I spent my last full and free day in Shanghai doing a little sightseeing along the Huangpu River. It was a warm and slightly hazy day – a good time for a walk along the Pudong side of the river. I enjoyed a frappucino at the river side Starbucks (Starbuck is everywhere – I think worse than McDonald’s). One of the first walks I took in Shanghai was right in this same area. I wrote about it in this blog entry. I guess it was fitting that I end my time in Shanghai right back where I started.
Here are some pictures (more over at Flickr).
The farewells are basically done now. I even got a bouquet of flowers. I’ve gone through this several times in the past so I guess I’m used to saying goodbye. It’s strange to think that my office, my home, my co-workers for the past year will soon just be another memory. Hopefully our paths will cross again sometime, but it’s hard to know when that might be. I have a day off tomorrow before flying to Japan on Thursday. Perhaps I’ll do some sightseeing in Shanghai if the weather is good. I’ll miss the constantly changing skyline and fast pace. I’ll miss the people. I’ve been blessed to have had the opportunity to work in so many places and meet so many people. Shanghai is no exception.
I’m not usually one to comment on examples of poor English. Not being able to speak any dialect of Chinese, I don’t usually thinks it fair to pick on a non-native speaker’s English ability. But this sign giving emergency instructions in my hotel room was just too good to pass up. It’s a good thing it comes with a map otherwise I would have no idea what the meaning is. Especially the last point, “Point profess your excellency seat.” I have no clue what they wanted to say. For a 5-star hotel I am little disappointed the hotel management couldn’t bother to spend a couple of extra bucks to have a native speaker (or even a person with a couple of years English instruction) check this. Any ideas?
I moved out of my apartment this afternoon and into my home for the next couple of nights, the HongQiao State Guest House. The check out of the apartment went smoothly enough but getting everything out was, as usual, a big pain. As always I ended up with more stuff leftover than would fit in my suitcases. It will be nice to have a couple of nights to relax at the hotel and have someone else do the cleaning for me, but now I just want to get on the plane as soon as possible. Work is basically wrapped up and it becomes more and more awkward to be around the office. Tomorrow will basically be my last day and then the Japanese consulate just needs to issue my visa and I’ll be ready to go.
Tomorrow is my birthday and tonight some of my coworkers gave me a farewell/birthday party. We had food and cake in a big karaoke club. The cake was accompanied by several renditions of the Happy Birthday song and I ate at least two pieces. It was a lot of fun except that the air conditioning wasn’t working well so it was at least 26 degrees (C) the whole time (that’s just about 80 F).