Leatherish

So I ate tonight at this little Chinese place near the gate of SJTU's Pan Yu Road entrance. I go there quite often, since it's close and cheap, and the cashier lady now recognizes me and says hello. (First time, I went in about 2 weeks ago and she was kinda cold b/c I asked her what food is served there, since I don't know how to read the menu. But now since I'm a quasi-loyal customer, she's much nicer.)

Anyhow, point of the story is, that the ladies who you give your receipt to, so that they can tell the kitchen what to cook, was wearing, get this, leather pants tonight; or at least like fake-ish leather pants. Like why would an older lady who works in the back of a busy, cramped, steaming hot Chinese kitchen all day want to wear leatherish pants to work? Did she wake up this morning and be like, well hey it's Wednesday/hump-day and I wanna be kinda stylish today, maybe a modeling agency rep will walk into my neighborhood eating place and notice that I'm wearing these stylish pants? Or did she think maybe a foreign SJTU student will come eat dinner here and while waiting for his food notice that I'm wearing leatherish pants, and perhaps compliment me? Hmmm....

Fuck, I forgot to compliment her. My bad.


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McPink Dot

i think the cold weather in shanghai reminds me a lot of washington dc. and of course, when my east coast friends read this post, they'll be like "you're an idiot, dc is not even that cold." growing up in southern california, anything below 60 degrees is pretty cold. i mean, don't get me wrong, temperatures in the LA area can get below 50 or 40, but i'm just saying i get cold when it's under 60. anyhow.

the cold here is a lot like dc. its a humid kind of cold, meaning that there's always moisture in the air. and it sometimes gets really windy. you can walk around for awhile, and never warm up. it kinda sucks. the longer you walk, the colder you get. ive also started hunching b/c i put my head down when walking to avoid the wind or the rain. so that will probably shave off another few years of my life.

not much going on this weekend. bought some knockoff "jeff spicoli" vans today for 80 rmb. and finally surrendered to mcdonalds and had a fish fillet and 2 taro pies for dinner. and get this, mcdonalds even has a 24-hour delivery service! like pink dot, but its mcdonalds. or is it, mcpink dot.

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sh rox

so i went out ngiht. it was pretty fun. met up with a friend at cantina agave, and had a few beers while waiting for her. 3 coronas. the coronas out here are more watered down than back home, weird as that may be. the food was great. the had lengua just like the la taco trucks. teh nachos were enough for a large group of people. bought some dvds aftereards -- rachel getting married love anne hathaway and superbad which is a great movie to quote from -- and then went to a whiskey bar called bar constellation. had an old fasioned. for some reason, no bar out here has makers mark, which is a shame bc makers mark rules. so had it with candaian club instead. then went to laris, on the bund, for 2-for 1 martini night. had 4 martnis. they were tasty. saw someone who knew me back when i was a school board member. fuck thought i had moved halfway across the world to get away from that. dammit. she was cool, we had a good convo met her friends who were also really cool. then came home. wher eim tryping where i cant seven see straight let alone type correctly. gotta wkae up in less than 7 hours, wish me luck

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Fried Bruce

So I was walking around last night looking for a place to eat. And since I needed to buy tape at the store afterwards, I wanted to eat somewhere close by. So that's why I didn't go to my usual place, where the lady who works there, now knows that I have a Suntory beer with every meal. Anyhow.

I was trying to look for this place that my friend recommended, but it was raining and there was road construction, so I conducted a quasi-search and couldn't find the place. (Note to self: I need a really detailed street map of SH in English and a color metro map.) I thought about surrendering to McDonald's, b/c there's one attached to the store, and b/c in all honesty, their pineapple and taro pies (like the cherry and apple pies in the US) are pretty tasty. But I was on the other side of the street, and would've been a pain-in-the-ass to get to across the street. This was also where I had witnessed the scooter dude get flattened just days earlier. So yeah, fck that I ain't jaywalkin.

I had two options; go to a place called Babela's Kitchen that looked like it served ham and corn pizza or the Bruce Lee restaurant. I was in the mood for some fried chicken so I entered the dragon. har har. For some reason, I thought Bruce Lee was slangin' fried chicken. Don't ask me why, it's probably b/c I can't read Chinese.

No fried chicken, but some boring looking Chinese food, as evidenced by the picture above. That meal was 22 rmb and sucked. Fish was kinda bland. Rice was soggy. Boiled cabbage was good though. I could've gotten a better meal at the little place by my dorm, and I could get beer too!

Dammit Bruce, I thought you sold fried chicken!


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3 cards

So my wallet has just expanded in size and not b/c it's full of Mao's money. I have 3 different cards from SJTU and every card obviously has a different purpose. The card on the left is my student ID card, and really doesn't have any other purpose but to show that I'm an SJTU student. The card in the middle is my cafeteria debit card and also my library card, and it costs 20 rmb. And finally the shitty looking card is my shower card. In order to use the showers here, you need to stick that card in a small machine-like thing by the shower, then the water turns on. Of course this being China, the card also tracks how long you use the shower for. And once you run low on credits, you can recharge the card. I don't know if it costs anything to recharge, though I wouldn't be surprised if it does.

And of course, there's quite a heavy fine if you lose any of the cards listed above.

Basically, my whole point is, why don't we just have one card for everything? The student ID card serves no purpose whatsoever and could be consolidated into the food card. I mean, that's what UC Irvine had for its student ID card when I was there for undergrad. It can't be that difficult. And the shower card could be consolidated into the food card as well, you can just buy credits for everything, instead of separate credits for food and shower. And plus, the university can save money from not having the extra material costs of plastic cards, and additional labor costs.

Oh well, just thought y'all like to know...

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Empty Handed

Today I decided to head over to the Qipu Market off the Baoshan metro stop. I spoke to a few guys in my dorm that were raving about the place. How they found good quality (fake) Nike Air Force 1 shoes for 85 rmb, which is like $12 and change. How one could find sweatshirts and jackets for next to nothing. And on and on and so forth. And since I need a pair of basketball sneakers, I decided to head out there and have a look-see for myself.

On the walk over there, I saw people with bags and bags of their loot, presumably purchased from the Qipu Market. So that got my Chinese bargaining juices flowing, thinking that I might be able to buy a lot of stuff. Cue Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" song. I normally don't shop for clothes that much; back home I shop at Costco and Wal-Mart, so that's basically my fashion sense, but hey I was kinda excited b/c I might get some deals, practice my Chinese, etc etc.

So when I arrived at Qipu Market, it was a mass of humanity in every direction. I should've taken a picture, but didn't want to take out any valuables, just in case fckers scoped me out and pick-pocketed me later. Popped into the first building and walked around; all women's clothes. Shit. Popped into the building across the street, there was only one or two floors with men's clothing, which all kinda sucked and with no sizes that actually fit me. I only found one shoe store that sold really bad knock-off Jordans. Bad in both design and quality.

Basically, I thought its pretty difficult to leave Qipu Market empty-handed, but empty-handed I sure did leave.

Better luck tomorrow, I guess....

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Accidental Clairvoyancy

Literally. I met another student while helping her translate with the security guard at the front of our building. So we met up on Sunday and I took her around to some of the places that I had already been to in SH. Not that I've been to many, but definitely more than her. Just like I have the Chinese proficiency of a kindergartener, but still that's better than not speaking/comprehending the language at all.

Basically repeated Saturday but replace XTD with Nanjing Xi Lu, where I finally got my transportation card. So now I don't have to stand in the single-ticket line while pissing off everyone behind me b/c I can't find the subway station I need to go to in English. Or b/c I'm trying to shove a 1 RMB bill into the subway ticket machine (which isn't allowed).

So we were walking back to SJTU and I asked her if she would ever drive in SH. She said no b/c its not safe, and there's too many cars, etc. Then I said "well it seems like people here have their own set of traffic laws, kinda like organized chaos, but in my time here, I've never seen a traffic accident." Then literally, 2-3 seconds after I said that, we hear brakes screech and then a loud BBBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!! We look over and a taxi cab has just literally flattened a dude on a motorcycle, flipping him twice. Holy shitfuck.

My jaw dropped to the ground b/c I just got done saying that I've never seen a traffic accident in SH and that the streets seem somewhat safe, etc. I hope the guy is ok, I did see him moving his leg, so he probably will hurt for awhile, but at least he's alive. So yeah, my next post was gonna be about how all the non-Americans here have had stomach problems with the local food, but you know what, I isn't going there b/c homey don't want none of that. That accident is the first and last time I want my bad "accidental clairvoyancy" to work. Hopefully, I have enough karma points remaining for some good "accidental clairvoyancy".

Peace out, home skillets.

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Speaking of which...

Hello again. I apologize to my loyal reader(s) that I haven't blogged in awhile. First, I was out and about and all over the City. Then it got too cold and I couldn't unravel myself outta the fetal position to get to my computer and blog. So, my apologies.

So on Saturday, I walked almost 8 miles around Shanghai. "Eight mile!" as in the mobile home park where Eminem lives. Nevermind. Anyhow, that was fun. Saw lots of the City and sometimes for the second or third time. I didn't eat lunch before I left thinking that there might be some affordable street-side food I can pick up. Unfortunately, in my haste of where to go, I decided to head over to Xintiandi, which is the like the last place in Shanghai anyone would ever go to get grimy, street-side food b/c there basically isn't any.

So now my stomach is growling and the juices are starting to eat away my intestines (yeah that's basically how hungry I was) and I really don't have the bankroll to eat at one of those high-class joints in XTD. Well, I do and Lawry's looked freakin' good, but something about eating at a nice place alone (while not on business) doesn't seem quite right to me. So I gave in and surrendered to the Coffee Leaf & Tea Bean. Had an awesome egg salad sandwich and a normal coffee w/o all the other crap in it. (Or as a bastardized Borat would say "I like my coffee black not.") It was pretty good. I was also quite surprised to see a lot of Apple laptops in the Leaf & Bean, since the only Apple retail store that I know of is in Beijing.

From XTD, I walked over to People's Square, then to The Bund for a view of Pudong, as evidenced by the picture above. On the way back, I decided to walk towards Beijing Road instead of Nanjing Road b/c I took the latter over to river walkway area. Yeah bad move on my part. Common sense would tell someone not to walk down a street that was under construction and apparently at that particular moment I lacked some serious common sense. As you can see from the picture, a man (not me) is walking over some large pipes and cut-up road material; that was the "sidewalk". Fortunately, I now have a good story to share. Yay.

Quick aside, if you hear in international news soon that a Chinese American male in Shanghai dropkicked an older Japanese man out of his 2nd story dorm window b/c that motherfcker was constantly making too much noise at all hours, that might just be me. I'm gonna fckin hadooken him then dropkick his ass out the window.

THE END jk

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2 bags of Bug-liss

After I checked into my dorm room, got settled, and realized that the only thing I had to eat was the 30 Oats & Caramel Fiber One bars that I brought from the U S and A, I decided to head out to the store which is not too far away. Just across the street from the main campus entrance.

It's a grocery store on the 2nd floor and a general goods store on the 3rd floor. I needed about 30 hangers and figured it'd be at least as cheap as Wal-Mart back home, where it's $1.99 for 10 sturdy plastic hangers. Well, not to be. These hangers were like one step up from the throw-away hangers that you get back from the dry cleaners, and they were about $1.50 for 5 of them. What the fuck? Is there a metal shortage in China? Has all the metal/steel gone into new buildings and infrastructure and not enough left over to make hangers? Since I kinda need to hang my clothes, I begrudgingly purchased 20 of them. I know now for sure that this store's motto is not "save money, live better."

Then I went to go look for some push pins b/c I want to hang some shit up on my walls. Since my Chinese sucks, it was pretty difficult trying to describe what a push pin is. I think the store ladies just wanted me to shut up and go away, so they pointed in the general direction of everything. So I bought some hooks instead, not sure if those will work.

Went back down to the food level and went over to the snacks section. In Asia, there's different flavors for Ruffles and Pringles. Like steak or shrimp or seaweed, whatever. But guess what, this store also had about 10 different flavors for Bugles!! Bugles! Those Klan-hood like corn snacks. Holy shit. Or as I like to refer to them as Bug-liss. I don't know why Bug-liss don't sell better in the U S and A, but regardless of that, I picked up 2 bags of Bug-liss. One was steak flavored and the other was either seaweed or sushi flavored. They both tasted exactly the same to me.

So that was my adventure at the store. They also charged 0.30 rmb for each plastic bag, but fortunately I had brought a few recycled bags from back home so in the future, I will be rocking the Wal-Mart recyclable bags in Shanghai.

$1.46 Dinner

And no, it wasn't the Costco hot dog/soda special. I skipped lunch today b/c I had a large breakfast and b/c I'm not entirely adjusted to the time yet. So for dinner, I thought I'd go walk around to see what's nearby. After walking for about 10-15 minutes, I turned onto Leshan Road which seemed to be a local neighborhood food street with a fresh veggie/fruit market as well. There were many food options with menus all in Chinese, which I can't read any of it. They must not get too many tourists in this part of the City, which is good b/c I hate white people. Just kidding, that was a joke.

Pretty much every menu I looked at, I couldn't read. But if that was to stop me, then hell I'd starve to death within the next 3-4 days. So I popped into a small place and pointed at an XLB steam tray and someone else's bowl of noodles. This place also had a "Milk" movie poster on the wall, which was quite random. Maybe the owner is a strong supporter of gay rights, who knows. Or maybe he likes Sean Penn or thought the poster was advertising cow milk, whatever, but I digress.

I'm starting to notice this more as I get questions/comments from people around here. Most of the time, it's the usual -- where are you from, are you an overseas Chinese, wow you're tall, where are your parents from, your mandarin is pretty good (i know theyre lying), where did you learn to speak mandarin, etc. I haven't met enough expats to know this for sure, but I think 2nd generation overseas Chinese is still kind of an oddity here, especially those who are 6'3".

Anyhow, end of the meal, I paid 10 rmb for one XLB steamer (which was ok, not dintaifung quality) and one bowl of noodles. According to http://finance.yahoo.com/currency-converter?u#from=CNY;to=USD;amt=10 that would be $1.46! And now, I even found a shortcut, so I may be going there more often... woo hoo

Quick Update

Ok so I just checked again, and only one toliet in the shared bathroom is Asian squat style. The other toliet is a regular sit-down type. I feel so relieved, you have no idea.

And here I was about to go on a holier-than-thou soapbox rant about how an emerging superpower still makes its citizens shit squat-style. Ok nevermind about that.

Whew!!

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Score one for me

I've recently started thinking about the John Lennon song "Starting Over" and it very much corresponds to my life now. I'm freaking 30, and I'm living in a dorm, in China. Remember when we were in undergrad and you wonder about those creepy grad students who've been trying to get their PhD in Comparative Ancient Luxembourgian Literature for the last 12 years, and who look way too old to be a college student. Yeah, I sorta feel like that.

So today I moved into my dorm here at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. I know in previous postings, I had expressed concern about who my roommate was going to be and how I hoped he wasn't a d-bag. Well, I woke up early, checked out of my hotel, and arrived on campus at 10am. It seems like I was the only student there to check-in. Anyhow, I figured I might as well ask to see if a 1-person room was available. No harm in asking, worse they can say is no. So I axxed, and they said (in Chinese) "yes we have one single room left b/c someone cancelled. Would you like it?" And my answer was "fuck yes!" Not in such vulgar terms, but same same.

With a 2-person room, you get your own bathroom inside the room. But with a 1-person room, you have to share toliets and showers located in a separate room a few doors down from yours. Still, I think having your own room is better than sharing personal space, etc.

The room is actually pretty nice. It has internet, a desk, a bookcase, a dresser, tv, microwave, mini-fridge, and a water dispenser that I have yet to figure out. The room is on the first floor, which means I didn't have to haul my luggage up a few flights of stairs. The room door even has a small red heart sticker with 5 yellow stars on it (similar to the Chinese flag). Aww, someone loves me. I'll post some pictures of my room when I get all my shit settled.

Speaking of shit, this is the one part of the dorm experience I'm loathing. The poo toliets are Asian squat style. I don't know if I sound like a spoiled American when I say this, but I've never pooed while squatting, and have never wanted to. Frankly, I'm terrified of squatting to poo. What if I have a particularly bad bowel movement, and going in to the stall I'm just regular Shangbert, but exiting the stall I look like the young Jamal in Slumdog Millionaire running after his favorite actor while covered in... well, you get the idea. Dammit, well at least my room isn't that far. Wish me luck...


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Shanghai Subway Adventure

So today I had a couple of to-do's, one of which was to ride the subway around and figure it out. When I lived in Washington DC, I used to take the Metro quite often until I got my car out from CA. B/c of that, I base all subsequent subway rides on the DC Metro. Here are some noticeable differences.

1. Trains in Shanghai are packed, I mean seriously packed. Imagine a packed train-car in DC and then multiply that by about 2 or 3. That's Shanghai.
2. People push and shove to get on or off the train-car. Actually, I don't really mind this. Everyone seems to accept it and frankly who wants to miss their train b/c they were the last to get on and none of the passengers want to move to let that person on. Now, people in DC generally don't push or shove, and such actions would probably warrant a heated rebuke and maybe even fisticuffs.
3. The train's color corresponds to the color of the line. So if the train runs on the purple line, then there's a purple stripe on the train, yellow line = yellow train. What a concept. DC trains all look the same, except for a small electronic rectangular area on each train that tells you which line it is.
4. It's fairly inexpensive to ride the Shanghai subway. For short distances, it's about 4-5 RMB, which is less than $1. The last time I rode the DC Metro, I think the minimum price was $1.65? I forget.


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Get Lost

So originally I planned my arrival into SH a few days before moving into dorm-life, so I can buy a cell phone, walk around the Xujiahui area, and adjust to the time difference. Well, I bought my cell phone earlier this afternoon from a China Mobile store near my hotel. It's a crappy little Samsung phone, but it makes calls and receives text messages, pretty much just what I need it for.

I'm a firm believer that in order to get your bearings in a new environment, you kinda have to get lost first, so that you know where to go or not in the future. I walked around earlier and got sorta lost, as in, I didn't find the streets on the map from the hotel, but kinda still knew where I was. (In college, I worked for a food delivery service so I'm pretty freakin' good with directions. I mean, my middle name isn't Thomas Guide for nothing.) Anyways, I'm pretty sure I walked over to Xujiahui b/c I remember reading how it's in an intersection of 5 major streets. The best thing I can compare it to is Times Square. Mind you, I haven't seen enough of this City yet, to make that qualified comparison, but thus far Xujiahui reminds me of Times Square with the bright lights, big buildings, and neon. Then again, I could've been completely lost and just happened upon some busy intersection and thought it was what I thought it was. Who knows.


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Airport Observations

Well today has finally arrived. All the moving, cleaning, throwing
away stuff, packing has come to this. Sitting on the ground next to
Gate 105 at LAX, waiting to board the plane that will first take me to
Hong Kong, then off to Shanghai. First some good news, my luggage was
not overweight. I weighed them multiple times at home and I think it
came in right at 50 pounds each. Second, some not so good news. My
lower back is fcking murdering me. Not something that I want before
getting on a 15 hour, 25 minute flight. There could be many reasons
for this, but I attribute it to the fact that I'm 6'3" and nothing
(and I mean nothing) in this world is built for me. Being tall is
worse than being left-handed. 30+ years of contorting my body to fit
in cars, small desks in school, and even simple stuff like brushing my
teeth at a counter that's way too low has taken its toll. Woe is me.
Or more like woe is my back, but I digress.

Anyhow, some airport observations. First, LAX sucks. The airport is
always under construction and it will probably never finish b/c both
the City of LA and the State of CA is running huge budget deficits.
Also, they will never finish b/c constant construction means more
jobs for labor unions. Don't even get me started about the utter
insanity of labor unions. Perhaps I'll save that for another post
where I can rant and stuff. Second, I realized that I'm now leaving
the friendly confines of the United States and will probably start
running into more douchey Euros. Look, as a minority, I know what
it's like to be discriminated against, but let me tell ya, I can't
stand douchey Euros. I actually happen to like many things Euro.
Daft Punk is my favorite band/music group. They are French. The
whole crew at Ed Banger Records - Busy P, Justice, DJ Mehdi, Feadz,
Mr. Oizo, etc - are French, I think. But they are cool. But then
there are those douchey Euros. Again, that will probably be another
post when I get my first frustrating interaction with douchey Euros.

Ok well I'm gonna save my macbook battery and perhaps blog another
post while on the plane, if I can find the time between watching
movies, eating ice cream bars, and sleeping. Ciao.

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Doubt = Chicken

Thought of a few more songs for my airplane mix cd:

Leaving on a Jet Plane -- John Denver (duh, that was an obvious one)
Jet -- Paul McCartney & Wings

That's about it for now. 2 hours, 24 minutes to Hong Kong. I think
they're supposed to serve breakfast soon. My past experiences with
Cathay Pacific Airline food has been great, but whatever I had for
"dinner" last night is not sitting well. Braised pork with mustard
sauce and potatoes. How did I even think that was going to be good?
Shoulda went with the chicken. When in doubt, go with the chicken.

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Airplane CD Mix

Signing on from 36,000 feet here and somewhere over the northern tip
of Russia and just passed the International Date Line. Just conked
out for about 7 hours. I'm in an aisle seat in a 4-seat row, and the
seat next to me is open. My travel agent is brilliant. She
recommended this seat and said when the flight isn't full, this seat
is most likely to have an empty seat. Good stuff.

As some of you may know, I make awesome CD mixes, which means I have a
very extensive and eclectic music collection. So I was thinking about
my next CD mix; songs about airplanes or air travel or flying or
similar concepts. I've thought of about 7-8 songs that I have in my
iTunes, but if you have any other suggestions, feel free to leave it
in the comments section. (Please don't suggest Dave Matthews Band's
"Crash"! That's just cruel.) Thanks!

Fly Like An Eagle -- Steve Miller Band
JFK to LAX -- Gang Starr
Daniel -- Elton John
Such Great Heights -- The Postal Service
Paper Planes -- M.I.A.
Come Fly with Me -- Frank Sinatra
Spaceman -- The Killers
Danger Zone -- Kenny Loggins (from the Top Gun soundtrack)

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