Category: Nebulous Items
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Boxha Cafe in the rain
In the interest of creating mental escape routes for the rainy season, I’m starting a new category exclusively for cafes in Shanghai to duck into out of the rain. Since I’m off til mid-September (mostly- I do have exams and papers to mark this week) and don’t want to become completely house-bound, bed-ridden and 500…
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(101 things about Shanghai) Grim, grim, grim meteorological tendencies
Shanghai in June is pretty grim. So is Shanghai between November and, say, March. Or maybe April. May and October can be quite nice, with skies you can actually see and skylines with visibility beyond the nearest few blocks. A lot of the year is made up of heavy white/grey/beige skies, torrential downpours at random…
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Decoding the Putonghua Parallel Universe
A few months ago I was in the middle of a speaking exam with a very capable university student who was explaining at great length to me the plot of his favourite novel. The plot sounded familiar to me, though I didn’t recognize the name of the author at all- I figured it was a…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Asking Permission to be Legal Laowai
Today I did what every foreign expert must do at least once a year (or like last year when I changed jobs and visas about three times in as many months) and I made my pilgrimage to the Public Security Bureau to renew my residence permit. It is located (according to my school’s assistant) exactly…
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Despo(t) 2010: Stan!
Also in this series: Death By Exposure and Despo(t) 2010: The Axis of Awesome In our quest to avoid the crowded pavilions at Shanghai Expo 2010, we embarked on an intensive one-day project to visit as many maligned countries as possible. We visited the Axis of Evil and a few non-affiliated-but-still-iffy countries. We…
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Shanghai Despo(t) 2010- The Axis of Awesome Pavilions
Also in this series: Death By Exposure and Stan! We went back to Expo on Saturday for a stubborn second round of heat stroke and agoraphobia. The first time we went, which was just last Tuesday on the second day of the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, we waited two hours in an increasingly…
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Death by Exposure: Expo 2010, Part 1
Also in this series: Despot 2010: Axis of Awesome and Stan! After we spent the first day of the Dragon Boat Festival being slothful, alternating dragging our bodies out for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, and lying dugong-like on the sofa, reading and drinking coffee, we decided to be ambitious for the second…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Economical Military Presence
On the 6:44am Line 1 metro out of Shanxi Rd, half the cars are filled with PLA soldiers going to work at People’s Square. They occupy the centre aisle, standing in perfect regimental rows, in half-car segments each led by an officer. When they exit, they exit in perfect rows of two, marching out the sliding doors…
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Redemption and Delivery
One of the things I really liked about Istanbul but never took advantage of due to sheer terror of using my (self-perceived) inferior Turkish skills was the culture of delivery. You could get everything delivered to your door. Mc Donalds delivered; the kebab guys delivered; your corner shop delivered. If you lived on the fifth…
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Perks of living on the 16th floor
You can see fireworks five blocks away.
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Fast, But Not Exactly McDonalds
Sometimes when I come home from work, I’m absurdly hungry- maybe I worked through my lunch break, maybe I covered ten kilometres just pacing and monitoring in class. It has been known to happen. I carry a pedometer as a clock in the class so I know this is a possibility. Dinner takes a while…
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People in the Mornings
On Jiashan Lu in the morning there are streams of bicycles weaving down the road and its crowded sidewalk, pedalled by parents carrying their children to school. On our street, we have a middle school at one end and a primary school at the other. The children are perched on the backs of the bikes,…