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.


http://shangbert.blogspot.com

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.

http://shangbert.blogspot.com

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

http://shangbert.blogspot.com

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!


http://shangbert.blogspot.com

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...

http://shangbert.blogspot.com

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....

http://shangbert.blogspot.com

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.

http://shangbert.blogspot.com