I can't believe that I'm halfway through week three already.  Time is just flying by!

To slow things down a little, Bruce (the other Scottish intern) and I decided to head out of Shanghai for the weekend.  We went to the neighbouring city of Hangzhou on the banks of the West Lakes.  I thought it was going to be a small town on the shore of a lake with a few temples and caves to visit.  Turns out its a bustling city, (although smaller than Shanghai with a population of only 6.8 million) and one of the premier tourist attractions in China!  We caught the train there on Saturday morning and checked into a hotel on the outskirts of the city, within walking distance of the lake.  The hotel was very nice and the first time I've ever stayed in a room without a window (single rooms were built in the middle of the building).  We headed out straight away to walk to the lake but soon had to come back to douse ourselves liberally in mosquito repellant!  We continued onto Flower Harbour to see the Golden Karp, passing by a secluded temple on the way.  Having seen very few people so far and with our hotel being off the main route, we were lulled into a false sense of security and totally unprepared for the masses of people waiting for us at the Harobour.  There were hundreds of people, almost as many as the fish, crowded onto the viewing platform to feed the fish.  Luckily it was made of stone and proved to be quite sturdy!  I also now have an understanding of what it's like to have to deal with paperazzi!  All of the tourists were Chinese and for some we were the first foreigners they'd ever seen.  Almost everyone stared and we posed for loads of photos (Bruce more than me as he's 6"3' and fair).  There were also a few school groups who were eager to try out their English on us.  After we finally managed to make it through the Harbour and out onto the main boat deck it started to rain, and neither of us had remembered an umbrella (although we did have suntan lotion!).  Within minutes, even though we were huddled under some trees, we were soaked and the pathways resembled fast flowing streams.  We bought some umbrellas from a man cycling past on a bike and continued on to Leifeng Pagoda.  Unfortunately by this time the Pagoda was near closing so we decided to head back to the hotel, dry off and head into the city for the evening.

The evening was fantastic!  Thanks to the help of a tourist from Singapore who spoke fluent English.  We'd encountered one of the drawbacks of staying in a small, quietier hotel, the receptionist spoke very little English, about the same as our Chinese!   We'd managed to ask her to call a taxi for us but had no luck in asking for recommendations of where to go.  Luckily our guardian angel stepped in and told us about the night market and the 'food' street that ran parallel.  She even spoke to our taxi driver so he knew where to drop us off.  We headed for dinner first before exploring the night market.  We randomly picked a restaurant out of the many and then tried to choose some food.  Most Chinese restaurants have photos in the menus, which are incredibly helpful, as the English translations of some of the dish names have very little to do with what's in the dish, for example "rising phoenix in amber sunshine" was a whole duck in an orange coloured sauce!  We finally decided to try some seafood (seeing as we were on the water) and went with prawns in a spicy oil and bacon and eel soup with bamboo shoots.  The eel was actually very nice, once you got over the fact that it was on the bone, had skin and was in large sections that still looked like they were swimming in the soup!  The night market was amazing!  It was a huge, long street, crammed full with shops, food carts, market stalls, craftsmen and even sideshow games.  We saw people painting intricate pictures on the insides of glass bottles (with a very long, thin, brush), making spun sugar swans, creating 3 inch busts of people on the street, dressed as ancient Chinese warriors and even a flicker show!  We stayed until it started to close at 11pm before buying a coconut to drink and taking a taxi back to the hotel.

On Sunday we headed back to Leifeng Pagoda.  We had seen it dominating the landscape and were expecting an ancient building, full of history.  Instead, once we had bought our tickets and walked through the entrance plaza (with its obligatory gift shop), we discovered a newly rennovated pagoda, complete with an escalator to take you up the steps leading to the front door!  So newly rennovated, in fact, that workers were still hard at work on the scaffolding standing either side of the front entrance.  Inside was a similar tale with a lift to transport you to the top.  After looking at the ruins of the original Pagoda on the ground level, we opted for the old fashioned method of climbing the stairs, and were then able to stop on each of the four levels to look at the amazingly intricate woodcarvings,  [They told the legend of White Snake, an immortal who dreams of being human, flees to earth disguised as a beautiful woman, falls in love with a human man, is betrayed to the man by a false monk, then rejected by the man, so returns to the immortal plane, heartbroken.], and paintings.  At the top I discovered that the lake was much larger than I had thought with ten islets and several boat docks and harbours. Once we'd descended again we decided that it was too hot to do much more walking, so for the hour before we had to leave to go back to the train station, we sat in the shade, eating ice-creams and people watching.  Or rather watched people, watching us!     

At the office things are moving a little slower.  Hank finally received the required data file at the end of last week and Bruce and I were than trained on the new task we had to complete.  We were to contact the requesting agents for a sample of POs that either had no unit of goods specified (ULs) or that were editable master orders (EMOs) to ensure that the goods and services received matched the invoices and were received within the time period specified.  I was to check the UL purchase orders.  The team perform the business control checks for the whole of the Asia-Pacific area including Australia and New Zealand.  I found that I could complete this task quickly and am now just waiting on a few more email responses.  I will have to speak with David (the team leader) and request some more (and if possible more challenging) work from him. Unlike some of my fellow Saltire interns, I haven't been given a project to work on or presentation to complete, so far I have only been given tasks that would traditionally be given to an office junior (or student intern!).  I have, however, just found out that next week I'm to meet with Dan (Head of Procurement department and my telephone interviewer), whom so far I had only seen briefly when he welcomed me on my first day, so hopefully things may start to change.  In the meantime a group of us are heading to a theme park (Happy Valley) on Saturday this weekend and I'm going to visit the Expo site (about two blocks from my apartment) on Sunday.  Wish me luck for surviving the crowds!

Bye for now,

Lindsay x