Exploring on Friday

This week has generally been quiet in the office. We had members from all the LO QC teams in our office for a big conference (Korea, Beijing, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, India, US, Vietnam and Hong Kong) and they have been out in the field with the management from my office. Yesterday was no different which meant that I got to sit down to a quiet day of getting stuff done. I realized this week how lucky I am to have a team that treats me so well, always inviting me to join them for lunch an generally checking in to make sure that I am doing OK. The women that I met at the oriented group mentioned that they don't normally head out with their chinese colleagues at all and mine would have it no other way. I was sure to thanks during lunch yesterday.

   Have I ever talked about going out to eat with a group of Chinese and how paying the bill happens? Traditionally, when Chinese eat together only one person pays the tab. It is actually seen as impolite to fight over who owes what at the table (unlike in America). So when we head out during the work day, only one person from our group brings money to pay for the meal. Once we get back to the office that is the point that we figure out the money that we owe the person that paid.

Friday lunch crew

Oliver, Tina from the Production team and Tina from my team.
We treated ourselves to yogurt even after the large lunch

The Chinese are crazy about their yogurt!

 After work I wanted to do a little exploring, so I headed to an area that I know as XinTianDi. I had heard that this was area to lots of good shopping, I had even seen advertisements. After taking 3 subway lines to get there and getting back to street level that this shopping was mall shopping. No exactly what I had in mind but thought that I should just check it out. I wondered for about 30mins but the shops were all really expensive and not what I was looking to do for the evening.

  Once leaving the mall I wandered the street in the area and found some better shopping to do. I was getting tired and hungry and since I wasn't  more then a 1.5 miles from my apartment I decided to just walk home. I walked through some ritzy areas. I saw lots of fancy condo buildings like the one below.

I also found a high-end Japanese grocery store. I bought some organic toothpaste,
 fruit bars called Bear Fruit Bar made in Hood River OR, chocolate and olives. There
was more that I wanted but didn't want to carry it all home.

I passes under one of the elevated streets, basically highways
through Shanghai. The circle around the city which helps to
alleviate some of the traffic on the surface streets. They are
all lit up at night.

I also passed through another fancy area that had a lots of mansions and high end shops. On the left is a shop called The Funky Chicken, which had good smelling roasted chicken (and they have free delivery in my area!). In the same complex there was some ballroom dancing going on. I couldn't tell why but I stayed to watch for awhile. Then I complete my walk home, made some dinner and crashed for the evening.

Now it's Saturday afternoon and I'm off to find some sort of Halloween costume...wish me luck!