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.

Dumplings....mmmmm!

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Morning

Had a morning meeting with a potential customer this morning. He arrived for the meeting about 45 minutes late because of the traffic—which, I’m learning, is pretty normal. Everyone we’ve made an appointment with at our office has been at LEAST 20 minutes late, and usually more. You’d think that they would figure out how to get somewhere on time, but a strong part of their culture seems to be that the meeting starts when it starts. <sigh> Anyway, afterward we went to lunch with him to the local Shanghai Restaurant. I love the Shanghai style of food—it’s much sweeter than the typical Beijing food (which I think is yummy, if you haven’t picked up on that by now!).

Afternoon

Well, I have good news, and I have bad news. The good news is that I remembered my camera, so I could take pictures of the mall from yesterday! The bad news is that we didn’t get a chance to go back today—we had an audit scheduled for 4:00 pm to review our petty cash balance, and Angela needed to get ready for it. So, we’ll try again after our Shanghai trip. When I got home, Tracy had a small pizza waiting for me—it was pretty good. But she decided that she wanted some fried dumplings from Gourmet Street, so off I went. It’s only a five minute walk/elevator ride to the mall, but when I got there, they had just started a new batch, so I had to wait about seven or eight minutes for them to come out piping hot. But that wait will give me time to tell you about the different dumplings. J  There are boiled, steamed, and fried—fried seem to be the best. They are filled with everything you can think of, but there’s this one specific kind of meat that seems to be the best (and most common, fortunately!). Beijing is known primarily for its steamed dumplings, and their not bad at all—when you come out, we’ll take you to Din Tai Fong, and you’ll see what I mean. But the fried part adds to the taste, just like fried chicken tastes better than broiled. Broiled is good—fried is better (just not better for you!). So, two orders of fried dumplings and a side of fried rice tasted really good beside the pizza. How can we not love this country?

China Mobile---Mike

Monday, January 16, 2012

Quiet morning—routine is really settling in. Workout, cleanup, breakfast, scripture study, and off to work. We did Skype with Tina this morning briefly, though she is always doing weird things in front of the camera, so it’s hard to take her seriously. J The Monday Morning Staff Meeting, where we call the Shanghai office to compare notes on the week’s plan. After, I got to hand out the annual bonuses to everyone as part of the Chinese New Year’s celebration. It’s customary for employers and family to hand out money at the start of their new year in bright red envelopes called “hong bao.”   It’s just the right size for money, normally, but I was handing out a letter explaining what would be in their paycheck at the end of the week, so the ones I picked up were larger. The folks in the office were surprised that I knew about the culture so much that I knew about hong bao, and they were happy with the bonus (equal to one month of their salary), of course, so if I committed any faux pas, they didn’t share it with me. Mission accomplished!

Afternoon

Our office manager, Angela, is back today from her tour across the states, so we decided to have her help us get cell phones. She warned us, however, that it would take at least 90 minutes there in line at China Mobile, so Tracy opted to spend the afternoon poolside instead. So, Angela had an errand or two to run, and I had to get Tracy’s passport from the hotel, so we agreed to meet at the China Mobile store. After getting to the correct subway stop, and coming to the surface, I quickly found the correct shopping center sign . . . on a small, shabby building literally in the middle of the road. I’m not kidding—it looked like a small storage shed. I crossed half the street, and went through the door (that looked like they were still working on it, BTW. At this point, I was REALLY glad that Tracy wasn’t with me!). As I descended, I went into a dimly lit hallway that had small shops set up on either side. I really gotta start carrying my camera with me—this stuff is too priceless to not show everyone. So, I finally found the store, and went in to try to get a number for the waiting line, like Angela had asked me. She hadn’t finished her other things to do yet, so she was going to be a bit longer. However, they wouldn’t give me a number without interviewing me, so fifteen minutes later, and a painful conversation in broken English (and not even broken Chinese effort on my part, so their effort was way better than mine!), I still didn’t have a number. Grrr. But then I found out that the computer that programs the sim cards (you have to buy a sim card and phone separately here) was down, so I’d need to come back tomorrow anyway. The good news is that I went home a bit early, and I’ll try to remember the camera tomorrow!

When I got back to the room, Tracy had ordered room service—spaghetti for dinner tonight!

Sunday, January 15, 2012

We went to church in the morning, and heard from a Hawaiian, a Korean, and a Kenyan (the latter two are married). As I look around the congregation, it doesn’t seem as diverse as our speakers have been the past two weeks, but there are still other nationalities that haven’t spoken yet. Still, as the branch is smaller than the Belfair Ward, I suspect we’ll be asked to speak soon.

We spent the afternoon lounging by the pool, and watching movies—a welcome break from our busy, first full week.

Wangfujing Street Trip---Mike

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Morning

Big plans today, just like last Saturday—going shopping to pick up a few things to make life better. We were starting to run out of money, so I also need to figure out the ATM situation. After discussing it, we decided it would be better to leave Tracy home, as she is getting increasingly frustrated at the transportation situation (subway is reliable but WAY to crowded for her, and taxis are hard to find at times, and it’s hard to be sure if we are going the most reasonable route or not). So, off I set. First stop, to find an ATM. Didn’t turn out to be too hard, though. After a quick internet search, I learned that there are four banks that allow international transactions. I found one of their ATMs at the west end of the mall that is below the hotel. Mission accomplished! Next, I set out to find a specific store in a mall about 30 minutes away, because it had been recommended to me as having the VGA cable I needed to hook the computer to the TV. Found the mall and the store, and got the cable. Sweet! Next, I headed about halfway back home, and walked two blocks to a Wal-Mart (turns out they have about five here) that seemed to be convenient to the subway, but in reality was about a half a mile. Anyway, I bought a humidifier and some speakers for the computer—now we’re in business! We can hook up the computer to the TV and watch DVDs or Netflix, something that we could only do in the bedroom with our headphones to this point. Life is good!

Afternoon

After lunch, Tracy and I walked down to Wangfujing Street on the west side of our hotel. This has many shops, and we stopped at a bookstore to get some hong bao. These are red envelopes that the Chinese hand out at the New Year to give money to family or people that work for them. I needed them to hand out to my folks on Monday, since they’re getting their annual bonuses. We came back to the apartment to chill for a bit, and then got ready to go to dinner with the Relief Society president and her husband. And that’s when the fun began.

Our taxi driver took us to the wrong location—not his fault, since the address we showed him in our little taxi book is out of date, but we arrived on time to a location about ten minutes from our hotel, and about an hour from where we were supposed to meet our hosts. By the time we finally realized where we were, the taxi driver was long gone, and we had no phone to call and tell them we’d be late. So, after snipping at each other a bit, we decided to get on the subway and head toward them. Well, one look at the line going toward the host, and Tracy knew she wasn’t getting on there—too many sardines in that can already! But, the line going back to the hotel was not nearly as crowded, so we went back home. We called them twenty minutes after we were supposed to meet them to extend our apologies, and they volunteered to meet us! Great people! We felt badly that they had to travel an hour, but it was a great meal at a Sichuan restaurant downstairs, and we had a wonderful conversation about a lot of different things. We picked up the tab, since they came all that way for us.

Friday, January 13, 2012

We seem to have settled into a routine—workout, shower, breakfast, scripture study, and head to work. I decided to take the afternoon off today to head to IKEA to see what kind of furniture they have. Tracy came to work after an adventuresome cab ride that took over an hour, so fortunately, the cab ride to IKEA was short. Unfortunately, it was in the opposite direction from the hotel, so after our window shopping (we did see some things that we may get, but we want to keep looking), our cab ride back took over an hour in rush hour traffic, and cost $12—easily the most expensive cab ride we’ve had here.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Normal day—nothing out of the ordinary to report for me, but Tracy went to lunch with some church ladies to a coffee house. Apparently, they have the best waffles in town. Tracy had a sandwich, but saw one lady order a large order of Belgian Waffles, with syrup, whipped cream, and chocolate ice cream! This place isn’t too far from my work, so I may need to try this myself!