[My Weekender] with Coley Dale

Whiskey, cigars, and Kris Kross - Jan 22, 10

Coley Dale is a Senior Manager at Ctrip, running their marketing and business development for the English site, as well as co-founder of the custom clothing site Dressmonkey.com.

I wish that my weekends were more provocative. If you had talked to me a year and a half ago, maybe they would have been filled with "Lounge 18" this, and "sleep all day Sunday" that. Yes, you're in store for a "nice little Sunday" type Weekender, maybe I'll throw in the words "Bed Bath and Beyond" or the phrase "I don't know if we'll have enough time" in for good measure. Deal.

As with most weekends, this one started on a Thursday. I went to the Shelter where I found myself actually not taking air breaks now that they've renovated. I've always loved the Shelter, and now my lungs do too. I was here to see a friend, Jenn Wong spin some 90's hits. I make a point to listen to Kris Kross at least 3 times a year -- thankfully I've already filled 2/3 of my quota for 2010. Thanks Wongton!

My Westy Hugo woke me up early this morning, and I got up to take him on his morning walk. Hopefully the ayi will give him a bath later, as anyone who has a white dog in this city can attest, it gets repetitive to answer when people say, 'I thought Westies were supposed to be white, not gray.'

I then sidled into Ctrip, studied the morning's reports, and then headed off to Bukhara for their filling and reasonable lunch set -- 80 kuai for enough Northern Indian food to supply a Bollywood film crew's catering budget for a trilogy. I just got back from a crazy wedding in Mumbai, and have been hankering for some Paneer to relive the madness. I then return to my desk where I've posted some pictures of a recent trip to Harbin on Chinatravel.net. I've got some great photos of the Harbin Ice Festival and the Siberian Tiger Park for anyone that want to check those out. Finally, I'll do some work and check out our new hotel booking pages which just went live this week.

Tonight I'll head to the Shanghai Sharks Basketball game (I haven't been to one of these in 5 years), where I'll pray that no one finds out that I actually have no idea what a triple-double is. Maybe I'll head to Constellation 2 for a whiskey and a cigar. I have recently decided to force myself to like whiskey, call it approaching my 30's, or the admission that I can't order chocolate martinis anymore without arousing serious questions to my heterosexuality.

Saturday you can probably find me in one of my many brunch go-tos. Now that Bonito is closed (sob), I'll probably head to Azul or Enoteca and waste half the day eating too much. I've heard rumblings of my girlfriend's architecture crew invading Cashbox later that night for baijiu fueled karaoke madness, I'll probably get a pre-emptive foot massage to soften the blow.

Sunday I'll be going pants shopping (on Dressmonkey.com of course). My current arsenal of pants is vastly depleted since two tragic incidents recently took the life from roughly half of my pants rotation:

1) While at home in Vermont for Thanksgiving, I introduced a pair of already tight jeans to the dryer, the outcome: one of my employees saying, "maybe you should re-think wearing those to work" as I got up to draw a flow chart on a white board.

2) While at Bukhara just a few hours ago, I was re-enacting an experience I had in Japan two years ago, showing the table how a naked 70 year old man was sitting (showing off a bit too much) at a hot spring in Nagano I heard the tear we all dread. Now I have to sit through a (thankfully good) quarterly evaluation hoping my boss doesn't ask me to do jumping jacks.

Sunday evening will find me sitting through a nice home cooked meal with the GF, actually looking forward to work on Monday.

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