First Friday in Shanghai

So there's at least one thing that I now think is pretty universal... people everywhere can't wait for Friday afternoon to roll around. Managed to make it into work on time by setting all three of my alarm clocks (the two I had and the one on my new Cell Phone!) I had my second Chinese lesson which started getting into some of the more difficult initials and finals.

A little background, the pinyin system (Chinese spelled out phonetically using the 26 letter alphabet) uses a combination of 21 "initial" letters and 39 "final" sounds plus 5 tones (high and flat, rising, falling then rising, falling and neutral.) Anyway, lunch was another interesting experience as I went down and had the free meal with most of the other employees. It's called a "Chinese Lunchbox" and it looks like a TV dinner packaging, but filled with rice, veggies, and then some type of meat... plus we had green-bean rice porridge and winter-melon soup. The food is definitely different but on the whole very good.

After work I went straight to happy hour with Alice and Sarah at Blue Frogs Bar and had a quick dinner and rounds of 2-for-1 drinks from 6-8pm. After a quick stop back at the apartment to change we headed over to a music club and heard a Chinese band (from Beijing) play some (apparently famous in China) rock covers and a few of their own pieces. Super crowded and really, really thick with cigarette smoke, the beers were 30 RMB (about $3.75) a piece and it was way to hot for an air conditioned venue... besides that I did like the music and afterward we went to a Taiwanese restaurant and got some really awesome cold noodles and some chicken dish that I couldn't pronounce but really liked. Got to sleep in this morning, which was also great, and now I'm going to get ready and head to my first "Expat Mixer" for foreigners at the Starbucks downtown.