Checking in while on the road

Hello! The Kat says hi on the road.

I'm currently in Szechuan on a company trip. We're going to host a lunch banquet for the students of a school that our company built for them after the huge earthquake in 2008. This is my second trip here, may there be many more to come. Nothing beats a company-funded trip and you don't have to pay a dime... Except for the extra food and transport you take, if you decide to go out.

We arrived yesterday, with some delay on the flight... Some places that we had to fly through had terrible weather and the plane had to wait, it was quite a painful ride... Or a painful wait. We were all boarded the plane and had to wait for a little over an hour before the plane actually took off... Then why let us board the plane?

First thing we did upon arrival, was dinner.... It was red, it was spicy, but by some weird way, I managed to eat that stuff. Apparently I can eat hot spicy food! But I'm not going to push it.

After dinner, we were brought to this Kuan and Zhai Alley (寬窄巷子) I found it pretty quaint and cute. They had a whole area built in the old Chinese style but had modern shops. Bars, restaurants, many things.

Nice place.

We didn't stay too late, got back to the hotel by 10:30pm. Coooooooooollllllll and niiiiiiiice....

It's a nice short holiday.

Today we have some serious work, it's the lunch banquet today but first! they are taking us to the museum!

Byyyeeee

Szechuan Day 2

It was another long day today :-)

It was fun while it lasted.

And this, what I currently see on the screen of my iPad, is déjà Vu. I've seen myself typing this before.

I digress....

So we went to the Szechuan Museum this morning. It wasn't particularly marvelous, but it was a fun enough place.

This was one of my favorite exhibits. Silk screen embroidery, two sided, each side with a different animal.

It was also here that I got the sudden inspiration and discovered how to use the camera... It was a stupid knob I put in the wrong position... Now my camera is super easy to use :-)

I personally think the logo of the Szechuan museum is very beautiful and incorporates the actual Chinese characters 四川.

I did see some interesting earrings but I didn't care for actually buying something today.

We were sent back to the hotel for our lunch banquet...

We were made to put on this head-thing... The funny thing is even the guys had to put this on...

Putting this behind the cut

( group selfie?  )

I was seated between some pretty funny kids!

I even found the little girl who was very friendly with me 2 years ago!

She practically didn't change. At all.

After the whole thing was done, we were back on the road!

And I saw a spider-panda...

This part of the trip wasn't too interesting as it was just shops shops and shops... Of international brands... Isetan, uniqlo, muji, McDonald's, Starbucks, all stuff I'm used to seeing back home... So it wasn't much fun for me.

Then we were taken to our dinner location. Looks nice, but the food wasn't too grand. It was mainly some medicinal hot pot... It tasted not unlike the Malaysian Bah-Ku-té.

And then it was back to the hotel. I'm doing a lot of wrong stuff here; the chips are pretty good here and I'm eating too much of the stuff...

Tomorrow, we don't have to wear that company t-shirt anymore... and we might go see pandas! Yay!