Friday, January 20, 2012
Morning
I went to work a bit early for a morning conference call with some folks back at Corporate. The snow has really messed everyone up—I wish we were there to enjoy it! No snow here yet, except for that first Saturday, and it came and went pretty quickly. My boss called to let us know he wants the Beijing team back in Shanghai on February 6th for the day, so we’ll be heading down for a day of meetings, but not staying the night. I faxed the paperwork to Sprint to begin canceling our phone service, but that turned out to be an adventure all in itself. I did everything okay, but the machine, after telling me that the fax had transmitted okay, kept trying to dial again, and when it did, it kept getting an error message from the Chinese phone line (in Chinese, of course, so I have no idea what curses it was slinging at me). Crazy. At one point, I managed to have all four of us huddled around the fax machine trying to solve it. We unplugged it, but it still kept going when we plugged it back in. We disconnected the phone line, and it STILL kept going. We finally pushed the right combination of buttons (all labeled in Chinese, of course—the big green button is the only one that makes any sense to me!) to get it to stop, but it was pretty comical for a bit. Worst. Boss. Ever.
I also have a really long story I can email anyone interested, but the moral of the story is that you cannot use a ball point pen to sign checks in China. You must use an ink pen. Get the difference? I’m not sure I do, but it was a hard lesson learned!
Afternoon
They took me to lunch at The Little Great Wall Restaurant. It’s just around the corner from the office, and they described it as “home food,” or like the stuff their Mom’s used to make. I took a picture of a couple of menu items, so you can appreciate what choices we have—everything from “bird nest” to “bullfrog!” But fortunately for me, they stayed a bit more traditional—we had green beans with minced pork, meatball stew with winter melon (a very mild melon), some very finely julienned potatoes and green peppers, and some Kung Pao chicken (with, of course, the bowl of steamed rice that accompanies every meal). The four of us left some food behind for ¥95, or about $15, and it was really tasty!
Quiet afternoon after that.
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