some photos from Shanghai

Horst and I went to Shanghai last weekend with an engineer and her girlfriend to do some sightseeing, eating, and shopping. It was a very fun time with some unexpected moments. Here's some of the evening told through pictures.

Horst before lunch.


Some place in a shopping area


These people put together dumplings amazingly fast


Horst receives an unsolicited shoe shine. I told him it could have been worse - could have been a street proctologist.


View from the Oriental Pearl Tower


same


The fast elevator


the tower at night


A building scale thermometer. Not shown: the world's largest horse hair hygrometer.


Matt as a dainty, flower-wearing geek. Not shown: Horst doing the exact same thing.


I didn't care for the Brokeback Shanghai reference, thank you


Sleepy time. Alternate title: Count my fillings


Next time: Nanjing photos

Busy and loving it

So, turns out I don't have to leave China next week to renew my 30 day visa. The admin assistant says to the effect that we can renew my visa for 1 or 2 more months, but I need to get more passport pages while still in China, before I leave.

If the American consulate in Shanghai would answer their phone, this might work!! I may have to take a trip over there next week just to talk to someone in person. What a pain.

Anyway, the weekend is nigh and I am going to Nanjing for 3 nights. Had dinner with a manager and a director which meant steak, wine, and fun stories about the company. Wow. Then a couple of G&Ts at the hotel bar (ordered vodka and tonic, but got gin - oh well) and now time for sleep. Everyone relax if you don't hear from me for a week while I am busy being Acting Engineering Manager and traveling.

Maybe I *do* travel too much

I have a standard passport, that means 24 pages for inbound/outbound stamps and visas. I've had it for about 6.5 years now and have about 7 or 8 countries stamped in it besides the US.

I have 1 visa - for China. It is good for multiple visits over 1 year. But, limit is 30 days per stay. You can extend this, but, they put a new visa stamp in.

My passport doesn't have room for this extra page. Hmmm. And, it takes at least a week or two for new pages to be sewn in. Hmmm.

So, about May 5th I need to leave China, at least long enough to get an exit stamp and a new entrance. Anyone want to meet me in Hong Kong?

Ironic, ain't it, since HK is part of China :o) Heck, maybe it won't work and I'll have to go to Singapore for 1 day :p

Another milestone in Chinese cuisine

I had dinner with a group last night at a very nice restaurant. I only knew one of the people, but they all work or worked for my company and all were very nice.

Dinner was at one of these restaurants common in Asia where your group gets a room to itself and there is a big round table with turn-table in the center for all of the dishes.

When I first arrived, there were four dishes on the table. I recognized the duck tongue and the chicken feet. There was a gelatinous sort of thing that was a little freaky (turned out to be a candied lotus - quite tasty) and a cut glass dish with lid.

Hmm, doesn't look good so far. I might be hitting the minibar later for my dinner.

Someone pulled the lid off the glass dish and I saw there was . . something in a thick, brown sauce. And then . . something . . moved. Yes, moved. The food on the table . . moved.

Uh, I've had raw before, but never moving :p

It's explained to me that they are shrimp. Oh, ok. I recognize them now. BUT THEY ARE MOVING! "Quite delicious. You should try them." Uh, no thanks. No heads, no feet, nothing that moves.

The rest of the dishes were much more approachable. I even had some of the blood soup. I ate a lot of vegetables and some rabbit leg (tasty). Twelve dishes in all, I think I had 8 of them and really liked 4 or so.

By the end of the night, all the shrimp had stopped moving. There were about a dozen left, so I guy just sat and ate through them. Bon appetite, my friend. I'll have some more blood soup, please.

Even worse than I've seen

We have seen some interesting menu items in China. Sometimes the English translation *is* correct and you really are eating pig face or some such. Sometimes, you pray to that they are mistranslated.

I haven't seen anything as bad as these, but have come close. . .

http://www.rahoi.com/2006/03/may-i-take-your-order.php
http://community.livejournal.com/engrish/164141.html

Apologies to Stone and Parker

This occurred to me the other day during dinner and I forgot to mention it before. Along the lines of my Miller Time parody previously.

A South Park takeoff

"I've never seen a man eat so many chicken feet"

look who's here

My apologies to the drooling masses. No, no, I mean drooling because you are waiting for a blog post, not drooling because you are just slobbery folk.

Well, some of you are just slobbery.

Anyway, here I am in Suzhou, China again. The weather is nice - about like Philly, I think - and it's nice to experience Spring anywhere. I've gotten out a few times, even ran again tonight, and it is pleasant during the day and cool in the evening. Lots of people out walking and enjoying the air. And the white guy in running shorts gets a lot of attention, especially when he smiles and greets them in (terrible) Chinese :)

Things with a possible Singapore move are up in the air. It's expensive to expat someone *and* they have a likely local candidate, so who knows :o\ We'll see by the end of the week, I was told.

I'm putting up a couple of fun photos taken during the trip. And I'll leave you with this wonderful quote. The backstory is that the Chinese love blond children. My sister has found this first-hand in the US when she goes to Chinese restaurants. I've seen 5 or 6 hotel workers laughing and playing with a small Western child for a long time, everyone having fun. My female, Chinese coworkers love to see photos of my little nieces and nephew.

There is a little issue with language, however, especially idioms. I was at first
startled and then about damaged soemthing laughing when a Chinese woman say a photo of my nephew and said "I want to eat his face!" Once I figured out what she meant, I explained that "I want to eat his face" sounds much more malicious than "I could just eat him up". I hope I fixed that before she really scares someone.

Now, for the wacky photos.






Now Horst and I are going to sit here in the hotel bar and have whatever they bring us. We have to, 'cuz you don't always get what you order.

"When it's time to relax . .

. . one beer stands clear - TsingTao beer"

Well, it fit and I thought it was funny. Though I'm hoping for western food and maybe some Euro beer tonight. And a massage.

The week peaked sometime Thursday. Today, eh, not so great. At least it's the weekend and I can eat, drink, sleep and relax.

Too good to be true

I'm back in China. And karma paid me back on this trip. First class flight from Philly to Chicago. Three seats to myself Chicago to Shanghai. In Shanghai, my luggage arrived undamaged, immigration was quick, my driver was waiting. And the drive from Shanghai to Suzhou was the fastest ever. From landing to hotel arrival was about 2.5 hours. Fastest yet!

I met up with the coworkers at the bar after two vodka sours and some Hainanese Chicken. Caught up on local news and then off for a $8.50 massage. Best massages ever, one hour long, only $8.50. It's like I've died and gone to China :)

Only thing left to do is change my last name to Dsborne as that's how everyone reads it :p It'll be pronounced the same, just spelled different.

Photos are up

Finally Yahoo was stable enough to upload the vacation photos. See Iceland, Amsterdam, Maura, Matt, food, drink, and a few random kitties.

The VFR turned over 45,000 miles on the way to work this morning. That means I've done about 10 miles since I got back from my Midwest trip in October :p 'Course, I've flown 60,000 miles since then, so maybe that's a good excuse.

Time to start the weekend. By going to bed early Friday night. So sleeeeeeepy.