Before heading to Shanghai, and while I was there, numerous people asked if I was going to the Shanghai Expo which is, as far as I can tell, the equivalent of a World’s Fair.  It has drawn thousands of extra visitors to Shanghai and lasts a full six months.  Well, I couldn’t find a compelling reason to go.  Hearing that there were long waiting lines sealed the deal.  Why do I want to do this?  OK, on to the real story:

The real reason for going to Shanghai was to have another CMIC retreat with Chris.  Peter and Chris had been to Shenzhen twice before, and since Peter’s trip to the US freed up a bed, the idea to spend some time working closely with Chris was hatched.  Well, I stayed about five full days and we worked every day from morning until bedtime only breaking for meals and the World Cup match between Argentina and Germany.

Well, I can’t argue at all with the results of the trip:

• Peter and I blasted through a release of the 1.1 software the day I arrived.  Actually, he upgraded the servers with all the changes while we were asleep and I made sure the system was running as expected the next morning.  A few bugs were discovered (as well as some fraudsters), but we took care of it quickly.
• Chris and I, working side-by-side, cranked out the callback feature making it possible to initiate calls as well as send calls.  I knew we could get this done during the trip, but I was surprised that we got it working end-to-end in just two full days.
• I bumped up my bash command line skillz several notches by just sitting with Chris and asking questions.  I really hope to be able to zip around the shell soon.
• Chris took me on a survey of the Ruby on Rails development system, which looks like a real pleasure to program in.  I can’t wait to learn it inside and out.  I also spent some time alone working on some sample code and problems.

Some fun things we did:

• We worked in some great locations, notably:  1) The Park Hyatt Cafe at the millionth floor (ok, 91st) of the International Financial Center (IFC) building.  We enjoyed expensive (and decent) cappuccino and the best view in the city.  2) Mocha Cafe in People’s Square Park.  This place is hidden behind the entrance to an art museum.  It appears to be unknown to the masses because, despite its size, there were only a couple of parties there.  We enjoyed a hot lunch in the humid pre-storm afternoon, then escaped inside to AC while it poured outside.  It felt good to crank out more code while looking out onto the park in a thunderstorm.
• Watching the Germany – Argentina game in a German restaurant.  We got the best seat in the house simply by asking, “Can we put a table HERE?” From experience, I predicted that Germany would win and that if Argentina got behind, they’d fall apart.  Neither of those was incorrect.  The Germans in the restaurant were quite mean to poor ole sad-looking Maradona whenever his face was shown on the TV.
• Enjoyed the Monday special at Malone’s:  a 50 RMB colossal hamburger at Malone’s.  I hadn’t had a hamburger like that in months.  My was it tasty!  I respect Chris for eating another half of one, including the fries and the pint of beer it came with.  He said the week before he ate two.  Respect.

Some innerestin’ things:

• Shanghai felt so different this time around.  I guess the last time I was there with Robert, we frequented visited Suzhou, got scammed by tea show representatives, bought knock-off ties on the street, and witnessed rats skittering through local hole-in-the-wall restaurants.  But this time, I had to make a special effort to speak Chinese, it seemed like.  Every single restaurant was full of foreigners and most every waitress spoke fine English.  It was good to get back to Shenzhen for this reason.
• Shanghai was also quite expensive this time around, restaurants especially.  Granted, we didn’t do any street food, but even the Chinese restaurants was at least 130 per person (a little over $19 USD).  I guess the cheapest was an Indian restaurant with a lunch special.  That cost us 91 RMB.
• There were tons of foreigners.  Plenty were quite obnoxious.  ‘Nuff said.
• The Chinese were generally more behaved and urbane.  I saw no egregious violations like peeing in the street and only one spitting incident.

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I was at a Karaoke party for an hour or so a cupla weeks ago.  One of the girls sang this song (in the Tibetan language, which is not simply a dialect of Mandarin).  Anyway, it totally floored me.  I just found it strikingly original and interesting, simply from a musical perspective.  The title means something like:  “Ten thousand things growing (or living, or being born)”. The text is Buddhist scripture, but I don’t know what it means.  Maybe I can hunt that down.  Here’s the video: