Thursday being the first real day of the training course I was giving, it gave me a chance to start to get to know the team. At lunchtime we took the corporate shuttle bus down to a local shopping and eating venue in the technology park phase 1 development area, where Jasmine selected a range of local food for us to try. We were too late to catch the bus back so had to walk it but its only about 10 minutes away anyway. It was cool but quite pleasant - it might be a bit different on a rainy day.
After work Yogi and I went back to the hotel and then took a taxi to the
Oriental Pearl (Telecom) Tower, Pudong
A stroll along the riverbank gave us good views of the Bund and the city on the other side of the river. There was quite a lot of water traffic ranging from big cargo ships down to local water taxi type boats in size. Lots of river cruise boats going up and down too. One of the ‘in your face’ manifestations of capitalism is the boats carrying huge plasma TV screens like you see in Sports Stadiums (Stadia?). These were showing non-stop rolling TV commercials.
After a quite pleasant stroll along the riverbank viewing both the Shanghai and the Pudong sides of the Huangpu River, we had a walk through a large shopping mall near there - the Super Brand Mall. The mall had many 'brand name' shops as well as a more conventional food court and supermarket. We had a stroll through the supermarket and the amount and variety of food and household items was amazing. Yogi bought some packeted dried fruits sweets to take home to his family but I didn't see anything that I particularly needed. I did have a foray into a pharmacy to see if I could find a saline nasal spray to help mitigate symptoms of the sniffly cold I carried from Australia. It was a fruitless endeavour apart from trying to describe to the non-English speaking staff what I was looking for.
Convention Centre and Telecom Tower
After a trundle through the Mall we walked back towards the river to find a restaurant for dinner. We had passed a couple of reasonable looking ones - one Japanese and one Spanish and a large Chinese restaurant too. All would have been OK but we opted for a Spanish meal at 'La Verbena' overlooking the river. As a plus they had a live band too - a bloke and two 'blondes'. The meal was delicious, Yogi had a chicken paella and I had a seafood one washed down for the both of us by a nice bottle of Spanish Red Wine (I don't remember the label but it was a very drinkable drop ;-).
Yogi musing over the passing water traffic
at La Verbena
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment