Adventures Galore August 13-19

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So the pictures are from the left, hot pot (see below explanation), my gigantic nose and a rock formation in Yu Yao that looks like a face, and the inside of the church that I go to.

So it’s Tuesday right, and we are off to get some food. Let’s try a noodle shop. This place is known for their homemade noodles. We walk in and there isn’t a place to sit, and this is a good sign. The place is packed. Chinese are particular about their food and if a place is crowded, usually it’s a good bet. I guess universal everywhere. Seen the line at Pats or Genos? Anycase, we finally get a table for the five of us and we got our man Fu Yi Lin with us. Great guy. He’s an intern and supposedly a heck of a basketball player. Since he didn’t bring his shoes to shanghai, I just have to go visit him at his university and play some ball with him. Anyways, I order some home made noodles with beef. I get the noodles in a separate plate and what beef meant was lots of green stems (probably spinadch stems) finely chopped and tossed in some ground beef. The greens definitely outweighed the meat. Not preferred by the carnivore, your humble bard of shanghai. But the noodles they’re great, really damn good noodles. So I’m chomping my way through and hold on, wait what’s that. Look a little closer, nah, that’s not it. Hold on bub, just for a minute. Wait a minute, that is, no that is a caterpillar. About as thin as vermicelli and a couple centimeters long. Well now don’t that just ruin a meal. So we complain, and of course normally that would be it for me, but you know I’m with company, and besides it’s just a caterpillar right? Stop being such a pussy. So I order another dish, a clay pot dish with a beef soup and get on with it. (yes I believe I did pop a cyproflaxin after I got back to the office, just in case)

So lemme explain Hotpot. There are different kinds of hot pot, but the principally you sit at a table with a stove and they bring a pot of broth (seafood, beef, chicken, satay, vegetable, mixed) and you order all kinds of raw food from leafy vegetables to noodles, to thinly sliced beef and lamb, fish paste (not bad really), fish, sausages, whatever, right…and you dip it in cook it and of course you get a spoon and a chopstick. If you come to china, learn how to use a chopstick forks are not standard. So this can be either a communal pot or individual. Individual is definitely preferred. Some pictures..

So how do you like to get your ass whopped on by a fifty year old? In Ping Pong, that’s table tennis for you sophisticated folk. Man this lady took me to school and back and then just for good measure, took my damn lunch money too. I’ve played ping pong and usually I am okay, well okay in China means you can’t return a damn serve and getting smashed even when you do manage to return it. I could get a couple of points against the old lady and then I played Anton, a colleague’s boy friend, and I felt so bad because I felt like he was wasting his time. I think I might have been lucky to get maybe 1 point out of 7. ridiculous. So add it to the list, Chinese, pool, badminton, and now ping pong. Krieky.

So Saturday, I made a friend of mine wait freaking 45 minutes. Now most of you are used to this, but this was horrible. She was doing me a favor by taking me to this place where they sell cell phones for cheap. But I promised her I would take her out to dinner to a really nice restaurant. I need one that can play Mp3s. So this place, I have no idea how they get their cell phones, but it’s like half the freaking price for the one I got, which I think technically has not been released in Asia. It has to be shady. So now I feel somewhat guilty about perpetuating the black market culture. Egh. Of course, as always after the fact. What a little bitch. Oh boo hoo I feel guilty, hey did you check out my new phone? You’re not going to believe the deal I got. Oh and let me cry some more about feeling guilty and not doing a damn thing about it. Of course places like this, there are no return policies and the receipt you get definitely is not official. Now I’m gonna enjoy my 4GB memory phone and rock to some 50.

Oh Sunday I go to Carrefour and Carrefour is pretty much like walmart, but it’s French. Freedom fries anyone? So this Carrefour is a really nice (there are like six in shanghai, and some aren’t so nice), and it’s got a fruit selection that is unbelievable. Fruits from my childhood that I could never get in the States.

Let’s get to Sunday dinner. So my boss tells me about this Thai place across the street from where I live and recommend I try it. Well he’s got good taste and I’m down, what the hell else am I going to do? Sure as shit aint’ gonna cook right now. So I go across and walk through this alley, pretty interesting sight. See a group of old ladies playing Mahjong, little kid and his mom playing together, I say hi. Well I walk into the restaurant, and it’s all guys, and the bartender sashes across to me, and points me to a waiter who does the catwalk walk and leads me to a table and I realize well, shit George, I do believe tonight is gay night. I sit down, go over the menu order the chicken curry and two ladies (American and Chinese American) sit across at the table across me. Should have asked them to join me, but me being the sissy little girl I am, I didn’t and ate alone. Well that’s it. Now that was an adventurous week.