October 18 – Yet another day at the factory, the day went by much faster because I got good feed back from the home office on a number of issues and there was a batch of machines here that needed to be inspected prior to shipping.

There are about 25-30 people here at the factory, almost all of whom are quite young. Only one of these is female, a young girl who has some administrative duties in the office here. She is an interesting girl to watch, she seems quite spunky. Every now and then I will hear her screaming out at some of her male co workers downstairs, my office being on the upper floor. I think they are continually teasing her about something but she will have nothing of it.

Every morning I bring in to the office crew the left over fruit from my hotel room, along with a few pastries off the breakfast buffet, and occasionally I drop in a roll of toilet paper from the hotel room also. I leave them with her and she doles them out as she sees fit. One day this week she tried to pay me back at lunch by bringing in a burger from the local Macdonalds, saying that I must miss my western food. It was a sweet thing to do, but I had already had my lunch (yuk) and the burger was not that good anyway.

Last week in Shanghai I had found one of my favorite Chinese food items, a little round egg custard pie, but I had not been able to find any here in Nan Chow. Well someone mentioned that they were available at the KFC, so off I went to dinner there. Lo and behold I found them but the quality was not good, they had some raisins mixed in and weren’t very tasty. But the chicken finger wrap was surprisingly good, quite spicy.

After my walk I took a shower and headed downstairs to the hotel’s karaoke room. I peaked in but decided not to bother, too noisy for me. So, just another nite with my favorite beta fish I guess.

October 19 – Still another day at the factory, every morning the factory manager stops for his breakfast, which he buys from a street vendor. It is a large diameter pastry, sort of like a crepe or a fajita shell, which is filled with some spices and a sauce, perhaps a peanut sauce. I am sure I will get up the courage soon to skip part of my western style breakfast and try it.