New City, New Hotel

Today my coworker J and I picked another colleague up from Shanghai Pudong International Airport and traveled to Nanjing for business.  We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant downtown at Nanjing 1912 before arriving at our hotel.  The hotel is pretty crazy.  I haven't been able to upload the photos I've taken to the internet yet (thanks Great Firewall of China!) but the room I'm staying in is their "European Continental Style Suite" - two rooms, 1.5 baths, a balcony, and what looks to be a larger than king size bed.  It's pretty wild.

I'm in Nanjing for two days this week then back to Shanghai.  I was able to do touristy activities on Saturday but I'd like to wait to post about that until I can put some photos with it.

EDIT 8/16/11: the amazing boyfriend G was able to hook me up with a way to share photos!
These are photos of my hotel room.  I made them small, but you should be able to click on them to make them bigger.

Powder room

Living room

Bedroom

Bathroom 

Bathroom shower - it's bigger than the elevator to get to the rooms.

View from the balcony looking into the courtyard

Do Not Tip

No need to worry about how much to tip someone while travelling in China - tipping is not necessary and frowned upon.  My first day I attempted to tip the young man who carried my bags up to my hotel room but he only looked at me strangely and shook his head when I pulled out my wallet.  Coworker J confirms that you don't need to tip at restaurants  not at salons, not at bars, no tipping anywhere.

The service has been very fast at all the restaurants I've eaten at - similar to the speed of fast food restaurants in the US.  Almost as soon as you've ordered one or two dishes arrive at the table and the rest arrive as soon as they are finished cooking.  There is no waiting until all the dishes are ready before they reach your table.  Since meals are family style there is no waiting for someone's meal to arrive while food sits in front of everyone else.  Besides the comfort in knowing that your food is fresh, it helps space out the length of the meal so you don't eat so fast.

Strange Food and Sales

I have escaped jet lag!  Last night I was able to sleep for a full night and woke up at a normal morning time.  My coworker J picked me up for work at 8 and gave me a tour of the my company's office.  I have my own cubicle now.  The walls of cubicles are proportional to the height of the average worker - short.  My face rises about the wall of the cube while I can barely see the tops of the heads of my coworkers.  I had a few meetings in the morning, meeting a lot of the engineers I would be working with in the coming weeks.

For lunch J and I went to a stir-fry place where I had soup (with chicken and chicken bones), chicken & tofu, beef and noodles, shrimp (with head, feet, tail, and shell), pork, and asparagus leaves.  The shrimp I ate did not sit well.

After lunch J took me to the Gomz and Suning department stores to see my company's products on display and the products of the competitors.  There weren't many competitors products on display and the ones that were were not in showroom condition (chipped paint, product faces falling off, etc).  What I thought was interesting is that my company rents out space in the store and staffs it with sales people.  At Gomz J inquired as to where a particular product was at and the sales people led us out of the store and across the street to competitor Suning's store to see the products.  You would never see a Best Buy employee taking a customer across the street to Circuit City (if any still existed?) to see a product.

I was under the impression that Shanghai would be very hot.  Everyone told me to pack my shorts and short sleeve shirts but I'm actually freezing.  It could be because I have an air conditioner blowing directly on me but my goodness, it's cold inside!  Outside is pleasantly warm, a nice temperature.  I would have been better packing the clothes I would normally wear in Milwaukee summers to work than the warm weather clothes I packed.

For dinner, J and I went to an individual hot pot place.  Each person gets a bowl with broth, little meat, and some veggies (onion and carrot in my case).  Then you select from many different thin slices of raw meet (beef or lamb or mutton or shrimp) which you dunk in the pot of boiling broth till it's cooked to your satisfaction.  It was actually pretty fun dunking the food in the pot and pulling it out.  That was my first chopsticks only meal (the previous places I ate at gave me a fork).

From Inside the Great Firewall

Is that what it's called - the Great Firewall? I can't get to
Blogger/Facebook/Google+ so I'm assuming China's firewall is the cause.
I haven't had a whole lot of sleep in the last day and the sleep I have had
wasn't very good. Monday morning I took a bus to O'Hare International
Airport then hopped a quick 13.5 hour flight to Shanghai, China. The
flight wasn't bad; it was a bit bumpy and the in-house entertainment needed
more spicing up for such a long trip. I can only watch "Water for
Elephants" and "Red Riding Hood" so many times in one sitting. My
flight landed at 1:30 local time and it was a breeze going through customs to get into the
country.

As I was walking through the snake of people waiting to pick up their loved
ones/co-workers I received a lot of "taxi, ma'am?" calls - I stuck out like
a sore thumb. My coworker had made the airport pickup and hotel
arrangements but I was a little worried about being able to find whoever it
was that was picking me up. My driver was one of the last people waiting in
the pick up line, the very long pick up line I might add!, so anxiety levels
were running high. He didn't speak any English, and my Chinese is
limited to greetings and polite expressions, so we stuck to hand
motions to getting out of the airport.

I haven't looked at a map to determine its exact location but the
airport is near the water - I could see the Pacific (I'm assuming) out
of the windows of the car for a good twenty minutes. I was surprised
by how many trees there are. Some must act as a wave break, there are
a line of coniferous trees next to the shoreline, but there are many
others intermingled with buildings standing well over four stories
tall.

I was also surprised by the number of street signs that are in Chinese
(characters) and in English. I would have thought they'd be in
Pinyin, or perhaps German (on account of the old European area of the
city), but I wasn't expecting English.
After an hour drive to West Shanghai I arrived at my hotel. It is a
very nice hotel, probably the nicest one I've ever stayed in. I'm
stationed on the 16th floor with my room overlooking what appears to
be a river. I had only two hours to shower, get ready, and take a nap
before dinner. The best showers are undoubtedly the ones after a long
bout of travelling.

I had dinner with my coworker J at a nice restaurant. The meal we had
was huge! There were peanuts and radishes to start, then out came the
dishes of tofu, fried fish, spicy mushrooms, beef, cabbage mustard,
steamed shrimp dumplings, a plate of assorted cold food, and finally
watermelon for dessert.

I really miss my best friend G and my cat. A month in China doesn't
seem so long in theory but in practice...

If You Thought My Posting Was Sporadic...

...then it's about to become much more so as I embark on a month long business trip to China!  I don't leave just yet so before I go I'll post about how I've been preparing and when I come back I should have advice about travelling in China.

If I can access Blogger in China I hope to give updates about travelling by oneself to a country where you don't know anyone or speak the language for business.  If I can't then I'll just have to enthrall you when I come back.

Published!

I finally got something published.  I'm only a second author but my name is now out there.  It doesn't come up when I simply Google myself but maybe one day it will.

Making Microbes Work

Tonight I'm trying out Blogger on my phone as I'm sitting in my research lab. I'm trying out something new with a reactor and I want to see how it preforms before I leave for the night. Microorganisms aren't terribly speedy though and watching this digital multimeter record a new voltage (at 1 microvolt incriments) isn't thrilling. I wish I could crack a whip and yell "Mush! Mush!" as one would to a dog-sled team and instantly reap the rewards of more power.  Pity things don't work that way.