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.