My parents made it to Mainland

For everyone stateside that was wondering, my parents landed safely in Shanghai yesterday and made their way from Pudong airport to their hotel downtown unassisted... very impressive. After work I met up with them at their room on the 28th floor of the Ladoll Delight Hotel (which happens to be a few square meters bigger than the apartment I live in) and we headed out for an amazing dinner at a local Chinese restaurant called Yin.

A lot more work on my plate now that I've also been given responsibility for the budget for our satellite clinic in the Minhang District, so while I slave away at a new set of projections my parents are venturing out on their own to the old city to see the famous Yu Gardens and have tea at the Bridge of Nine Turnings Tea House. The name is pretty descriptive as the tea house sits out on a small lake and the foot bridge to reach it has nine 90 degree turns in it, based on the belief that evil spirits don't like, or can't make, sharp turns...

Also managed to put off a parental inspection of my apartment until Friday after work which gives me a much-needed extra night of cleaning and laundry to get the place into shape before my dad sees it for the first time.

On a side note, the 7.5 magnitude earthquake that hit off the coast of Taiwan apparently knocked out one of the large cables that handles the Internet connection between mainland China and the US. This caused US websites to be down or intolerably slow to load the last 36 hours and also made it painfully clear how dependent I have become on the instant access to information and connectivity the Internet provides. Honestly, I'm not sure I know how to use a phonebook anymore; are the yellow pages for business or residential? And don't even get me started on the Encyclopedia Britannica...

Workout, Sushi, Sake...

After spending Friday recovering from 48 hours without sleep (thanks to the early morning flight from Hong Kong) I had an incredibly relaxing weekend, accomplishing as little as possible and reveling in self-indulgence under not one, but two comforters in bed on my day off yesterday. Rested and ready to take on the final stages of the FY2008 budget, I got into work bright and early. While work wasn't quite as productive as I was hoping (mostly I realized how much of the budget was still left to figure out) I did get in a really good workout after work and then headed to Haiku by Hatsume, a new sushi restaurant. The owner, a Chinese-American from California is famous for his Beijing restaurant Hatsume and the new branch did not disappoint. I should probably mention that despite the relative proximity of Japan, until Haiku opened Shanghai was somehow devoid of a restaurant serving actual American-style sushi rolls (think California roll, Philly roll, Spicy Tuna Roll, etc.) and Haiku fills that gap perfectly.

You may have noticed this is a pretty long rant about a restaurant, but it was that good, and because it was the day after Christmas (never knew that was a reason for discounts) we got 15% off our total bill and 50% off our drinks (really good sake.)

In other news, I'm about half done with the monumental task of cleaning my apartment again so it looks like I'll have to figure out a way to delay my parents tonight over by their hotel near the Bund until I've had a time to take down Mount Laundry again.

Yesterday was also interesting in that the tickets and tour package for our trip to Thailand and Cambodia arrived (from the highly recommended and supposedly top-notch travel agency we used to arrange the trip) without two sets of tickets and with a blatant error in my flight reservations... so, here's to you, China, just when we thought you only half-assed mass production and population management, it turns out attention to detail and quality service haven't made it into any "five-year plans" yet either. Bravo, go have a Budweiser.

Happy Boxing Day!

About as non-secular as you can get... it basically boils down to a shopping day in the states and a big day for eating for my friends from the former British colonies.

I spent last week touring Hong Kong and Macau with Miguel, including a trip to see the world's largest seated Buddha and both a day and a night excursion to the top of Victoria Peak to look out over Hong Kong and Kowloon (spectacular, by the way.) I'm about 750 pictures behind (seriously) on uploading to my photo page but as soon as I have it updated I'll let you all know.

Hong Kong is also the home of the easiest and most efficient public transportation I have ever seen, and as of a few years ago, everything (busses, taxis, the metro, even convenience stores) can be paid for with a small, non-magnetic, debit-card-like system called the Octopus Card. The advertisements for it at the airport and metro stations boast that over 95% of the population uses the card and from how easy it was to acquire and use one I'm not really surprised.

Macau was definitely not what I expected... that is, it is NOT the Las Vegas of the East. While it did rake in more gambling revenue last year than Vegas (honestly, look it up) the figures are due to an unbelievable number of mainland Chinese that take one or two day trips over to throw money at Stanly Ho (owner of the Lisboa Hotel and Casino where we stayed) or one of the two Vegas corporations that have been granted Casino licenses.

Two interesting things separate Macau from Vegas in my mind; one, the casinos in Macau serve tea and warm milk instead of alcohol and two, the casino games are hyper-simplified. By simplified, I mean the games that require a modicum of skill (craps specifically) are absent, there are a minimum of blackjack tables and the bulk of the gambling is done at baccarat, Sicbo and roulette tables... all of which are basically variations on "pick a number" style guessing games. But more importantly, no alcohol!?!

Fortunately, Miguel is a great wingman, and seriously limited our time in the casinos and made sure we got around to some of the (unexpectedly interesting) historical sights around Macau including the ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral and the A-Ma temple (pictures up soon.)

We capped off the trip with a great run at the blackjack tables (both of us ended up on the week, miraculously) and a ride up to the top of the Macau tower, the tenth tallest tower in the world, and one of the highest observation decks anywhere at an impressive 228 meters. We even managed to catch a screening of the new Bond flick, Casino Royale (fitting) before I caught my 3:00 am ferry back to Hong Kong and after an awkward 4 hours in the Hong Kong Airport, got on the first flight back to Shanghai. Even managed to get a productive half-day of work in before the festivities began for Larry's last night in Shanghai.

Happy Holidays everyone, my parents arrive in about 24 hours so tonight is dedicated to cleaning and laundry.

My better half is leaving Shanghai...

Just in time for the holidays, Larry, the intrepid Microsoft recruiter, is headed back to Seattle, WA, allegedly to "spend time with the wife" and "start his new job now that his contract is up and they won't pay for housing in Shanghai anymore" or some nonsense like that.

We've sort of celebrated it up the last week, including a completely indulgent "Lao wai" day on Sunday. Our tourist day started at the Westin's all-you-can-eat plus free-flow alcohol brunch around 12:30... the awe-inspiring brunch ended up lasted a truly gluttonous three and a half hours! Waddling out of the Westin, we took a stroll on the Bund and stopped in the old British Customs House, the Gold Exchange and in the PuDong Development Bank; all excellent examples of grand colonial British architecture.

We grabbed a cab and headed back to my side of the city after calling ahead to make reservations for massages. We made record time across the city and ended up browsing fake watches, bags and DVDs in the Hong Mei Road Pearl City Market before our appointment. Post-glorious massage, we headed across the street to Micasa, a Spanish Tapas Restaurant and grabbed a couple glasses of wine before calling it a night. You might notice I didn't mention another meal... there's a reason. After the brunch not only did I not eat, I wasn't even hungry again until lunch on Monday.

While I'm a little down about Larry heading home, as I lose both my first friend in the city and my reliable Shanghai drinking buddy, I did get a consolation prize. Larry has passed along the XBox that was given to him by a former Shanghai expat, which contains a mod-chip allowing it to play the copies of XBox games that are sold on the street for 50-75 cents. I'm hoping to use it more as practice for avoiding the kind of time-sucking temptations I'll face on a daily basis next year in medical school...

Who am I kidding, I've had the thing for three days and I've already logged almost 6 hours on the Godfather game... looks like I need a lot of practice...

Working out with your boss is a bad move...

That's right friends and family, not only am I still alive, I've actually picked up a gym membership and have been working out regularly... a shock, I'm sure. Tonight, however, I learned an important lesson; it turns out that working out with your boss is even worse than going golfing with your boss. At least with golf, if you're better than your boss, it's pretty easy to miss a couple putts here and there and let the guy win... not such a simple task in the weight room.

Long story short, my boss is in way better shape than me (I'll use my 10 month hiatus from the gym, post-motorcycle accident, as an excuse) and managed to show me up on literally every lift we did... and tonight was just chest and triceps. It's good to be back in the gym, but oh man, the Chinese have ZERO gym etiquette. More to follow, my internet is working great now.