I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a nice time visiting family.  I had a chance to talk to most of the family at some time during the holiday time but not for long enough.  The holiday period in China is always a bit strange and sometimes lonely.  It just does not feel like the holiday season and really if I were disconnected from the computer and Internet world, I would have very little feeling of holiday season.  You really have to make it yourself for that feeling to be present.

Well I had the 2nd annual Sean Fannan Shanghai Christmas Party.  Although I had a great time and it was nice having so many people over, I think the first year’s party was a bit better.  I don’t really know what happened, it was probably mostly my fault, but I did not plan ahead very well.  I wanted to have a potluck dinner, which for all you non-Americans, means each person brings their own dish.  This means the host is not cooking, or is cooking as equally as anyone else.  Usually the purpose of this style of a party is two-fold.  First, the host does not have to prepare and spend countless hours cooking for a big group of people.  All of you know from last year that I had a long and tiring day cooking for over 25 people, so thats no fun (at least for me).

The second reason a potluck can be so cool and interesting (which is actually the main reason I wanted to have this kind of party) was because it creates an opportunity for a wide range of food and dishes.  I figured since I have such a large range of friends and cultures that would be represented at the party, this would be a great chance for many different types of food to be present and shared.  Well to my surprise, it was kind of a bust, and this is by no means to blame anyone else.

To make a long story short, a few people brought some good food, but for the most party, people brought snacks, food they bought at the supermarket, and basically food I eat everyday.  This is not exactly the range that I was looking for.  Actually I was pretty lucky because at the last moment before the party started, I decided to cook a lot more than I had initially anticipated and if I had not make that decision, the entire spectrum of guests would have thought the party was kind of a joke.

We played the same gift exchange game later on and then a few other games that were recommended to me (thanks Mom and DD).  The gift game worked out alright, the other two were kind of a joke.  Oh by the way, to give you a better picture of the food situation, I had imagined, as I said above, to see all these great homemade dishes.  I have friends from all parts of China, a lot of them having some specialty foods that their area of China is famous for, I have foreign friends from Germany, Brazil, parts of the US, all over the place.  Ok, so I am preparing the food I made, spaghetti, Hobo Chili (wink to Bob Fannan), a nice salad with some vinaigrette dressing, onion rings, friend zucchini, banana milkshakes and eventually some other snacks.  The first guests arrive, two of my best friends in China.  One of their hands contains the gifts which were for the gift game that was eventually played.  The other hand was holding a bag of peanuts.  This was the ‘food’ / ‘homemade delight’ that I was expecting.  A bag of peanuts!!!  (For those of you who do not know, you can buy peanuts on every street corner in China.  They are everywhere, I eat peanuts almost everyday, and they cost basically nothing!)  So after seeing this from the very first guests to arrive, I had a feeling this might have been the start of a trend that would last until the final guests of the party would arrive. (And yes, it was the correct feeling)

Ahh, so anyway, other than that, I am doing well.  I have some big projects coming up next month that I should be busy with (several projects in the +100 hour range).  I have been invited to a exhibition hosted by an IT company who has sent me several prospective workers who I interviewed.  They are having an end-of-the-year exhibition to show off the work of the graduating students.  In addition, they are holding some kind of interdisciplinary competition within the student body and they have asked me if I would like to be one of the judges.  So it should be a fun experience nonetheless and hopefully a good opportunity to speak directly with teachers, students, graduates and anyone who might help me out with finding some workers.)

Alright, I gotta close this writing.  Check out “The Lookout”, I watched it last night and I thought it was pretty good.  I found this list of the 19 movies of 2007 that bombed at the box office but maybe shouldn’t have.  My next movie is about these two guys competing to beat the Donkey Kong world record, called “The King of Kong” (I think Dad mentioned this to me at one point a while ago).

Happy Holidays everyone!