Over the past 10 days, we were thrilled to host several US friends in town.
In the last update, we mentioned our first anniversary celebration weekend. Karl arrived home with beautiful flowers on June 16. Our special evening was spent with David, a Palo Alto neighbor and fellow Intel co-worker who happened to be in Shanghai for 1 night only. To compensate for crashing our anniversary, David managed to negotiate 3 free bottles of alcohol from the flight attendants as a gift for us! It was really fun to catch up. Later that week, Lila had a girl’s night out of foot massages & tapas with 2 colleagues, including 1 who was visiting from the US. On Saturday, Abdul, Ahmad, and Len arrived from Santa Clara. We hung out at the apartment for a few hours before heading for dumplings with one of Lila’s Shanghai colleagues and mutual friend of Ahmad’s. We learned a few important lessons during that visit: 1) we need to stock our fridge with more beer for when people come over, 2) having 2 guest rooms is great! (both Abdul & Ahmad stayed with us), and 3) the espresso maker was by far the best investment we’ve made! Sunday, Karl went to a resort area with Ahmad and a few Shanghai-based folks to enjoy volleyball, swimming, and an amazing brunch. About 14 hours later, they had managed to also squeeze in a night of poker (Karl tripled his money! :)), KFC, and a foot massage. Meanwhile, Lila met up with Craig, Abdul, Jim, and Len in Shanghai before flying to Chengdu in Sichuan Province. (Will post separate blog entry for update from earthquake impacted region.) By Tuesday, Lila had returned to Shanghai to host 2 of her staff. Overall, a fantastic week for catching up with 8 US visitors . We also managed to get Sudafed, 4 bottles of wine, a lot of news, and a stack of new magazines out of everyone’s visits.
Aside from the visitor excitement, Karl spent 2 days in Beijing. He’s becoming a pro of visiting up North. He then flew to Hong Kong, where they happened to have a level 3 Typhoon warning,which later turned into Level 8 (severe). All businesses closed, so he was stuck at the hotel for the entire day. Fortunately around noon, they downgraded the warning back to Level 3 and the mall opened for business. He returned home, after no meetings, but with shirts and appropriate sized tennis shoes (hard to find in Shanghai). Lila also spent 4 days in Penang, Malaysia, for her boss’ staff. Even though it’s in the same time zone, it took an entire work day to travel there & another day to travel home. Fortunately the meetings went well despite the cold she caught. For both of us, the week was full of airport delays. The previous blog entry was just a foreshadow of the remaining 6+ hours of delay we would face later in the week.
Lila returned to Shanghai on Saturday, 6/28. Karl had prepared a wonderful BBQ dinner of sausage, corn, a baked potato, and a bottle of wine. It was fabulous. We were both pretty exhausted today, so we caught up on movies (Kung Fu Panda and Sex&the City) for the entire morning. In the afternoon, we managed to get out for a 3 hour walk to Jing An temple and around our neighborhood. Dinner was another BBQ – chicken, mushrooms and a Chardonnay. We typically ration our wine, but since this is a month of busy travel we’ve decided to indulge!
Work is going well for both of us. Lila is finally finding her groove, which has been a big issue given all the changes her organization has gone through. The past 6 weeks have been good as we’ve both had limited travel, but the next 2 weeks will be tough as Karl goes to Japan, while Lila is in the Middle East.
While Lila types this blog update, Karl’s reviewing his Chinese studies. The language remains very difficult for us, especially as we have limited opportunity to practice. Until the next update…
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