cdrum

Well, it’s Monday – the day after the Closing Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Things around the city seem to be pretty much the same – the car ban is still in effect and they still x-ray bags in the subway… I imagine these measures, and many more, will remain until at least the end of the Paralympic Games in September.

The question I have now, is whether our restaurant on the Siemens campus here has green beans (bian dou) and tofu (doufu).  During the Olympics, these two items (and maybe more, I don’t know) were not available “due  to the Olympics”.   Don’t ask me where the logic is here…

I’ll check during lunch today if I can get some toufu.  Let’s see if they try giving me the excuse “because of the Olympics” again – I’ll shoot back last night it ended.  So where’s the toufu?

BTW, I am a bit late, we saw some more events since the baseball photos I uploaded last week.  On Friday, we went to an Athletics event in the “birds nest” and Sunday, we went to the Men’s Volleyball final!  That was an exciting match!  Will upload photos in due time.

I’m hitting myself for not taking a picture, but, oh well.

In my office building, there’s a sort-of cafeteria where there are many different kinds of food stalls, and you put money on a charge card.

Well, apparently, the landlord is kicking these guys out (the whole operation) because they claim they haven’t paid rent since moving in.  After getting off the elevator, the landlord posted a big A2-sized notice stating what’s going on and how today is the last day!  They are also making announcements every 5 minutes or so informing the patrons to hurry up and get their money back.  I can tell the landlord is damn pissed!

Of course, the cafeteria management is claiming otherwise, but nonetheless, there was a mad dash to reclaim the stored money – big mash up of people at the counter, tempers flaring, kind of an interesting situation.

I got my RMB 103 back, so I’m happy.

So, now, 100+ people don’t have a job to go to tomorrow, and my colleagues and I will have to find alternative ways of getting lunch (along with the rest of the building occupants).  All around ma fan, no?

Folks, I’ll be in the U.S. for most of next week: leaving early morning Saturday, January 26, and returning late evening, Thursday, January 31.

Even though this was a last minute, unexpected trip, I managed to get a relatively acceptable air ticket on Northwest Airlines – Round trip Beijing to Baltimore BWI (via Narita and Minneapolis), RMB 6,700 inclusive of tax.  Not to shabby.

And, I’ll be sharing the first leg to Narita with H.  We’re going to do a food experiment, where he gets the Kosher breakfast (there are Asian Jews, you know…) and I get the Muslim breakfast (no comment).

I suppose a good result of this trip, if there can be one, is the what was going to be a 9-day work week* (due to Chinese New Year) is now back down to a 5 day work week (Friday Feb 1 through Tuesday Feb 5) – I then fly to Hong Kong on the 6th.

Unfortunately, the Narita to Minneapolis, and return, flights are on the older 747’s, which means, us slaggers in the back (economy class) don’t get individual TV monitors.  ugh…

*Oh, to my friends who don’t know what is going on with the 9-day work week, Chinese New Year is a “Golden Wee” holiday, where we get 3 days off, plus the weekend, plus a shifted weekend, that results in a 7-day straight holiday.  The shifted weekend is made up either before of after the holiday.  In this case, we make it up on February 2 and 3.