Kijiji - final thoughts

This morning I went through my morning routine at Kijiji for one of the last times:

I arrive at the office, absolutely covered in sweat and dripping wet. (This has happened 17 of the 19 days – I took a taxi successfully once and unsuccessfully yesterday to escape the heat.) I drop my bag off at my desk and immediately head for the bathroom to try to clean up and dry off. I then search around in vain for a cool area, but wind up back at my desk still sweating. Then the battle begins. I can’t do anything productive until I have some coffee. But I am way too hot to have coffee. So I sit and stare at all the emails I got from the previous day in the US until I am a reasonable temperature.


Last night I took some people from work out to Bubba’s Texas Bar-B-Q to celebrate the 4th of July. Bubba’s was an amazingly authentic BBQ place. If I was in Houston, I would think it was only good, but it was probably better than any BBQ I had in New York or California. And since it was in Shanghai it made it more amazing. We had Budweiser, margaritas (not really American, but still better than green tea and whiskey), pulled pork sandwiches, beef brisket, yellow bbq sauce, red (vinegar) bbq sauce, pork ribs, hush puppies, French fries, corn bread, baked beans, and cole slaw.

And, like a typical American restaurant on the 4th of July, the service was really slow, and the place was packed with loud and obnoxious Americans (at one point, a version of the Star Spangled Banner broke out that was painful even to my tone-deaf ears). Still it was a lot of fun, good food, and I think everyone here enjoyed trying an American restaurant that served something other than just hamburgers and fried chicken.

And after dinner we promptly returned to China and went to get foot massages.