http://www.hesspoint.com

Last night we went to the openBC offline event in Shanghai. For all of you, who don’t know openBC, fist of all shame on you and second check it out on their website. It is a business networking site. So about 100 people gathered in the Captain’s Bar yesterday and I met many interesting people. Even met another German who lived only a stone throw away from where I grew up. As I said many times before, it is a small world. So it was a nice evening, good food and lots of new contacts in Shanghai.

Today I have to get going on my report for the scholarship foundation, but the weather is bad anyway today.

Finally tomorrow is the last day of work before the golden week. That means whole 9 days off! This last two weeks at the office were just crazy. I was working overtime everyday at least 1 or 2h. Today I got home around 9:30. I think I deserve some vacation now

And most of all I am looking forward to Sunday to go to F1 at the Shanghai International Circuit. We got pretty good tickets with view on the breaking zone before the first hairpin. So there is gonna be plenty of overtaking action I hope. Maybe also meet Michael or 舒马赫 (Shumahe) as the Chinese call him. Anyway expect plenty of photos.

By the way, photos, I uploaded many new pics of my recent trips in the Greater Shanghai area. Tomorrow I have one more day of work, so now it is bedtime for me…

Recently, I received an interesting email at work about the Siemens Arts Program that offers a cultural program for Siemens employees. Today they organized a visit to Shanghai’s latest cultural highlight, the 6th Shanghai Biennale "Hyper Design". Well, normally I am not the biggest fan of modern art, but I thought a look cannot hurt and I was really surprised in a positive way. The exibition is really worth visiting. The Biennale has many interesting installations of artists from around the globe that sometimes use high tech like projectors and displays and sometimes really basic materials, such as wood or cloth. Some of the really interesting parts where an "IKEA coffin" called DIY or a replica of an appartment that was upside down and you could walk underneath it on mirrors that let you see everything with yourself inside. Really hard to describe but awesome if you stand there.

The Biennale is open till Nov. 5th 2006 in the Shanghai Art Museum.

Guess what happens when 1.3 billion Chinese (ok maybe not so many) all have one week vacation at the same time. Actually you don’t wanna know. If you plan on taking any means of transportation, no matter train, bus or air, don’t even think about it. Well we were so smart to make travel plans anyway. So my wife waited at the train ticket counter for 3 (in words three, san 三) hours just to be told that there is absolutly no train ticket avalilable anymore. So in the end we had to book a pretty expensive flight. I just hope we get a train ticket back. Not that I like taking trains in China that much, especially not if they take 19h for a 700 km distance, but airtravel gets really expensive after a while. Actually the thing I miss most here is my car. Now I just realize how convinient car travel is. But on the other hand, you don’t really want to drive here in China, at least not if you don’t have a serious death wish. I have seen literally every violation of traffic rules that is possible. Starting from complete ignorance of red lights to 4 trucks driving parallel to each other on a 3 (!) lane highway. The most fun part was the busdriver who was then overtaking on the opposite lane. Ok I got carried away…

Anyway if you can, don’t travel when ever there is a longer holiday such as National Holiday or Chinese New Year. On the other hand that is about the only time when you get of work for a longer period of time. Yeah life can be a real bitch. On the other hand, did I mention that I have a ticket for the F1 race in Shanghai next weekend . That is really gonna rock and it is the last chance for me to see Michael race.

Ok that’s it for today. Actually I gonna upload some photos from our Suzhou trip last weekend soon. So stay tuned.

It was another long day at the office, so I am too tired (mentally and physically) for some real content. Just wanna let you know I put up some more photos on my gallery. Check it out. Maybe I have some more time on the weekend. Also at my office I opened my blog with IE for the first time in months and I noticed that in IE it the layout ist totally messed up. So I also have to fix that soon. Till then I encourage everyone to use Firefox if you can. Ok so much for today….

On Sunday I finally took some time to go sightseeing in Shanghai. The whole week I was busy working and the small free time I had I spend shopping for all kinds of things. The first week in a new place is always the busiest. There are lots of things missing in the apartment that have to be bought. In our case a desk, a printer/scanner, some speakers, lamps, kitchen ware and so on. Now I think we got most of the stuff together, now I can spend the evenings of this week to shop for some new clothes, my favorite waste of time, however a necessary evil.

Anyway, what did I want to say in the first place? Yeah, right, sightseeing! So we went to Shanghai’s famous Yu Yuan. Most of Yu Yuan is a huge basar where you can buy almost any trinket that is available on this planet. Starting from the ubiquitous Mao caps to overpriced paintings to jade (or better fake-jade) jewlery. It is a lot of fun there because you can discover what the human mind is capable of inventing at the prospect of making some money. The other, definitly more quite part of Yu Yuan is the actual garden, which is a nice example of Ming-style garden art. It is really worth visiting with lots of pagodas, little bridges, ponds and grottos. Just when we came out of the park, I suddenly heard a voice calling my name and as I looked an old study colleague and fellow Chinese classmate from my university times in Paderborn. Really crazy, you are in a city with a population of over 14 million and meet someone you know. What a small world! If you like you can check his website here.

After that we took the ferry to Pudong, Shanghai’s new development area on the other side of the river, heading for Jin Mao Tower,  China’s highest building (after the Taipei 101) with 88 floors and the world’s highest hotel lobby at the 54th floor (ok not above sealevel but above ground). From inside you can look up over 30 floors since the inside is build a bit like a hive. Really impressive. However they wouldn’t let us up to the bar on the 87th floor because we were dresses in shorts and sandals. We will dress up and come back. From there we went to the Oriental Pearl TV Tower but didn’t go up, heading for the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel instead. Back on the other side of the Huang Pu River we took a walk at the Bund and then went back home. Of course too late to catch the start of the Formula One race…

Here you can find lots of other attractions in Shanghai to visit.

Well, the good news is that you can get about anything here in China, especially in Shanghai. The bad new however, the prices for everything special (means not Chinese) are often through the roof. Examples: A pack of coffee (the real one, not the instant stuff you normally get in China) is about 120 Kuai, which is (by 10) 12€, a bottle of French whine (not even good one) is about the same. One example that proves the opposite is possible as well, is IKEA. They actually have prices also Chinese can afford. The fun thing about IKEA is that no matter where in the world you are you always find everything, even the names are the same. The only difference I could notice between the IKEA in Germany and the one in Shanghai was that here you can also buy chopsticks and to my dismay the hotdogs come without roasted onions. Everything else is the same. You can even eat the famous Swedish meat balls in the cantina. On top they deliver to your home for 30 Kuai = 3€.

The Chinese don’t have lots of leasure time. I think normally each year 10 days vacation tops. Besides some people here work 6 or even 7 days a week. One thing which is really cool here though is that there are two 1-week holidays a year. One is the Chinese Newyears, around February or March, depending on the lunar calendar and the National Holiday in Oktober. So also for me that means a whole week off. So right now we are making some plans were to go that week. Some friends are taking a 7 day hiking trip in Xinjiang (the most western province of China, about 4000 km west of Shanghai) but it is kinda expensive. If I had the money I would definitely go though. Here are some pictures of the beatiful landscape there: Gallery 1, Gallery 2. But since our money is not enough we cannot go Real bummer!

Instead we might go to Henan and Shaanxi Province to visit the famous Shaolin Temple and the Teracotta Army and much more.

Thats all for today, tomorrow I have to be at work again.

So I finally have time to blog again. The last few weeks were just crazy. I was barely at home. During the week I had my Chinese classes and every weekend I was in a different city. First me and a friend took a trip to Dalian 大连 to visit a friend there who also learned Chinese at that time. We first went to the port city of Yantai 烟台 (which by the way means "smoke signs", since in ancient times they burned wolf dung to create thick smoke as warnings when pirates were about to attack ) by nighttrain and then via speed ferry to Dalian. In Dalian was a nice beer festival at that time, so we had quite some fun there before hitting the clubs.
The weekend after that I was in Shanghai 上海 to find an appartment which I did through the kind help of two Chinese friends who supported me a lot! Thanx guys!!!
The weekend after that I flew to Beijing 北京 to pick up my wife who arrived from Germany. The weekend before the last we went to Qingdao 青岛, a colerful bathing resort at the Yellow Sea. Qingdao is probably the most clean city in China also in terms of air, which is actually breathable there. Also can you swim into the sea or put your feet into the water. Besides Qingdao is the home of China’s world famous Tsingtao Beer 青岛啤酒. Consequently, there was also a beer festival
Last weekend we moved into our new appartment in Shanghai. Unfortunately I ate something wrong so my stomach and bowls were upside down the whole weekend, that I couldn’t really enjoy my first days here. But since Sunday and a couple of antibiotics later I feel fine again. Today I had my first day at the office. Stay tuned for more…