Busy Week

What a busy week both work and personally, have not had time to blog........ Let's see how good my memory is on all that took place. From a work perspective, we had executive management in town all week, including my manager to see how the team is doing and what progress we are making. This entailed 3 work dinners starting with a very nice one Monday. I wish I had taken a camera for pictures of the dinners since the venues were so beautiful.

Our first dinner was at a Cantonese restaurant in a beautiful building which was built over Longtan (Dragon Pool) Lake in Longtan Park. The park is just east of the Temple of Heaven (south east part of the city). It took me over an hour with the traffic to get a cross town. I can't remember why I was by myself in the company van but when I got there, the employees of the restaurant knew exactly where to take me which seemed like a 10 minute walk through buildings through the park to a separate building where cocktails were being served on a beautiful spacious patio. The dinner was to welcome the credit card teams to Beijing and to wish everyone great success. There were many toasts throughout the night. I think I got home about 10:30pm.









We had a dinner with my manager, RF on Wednesday night. We decided to go for a meat meal. RF saw a Brazilian restaurant on his way into the office but was not sure what the name was. I looked it up on the internet and figured it had to be called Brazilian Grill and was on Fuxingmennei. We gave the drivers the address. We were all thinking it was on Fuchengmenwai. It took us an hour to go what should have been a 10 minute ride. The funny thing is we gave up on the address and just went with landmarks that RF knew to get to the restaurant. We did not realize until the meal was over by looking at the business card that we were at the address of restaurant we had intended all along. We sure got our fill on meat. They kept bringing out different cuts of pork, beef, sausages. It was a good departure from our other meals.

Thursday night the family went out to get a last minute gift for AF to give to her host family that she is going to stay with in Shanghai. She has a weekend volleyball tournament and is leaving on Friday on East China Air with the team from school. So, we went to Lufthansa Center to pick up some chocolates for a gift. On the way out I was checking out some brochures from HSBC and a woman approached me. AF wanted to know why that woman talked to me. She was shocked when I told her what she asked me.........

Friday night BF and I went out to dinner without our darling daughter to a Thai Restaurant (Serve the People) . We walked and sat outside on the street and had a nice spicy dinner.

On Saturday we went shopping with a work colleague, SL. We went to an antique market, a couple of Tibetan Rug stores, and another shopping area that was non-descript. One of the rug stores we would never have found if it were not for our driver. It was in an apartment in the south part of the city. They really had the best selection at the best price. We left to think about it.



The antique market had unbelievable stuff everywhere. We ended up with 3 framed photographs of the Beijing area that were pretty cool. We did not take home any stone Buddha sculptures, animal parts, wood furniture, or any of the other wild items they had for sale in this bazaar.

For the evening we went to dinner with RW at Nam Nam (a Vietnamese Restaurant). We walked a few blocks in our neighborhood (the second Embassy Area -Sanlitun) on a beautiful warm dry night. Nam Nam looked very small from the outside but it was much larger than we thought with a nice upstairs. It looked Vietnamese with French influence. BF and RW order a bottle of Vietnamese Rice Wine. It looked like a cloudy lemonade. It tasted like s very sweet sake. We had good spring rolls and each ordered a separate dish that were all very good.

The real reason we got together Saturday night was to try out a new upscale foot massage club Liangzi a block away from our apartments. RW and I had done this once before with a sister club near the St. Regis. What an experience. The whole thing took almost 2 hours from the beginning to the end. It began with deciding what treatment we wanted and by who (senior massage specialists, same sex, etc). We were seated in a private room where the 3 of us were seated in comfortable chairs (side-by-side). Young boys came in with wooden buckets of liquid elixir (water and herbs that were extremely hot). BF could not put her feet in the bucket and we needed to ask for more cold water to cool the temperature. The masseuse worked over our feet to the point it hurt at times. They also massaged our legs, the entire leg by rubbing and beating our muscles. We made sure that they did not cut our toe nails this time (last time they did a great job but they were cut so short it felt strange walking for a week or so). Just when you think it is over they take you to an area where you lean over a pillow and men give you a back massage. At times they were taking their elbows and really giving it to me. The only thing I was thinking at the time is I hope this feels good tomorrow and I don't end up with sore muscles and feet.