Life has been quite eventful in my hiatus from blogging, and perhaps the biggest event is my arrival two days ago in Shanghai, China, to support one of our local teams. I'll be here for over three months and am very excited about the opportunities, both in working with amazing coworkers and experiencing this incredible place for a longer visit.
I wrote about my previous visit to Shanghai (and the one before that) in my travel blog. But rather than continuing separate blogs, I will be posting here.
In getting here my flights were uneventful, which was fine by me. I got very little sleep in my 19-hour process of getting here, so seeing my colleague Vivienne's welcoming face when I got out of the customs area on Thursday afternoon was a welcome relief. She and our driver helped me get to the hotel and get up to the room. I have a small furnished suite/room in a hotel two stops from our office. And the best part is that it has a kitchen!
I got a bit of a rest, a much needed shower, and then I met up with Bruce, Itamar, Vivienne, Beebee, Tony, and Richard for dinner across the street. Lots of great food right away. Yum!
I actually slept during night hours that first day, which was pretty good considering the 12-hour time difference. On Friday I went into the office, got a refresher tour, got set up in my temporary office near our UX team, got caught up on email, and then went for a lovely lunch with the full team. More yummy food! But I haven't yet been taking pictures of it, sorry!
After a few more meetings, I got to witness the flash mob of the mid-autumn festival celebration at the office. Lots of food and riddles to solve! The mid-autumn festival is on Monday and there's been lots of discussions of mooncakes around here, as the traditional food to eat.
Anyway, once my work day was finished I came back to the hotel and fought to stay awake until 9. Probably should have worked harder as I woke up at 4:30. Ahhh, jet lag!
But this morning it was alright to get up early as I was meeting Bruce, his wife Mindy, and Rick and Jenny (whom I had not met before) to go witness the Qiongtang tidal bore coming in. It was a long drive, but lots of great conversation. Mindy and Bruce both lived in the US for 20 years, and Rick and Jenny both lived in Canada for many years before coming here to work at our company, so lots of interested tales and perspectives to hear about.
We got a bit lost along the way, but ended up going some 1/3 to 1/2 of the way across one of the longest bridges in the world, the Hangzhou Bay Bridge. It took us about 10 minutes to get to that point, but it was so foggy I have no idea where the end actually was. Thankfully they have a mid-bay platform that people can turn around on, otherwise our detour would have ended up even longer!
Anyway, it was a mad dash to just see the wave of the tide go by, but we did it!
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| From Shanghai - Sept10, 2011. Haining |
The crowd watching was pretty big, but the tide was only a meter high on this day. I guess on some days it comes in as a wave of 10 meters!
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| From Shanghai - Sept10, 2011. Haining |
Rick took a picture of the rest of us, after our mad dash. Here's Jenny, me, Mindy, and Bruce.
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| From Shanghai - Sept10, 2011. Haining |
As we walked down the shoreline path, toward the pagoda and into the park, I saw this amazing 300+ year old tree. So beautiful, and the hole in the middle goes straight through!
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| From Shanghai - Sept10, 2011. Haining |
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| From Shanghai - Sept10, 2011. Haining |
We continued wandering around, and I must say... I was quite the stand-out in terms of being the only foreigner around. The little kids do not restrain themselves from pointing and coming up and saying "Hello!" and laughing. I was completely fascinating to them!
After we wandered around the park a bit (there's some nifty photos in the album), we got back into the car to head to downtown Haining. The first thing I noticed when we got out was the insane number of scooters.
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| From Shanghai - Sept10, 2011. Haining |
While we looked for a restaurant (I was interested in something other than an American chain, so my hosts dilligently looked for a place serving traditional Chinese food...), there was a lot of neat sights in wandering around. I caught this gentleman cleaning the street. I just liked his face and the broom. Not so well composed, but a decent shot.
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| From Shanghai - Sept10, 2011. Haining |
A little sadly for me we ended up here:
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| From Shanghai - Sept10, 2011. Haining |
That's Pizza Hut. However, it's not like any American pizza hut, so that was nifty... Plus, you could order things like escargot as an appetizer here!
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| From Shanghai - Sept10, 2011. Haining |
After much-needed food, we were off to see the former home of a great poet of the modern era, Xu Zhimo. Mindy loves this poet, so she led the way, and it was a neat space. Here's a couple of shots, Bruce and Mindy, Rick, and some nearby roofs from the top of the poet's home.
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| From Shanghai - Sept10, 2011. Haining |
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| From Shanghai - Sept10, 2011. Haining |
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| From Shanghai - Sept10, 2011. Haining |
Once we were finished there, the jet lag was really catching up with me. That pretty much meant the rest of the day was a combination of nap and sort-of-awake time. Sunday will be getting the house in order, finishing unpacking, grocery shopping, gym, and perhaps some other neighborhood exploring!
This is a bit of a rushed post, sorry about that. But I just wanted to record things before they faded from memory! More updates to come, I'm sure.
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