Relaxed weekend

After a rather hectic work week I was totally fed up with work on Friday evening. Most of the time I really like my work, but sometimes you hit these periods that it’s a bit difficult to motivate yourself. Coincidentally, Spill Group Asia had planned a karaoke evening with the whole team, and that was a good way to unwind a bit and ‘sing’ the stress out of me. Several of our former colleagues also joined, something that would not happen quickly in Holland, and we had a nice crowd in our private karaoke room. Thijs and I made fools of ourselves of course, because we were the only ones without any singing talent, but that’s part of the fun. The best part was when we loudly sang a song, and only afterwards found out that they microphone had been turned off by one of our colleagues… Pictures of the evening can be seen here.

Saturday morning I felt a bit better, and I went through my emails. But after an hour or so I had enough of it, and decided to quit working for the weekend. Normally I spend at least several hours behind my laptop on both Saturday and Sunday, but I think I am going to change my working habits. From now on I might check my mail, but I am not going to spend much time working on weekends anymore. Just enjoy the days off, do some sports, study Chinese and spend time with my wife (and very soon with our first baby!). Let’s see how long I can keep this up.

We had a pre-natal class on Saturday, and that’s where we spent 6 (!) hours. Quite interesting though, learned lots of things about the final stage of pregnancy, the birthing procedure and about taking care of a newborn baby. I never knew that you might have to change diapers up to 12 times a day… And breastfeeding is not a 3 times per day affair, but will happen every two hours or so. Also fun to meet other couples that will give birth around the same time, and listen to their (quite similar) stories.

After pre-natal class we did some shopping in Grand Gateway, I made one business phone call (was already planned before), and then turned off my phone to watch a DVD. We started watching ‘Lust, Caution’ (Se, Jie), Ang Lee’s newest blockbuster that was released this week. But we got the censored Mainland China version, so stopped watching after about 15 minutes. We’ll watch the rest when the Hong Kong version is available in our DVD shop. We then watched the beginning of Walt Disney’s Ratatouille, before preparing some dinner. During dinner we watched the rest of the movie, which was actually quite entertaining. The story line was fun, and the animation was extremely well done.

At night I met up with Gary and Yang Lei (and later also Tudou.com colleague Michael and his wife) for a few beers in the new Blue Frog in Xujiahui (Tianyaoqiao Lu/Xingeng Lu). I did not stay too long, because I was still tired of the week, and was in bed by midnight.

On Sunday morning we slept in, had a small breakfast and then went to check out Gymboree on Huaihai Lu. After that my wife went for brunch with some INSEAD friends, and I went to Hong Kong Plaza computer mall. Did not see anything interesting, so decided to walk over to Xintiandi to have a coffee and a poached egg sandwich. And that’s where I am sitting now, outside on the terrace, watching the crowds walk by. Very relaxed. And no more emails until tomorrow!