Christmas Lessons

Merry Christmas!
I hope everyone has had some great days so far and will continue to do so.
Currently I'm floored, this last week has been one huge organisation craze and the execution was far from perfect. Main reason, I think I should just blame culture differences. None the less I had fun so don't worry about that part.

Christmas dinner on the 24th, dinner in a Chinese restaurant with their menu specialty Peking Duck. The number of people that would show up kept on changing throughout the day. In the end we ended up with 23 people at the table. With a total of 10 Chinese persons that I've never met. Fortunate we got a room with space for 30 people. So that wasn't the problem. The main problem occurred when ordering the food. Apparently in Chinese culture your suppose to determine what food will be served to the tables. Meaning the guests will never see a menu and will eat what you decide. This caused for a miss understanding, because the Chinese were not aware that in Western culture you usually get a small menu choice. I apologized for the problems and thanked Gaby to help me solve this matter with the waiter.

The second part of our night we would continue in club SoHo, where I paid for 2 tables total price 2000 RMB ($300 dollar). This amount would be turned into beverages for everyone that decided to join in. Of course everyone would pay back a share... or so I thought. It turned out that half of the people that I counted on that would pay a share cancelled at the last minute. Ouch.. lesson learned. So I had quiet a loss this evening.
One other thing that I disliked was that one of the invited European guest brought 9 Chinese to claim one of the tables and drink it completely empty. With only him paying. Of course others started complaining and we were in for strike number 3 that night. After the dinner, people cancelling I now had to tell these 9 Chinese to start paying or find another place. As expected they moved and later returned without paying a single dime, *Sigh*. I didn't care that much for the money at this point since I had counted my losses already, but I did not like the fact that I and most others did not know any of these 9 people nor did they even attempt to join in.


I just let it go and instead accepted an invite of some random Chinese stranger to have a drink at their table. This really took my mind of of things and I started to enjoy the party. Apart from the problems that occurred everyone had a great night in the end so I can't really complain. I left the club at 03:15 with a massive headache and felt really tired. I guess it was just too much trouble and experience for one night. I slept at Gaby's house where I had a good rest.

The next day (25th) I had planned a small get together in the our working office to play some games. At this point I was kinda done with organizing things, mainly due to how things turned out last night.
So I told Gaby we would pick up her Christmas gift today. I had been teasing her these last day about it. Not knowing what she would get we headed out and ended up in a street full of dog stores. I told her having fun choosing. She couldn't believe it and at first refused to accept the gift because of the cost. She did want to have a look though.


After a total of 3 hours looking, walking away, thinking and coming back she finally picked a puppy. After going over some names I came up with "Dumpling" like the Chinese dumpling food. She taught it was funny and she now has a puppy called dumpling. (Who is currently sleeping on my lap as I type.)

The Christmas gift shopping took a bit longer than expected so I showed up late in the office. Finding just a few people, as expected, having a good conversation. I ran to the store to buy some drinks and food. On return we played a Chinese game called Mahjong (4 player variant). Pretty nice game and enjoyed the conversations.
For dinner the European guy from last night who brought 9 Chinese friends suggested to go to an Portuguese restaurant. I agreed, but did demand he would pay for my 3 Chinese friends this time as a small compensation of last night. I think this was the least he could do. Without too much sputter he gave in and we headed out for some delicious food. I had lasagna, didn't eat pasta for the last 4 months, it was really nice. My 3 Chinese friends really enjoyed the dinner and I was very happy they could experience the European way of eating out in a restaurant. As promised the European guy paid his share. Which I truly appreciated.

All with all Christmas was different, but fun and with a lesson well learned I'm sure things will go better in the future.