east side v. west side

we live in puxi, which means west of the Huangpu river. today i went to a conference in pudong, which means east of the Huangpu river. i was asking my boss if there's a west side v. east side rivalry, kinda like back in the states, jokingly. she said puxi is like NY and pudong is like jersey. when i asked if that meant pudong is more ghetto and less urban, my boss said it meant the opposite. according to dave, that means pudong is suburban and puxi is urban. on an episode of How I met your mother, the main characters from nyc diss jersey, saying it's not happening enough and people have big yards. either way i was impressed with pudong, with my glimpse of the Oriental Pearl Tower, which is huge up close, and i saw what used to be the tallest building in the PROC, the Jin Mao Tower. there seemed to be a much bigger financial district and more and larger skyscrapers in my opinion. i was so glad to check it out and so wanna go back and take some shots of those mighty skycrapers! it takes about 50 min to get to pudong via subway from our apartment. i'm just glad the subway goes across the river. on the drive there, we went thru a tunnel that connects the 2 areas. 

the conference took place inside an int'l hospital, one i actually interviewed for last month for a psych position. it was interesting to meet the people i had only spoken to only on the phone. my boss pointed out the VIP ER admit area which apparently is much different and more lavish than the regular ER admit area where i was told hundreds of people sit in chairs with IVs sticking out of them. so much for privacy and patient comfort!

anyhoo i didn't get any foto shots this time, mostly b/c i was car sick and nauseous on the car ride back. the thing about driving in shanghai is that you have to be aggressive, erratic and cause car sickness for your passengers in order to get anywhere in decent time.

Pudong

along for the ride..

The Center

night skyscraper

the French concession..hofbrauhaus

o'malley's

french concession at nite

shady bar

i got green milk tea here

interesting

Twilight in chinese

hottie on a cd

puzzles

chinese bookstore

i could not get enough of the propaganda stuff. i went kinda wild.

this is snuggled by the children's books section of the book store.

i have no idea.

i wonder if you can get worker's comp here

catholic church

some famous guy

just what the doctor ordered.

a chinese, finnish and african american walk into a bar...

today was taxi day for me. i enjoy it b/c i can enjoy the view of the city as i snap shots of it. and the breeze is nice compared to the stuffy subway.

i was all gung ho that it's dragon boat festival tomorrow. so i asked around for what type of festivities are going on. the HR asst basically said she stays at home and eats zong zis for duan wu jie. when i asked if there were dragon boat races she had a hard time telling me where. i was disappointed b/c i was excited to spend a chinese holiday in the mother land. i will find those boats!

i went to my first expat hospital in shanghai. it ends up i just have bad constipation not a bacterial infection. the doc rx'd forlax--i have no idea what that is but i'll take anything at this point. hopefully i will feel better after tomorrow. i'm supposed to drink tons of water but i'm terrified of using public toilets, hence i've dehydrated myself, which is part of the problem i suppose. :(

i found propaganda literature in the local bookstore. i found the drawings so fascinating despite not knowing what they said. i went kinda crazy snapping shots of those. i wish i could read chinese..

i guess there are cute local chinese guys. i found cd albums with some hotties. and i saw one guy i would actually consider attractive in american standards.

last night we went to the French Concession. there they have international pubs and restaurants such as Hofbrahaus and O'Malley's. i took pics of the cool architecture along the way. they had cobble stone paths. i noticed a suspicious dude kinda following us. i was mesmorized by the neon. i think it was probably not the safest place to b at nite but as long as i know where the subway is, i'm fine.

today we had dinner at Whisk, an Italian restaurant by the french concession. the food was good but probably over priced. i had duvel for the first time.

waste in the mother land.

i think the expats here are wasteful or maybe just extravagant. after living here awhile, i can see myself become lazy, extravagant, wasteful, entitled, callous, rude, pushy.

they eat/drink such expensive things. it costs me .8rmb for a huge delish baozi i can conveniently get at a vendor. it would have costed me 200rmb for the mental health assn dinner i was going to eat at a nice italian restaurant. mind you, it's for "networking" purposes. our next meeting is at some fancy coffee joint that will make starbucks coffee look like it's worth the latte prices. expats are wasteful.

the expats here LOVE convenience. which then makes us lazy. dave and i are starting to become that way. you have anything and everything delivered. we can get our meals and groceries delivered. i never have to set foot out of this apartment, except for work. we eat mealbay daily. and we've recently discovered that carrefour, a "hypermarket" delivers! although they do a crappy job at it. expats are lazy.

you already know my take on ayis. i've survived over 30 years in the US without a local maid. do i REALLY need one now? can i really not clean my own toilet? maybe, but i can certainly see the appeal. it's getting to the point where everyone else has one, why can't we? expats need to clean up after themselves.

people have "drivers" here. at our workplace, we have 3 drivers who can take you places thruout the day. as much as i enjoy that, i actually prefer to take the subway back home. there is something about using my 2 feet (and breathing in that smog). there are tons of public transport here b/c there are tons of people! subways, buses, trains, even taxis are more economical than "drivers." do we really need chauffeurs? expats are entitled.

i don't know if these expats come from wealth back in their native lands or after moving here they began living like this b/c other expats are or they can afford it now but there just seems to be a sense of waste and entitlement here. plus, it's not THAT cheap if u add everything up. things aren't that much cheaper, depending on what u buy. i think that is a misconception. i can also see how it can become hard to save up money b/c you end up spending what you earn thinking cost of living is cheap. that can be a trap. 

i also noticed on a side note, the expats that tend to stay here for a long ass time are the ones that married a local spouse who probably doesn't want to leave. that doesn't necessarily mean the expat likes it here but i haven't heard one say they didn't even if they felt that way. probably a coping mechanism. and they get pretty good at chinese. and they are usually male. or sometimes they convince the local spouse to go back to their home country but only for a while b/c usually they end up back here. or usually one expat significant other comes b/c of the other one and they stay for awhile then leave screaming. that would be my story.  :)

sicko.

i've been going thru the general routine of waking up ok, but as the day goes by, as i eat local food of different sorts (usually the kind my work orders from across the street that is like 10rmb per big bowl of beef noodle that i can't resist or baozi, which i have now laid off), i become sicker and sicker. by the time it's dinner time, i eat something non-local courtesy of mealbay, then i can feel my intestines inflate with gas and poop that has not traveled thru my colon-it's awful. by the time it's like 8pm, i am immobilized and laying on the futon or bed totally feeling like a dirty balloon that can't be burst and if i push my stomach, i can feel the gas move in me. ok, i know i need a doctor but i haven't exactly signed up for expensive health insurance and i will only see a western doctor. dave says i need to get antibiotics to clean out my system so that i can eat and not get sick. i asked him to go see a doc for me and get antibiotics but he said they make u give stool samples on the spot. i'm thinking, what if i can't poop?? stool samples have always been given the option to be taken at home! so i decided since i'm not getting any better, i will sign up for health insurance tomorrow. i am dreadful of eating ANYTHING now. dave says i can't eat anything of carb value-that means rice, noodle, baozi, all the stuff i love and have been eating. i can only eat veggies and meat, but i don't trust meat here. so by default, i need to become vegan. today all i had was dried calamari in a bag, my usual red bean green tea and i had this salad and chowder i love. no carbs right? ok well the chowder was pretty carbalicious..

this is the ultimate china induction. you aren't considered living here til you get food poisoning, which usually happens within the first week.

fooooooooooooood poisoning

ok maybe it was the local chinese food or the cong you bing or the dou jiang or the milk tea. either way my constipation has been cured by food poisoning. my colon is having a tantrum and there ain't no butts about it. ok sorry for the pun and giving TMI. ;(

ayi-ahhhh!

note how the baby is white and the ayi is not

i don't know if i will ever get used to the idea of ayi's. apparently everyone and their mother has at least one. they are essentially very underpaid nannies or maids. they can range from cleaning your house once a week to taking care of your kids while you're at work to cooking for your family to living with your family 24/7. they can be found in people's home and businesses. they get about 15 kuai an hour and are probably just grateful to have a job. and these expats certainly keep them employed. my coworker said some of them completely raise the kids while the parents work too much or go travelling or their mothers go shopping. some expats parents don't lift a finger at all! i said it's like having 2 moms. i wonder who the kid feels more attached to. you could probably write a dissertation on maternal attachment about this. at my new special ed school, we have 2 ayi's who not only cook, clean, and slice your watermelons, they also serve as teacher aides. talk about multi tasking! i have yet to see a male ayi. but then, wouldn't they be called su-su's?

find a local ayi today!

the view.

our apartment

the view from our 12th fl balcony

Lost.

today was Get Lost day for me. i literally got lost at every possible juncture. my first mission of the day was to make my way to the Creative Garden Program where my company has a special ed school. 998 lane was my destination. well there are apparently more than one of those lanes. so i went down one of them and wandered into an indoor open market. it smelled pretty nasty, like decaying meat and seafood. i was hungry and searching for baozi, despite the rancid smell. pushing and shoving has become quite fun. well i got to the end of the open market and came out into a busy street. i found cong you bing, otherwise known as scallion cake and got that with fresh warm soybean. man that was good. next to that vendor, i couldn't resist the baozi stand and got a veggie one. i was so full after the scallion cake and soybean i never got around to the baozi, which now i think about it, is still sitting in my bag and probably rotten. :( i proceeded to backtrack through another open market then came out the other side to some alley and knew i was lost. i backtracked again, came out the other side then went thru the original open market. i started walking along a long alleyway parallel to the subway train. i asked a crippled man if this was 998 and he did not know. then i backtracked all the way back to the original main road, asked the guards if the next street over was 998. he said yes so i proceeded to walk thru that maze. it ended up being a neighborhood of residential tenements. i relented and called the program to ask for guidance and carolyn, the secretary couldn't figure out where i was. i decided to backtrack again to the main road after asking the guards again and learned that there are several 998 lanes! i went down the next street and finally was found. it was fun romping around with the different special ed kids. my new employer has their hearts in the right places. i had my first full on local chinese food today. my boss ordered kung pao chicken, jia chang tofu and garlic chili string beans. i wasn't sure if it was shanghainese food but damn was it goooood!! they deliver the food on plates not styrofoam. the ayis clean up after you and bring out sliced watermelon. it's great!

after touring the program, i decided to adventure thru the hong qiao area. first i stopped by a stand to get green tea red bean drink. that's like my dream combo except i couldn't get the damn straw thru it and ultimately the drink made me sick. i kept walking in an effort to subside my nausea. the milk was probably rotten. i entered an indoor bazaar which contained nothing i would ever spend any amount of money on and encountered the rainbow spray painted poodle you see in the pics. the owner wasn't too happy i was taking a pic and warned me AFTER i petted her dog that it bites. i continued to walk along the road and noted lots of spas, bars, clubs and several pet stores/grooming stores. i walked into one b/c i just couldn't resist my love for animals. i noted lots of poodles in there. i approached cages of cats and saw cats i absolutely fell in love with. i asked the worker what kind of cats they were. she said they were Garfield cats. i'm like, that's not a breed! either way, i wanted to sneak one into my bag sooo bad cus they looked like pug cats, with their smooshed in noses. the little ones kept playing with me. i was smitten. then this labrador snuck up behind me and kept following me around the store. there was another rainbow colored poodle and i had no idea why these chinese like to torture their dogs that way.  when i left the store, a customer who had just picked up her pekingnese from being groomed at the store was holding her dog and comforting her. she asked me to unlock her bike b/c her dog was scared. i did so and then went on my way. 

so i kept walking cuz i saw some sign for the Bund which was 1km away. i never found it. i kept going til i found the next subway stop from the one i was originally supposed to get on. there was a huge park next to it so i decided to walk around the park and see what locals were up to. i saw a couple making out, old men playing chinese games with black and white rocks, people smoking up a storm, a man doing tai chi, grandparents playing with their grandkids. it looked like some of the buildings were old temples. there was a stone bridge and it was quite peaceful. there are alot of stray cats that hang out in bushes and parks, i noted. i saw this old lady being wheeled in a wheelchair as she lit one up. my camera ran out of batteries so i headed back to the subway station.

i finally figured out which line to get on but got off one stop too soon. when i went back on, i went on line 3 instead of 4. good thing line 4 ends at a stop that interchanges with line 1 which was the one i needed. i really enjoyed lines 3 and 4 b/c they come up from underground and u get a neat view of the city, alleys, back yards, and huge high rises and tenements.

i feel like i'm an in the closest tourist who is only working here to support the habit. oh wait, i am!! i start work next week but am glad i am contracted so i will have days of meandering in between. i am looking forward to making some money and meeting these int'l families, which i've heard are quite fascinating.

in the meantime, laundry still takes forever, i smell bad all the time, i don't pass for a fobby local yet, i've developed callouses from my tennis shoes, and my stomach is starting to react to the local cuisine.

it's the weekend!