Eclipse Reaction

Ok so I was initially skeptical of the solar eclipse in Shanghai this
morning, as evidenced by my previous blog post. I guess I had good
reason to be skeptical. First, it was rainy so you couldn't see the
sun. Second, this is China and China tends to hype up good stuff and
tone down the bad stuff. (I don't think I need to further explain
myself here.)

So yes it was raining and still is. But the solar eclipse was kinda
cool. It was pitch black for about 5 minutes. Which is just like
night, but none of the street or building lights were turned on.
Probably should've hauled my ass over to Nanjing Dong Lu or The Bund
to experience total darkness, but oh well. I enjoyed the eclipse with
the local folks downstairs.

I'm sad that I didn't get to use my nifty eclipse glasses. I'll just
save it for the next total solar eclipse. I think that will be in
year 2132, when I will be 154 years old.

No big deal.

http://shangbert.blogspot.com

Solar Eclipse

There's supposed to be a solar eclipse right now in Shanghai.
Supposedly, it's a big deal b/c stores have sold out of eclipse
viewing glasses and people are scrambling around looking for them. (I
just got a pair at Coffee Bean this morning for free, but whatever.)
And it just so happens that today is kinda rainy, and it's dark
anyways b/c of dark rain clouds.

So I'm not sure if it's dark b/c its raining or it's dark b/c of the
solar eclipse. In about 10 minutes, it's supposed to be totally dark;
but is it dark b/c its raining or b/c of the SOLAR ECLIPSE? You can't
see the sun either way, so maybe I'll just go back to sleep. Oh well.

http://shangbert.blogspot.com

My Gift to Shangbert Readers

This is a historic post. Why? B/c it's my first post as a 31 year
old, a newly minted 31 y/o. Yes today is my birthday and I do
sincerely appreciate everyone who has sent me birthday wishes. So I
was thinking that I should do something for all (probably 2 or 3 at
most) of the loyal readers of the Shangbert blog. Below is my gift to
the readership!

Let me explain. I've posted about haircuts in China a few times, and
have bitched and whined about it even more on Facebook. Even though
the haircuts here are cheap about 10 kuai (around $1.30), the barbers
are terrible. I've always kinda wanted a mohawk, just to see what
it'd look like. I tried the feaux-hawk awhile back but couldn't
really rock it too much. Could you imagine sporting the feaux-hawk
while serving as school board president and trying to run a hectic
school board meeting? Yeah probably wasn't gonna work. So hey it's
my birthday weekend and I needed a haircut anyways, so why the heck
not. Enjoy!

I'm convinced...

that Shanghai clubs just play one mix CD throughout the night and that
the DJs are just bobbing their heads, pressing buttons and pretending
to mix. I've heard the same exact mix at 3 different clubs (not that
I go to clubs a lot. in the past week and a 1/2 or so, stopped by 3
of them b/c 1 farewell party, 1 of out-of-town friend visit and 1 b/c
I was already drunk.) And these are like mostly expat-targeted clubs
(M1NT, Bar Rouge, M2) too, so the quality should be a bit better,
right? I don't know all of the song titles in the mix, but they
definitely include Show Me Love by Robyn S (this song is so old that
it came out when I was in high school) and Billie Jean by Michael
Jackson (which of course everyone goes nuts b/c that freakshow just
died).

I don't really like clubs in the first place, so maybe I'm more
observant of music selection than other folks and more willing to
"tiao mao bing" (translated: identify problems). This is why I'd
rather grab a 25kuai mug of Tiger beer at Time Passage and chat with
the shao kao dude (translated: chinese bbq guy who grills skewered
meats). But that's just me.

http://shangbert.blogspot.com

Facebook Blocked

I know it's been forever since I blogged. Access to blogspot has been
blocked since mid-May or so, and even though I can continue posting to
the blog through email, I can't actually check for comments or edit
the blog, so basically it's sapped my desire to do anything with the
shangbert blog.

Anyhow, Facebook, which survived the blocking of other social
networking sites leading up to and after the may 35th anniversary, has
just been blocked this week (tuesday afternoon to be exact) b/c of the
stuff going on in xinjiang province. At first, I felt like my right
arm had been cut-off. Most of the time I spend online is on Facebook
or latimes.com/sports, and maybe sometimes google news or yahoo
sports. I wanted to hold a dinner at my place with friends this
Saturday and use Facebook invites to get the word out, but now I
can't. I guess you don't realize how much you depend on something
until it's gone. There's a lot of FB friends, where I don't actually
have their personal contact information. So oh well. I'll have to
find another weekend to host a dinner party.

And don't even get me started on youtube, which has been blocked since
April. There's nowhere I can go now to watch hilarious clips of
Family Guy. You have no idea how important that is to my daily life.
Just kidding. Still, it'd be nice to access youtube again.

Other than Great Firewall issues, my lifestyle in Shanghai is pretty
cool. I'll touch upon that in a future post. Hope everyone is well.

http://shangbert.blogspot.com