Chapter 337 Brave New World (IV)
"Building 204, Room 605..."
"arrive!"
After exiting the elevator, Liu Meizhu found that this house was quite unique. She asked curiously, "Jingcai, are all the houses here like this?"
"It's like this. All newly built houses are designed like this." Zhao Jingcai nodded.
The reason why Liu Meizhu was very surprised was that the housing here was indeed unique and very different from that on Dayuan Island.
In other words, there is a huge conceptual difference between Zhiren Company's residential building design concept and traditional commercial housing.
As soon as Chen Yanxiu and his family walked out of the elevator, they discovered this difference.
The first thing that catches your eye is that the house does not look like a high-rise residential building, but more like a villa, because the houses on this floor do not share the same walls in the front, back, left and right.
After passing through a 4-meter-wide corridor, we arrived at the gate of No. 605.
There is a 1-meter-wide alley between the house and the neighboring houses on both sides. Liu Meizhu did not enter the door first, but walked along the alley on the left.
After passing through the alley, the view suddenly opened up.
The back half of the house in front of us is also a balcony area facing outside, and the neighbor is having a barbecue on the balcony.
The neighbor's hostess saw her and greeted her in Thai with a smile: "Sawadee ka..."
"Ah...Sawadee ka." This is the only Thai sentence Liu Meizhu knows.
The neighbor seemed to notice that Liu Meizhu didn't understand Thai. She pointed at the back door of her balcony and said a few words in stuttering Chinese:
"Hello...are you new here?...The back door is this way...Come and visit me when you have time..."
The neighbor's husband laughed and said in fluent Mandarin: "Hello, you are the new resident of No. 605, right? Your back door is on the other side, you can go around from this side."
"Thank you, are you Chinese?" Liu Meizhu felt relieved when she heard the familiar Chinese.
The male neighbor shook his head and said, "I'm from Chiang Mai."
"Your Mandarin is so good that I can't even detect an accent. Thanks for reminding me. I won't bother you anymore."
"It doesn't matter."
After saying goodbye to her neighbors, Liu Meizhu carried her little daughter around to the back and found that there was also a corridor behind the balcony, but this corridor was about 1.5 meters wide.
On one side is the low wall of the balcony, and on the other side is a huge window. Below the window is a 1-meter-high hollow stainless steel grid, and there is a layer of gauze on the grid, and on top of that are also stainless steel grids and gauze. In the middle is a single glass window with a height of 2 meters. The overall height of the three parts is 4 meters.
Liu Meizhu also found that the buildings here were very tall.
After standing in the back corridor for a while, you can overlook the lush little park not far away.
She walked in from the alley on the other side and saw the side back door of her house, which could be opened directly.
"The door was not locked?"
After entering, there is a large balcony. The wall on the side of the balcony facing the neighbor I just met is 2 meters high. Obviously, it is specially designed to block the view.
On the other two sides, there are 1-meter-high low walls, but they are also equipped with 1-meter-high foldable bamboo fences, and the fences are covered with gauze, which can also block the view.
Since she is a family of four, according to the internal housing standard of 30 square meters per person, her family has 120 square meters of living area.
However, the 100-square-meter balcony behind the house is not included in the residential area. Other front and back corridors, left and right side alleys, elevator shafts, stairwells, fume shafts, garbage shafts, and wire and pipe shafts are not included in the residential area.
In other words, the 30 square meters per capita stipulated by Zhiren Company means the actual 30 square meters of indoor area per capita.
The balcony area was still empty at this time, just a piece of open space within the wall.
Through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, she could see the living room and open kitchen inside the house. At this time, her husband Chen Yanzheng was packing up.
Open the back door on the side of the French window and you can enter the living room yourself.
Liu Meizhu put her little daughter on the sofa and said, "This house is so big, but it should have been newly renovated, right? Will there be formaldehyde or something like that?"
"Don't worry about that. The walls are covered with environmentally friendly and safe coral diatom mud. The furniture is made of iron bamboo, stainless steel, and aluminum alloy. No chemical glue is used. Once the decoration is completed, it will meet the occupancy standards." Zhao Jingcai patted the sofa.
Liu Meizhu walked around the room.
This 120-square-meter house has four bedrooms, two living rooms, two bathrooms, one kitchen and one storage room.
The master bedroom is 16 square meters, the three secondary bedrooms are 36 square meters in total, the front hall is 8 square meters, the back hall is 20 square meters, the open kitchen is 16 square meters, two bathrooms are 16 square meters each, the storage room is 4 square meters, and the central axis corridor is 4 square meters.
Plus a 100 square meter balcony behind the house.
Since there is no visual obstruction between the open kitchen, back hall and balcony, this 136-square-meter area looks very spacious.
"Honey, I feel like this house has such a high ceiling that it could even have a small second floor."
Chen Yanxiu looked at the ceiling of the living room and it was indeed very high.
However, Zhao Jingcai reminded: "This floor is 4 meters high, which is indeed higher than ordinary commercial housing, but I don't recommend you to add a small second floor. If there are more people, you can apply for a change of housing. There is no need for internal partitions."
"And the Housing Management Department will not approve this. Don't change the layout of the walls inside the house at will. These walls are specially designed to resist earthquakes. If you change the structure at will, it will destroy the earthquake-resistant structure of the entire building. Once discovered by the Housing Management Department, you will be severely fined."
Upon hearing that she would be punished, Liu Meizhu immediately gave up the idea of rebuilding.
Since the residential buildings of Zhiren Company are only rented and not sold, the property rights of these properties belong to the company and the employees only have the right to use them. Therefore, they do not have the right to make private modifications.
Even if you want to redecorate, you can only find the Coral Decoration Group under the head office. There are very few parts that can be changed privately.
Zhao Jingcai continued to remind them: "You must take good care of your furniture and electrical appliances. These things have a maintenance fee and a renewal fee, which is calculated based on their years of use."
"How much does this cost?" Chen Yanxiu asked quickly.
"Furniture usually has a 10-15 year no-loss period, while home appliances have a 5-10 year no-loss period. The so-called no-loss period means that within this period, the company will not replace you with a new one. After this period, if the item is aging or faulty, you can replace it with the same item by exchanging the old one for a new one."
Chen Yanxiu touched his chin and said, "In other words, if there is damage during the damage-free period, you have to pay for repairs and updates?"
Zhao Jingcai nodded: "Yes."
Liu Meizhu turned on the TV and asked with a smile while pressing the remote control: "Can these appliances be used for 5 to 10 years?"
"Don't worry, sister-in-law. These appliances are all produced by the company itself. As long as they are not used violently or illegally, they can be used for more than 12 years."
Chen Yanxiu was very surprised: "The company doesn't implement planned obsolescence?"
"That's not necessary." Zhao Jingcai smiled and shook his head: "The company doesn't pursue profits when selling products to internal employees, so naturally there is no such trick."
As Zhao Jingcai said, the "profit" that internal employees can provide to Zhiren Company is actually their labor.
In this case, it means that the more durable the products sold to internal employees, the lower the company's operating costs.
Otherwise, a TV will break down within three or four years, and employees will have to continue buying new TVs. Does this mean that the company will have to squeeze out some resources to produce new TVs?
The scrapping of free market plans is an inevitable choice for enterprises to maintain product production and profits.
Although planned obsolescence will result in a large amount of resources being wasted in a repetitive manner, this is the reality of survival in the free market.
Sapiens does not have that need.
Wouldn’t it be better to invest these resources in scientific and technological research and development?
Therefore, the products supplied internally by Zhiren Company are often sturdy and durable versions.
…
Liu Meizhu was watching TV and subconsciously pressed the remote control to change the channel.
"Huh? Why are there only Chinese channels? I remember that the official languages of Homo sapiens are Burmese, English, Thai, Malay, and Javanese, right?"
Zhao Jingcai was stunned for a moment, and thought for a moment: "It should be that Nanyang Film Company automatically set Chinese as your first language."
Chen Yanxiu, who was preparing milk powder for his little daughter, glanced at the TV and said, "This kind of old TV is quite rare nowadays."
The TV in the living room does look a bit like an old TV, but it is actually the most technologically advanced TV available today. It uses Sapiens' unique nanostructure light screen, which not only has very low energy consumption but also provides softer images.
The reason why the design is old-fashioned is that this TV is not designed for young people at all, but for the elderly.
This is also the television standard determined by the Social Research Office of Sapiens Corporation after careful research.
Many motor manufacturers nowadays are blindly pursuing so-called innovation without considering the user's feelings and have come up with a lot of fancy functions.
The elderly do not know how to use them and young people seldom watch TV, so the use of electric machines in the home is very awkward.
The Social Research Office of Homo Sapiens has seen this problem. After entering the 2020s of the 21st century, with the popularization of smartphones, laptops, and tablets, the only group using televisions is middle-aged and elderly people.
However, TV manufacturers intend to regain the market of young groups by adding functions.
There is nothing wrong with this idea itself, but the problem is that their operation is very stupid.
While embracing young consumers, they have forgotten the largest user group of televisions - the middle-aged and elderly people. They have made the functions too fancy and even designed some functions that are very difficult to use.
The balance between the needs of young people and middle-aged and elderly people was handled very poorly, resulting in neither side being pleased.
Sapiens learned from this lesson and readjusted the functions of the TV station.
As soon as Liu Meizhu turned on the TV, the system automatically entered fool mode and directly displayed the first Chinese channel of Homo Sapiens. Channels could only be changed through the remote control instead of various function selections.
"This remote control is actually for the elderly. If you want to use other functions, they are here..." Zhao Jingcai said as he opened the drawer of the TV cabinet and took out a small box.
After opening the box, there is a smart remote control, a wireless mechanical keyboard, a wireless mouse, and a voice-controlled remote control.
After making the milk, Chen Yanxiu handed the bottle to his wife, and then started playing with the keyboard and smart remote control.
"With these accessories, this TV can be turned into a computer."
Zhao Jingcai smiled and said, "The production line for this type of TV is originally shared with the computer production line. In addition, this voice-controlled remote control is also for the convenience of the elderly and children."
He picked up the voice-controlled remote control that looked like a karaoke microphone and pressed the red record button: "I want to see true happiness."
After saying that, he released the recording button.
Suddenly a floating window popped up on the TV page.
[Retrieving…].
[Retrieval completed. The first episode of "True Happiness" is playing for you...].
Soon the TV screen entered the first episode of "True Happiness".
Then Zhao Jingcai pressed the record button again: "Episode 5."
Then the system automatically jumped to the fifth episode.
"It's a good function, very friendly to illiterate elderly people and children, but can this thing recognize dialects?" Chen Yanxiu asked curiously.
Zhao Jingcai nodded: "Yes, as long as the TV is connected to the Internet, the data analysis center can analyze thousands of common dialects. Even if you speak Minnan dialect, the system can recognize it."
"It seems that the company's technology in translation and artificial intelligence is far superior to Google!"
"Of course. Google has only a few employees, while its three network technology subsidiaries, Yemai, Zhiyun, and Cipu, are giants with 870,000 employees."
Chen Yanxiu was not surprised by the size of the employees in each subsidiary of Zhiren Company.
After all, the company's total number of employees has now reached 800 million. Minus the elderly, the weak, the sick and the disabled, plus the area controlled by the Homo Sapiens company, the average age of the population is very young, with at least 600 million young and middle-aged people.
Therefore, the staff size of each subsidiary is unprecedentedly large.
Among all the major subsidiaries of Zhiren, the three major construction engineering groups have the largest number of employees, totaling about 83 million.
This is also one of the reasons why Sapiens can quickly promote a large number of infrastructure projects. In old areas like Hongsavadi, various supporting facilities are already very complete.
Johor, which was previously part of Malaysia, only has relatively complete subway facilities, while other supporting facilities are still being improved.
The supporting facilities in Kampung Town are better because the electronics industry is given priority support here.
As the proportion of new humans continues to increase, the talent advantage of Homo sapiens companies in various industries will be further magnified.
For example, the dialect translation problem that Chen Yanxiu is concerned about can be solved by cooperating with dozens of new human employees and finding some new human employees who can speak that dialect. In less than one or two months, the construction of a voice translation database for a dialect can be completed.
This kind of human investment is difficult for Google to achieve.
Of course, arrogant European and American companies will not set up a translation project team specifically for a small language.
But Sapiens can and must do this.
For example, in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, the Internet subsidiaries of Sapiens are now able to suppress Google, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.
The core competitiveness of Zhiren Company lies in its in-depth development of small languages and dialects.
Whenever a subsidiary of Sapiens enters a region, they will quickly create a localized version based on the local language.
At the same time, a professional docking department will be set up to serve users of small languages.
No matter how powerful English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German are, they are merely mainstream languages in Europe and the United States.
In the vast regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America, there are many people who speak various dialects.
For example, India, which has 1,652 languages and dialects, has more than 22 official languages.
No matter how powerful Google is, it cannot build a specialized database for 1,652 languages and dialects, but Homo sapiens can do it.
Therefore, in the minority language areas, European and American Internet companies cannot compete with Sapiens companies.
The high-quality professional talents that both sides can invest in are completely not of the same level.
This is also the core means by which Sapiens can now create a wave of public opinion in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and fight cognitive, cultural and public opinion wars with Europe and the United States.
By being able to use the local language, the local people’s resistance to the Homo Sapiens company will be reduced a lot. This advantage will have a huge added effect in guiding public opinion.
In fact, paying attention to minority languages is also to further consolidate the loyalty of employees within the company.
Why are the natural person employees of Zhiren Company so loyal to the company? The reason is that they feel they are valued and respected in their work and life.
If those natural person employees are forced to use a certain language all of a sudden, they will definitely feel uncomfortable.
But with 150 million new humans, the Homo sapiens company can fully take care of natural person employees who speak small languages and reduce the communication barriers.
Therefore, in the daily work of Homo sapiens, it is common to see supervisors, team leaders, factory directors, managers, etc., speaking several languages fluently.
This also makes many natural person employees more convinced of their superiors. After all, being able to speak several languages makes them seem like extraordinary people.
…
While watching TV, Chen Yanxiu asked, "Jingcai, do people speak Malay in Johor?"
"Huh?" Zhao Jingcai scratched his head, recalling his experiences over the past month. He suddenly realized that he rarely encountered language communication barriers these days.
"How should I put it? I speak Chinese here, and many of my colleagues around me can speak Chinese, but some employees can also speak English or Thai. However, there are always a few people in each department who can speak multiple languages, so there is no need to worry about communication problems."
"So that's how it is. I feel relieved then." Chen Yanxiu breathed a sigh of relief.
Liu Meizhu wiped her daughter's mouth and said, "Many people here should be able to speak Chinese. I just met my neighbor next door and her husband can speak Chinese."
"This is better. I don't have to worry about communication problems in the future, and life will be very convenient." Chen Yanxiu looked at the time and found that it was already 3:30 in the afternoon without him noticing.
He turned around and asked, "Jingcai, how about having dinner together tonight?"
"No, you will be busy cleaning the house tonight. I will treat you to dinner next week." Zhao Jingcai shook his head.
Chen Yanxiu also felt a little tired, so he took advantage of the situation and said, "Let's make an appointment next week. By the way, leave me a number and email address..."
The two of them left each other their cell phone numbers, ID numbers, and email addresses.
After seeing Zhao Jingcai off, Chen Yanxiu quickly cleaned up the house.
After opening the closet in the master bedroom, he found brand new bedding, sheets, and pillows inside. He hung up his daily clothes, removed the dust covers on the furniture, and laid out sheets, quilts, and pillows.
It took me an hour and a half to clean up the house.
Chen Yanxiu, exhausted both physically and mentally, went to the large bathtub in the bathroom to take a bath.
Liu Meizhu, who was looking after the child, took a few small stools from the storage room, and the mother and her two children rested on the balcony.
Liu Meizhu was looking through her cell phone. In the employee account on her phone was her salary and comprehensive subsidies for this month, a total of 650 yuan.
The salary payment of Homo sapiens is divided into two parts.
One part is the basic salary and comprehensive subsidy, which is paid on the first day of every month.
The other part is overtime pay, performance-based salary, and bonuses, which are paid at the end of each month.
The job that Liu Meizhu applied for is a manicurist, and she will be paid a salary of D4 when she first starts working.
Chen Yanxiu is a chip flow inspector and is paid a Class C4 salary upon joining the company.
Looking at the line of family common property in the employee account, the couple currently has a total balance of 3,800 yuan.
Liu Meizhu is a woman who is very careful with money. She used to be the one who managed the family’s money. Now that she has come to live in the kampung town, she needs to make a new income and expenditure plan.
There is an account book function in the employee account. After opening it, she began to list various expenses.
While listing the expenses, he asked the system wizard some questions.
Housing rent: 120/month.
Water and electricity charges (100 cubic meters of water and 1,000 kWh per month): 30/month.
Gas fee (1,000 cubic meters per month): 10/month.
Communication fee (two mobile phones): 20/month.
Wired Internet (including landline): 5/month.
These are all fixed expenses, totaling 185 gold yuan.
Of course, if you feel that the fixed packages of water, electricity, gas and other services are not cost-effective, you can also choose to be charged on a usage basis.
Usually the price of tap water is 0.07 per cubic meter, the price of residential electricity is 0.03 per kilowatt-hour, and the price of gas is 0.02 per cubic meter.
This pay-as-you-go method is more cost-effective for those who do not often cook, bathe or live at home.
Liu Meizhu felt that her family must cook frequently, so it would be more cost-effective to choose a fixed set meal.
As for other expenses such as transportation, food, daily necessities, cosmetics, clothes, milk powder and diapers, she also carefully calculated the local prices.
Even if she chose better food and daily necessities, the total monthly expenditure for a family of four still remained at around 670 gold yuan.
In other words, the family still has a monthly surplus of about 3,130 yuan.
"The prices are really extremely cheap. It seems that we can increase some other expenses." Liu Meizhu feels that there is still a lot of surplus and she can consider other things.
"Buying a car? Is it necessary? You can rent a car here, and there are subways, buses and taxis."
"House? Uh... there are no commercial houses for sale here, eh..."
Although Liu Meizhu did not find a commercial house, she found a fine decoration service, which allows her to customize various furniture and appliances, as well as specially designed balconies. When she looked at the bare balcony, she was immediately moved.
However, she needs to discuss the decoration with her husband.
Then Liu Meizhu continued to plan. With sufficient income surplus, she could consider fitness and beauty, travel and entertainment, hobbies and the like.
After daydreaming for a long time, Liu Meizhu found that having too many choices was also a kind of trouble, but she never got tired of this kind of happy trouble.
Looking at the setting sun outside the window, Liu Meizhu stretched and sighed:
"It's so cool! This is how I want to live!"
Chen Yanxiu, who had just finished taking a shower, looked at his excited wife with a surprised look on his face: "What are you thinking about that makes you so happy?"
“Thinking about the wonderful life in the future!”
