Our little daughter is moving on to solid foods. We are having a grand time pureeing things for her to eat. Her favorite seems to be ground carrots. It is funny to watch her eat. When she first starts, she will pull the spoons into her mouth to stuff her mouth full of food. If you aren’t fast enough she will cry and complain. Then by the end of her feed she will signal she is done by pushing your hand away or actively swatting at the spoon.
This week I went to a different office to do some training on finance in downtown Shanghai. So to get there I decided to take the new light rail that runs in from of our house and to the metro station. I get to the light rail and wait at the station. The tracking on this is great. It shows the position of each train is shown on the electric board and where it was going. The tram shows up and I go to get in. The doors don’t open so I push the door open button and the tram pulls away. I was like what the hey. I wait for the next train and the same happens and I was like what! At this point I am running late so I grab a cab to the station.
The next day I decide to give it another shot. And the same thing happens. So here is my question, is the tram just running for show and not taking passengers? That is just stupid why was all this money spent and no one is allowed to use it. Now that I think about it I have never seen anyone ride the tram and I think I know why they won’t let you. Stupid.
The weather in Shanghai, well China in general, is getting terribly cold. This last week the temperature was only 40 degrees which is so close to freezing. Last week it was 70 degrees and I was in a T-shirt and shorts. This week we had to break out the cold weather gear and bundle up. We are worried about how to really keep Megan warm when she sleeps. We are glad we put in the sliding doors since we can separate of house and only warm our rooms. It is supposed to warm up later this week but the sudden cold front is really unexpected.
Things and responsibility are increasing at work. My boss has pretty much decided that it is time to hand over the reins. He is getting all of his personal stuff taken care of. And now he is starting to hand over the work stuff too. I am starting to do the financials and work flow tracking. Things are stacking up and I need to start passing on my responsibility. Stressful. And I just saw a news posting saying that manager have shorter lives. I think so.
Well it has been a few weeks since we had an outing at the Hyatt. Megan’s schedule got all out of whack. For the next week or so she had the toughest time going back. We think we got her Back but she still does fight her nap.
Over October holiday in China we had friends over for a mini oktoberfest festival, since we can’t really go out and celebrate for real. I learned how to make home pretzels (Alton Brown recipe), quick saukraut (non AB since I don’t trust the bacterial floating in China). We even found a Danish butcher in Jin Qiao who makes real sausages, not the sweet filler filled one you usually find in China, sausages that are made with ground meat and spices in a real casing. And of course beer.
Instead of just drinking we made it a little more fun, we did a beer tasting contest. Yunan bought like 9 different kinds of beer, domestic and imported. We did a blind tasting with 3oz shots of each drink. People where very happy afterwards.
Now here is the bad part here is where the taste changing comes into play. Of the lighter beers I picked Tsingo Qiao and Budweiser as being better than things like Duval and Heinaken. And of the darks I picked a local ‘dark’ beer vs Newcastle. What the hey? Has living in China for 1-1/2 years drinking not spectacular beer changed my taste? Yunan mentioned she couldn’t pick out some of them too. In America we would go down to Trader Joes or Bevmo and try new stuff. Our tastes got sharper and we were just more discerning. Now they have muddled. What are we to do? We could try to have more beer but good imported beer is expensive. There isn’t decent locally brewed beer. (Well there are three. Two German breweries, Paulaner and Hofbraugn House, and unfiltered draft Tsing Qiao only available in Qing Dao). It is a quandary.
I was walking to the bus stop where I catch my morning shuttle to work and just random musings about the last few months. Just on the adaptability and short term memory of the human species in general. It just felt so natural and normal for me to walk down the street with loud noises and commotion waiting to catch my two hour long bus ride. This time a year and a half ago I was working in San Ramon driving to work and generally living a normal silicon valley life. We had a reasonable mortgage, Trader Joe’s and just a normal comfortable suburban life.
Now things are more complicated. My commute to work is much longer, our salary won’t cover our mortgage in the US, we now have a daughter. We do get nice cheap labor. We can have a full time ayi , get affordable massages, and can go out to eat a lot more.
Yet we still get a TIC (This Is China) mentality. Where things are not quite right. Service, food, construction…do I have a point not really. Just a thought
I have joined the new trend I guess and got a smart phone. No not an iPhone like every body else in china but a blackberry. Specifically an 8820 for the wifi. It has really good sound quality and fairly cheap. It is an older generation so I got it for 1200 yuan (~180USD) which is quite a deal. Amazon wants 300USD. What is one of the first apps I downloaded? Wordpress. So my long 1-1/2 hour commute will be slightly useful as this is now posted from my blackberry.
If you have been keeping up with my blog, sorry for the interuptions. We have been busy with Megan. And when I last tried to blog I upgraded wordpress and it wiped out my install. I had to do another install and do a db copy to get my posts back. Hopefully I will get back to posting a little more regularly. There will be changes here or there as I tweak the new themes and side gadgets.
One of the things we missing in Shanghai is a really good breakfast place (see previous posts on Country Way in Fremont, or the Brown Bag Cafe in Redmond). So we have to rely on ourselves to make do with what we have. One of the things we miss are biscuits and gravy. The luscious chewy flaky biscuits oozing over with saw mill gravy. Combining several Alton Brown Good Eats episodes (biscuits, gravy, and egg files) we think we have come up with a yummy concoction to match what we miss. A yummy bunch of biscuits and a nice creamy thick gravy with sausages and nice fluffy scrabbled eggs. See below for photos.
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