ASR 20th Anniversary

The reason I was in Shenzhen was that our 20 year annual party was kept there. It was a great show and a lot of fun. Had the chance to meet all my colleagues around the whole world. Now I have a 1 meter pile of business cards and no idea who was who :D

Everyone's name on the board

One of the fun things in the evening was the talent show. For every second you perform you get 10 kuai. The judges will ring a bell when they think the performance starts to suck and the audience will also join in if they think that the judges should cut the show. Longest performance was around 2 minutes or so which is way over 100 Euros :)

There was a golf match earlier in the day and Ville manage to win almost all prizes in it so we had a nice stack of trophies to carry home, gogo Finland!

Shenzhen - OCT East Vacation Resort

Shenzhen - The first city in mainland China who started Chinas trade with the rest of the world. We have a 3 day company annual party here to celebrate our 20th anniversary! This whole place is just a massive entertainment area, 3 huge golf courses, theme-park, restaurants, apartments, gardens own train track etc etc. They tried to build a whole town that looks exactly like one in Switzerland. The houses (at least on the outside) looks totally European. The hotel here is also 5 star all the way and looks amazing from the inside.

Swiss copy

One of the golf courses

View from one of the mountains

Up by cable-carts

The theme park offers a little of everything from 3D movies to crazy rides on the top of a hill to strange fish and jelly fish. Little bit of everything in this massive area!

This theme-park has an European "theme" but somehow Nasa slipped in

Wildride on the top of a mountain

3D

Soak em and get wet, water cannons for everyone

Take care!

Jelly fish

Each over 1 meter long, should have put my hand next to it for illustration

Hong Kong - Shenzhen

If you wanna cross the Chinese boarder from Hong Kong to Shenzhen it's easiest done with the subway. Just take the light blue line up to a stop called La Wu. From there you walk a little but throughout the customs and thats about it, takes about 1h. Expect a lot of people here because this place if very popular, mainland Chinese coming to buy Gucci, LV, Armani etc bags in HK because the tax s a loooooot lower than mainland. Last time I came here this place was totally packed because of a Chinese national holiday.

A lot of barbed wire...the boarded between China Mainland and Hong Kong.

HK - LKF

The bar area where the night never ends. If you drink you come here, kinda like Beijing's Sanlitun or Shanghai's Xintiandi.

Bars bars bars

On the way home I saw some teenagers doing breakdancing here, 2 am

Shanghai - Hong Kong

Going to visit our head office in Hong Kong a few days...Took the Maglev train to the airport this time, it's really fast! 8 minutes and your there! Maybe because it goes 301km/h! Cost 50 RMB to take it plus 50 RMB to get to it, taking a cab all the way is much slower and over 200 RMB so you save time and money.

Nice seats, lot of space

Speed!

When arriving at the airport they kindly informed me that "You are here" in the middle of the hall. Thank You!

Staying at James place here, the morning fish market downstairs is awesome!

Like in Japan they also have a lot of vending machines full of comic characters, anime stuff and all kinds of weird things.

Our office is located on the HOng Kong Island in Lam Tin. I think I have one of the best office views ever! 11th floor with ocean...well check out for yourself!

Summers coming!

Weather wise this week has been great! I keep getting messages from Finland that it's more than -20 degrees while here the whole week has been sunny and the quicksilver is shoving well above 10! Next week I'll start driving the scooter to work! Just check the view from the office in this weather! Can clearly see Jin Mao and World Finance Tower now!

My co-workers took me out for lunch in a place where they serve some kind of fish hot pot but the soup is added later on, not the other way around like usually. After you've eaten all the fish from the form soup is added in and then you can start boiling other things so it get a "fishy" flavor. One thing about this place was funny, this young kid who said he was 18 came and did a "Noodle Dance". I should have taken a video about it but maybe the pictures can express at least a little of it. He was pulling the noodles out by dancing, jumping and whipping the dough all around. Price for the whole thing 7 persons? Just above 2 Euros each.

Also went to a Airplane company for a business meeting. Their office was super nice with an awesome view but the windows were...eeeer, a LITTLE dirty.

Tomorrow I'll fly to Hong Kong for business, 20 degrees and good times ahead!

Japanese Weekend

The Finnish Business Council aka FBC arranges meetings in Shanghai as well so I went there to meet some new people and friends. The name of this saturdays meeting was "Young Talent", much more people then I expected showed up and it was nice to see new faces. There wasn't much program, just free talk and happy hour drinks 2-for-1.

After the FBC meeting I went to meet Mårten who I haven't seen since 2008 when studying in SH. We went to have a late dinner at this super amazing exclusive restaurant called Shintori. The food was amazing and the interior design of that place was something I've never seen before. We got an own room at that place, walls were all grey concrete/wooden and the place was rather dark and it feels like going back in time when coming here. Service was very very excellent! 2 persons food set with drinks about 140 euros...

Sashimi, sushi, all kinds of fish, raw meat, sake etc

Now a very good picture but looked something like this

Open kitchen

And some pictures from home! I got palm trees on my backyard! I always dreamt of living in a place with palm trees when I was a kid because if you have them it has to be a warm place and I HATE winters..

7th floor is mine

I got the most strangest message yesterday. If anybody feels like getting some free money please assist poor miss Bella here :D

Sent Date:	Feb 19, 2011, 5:25 pm
Subject:	Miss. Bella Duncan.
Message:	Hello Good Day My Dear, With Respect, Permit me to inform you of my desire of going into business relationship with you. I know that this mail may come to you as a surprise, since we have not known or written before. After you receive this mail kindly contact me on my private Email. (belladuncanbella100@yahoo.com) for the full details of the transfer. I am Miss. Bella Duncan, the only Daughter of the late Duncan Gavin, my father was a gold and cocoa merchant based in Accra, Ghana and Abidjan (Ivory Coast) and He was poisoned to death by his business associates on one of their business trips recently. Before his death, he called me on his bedside and confided in me that he has the sum of $7.500, 000USD deposited in one of the prime bank here in Abidjan Ivory coast, that he used my name being the only Daughter as the next of kin in deposited fund. Please my dear contact me on my private email for the full information and my picture and the deposited slip and other documents concerning the transfer. I will need your assistance as follows; 1) To assist me in retrieving this money from the bank. 2) To serve as the guardian of this fund. 3) To make arrangement for me to come over to your country to further my education and to secure a residential permit in your country. Moreover, I am willing to offer you 15% of the total sum as compensation for your effort/input after the successful transfer of this fund to your nominated account overseas. Reply to my private e-mail box. (belladuncanbella100@yahoo.com) Awaiting your urgent reply. Regards, Miss. Bella Duncan.

How to kill time

Best day of the week is here again! And what better way to spend it than going to buy 20 Xbox games on your lunch-break? To all of you who buy games back home, I paid €0.50/each. Gamers will probably recognize some of them :)

Not much up here today, just learning new things at work and outside is cold and misty but tomorrow will be lots of good parties and some reunions with people I haven't met for years here...

Lantern Festival and Mini dumplings

It's been cold and rainy the last few days and the mist is so think you can hardly see anything. Took some pictures from my office of the Jin Mao tower and World Finance Tower (570 m tall) but most of them are in mist...On sunny days I love! the view from the office. Next week should be sunny and 10-15 degrees. Hope you guys are fine back home even though it's -20...I had my share of cold up in Manzhouli -30!

Misty...

Today is the official "end of spring festival day" called LANTERN FESTIVAL. One part of the Lantern Festival is MORE firecrackers, fireworks and other stuff you can blow up. The whole evening has sounded like a war-zone with stuff blowing up in every corner. People were setting off a lot of things on my yard, just look at the ground, full of empty firecracker packages, as if the air quality wasn't bad already?

Look at all the empty boxes!!

The second part of the Lantern Festivalare the "Yuanxiao=Round evening" which are small dumpling balls with various stuff in them. The outside is made out of rice and the filling varies, there are the sweet ones and the salty ones. The Yuanxiao are made differently depending on which part of China you are (fried, boiled etc) in and WHY are they round? The roundness symbolizes family unity, happiness and completeness, how sweet isn't that!

Shanghai Säbä

Floorball! It's been a loooong time since I played Säbä last time, high school or something? Problem is that I suck, seriously suck in all kinds of team games (football, ice hockey, floor ball, basketball etc) but it's fun to run around and get sweaty. In elementary school and middle school I was always the last chosen into the teams because, well my skillz were not very mad at all (very much the opposite). The cool guys were the one's who could play, I was NOT one of them...But here I am now in Shanghai realizing that I still can't play but it was nice to meet new people and the pizza and beer afterwards was great. Thanks for the game "Shanghai Hakkapeliitta", next week again, maybe I'll get the hang of it someday...

Springa springa!!