Last Day at the Office

I woke up at 8, showered and got my stuff together. Went downstairs to have breakfast.

I called Alex to find out where she was so I could say goodbye -- she was to leave while I was at work.

To my surprise, Alex was not asleep. In fact, she was outside the hostel, sitting on a stoop with Max, one of the twins, and Chris from CT.

The two (Chris had not) had stayed up all night, as today they were both leaving. They were sipping Mountain Dew and Red Bull to stay awake. We talked for a bit and I had breakfast.

At 9:40 I had to leave, and so I said my goodbyes to Alex, the third of our original group of five Americans to leave. I hope we meet again. She has my number and such so it shouldn't be too difficult (she goes to school in Boston, so not too far from home either).

Now it's just Cole and me. And then there were two.

I got to work a tad past ten for my last day. There was no morning work (I had two memorandums to edit but they were on others' desks and I couldn't get to work on them immediately, so I waited), so I finalized my itinerary for the UAE and Belgium.

Ian, my mentor on this internship, took Evonne and I out to lunch to a cafe down the street for my last meal. I had a duck salad and chicken breast. Evonne naively ordered a T-bone steak, which was four times more food than she could eat - it was real American portions.

The meal was good and the company was too. We walked back to the office and went our separate ways.

I got a call from Joel in Hong Kong at 2:15, who told me no more work was needed on the project I've been doing for him. Done.

Wrapped up all my work in the afternoon. I gave Mark my key card, sent an office-wide email out, thanking them for a great 6 weeks, got listed on the PH alumni list, and made the rounds to say goodbye to everyone I worked with. It was very final.

I left late, 7:30 or so. The office was throwing me a karaoke party after work and it wouldn't have made sense to go back to Sanlitun just to turn around and go to Karaoke.

Got to Karaoke at PartyWorld at 8 with Della; we were shown to the wrong room at first, but we found the others. The only people who had showed showed were Emma, Shuang, Shirley, and a few others; a few of the secrataries, and Emma and Shirley's husbands. Later we were joined by Baker and Ethan and the other two interns, as well as Evonne.

The company had spent a lot of money on me, seeing as this was a going away party for me; we had 1000 yuan to spend on food, plus the cost of the room. We sang song after song until 10:30, when our room rental expired.

Emma gave me a ride home after KTV, and I got to the hostel a little after 11. I got changed quickly, collected Cole from his room, and went out to meet Veronica, Lixuan, Shanshan, and Milton, and several others from their program, at Kokomo in Sanlitun Village (they had contacted me, begging me to come out).

We met up with them on the rooftop bar, and Veronica starting giving me shots of Malibu Coconut. I took 4 in a few minutes to catch up to everyone else.

After Kokomo we went to the Door, next to Smuggler's (which was packed), and someone passed around more shots; this time of Skyy vodka. I took two. Then I got a draft beer. Downed it. I bought Milton and myself glasses of Absinth. Downed that (though a little more slowly than the other ones). I had been drinking for an hour.

1 hour in, with 6 shots of hard liquor and 2 shots of absinth and a beer in me, I was feeling buzzed. We all went back to Kokomo and I danced with Shanshan on the roof for a while.

After, we spent some time on the couch in the corner before we called it a night. I said my solemn goodbyes to Milton and Lixuan -- hope I'll see them again, they're good guys.

Shanshan and Veronica and I walked out of the bar street and passed the Creperie. It's a French Crepe place which I've been dying to try. The three of us sat around and enjoyed mediocre (by French standards) but delicious crepes for a while, fleshing out business ideas and talking about our plans tomorrow for Veronica and my last day.

I left then, a little after the crepe place closed at 2, and got a rickshaw back. I got the price to 10元 but he begged for more when I got back to the hostel. I didn't give it to him.

I got in around 2:30, and fell asleep around 3:30.