Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 61

This will be somewhat of a general blog this week, just random thoughts and things that I did.

While quiete outdated, in the middle of the winter it was nice to go back and remember a good thought in the summer when it was warm. I pulled out some pictures that we had taken when we went to Japan and played a few rounds of golf. I hadn't put these pictures up because they were ones taken by a photographer at the course and we only have a printed copy, so I'm including them now. The first is the two of us, along with our caddy, as we were getting ready to tee off. The last 3 are a few of the sequence shots. And if Kelly is reading this .. yes .. I know .. I need to shorten my backswing! The other bad thing is, and I really hate to admit that Tom is right, but I really do need to have the ball more forward in my stance, which is really obvious in the first picture (oops).

Then around Shanghai right after Christmas, I noticed this amazing set of decorations, so I grabbed a picture. The next pictures are at the post office. I went to the post office to pick up a package that my mom had sent. These girls were sending plastic bags just crammed with something. I have no idea, but they must have been shipping around 10 of these big bags.

Next set of pictures is a little bit of snow that we got. It was just a dusting, but we did have some that stayed on the ground for at least long enough for me to get my phone out and snap pictures.

This is a pomelo, which is a citrus fruit native to Southeast Asia. It is pretty large, larger than a grapefuit, and normally green to yellow in color. The flavor is like a sweet, mild grapefuit. I hadn't ever seen these before and happened to see this little packet at the grocery store that looked like a white grapefuit already segmented. I bought them and soon realized they were NOT grapefuits. For one thing, the membranes around the segments had been removed. I found out by reading that the membranes are bitter and mainly considered inedible. They also say that a tangelo is a hybrid between a pomelo and a tangerine (see, and I thought it was a tangerine and an orange). I've been buying them each week if they have them segmented.

So this week, I decided to buy a whole one and peel it myself. I learned two things: 1) God doesn't want you to eat these because he made them SO difficult to peel, and 2) just PAY someone to do this!

First you cut the top of of it. Notice the large amount of white pith on the outside. Next you score down the sides, trying to cut through all of the white without cutting the actual segments. I failed in a few places and cut through (oops). Thenyou peel those "fingers" down.

You remove as much of the white as possible until you get down to the fruity part, and then pull it apart like an orange. You can see how the membrane is really thick and pulled off of a few areas. They also have really big seeds. Then you carefully pull out all of the segments. Mind you, most of mine did NOT come out as whole segments like the people who do it at the grocery store. It tasted the same, but from now on, no whole pomelos for me.

I had a semi-quick business trip to Jakarta as well. I got a little freaked out getting to the hotel. Between the airport and the hotel, the taxi was stopped 3 different times and security guards opened all of the doors and trunk, and went around with a mirror looking for (I guess) bombs under the car. Then when I got to the hotel, it had barbed wire around it. Hmmm.... do we REALLY need barbed wire around the hotel???

I did dinner out one night with Anil, my colleague from India who was there with me. We went to a restaurant next door to the IBM location that was recommended by Tom's colleague, Justin (good recommendation). This restaurant served Padang style. Padang restaurants are common throughout Indonesia and are famous for their spicy food. We sat down and they brought over all of these dishes, just a small portion in each dish, and they stack the dishes on top of each other. We didn't even get to choose off a menu or anything. They explained that we just eat what we want and we pay for the dishes that we ate. I thought it was pretty good, although it was a bit spicy for me. Thanks Justin!!

Mid-week we ended up with flooding, which even made CNN. It was so bad on Thursday morning that our meetings were canceled. I walked out to get Starbucks and grabbed a picture of the flooding right outside of the hotel. The 2nd picture is on Friday on the way to the customer location and you can see the flooding from the car.

When I got back, Joan, Lily, and Lisa, from our apartment management company, came by to decorate the apartment for the upcoming Chinese New Year. We got one decoration for the wall and one for the front door.