Recipe Book

Over Thanksgiving Mom and I came up with the idea of putting a bunch of our favorite meals from the farm together in a cookbook. We're using old photos and taking some too. Here are two pages I've put together so far. We'll get it printed at Shutterfly and it will be hardcover. Let us know if you may be interested in one!

You have new Picture Mail!

Amanda laminating signs that I helped her make for the bridal showcase.

You have new Picture Mail!

The signs that Amanda and I created.

You have new Picture Mail!

This is Alexis, Kristal's daughter. Shejust turned one and is really good at sign language.

Sunday - Traveling back home

This morning we slept in and then packed up all of our stuff. Trying to fit your dirty clothes back into the suitcase, along with the stuff you picked up, is never fun. :-(

The photo is the view from our hotel. It's pretty average - lots of cranes in the background, a lot that's just been leveled for new construction, and a haze hanging over everything. Dan said that it is clear only when it is really windy.

We went over to Dan and Sai's apartment so Jon could leave his big suitcase and borrow a smaller one to take to Beijing. Chris Westerman had gotten in the night before and joined us for lunch, along with Ning, Lisa and Sally. We went to California 101 again and it was delicious again. I only ate sushi and dessert. Sai got the manager to make a platter of hairy crabs for us, which is a Shanghai special. They are only available during one season. Click here for how to eat a hairy crab.

At about 2:30, Jon and I got in separate cabs. He headed to the smaller airport to go to Beijing, and I went to Pudong for my flight home. I left at 5 pm in Shanghai and got to Chicago about 6 PM CST. Chicago was getting a touch of snow, so of course O'Hara was a nightmare. Flights canceled left and right, tons of delays, etc. Fortunately my flight wasn't canceled, so I did manage to make it home at midnight. I saw some people totally freak out at the airline people cause their plane left without them.

The jet lag has been brutal, especially since I got in so late. When I tried to go to bed at 1 AM, my body thought it was 3 PM so I couldn't fall asleep. The lack of sleep and 14 hour time change about killed me the next day. I actually fell asleep standing over my computer. I had to go to work as Dave was out so there would be not enough people to do schedules if I'd stayed home.

Saturday - Eric Clapton

Tonight Jon and I are going to an Eric Clapton concert here. We just got our tickets today and were able to get seats on the floor still. They were the highest price range and were the only ones left. 1800 RMB for one ticket.

Tomorrow I leave for home at 5:00 PM (local time.) I will go backwards in time, so will get home the same night at 9:30 PM CST, even though the journey will take about 20 hours.

Friday - Buying Pearls

Jon went to the office again and spent all day in meetings. They were so busy that he didn’t even get lunch. Larry scrounged up a cup of noodles for him.

I caught up with email and blogging, and then Sai took me to the knock-off market. It was tons of little stores in an underground station that sold (fake) name brand purses, belts, shirts, ties, cuff links, jeans, suitcases, scarves, wallets, shoes, watches, pirated DVDs and anything Chinese-looking. You have to bargain to get things. The first store we walked into, the girl said her best price on a purse was 780 yuan ($98.) You have to offer something really low, then keep saying it’s still too high when they counter offer. This goes on and on until you reach an agreement. Usually, you will have to walk away and let them call you back a few times. It was kind of weird at first, but then I really got into trying to see how low I could get stuff for. It’s such a big act – they act like they are losing so much money by giving it to you at that price, but you know it is totally an act. It is a big drama. It was really fun to get something for a super-low price that you didn’t really think they’d go for. I got the purse for 100 yuan instead ($13.)

We stopped at another subway station that was connected to a new mall. We have a 12 mm board inside and a big 23 mm outside. They don’t look great though – a couple problems with how the buildings designed the access to them. It was raining so we didn’t stay outside looking at it very long.

I went back to the hotel and Sai went home in the afternoon. After work, Ritchie and Gislain picked us up and we headed to the pearl market. The whole second floor of this building is pearls. All shapes, sizes and colors. Once again, you have to barter. Sai goes to one place where she knows the owner and gets good deals.

I wasn’t planning on buying anything, as Jon bought me a pearl necklace in Australia. The guys got a couple things for their girlfriends (after consulting our expert options). I thought maybe I should get a ring to match my necklace and some earrings too. The earrings have about 15 pearls each on them, but they are smaller and some are far from round. The ring has one nice big, round pearl on it. Both of them together were…. 25 yuan. That is $3.25. I couldn’t believe it.

I tried on a couple of different necklaces that were nothing like the one I already had. I didn’t really like any of them. Gislain handed me one that was three strands of pearls around the neck and many strands hanging down in a triangle, with aquamarine beads between each pearl. It was really beautiful and easily has over 100 pearls in it. I bartered it down to 80 yuan. $10. I would be very interested in knowing what it would go for in the States.

The four of us met Dan and Jon back at the hotel and walked to the Always Café. They have a nice selection of food and of drinks. The best part of the meal was dessert – I ordered a banana split that had three scoops of ice cream, whipped cream and a chocolate wafer.

The Always Cafe

Ritchie and a beer girl. We've seen these girls in various bars - they dress up in short skirts and tall boots and promote their brand of beer. Most of the American guys are quite a bit larger than the Chinese girls....

Ritchie thought it was funny that Jon was still working.

Jon and I - check out the new pearls!

(photos courtesy of Ritchie Hart - thanks!)

Thursday

This morning the China sales team had a meeting. Angel and Zhou Lin Lin, two saleswomen based in Beijing, were here for it. Jon was at the office all day.

I had to have a computer guy here at the hotel come up and help get the internet working. You’d think a former EIS person could do it, but he had to reset the username and password for the room. I got most of my Dak email and was able to update my blog.

Sai and I went to a Japanese restaurant for lunch and had sushi. She had to get her repaired IPod and showed me a huge electronics store. Best Buy was nearby but we didn’t go there.

It was Zhou Lin Lin’s birthday and Dan promised to take her out for supper, so we all went to a Chinese place. They like really hot food so ordered quite a bit of that. It was pretty funny watching them eat the chili peppers and get all red. I did try some spicy stuff but didn’t really like it. They ordered plenty of non-spicy dishes for me though.

The restaurant looked out over about 12 LED boards made by Samsung (I think.) The Dak people grumbled the whole meal about how bad they looked and how hard it was to compete in China because price is so important. Millions of dollars in projects are going up right now and we don’t have the sales force to even find out about all of the projects. Hopefully that will change soon.

Dan also had promised Zhou Lin Lin a spa night. We went to the Spa de Regent again, but this time all of the girls had facials and just Jon had a massage.

Wednesday - Hangzhou

This morning Dan, Jon and I boarded the train to Hangzhou. The south railway station is extremely modern – very clean, spacious, and beautiful. It cost 44 RMB for a ticket for a two-hour train ride. Of course everything but the numbers are in Chinese, but we managed to figure out that we were on car 1, seats 54, 55 and 56. We thought that car one should be at the front of the train, as we passed 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2. At car 2, we were told that car 1 was between 8 and 9 though. Lesson learned – just show someone your ticket right away.

The train was not as modern as the station. It had two levels and every seat was full. There was this curtain by me that had mildew or dust or something that I was allergic to in it. I didn’t want to breathe. You see people wearing surgical masks around occasionally. I was told it was to help filter the pollution, or to prevent them from spreading their cold. I wished I had one then. In the US you would get hundreds of stares, but here it is fairly common.

In Hangzhou, we took a taxi into town. Grace sold her first large video board there, and it was being fired up. Once in the taxi, Dan called Grace and had her tell the driver (in Chinese) where to go. This also is very common, among Chinese as well as foreigners. All businesses have a map to their location on their business card or any other printed material.

We met Pete Johnson, Stephanie, Grace, Gary Gregg (US tech), Larry (Chinese project manager), and William (Chinese tech) there. The sign was almost totally up – two blocks of modules were out, but William replaced a power supply and fixed some wires and it was totally up and running. We only have one standard animation for China – it is the Chinese flag rippling. It looks good but we just need to have more variety.

The display is on a building still under construction. It will be an entertainment complex, with discos and KTV (karaoke). It is owned by a very important man, Mr. Lu (I think). He actually saw our displays in Macau and sought Daktronics out because he was impressed with them. We are also proposing a ProAd display for the other side, so a couple hours were spent discussing this proposal, pricing, etc. Mr. Lu met us at the hotel in the afternoon. We sat in booths looking directly at the display and discussed the possibilities for it, along with content creation. He did not speak any English so Grace translated everything. There are actually two other owners, who came later, but he is the decision maker.
Mr. Lu owns several restaurants throughout the city. He took us to one near the hotel. It had a waterfall flowing down two stories of smooth rock, with a glass staircase going upstairs. We were shown to a private room. There were a couple of special dishes that would cost hundreds of dollars back home. One was abalone, and the other was some type of mollusk that have to be alive until the chef cut it up, minutes before it was served. Another interesting dish was whole smelt fried. It was hard to get the meat without getting bones using chopsticks. Many of the dishes with fish have the entire fish including head and tail.

We also drank several bottles of sweet, warm wine. It was used for toasting with the miniature wine glasses. I learned there is a certain way you must toast with important people. The non-important person must always keep their glass under the important person’s glass as they toast. So, when Mr. Lu toasted Dan, they clinked their glasses together, Dan’s under Mr. Lu’s. Mr. Lu then made his lower, then Dan did, etc. Basically, the important person is lowering the glass trying to say they are not important, but the other person insists that they are.

The only time Mr. Lu wasn’t the highest glass was when he got up from his seat and toasted Gary Gregg. He said Gary was very important and he must be very smart (referring to him helping put the display up.) Mr. Lu’s driver then took us to the train station.

The 8:30 train was sold out, and the next one was at 10:00. A group of people with red shirts said, oh, the busses are this way. They led us to a group of mini-vans! We said no way and started to leave. They started bargaining with us, and we said we’d pay 400 yuan for a ride to Shanghai if they had a big van. They showed us, but wouldn’t give us the price we wanted.

So we went back to the ticket counter and discovered only hard seats were left on the late train. These people kept trying to bargain with us and get us to take their transportation. We said we’d only take a real bus.

Somehow they managed to find a real bus. We agreed to the ride for 60 yuan each and left at 9:10. It was a charter bus that probably took a group of tourists from Shanghai to Hangzhou, and the driver was going to make a few bucks on his way back to Shanghai. Dan said the vans they were trying to give rides in were probably company vans and they were basically stealing from their employers.

Photos from dinner Tuesday

Emily, Maggie and Sai

Jon eats the duck head - not only fish are served with the heads here.

Judy, Dan and Ning

Tuesday

Jon and Dan went on a business call together. The hired driver got them lost so they were delayed in getting there. They sent the car back for Sai, Maggie (the HR/Office assistant here) and I to go look at furniture for our apartment. Yes, we have decided to move here. Maggie translated prices and such all day for us. She is so cute – she giggles frequently and covers her mouth while doing it. That is quite common among the Chinese women. She and Sai LOVE to shop. It was a lot of fun. We had lunch at Papa John’s. It is the most popular pizza place here. KFC is the most popular fast food, followed by McDonald’s.

Furniture here ranges from cheap to outrageous, just like anywhere else. I didn’t find anything that was really soft – most of it was modern and hard cushions to sit on. We did find a couple Slumberlands and a Serta dealer, so we will be able to get a soft mattress. I saw a couple of western recliners and couches, and they were about what you’d pay in the US. Everything else was about half of that.

Sai bought a huge hand-made vase. It was priced at 830 RMB and she got it for 400 RMB ($50). You have to bargain and walk away a few times and usually they will follow and barter more. Even meals are negotiable – Grace (Dak Shanghai saleswomen) won’t let up if she thinks she is not getting a fair price. When we buy furniture, we will pick it out first and then let Ning or another Chinese person go bargain for it later. The assumption is that all foreigners are rich and we will definitely get ripped off.

I got my nails done again – they glued on acrylic nails, painted them pink and then painted three tiny flowers on each nail, with glitter for a center. It was 50 RMB ($6.50).

The three of us met Dan, Jon, Ning, Judy and two guys from Dak Canada (Ritchie and Gislain) at Lu Lu Restaurant. It was another huge meal! I don’t believe I explained how the meals are served. In the middle of the table is a huge round piece of glass on a turntable. The dishes are set, one by one as they are ready, on the glass and people turn it slowly throughout the meal so that every is able to sample every dish. With the ten of us, probably 20 to 25 dishes were served. One course is always soup, although it is hard to count courses since the food just keeps coming and is not taken away until the dish is empty.

Dan bought a bottle of Maltese, which is traditional liquor that is quite strong. It is poured into a decanter, which is used to fill what look like tiny wine glasses. You drink them like shots. Our group managed to finish off the whole bottle, although I didn’t try it.

After that we went to the Blue Frog for a couple drinks. It was a very modern bar, although it was very smoky. 80% of the men in China smoke, and China consumes one-third of the cigarettes produced world-wide. People smoke everywhere. In one of Jon’s sales meetings, the guy chain-smoked in a conference room. The lobby of every building has people smoking… really, anywhere it is permissible, it seems. The Dak office is non-smoking though.

Monday - At the Dak Office

The hotel serves a “help yourself” breakfast, so we this morning we went to that before going to the office. The variety of things was very interesting – fries, soups, dumplings, eggs, potatoes and no juice. I pulled the tap for milk and was surprised to find that it was hot.

Stephanie Bohlen, the Asia-Pacific region project manager, stepped into the elevator as we were going down. Daktronics is such a huge company we don’t see many of the employees, so it was a real surprise having her step onto the same elevator in Shanghai. She’d gotten in last night.

It is raining today, so getting a cab wasn’t easy. Dan rode the subway to our intersection where there were more cabs. While we were waiting, I saw an interesting mix of old and new. A city worker was dressed in bright orange and sweeping the sidewalk. Her broom was made of a few branches, complete with leaves.

At the office we were introduced to many of the employees. 27 people now work there full-time. There is no way I’m going to remember most of them. We saw the plant and heard about the plans for expansion when other people moved out of the building. We saw all of the offices upstairs too. The building is freezing – in the largest room where most of the cubicles were there were two heaters. There is no central heat, which is normal for Shanghai.

When it was lunchtime, everyone put on their coats and went to the lunchroom. It isn’t much like the new lunchroom we have at corporate. Of course, instead of silverware they have chopsticks. No huge refrigerators and lines of microwaves, no vending machines. They did have one microwave and a mini-fridge in the break room though. The personnel is probably less than 1% of what Brookings has, so it’s not really fair to compare the two though. No heat there either – hence the reason everyone put on their coats. Chinese food had been ordered in. It was quite good and I handled my chopsticks well. (Sometimes I’m good with them, sometimes not so great.

Jon is out on a couple sales calls with Jason and Grace, two of the salespeople here. Dan, Abe and I met and discussed what role I could fill in the office.

The internet here is terrible. About 20 times slower than dial-up, I’d say. I know it has something to do with the earthquake in Taiwan, but normally it isn’t much better they say. I managed to get through my Dak email but it was incredibly painful and took the whole morning. All I really did was delete all of the stuff I didn’t need and read about 10 of the rest. I cannot imagine trying to do what I do at the NOC here. We are constantly remotely accessing displays and FTPing things to them. That would be virtually impossible here without some major changes in connectivity.

They have an ayi here. It means “auntie” and refers to the woman who cleans for you. She is very nice and gets coffee and tea for everyone, besides cleaning everything daily. Most foreigners here have an ayi. We heard that it was about $80 per month for half days, five days a week. (I have no idea how much she gets paid though.) She also does the Dak apartment (where Abe lives now.) He said that when he was sick she brought him soup, cooked for him and lectured him in Chinese about how to stay healthy (at least that’s what he thinks she was saying.)

There are two bathrooms that we have, but the Western toilets are on the first floor on the other side of the plant. The second floor, where the offices are, only have the squat toilets, which are basically a porcelain hole in the floor. They will be replaced by western ones as soon as the security doors are in place.

The plant workers are day laborers who are uneducated Chinese, and they didn’t know how to use the western toilets. Some stood on the seat, men used the urinals for defecation, some urinated in the shower… basically created a total disgusting disaster. They had to train everyone how to use the toilets correctly. I can’t imagine how many other unexpected things come up when you are doing business in a developing country.

At about 6:00, Dan, Jon, Stephanie, Ning, Abe (Keyframe creative), Judy and I met Sai at a new Thai restaurant, Baan Thai. It was really nice and had a beautiful outdoor courtyard in the back. I’m excited to go back when it’s spring. Sai ordered several different dishes for us – it was about a six course meal, including ice cream and fried bananas at the end. I almost died because I accidentally ate a chili pepper and I can’t handle hot stuff at all. My mouth kept burning, no matter how much I drank, until Judy got some ice cream for me.

After supper we all went home – it was pretty funny trying to hail four cabs at the same time. The stars aligned and we all managed to jump in one and head in different directions.

Sunday in Shanghai

We slept in until about 9:30. Dan had to get Lisa (his 14-year-old daughter) a new cell phone, so didn’t pick us up until about noon. We met Sai and Sally (Dan’s oldest daughter) at a new restaurant called California 101. It is a Japanese restaurant. It had about 10 different buffet lines, with mostly seafood on them, such as many types of sushi, California rolls, whole crabs, and king crab. They also had a grill so they’d cook whatever you wanted. I tried two things I didn’t like: stomach lining and bone marrow in a gel. They were both very chewy with and odd taste. There were two stations full of gelato, a chocolate foundation, and many little bite-size desserts such as cheesecake and tiramisu. At the drink station, along with pop and juice, they had beer on tap and bottles of wine and champagne. Even Lisa had a glass of wine and of champagne. (There is no legal drinking age here.) All of this for about $15 each. The whole place was gorgeous, with black leather seats, glass tables, and lavender sheers draped from the ceiling.

Sally has been talking Chinese lessons here, for four hours every day. She is really good. She wants to come back to teach English after she graduates from college. I would really like to learn the language. It is certainly not like Europe, where everyone speaks some English.

After lunch, we walked around this shopping complex a bit. Sai showed us the grocery store and started telling us where to buy certain things at. They had some interesting items, such as a whole pig’s face smoked. It looked smashed, but everything, including the eyeballs, was still there. I took a photo of Dan holding it up.

We walked around more shops in the subway station. Jon and Dan went back to their apartment while Sai and I got our nails done. I had asked to get them filled, but this didn’t come across as they didn’t speak any English. I pointed a lot to try to explain and they said they could do it. I sat down and she started putting stuff on my nails and wrapping them in tin foil. Then we realized she was taking them off! I wasn’t too happy about that but it was too late. So now I have a manicure instead of acrylic nails. My real nails are so weak – they really need new fake ones.

This took so much longer than planned that we missed part of looking at apartments. Amanda, the manager of the apartment complex that Dan, Sai and Ning (Chinese engineer) live in, showed us several different apartments. The complex has a pool, a gym and a restaurant too. It is very nice.

After having tea at their apartment, they decided we needed to go to the spa. Spas are very big here. We went to Sai’s favorite one, Spa de Regent. The entrance was very impressive. Over half the room was a pond with lilies in it! Two wooden brings crossed the pond. When we walked up the stairs to go to the massage room, red tea lights were burning on both sides of each stair.

After we were finished, we went to a restaurant/bar called YeeHaws. It was a piece of Texas in Shanghai, complete with country music, and billed as such.

Saturday - Arrival in Shanghai

Friday morning we left the airport at 10:15 CST. We arrived in Shanghai Saturday at 3:00 PM. The flight wasn’t actually too bad; it didn’t seem as long as it really was. Dan and Sai picked us up. We drove back into town, which seemed like a long drive. Only Chinese can drive in China, so Dak has a taxi company that they use frequently. No one in their right mind would drive here; it seems like all of the signs and road markings are merely suggestions.

We got dropped off at our hotel and got settled in and showered. The hotel room is fine; but the bed seems like it’s just a box spring and they forgot the mattress. We were told all of the beds were this hard.

Dan and Sai took us to a nice Chinese restaurant a few blocks down from our hotel. In the Chinese fashion, we ordered many small dishes and shared everything. The food was very good. The dumplings were probably my favorite. Then we went to Maloney’s, an American pub that they hadn’t been too before. It was a bit loud and we decided to go to another place, which the Always café. I started nodding off at the table, so everyone finished their drink and we went back to the hotel.

Perhaps last post for a while...

We aren't sure just how much internet access we'll have in Shanghai. The Dak office is still crippled with no internet from the earthquake in Tawian. We'll see when we get there.

Our plan was late in taking off in Sioux Falls because of weather delays in Chicago. (it was drizzling a bit.) Typical of Chicago - nothing ever goes smoothly it seems!! The flight we got out on was actually the 2:30 flight and we left at 7:30 or so.

Jon is a platinum member of the Priority Club (Holiday Inn) and gets free upgrades now. The lady at the desk asked if it would be OK to upgrade us to a suite. It's pretty cool - double doors to get in and a sitting area with a glass coffee table, red couch and 2 other chairs. I'm pretty sure it is the biggest hotel room I have stayed in.

Well - post some comments!

Fernholz card

I made this card last night. Jenny wanted a card that was pretty generic, as she wasn't sure when she was going to get a chance to send them out. She said, "really just pick anything" so it will be a total surprise when she gets them in the mail. I had fun with photoshop filters for the background.

Quilt

My aunt Nancy is a quilter. She has embarked on a project to make a quilt for all of her nieces and nephews. I just got mine - it is beautiful! Very bright and so unique - the whole thing is borders around more borders. Mom even had this made into a card.

Wright photos

I finished the Wright family photos today. Here is their album. It's the first one to be only made with Gallery and is only on the new "view my photos" page.

Sorry if some of my old links do not work. I have tried to make sure they all do, but I am sure I missed some. Please email me if you can't view a slideshow anymore, or else try looking at http://www.emilyminor.com/gallery/main.php.

The Big News....

.... is that Jon and I are going to Shanghai, China in a week.

We leave about 6 PM on Thursday. We'll arrive in Shanghai at 3 PM the next day, and it is 14 hours ahead of Central Time. Trying to figure out actual travel time has thoroughly confused me. United.com says that the flight from Chicago to Shanghai is 14 hours and 35 minutes. Definitely the longest flight I've been on.

Daktronics has an office there, and Jon's old boss Dan Chase is the manager. He has been living there for a year with his family. He's been recruiting Jon to come over and manage/build the Chinese sales team. I'd be able to work for Daktronics too. (or maybe I'd be a women of leisure and spend all of my time wandering the city taking photos. Probably not though.) We're going to go to decide if we want to do it for sure. We'd be there for 2 years.

If it's a go, we'll sell our house, put things in storage and go! How exciting.

New Year's Eve

Me, Megan, Elly and Sara after a rousing game of ping pong in Sara's garage. Lots of our college friends got together to celebrate another year at Pete and Sara's house.