My First Weekend

The Hotel Elevator

18 19
15 16 17
11 12 13
8 9 10
5 6 7
1 2 3

The Mandarin word for four is phonetically identical to the word for death. It's a difference of tone. Note the missing numbers. Eight however, is considered a lucky number. I'm on 15 (which makes it 13 floors from the bottom, "uh-oh").

Work

This word better describes the bulk of my weekend than anything else. Big install at the company back home, and I'm 13 hours away -- who better to take the "overnight" than the guy who just got to China and hasn't seen anything touristy yet. Yeah, sure there's the malls (more on that soon). It makes sense, the night shift is my day and someone had to do it. Really, there isn't anyone else whom I would have wished it upon, but there you go. So Saturday afternoon, and Sunday 9am to 9:30pm.

Sunday

Working all day means that Sunday wasn't any better than the previous one. At least I'm over the jet lag.

Saturday Morning

I didn't have a bad Saturday at all. Not too far from here are two malls, right near eachother. They are within walking distance, so I don't have to brave a cab alone.

First one is 8 Gate. I ate dinner here in a previous entry, but I decided I'd explore both of the malls a bit. It has a cinema in the lowest level (two below ground), and several international stores, including a Dairy Queen, Cold Stone Creamery, Starbucks, Nike, and a whole bunch of other non-food related ones that I can't remember anymore.

The 8 Gate mall is 5 levels, and seems to have a hotel on top of it (I think). The building is somewhere around 25 to 30 stories tall.

The other mall is mostly underground, and I think it's official name is the Zhong Guan Cun Shopping Center, but most folks call it Carrefour Mall. Carrefour is the closest grociery store, though the lower level of Carrefour is something slightly worse than Target having bicycles and housewhere's, etc.

This mall is absolutely huge, and I'm not convinced that I've seen all of it. It would make a great map for a shoot-em-up video game - in that the corridors don't seem to "go" anywhere, but are numerous, long, and open up into slightly larger areas where vendors are waiting with their wares.

For a single mall, it also has very distinct areas. I mean areas where vendors are on tables, with heaping piles of vegetables or shoes. And areas where I feel I'm outclassed by the fancy store-fronts. There's also a Children's world, where there were kids actually skating around in the mall. Just different.

At the end of all this exploring, I went to the Carrefour (very crowded - hard to not get stressed when shopping here) and bought a dozen water bottles, and some "American Classic" flavor potato chips (not in the mood for chicken flavor chips yet) and some sandwich stuff.

Saturday Night

London Chinese Girl (LCG), Singapore Girl (SG) and another guy in from the India office (ID) called me up and suggested we go find pizza. This place was in one of their guide books, and is not far from the Hotel (by taxi).

Dinner at the Kro's Nest. It's a pizza place, with full-size pizzas with almost regular pizza like ingredients. Really reasonably priced, too. A 20" large pizza for 140 (totally feeds four for about $25).

Afterwards, we came back to the hotel and met up with this guy from Australia of India descent, who invited us over (he's across the hall from me). Also into technology and a Pink Floyd fan. We had a few drinks and sang Pink Floyd songs loudly at eachother. It would have been really embarrassing, except for it being so much fun.

Sorry -- Another long one, I know.