Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 6

Okay, this is the last week I'll complain about the heat and humidity, and yea, those of you in the blistering heat in the US can now chuckle a little bit! It's up in the mid-90's now every day, and it only goes down to the mid 80's at night. The A/C here just doesn't quite cut it and so it is a bit warm, even in the office. It is "comfy" there, but definitely not like the office is in the US, where it is a bit too cold for me. I think the two main things about the heat here is that the A/C isn't as good in most places, and we are out in the heat more often. We walk a lot here, especially on weekends when we are trying to explore the city. In addition, dinner isn't "get in the car, drive somewhere, walk 20 steps from parking lot into building", it is "walk 10 minutes to the metro, wait for 3 minutes, ride the train for 10 minutes, get out and walk 10 or 15 more minutes to the restaurant, eat, repeat". So while the restaurant is cool, the walk for 10 minutes really makes you hot and sweaty. It is also quite humid here, especially with the river right next to our apartment. Then when it rains you get a tiny break until it stops and then it is just a steam bath as the rain which is now on concrete heats up and steams away. There are some grass and trees around, but mostly, it is concrete, concrete, and more concrete!

okay, so, that is my last rant on the hot weather! Pretty normal week for the start of the week, but then Thursday I had a customer conference to attend here in Shanghai. It was a little odd as I had only 1 presentation, and that presentation had to be in Chinese. Well, so I'm not fluent yet, so needless to say, it wasn't easy. One of the guys from work came with me and was doing the translation. However, it seems to me a little stop-and-go since I would say a sentence or two, and then Sean would translate, then back to me, then back to Sean. And during the time Sean was speaking, I'm standing up with a microphone in the front of the room trying to look .. nonchalant. Doubtful that I was successful in THAT one! Oh, and my charts also were translated, so I couldn't even look at my charts to figure out what my next point was supposed to be after I lost my train of thought waiting for the translation of my previous thought. I only hope the customers weren't thoroughly confused by it all.

And here is my "breakfast of champions" that I have started having here. When I get to the office, there is a Lawson downstairs ... they are all over town and the closest I can explain it is a 7/11 store. So when I get to the office, I pick up a cold Caffe Latte (thank goodness they don't translate SOME words!) and a 'puffball'. The puffball here is a steamed bun with BBQ pork on the inside. They have 3 different filling options downstairs but I have stuck on this one. So total for this breakfast: about $1.25 or so.

Friday I decided to take a "me-day"! I slept in and did basically nothing all day (well, not exactly nothing ... I spent some money). I headed out about 10 in the morning and walked up to the Super Brand Mall. As I walked through the complex, I decided to take a few more pictures.

Right outside of our building, there are these 3 Palm Trees, with flowers around the bottom.

So about 2 weeks ago, they took 2 of them out and replaced them. Here is one fo the new ones, and you can see that it looks a big weird at the top. They have the palm branches still wrapped up, and they have been watering them every day.

And then we have the pond, with all of the fish. It is a pretty decent size pond, and one side, the side closest to us in this picture, although maybe hard to see, is a wall of glass/plexiglass that allows you to see the fish swimming around.

There is a little covered area that juts out into the pond where you can sit as well.

and fountains that only seem to run at night.

We also have 2 swans, although they really are hard to see in this picture .. .they are the two little white blobs. They have a house setup in one part of the pond and the other day, Tom saw them chasing some little ducks in the pond.

We also have a little "kiddie pool" which they seem to fill and un-fill about every day. I haven't seen it with more than about 1foot of water in it, so it really seems to be for little little kids just to wade around in.

And the grass field on the other side of the pond from our building, where you can see kids playing ball and things like that.

I was thinking it would be a perfect place to practice wedges .. until I saw the sign ...and so I figured "needs your care" did not really mean hacking divots out of it with a sand wedge.

After walking through the 3rd floor about 4 times, I finally found the 1 and only 1 nail salon in the mall. One of the few things that is the same in every language ... manicure and pedicure! So I was able to get a manicure and pedicure without too much issue. Mind you, they do a few things differently here. First, I haven't found a spa chair yet in Shanghai for the pedicures. You sit at the manicure table and the girl sits on the floor and does your pedicure almost exactly like the manicure, without going through the 10 minute soaking like we do in the US. So they did the pedicure and the manicure. It was definitely more expensive than the last manicure I got here, which seemed to be just as good, perhaps it was the difference between a little store on the street and the mall. What I also have noticed here is a tendency to LOVE pre-paid cards. For example, if I buy a 1000 RMB card, which is like $150, I get 10% off of all of the prices. A 2000 RMB card gives you 20% off. The same with the dry cleaners, 1200 RMB card gives you 30% off your dry cleaning bill along with free same-day service. I have a whole set of cards ... 1 for the metro, 1 for the nail salon, 1 for lunch in the cafeteria in my building, 1 for lunch in the cafeteria in another high-tech park a couple blocks away.

Saturday and Sunday seemed to be more shopping days and lounge around the house days than anything else. Saturday we ventured out to the AP Plaza at the Science and Technology Museum, which is a huge underground shopping plaza. There are TONS of little stalls/stores that you can buy almost anything you need ... bags, underwear, t-shirts, jackets, phone accessories. There is also a fabric market with about 300 different places to get clothes tailor-made. This is where we had gone to get Tom's suits made initially, and this time, I was trying them out with ladies casual apparel. I had printed off 2 pictures from The French Connection website that I kinda liked and asked them to make me a skirt and top ...very casual, that I could wear to work, around town, dinner, etc. They measured me for the fitting and we'll go back next week to see how they did. Sunday was more of the same, but in 2 OTHER fabric markets. My friend Carol had gotten a skirt made at one of them, which seemed much more of a "local and casual" place and so I asked them to make me one as well. Then further down at South Bund, there is a more "touristy" fabric market (it is in the travel books) that we tried out one tailor for a dress shirt for Tom.

Sunday for lunch we stopped at a place called "Cool Docks", which is a new little area at the wharf with all kinds of restaurants and bars. I have a picture that I'll pop in this afternoon (it is at home).

And I normally don't put food pictures up, but here are a few exceptions. This was dinner Sunday night, at a Singaporean restaurant near the Jing'An temple. This is a Bamboo Chicken dish, which has pieces of chicken, onions, and other "stuff" cooked inside a piece of bamboo.

Now, not exactly this week, but I was really slow getting the pictures off my iPhone. A few weeks back, I took a Chinese Cooking Workshop. I think I talked about this back a few weeks ago....the Chinese cooking class by myself and with the instructor who spoke no English. Well, it was a dumpling course, and so here are a few of my dumplings. There are 2 "fish", which are the ones with the little eyes, as well as 4 other ones that I have no idea what they are called.

Here is another basket. I found that either my fingers are too big, or you can't really make dumplings with fingernails! As you can see, we did a whole bunch of different kinds. They all have the same filling, which is a mixture of ground sausage, eggs, and chives. The dumpling dough is just flour and water ... so very easy to make them. I still need to buy a little bamboo steamer so that I can make these at home for Tom.