GwaiLoDown 鬼佬向下

I’ll never understand moon cakes 我永远也不会明白月饼

Archive for category Dalian

Holiday Party

Dec 18

Posted by Gwailo in Dalian, Holidays | No Comments

Last night I attended the holiday party thrown by my business park. It was put on at a 5 star hotel, good food, free flowing wine & beer and pretty decent entertainment. I won a flashlight. Exciting, huh?

Anyway, here are a few pics of what went down. I apologize in advance for the poor quality of the images. These were taken by my cell phone in a dark room.
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Robert Frost

Dec 9

Posted by Gwailo in Dalian, Holidays | No Comments

Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Tis the season

Dec 9

Posted by Gwailo in Dalian, Holidays | No Comments

December is in full swing here.  I have already been invited to about a dozen parties/events in the next couple of weeks.  Because most of them are business related, I have to go.  But I would much rather sit at home playing on my banned (thank you Microsoft) xbox.

Let me summarize…

Dec 8

Posted by Gwailo in Dalian, Family, Guangzhou, Life in China | 1 Comment

Wow! My last ‘real’ post was back in January. Where has the time gone?

I was going to do a top 10 list of myths surrounding my disappearance, but after I got to number 4 even I thought my jokes were pretty stupid. The reason I have been silent is a combination of work, life and lazy. Not particularly in that order.

So here is what I have been up to this year in a nice, bulleted and summarized format.

  • In March of this year, I closed the doors on the business I started when I first came to China. The financial crisis made all of my clients run for the hills.
  • I spent the next several months taking a well needed rest while playing with my boys Wyatt & Cyrus.
  • I also continued my involvement with the Guangzhou chapter of the Hash House Harriers. I love that group of people and I miss the free beer. On on!
  • In June, through what can only be called “blind ass luck” I was introduced to a person who was looking for someone to run the China operations of their company. The company is a software/hardware development company and my skills pretty much matched exactly what they had been searching for.
  • After many rounds of interviews I was offered the position. The job was exactly what I wanted to do, but it did have one big down-side. I had to leave Guangzhou and move to Dalian. My wife has a great job in Guangzhou so we determined that the only thing to do was for me to move to Dalian without my family. They would follow in spring of 2010. And in the mean time I would be flying back and forth on a regular basis to see my family and every night my wife and I talk on Skype.
  • At the end of July I made the move from Guangzhou to Dalian. My loving wife visited a month later in order to help me find an apartment to live in and not get charged too much because I was a foreigner.
  • Summertime in Dalian is beautiful.
  • On October 15th we had the official grand opening of our company here. It was attended by all kinds of VIPs including the Vice Mayor of Dalian, the Irish Ambassador to China and the Irish Minister of Finance and Trade. It was also the beginning of winter in Dalian. My first real winter in over 20 years.
  • Wintertime in Dalian is cold. Very cold. Lots of wind. Cold + Wind = Sucks.
  • Fast forward to yesterday. Yesterday my wife was offered her dream job. In Wuhan. Wuhan is not near Dalian. This means my family will not be coming to Dalian. So lots more flying in my future. Time to get a frequent flyer card. It is my wife’s dream job. All I can do is support her and know that the choices we make will ultimately be best for our family.

So that is a summary of what I have been up to. Lots more details and stories to be added as time permits. Hopefully I will get around to updating a tad more often.

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