Monday April 2, 2012 - My last post from China

At 7:00am sharp, we hopped into a taxi and began our daily adventure to get to work. This day, however, the traffic seemed unusually light, and by 7:30 were we safely at our desks at work. 11:30am rolled around quite quickly, and due to the worsening weather conditions (now rainy and windy, as well as cold), Winson had us walk over to the nearby McDonald's located here. We peeked inside and say that it was absolutely packed. Winson mentioned that today and tomorrow are a holiday time here in Dalian, and our office cafeteria was closed (this explained the lighter traffic), so he thought McD's may be too busy. So, we headed back outside and was eventually able to flag down a taxi. Again, our destination was the college Korean BBQ - I think it is somewhere here. This time, we got a regular table, and had fried tofu, a fish and vegetable plate, and we all split a 2-liter bottle of Sprite - as we watched a Laker-Warrior NBA game finish up.
I finished up work in the office around 5:45 and Winson and I headed over to one of my favorite restaurants for my favorite crab. I believe the restaurant is located here. We went in the back room, picked out the crab, some mushrooms, and some small clams. I really like the high end service here, you arrive and two people in the parking lot help you out of your car, and walk you to the front door. There, at both the outer and inner door, a doorman greets you and hold the door open. Walking through the inner door and entering the lobby, 5 ladies in long red heavy dresses greet you in unison with some sort of Chinese saying. Lined up past them, are a number of other attendants, this time in blue outfits. The one on the end peels of to meet you and walks you to your table. There, the attendant stays table side, providing immediate assistance and cleanup. There is also an attendant supervisor that helps out from time to time. Additionally, you receive extra help when in the back room picking out the seafood. Very impressive, and I never get tired of the service. Throughout our dinner, the water was refilled after every sip, plates changed out to keep them free of seafood shells, etc.
After a very fine meal, we walked across the street to a shopping mall where we sat down at a Starbucks to chat some more. There I actually had some sort of vanilla something or other that wasn't too bad - despite he fact that their may have been some sort of coffee in there.
By 9:00pm, it was time to return to the hotel, finish up more work, and went to bed around 11:00pm.

So, since I have had a couple of uneventful days in a row, I thought I would throw in some miscellaneous observations:
* While the driving is haphazard, with constant weaving and no actual enforced speed limit, it is clear the only reason it works is that there is an unspoken rule that if the car cutting you off is slightly ahead of you, you automatically yield to them. This is the case if people are driving on the wrong side of the road, or have no apparent right of way at all. I think this fact, above all others is what allows taxis to maneuver at will and have not been in any accidents that I have ever seen.
* Our office building is very strange, we have security doors to get in, but located throughout our office area are more security doors inside the main ones. You need to swipe your badge to get to the break room, as well as the bathroom areas. Very strange. Add to that the fact the the alarm system was on the fritz all last week, and we had a noisy office of door alarms going off constantly.
* I think as cell phone use explodes over here, they will have more people getting hit by cars. Their non-existent looking for traffic before crossing, coupled with distractions from cell phones spells trouble - I saw many people get grabbed to prevent them from just walking out into traffic and getting hit. I think cell phone use in a car will actually not be that big of an issue because you need 100% focus to keep up with the weaving traffic - I just don't think they would even try it.
* The city, and maybe China, appears to be finally slowing down on blatant misuse of Corporate properties. By that I mean, the Swisshotel - which really wasn't one, was changed to the Swishhotel about a year and a half ago. Then, by Victory Square, the giant guitar that used to say Hard Rock Cafe, now says some local coffee shop name. Small examples, but something is going on.
* I still wish our culture was that of healthier foods. I have eaten very well here, in terms of quality of foods, amount of food, and healthiness of foods. Although, I actually ended up with too much Korean BBQ - I actually find my self missing the normal Chinese meals over here - I think they are starting to get a taste for more things fried - and we all know where that goes.

That is it for random thoughts of the day. In fact, I will not be able to post again until my return. My flight leaves Dalian tomorrow (Wednesday) morning and I will be landing in Chicago around 4:00pm on Wednesday.

I promise to provide my wrap-up post sometime on Thursday.

If any if you read all 13 posts congratulate yourself on getting through 11 more than Lisa - last time I checked, she said she saw a "picture of me on a hill or something" - nice. Ask her if she was too busy celebrating her birthday!

Take care, and ask me to show you some pictures on my return!