The Caterpillar Suzhou factory and office has been closed on Fridays since July. We are working four 10 hour days instead of five 8's so we have every Friday off. This is a nice schedule and today was one of those quiet and relaxing Fridays.This morning at the gym, I had an appointment with the manager to discuss their opening hours. One of the iClub employees told me recently that the gym management had decided to change the opening time from 6:15 AM to 7:00 which would be too late for me to exercise before work. After a very frustrating, but very typical negotiation with a Chinese manager, I managed to get a promise that the "soft" opening time would remain at 6:15.
I spent the middle part of the day reading a Harlan Coben novel and studying Chinese. In the afternoon I had my Chinese lesson and in the evening a birthday party with the Cazzato family.
Today is actually the day after my birthday, but since we had a conflict with the work function last night, tonight was the house party. Kathleen served homemade lasagna and carrot cake with cream cheese frosting (my favorite). The kids all had handcrafted cards and gifts for me. Maria made a necklace, Joseph made a small robot, Marco gave me a Caterpillar calendar that I bought for myself earlier this year, and Juliana gave me a book of Do's and Don'ts for fathers. Photo evidence above.
All in all, it was one of my best birthdays ever.
3 comments:
Tony,
Happy Birthday!
I can't beleive how much the kids have grown since you've been in China! How are they doing with learning the language? Maybe you could post a blog on that topic?
-Jason
Jason,
What a thrill to see a note from you in the comments on the Cazzato Family Blog. I checked out your mountain bike training blog and was glad to see you are back in the saddle so-to-speak.
As far as the kids learning Chinese, there is not enough story to write a blog entry about. Maybe I'll conduct an interview with Juliana and share her views on the subject.
Happy Sailing.
Tony
Tony,
I wish I had thought of posting a comment sooner than now, to get ahold of you. What's your current email account? I got a couple interesting stories to tell you about. The one you may be most interested to hear is that I got into sailing this last month! I can't beleive I have never realized how cool of a hobby it is! I think I was hooked when I discovered the wind actually pulls you forward due the sail being an airfoil... This is sort of embarrasing to admit being a ME, but since I've never really been exposed to sailing, I'd never thought about it. Also, it's a much wilder ride than I ever imagined.
-Jason
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