Shanghai 101 - Week 2

And, our learning of Shanghai continues...

1.  Smoking...it occurs everywhere, by everyone.  We were in a great little Belgian Beer place, having an enjoyable time, when some bozo's sitting at a nearby table lit-up and kept on smoking...sad for the Belgian Beer place, we left - and we could have sampled a few more beers.  We may have spied a little fellow who was not yet out of diapers carrying a pack of smokes for his old lady (again, I was too slow on the camera).

Great little SMOKEY Belgian beer place.

mmmm, beer.

2.  People run into you - a lot.  AND, that also means that you walk into people...they don't move.

3.  You can get food delivered of every variety - there is a service with over 200 restaurants that they deliver for.  It is awesome.

4.  Speaking of delivery, it seems everything can be delivered - groceries, dry-cleaning, vegetables, dinner, etc.  And delivered cheap.

5.  Older Chinese people have an innate understanding of their surroundings - they cross the street without looking, flinching, or hurrying-up...and amazingly, we haven't seen one get hit.

6.  Car seats are virtually non-existent (from what we have seen).  Often children will ride on a scooter, standing in between the driver and the handle bars.  They also ride on the back of them.  No one wears helmets.

7.  Young kids get the rosiest of cheeks.  It seems like they have old-school circular rouge on their cheeks.  It is very cute.

8.  You have to plan a lot...many of the map websites don't work - or they don't work well.  So there is a lot of conferring with a real map and two or three websites.  Forget about it if we don't have a paper map.

"It's Never Like This" Revisited

We've been down this road before.  Let's hope they're right this time.

When we took our exploratory trip to Melbourne, we experienced dramatic weather shifts each day.  Sunny and calm, to bone chilling wind and torrential rain, to hail .... a cycle that would repeat several times each day.  The sun and bone chilling wind were to be expected, but everybody we talked to inevitably said "it's never like this" when referring to the rain/hail.  In their defense, they had been in a seven-year drought.  We loved Melbourne, but we lived through 18 months of dramatic weather shifts and rain.  In fact, we seldom left the house without raincoats if we thought we'd be out for more than an hour.

Fast forward to our Shanghai exploratory trip and it was a bit of a different story.  Every day of that week was sunny, sixty degrees, and clear skies.  Fantastic!  It should be noted that nobody really commented on the great weather we had.

Since we arrived on January 13th, we have been in a state of "Unhealthy" to "Hazardous" air quality.  Yeah I know.  All the news organizations keep talking about Beijing and all the extreme measures they put in place to combat the issue, but we're choking on a massive amount of PM 2.5 particulates here as well.  Not sure why nobody seems to care about us, but inevitably people here say "it's never like this".  I hope they're right.  It's disconcerting walking outside into this:

Out our hotel window

From the streets.  That building with the spaceship
looking thing on top is about 300m away.

The road from Shanghai to Qingpu.  There are buildings in this picture.  It is
a difficult task to find a place you've never been to, in a city you've never stepped
 foot in, in a country where you don't speak the language in these conditions.  

A clear, sunny day in Shanghai from our first trip.  More please.

Shanghai 101 - Week 1

We've been in Shanghai for a week, and while we have been here several times before, life is somewhat different when you are actually LIVING in the city. 
With that, here are some thoughts of what we have learned from Week 1 in Shanghai:

1.  For how quickly the city has grown, the infrastructure supports it amazingly well.  YES, we sit in traffic going to and coming from work, but seeing as the city has grown to over 25 million people, it works surprisingly well.

Just a small bit of the construction going on...

2.  When walking down the street, your head needs to be on a constant swivel.  Pedestrians are the lowest on the food-chain when it comes to the street.  On our way to brekkie this morning, Jeff was nearly hit by a taxi, scooter, and spit on - all in one intersection.  It was surreal and scary.

Did you notice that it appears that they are all running a red-light?
They are, and it just works...

All of those scooters going every which way...
without warning...

And, sometimes, they are on the sidewalk, too.  Why not...

3.  The PUFFY coat is everywhere in Shanghai.  Man, woman, child...all sporting the puffy coat.  Long, short, vest, some with detachable lenghts.  The bell hops at the hotel wear them. 

4.  Pajamas are a big thing here.  And, if you're old, you can wear them at any time, in any location.  It is awesome.  Oh, and they are proper jammers, like matching and everything.

This guy is rocking his jammers on a random
day...and smoking and walking his dog, too.
We saw one set of jammers today that was
legendary, but I was too slow on the camera.

5.  Jet lag sucks.  There is no way around it...it just sucks.  I was able to make it until 10pm last night...the latest in a week - earlier in the week I was lucky to see 8pm.

6.  Everything takes longer in China.  EVERYTHING.  While there may be more people working, everything takes longer...there is a lot of checking and rechecking, then checking again.  We waited for an hour this morning for scrambled eggs (but they were good once we got them.)

7.  English is limited, at best...thankfully we start Mandarin lessons this week.  Getting a taxi driver to take you where you want to go requires knowing the address in English, then translating to Chinese characters...and hoping that they take you where you need to go.  I cross my fingers...a lot.

Any questions on which way to go?  

8.  Pollution sucks, too.  Probably more than jet lag.  The city has had a rough week when it comes to pollution.  The US Consulate publishes hourly updates on the interweb - it hasn't been healthy this week.  At all.  The good news is that the cities are taking 'emergency measures' and have instructed construction sites to shut-down, and for companies to only burn 'high-quality coal'.  And, in case you haven't seen it, the sun looks really odd when trying to shine through really bad pollution.  We will likely become tree-huggers as a result of living here.

Monday morning...not a good day for the environment.

One of the REALLY clear days we were here in September...I don't
know if you could even see across the river this week.

9.  People stand really close to everything.  Walls, buildings, other people, you name it, they stand/walk/run close to it.

Jeff providing an example of how people are normally
standing in the elevator.

This little guy has absolutely nothing to do with people standing close
to you.  I just thought he was cute! 

10.  Nice work perk - we get fresh fruit every afternoon - "for healthy body."  I think that is a great habit to get into, and it will limit my candy eating (at least I'm hoping!). 

11.  Not so nice work perk - there is sometimes dried fish on the bench at work.  I don't think it's company provided, I believe it is a personal donation, BUT, it stinks.  Especially early in the morning.  Reminds me of this night...

Dried fish, anyone?

Not so much related to this post, but a pic from
our trip in September...at Yuyuan Gardens.

Welcome To Shanghai!

Fortunately and unfortunately, one adventure has ended and another has begun.  We loved Australia, but a new opportunity has brought us to a new home for the next three years.  We have arrived in Shanghai and will continue to share our stories with you.  There's sure to be some whoppers.  Here's a taste of our new city:

Nanjing Lu., a main shopping street.  Note the green light.
Those vehicles are not stopped due to congestion, they're
just ignoring the traffic signals.  This is common here.

These folks do a pretty good job of keeping the city clean

The Bund

Pudong skyline

Out our hotel window.  You can't see past the
skyscrapers in any direction.  It's a massive city!

There is new construction going on all over the city.  It's
 not bamboo, we were certain it was until closer inspection.

Should have no problem finding our way around. 

Yuyuan Garden

Sure is a nice looking BOYD!

We hosted the 2nd Annual Turnbull Thanksgiving on the Saturday following Thanksgiving, again this year.  And we had a blast...so much fun, that for the most part, we forgot to take pictures (again!)

Just to make things interesting, we awoke on Wednesday
 morning to a leak in the upstairs bathroom, that waswaterfalling
 into the kitchen...meaning that we wouldn't be
able to use that bathroom on the day of our celebration.

Beautiful day...to feed 35 people, we had 2 fryers and
the grill going, in addition to all burners on the stove and
the oven.

The first of the three birds...delicious.

Mid-meal gravy making...

So glad we could share our traditions with our friends in Melbourne one more time...nothing beats a Thanksgiving meal with friends that have welcomed us like family (and that pitch in at a moments notice like family!)