Eventful weekend in Shanghai

My weekends are never boring, there are always lots of things to do or events to attend. This weekend for example started off early with a cocktail reception for the Dutch Design Exhibition. Spil Games was one of the sponsors/exhibitors so I went to reception, which started at 4 PM already. A bit too early for my liking because we normally work until 6:30 or 7 PM (also on Friday), but I guess they copied the Dutch habit of going home early on Friday :-).

I walked around the Dutch Design exhibition area, had some mineral water (I stopped drinking alcohol completely because of the upcoming 100 km Trailwalker race), talked to a lot of people, listened to some of the speeches and then went home. On the way home I bought a small TV for my gym, so I could finally watch movies while running long distances on the treadmill.

At home I installed the TV and connected it to an old DVD player and it worked fine. To test it I did a 30-minute work-out, which went quite well considering the fact that I had already done a 1-hour run in the morning. Afterward I played with Scott until my wife came home from work, we had dinner together and then I read magazines and newspapers until I could not open my eyes anymore.
Saturday morning we got up early because Scott’s hair dresser came to our house. He comes regularly and when he was younger Scott just slept through most of his hair cut. But now that he is a bit older he started to have a mind of his own and was not happy at all with someone trying to cut his hair. He got very upset, crying, screaming and kicking his feet in anger. Our nanny had a hard time to keep his head still. I felt bad for him, but what can you do? The good thing was that right after Mr. Hairdresser left Scott fell asleep (he was exhausted) and after he woke up an hour later he seemed to have forgotten all about what had happened.

Because the weather was nice I decided to go for a run in the early afternoon. I first ran to the new metro line 9, which is only a 10-minute run from my house, and from there took the metro to Sheshan. I could have driven there myself or taken a taxi, but the metro is much faster. I got off one stop before Sheshan and ran from there to the hill. I started with a one-hour run in the countryside around the hill and was surprised to see how many new compounds are being built there. Luckily the roads were not very busy and it was a pleasant run. It was still quite warm though (about 28 degrees) so I was glad I took enough sports drink and water with me in my backpack. After the first hour I ran up and down the 100 meter high hill a couple of times and then did some more jogging around Sheshan. After 3 hours I took the metro back, a nice work-out for a Saturday afternoon and a good training for the 100K race. Not as good as off-road mountain training in Hong Kong, but a good substitute.

Saturday night I went to the JZ Club, because I had heard that jazz singer Laura Fygi would do a surprise performance with Rolf Becker’s JZ Big Band. As usual, the jazz club was completely full already when I arrived around 10:30 PM, but Rolf had kept a seat for me at the table next to the stage. I met a lot of people there and had a great time. Laura gave a great performance, she knows how to make a great show when she is on stage. She sang some famous songs (Fly me to the Moon for example, but this time in French) and some songs from her latest album Rendez-Vous, and the audience loved them all. Great to see her on the small stage of my favorite jazz club (Laura said it was the smallest stage she had ever been on!).

Sunday I went among others to the Formula One race on the Shanghai Circuit. I was a bit early so also watched the GP2 Asia race and the Porsche Carrera Cup, but of course the F1 was the most impressive. It was my fourth year in a row to see the F1 monsters race and it does not get boring. Too bad that the Chinese audiences are not so interested anymore. The organization changed a lot of grandstands into advertising signs for the Expo 2010 and a lot of the unsold seats were given to high school classes (that all had to leave halfway during the race). The company that had invited me got me a small video device that allowed me to watch the race on a small screen (with comments on a special headphone). You could change the camera feed yourself, for example by choosing the on-board camera of your favorite driver. Quite a cool gadget, and it made it a lot easier to follow the race.

I ended the day at Abbey Road where I met with Gary for a drink. We had not seen eachother for a few weeks because we both had been traveling and it was good to catch up. When I got back home Scott woke up, so I held him for a while and fed him a bottle before putting him to sleep again. I then followed his example and had an early night as well. Once again an eventful weekend in Shanghai!