We finished teaching on Friday with chris shooting off to meet a girl Friday evening in shanghai, and me following on later on Sunday. The original invitation said 3pm but this was changed to 7pm, which made getting to shanghai much easier!
I got the train at 10.30 without a hitch (I booked online and ningbo has a fast pickup line for online booked tickets), the only problem being the fast route to the station goes through a tunnel and the tunnel is down for maintenance, for four months, meaning you add a 10km detour to the next bridge down and back!
The train was fine and took 3 hours, and then I changed onto the subway to get to the hotel, i booked a priceyish hotel in pudong, near the conference, for 350rmb, but thought to save on taxi fees and work out about the same.
I checked in and borrowed an iron to iron my shirt, I wore a shirt, tie, trousers formal shoes but no suit jacket, my excuse for no jacket was the weather but in reality it's because I don't have one!
As I was lying on the bed resting an email came through at 3.15pm changing the start time to...3! By the time i looked at myphone at 4.30 it had already started!
I got up, showered, changed and got to the event for 5.30, I found the shanghai pudong ritz Carlton and as I walked in saw lots of people wearing badges walking past, I grabbed one and asked where to go and Richard, a nice guy from the engineering department, helped me find the checkin, got checked in ok and got my badge etc and realized I had missed all the speeches but arrived in time for the buffet dinner!
Richard and I went and took the lift to the 52nd floor where the dinner was being held. We arrived to evening light and panoramic views out across the bund, and so I found a place and sat down with a good helping of food, they had wonderful roast beef, a full selection of lovely western food and free drinks including imported wine! I started chatting with the woman next to me and it turns out she is an officer in charge of helping Coventry graduates find chinese jobs! Amazing! I exchanged one of my business cards (that I hastily printed and cut out myself the night before on the dining room table) and we chatted for the whole meal about how we both ended up here, apparently for an english born and raised guy to up and head out of England is pretty rare, but I was the exception!
Chris at this point still hadn't arrived and he had got caught up with the girl and missed most of the meal, there was a raffle (I won nothing) and then it dissolved into trying to drain the free bar as the sun set over the pudong pearl tower right next door and the lights across the shanghai bund all came on, beautiful.
Chris eventually arrived and made a late start on the buffet, making a decent dent, but unfortunately got bitten by the 9pm wine cut off. I had a good chat with several people about jobs and possibilities in china related to the university with some very interesting results! I also chatted more with the woman from dinner and found out that she knows Ben, my best friend from university, as he was from her department, which was pretty cool!
After dinner chris and me and the girls all headed to a bar in shanghai for a couple of gin and tonics and a couple of shots of tequila before leaving chris to a night out and getting the taxi back to the hotel, eventually getting to sleep after 2 but having had a very fun and productive time, and really loving the shanghai ritz Carlton!
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