aaaaiiieaaaaah

Hell no course I didnt forget the Macao party crew but actually SOME peopel have to work from time to time, know it sounds crazy, but thats the way the water flows...

Aaaaaanywho...

.... the last week passed by quickly as hell, fortunately I was able to hand out my draft of the statement of work to the supervisor in Hamburg and my academic tutor at the university and despite the lack of project management deliverables I still have to produce the project is on its way and the thesis can start as structured as a German can be ;)) I know u didnt expect anything else ;)))
Due to all the action during the week friday was rather low profile - I met up with Poka and we discovered some really nice cheap sports bar like 700m walking distance away from the office. This could actually have the tendency of becoming the most favorable bar in the neighbourhood despite the rock music which is not quite my style but anyways - with drinking prices NOT HIGHER whatsoever drink u might want than 2 euro (20 Kwai) the bar is obviously designed for the student wallet. Popcorn chicken, fish and chips and other snacks for 1 Euro support this image.

Saturday was of course another shopping day, but first of all we started off with sth. I should ve done quite earlier: take chinese lessons. Beate and me met for breakfast at Starbucks (which in Shanghai has the most dense concentration in a city with 68 coffee places all around Shanghai) and then went to People's Square to meet our teacher Wang Qing. Funny thing again - of course he had to find us there coz on a saturday will million black-haired bees humming around in front of Raffles' City its quite hard to find the one who is your new chinese teacher. 2 western people are quite easier to detect :) After a lunch in order to get to know each other (already adapted to chinese business culture) we were checking the bookstore for appropriate material. For our first lecture we decided to go into the parc nearby and for the hell of an amusement of the surrounding Chinese we were practising how to pronounce the tones and the pingyin properly (one couple was running away coz they couldnt stop laughing - one good deed a day by the western community to make people laugh). But it was really nice to learn some stuff and we ll see how well we can proceed in the next few weeks (hopefully we will last that long).

Shopping for reward came afterwards so we went to the cloth-market or as I recall copy-paste-for-clothing-place: One tailor next to each other trying to sell his/her suits or dresses to the visiting community. Silk dresses, cashmere suits - u feel like being in Thailand again here. AAAnd of course despite the fact that I didnt wanted to spend money on the weekend I ended up ordering a suit for 550 Kwai which is roughly 50 Euros. We ll see how the quality will do when I can pick it up in a week.

Evening program was quite perfect too: German DJ legend DJ Tomcraft was in Shanghai and so Beate and me decided to spend money again to go there. First a quick visit to the Windows Scoreboard (u remember, cheap student bar), inhaled some Havana colas and then off to find the club coz it wasnt properly shown where that might be exactly, but after a while we managed to actually find the desired adress (hooray).

really nice club, old-fashioned furniture combined with nice paintings and airbrushes on the wall, club Voltar was hosting DJ Tomcraft and a nice party bunch that was ready for some electronic party time. Professions like sons or daughters were also there spending their parents spare money on Hennessy XO and I got almost a shock when I went to the bar and ordered 2 beers for an unbelievable amount of 160 Kwai - SHOCKING. But ok, guess the flight from Germany has to be paid also. But was a very pleasant evening and after 3.30pm is was walking in the actually quiet streets of Shanghai to find my way home coz i didnt wanted to go with the cab.

Sunday was under the opympic influence :))

Daniel and me went to the Gym ( I already applied there for half a year for some quite ok money), and that not enough, we went out into the suburbs in Pudong to meet his chinese colleagues and friends from his last stay in China and played soccer for almost 3 hours. That was really funny but quite exhausting and finally we got together with almost 20 people to have typical chinese dinner (with incredible spicy and hot food from Sichuan province, but which was very enjoyable to have an experience like that with so many people). Some spoke english, we tried our 4 words of mandarin and so we had funny times and some insights about chinese eating and meeting again.

Therefore today was muscle ache all over the place and I could barely move, but had to sit on my chair anyways quite long in order to get my project ahead.

Then funny last thing for all my people from the MBA: I couldnt believe it myself, we had an Alumni meeting from Pforzheim people in Shanghai and the managing director of the company called Wuerth here in Shanghai is also an Alumni from Pforzheim so we ended up 4 people meeting there and talking about our experience with the lovely city of Pforzheim :) Unfortunately we couldnt get in touch with Prof. Pfoertsch coz he had other plans, but Uwe told us they regularly meet up with sth. like 5 to 6 people once a month so I am curious if next month I will have the opportunity to see our Leadership Professor again. And of course we went to Paulaner, the german wheat beer brewery branch here in Shanghai in Xintiandi (the amusement mile close to the office).

That's all folks, talk 2 u soon,
Shanghai-MO