A Good meal!

It's Sunday night here in Dalian. I just got back from a GREAT dinner. The plant manager Rick and his wife invited me to their place for dinner. They are staying across the street from me. They have a huge apartment at the residence inn of Shang-Ra-La hotel. Rick and Susan couldn't be nicer people. I was really grateful to be a guest. His wife made fish and shrimp. It was really good. I'm starting to eat fish, which I never use to like much. However, Dalian is a port city and fish is a big part of the menu anywhere you go.

They both have really good taste in music. I dare say their taste is almost as eclectic as mine. Rick and Susan have moved 18 times in the 32 years that he's been with Goodyear. They also own a home at Emerald Aisle in North Carolina. My family vacations there every year. So we talked for a while about the area. (Small world) They were a lot of fun to talk to because they've lived in a lot of areas. Rick took this assignment in China because they are building a new plant. He says it's an engineer's dream to start a new plant. So he's enjoying the work immensely. We talked about some of the difficulties in communicating with the Chinese. All in all a great night.

One quick funny story. I went to the local grocery store to grab a bottle of wine to bring to dinner. I knew I needed a white wine for fish, so I was looking through the wines, and tried asking a Chinese worker if she could help. I think I got her to understand that we were having fish....so I point at the wine selection and started making gestures to eat and drink and kept saying fish. Finally she goes, "Ahhhh". She grabs a bottle of some kind of white wine and gives it to me. I look at another bottle and point, she says, "No!" and keeps pointing at the bottle she has. I try to grab one other bottle and she jumps in front and yells, "No!" again.

I thought alright then, it'll be this bottle of wine!

Lesson: Don't ask the Chinese for advice, unless your sure your willing to accept the answer as final!

Good Times!