Saturday morning. My favorite part of the week. Get up early, bike over to Starbucks with my laptop and soak in the English newspapers with a giant coffee and a chocolate muffin.
Unfortunately, this morning, its pouring. Which means my bike is getting soaked outside and I'm stuck here for quite awhile. The American Chamber of Commerce July 4th BBQ is this afternoon/evening. I'm totally bummed. Gabe, my AmCham insider, tells me that there should be over 1200 people there and that they've got the works lined up, including fireworks. It rains so infrequently here, I don't know if they have a contingency plan. Hope it clears up!
So while I'm stuck sitting here, here is the week in review:
Monday: Finally picked up my bike. Left it at Courtney’s courtyard when we threw Ali’s birthday party (I posted a picture of the beginnings of the party just to make the post more interesting. Note the guy making kabobs in the back. We were proud of getting that together).
So, without a bike, I was forced to take the bus to work all last week. The buses are so jam packed that there is a person who works at every stop to cattle prod people in as the doors close. There is no space to breathe and its 90 degrees out. Yummy. But it only costs one kuai— in USD about twelve cents. Taking a cab to work costs twenty (still only $2.50). But getting one is impossible where I live after eight in the morning. So: sleep later, pay nothing, get squished. Get up early, pay twenty times more, sit in a spacious Hyndai with air conditioning. I choose the bus.
So, I finally picked up my bike, which makes my morning commute much more bearable. Since I was in the neighborhood, had dinner with Courtney and Will. The three of us foreigners, booking through the old narrow hutong streets on bicycles, in suits, must have been quite the sight.
Tuesday: Trivia night at Tim’s Texas BBQ. All of the people us regulars pester to come every week actually showed up. Had a huge team and finally beat out the Mudbugs.
Wednesday: Song Dan and Lu Na invited Dan and I out to dinner as a thank you for helping them out with an urgent problem with the UN. By the time the day finished, it had evolved into half of the office going over to Dan’s to order food and play cards after work. Linghui showed up with noodles and veggies and whipped up an inproptu dinner for all of us (you can always count on Linghui to keep everyone fed). Vivian brought a bunch of beers and before I knew it I was teaching them American drinking games. By the end of the night, Dan was serenading us with Bohemian Rhapsody and John was passing around the Cubans. One of the most random Wednesday nights I’ve had in awhile.
Thursday: Spent the morning at a EU CDM conference
Thurs evening, Ali and Courtney threw the big Ogilvy media party. Since they organized it, they were able to slip me in-- which got me free food, drinks and a party bag. The party was pretty cool, they ordered eight different kinds of Belgian beer and had a real American grill man making the best burgers I’ve had in months. Ran into some of my old Edelman colleagues and spread the carbon trading gospel (and my business cards) to all the foreign correspondents. It’s fun hanging out with journalists. It reminds me that
Friday: Went to another conference in the morning. Terribly boring-- I left after the first coffee break. But it wasn't a complete waste of time- they gave me a free computer bag, which I desperately needed. Had to write a semi-annual self assessment report for John. It was a weird thing to write. My major accomplishment of the six months on the job is that I now know what I'm talking about. How do you tell your boss-- "Well, I had no idea what I was doing six months ago. Now at least I've gotten the hang of it. I know I have a long way to go " ??
Still raining. Looks like I'm not going anywhere anytime soon.
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