Andi  in basic dress pants and fancy top, at the entrance of the Museum of Flight.

That's me, by the front desk, in Lululemon, disguised as evening wear (haha!)

Andi, driving the plane, she's a natural.

So sad, I don't look nearly as bada** as Andi, mostly, I look confused.

She's flying this one.

Watch out Ice Man!

Andi and I try not to look at the airplane cookies while our picture is taken.

Next, the ladies all want to pose with Mike.

Ginger wears heels!  And a halter!

Mike compliments any wardrobe

Its Mike, tastefully dressed, accessorized with a Gin and Tonic.

Charming couple.  Tux and a classy grey ensemble.  Que Bueno.

The Museum of Flight was featuring an exhibit of DaVinci.

Andi, Mike and Ginger enjoy the DaVinci exhibits

This exhibit inspired me!  The brilliance of DaVinci.

Dan Perkins and lovely wife.

Da Vinci's Boat-Foot man.

Dancing!

The "Dates" Stephanie, me and Mike + Ginger.

Afterward we go to the "Manray" bar.  It was kinda trippy!

I spotted a product planner friend (in the background), he was slightly embarassed.

This is a blog post from Sachin -- a lead PM in China.  I think I'm going to love China.

Quote

Landlord

In hindsight, we made a mistake. I say this because hindsight is perfect. When we started looking for an apartment, we had a certain budget in mind. We absolutely loved the complex but this was the only unit at that time which fit in our budget. The finish work wasn’t that great, but we thought we could live with it because we loved all the amenities around us.

Things quickly turned sour. Our landlord (actually landlady) is a completely dishonest, un-ethical b****. At this point we wish we could just break the lease and move to another apartment.

We got a glimpse of her personality when we were ready to move into the apartment and found that it hadn’t been cleaned. There was a thick layer of dust on all the floors. She made up a story about having the floors being waxed and that the person she asked to clean didn’t do a very good job. I could see from her face that she seemed like a conniving person; after staying here for a few months, I know that there was no cleaning done. It took us a couple of weeks to clean the apartment and meanwhile we just waded in dust.  I lost complete trust in her and decided that I was going to make life miserable for her.

When we moved in, the washers were both broken – one of the washers constantly flooded the balcony and the other one didn’t fill with water. The appliances were clearly old – she had appropriated them either  from a used appliance store or from her own house. It took weeks of going back and forth before we had both appliances fixed.

The other thing that we had a hard time getting used to was the smell in the bathrooms. It seems like the concept of pea-traps doesn’t exist in China. The drain covers sit directly on top of the drain holes which means that that the sewer smell just permeates the whole bathroom. I didn’t realize this initially – and to this day I haven’t figured out why other people’s bathrooms don’t stink as much as ours. We went back and forth for weeks on this issue – the landlord bought some cheap drain covers and asked us to fill the sides of the drain covers with water to keep the smell out; the nerve of her. What did she think: that we had nothing better to do than keeping on filling the drain covers with water?

After our sea shipment arrived, we started using the dishwasher – and the same old problem. The dishwasher leaked and it took a couple of weeks to get it repaired.

Although we had thought that we could live with the lousy finish work, it has started bothering me. When we were in Shanghai, the hotel was very nice. The construction was high quality and the bathroom felt nice and clean. It felt really sad to me that going “home” wasn’t something I was looking forward to because that bathroom stank, was dirty and generally felt un-tidy.

The thing that broke the camel’s back was the DVD player. Our lease agreement stated that the landlord was supposed to provide us with a DVD player – the DVD player that I saw when I moved in looked like it was 20 years old (even though DVD technology isn’t that old). She had clearly gone to great lengths to secure the oldest of old appliances. When we started using the DVD player, we found that it wouldn’t accept all DVD’s (perfectly legitimate ones that we had brought with us from the US). We requested that she change the DVD player – she refused, at first. On being threatened as well as being quoted the lease agreement, she finally bought us a new DVD player.

The irony of the situation was that buying us a new DVD player didn’t cost her much. When I first saw the old DVD player, I assumed that DVD players in this country were not as modern and expensive. A visit to a local Walmart quickly dispelled that notion – one could buy really sleek DVD players ( all DVD players were manufactured in China anyway and one could get one with the form factor of a Sony Viao laptop) for about 400 RMB ($50). Considering we were paying $3400 towards rent, this seemed like so petty and such a small thing to bicker over.

Things came to a boil when winter came and the pipes to the washers froze. The management company had warned us about this. The washers were in a semi-covered location which wasn’t heated. During winter, the temperature hadn’t crossed freezing for weeks and of course one day we found that the washers weren’t working because the water pipes were frozen.

We contacted the landlady and her response made our blood boil – she sent us a text message saying that she had anticipated the problem and that is why she had supplied us with an additional heater which we should use to heat the space. She wished us a merry Christmas and would be un-available because she was going to Taiwan for the holidays. The nerve of her.