Last Call

Back home in LA, last call at clubs/bars is usually around 1:30am,
since alcohol sales is cut-off at 2:00am (California law). B/c of
that, I've trained my body to shut down around 2:00am b/c once
alkiehall is cut-off, I go home or get late-night tacos in downtown or
detox at some Chinese cafe in Alhambra or Monterey Park. And LA bars/
clubs usually get going around 10:30-11:30pm in anticipation of the
1:30-2:00am cut-off time. Simple concept enough right?

Except in Shanghai, I don't believe "last call" actually exists. So
this poses quite a problem. B/c there's no last call, SH nightlife
doesn't get going til past midnight or so. Even with the time
difference, my body knows when it's time to (2:00am-ish) to call it a
night, but that don't jive out here in the S'hai. So I find myself
often pooping out around 1:30am, right when the nightlife is about to
pop. It's quite a humbling experience; going home Charlie-Brown-sad-
song-style when party-people are still arriving.

Sad clown indeed.

http://shangbert.blogspot.com

$0.58 Haircut

I got a haircut today for 4 kuai, which is less than 60 cents. And
basically I got 4 kuai worth of effort from the barber, who was a
young high school aged kid with some crazy, dyed Asian pop star like
hairdo. I honestly don't think it's that hard to cut my hair, but I
may have been spoiled from my barber back home that I've gone to for
the last 25 years, give or take. I'd tell him make it a zero fade and
take some off the top, and 5-10 minutes later, I'd be outta there.
Here I gotta use my kindergarten Chinese, and attempt to describe what
I want. Basically, I told the kid I want the same style but just make
it shorter.

Next time I go back, I'm going with the Asian David Beckham look that
I sported last summer. It's gonna get hot soon and it's a hell of a
lot easier to describe with my shitty Chinese, so why the heck not?

http://shangbert.blogspot.com

Squatty Potty

I've been to a few clubs here in Shanghai since I got here and when I
was here for a brief time last November. Normally, I only like
clubbing if I'm in Vegas. (I haven't been to Vegas in 3 years, b/c I
don't gamble, so basically I really don't go clubbing all that much.)
Anywhere else, it's just not worth the money or the effort. But every
once in awhile, you get sucked in when your friends say that there's
some open bar dealio for just 50 rmb (approx $7+) and then you find
yourself at some terrible club with terrible music and terrible people
dressed terribly. So like I said, I've been to a few clubs in Shanghai.

If I'm not too intoxicated, I'll notice the decor around me. Some
clubs are designed with an air of luxury and sophistication in mind.
Glass chandeliers, marble floors and countertops, metal stools with
puffy seats, crystal mirrors, velvet couches, impeccably dressed
employees, etc. Then you go to the restroom and all the nice stuff
ends. Unisex restrooms that smell like a combination of fresh poo,
stale piss, and chinese incense. Add insult to injury, the toliets
are squatty potty style.

So my question or rather rhetorical question is "WHY?" Why go to that
much trouble loading up your club with all that nice stuff just to
ruin it with such poor quality restrooms? Would it honestly have cost
that much more to install a few urinals and sit-down toliets rather
than the squatty potties? I just don't understand sometimes. Mark my
words, if I ever open up a bar or restaurant in Shanghai, there will
never be a squatty potty in my establishment.

http://shangbert.blogspot.com

Sister #2

Sister #2 is here! She arrived last night from a harrowing 15+ hour flight from LA. Harrowing, b/c she decided to fly (against my recommendation) Northwest Airlines. I'm of the belief that you don't order a hamburger at a Mexican restaurant. Just like you don't fly a US-based airline to Asia. It's no secret that I'm in love with Cathay Pacific Airlines. Them and Singapore Airlines may be the best airlines in Asia. There's a reason for that. They take care of you. The flight attendants are nice and attentive. There's a lot of extra amenities: in-flight entertainment, endless snack bar, enough leg room for people over 6 feet tall, etc etc. It's probably also b/c (I'm assuming) that Asia-based airline flight attendants are not unionized. Another example of how labor unions ruin everything. Fly any US-based airline and you will get the bare minimum of customer service, b/c that's all their union contract requires them to do. Why do more when you don't have to and can't get fired? And then people wonder why the US economy is in the shitter and why the big 3 needs a massive taxpayer bailout.

Anyhow, back to Sister #2. I will be playing tour guide for the next few days. It will be fun. I may even blog and post more pictures now that she's here. We'll see.

2222-2222-222

You must be wondering about the blog title. Back home, there's this personal injury lawyer that advertises on the back of buses with his phone number that consists of all 2's. Or it could be another number, I kinda forgot. B/c some SH numbers have 11 digits (such as my mobile phone), I changed it to correspond to my current environs. Har.

Anyways, I don't know enough about Chinese laws yet, but I'm pretty sure there's no such things as personal injury lawsuits or ADA compliance. Honestly, if you were in a wheelchair out here or even crutches, you'd be pretty much fucked. I haven't seen any wheelchair ramps or elevators to get into subway stations, onto pedestrian bridges, into restaurants, department stores, apartment buildings, etc etc. That stupid ADA-compliance bastard in California who makes a shitload of cash suing restaurants and municipalities for not being ADA compliant would probably be sentenced to a labor camp out here, if he tried to pull that petty shit out here.

And with personal injury lawsuits, I don't think they exist. B/c for the past few weeks, it's been raining like crazy. I mean like Noah's Ark kinda crazy raining. Back home, anywhere you go there would be carpets or mats set out so you can wipe your feet down so you don't slip, fall, crack your head open, and then proceed to sue the shit out of the place for negligence. Yet, here nothing. No mats, no carpets, nothing. Just be careful and don't slip. And if you do, it's b/c you weren't careful and hence entirely your fault.

If you stop and think about it, it makes sense. It's about personal responsibility, a concept that I think some Americans have a real hard time comprehending and dealing with. I'm sure Larry H Parker or the 222 dude would disagree with me, but whatever this is my blog so fck you.

Peas out.

http://shangbert.blogspot.com

Benny Benanas!

I know, I know I haven't blogged in a long ass time. There's no excuse for such flaking except that I've kept a busy social calendar in Shanghai. So I apologize to my friends who are living vicariously through me and that are now demanding for new posts. Creative genius cannot be rushed...

So before I start on regaling about Benny Benassi last Friday, I just gotta say that it's nice to finally have the sun come out and get warmer here in SH. So I biked over to Cotton's which is a in/outdoor bar near me. Enjoying their 2-fer-1 happy hour with a few black labels and smoking a nice Cuban cigar, while blogging on the Macbook and listening to my iPod.

Ok so anyways last Friday night I went to check out Benny Benassi at Bar Rouge with a friend. Bar Rouge is this really fancy schmancy bar/club on The Bund, which is this really bougey area of SH. Not really my scene, but I don't expect Benassi to DJ at the neighborhood dive bars that I like. Needless to say, it's also a foreigner magnet. I saw Benny Benassi at Coachella a few years back and he was really good. He's a pretty famous Italian DJ. You've probably heard his DJ mixes before and just not known it's him. (See being in China, my Engrish has already regressed.)

So he finally comes on around 1am-ish. Place is packed, I mean elbow-to-elbow with sweaty drunk foreigners. He's speaking into the microphone and welcoming the crowd. "Where's my Italian people at?!?" A deafening roar of all the Italians there! "Where's my French people at?!!" And again, all the French people in the bar go nutso.

Then he says "Where's my Chinese people at?!?!" I swear to the gods that the place falls silent, like absolutely silent. You could've heard a pin drop on carpet. I think I might've heard some crickets chirping in the corner. So of course, I start yelling "YYYYYEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHHH!" I realized that I might have been the only Chinese person in the bar that wasn't a bartender or washroom attendant.

So yeah, in the States I was a perpetual minority. I move to Shanghai, go to a bar, and I'm still a gawddam minority. Go figure..

Peas out.

http://shangbert.blogspot.com

Sprint Mystery

I can't figure this out. Maybe y'all can help. So I kept my American cell phone and brought it out here, primarily b/c I have a lot of phone numbers of family and friends, but b/c it's Sprint and Sprint phones don't have SIM cards that you can take out, it doesn't work in China. So basically it has two purposes. 1. phone numbers, and 2. it still has the time and date of back home, so i know what time and date it is back in LA, since i can't always subtract 16 hours and figure out the time. (Despite my ethnicity, math was never my strong point in school.)

So I have my phone on Airplane Mode, meaning that the phone service part is off, meaning that the phone won't automatically start searching for a signal, which is perfect b/c there is no signal it can connect to. Or so I thought. Last week the battery finally died, so I recharged the phone. When I turned the phone back on, it displayed the current time and date of Shanghai. Whoa, wait up yo, what the fck?

I can't understand why my US-based Sprint cell phone that is not accepting any phone signals or service is displaying the current time and date of my current location. What's going on?

http://shangbert.blogspot.com

ps. Yes, it is the same phone as Agent Moss in this season's 24.