30) a day the year before last and it was far too easy.

I like to set myself these challenges because, since becoming a freelancer and having to deliver my very best for every single penny I earn, I am evangelically evangelical about VFM (value for money).  This is not to say that I always go cheap, but I do expect there to be a very direct correlation between the kerching! I spend and the satisfaction I derive from it. (Which is code for: When we are talking shoes, all bets are off.)

The Rules:

• This RMB 32 (USD 4.70)-a-day spend does not apply to weekly grocery shopping or any necessary recurring expenses e.g. rent / bills etc.  I am not doing a penance so I will still eat full meals and do what it takes to make sure our lights aren’t turned off.  I’m simply cutting back on the untrackable amounts I spend on things like cabs, lunch, post-work drinks etc. to see what’s possible if I take a more disciplined approach to me spending.
• The challenge doesn’t apply to my health.  I will not try to find a doctor to treat me for 20RMB if I have already blown 13RMB on the day I get sick.
• To make it a little harder I have to keep on living my Shanghai life, as I know it i.e. go out at least two or three times a week.
• If I come in under budget one day, I can carry the surplus over to the next day.  I cannot, however, go over-budget one day and the try to make up the difference on subsequent days.

Strategy Part I: Find a LOT of two for one deals, latch onto a friend and hold on for dear life.
Strategy Part II: Hope that said friend is not a reader of this blog.

The Point:

• I have just come back from a 4-week spend-a-thon vacation
• I’m paying 4 months of rent to activate my new lease on Friday so May is definitely be-smart-with-your-money month (I have one each year).

Start Date: Monday 10 May
End Date: When I get bored When I get paid When I spot a bottle of wine with my name on it June 9

So, here we are…Day 1.

The story so far…

• Breakfast – didn’t fancy oatmeal at home, just had free office coffee
• Bus(es) to work – 3RMB
• Lunch – 4 包子 (steamed buns) @ 1.2RMB.  That’s right, lunch for under 5RMB!
• Bus(es) from work – 3RMB
• Dinner – 8RMB (from vendors on the street – not off the street surface itself – in case that wasn’t clear)

Daily Spend: 19RMB

Surplus: 12RMB

Is this going to be be ridiculously easy?

To be continued…

Physical Fitness Gym*** in Shanghai is running a promotion where you get a 2-month membership for just 59RMB.  When I heard about it, I thought:

•    Either the gym is going to be horrendously filthy and crowded or
•    There are going to be about 100 hoops I have to jump through to get that deal.

Wrong on both counts.

The deal… How to get it

Like most things in China, there’s the way you are told things are and the way things actually are.

•    The advertised end date for this promotion is April 15.  But if you call in to the gym, you are told April 30.  So, sign up sooner rather than later because no one can really say when this gravy train will come to a shuddering halt.
•    Initially I was told I had to have special vouchers to register.  Then I heard that I had to have a QQ account/number (I still have no idea what QQ is).  Then I heard that I had to be able to tuck both feet behind my ears and hum the Marseillaise backwards while whittling out a banjo with my front teeth.  None of these is true.  What you definitely need is your passport and a little bit of your inner actress (for when they ask you why you don’t have all the other stuff).  Be prepared to burst into tears, or at least display a quivering lower lip if it looks like things are not going your way.

Here’s the deal:

• Two months unlimited use of the gym facilities except between 17:30 and 20:00 on weekdays.
• You have to bring your ID (passport) along with you each time you come to work out.

How I went about it:
I had called ahead and been told by one of the trainers that it was basically a free-for-all.  He said as long as I was a new member and brought along my passport, I could sign up.  But when I got there the girl at reception asked me for my QQ ID or voucher, which, of course, I didn’t have.

When I got to the gym, the two guys who were signing up ahead of me also had neither of these.   One was a local who said he’d bring his tomorrow and was allowed to sign up right away.  One was a laowai who got so frustrated with the language barrier that he jacked it in and left.  Not me.  Not for under 1RMB a day.  I stuck it out.

The easiest thing would be to just get your Chinese friend to sign you up for a QQ account if you can’t do it yourself.  Or, if you are feeling particularly rebellious, you can just make up an 8-digit number, which is what I hear a QQ account ID is.  I know someone who went down this route and it worked for her. But they could check the validity of the QQ number while you are standing there and that would be pretty embarrassing for you to be caught in a big fat lie.  Like some sort of big fat liar.  So avoid the deception.  Go instead for the emotional manipulation and be prepared to weep like a little girl if 59RMB over two months seems like too good a deal to pass up.

I admit to going to Physical with some trepidation.  The gym got a solid kicking from City Weekend’s reviewers.   But having said that, how seriously can you take someone who writes in all caps?  Not very, I say.

The Good:

• It was pretty clean.  There were cleaners in the bathrooms and in the workout hall while I was there and I have definitely seen much, much worse.  The toilets were also ok.  The treadmill and the elliptical trainer both felt sticky on the grips (ew!), but, overall, I was pleasantly surprised
• The gym is huuuuuuuge.  There are dozens of every type of equipment.  I was just interested in cardio and stopped counting when  I passed 20 elliptical trainers.
• It was only a third full when I got there – around lunchtime.  So that is a sweet time to go.
• Everything inside is in Chinese and English.

The Bad

• The address that they advertise via Guanxi and local websites is, at best: misleading and at worst, downright wrong.  When you call to ask how to get there, the girl who answers the phone tells you to ask someone on the street. What?!
• It is very, very hard to find a) because they have done a lousy job of signposting it and b) there is loads of construction going on there at the moment.
• It is really warm in the workout area.  And we’re only in Spring.  They’ll have to amp up the aircon once the temperatures soar in summer
• I didn’t see any exercise balls or floor mats so the warm-down, ab-crunch-fakeout was a bit disappointing.
• Not only is getting to the gym kind of confusing, the gym layout itself could do with better signage.  For example there are two receptions (one where you get your key and one where you do the admin stuff) .  Both receptions have people on the phone and receptionists fiddling around with thick reams of paper.   If you don’t know you are in the wrong line, you will wait for what seems like ages before someone tells you where you should be.

How to get there.

Get out of Exit 2 of Huangpi Nan Lu Station and walk down HuaiHai Zhong Lu in the direction of all the construction.

The advertised address is:

1/F, South Tower, Hongkong Plaza, 283 Huaihai Zhong Lu (nr the cnr of Huangpi Nan Lu).

This is not right,  They are on the 3rd floor and the entrance is actually on Songshan Lu (i.e. turn left at the first set of traffic lights after the intersetion of Huai Hai and Huangpi).  When I went today there were loads of building trucks and workers unloading large chunks of cardboard.  They were also blocking the entrance that is just a large doorway (like a garage doorway) with a sign that says “To Cargo Loading Area”.  That is where you need to go in while construction is underway but you won’t see this sign until you are standing pretty much right under it.  So instead, look out for the stop for Bus 109.  Once you are at that stop (on Songshan Lu), you are right next to the entrance.  It is on you right if you are facing HuaiHai Lu.

***This information is based on my visit to the Hong Kong Plaza branch of Physical Fitness.  All references to directions etc. are accurate at the time of writing due to the construction that is currently underway.

I’ve never been a fan of flying but about a year ago, on a trip back from the consumerist nirvana that is Hong Kong, our flight experienced some pretty bad turbulence. At the time, one of the stewardesses screamed and ran the length of the aisle to her seat. I haven’t been able to get on a plane since.

I tried flying to Hong Kong on Wednesday but heavy fog meant the flight was delayed by 4hrs. As the plan was to get in and get out in the same day, 4hrs proved too long a delay. I rebooked the flight for Friday and convinced myself that Wednesday’s abortive attempt to overcome my flying dread was a sure sign that my number was up.

So, having written a brief note bequeathing each of my Apple gadgets to the siblings I deemed most deserving, my shoes to the only charity I know which combines fashion-consciousness with humanitarianism (just because someone is starving and without shelter, doesn’t mean they’ve given up on looking good), handed my sister passwords to my online aliases and a list of websites she absolutely had to delete from my browsing history should the worst come to the worst, I set off again at 5am on Friday morning to face my fate. More fog. And a 5hr delay this time.

So, 600RMB in wasted taxi fare later, I decided to train it to Hong Kong instead.

Shanghai – Hong Kong – Shanghai Train Schedule

This is the most annoyingly confusing thing I have found online in while. Like they intentionally wrote the website content to make everything unclear. You can find out about fares here but the advertised discounts are not available if your journey originates in Shanghai – no matter what the website tells you. The schedule varies but right now, trains leave Shanghai on even dates (not even days, Mr. Data Compiler). So don’t break your brain trying to figure out what an “even day” is, or if they count the first day of the week as Sunday or Monday. To get to Hong Kong you leave Shanghai at 18:24 on the 2nd, 4th, 6th, etc. of the month. Trains come back from Hong Kong on odd dates. Setting off from Hung Hom Station in Kowloon at about 15:30pm. The schedule is subject to seasonal changes, though, so departure and return dates alternate.

Buying Train Tickets

This is kinda inconvenient. Train tickets to Hong Kong can only be bought from Shanghai Railway Station. And then only from counters 11 or 12. Counter 11 is tagged as an “English Speaking Counter”. The editor in me always wants to whip out a big black marker and scribble “English Service Available” over these words but the proliferation of military types milling around with batons puts me off. Like most major stations, Shanghai Railway station smells like a petty crime wave waiting to happen. That may seem like a rather specific smell but if you’ve been there, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you’re paranoid enough, you can almost hear the pickpocketers’ buzz of excitement as they thrill at the throngs of opportunity around them. Tickets are 725RMB for a space in the 4-person sleeper cabin and just over 1000RMB for what they call the en suite “deluxe sleeper”. I’ve ridden in one of these; let’s just call them “2-person sleepers” so nobody gets their raised hopes cruelly dashed.

Be sure to specify that you want the lower bunk, if that kind of thing matters to you (it’s slightly pricier – but only by a couple of kuai).

Check-In

This is exactly like at the airport except that a) you can leave it pretty late b) the waiting room is always full and really, really dirty. I mean really dirty. If, like me, you are on an African passport, expect them to ask you to take off your glasses, let down your hair, shimmy to the left, shimmy to the right and explain the very essence of your being and how it correlates with each aspect of your stay in China. This is either a very misguided seduction ritual or it’s profiling . Yum!

The Train

The T99 train, the overnighter to Hong Kong, is always clean (when you get on, anyway). The cabins are comfy, the bedding is crisp and white, there’s an electrical socket for you to recharge stuff, hangers for your clothes and in-train TV.

Dining Car

The first time we rode the train to Hong Kong, when we got to the dining car, one of the train staff was seated at a table picking the dirt out of her nails with tweezers, onto the tablecloth. The moral of that story? Stock up on sterilizing agents before you make this trip and bring your own food and utensils. Obviously.

Toilets

Well, it’s a public toilet. So…hold your breath and think of England.

Overnight trains to Beijing and Hong Kong are the most comfortable way to get to either city, if you are not in a rush. The route is scenic, the trains always punctual, you cut back on hotel charges, it’s mostly cheaper than air travel and, if you have a phobia like I do, you get to eliminate several nights of anguished terror in the build up to your departure.

I am a fan.

So you know how I can’t stand Oprah because of how she is just this random, middle-aged single woman who is always shoving unsolicited advice down people’s throats?  Well as a random, 30-something woman from whom most people know better than to ask romantic counsel, I’m jumping on this advice-giving bandwagon because it seems like a fun place to be.

So…

1.    Don’t take it too seriously. It really is like buying a lottery ticket.  Chances are that it will end in a big fat zero.  Which, to be fair, you should consider a win because at least he didn’t try to kill you.  Set your bar of expectation way low and don’t prioritize that first date over anything else.  Really, don’t do it.  Think about it like looking for a needle in a big old pile of other needles.   Better-looking, socially well-adjusted needles.  Which are all already taken so you are left to sort through “The Others” like some creepy parallel universe version of Lost.  Which is how you feel as you trawl through maybeillfindsomeonewhoisntbroken.com and then self-awareness kicks in – belatedly – and you stop and think: “Eek!  Is this what guys are thinking when they are looking at the profiles of people like me?”
2.    Only use paid sites. This is a biggie.  Ladies if you are looking for a date that has never been, and can never be, described as “the dregs  of society”, then use paid sites.  If you use free sites you will get what you pay for.  Herpes.  No, not really.  But if you are looking to meet a grown up, show the Internet some money.  But don’t sign up for more than a month, until you get a feel for what sort of people are on the site.

3.    Don’t be yourself. Unless you are flawless.  Then, congratulations -  bring yourself to the table.  But in the same way girls cake on make-up, wear bras that…er… jack stuff up and control knickers that suck stuff in so that you don’t spend the whole run up to the date kicking yourself for not joining that gym years earlier…don’t be you in the profile.  Why spend that much time upgrading the outward packaging only to lump it with the same old internal clunkery.  Fake it till you make it, girls.   And if you are a little bit of a nutter, dial back the crazy (dial it waaaaaay back) and do not mention any of the following:

• Phobias / Neuroses
• Grudges you have held since the 80s
• Any of the things you vehemently dislike. (Like the word ‘milky‘)
• How gross you think nature is – unless it’s on a postcard.

4.        Be who you wanna be. When asked, in your online dating profile, to fill out your body type, think of how you actually look.  And then think of how you feel.    And then lie.  This kind of lie is ok.  You can defer meeting him for a few months, actually join a gym this time or make up an overactive thyroid shortly before your first encounter to explain the “sudden” weight gain.  Or post a 10-year old picture of yourself.  That’s cool too.
5.        Don’t take anyone’s advice – especially Internet people  – about the do’s and don’ts of online dating.  It’s far too intuitive an endeavor to be an exact science.   Although do be safe.  It’d be silly not to.

Here’s the thing about surprises: they are invariably rubbish.

Unless it’s like “Surprise! We’ve found a donor for that kidney you so desperately need” there are very few surprises that really blow your hair back.

What that means is that you have to fake the hair blowbackerry because if you don’t then you, the surprisee, will hurt the surpriser’s feelings.  And the surpriser is a friend or family member trying to do something nice for you.

As I close in on my 31st birthday (roar!), I am thinking that this year, I don’t want to have to fake being impressed or pleased.  There’s a simple way round this…no gifts.

I get to see my parents the day after my birthday and hang out with them for three whole weeks.  I really, really need that.  The rest is just fluff.  Don’t want it.  Don’t need it.  So, to my mates and sisters who don’t read this blog – I know this for a fact because somehow most of my (3) readers are from the US (Hi, America!) – this is what I want for my birthday:

Veer off this course at your peril.  This year I will actually say out loud what I usually think when people go off-script in the gift department: Why do you hate me so much?

Thing number 1: Cheesecake.  My relationship with The Cake is truly mystical.  Definitely spiritual.  Like the time I was walking past that Angel cheesecake shop on Fuzhou Lu on my way to work at the peak (or should that be “the nadir”?) of diet number 5 kerjillion and 8.  Against my better judgment I walked in and was immediately overwhelmed by the warm, buttery, lemony aroma of cheesecake.  Cheesecake of every description.  I may have passed out from the delirium. No one will tell me how they found me but apparently a concerned passerby helped me out the store as I wailed and shredded my clothes in an ecstasy of yearning.

Thing Number 2: Poetry recommendations.  You don’t have to buy me the books.  Just find a poet you think I might like and then casually say, on December 23, have you ever read anything by Blah Blah, Iris?  And I’ll be really excited to have the chance to blow your mind with the poetry that I have read (not that much, to be fair) and keen to hear about this Blah Blah fellow who seems to have slipped under my radar.  And if he turns out to be awesome, I’ll think of you every time I read a Blah Blah poem.  Which will be often.  So we all win.

Thing Number 3: Come round to my place and teach me how to put in contact lenses.  It’s been 9 months since I’ve been wearing them and it still takes me a minimum of 20 minutes, some vicious quasi-eye-gouging, a definite reddening of the whites and streams of tears running down my cheeks as all the poking and prodding wreaks havoc with my tear ducts.  I could just check on my go-to site – I heart you http://www.videojug.com – but I wouldn’t want to deprive you of the pleasure of helping me.

And that’s it.  How low maintenance am I?

Ooh, and money.  I’ll never say no to cold hard cash.

So I had a bit of a setback on the weekend.  I’m not sure I really want to elaborate on that because once I did elaborate on a blog – stupidly – and it totally came back to bite me in the rear.  Which was pretty unfun.  This was a while ago.  Back in my 20s.  Which I am now referring to as “The Lost Years”.  So let’s just call it Setback X.  “Setback” because that’s what it was.  And “X” because it’s a mystery.  Yeah.

And it made me think about patterns we repeat.  I am such a pattern repeater.  If there is a sure thing in Irisjumbania, that tiny island in the sea of shared experiences, it’s that if it is bad for me, I want it.   That’s pretty much a given.

So I was thinking about breaking patterns and doing something different and doing something that actually matters and making a difference to someone else’s existence other than my own and trying to be a big picture thinker rather than an insular navel gazer.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while.  A couple of months ago, I came up with a plan.  A good plan which involved me and Persons A, B and C.

But here’s the thing about plans: when it comes to actually getting stuff done: it is hard.  No-one tells you that when you are at the conceptualizing stage.  Concept: fun.  Implementation: draaaaag.

When the idea was in its very embryonic stages, I spent days and days writing proposals and contacting people, and coding everything into pretty, multi-colored html and getting the key players on board. And then when it came time to put it into play, to roll up sleeves and get on with it, if felt like there was suddenly this massively impenetrable wall in front of me.  Like in Langston Hughes’ As I Grew Older:

And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky–
The wall

The wall really threw me.  I didn’t see it coming and I wasn’t really in a climbing frame of mind.

So now I’m left with two choices – jack it in so that 10 years from now I can wistfully muse: Whatever happened to that good idea I once had?  Whatever happened to that thing-doer I always wanted to become?

Or … get on with it and find a way to climb or dismantle or circumvent the wall.  Because there has to be one, right?  I like to think there is.   I just have to figure it out.  Let’s go, Brain.

“Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.”

Remorse, regret.  To err, to do nothing.  Potayto, potahto.  I agree with you, Mr. Rochester.

Trying to buy health insurance and figure out all the forms is like trying to decode something … really hard to decode.

They use all this convoluted jargon and verbs as adjectives, and adjectives as nouns and nouns as question marks and they get you so dizzy and twisted out with all the gobbledy-gook that you figure – Let me just sign. I’ll figure it out when I need to. And by then it’s too late. Because when you need it most is when they will introduce you to the phantom clause 46W, which clearly states: “You’re on your own – suckah!”.

And of course you hadn’t read Clause 46W. It was in a separate booklet. In Sanskrit. But it was in there nevertheless. Or so they claim. And you’re left with the choice of either challenging all their awesome litigious might with your feeble lawyer who just does it “for the love” and whatever disease it is afflicting you rotting you to your very core. Or just sighing, rolling over and dying quietly.

Because that’s just how insurance companies roll.

I’m gonna call my Dad. He knows stuff.

I feel very grown up right now.

Thing Number 1

If the job ad has the word “urgent” or “urgently” in the title – stay away.
If the job ad has urgent(ly) and an exclamation mark, or two, or three – run away.

The advertisers are desperate and disorganized.  Do you really want to step into a gig with Panic Incorporated?

Thing Number 2

If the company is “young”,  “dynamic”and ungooglable, your BS meter should go into overdrive.  Play the substitution game:

• young = inexperienced
• young = experimental
• young = making it up as we go along
• young = still waiting to get someone to agree to finance this venture
• young = yet to complete a single billable project
• dynamic = fast and loose with the rules
• dynamic = with a wildly fluctuating number of employees
• dynamic = Business plan?  What Business Plan?
• dynamic = of no fixed premises
• dynamic = just trying out this job thing, if it fails we are going back to drama school like we always dreamed

I don’t know who the first guy to think of wedging “young and dynamic” into every single company blurb was, but I am not a fan.  I wouldn’t hire a young and dynamic nanny to look after my kids (she’ll surely turn out to be a pothead or some sort of psycho).  I wouldn’t put my life savings in a young and dynamic bank (they’re sure to hire even younger and more dynamic employees and look how well that turned out for Barings).  If I were on a plane and the pilot introduced himself as the young and dynamic Captain Chad, I would be off that deathtrap so fast…

It makes me nervous.  The way they are always next to each other.  As if youth has some sort of monopoly on dynamism.   Where are all the old and dynamic companies?

Thing Number 3

“We can’t pay you much/at all to begin with but-”

Whoa there, Horsey.  Are you really going to keep on reading after “but”?  Ignore, for a moment, the certainty that your rent can’t be paid in karma credit and good vibrations (unless you are in some sort of hippie commune), what about the fact that no-one EVER says: when I started working for ABC Co they were paying me pitifully low wages, not at all on par with my skills and experience, but then, after I slaved away for months and months they gave me a massive pay rise and we all lived happily ever after.

Unless you have a meaty trust fund you can dip into or a bridge under which you’d like to sleep, you have to be ruled by the dollars and cents a little bit.

“Start as you mean to go on” is one of the truest generalities there is.  If you start of by letting people lowball you or undervalue what you do, they will expect to be able to keep on doing just that. So don’t set that precedent.

I’m off to Hong Kong in a few weeks and have decided to take the train. For a few reasons. One of them is that I’ve never tried it before. One of them is that Shanghai – Beijing – Shanghai by train is one of the easiest trips I have ever taken. No drama, nominal foreplanning required. Just turn up at the station, buy your ticket and snooze your way to the capital. Yay, the train! But the most important factor is that I am a terrible flyer.

Last time, on the flight back from Hong Kong, we had really freaky turbulence that caused one of the hostesses to scream and scurry the length of the aisle to her seat. More than the turbulence itself, the sight of one of the airline staff losing control took my confidence in flying from zero, to negative figures.  High negative figures.

So me and J are going on a bit of an adventure. It looks like we can get the swish deluxe sleepers and still make a pretty good saving over the flight prices. Which I think will translate into being able to stay in a nice hotel.   Yay, nice hotels!

So, what should I know about getting to Hong Kong by train?

So I’m sitting here debating whether now is the time to finally write that ode to cashew nuts and cheddar (together – yum!) or if I should actually write about something sensible.  I’ve decided on Option B.  Ish.

I’ve been eyeball deep in editing over the past few months and it has been fantastic!  I’ve learnt a lot.  About processes that work, and the ones that don’t.  About industries I’d never have had a chance to get involved with in any other capacity (smart, techie stuff) and about the fact that the piece will only ever come out right if you start from the end and work backwards.  So start by completing the sentence:

“When they finish reading my piece, I want readers to….”

Unless the sentence ends with “…go: ‘Huh?’ ”  then please, Shanghai, and I am asking you specifically because I have come across  a lot of your work lately, think about the objective of the text you are writing.

• Is it a sales pitch?  At the end of it do you want them to click on a link and sign up for something?  Do you want them to buy something right away?  Do you want them to pick up the phone and call you?
• Is it meant to be instructional?  Is it a how-to text that is meant to give a step-by-step explanation of how something is done?
• Is it meant to simply be informative.  Like a press release?

You need to sit there and categorize the article you are writing first and then start to write.  If you don’t do it in this order, you could find yourself halfway through the most riveting article ever – and it will be completely useless because in the end, it won’t do what you need it to do.

So, define the goal, and then just be really clear.  “Really clear” does not mean “incredibly patronizing”.  For example, if you are writing about an event called the Beijing Motor Show, you don’t have to explain that it will be held in China.   Where else would the Beijing Motor Show be held?    No doubt there is a Beijing in Central Tanzania or a Paraguayan district called Beijing but go ahead and assume that the people you are writing for are not brain dead.  This is not an absolute, however.  I still like to know which “East London” people are referring to when they talk of rampant muggings.

Just because you know a big word, it doesn’t mean you have to use it.  I know that contradicts my previous “Don’t-hate-me-because-I-am-not-a-Neanderthal” post (of course I never blogged that!) If you are writing for Octogenarian Botanists Weekly, then, by all means, bolboschoenus planiculmis is the perfect term to use to describe the plant that is found in southern China.  But if you are not submitting your article to this esteemed periodical, ask yourself how many people in the world know what bolboschoenus planiculmis is.  Then ask yourself how many of them are likely to be reading this piece that is being featured in a publication that talks about finance or child-rearing or where the best happy hour deals are to be found.  Then tell yourself “No”.  Just…no.  If you have to use it because there is no “normal” translation then compare it  to something that is commonly known so instead of just bolboschoenus planiculmis, write “Bolboschoenus planiculmis, a plant with similar features to the African Dandelion”.  At this juncture it’d be good to point out that I don’t even know if there is such a thing as an African Dandelion – but you get the point I’m making, I’m sure.

Don’t assume readers know all the same codes, abbreviations and nicknames you do – especially if you are writing for an international audience. That’s the worstest. The number of times I see articles being written for a global audience peppered with esoteric references that obscure, rather than illuminate, is countless.  Why would you refer to the GZ-SZ Highway to people who are not in China and know even less about major travel routes in the south of China.  Seriously, I’m asking you: Why would you do that?

It sucks all the light out of your piece and disrupts the reader’s flow if, every other sentence he has to wonder: “What is mapo dofu?” or “What is the bottle opener building by the Bund?” Call it Huai Hai Lu first before you slip into HHL and if you can’t make it clear with the information you have at hand, either research some more until you have all the facts you need, or leave the whole point out altogether

Quite often I see something along the lines: “One of the people who works for the XYZ organization made a really important point during his presentation.  Everyone agreed with him”.  And then it moves on to the next paragraph.

This is not a language thing.  It’s a common sense thing.  When I query it, the response is often: I don’t know who it was who said it, or what he said, it was just in the release like that.  * heartbreak *

The thing that strikes me the most is that the writing issues are never really about technique, or grammar or any of the other stuff that can be brushed up on with practice.  It’s like that thing that Alan Sugar once said on The Apprentice, if you ask someone to touch their left ear, you don’t expect them to reach their right arm all the way round and curl it over their head before touching the left ear lobe.  With writing , if you are trying to get from Point A to Point B, get there in a straight line.  Specially if you are writing for professional purposes.  People have neither the time, nor the inclination, to read anything else.