LazyFox blog

I’ve uploaded a bunch of stuff today:

• My photos
• Some of Vincent’s photos
• Some of Vincent’s movies
• Renmin Park
• Drunken shrimps in the bowl
• Eh? It’s recording now?
• Me praying at the temple in Suzhou

Enjoy

Time seems to go a littlebit faster already as I’m getting more and more settled in. Work was alright with me mostly studying various CMMI materials. Just got an interesting book that I’d ordered through Amazon this friday as well. I also worked pretty hard on a digital subscription form for my part-time job at the DIA.

Despite my hard work I took a little more time to relax and go out this week. We went to the Koala bar on wednesday where I joined a little pool tournament (and lost 100 RMB). On friday we started at Koala again and then went on to Mao Ming Lu. We meant to go to Tong Ren Lu but communication attempts with the cab driver weren’t very succesful. Mao Ming was interesting as well though and we had a pretty good time chatting with some girls and punters in the Manhattan bar.

Finally and most notably Vincent, Andrew, Ivan and me went to Suzhou yesterday and came back to Shanghai today. Suzhou is less then 100 kilometers west of Shanghai and is known for it’s classical gardens and many picturesque little canals. Andrew was an English teacher in Suzhou some time ago so he asked one of his former students, Rose, to guide us on saturday. We went to see an impressively high ancient tower and the temple next to it and drank some tea in a small quiet tea garden. Unfortunately the Humble Administrator’s Garden wasn’t open so we couldn’t visit that one.

In the evening we went out to join Ivan with some of his old classmates in a pretty big club (S.O.S) with some impressive entertainment including a dancer climbing her pole to dangerous heights (more than 5 meter!). We left the loud house beats to relax and play some pool at a little bar until that closed at which point Vincent and me were guided to another bar/club (Scarlett) by one of the bar girls. We were joined by some of Ivan’s friends, had some more drinks and did a little dancing, but the place was winding down already. Suzhou isn’t Shanghai so things were pretty much finished by 4 or 5 am and Ivan’s friends failed to find a place to get something to eat afterwards and just dropped us off at the hotel.

Today we slept in a bit, visited a big temple and strolled around and chilled in a pretty big park next to a lake in Suzhou’s new business area. I think we must have seen more then a dozen brides and grooms having their pictures taken in the pretty scenery, so that was pretty funny.

All in all a tiring but very entertaining weekend trip to Suzhou, which I certainly plan to visit again later because I want to see more of the classical gardens and canals.

This saturday Vincent Bakker, the fourth and final Dutch intern of our group, arrived at Shanghai and moved into the apartment with me. We had a pretty easy day waiting for the cable guy to come by and install cable internet for us, going out for lunch and dinner and buying a wireless router, then trying to figure out how to configure it.

We walked around a bit more on Sunday, visiting Renmin Park and Square (also known as People’s Square) before going out for dinner with Andrew and his friend Rick. That turned out to be a pretty interesting dinner; here’s a summary:

• Fried ’smelly’ (aka rotten) tofu
• Century eggs (eggs burried for an extended time, then eaten raw)
• Live ‘drunken’ prawns (drunk and immobilized after being submerged in strong liquor)

Here’s two little movies for your enjoyment:

• Drunken prawns in the bowl
• Rick, Andrew and Vincent eating drunken prawns

This was easilly the freakiest thing I’ve ever eaten; I actually hesitated a bit when I saw the little critter looking at me before I bit off it’s head. Or rather, before I tried to bite off it’s head; I couldn’t get it off all the way and it started splashing around it’s tail. You’ll see similar problems with Vincent in the video, allthough he kinda cheated by using his hands

The people at work prepared a preliminary planning for the coming 3 months for me which was alright, though somewhat overly ambitious perhaps. But they recognised that as well and we basically agreed I’d try to get some kind of concrete interim result by the end of that period. I had a very tasty ‘hot pot’ dinner with Vincent and Ivan and we went for a walk and a drink at Hengshan road to get a little taste of the other side of Shanghai.

The monthly office birthday celebrations just took place and they let me join in with the birthday boys and girls and even gave me a little present! Apparantly it’s usual for the birthday peeps to sing a song, but I convinced them to sing ‘happy birthday’ for us as well. I forgot to take a picture of the cakes which were beautiful, sorry..

I didn’t post these last days since I’ve been pretty busy with work, but now I’m pretty much done for the week so it’s time to relax. I also didn’t have much special to eat recently, just pig ears for lunch today. The office will close at 18:00 because they’ll start fumigating the place against cockroaches. So that’s a good excuse to stop early today and join Huatek’s swimming league for a little casual swim in a pool somewhere (curious to see how that will be).

I was planning on doing some work for DIA this weekend, but the office will still be closed due to the fumigation. Fortunately it looks like I’m finally getting an internet connection at the apartment this saturday. Saturday is also the day Vincent Bakker will arrive and join me in the company apartment until I leave for Xi’an around the 16th of October.

PS: Just took a little group picture with most of the Shanghai Quovadx team in the hallway and uploaded it with a few other pictures.

Well.. actually I ate the chicken feet yesterday at one of the food courts at Xuijiahui with a nice little arcade right next to it. The taste is allright (I’m getting used to the fatty skin food), but it’s very difficult to eat, let alone with chopsticks. The bullfrogs I ate today, during lunch, without even realizing what they were! I just figured they were some really small bony chicken parts And this night i had some overpriced pizza since I was feeling like eating some exotic food

Work was allright, I’m finally getting to the point where I’ve got a nice clearly defined assignment and I can start doing some ‘real’ work. Basically I’ll work on increasing SW-CMM3 compliance and preparing for CMMI4 within the Quovadx team of Huatek.

After work I’ve been doing a bunch of laundry, since I can finally do that after moving into the apartment on monday. And I’ve been enjoying some shopping. It’s more fun here than in Holland, so I might even get used to it after some time