Olympics Bound: 8/8/08 Train Adventure

Our journey to the Beijing Olympics started Friday evening. While billions of people worldwide watched the Opening Ceremony live, we opted for the 12 hour overnight train to Beijing (don’t worry, we’ll download the video!). Our train tickets were a mere US$71/ea and allowed us to work a full day before catching the 7:30pm northbound Z-train. Since this was the first time we’d taken the train, everyone was worried about us. My admin sent 3 messages and Driver Shen tried to buy an “accompanying” ticket to ensure we boarded the right car. The train policy during Olympics stopped him from taking us to the gate, which made Shen very nervous about us. While appreciative of the concerns, we were pretty comfortable finding our way around with minimal language abilities given our adventurous spirit. We got there early enough to enjoy wandering the train station's snack food shops, which sold every imaginable packaged Chinese snack (nuts, dried fish, instant noodles, & a bunch of stuff we couldn't recognize).

Overall, the train was great – quick check-in, very clean, and on time! Although many had compared the train to a 5 star hotel, it felt more like a 3 star with very clean rooms and attentive English-speaking staff. Each cabin had 4 bunks, fresh flowers, small table, hot water service (for tea & instant noodles) and slippers. There’s another 2-bed “T” train, but we weren’t able to get on.

Two downsides of the train. First, our roommate for the night was a Chinese man who slept as soon as we departed the station, and didn’t wake up until his phone rang at 5:30am Saturday morning! The other was the lack of electricity in the room....and no, not for our notebooks (which were not opened during the trip thankyouverymuch). There were, however, outlets at each end of the car. Luckily Karl had bought a 5meter extension cord to power his CEPAP machine through the night. The extension cable required convincing the train staff to allow us to run cable down the hallway. Our cabin neighbor (Penny) was bilingual and built a “life or death” story around Karl’s need to run the wiring. The train staff lady was so freaked out that she sat outside our room all night making sure no one unplugged the machine. We gladly abided to her request: provide feedback about her customer-orientation in the train log. Ah! Foreign-friendly customer service points.

The real highlight of the journey was that Penny was an exchange student to the US about 10 years ago. She was traveling with her host sister and brother in law from Texas – both really fun lawyers. We had a wonderful time hanging out with them talking in the halls, then downing a few beers in the dining train. It was great until 1am, when the beer had run through Lila (who slept on the top bunk). Imagine climbing down in pitch black, then squatting over a Chinese toilet of a moving train in the middle of the night!?! Needless to say, the train was a fun adventure and a great way to start our Olympic journey.

Olympics Bound!

Tonight we are heading to Beijing on an overnight Z-train from Shanghai. The train is supposed to be super posh & some compare it to a five star hotel (we aren’t holding our breath). We’ll miss the Olympic Opening Ceremony -- wasn’t very high priority for us to buy uber-expensive tickets or be jammed outside the stadium to watch fireworks with 20 million strangers.
We’re pretty excited about experiencing the opening weekend. Unfortunately, we don’t have game tickets yet. Paying scalped ticket pricing of US $400/ticket for one swimming event seemed a bit ridiculous. So we’re going to see how in person scalping goes, per Nabeel & Lila’s learning at the Nagano Olympics. Karl spent the morning learning/practicing his Olympic ticket buying phrases in his Chinese language class! [Phrase of the day: Women xiang yao liang zhang tiao shui de piao; or those mandarin challenged -> we would like to buy two tickets to diving] We do think we’ll get rowing tickets Saturday afternoon from an Intel friend. We’re returning to Shanghai late Sunday.

Catching Up...

It’s been a while since we wrote updates. In fact, we are now in our 5th month living in Shanghai. Seems somewhat surreal to be honest. We both agreed that it feels like home now. We can go to Carrefour on Saturdays and not be completely overwhelmed by the million or so who decided to sift thru the bananas at the same time. We can communicate with our drivers and to complete strangers with enough vocabulary, sign language, and the trusted translation tool on Karl’s cell phone. Anyway, time to update the rest of the site… enjoy!

BASKETBALL: GO USA!!!

Xiao is our hero tonight. He’s a former Intel colleague who went off for the sexier job with the NBA. He also got us tickets to the pre-Olympics exhibition basketball game: Team USA vs. Australia. We had box seats and even ran into a couple of Karl’s customers from Dell. Getting to the game was quite an experience! Driver Shen took us down 2 roads that were blocked off completely unless you had tickets in hand. No way could we pass thru the police barricade. Alas! Driver Shen is extremely resourceful. He found the road that got us around the mess to exactly where we needed to be. We had SO much fun watching professional players literally "wow" the audience with their speed, resilience, and dunks. The Australians weren’t bad either. Go USA! (ok, we’re feeling oddly patriotic right now)

THE FIRST DINNER PARTY

Our weekend was nice. We spent the whole weekend cooking and grocery shopping. On Friday night, Lila just returned from Portugal and Karl found out that his Sunday Singapore trip was cancelled. We decided to host a party to thank our key friends that helped us get established here. It was mega late notice (we didn’t send out the e-mail invite until after 7pm on Friday night). We decided to do a BBQ / wine party. We didn’t really have an recipes in mind and Karl thought he’d pull some ideas from our family website. However when we discovered the site was being renovated on Saturday morning, we decided to look through the Bobby Flay cookbook (Christmas present from mom) for ideas. We made the following menu:

• APPETIZERS: Lila’s family fried eggplant salad, Lila’s humus w/ various vegetables, Cheese & crackers imported from Germany (by Lila on Friday afternoon due to a plane transfer in Frankfurt), Grilled large shrimp tossed in a red chili vinaigrette
• MAIN: Sixteen spice chicken served w/ roasted red pepper sauce and sweet cilantro / spinach pesto, Mashed potatoes w/ pesto folded in, Chopped romaine lettuce & three bean salad served with a mustard vinaigrette, Mexican grilled corn salad, and homemade sundried tomato focaccia bread
• DESSERT: Homemade tapioca based dessert pudding with a cooked blueberry & mango topping.

Our friends added some hot/fresh bbq beef jerky (for an appetizer), two types of chocolate cakes, and some egg custard tarts. Throughout the meal we served three different CA white wines, three different CA red wines, and two bottles of French sparkling wine.
To build this feast, it took us stops at four separate grocery stores to gather all the ingredients. However even with all our searching (and pocket translation dictionary) we didn’t find things like fresh pumpkin seeds, onion powder, habanera peppers, tomatillos, or corn tortillas. I guess they don’t have many Mexican dishes / cooks here. We then spent most of Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning prepping all the sauces and raw ingredients. It was extremely relaxing for both Lila and I to spend the day in the kitchen.

The apartment looked great & the party turned out great! Fourteen of our friends were able to join the party. We enjoyed all the conversations – especially the ones that started, "Have you seen …. In Shanghai yet" It really meant a lot to us to be able to thank our co-workers and friends for all the help they’ve give us.

ALLERGIC TO CHINA: KARL’S RASH UPDATE

The rash has been driving me crazy, but we’ve finally figured it out. It is NOT as the first doctor said, "you’re allergic to China." In fact, it’s wheat.

Over the past few weeks, the rash got better than terrible again. I finally went to the clinic for the third time. The Dr said I had 2 rashes: Eczema and Urticaria. They are both caused by something internal, not likely a contact rash. The Dr said it was either stress or a food allergy. After reviewing the foods we’ve been eating, he told me to stay away from mushrooms, local seafood (farm raised), and spicy foods. What was I to eat?! Anyway, he prescribed 3 new drugs including allergy medication and steroid cream for my legs. I had them also run a blood test to see if they can figure out the cause, but it would take 7-10 days to process.

The medicines helped a lot as I anxiously awaited the blood report. I was told that I have an extremely high allergy level to ragweed and mugwort, which is hay fever. However the doctors does not think this is the problem that is causing my skin rashes. However I have to watch this going forward. I have a low to medium level allergy to wheat flour. The doctor recommended that I eliminate (or greatly reduce) all the wheat from my diet. Our guess is that I’m eating more noodles, dumplings, and dishes thickened up with wheat products here. We had Sheila translate "NO WHEAT PRODUCTS" for our Ayi (Helper) when she cooks, and will be searching for alternative food options (or bringing them back by the suitcase-full from US!).

Also searching the web I found that watermelon and bananas (eating a ton of both) are the foods related to ragweed sensitivity. Mugwort sensitivity has foodstuff connections to coriander, garlic, carrots, paprika, and hazelnuts. Oh my gosh – these are all my favorites! I’ll try this for a while and see how I feel. Luckily I can add mushroom & spicy foods back into the diet. At least I now know I’m not allergic to China…. Well, kind of.

Lila in Portugal

(Lila) I spent more time on airplanes this week then on the ground. But it’s ok because we had a huge win in Portugal, and it was really amazing to be a part of it. I departed Monday and got home Friday – but basically spent 3 days in airports. While on the ground in Lisbon, I had a great time catching up with my old team (Craig was there, Abdul too) and having meetings with the sales organization. The night after the launch my inbox was full of excited mails from my team around the globe. Their energy fueled mine, and resulted in not being able to sleep beyond 2 hours. I returned to China with a lot of energy and feeling very inspired.

You can check out the news at Intel's pressroom: "Intel Collaborates with Government of Portugal on a Comprehensive New Education Initiative" at http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20080730corp.htm?iid=pr1_releasepri_20080730r)

Along the way, I dealt with the Frankfurt airport during the Lufthansa strike. It turned out to be less of an issue than originally thought. Fortunately flights were on time. But no catering (food was small packaged snacks), no customs forms, and service that makes US domestic airlines look luxury (since you have to pay for food, but at least you get food).

On the return, I slept a total of 11 hours between the 2 flights which totaled ~13 hours.