So up until yesterday I didn't know my address. I knew what it says on the lease, what the realtor said it is and what my landlord says it is, but how to get mail delivered here was a different story. Things like apartment number, building number and so forth might be construed differently in another culture. For instance, if you wanted to say where my hometown is in English it's “West Palm Beach, Florida”. In Chinese it would be “Florida, West Palm Beach”. Bigger comes first. Then there's the matter of street address. Outside the door of the building it says 31... but the lease says 29. The building also has two towers, which the realtor called “units” in the address he gave to me. In America “unit” would refer to the apartment. And of course there's always the question of whether pinyin would suffice or if the address would need to be written in Chinese
Thankfully there was a way of testing it out before getting anything of value sent here. As noted in the last post I've subscribed to a variety of publications over the years but the one that's stuck is the Economist. Luckily it's also the most international of them. So all I had to do was keep updating the address until something showed up. As it turns out that section of the website doesn't play nice with the firewall here. Ultimately I changed it once, decided to give the change some time and after a little bit chalked it up to a lost cause. Apparently the realtor was correct though because yesterday I received my first Asian edition Economist! Of course, it's March 26th issue (received on April 11th) and the plastic covering is just beat to hell and back. In an initial boon to my confidence in my “estate agent” today confirmed that the address is definitely correct as I received another Economist... the March 19th issue.
At least subscribing in the States for two years as a student has saved a ton of money. The cover price is 75 yuan (about $11.50).
Thankfully there was a way of testing it out before getting anything of value sent here. As noted in the last post I've subscribed to a variety of publications over the years but the one that's stuck is the Economist. Luckily it's also the most international of them. So all I had to do was keep updating the address until something showed up. As it turns out that section of the website doesn't play nice with the firewall here. Ultimately I changed it once, decided to give the change some time and after a little bit chalked it up to a lost cause. Apparently the realtor was correct though because yesterday I received my first Asian edition Economist! Of course, it's March 26th issue (received on April 11th) and the plastic covering is just beat to hell and back. In an initial boon to my confidence in my “estate agent” today confirmed that the address is definitely correct as I received another Economist... the March 19th issue.
At least subscribing in the States for two years as a student has saved a ton of money. The cover price is 75 yuan (about $11.50).
RSS Feed