Going Back to Normal Life, Slowly

Fan and I went to Sichuan Garden in Xujiahui for dinner today. It is a decent restaurant with reasonable price. It is located on the Gongchen Road, just behind the Grant Gateway.

Many people there

I still remember when we had dinner half an month ago at the same time in this restaurant, it is half empty. We two even occupied a large table near the door. There are still many empty tables.

Today, the news is good news and bad news. The bad news, people begin to line up to wait for an empty table. It is bad actually since ever Friday day, it is often hard to find a place in good restaurant. It seems the good time has past and we need to struggle to find a place to eat later. The good news is, obviously, the impact of SARS on hositality industry become weaker. People begin to go out of the door and rush to restaurant again.

The even better thing I see is, with the returning of customers, the restaurant strengthened the precaution measurements - the air condition is stopped, instead, it uses the fresh air. Waiters and waitress are still wearing masks.

I can feel the city is waking up and the prosperity and the energy of the city is coming back slowly.

The SARS champions

Opening my TV and I saw a series of SARS related champions. One is about the confidence of foreign investments. About 6 CEOs of major companies in Shanghai, such as Siemens, are repeating the same sentence in Chinese “I love Shanghai. I believe in Shanghai”. It is very impressive.

Shanghai government is always doing good job of buiding its image among citizens. It is seldom seen in cities in China.

WHO lifted travel warning to Hongkong and Guangdong

Effective today, the World Health Organization (WHO) is removing its recommendation that people should postpone all but essential travel to Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Guangdong province, China.

Source: WHO website

New SARS cases

Yesterday, all the TV station in Shanghai printed rotating subtitle to their program. It reads:

All passengers taking training K48 (Guangzhou to Shanghai) on May 20 are required to register at local CDC. All passengers in the No. 2 train are quired to take quarantine. Tel: 62095600、62750270

It is because the new SARS case is confirmed to be a train attendant on tha train.

Also in these days

There are some interesting things these days. I am tracking all these events everyday.

CCTV broadcast China expedition team atop Everest

It was an exciting moment when I see the real time broadcast of Everest from CCTV-1 the day before yesterday. It is so beautiful, man! The camera sent back the picture form the top of Everest to my home - it is really an exciting moment. The hundreds of snow covered mountains are below the feet of the camera man.

“Everest, Mount,” Microsoft?Encarta?Online Encyclopedia 2003

http://encarta.msn.com ?1997-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Office website and news

There is even a flash showing the routines of the Everest.