Car service

For dinner tonight, I went to a really lovely restaurant with two former co-workers who are also in town for The Nonprofit's conference. We asked our hotel to order us up a taxi and learned that it would be 15-20 minutes. After approximately 45 minutes, we were still waiting and the poor hotel boy (a Cornell student) kept calling the taxi company with no luck.

Finally, he offered to drive us to the resaurant in the hotel's big white van. It was very kind of him and it was the sort of above-and-beyond service that you don't really experience much these days.

After our meal, we were in the same predicament. Our restaurant couldn't get through to the taxi dispatcher and a waitress, a very kind, soft-spoken woman from Beijing, offered to drive us back to the hotel on her way home. We were the last people in the restaurant and it was clear they wanted us out, but again, such a phenomenally kind gesture!

And thank goodness for these acts of kindness because otherwise, we probably would have had to settle for the hotel restaurant!