i had 2 meetings lined up for this morning, but both were delayed because there was heavy congestion on the highway between chongqing and changshou due to construction work. my first meeting was at 9:00, to discuss the annual ceremony dinner. my second meeting was at 10:30 to negotiate manhour numbers with a sub-contractor.

* negotiation meeting moved to 11:00. sub-contractor didn't understand why we needed actual man hours instead of just estimated man hours based on hourly rates multiplied by the number of days and number of workers. we told them that based on their rough estimate, the final cost would be unrealistic and astronomical.

* yuwei introduced as my cohost, we meet our 4th cohost a conceited german guy; disparity between owner workers and contracter workers; i wanted to be paired up with sarah but she's a bit pretentious with her amazingly fluent english. who really pretty though? sally, the other owner-side secretary - amazing cheekbones!

originally loren was having dinner with me and his former classmate, but his classmate couldn't make it back in town tonight, so it was just loren and me. we tried to invite xiao and liu, but they were having a special joint dinner with their family members. loren pointed at fengya but i shook my head. i felt a little bad because despite the cold war that's currently ongoing between FY and i, she still has a very good relationship with loren. but since i was treating, i had final say on who the guest list, and she would not be on it. we ended up catching a medium bus which got us back in town in about 15 minutes. behind us sat shirley and her roommate. i wanted to invite them to dinner, but thought their presence would prevent loren and i from speaking freely. we ended up going to a new lamb restaurant near where i live. inside it looked like a retrofitted KTV lounge, with winding hallways and dining rooms of varying sizes. since loren was leaving, i unburdened myself with some office gossip. people love sharing secrets with me, maybe because they feel comfortable around me, or maybe because i'm not from around here. usually i'm tight-lipped about secrets, except when i broadcast it on the blog or in the event of somebody leaving. loren also remarked how i seemed to have a good relationship with xianglian. "you need to find someone to take care of you," he said. he also added that his coworker friend in shanghai knows a lot of single ladies, so when i visit him, he'll make sure to introduce me to some of them.

* laundry followed by some ironing before calling it a night, climbing into bed to surf the web and work on the blog