Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 77

This is a bunch of miscellaneous stuff.

First up is a couple pictures of the Shanghai Tower, specifically the Pavillion. As you can see, the shape of the Pavillion roofline is coming together nicely.

There is a new restaurant that opened on the Pudong side of the river called Chastory. We went there one day for lunch and ordered a couple noodle dishes and a glass of "tea". While their noodles menu was in English, their drinks were not. We went with their "house tea" which they recommended (well, recommended may be a little strong, I think it was more the only thing they knew in English). It was, to say the least, a little ... well ... odd. It was tea with a salty-caramel frothy thing on top. Just another on our long list of "well, we tried something unique".

They recently opened the K11 art mall (or just K11). I guess I should say "reopened". It is a 61-story skyscraper formerly called the Hong Kong New Tower, but then renamed and reopened in May as K11. We headed over there one day for lunch and well, it was a really bad experience. We started at a Thai place where we ordered fried rice and noodles. After 30 minutes, during when the table next to us came, ordered, and got all 4 dishes they ordered, we attempted to ask where our food was. Seems not a single person on staff spoke a word of English. I got tired of waiting and we paid for our Diet Cokes and left. We went to a sushi place and had lunch. On the way out, there is this restaurant which seemed to be a "farm fresh/organic" kind of place. Out front they had little tiny piglets with a little house along with a bunch of plants (tomatoes and peppers mostly).

On our way back, we stopped off at East Nanjing road and walked down the Bund to the ferry terminal. On the way, we grabbed a few pictures of the tower, which definitely now looks taller than SWFC. Supposedly they will "cap" it on August 3rd.

I always get a kick out of watching out some things are done. Here the workers are pruning the trees that line the roads near our apartment. You'll see the two workers in blue literally in the trees, cutting off the branches. And how do they get up there you ask? Well, easily ... they have a bamboo ladder!

This was another day where the clouds were SO low, about 1/2 of the Tower was in the clouds!

Down the street from our apartment is a tailor that we have started going to for a few things. His store (which is a very "local" store) is down one of the side streets that goes into a local little neighborhood. As you turn in, there is this bear, life-size. I hve no idea why it is there, or what the words on it's belly say, but he's kinda cute. And then there is the rice-lady ... she has a cart and sits at this corner every day I think selling all different kinds of rice.

Then there is Ruili Tailor. This is a little tiny local shop with the oldest sewing machines that I have ever seen! It is also just about the most disorganized. There are things just laying everywhere, hanging everywhere, hidden everywhere. And as you can see, it isn't very big. We've had a few things fixed there, as well as a few pair of pants custom made. It is just wide enough for the one table and a walkway for just one person. If you need to try things on, you can see in one picture at the back where there is a guy sewing...you go back there and there is a little sheet/curtain that you pull across and have about a space of about 12 inches to try things on.

This is the newest edition to my office ... I had a cactus that I had bought last year but one weekend when some workers replaced the window blinds, they seemed to have squashed it, so I bought a new one the other week.

And to end ... they did "something" to the trees .. we think it was insecticide spraying. They do this with a guy on a bicycle that has a big plastic jug of liquid that pedals the bike while another guy walks beside with the hose. I found this kinda funny ... the whole bike part.