Eventful Friday

We had a good work day on Friday with some good decisions and directions. In meetings with our co-workers we were given gifts of moon cakes. Moon cakes are given as gifts for the Moon Festival or mid-Autumn Festival. It is celebrated on the day of the full moon somewhere between the middle of September or the middle of October, when the moon is at its brightest during the year. This year it is October 6. This is festival that is celebrated by being with all your relatives and eating moon cakes. If you cannot be with your relatives you send them gifts of moon cakes. There are so many varieties and they are being sold all over China right now. Many are like figs and nuts like plum pudding.


One of our new work colleagues from the JPM Beijing Branch hosted the CCS work team for a beautiful dinner on Friday night. It was an old traditional Chinese courtyard restaurant which served Cantonese food. The restaurant is named Jun Wang Fu (Peninsula Restaurant). We had a private room for the group (10 of us). The host and his wife have been in China for 16 years, so they were very helpful with information for shopping and getting around. I know they will be a good resource to turn to if we need anything.

http://www.jwfbd.com/en/jdjj.asp

together at last

BF arrived yesterday. I met her at the airport with one of our drivers. It sure was good to see her after a month. She showed up in a new pair of cowgirl boots that her friends bought her for her birthday in the US. I took her to the apartment and showed her some of the ropes. I then needed to attend a special dinner in a very nice place in South Beijing, I should have brought my camera. It was a beautiful night in a spectacular park Dingge on Zuanmennei Ave. It was a clear night with a full moon. There was lots of toasting by everyone and beautiful food.

Today BF let AF take the day off from school because there was not much going on with some IB program (AF is not in IB). They did some shopping while I went to work in a new V6 Ford sedan that was provided to us. I met the driver at 7am for the first time, Liu Bin. We made good time driving to work in 35 minutes. There was little conversation since he know virtually no English and I am constrained to right, left, hello, thank you, and goodbye.

My co-workers were talking about what a great restaurant they found yesterday on some side street fro 25 RMB per. They wanted to go out to lunch today and I thought we were going back to the same place or some other Chinese restaurant. I was surprised when everyone headed into a KFC.............. Yuck, I will ask where are we going next time.

The best thing that happened today was AF agreed to go out to dinner. I took AF and BF to Mare a Tapas place that a co-worker took me to on my first day in town, It was really good but a little expensive.

Sharing the Oddities (not necessarily in China)

Ok here is a good one that all you treadmill junkies will love. Looks like a bunch of Napolean Dynamites (my favorite is the white shoes dude!!!!!!!!! >>>>>>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCjSwr7zYtE (thanks DC).

Saturday Volleyball

Last week we were a couple of minutes late for practice so this caused the rest of the team to do an extra suicide sprint. AF mentioned that 7 girls were late to practice and they had to do 7 more but they have not done them yet. Needless to say AF did not want this to happen today. She needed to be at the school suited up for a scrimmage game by 8:20am. We left an hour early and of course we got there just before 8am. It is really hit or miss with the taxis. All the girls were there on time..........














The ISB Dragons played against a 14 year old Chinese Sports School team. The first couple of games the Dragons did not play well but the last 3 were very close but still the ISB team could not get it together and lost close games. It was hard for me to believe these girls were 14 when you saw their size. Here is a team photo:
I met a really nice couple who are parents of one of the girls on the team. They are from Portland and have been here about 18 months. They have gotten to know the area rather well and have actually purchased a place in Chaoyang Park which is not too far from us. The wife has even acquired a Chinese drivers license and owns a car. We talked about all the fun transportation issues in Beijing including when you drive and get in accident (it is a big headache to get resolved). They were kind enough to give us a ride back into the city. I know AF really appreciated that.

A New Week

This week was filled with many new experiences for me at work and not many new happenings in the home front.
We had our entire work team together on Tuesday and had a successful full day meeting. We made a lot of progress and learned much. Our work in China is something that we are not at liberty to discuss much about. So when we encounter new people it is always interesting to keep conversation at a very superficial level. Usually it comes down to the name of the company and where the offices are located. This week we spent much of the time talking with people in the China market and putting together a game plan that we can work from. The best thing that has happened is we are now working in our functional work teams really for the first time.

We met CW who is the COO for JPM Mainland China. He and his staff have been helpful in establishing working space, getting us some ground transportation, and making us feel welcome. He planned a dinner for our team and spouses which with this team is not much different than just inviting the team. There are only two non-employee spouses. (Two spouses did not move, there are three working husband and wife teams, and one should be here in another month or so) out of the 11 employees.

Traffic to work has been ok. We have been trying to sort out the use of the vans between the employees and establishing the best routes. I always take a taxi at 7am and will usually arrive at the office in 30 minutes. Friday seemed much more congested but it still only made a 5 minute difference. The congestion I discovered was due to the first day of school for the Chinese kids in Beijing. Getting home I made the mistake of riding with the team in one of the vans one night. It took well over an hour by dropping off a couple in CBD and then going onto Dongzhimen where 3 other families live within a long block from each other. So the last couple of nights I have shared a taxi with the 3 other employees who live in Dongzhimen. It usually take about 1/2 hour unless the taxi drivers decide to take alternative routes than the second ring road.

CW and I ate at a new restaurant that serves Shanghai traditional foods, called Merryln Restaurant. We were the guest of some Chinese work acquaintances. They introduced us to some of the dishes like "lions head" which is ground pork in the form of a meatball with a hard egg in the middle. There were several dishes that were dumplings. The Shanghai food tends to be a little sweet to the taste. We will need to take the JPM work team there some day since it across the second ring road from work.

Here are a couple of pictures of the the team hard at work: