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March 10 DublinPeople says you can tell the city from its taxi drivers - taxi drivers in Dublin are in general nice and friendly, they drive their own car and work for themselves. The one from airport is very handsome, but not talkative as I expected. The lady on the first working day can't find the way even after I showed her the map I printed out, but she is very active giving me sightseeing suggestion and write down all the place names while she is driving.
The first day sightseeing is to the north coast and Malahide castle. For a person never seen a castle, it's pretty good. The driver and commenter is very humorous and a good singer. The north coast is beautiful but it's a pity that we didn't have time to stop at Howth. Otherwise, I will highly recommend this half-day tour operated by Dublin Bus.
After a short break in the hotel, I spent the afternoon visiting Ireland National Museum and National gallery, free to public and good collections. It's just so happened that night I read on news that Shanghai museum is also going to be free to public, big improvement and the way it should be!
Grafton shopping street is only a couple of minutes walking from hotel, so I spent my evening there before the stores are closed. Had a 3 euro McDonald dinner while having fun watching the pedestrians on the brick-paved no car street and many street performers.
Dublin leaves good impression for me on the first day. Neat city and nice people, good place to live if the house is not that expensive.
By the way, there are Chinese people everywhere, in airport currency exchange, gallery café and hotel staff. One Chinese girl told me there are 60,000 Chinese working in Ireland now.
May 28 Beijing 2005 (work hard, play hard)Hello, Beijing, here I come again. Beijing in May is much prettier than in Dec. A lot of greens and flowers on the street. First night: Arrived hotel at 7:30pm, after a quick dinner, I got a hair cut at the salon in hotel, usually that's the first thing i do when i arrive China, much cheaper and higher quality. Day 1: Walked to office in morning breeze following the crowd makes me feel like a local resident. Although the severe jet lag caused me waking up every hour at night, I still need to do 2 presentations on the first day of my training. I think they both went pretty well. During lunch timie, instead of having the lamb hotpot cross the street of our office building, my colleagues took me to a new local favorite hotpot place, it was GOOD. After a whole day training, another colleague of mine introduced me a chinese herbal facial just in the basement of our office building, that was GOOD too. At night, I spent a couple of hours at Shuang An shopping center area(closest shopping center to my hotel), here are some key findings: * I was amazed by so many American chain-store in Beijing: subway, DQ and haggen-Daz are next to each other on one street. and Subway has a super nice Chinese name: 赛百味。 * the new Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn movie "interpreter" is already showing in China, cost RMB50, quite expensive considering chinese average salary. Since my hubby already watched it and give it an "OK", so I decided to pass and bought 2 new chinese movie DVD from a street vendor to watch at hotel, cost me RMB7 each :) * found a very cute bakery decorated as a subway station, indulged myself a piece of taro cake, a small cup of orange-flavored cream cheese and a box of coconut ball. (say bye-bye to my diet during my China trip) * even a regular shopping center in Beijing looks like a royal palace, the clothes there are expensive too. * "half acre garden" restraurant my colleague recommanded is pretty good
Day 2: Small group workshop-type of training for my own team today, i think it's more efficient and effective than big group presentation. Message is another local favorite activity after work. So I tried the foot message and body message for 2 hours and for only 20+ dollars. After the relaxation, one big fish head soup in hotel restaurant filled up my empty stomach and the craving for a good fish head soup.
P.S. I slept for 4 hours in a row, but couldn't fall back to sleep after I woke up at 4am. P.P.S I made a phone call to home, Jasmine said mom i miss you, poor Justin kept calling me mommy, mommy 'cause he can't talk much yet. Dear kids, I miss you too. To be continued... December 21 China 2004Our family visited China at the end of 2004. The very first week, both kids and Jeff suffered from stomach flu in shanghai and couldn't enjoy the trip very much. On the second week, we visited most relatives, friends and classmates and did a lot of shopping in Shanghai. Mom and Dad went to Lijing, Yunan without the kids and headed to Jinan and Beijing separately afterwards for business trip. They had a white Christmas eve in Beijing and attended Jacky Chang's concert 雪狼湖． *********************************************************************** please visit our old family pictures at http://groups.msn.com/tiger74s |
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