Roots

Before you all stop reading because you think I’m going to start quoting Numbers and describe in detail on how I came in to being. To quote my friend Lorraine – “Be foh real”… and lets remember my obcessive personality and think the obvious – yes, it’s another blog about my hair.

Since my 35th birthday has come and gone and we are on the brink of 2008, my question this is year is: When do you make the decision to “age gracefully?” All I can tell you is that I ain’t there yet. My past trip to Austin took me to my favorite hairdresser – who not only is a size two, but gorgeous! She will be forty next year and she is planning on getting a boob job. Say what? Why would you do something like that? – this is of course coming from me as she is dying my hair back to the color I originally had in high school.

Red heads – their personality only BEGINS with the hair color – but that is another story. I’ve had grey hair all of my life, and when I was 12, I remember a hairdresser tell me with certainty that by the time I’m 35, I’d be grey. Gasp! Although it wasn’t quite true, I do seem to be developing a poltergeist type grey streak down right side of my bangs. The thing with the hair color is that red hair slowly gets lighter as we age. Well, 1. it is not going so slowly anymore and 2. Why did I spend all that money years ago making my hair blonder? Did I think that would make me look smarter? He he, had to throw a little blond joke in there.

So throwing caution to the wind, I decided to really go a dark auburn and now that it has been only 6 weeks, I realize my error – ROOTS! This means I can either travel back to the US with greater frequency or really more practically – I have to find a hair dresser in Shanghai. I’ve gotten a hair cut, but coloring brings it to the next level.

Well in any event, I had another fabby birthday with friends and my lovely husband. I have to give him credit – he actually surprised me this year with my gift – a strand of saltwater pearls…nothing to compete with Barbara Bush, but beautiful just the same. Thank you schmoopy!

Happy Holidays from Shanghai...again

Can't believe it is coming up on our second Christmas here in the PRC. We once again went out to get another fake Christmas tree - last year's got stuck on the back patio and was covered with at least 1 inch of soot so I decided it would not make the move to the new place. So this year we went back to my boring, uh, "classic" tree - white lights a bunch of red ornaments and one blue and white porcelain one from our recent trip to The Netherlands... Yup, we are pretty boring around here.

So Will is now off to Seoul, South Korea this morning and I am getting ready for some more excitement at work this week. So the latest exciting news is that the week after I returned from my US/Europe extravaganza there was a company wide email announcement that our COO (aka the guy who hired me) is resigning to move onto a bigger position with a hospital system in Dubai. Very exciting for him, but leaves me without a fearless leader. Now he could have been the best used car salesman out there, but lets face it - he was an expat and he understood what the expats wanted - the administration that remains, still seems to not have its act together. My immediate boss is none other than a former colonel in the Singaporean army who likes nothing better than to run the clinic staff like a bunch of soldiers and has no customer service skills whatsoever. And LASTLY - returning back to the infamous Dr X - he is resigning completely and moving back to the US.

So how many 'signs' does Tracy need to say this is a good time to back off from some of the duties at this crazy place. So far that is what I have done. The sad thing is that the less often I run into my current "colonel," the better I enjoy my job. I seem to be hearing voices calling me back to the world of self-employment, Chinese lessons and tai tai lunches, but for now I am using my improving patience to take a wait and see approach. We should be finding out this week who is taking over the COO role and what 2008 has in store for the life and times of Shanghai General Hospital.