I'm really having so much fun that I don't want to work.  I wonder if Microsoft would pay me to just play in China for 3 months?  Actually, when I stop goofing around in Shanghai and start thinking about work, I am pretty excited.  Besides Bruce, who I've known almost my whole career at Microsoft, and Terry Leeper, who I've know his whole career at Microsoft, I've also met 2 other members of the team I'll be working with, and I'm really looking forward to putting faces on the e-mail names of the rest of the group.  I'm going to try to catch the 7AM bus, because it looks like they killed the 6AM bus :-(.

For dinner tonight, we decided to try a "local" restaurant.  It's called "Little Sheep" and they serve what I believe are called "Hot Pots".  When we walked in the place, we had no idea what to expect, and I don't think there was a single person in the restaurant that spoke a word of English.  So we pointed, and my amazing wife communicated a few things in Mandarin, and we were good to go.  We got a 'Nourishing Soup' base which they put on a burner to start boiling, then we ordered strips of beef, lamb, a vegetable medley tray, a "medley of balls" and some noodles.  The kids did quite well with the chopsticks, though Casen only liked to skewer meat balls and hold them up to watch the steam as they cooled.  They all ate something, and Amy, Megan, and I all walked out feeling that thoroughly pleasant "too full" feeling of eating so much yummy food that you can't pack in any more.

We walked home at which point I trudged back to the Grand Gateway to try our ATM card again, as it failed at the Fabric Market.  Turns out that all the American Banks take an ATM hiatus at about 2 am Sunday morning, and turn back on around 6AM.  So no cash for us on Sunday afternoon (I visited 4 ATM's before Amy called me to confirm that Visa said that was true).  Stupid global roaming blackout!  Anyway, it turned back on around 6PM local time, and we've now learned our lesson...  I wet back and grabbed some more cash, along with some "Rocky Chocolate" ice cream for Amy.  Hot Pots for dinner, and Ice Cream for dessert.  Life is good...

I also thought I might start chronicling (sp?) the funny translations I see while I'm out.  Today's is "For You Shanghai, Youth Outstanding Person".  You might think that's not really funny, just gibberish, and if it were printed on some pamphlet, I would agree with you.  But that lettering is 8 feet high on a batch of signs that are probably 3 stories high.  If you're making signs that big, perhaps consulting with either a native speaker or a student of the language would make sense :-)

Off to bed before I pass out.  Jet lag still sucks, just not quite as badly as it did 5 days ago...

Amy already talked about our very cool 'tour' of the city of Shanghai on February 28th.  It was pretty limited, but very fun.  Theresa Wang was incredibly helpful, and really good with the kids, letting Chloe just talk her ear off almost the whole day.  Ken [forgot his last name] was also on the tour with us.  His qualifications were, uh, he's been in Shanghai for a year, and he's not from China :-).  He was really helpful in offering a few interesting perspectives.  While Amy was using a restroom at the Yu Yuan Gardens, the kids were eating some ice cream sitting on a ledge.  We had around 75 people watching us, with one woman with 4 teeth (Casen said "Where'd her teeth go?  She needs to go to the store and buy new teeth!") taking Casen's hand to walk off with him!  After that whole thing, Ken pointed out that for many Chinese, the trip to Shanghai is something they save their whole lives for.  They've never seen a foreigner before, and they're not likely to see one again.  It certainly gave me more patience with the 4-toothed child-stealer :-).

I was really impressed by how well the 3 kids did, after being driven all over the place, and forced to walk everyone all day long.  By 5 PM, however, Casen was done.  So we didn't get quite as much junk as we needed from Ikea.  So today (March 1 - I'm now 34 years old...) I took him with me as I explored the Metro and went down to Ikea.  The Xujiahui station is like a mini-city beneath an already impressive above ground area.  Casen loved all the escalators, and watching the trains come & go.  He wasn't as excited as I thought he would be by the actual ride on the subway, but he wasn't upset at all.

Once we got off the metro, we headed above ground.  Most Chinese people I've met here are almost offensively "pro-boy".  I have 2 beautiful, brilliant, amazing daughters, and yet no one comments about them except to say I have 2 daughters & one SON!  Then they faun all over Casen.  Mind you, when he's in a good mood, and he says "Ni Hao!" to everyone in earshot, he is pretty adorable, but when I'm out with Megan or Chloe, I don't get even a tenth of the smiles from people on the streets.  I should probably get off this subject.  People that know me well know that I'm pretty outspoken about equality & how much that kind of stuff irritates me.  The thing that drives me the craziest around here is that everyone that sees us with 3 kids, 2 girls and then a boy, believes that the reason we had 3 children was so we could have our boy.  In reality, when we discovered we were having a boy, both Amy & I were fairly shocked:  we just assumed we were going to have a 3rd girl, and were quite excited about it.  Not that having a boy was a disappointment, just a very big surprise:  we weren't happy or sad to have a boy, just not expecting it.  I'll try not to talk about that subject any more.  I imagine Chinese society might start understanding the value of women if they're male/female ratio winds up in a bad state.

Anyway, as Casen demanded a 'shoulder-ride' and I tossed him up in the air over my head and sat him on my shoulders about 40 people must have been staring as him, and smiling.  We went into Ikea, which, as most people told me, is exactly like every other Ikea (almost), and found the extra things we needed.  We got through the check out at 11:30 and Casen was hungry so we got in line for a hot dog.  And this is where the Shanghai Ikea is different from the one in Seattle:  A hot dog was 3 RMB.  That's roughly 42 cents.  An ice cream cone was 1 RMB!  15 cent ice creams, just like my mother (okay, perhaps my grandfather - my mom's still a spring chicken) told me about!  So Casen downed his hot dog like the walking vacuum cleaner he is, and then we got a couple of ice creams, and headed back to the metro station.  We walked back to the house, stopping a couple times to convince Casen that he should A) hold my hand, and B) walk because my shoulders had all of his 40 lbs. frame they could handle for one day.  Amy took the girls out to go pick up a birthday cake from a yummy french bakery for me, and we played on the toys for a while.

Once we went inside, I got pretty sleepy, so I laid down while Casen was napping.  Amy decided to take the girls down to the big playground and let them play for a while, and I didn't set an alarm, so she woke me up when they got back up more than 2 hours later.  Needless to say, that didn't help my still-screwed-up internal clock...  She actually met Bruce at the playground and chatted with him for a while.  I've known him since I started at Microsoft almost 11 years ago, so Amy's met him a few times.  I think the conversation with someone not named Kevin was good for her.  She was in a great mood when she came upstairs, and recommended we order dinner from Blue Frog, which, according to Bruce, makes the best burgers he's ever had.  After ordering them, I'll agree:  If you want a hamburger, come to Shanghai.  Best burger I've ever eaten.  Salt Lake City has a chain of restaurants called "Training Table" that has relatively good hamburgers, but nothing I've ever had comes close to the Montana BBQ burger I had.

During dinner Amy made a bit of a stunned face, and then let out a disappointed "awww...".  She realized that while she bought candles  for my cake, she had no way to light them.  Then she actually opened the cake up.  The bakery included not only matches, but candles, forks, places, and a serving knife!  When the Shanghai-ese sell you a birthday cake, they sell you the whole package!

All in all, a fairly good birthday.  Particularly for a 34th.  On the bright side: only 1 more year until I can be president :-)

A few days back I went to an electronics store about 200M past the Best Buy in hopes of getting a couple more power plug adapters for cheaper than the 58Y that we paid our first day at Best Buy.  The place is called "gome" (probably pronounced Go May).  I found it because when we went to Xujiahui Park, and I saw a big sign that said "PCMALL" across Zhaoziabang Road, so I thought I'd check it out.

Initially, it felt a lot like a Circuit City or Best Buy.  But when I headed over to the section called "components" to get a couple of dealy-bobs (technical name), a salesman approached me.  I pointed to the 4 items I needed, and he got them off the wall rack for me, then proceeded to fill out 3 separate half-sheets of paper for them (2 power adapters, a VGA cable, and a Stereo-Miniplug -> dual RCA jacks).  Then he pointed me at a little counter in the back of the store that said "cashier" above it.  I walked back there, gave them the papers, the nice girl behind the counter tallied up the total, then stamped each of the papers, then printed up 3 receipts, each with 4 copies, and stamped all 12 copies and handed me 3.  When we ordered dinner last night, the delivery guy left us with probably 12 pieces of paper each that looks like an odd combination of money and lottery ticket.  When we bought a few toys from an overpriced toy store, you show them the toy, they give you a piece of paper, then you take that piece of paper, with the toy, up to the cashier, who takes your paper, and prints up a new set of receipts, one of which you get.  Plus you have to sign the credit card receipt.  THis place is totally paper-crazy.  For any random purchase, I wind up with at least 2, or more frequently 4 or 5 pieces of paper, generally container various stamps of some sort.  Apparently, the phunny-money lottery tickets we got when we got our first meal delivered were tax receipts.  The restaurant must buy them and give them to people to prove they paid taxes.  The way it actually works is that some of those receipts actually win money, thus providing an incentive to the customers to demand them, thus forcing the company to actually pay taxes.  There are so many things that, at first glance seem very nonsensical to me, but when looked at from a different perspective make perfect sense.  But I still don't get why everything has to be paper :-)

We arrived Monday night and had an interesting ride to the apartment (I counted 12 times when we were, quite literally, within inches of another vehicle, traveling about 50MPH).  Once we got in the apartment, I discovered I was immediately indebted to Alain Raitt, one of the CLR team's test managers.  He mentioned what the mattresses were like, and I remembered to pack an air mattress.  Our 3 bedroom apartment has 1 king size bed, and 2 queen size beds.  And each bed has what Americans call a "Box Spring" and nothing else.  For American beds, the box spring is what you put under the mattress.  Aside from that, the apartment is fairly nice.  It's furnished in 100% Ikea Black & Silver, with dark hard wood floors.  The bathrooms are very nice, though the water smells of something odd (and according to Frommer's it's not even safe to brush your teeth with).  We've got a 5 gallon water tank, which is now down by about 2 gallons.

The electrical outlets will accept 3 different styles of plugs, but not grounded American plugs, or 'directional' American plugs (where one prong is wider than the other).  We went to Best Buy & bought an 'everything' surge protector, which lets you plug almost anything into anything.  There are a couple of stupid things that we own that don't like 240V 50Hz, but all the computers & computer peripherals take anything from 100V-240V, and 50-60Hz.  We paid way to much for a printer for school work for the girls, and wandered around a big mall.  Elevators around here are A) tiny and B) rare.  I think the stroller is a total lost cause - too many escalators & stairs.

I think the biggest problem we've had so far has been trying to figure out how to work the heaters in the apartment.  Everything is written in Chinese on the remotes, so we couldn't really figure out how to get the heaters working.  We woke up last night at midnight to a bedroom of 28C (82F) and turned it off.  I don't think the girls minded too much, because it was so cold during the day (like 35F, with 20MPH winds...) that they were huddling under their sweaters, vests, coats, and for Chloe, her robe too!

We were supposed to go to the International Health Center this morning to get our health screening for our visa's, but last week the company that was doing that for us closed their Shanghai office, which I learned of because my e-mail to the woman who was supposed to meet us there bounced.  So I sent a slightly nasty sounding e-mail to 3 or 4 different people [I probably wouldn't have been so nasty sounding, except I was really tired] yesterday afternoon, and a very nice woman from Microsoft Law & Corporate Affairs called me and is getting things straightened out.  So now we have to go get some groceries, then talk to the apartment manager who's going to help us at the local police station to register with the local authorities.

Anyway, I'd better get going - the boy is running around here in his pajamas cutting a piece of paper into little tiny triangles, and we don't yet own a broom :-)