Shanghai...Again

Wednesday, January 19, 2010

Morning

Flew to Shanghai for the annual staff dinner. This happens once a year, and it’s kind of a cool tradition. Anyway, Tracy was having a bad morning. A really bad morning. One of those mornings where nothing goes right, and no matter what she did, it just kept getting worse. It was all little things—the trip to the airport took longer than it should have because of traffic, we thought we were flying first class, but weren’t, the flight got delayed, we walked to the wrong gate—but they all added up on top of the stress of being in a foreign country away from (almost!) everything and everyone she loves. But, she soldiered on in the end, just like she always does, and the plane finally took off at 11:00 am.

Afternoon

We dropped Tracy off at the hotel, and went to the office for meetings with the Shanghai staff. Lots of good discussions—it’s always amazing to me that even though there are several phone calls every day between our two offices, we always get soooooo much more done in person. Expensive to get together, but seemingly worth it. Afterward, we went out for dinner to Pudong Shanghai, which at first, seemed like yet another restaurant in the first floor of a hotel. But, oh boy, was it so much more. It was a buffet style restaurant, with dishes from every part of the world there. Middle East, Central America, Asia, North America, Europe (sorry, Benn—I’m not familiar enough with South American food to know it if I saw it)—it was all there, and all yummy. Most of the staff had three or four plates, before dessert (which was usually two rounds). We finally had to cut everyone off, because while the four folks from North America had been done for over an hour, several of the Shanghai Staff were still going strong! It was incredible how much food they put away, but it was delicious enough to understand why.