An Exercise in Avoiding Boredom

In the U.S. mementos that life is transient are quite common, see below. Or, more prosaically, this is what you get when you try to leave the house in a hurry.

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From a leaflet on tips and tricks for staying in Beijing:
“Please prepare extra clothes if you want to hang out in the evening, though we will never suggest you to do that.”
“Make sure you don’t have your cameras, bags, packets, and other unreasonable things with you. Ladies will be allowed to bring their hand bags [...]

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For yesterday’s drive to and presentation in Suzhou, I picked up my guide at the airport. I could have taken a cab but rather decided to take the Shanghai Magnetic Levitation train, a.k.a. the Maglev. Engineered in Germany but never deployed there, the Maglev connects the inner city with Pudong International airport, and travels 30 [...]

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I just returned from a presentation and recruiting trip to Suzhou only to find my hotel room unmade. This was my fault as I had forgotten to switch of the Do-Not-Disturb sign. (*)
The fruits I had received as a welcome gift two days ago were still on their plate, half-eaten. So I called up the [...]

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Sunday was a day off, and so I did some sightseeing in Shanghai, together with Cao Yi. Shanghai showed itself from its best side—it was warm, sunny, and as unpolluted as it could get. Below, find a random sampling of photos I took.

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Alright, I don’t get it. Yesterday, a friend and I had dinner on Hong Kong Island for HK$ 450 (about US$ 60) for two. It was good and plenty. During my last visit I had either been invited or I had grabbed a quick dinner on my way back to the hotel—typically cheaply at a [...]

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It started out with the usual quarrel: A woman was sitting in my aisle seat and couldn’t be convinced to move to her assigned (center) seat. I tried English, which didn’t help. She tried Cantonese, which didn’t help either. Sign language only lead to further confusion. Only when I started counting seats using A, B, [...]

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Here are the ingredients:

Warm and sunny weather outside
A comfy couch to lie on
Listening to La Mer

Ahh… laziness, sweet laziness, just perfect.

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Today, at work we had a produce tasting. We compared four different sources of produce, namely Piazza, Whole Foods, Costco, and Trader Joe’s. The produce were tomatoes and strawberries. Not quite in season yet, but already very good.
I had called for this tasting after one of my colleagues had made fun of my loyalty to [...]

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Monday morning, 7:23am, a great way to start the week.

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