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I have a mobile phone. Yes I know you do, but it's not like mine. My phone has a personality, and it does things yours can't do, or at least doesn't have the courage to do. For one thing, my phone calls people by itself. It's so interesting to answer my phone and have someone ask, "Why did you call me"?, when I didn't call them. But then I look at my call record, and sure enough, my phone did call them. I don't use my phone all that much, and I guess it could just be bored and wants something to do. And it seems to call only my friends. So far as I know, it hasn't been calling the police or the tax department, so I guess that's ok. But then I noticed that it calls only girls, and I think maybe it goes through my contact list looking for pretty girls and calls only them. Worse than that, this phone doesn't seem bothered by distance; it will call pretty girls in any city, not just in Shanghai. It called one friend in Zhu Hai three times in one day. That's not cheap. I guess I appreciate the effort it's making in my behalf, but I don't know if it says anything when it calls. I now worry that when these girls answer the call, my phone just sits there maybe doing heavy breathing or something, and that may not be in my best long-term interests. Good thing I don't have the police number on my contact list. It seems that carrying my phone in my pocket, with the keypad exposed, was not a good idea. But how the correct combinations of buttons could be pressed accidentally to actually initiate calls to only selected people in my contact list is a real mystery. I finally figured out how to lock the keypad and put an end to the mysterious heavy breathing calls to pretty girls in the middle of the night. I guess I should have done that sooner, but my phone manual was in Chinese and I couldn't find the part about > bored > auto-dial > pretty girls > heavy breathing > police > hahaha. |
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Another strange problem with my old mobile phone was that it would unexpectedly announce the time in a quite loud female voice, and I had no idea what buttons had been pressed to cause that. I just keep the phone in the side pocket of my slacks, so it's subject to all sorts of bumps - some of which must have been occasionally duplicated. Not a big problem, but I collected many funny stares. |
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Great disappointment last week. I travelled to Nanjing, but China Mobile didn't send me a welcome message. I guess I'm no longer news. It's not like I'm lonely and need to think the phone company loves me, but it was so nice to feel special, to think that out of the 1.3 billion people in this country, China Mobile chose ME to send a message to. I should have known this was only a fleeting romance and I'd soon be dumped for the next new customer. But later I thought maybe it's these deep emotional scars that'll make me so interesting when I'm older. |
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There is a set of 4 apartment buildings here, situated on the river quite close to the Oriental Pearl Tower that are priced at 50 million to 100 million each - roughly 10 to 20 million dollars. Each floor in the buildings is one single apartment of about 500 square meters, so you get a nice 360 degree view of the city. The buildings don't look like much from the outside, and I'm not able to see the inside. They won't let you take a tour unless you can produce bank statements showing that you have enough money to buy one if you want to. This week, I'm a bit short. Probably next week too. I'm told they are so nice inside that they are worth the money - assuming you have the money, but there are no photos of the interiors and no cameras are permitted. Interestingly, all four buildings are empty and have been for the 18 months since completion. I am told that the funding for them came from the City of Shanghai Pension Fund, and that this was not a legally permitted investment. The former mayor of Shanghai is now in prison for dipping into the city's pension fund, and I'm told nobody wants to risk buying one of these apartments for fear the government might repossess them, or something. So they are just sitting. If they wait long enough, maybe I'll make an offer. But apparently there are many people eager to buy in spite of the price; it's just the legal concerns that are holding them back. There really are a lot of people in this city with far too much money. |
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I frequently encounter charming expressions that are worthy of cataloguing. Last week, one of the girls in the office wanted me to check a marketing .ppt for her, and in it she wanted to make reference to 'word of mouth' advertising. But she couldn't recall the expression exactly, so we got 'mouth to mouth'. But then she had second thoughts about her spelling and we ended up with 'mouse to mouse'. I spent some happy moments imagining the context of mouse to mouse advertising. And there are the signs containing fractured English which I sometimes enjoy sending to friends. With some of these, it is easy to understand how the error was made. Like the sign at the Shanghai airport that directs 'inconvenient passengers' to a particular place. Some of the errors are simple spelling mistakes, like the staff-room door in a hotel that said 'STUFF ONLY' instead of 'STAFF ONLY. And some expressions are just due to an unfamiliarity with the niceties of language, like the barf bag on the airplane that said, "Use this to keep your vomit." And sometimes Chinglish can be almost incomprehensible, where it just isn't possilble to know what the intent was. Like the sign that tells you to 'close the door omnivorously'. Often, this happens where someone with a dictionary finds a meaning represented by many different words and has no way of knowing which words are in common usage for that meaning. Like the shop named 'Unsightly and Peculiar', or the 'Very Suspicious' supermarket. I imagine the first shop wanted to refer to odd or unusual things you don't see very often. I can't imagine what the 'suspicious' was. And if 'complimentary' means 'free', then 'uncomplimentary' must mean you have to pay. |
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Things begin early here; by 5:30 all the street food stalls are in full swing, people are practicing Tai Chi on the sidewalk, and the city's coming alive. And it shuts down fairly early in the evening. Some of the trains stop running by 9:00 or 9:30 PM; many stores close by 8:00, the supermarket at 10:30 PM, and everyone's at home. I imagine the bars are busy late into the night, same as everywhere else, but the city closes down earlier than I would have expected. |
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We recently had an unexpected civic holiday. There was some huge conference in the city on Wednesday, and the local government thought the traffic problems might prevent too many people from getting to work on time and declared a holiday. So most companies had their people work on the weekend - Saturday and Sunday - and take off two days after the Wed. holiday. So people worked right through to Tuesday evening, then were free til the next Monday morning; Wed. for the civic holiday, Thurs. & Fri. to make up for the two weekend days worked, and then the weekend. Great idea. |
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On the East part of Nanjing Road there is a long pedestrian mall with lots of shops and restaurants and people, and quite a few scammers whose English is limited to "watch, bag, DVD, shoes"? Or, sometimes, "girls"? Frequently I encounter a pair of young people, always a boy and girl in their early 20s, who claim to be university students from Beijing, studying art, and who have a 'little art gallery' nearby, and would love to show me their paintings - which I can buy for very good prices just for me because they like me because I'm a handsome foreigner. Usually I just tell them to get lost, although sometimes I'm less polite than that, but a couple of weeks ago I sat down and talked to the two of them. I asked the girl why she was doing that sort of thing, and how she felt about lying to people, and if it bothered her to know that she was cheating innocent foreigners very badly by selling them worthless paintings for high prices. I asked if she enjoyed stealing from people who trusted her, and if she would like that to happen to her. And I asked if her mother knew what she was doing, and if her mother was proud of her. And she started to cry. And we talked, and talked some more. It was clear that when confronted with the facts of what she was doing, it did bother her quite a lot. And she quit. I got her a couple of job interviews at companies I knew, but so far no real job. She went back to her home town for the May holiday and sent me a message that she was still there but would return to Shanghai and find a real job. And she said she had told her mother all about me, and that her mother cried too, and that she was going to bring back some special foods for me from her home town when she returns. And she thanked me for changing things for her. I was happy too. Good thing to have done, but it doesn't work for everyone. I still see the boy on the mall, still posing as an art student and still selling the same overpriced junk and not distressed about it. |
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Well, that's not really true. But what is true is that there seems to be no word in Chinese for 'funny'. I've asked a hundred friends and received more than 100 answers (all different), none of which reflect the correct sentiment. Most often, people use a word that means 'interesting', so if they think something is really funny they will tell me it was very interesting. And there are apparently many words that might mean 'amusing', but they vary so much by specific situation and are often unsuitable. |
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I was in Nanjing last weekend and my friend took me to see some new houses. We saw one set of townhouses that were spectacularly beautiful. They were 5-story houses of about 260 square meters, fully finished inside to the highest standard I have probably ever seen. Beautiful marble, brass, glass, hardwood everywhere. Everything from the door handles and light switches to the walls and ceilings were done so beautifullyl and tastefully. Magnificent. The main floor has a glass atrium going right to the top, and the rooms facing the atrium have a glass wall, so there is light throughout the entire house. Wonderful. The lower floor (basement) had a garage and storage space, the main floor had a huge kitchen, diining room and living room plus other areas, and a huge bedroom. The upper floors all had two bedrooms plus an extra bath, and the very top floor was outside, all decks and balconies that were beautifully done with 5 or 6 different private places to sit and talk or have a barbeque. The bedrooms have to be seen to be believed. They must each be 600 sqare feet, with room for a huge bed, a large sitting area with a sofa and coffee table and chairs, and another large area with a desk and chair. The bathrooms were larger than my bedroom, and the bathtub had its own room. One of the extra rooms had a Mah Jong table in it and others had room for a pool table or more. The place had a yard with a small swimming pool and lots of trees and bushes, and every floor had many outdoor decks and balconies everywhere - probably another 260 square meters of the outside areas. The price was about 4 million RMB, or about $500,000. It was priced at 15,000 RMB per square meter, which is not really expensive. My apartment here would sell for more than twice that price per meter, so more than 5 million RMB, and it is nothing compared to the one I've described, and much smaller too. If I wanted to buy a home here, I would buy one in Nanjing and continue to rent in Shanghai. I'd rent out the one in Nanjing and wait for the values to rise as they will do. The prices in Shanghai are now so high that it just isn't worth thinking about buying a house here, and the rents are very low relative to the purchase prices so renting makes sense. The time to buy was maybe 6 or 7 years ago, but I wasn't here then. On the other hand, the prices in places like Nanjing will likely rise a lot during the next 5 years, and if I were to buy a home there I would wait for that and then sell it and buy one locally. |
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Well, I have an English student, and she is possibly the prettiest girl in all of Shanghai. And she likes me, too. When I give her a lesson, she sits on my knee, and I put my arm around her and we practice English together. Okay, so she's only 18 months old. But admit it, you're jealous anyway. Her mother is a friend of mine and wanted me to help teach her little girl some English. I didn't know how to say 'no'. So I have some really challenging English lessons - 'nose', 'milk', 'apple'. |
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Walked around taking photos yesterday. I spent my time looking at faces; there were so many interesting ones and (probably) so many stories to go with them. But it's not easy to surreptitiously take good photos of people's faces, and I'm reluctant to ask permission. Mothers with small children are always pleased, but not everyone else is. |
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Discovered that my lovely little Haier washing machine has no connection to a hot water pipe. Washing in cold water is for university students and the neighbor's cat, not for my tea towels with the little kitty on them. So I pour hot water from the kitchen sink into the washing machine. I discovered that it is not a good idea to hang a wet, heavy with water newly-washed jacket from one of the light fixtures on the ceiling. I put it back and it seems to be holding, but I need a dryer. I've been wondering if I could buy a small dishwasher and use it for socks and T-shirts. |