Olympics in Beijing

I think the last time I wrote was Friday…after the opening ceremonies.  So Saturday morning was pretty un-eventful.  I had breakfast here at the hotel (like I do every morning).  My boss’ wife and I went to IKEA early afternoon-ish to buy things for the apartment we are moving in to tomorrow.  I don’t think many people in Kansas probably know what IKEA is, but you should look it up on-line.  There is on in Sacramento (a couple of hours from Tahoe) that I LOVE to go to.  You can pretty much get anything you would need to furnish a house or apartment dirt cheap, but it is fun, nice stuff!  We already tried Wal-Mart once and they didn’t have quite everything we needed.  So we took the driver (yes, we have a private car and personal driver!) to IKEA, which was about half an hour away.  It was a MASSIVE warehouse FULL of stuff…and full of Asians too of course.  Found out later that it is actually the largest IKEA in the world.  Three floors of house stuff to go through.  We literally filled two shopping cards to the RIM and had our arms full…we could barley walk and push the carts up to the check out stand, and only spent a couple of thousand dollars.  Rugs, towels, dishes, kitchen utensils, sheets, pillows, bathroom stuff, paintings, flowers…you name it, we got it there!!  Thankfully we had the driver, so he came in and carried everything out for us…after over two hours of shopping there!  We drove to the apartment and dropped it all off…and kind of quickly made sure we liked the way everything looked. 

We had to rush back to the hotel because we were throwing a surprise 50^th birthday party for my boss (his birthday was actually the day before, 08-08-08, but he was at the opening ceremonies).  We reserved the restaurant here at the hotel and had AMAZING food/appetizers and an open bar.  Well about half an hour before he was supposed to show up, he called me, and was just FURIOUS about his cell phone not working.  We bought these crazy Chinese cell phones over here (one for him, one for his wife, and one for me) and we have had a heck of a time getting them to work properly.  My boss literally LIVES on his phone – it is his life and his way of conducting business, which he does 24/7, so he was NOT happy at all to say the least.  He told me to go out right then and buy him extra batteries for his phone, and to find something that charged batters outside the phone.  So…off I went…after talking to the concierge desk and having them write down the name of some place in Chinese.  “Oh yes, only 5 minute walk from here!” they said…like they always do.  So I set off, dressed up, in my strappy heels, practically running down the busy street in 100% humidity to try and find this place I didn’t even know the name of.  I’ve learned to stop and ask someone (well, show them the Chinese symbols written down) about every 50 feet, because you always get a different answer!  So after being told that the place was on my side of the street, I later found out it was across the street.  And these aren’t little streets, you have to find a place to go down under the subway tunnel to go under the busy road and then back up on the other side.  So I did that, and found what I thought MIGHT be the cell phone place…they had cell phones anyways.  I asked a lade working if she had the same batter I had in my phone…and she had no idea what I said…shocking.  It really is terrible to not be able to speak the language over here (I’m learning pretty quickly)  So she found someone who understood me, and he said no, he didn’t think they had any more of those batteries, and they did not have a stand-along charger.  He wrote down some OTHER name in Chinese and said to go back across the street and down a few blocks (only 5 minute walk from here…this way)…yeah, yeah…I’ve heard that before.  So off I went again…still running as I was missing the party.  Found place number two, no luck.  New address, in Chinese…and I’m off again.  This is no joke…it was unbelievable.  And still stopping to ask every 25 feet now…So I get to this mall, a pretty big shopping mall for Chinese standards.  And walk in and frantically start showing people my little piece of paper.  I eventually make it to the mall next to it, and up to the sixth floor through some dark stairs, somehow, and find a massive floor full of cell phones and accessories!  They didn’t have extra batteries, but they did have some crazy little contraption that charges batteries.  I took two and ran out.  Forget the walking; I got a cab, as I was completely drenched in sweat by now.  So much for looking nice for the party.  The cab ride was probably 10 minutes, with little traffic, so I have no idea how far I ended up walking, but it was no where close to five stinkin’ minutes!! 


I made it back, and of course had missed the surprise and my angry boss was now somewhat calm…so that was good.  We enjoyed the food and drinks for the evening, had a couple of toasts, and his little kids (4, 5, and almost 6) brought out the cake and sang to him…it was so cute. 


I heard that evening that there had been a fatal stabbing of an American at Tienamen Square that afternoon, which is very close to our hotel.  It of course was never on the news here (the Chinese cover that crap up pretty good), but I heard it did make it on the news back home.  I still don’t really know the full story, but it gave us all a pretty good scare. 


Later that night, a few people went to watch a women’s basketball event, but I was pretty worn out.  Joe (colleague of mine) and I went out and walked to try and find some food (the appetizers didn’t do it for us).  We found a Sizzler and a Pizza Hut in a shopping mall (coincidentally back across the street from where I was at earlier for the cell phone) but they were both closed.  So we settled for some McDonalds.  I really don’t like McDonalds, but I was craving some American food.  We both got cheeseburgers, and did our best to order them with ketchup only, but we got nothing on them at all…which was pretty good!  We thought we’d end up with everything on them…they don’t speak so much English around here.  It was SO SO good to have a burger and fries again!  I am so sick of weird Chinese food and stuff I just end up spitting right back out! :) We walked back to the hotel and went to bed around 11pm.