#210 Kids at Office

Kathleen and the kids met me at work for our Thursday afternoon departure to Guilin. Here is a picture of the kids in my cube at the new Cat Suzhou office. The four Cazzato kids drew some attention at the office - you can see them saying hello to my colleague Rico and returning from a candy run at Bill's desk.

#209 SIP 15 Yr Anniv

There was an amazing fireworks display last night over Jinji Lake. It seems that the Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore, Wong Kan Seng is visiting Suzhou this week. The Chinese Vice-Premier Wang Qishan is also in town for the ceremonies. I heard as well that one of the visiting dignataries from Singapore is a founding father of the original collaboration between Singapore and China that formed the Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP). SIP is the new city adjacent to the old town of Suzhou. We live in SIP and our new Caterpillar factory is located in SIP.

This year is the 15th anniversary of the founding of SIP. I can only imagine the Singaporeans' amazement if they is visiting this town for the first time since the project was started. As I understand it, when SIP was launched 15 years ago, this whole area was farmland and swamps. Now it is a huge new city with two big lakes, hundreds of high rises, and thousands of factories. It is an incredible example of economic development and urban planning.

#208 Blog Blocked

Here is an interesting development. It seems that the Cazzato Family Blog has been blocked in China. I can access the blog through the Cat VPN but not directly from my home computer. From home I get the error message above. I heard from friend and neighbor Michael that he too cannot see his own blog.

Hopefully no one has found offense in any of the postings on this blog. Michael heard that thousands of blogs have been blocked this month for some unknown reason. Wikipedia has a funny reference to Chinese administration of the internet as the "Great Firewall of China".

#207 Shan Tang Jie

Today was a warm and sunny Sunday in Suzhou and we did some exploring along Shan Tang Jie, an ancient walking street in the northwest of the Suzhou old town. Everywhere you turn on Shan Tang Jie, there are interesting things to see ranging from unidentifiable street food, a five foot wide tailor shop, to vendors sound asleep at their tables. There are also many lovely canal scenes like those shown above.

We held the kids off from lunch by stopping at the bread and bun vendor. You can see Kathleen buying a bag full of carbs for less than a dollar. We finally found a restaurant we were all willing to try. You can see Marco sampling a bit of a mystery meat ball.

For eating their share of Chinese food, each kid earned the privlege of a treat from the sticky, sugar, sweet vendor. This guy has a hot vat full of liquified brown sugar that he attaches decoratively to a stick. It looked awful, and it made a mess but also made the kids quite happy.

Next we wandered into a shop selling live Suzhou oysters. You buy one and then crack open to havest the pearls. Our $4 creature had over a dozen small pearls inside. It was fascinating.

This coming week we have two days off from work and Kathleen has planned a trip to Guilin and Yangshou, a city and town in southeast China in an area known for its picturesque landscape and scenic river. My impression is that many of the National Geographic pictures of China are taken in this region with the steep, fijord-like hills popping out of the watery landscape. It is a two hour plane ride from Shanghai and Kathleen has set us up in some rustic Chinese lodging. Look for a blog posting from Yangshou by this time next week.

#204 New Office

On Monday we moved into the brand new office space at the new Caterpillar factory. This office space is beautiful. There are many windows, many conference rooms, and a large spacious cafeteria (no food service yet). You can see my colleagues Catherine, Billy, and Frank above unpacking and enjoying their new digs. I have not quite gotten my boxes unpacked yet, but I am enjoying my new cubicle.

An interesting issue upon moving into a new building is that most Chinese people are very concerned about breathing paint fumes and other volatiles in a newly renovated space. I guess they don't appreciate the "new car smell" like we Americans do. The third picture above is in the newly painted stairwell near my desk. Pineapple is considered effective in absorbing unwanted paint odors. After three days, the stairwell has a pineapplely-paint smell now that is quite unique and distinctive.

It is great to be out of the "mamahuhu" temporary office and into the professional new space that is attached to the factory.

#203 Boys at Tailor

The boys went back to the You Ya tailor on Sunday and picked up their suits. You can see they make quite a dashing pair. Two custom made suits for a 6 and 8 year boy - about $50 each. Not too bad, but probably still grossly overpriced because we are foreigners.

I myself was motivated to try some custom made clothing. Above you can see me getting fitted, though at a different tailor from the boys. This is the Gu tailor shop - one known as a better "finish tailor", whatever that means. I am conducting an experiment and ordered one item each of dress pants, khaki pants, khaki shorts, dress shirt, and casual shirt. This is an audition for the tailor. I want to see how he does on fit, cost, and quality, then I will decide whether to have more items made.

This is all very interesting to me, of course, because my father is a tailor and my parents owned a tailor shop as their livelihood for most of my life. I spent many Saturdays in the shop with my father waiting on customers, drinking coffee, and learning (a little bit) about how to sew. Dad never made custom clothing, but as I recall, people easily spent $50 just to have a suit altered to fit.

More update on the Suzhou tailor chronicles in a couple of weeks.

#201 Mother's Day

Sunday was Mothers' Day. It is not a China holiday, but still a Cazzato family tradition. Kathleen's stated requirements for Mothers' Day were to get a cup of coffee delivered, to cook no meals, and to wash no dishes. I think her day met all of these requirements, partially thanks to her enthusiastic and loving children above.

Juliana made the coffee, Marco assisted with the scrambled eggs and toast, and Maria led the creation of the paper flowers for the new Chinese vase I bought last week on bar street. Joseph spent Mother's day morning with his surrogate family and his ubiquitous buddy Owen.

#200 Suzhou Soccer

Check it out - this is the 200th blog entry for the Cazzato Family Blog. Another milestone for our life in China.

I took a few good pictures of the kids playing soccer on Saturday with the Suzhou Sports Club. After a bit of arm twisting by Kathleen and I, all four of them are playing soccer and enjoying the exercise and competition. Marco and Maria appeared particularly engaged in the action photos above.

Funniest thing, of course, is Maria's outfit. She prefers to wear dresses and actually does not own any pants or shorts, so for soccer she is wearing a polka dot pink dress underneath her football jersey.

This week I had the opportunity to fill in as coach when there was no one to lead Juliana's team. Unfortunately we suffered a crushing 5-1 defeat at the hands of my friend Robert's team. Our team seemed equally capable and we even had three Korean kids prodigies on the team. It seemed however, each time we got the ball into the other teams backfield, that we had no one playing offense.

Blame it on the coach (me) who was challenged to figure out even the basic rule. When do you throw-in versus having a corner kick. We didn't have soccer when I was a kid !

#199 K's 1st 39th Bday

Kathleen had a big Cinco de Mayo bash today along with her pal Wendy who shares the same birthday. Kathleen, the senior member of the pair, is celebrating her 39th, a milestone before the milestone. Of course, she is reassured to know that as long as I'm around, she will not be the first to next big one.

The party was held at Zapata's, a favorite Mexican restaurant in SIP that sells overpriced buckets of Corona to overpaid expats. We met there after work and the women hosted a crowd of nearly 50 people. You can see Kathleen above with some of her tai tai pals - Marilyn from New York, Paige from New Orleans, and Jeannette from Chicago. Paige and Marilyn were looking for some exposure on the Cazzato Blog, so here they are !

In another first today, our friend Rich got his Chinese drivers license. He was as excited as the day he turned 16. He is enjoying the freedom to go where he wants without arranging first with a driver. We China expats have all learned that having a "chauffeur" is not as glamorous as it sounds. On the other hand we are quite spoiled compared to the countless folks here who only have a scooter, bicycle, or public tranport to get around. Nonetheless, several of us marvelled at the convenience of bumming a ride home tonight with Rich.

#198 No Kid Monday

Today is International Labor Day and a national holiday in China. Caterpillar Suzhou was closed on Friday and Monday but the kids only had Friday off. Kathleen and I made plans to go to the Suzhou Museum, an activity that we thought the kids would be happy to skip.

It turns out that the museum is closed every Monday so we had to go to Plan B. It was a beautiful day in Suzhou, so we opted to take a walk down the ancient street of Ping Jiang Lu. We saw many interesting residences, buisiness, and art galleries. There is even a Youth Hostel on Ping Jiang Lu. We enjoyed a drink at one of the many outdoor cafes alongside the canal.

Kathleen had to leave early to attend the inaugural meeting of the new Girl Scout troop in SIP. I continued on with the sightseeing to visit the "Twin Pagodas" and then took a walk through Suzhou University.

The University was quite interesting to see. It certainly had the initial feel of a traditional U.S. university campus, but with some notable differences. There were turn of the century buildings as well as 60s era architecture. They have quadrangles, outdoor recreation areas, and some scenic garden areas. Everything, however, is a bit rough around the edges. The lawns are weed-choked, the paint is peeling, and some windows are broken. None of the basketball hoops have nets and, like everywhere in China, there is lots of laundry hanging out - especially on a sunny day like today.

I posted a few more pictures at snapfish.

#197 Tailor & Stationer

Sunday errands took us to Guan Qian Jie, also known as "Walking Street" in downtown Suzhou. First task was to visit the You Ya Tailor to pick up Joseph and Marco's new custom made suits. Joseph's first communion is coming up in early June and he needs to look good for his first body of Christ - hence the new suit. Marco is tagging along, also getting a new suit though he has no occasion at the moment to need it.

There were a couple of snafus with the custom suits. The first of which was that they forgot to make the pants ! Small detail, but they suggested we return after lunch and they would get the pants made while we were gone. We had lunch at TGI Friday's and returned to the You Ya to find that Joseph's pants were way too big and Marco's pants were way too small. Maybe they mixed up the sizes, but the story will have to continue on another day as we said we would return next Sunday to pick up the reworked pants.

Next stop was the stationery store where Kathleen needed to pick up art supplies for the kids and for the first communion class. The stationery store is a very small, third rate version of a Michael's craft store and a Staples office supply store. And believe it of not, the clerk actually uses an abacus to work out the sales total. You can see Kathleen checking out and Marco getting an abacus lesson from one of the sales clerks.

#196 Maria's Birthday

The event she has been talking about for 11 months arrived this week - Maria's birthday. She had four friends over to the house for a butterfly-themed birthday party. Kathleen organized some coloring, craftmaking, butterfly dancing, and mystery gift activities. By all accounts, it was a raving success.

The boys and I were asked to vacate the premises as we were not invited to the party. We picked up Joseph's friend Owen and went to the IMAX theater for a 3D showing of "Deep Sea". Although the narration was completely in Chinese, the 3D visuals were quite good and the boys seemed well entertained.