Merry Christmas

I hope that wherever you are and whoever you're with you have a wonderful holiday season.

I'm taking two weeks off and flying to Beijing tomorrow to spend Christmas with Reggie. We'll spend a few days freezing our bits off before heading to Xian. There we are catching up with some of the other AYADs for New Year's which should be a lot of fun.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year.

Feed The Ego

I went to a function last night hosted by the Municipal Government (equvalent to the state government in Australia I think). My Australian boss was receiving an award for his contribution to Chongqing and it was a fairly big deal. Before the meal we were treated to some entertainment - Chinese acrobats and dancing girls (Yes! Dancing Girls! Again!). The presentation itself was fairly quick. I had some concerns when the Mayor of Chongqing began the ceremony with a fairly long speech - mainly because he was flanked by about ten other officials on the stage. Fortunately his was the only speech.

There were a lot of foreigners at the dinner, in fact I had never seen so many in one place in Chongqing before. Dinner was a western-style buffet... I found some smoked salmon which made the whole thing worthwhile. Most impressive were the table lists though. Next to my name, under occupation I was listed as "Foreign Expert".

Friday Fun

I went to a Thai restaurant last night.

This indeed is a newsworthy event. I haven’t had Thai food since leaving Australia and this was a much appreciated meal. As far as I’m aware there is only one Thai restaurant in Chongqing which has recently opened on the top floor of the most expensive mall in town. Downstairs are boutiques selling all the major European labels such as Armani, Zegna, Burberry, Max Mara, Ferragamo etc... the real deal not the cheap fakes available at the markets. The Thai restaurant was very expensive but beautifully decked out. We were in a private room overlooking the city centre and we had our own private bathroom (swish!). The manager, whose name is Towie (seriously), is a Singaporean who has just moved to Chongqing to manage this restaurant after having lived in Sydney for 17 years working as a flighty for Qantas. The food was excellent and I was one happy girl.

After the meal some of us decided to head out for a few drinks. I have been here for nearly three months and have yet to visit any clubs despite living literally just across the road from the main clubbing district.

We began at the Cotton Club which is actually in the basement of my building. It is a very cool bar where the staff bring your drinks to you (no lining up at the bar here!). I was interested to see that rather than ordering a mixed drink people would buy a bottle of spirits and a bunch of mixers and mix their own drinks. One table behind us had about three bottles of scotch on it so they must have been up for a big night.

Most people were seated or standing at tables and most were playing a Chinese dice game. The Chinese are into games in a big way and they especially love drinking games so I can only assume this was a drinking game of sorts. Looked a bit like Yahtzee and wouldn’t be considered very cool bar behaviour back home. Others were in big groups playing what looked like Paper, Rock, Scissors but was obviously a drinking game and was very rowdy.

The patrons were all very well dressed, obviously the more well off young folks in Chongqing. I saw the coolest Chinese guy I’ve ever laid eyes on – he was the bass player in the band (of course) and had a massive boofy pony tail, a painters cap and was wearing baggy cammo cargo pants. He had the attitude to boot and was tres cool.

He may have been cool but his band wasn’t exactly. Their set list included an eclectic mix of hits such as An Englishman in New York (Sting), Dressed for Success (Roxette), Johnny Be Good (Chuck Berry) and Addicted To Love (Robert Palmer) (just to divert... did anyone else know that Robert Palmer died two years ago? I just read that on the ‘net today. How about that hey?).

The dancefloor was empty (why dance when you can play Yahtzee?). In fact one woman, who we nicknamed Poopy Pants, sat at the bar watching the band with her arms crossed and her bottom lip jutting out as though she was hating every moment. I guess Sting will do that to you. She perked up later – a lot – when the band finished and the crowd hit the dancefloor. She was really throwing her ‘hands up in the air’.

There are a bunch of bars to choose from including the Celtic Man (an Irish pub, of course), the True Love Club, Myth, and Sex (don’t think it’s dodgy. They probably just don’t know what it means, exactly). We chose SoHo as our next bar of choice. It was much bigger than the previous, more of a club than a bar. It actually reminded me of the Hard Rock Café with their fitout and although they didn’t have a dancefloor people were grooving wherever they were. Again punters were buying full bottles of spirits and as I made my way through the masses I was offered several shots of vodka by the friendly crowd.

A few people chatted to us in English and just about every woman in the place made eyes at the Australian men I was with. Naturally we stood out in the crowd so were the focus of a fair bit of attention. It was fun night (aside from the toilets where the walls were covered in mirrors... inside the stalls too...) and I’ll definitely be heading back to check out more of the clubs again soon. If not for the music definitely for the awesome people watching opportunity!

More speculation about the weather

As I walked to work this morning I decided that the weather wasn't too bad and we were possibly over the worst of winter. It's only mid-December but a girl can live in hope, right? I then realised that my perception of the milder weather was probably heavily influenced by the fact that I was wearing five layers.

Yeah that's right. FIVE.

Funny, aren't we

All the Chinese girls are jealous of my curly hair and pasty-white skin.

How I wish I had straight hair and a tan...

Brrr...

I don't mean to harp on about this but damn it's cold. The weather has changed noticeably in the past week and it's getting really really cold. They tell me that it doesn't snow in Chongqing but geez it must get close. I even bought a scarf and bedsocks on the weekend.

Yeh, it's getting serious.

Check out today's weather forecast...

If you're more interested in the current temperature (as opposed to the forecast) check out this site.

A Tough Day at the Office

The hospitality adviser on the project yesterday invited me to attend his food and beverage workshop. He was demonstrating to his students the art of creating and serving mixed drinks and needed someone to help out demonstrating the correct techniques in drinking said mixed drinks. The project Youth Ambassador was naturally first on his list of able assistants... After all, as we all know the primary aims of the Youth Ambassador program are capacity building and the sharing of skills.

Students were shown how to mix and serve stirred drinks including the Screwdriver, Harvey Wallbanger and a variety of martinis. Demonstrations were also given in blended drinks such as the Margarita, Daiquiri and Grasshopper, and the day was rounded out with demonstrations of shooters including the B-52, Brain Haemmorage, Maggot Attack, Orgasm and the very special Screaming Orgasm. My role was to sample and demonstrate how to drink them.

Fortunately there was a driver waiting to take me home.

Life's Not Fair

I just read that it was 33 degrees in Melbourne today.
This is what it's like in Chongqing.