Only a few days left in Shanghai. After a quick breakfast, we went into the office to turn in our temporary badges and meet with HR to go over the procedure for signing a lease. We had a follow-up visit with our agent Jack at 1:30, so as soon as we finished at the office we had lunch at a place near the ZhangJiang subway station -- House of Flour. Pasta and paninis and cokes! The courtyard near the subway station was filled with shops and restaurants, even a Cold Stone Creamery, and with hungry engineers from all the tech companies located nearby.
We met back up with Jack at Yanlord Town, and viewed several more apartments. But none measured up to one we had seen with Jack on Wednesday, so we asked to view that one again. The landlord was there for our tour, and seemed open to all the things we asked for. So we decided to come home, write up our offer and send it out. In the meantime, we heard back from Candy, the other agent -- our second choice from Thursday had accepted our offer, so we would need to view it again on Saturday to make sure we still liked it and confirm our requirements.
Tony called from Puxi, where he had been touring places with Candy, and we decided to meet out there for dinner. Our first rush-hour, Friday afternoon metro ride from one side of the river to the other, and it was just as crazy as promised. But we found Tony with no problems. With plenty of time to kill until our dinner with Herbert and Dan (another NI engineer), we had a snack in yet another pastry shop, then did some shopping in the brand-new Marks & Spencer and wandered around Tony's new neighborhood.
Herbert had decided on a restaurant specializing in Hunan cuisine -- spicy, loaded with red peppers and cumin. We had crab, ribs, vegetables, beef, chicken, and even some of the traditional Chinese rice wine. It's a good thing that we'll be walking so much over here!
While we were there, we got a message from Candy -- our first choice had submitted a counter-offer. We countered back (text messages are very important in this process) and started to get our hopes up.
After dinner, we wandered over to the French Concession neighborhood, a very trendy area of bars, clubs, and expensive apartments set up in the old lane houses. We had drinks in a bar called Sasha's (which has a great history but unfortunately I can't link to it because I can't access Wikipedia...) before heading back to the hotel.
We're supposed to meet up with Candy again on Saturday, and we're getting anxious to get things settled.
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