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This could happen only to me. Invited to a lovely Sunday brunch with friends at a famous Shanghai dumpling restaurant. And they brought us some very special (large) crab dumplings, with a little dish of special sauce for dipping. My friends asked if I knew how to use chopsticks. Well, of course I did. I can use chopsticks better than most Chinese. So I picked up the dumpling with my chopsticks, squeezing tightly because the dumpling was large and heavy, and I didn't want to drop it and lose face. I took my first gentle bite of the dumpling, then discovered it was filled with liquid. Since I was squeezing so tightly, the first bite opened the dumpling and all the liquid went 'whoosh' into the air and all over the table. I was so startled by the liquid eruption that I forgot to continue squeezing the dumpling, and it dropped from my chopsticks into the little dish full of sauce. The sauce was so startled by the abrupt arrival of the dumpling that it also went 'whoosh' into the air and all over the table. The waitress needed no special request to bring us four dozen napkins. Friends appear to have no further questions. Lunch conversation strangely subdued. Many jackets and skirts at the cleaners. Return flight to Canada leaves Wednesday. |
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This may not be a surprise to you, but the streets here are full of Chinese. No, I mean really full. I've never seen so many Chinese people in my life. They're everywhere. I thought they were all in Canada, but that's not true. There's lots left. |
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The other day I ran out of whipping cream for my coffee and bought a little thing of milk. Actually, it was yoghurt. Jesus, that's awful in coffee. I really have to learn more Chinese. |
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My apartment is on the 18th floor and my windows open. That's good for fresh air and for reaching out with a squeegee to clean the outside face of my windows. Depending on which outside window I'm cleaning, the squeegie can normally be retrieved from the bushes beside the pond. |
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This weekend I will mail two packages of the firecrackers and stuff to my nephew Eddie, in a gift-wrapped package so Canada Customs thinks it's a birthday present of socks and isn't tempted to open it. Note to Eddie: I don't know exactly what those cylinders do. I think they are fireworks, but I don't understand enough Chinese to be sure. My advice is to just light the fuse and run like hell. Be sure your dad is with you. It's much better for the police to take your dad home to his wife than for you to be taken home to your dad. The firecrackers can be burned off in one long string or separated and lit one at a time. The whole string will make enough smoke that the police won't be able to see you and you can crawl under the bushes and escape. Do it at night in the park. I'm sure you don't need my help in thinking of all the stupid things kids can do with firecrackers. |
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I bought some mulberries the other day. They look like a long black raspberry, about 2 ins. long, and are the original permanent non-washable dye. If you so much as touch one of these things, your fingers turn an interesting shade of purple and if you scrape your skin off fast enough the dye won't penetrate to the bone. If it gets under your fingernails, the dye permeates the porous surface and you look like you've been fixing cars all your life. I can understand why silkworms eat only the leaves and won't touch the berries. The taste of the ones I had is fairly bland - no adventure except for the color surprise. |
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Most of us are blessed in that we feel free to ignore evidence or lack thereof in forming our opinions. I have been doubly blessed to have met the person who patented this concept. This guy has quite firm opinions about things he knows absolutely nothing about, and that covers quite a range. I was trying to explain to him that in the Southern Latitudes (near the Equator) there is almost no twilight, and that the twilight period lengthens considerably as you move North. In fact, near the Equator, the sun seems to set almost instantly, as if someone flicked a switch. It takes only about 15 minutes to go from more or less full daylight to full darkness, and it's unnerving as hell when it happens. And the reason that the sky, the sea and the land all appear totally pitch-black is that they are accurately reflecting the survival chances of the four idiots (of whom I was one) drinking beer all afternoon in the sailboat anchored 2 Kms. offshore. In that total blackness you see absolutely nothing except the small light (or three or four, depending on your condition) in the harbor entrance. And each idiot follows his own uncoordinated plan for reaching that harbor light before something bad happens. For example, that harbor light actually being in the shopping center parking lot - presenting surprisingly abrupt parking problems when you're in a 40-foot sailboat under full power. But I digress. This person, in a surprising fit of literacy, said "I think you'll find that the sun sets at 5:00 everywhere in the world." Ok. Time to change topics. Well, in Canada we build single homes instead of apartments because we have so much empty space that we don't need to go up; we can just build outward. Nope, it has nothing to do with cheap free space. It's cultural. Ok. Time to change topics. |
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I had another birthday, my 30th (same as last year), and it was a surprise because I forgot it. Someone from the Ad agency invited me to stop by the office (to wish me Happy Birthday) and then gave the staff some money to go downstairs to the bakery to buy a cake. So I had my first 9:00 AM birthday party. Not bad. |
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A friend of mine, Silver, got herself a new small dog that was giving her a lot of trouble and she said she didn't know what to do with it. So I sent her a recipe for dog soup. Chinese Girls have no sense of humor. |
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My day is over, so I'm going to watch a Godzilla movie. He's my favorite actor. His accent isn't as heavy as Arnold Schwarzenegger's so he's easier to understand. Better looking, too. |
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My cleaning lady is a jewel. Really. She's pretty and friendly (not that it's any of your business), she works quickly and does such a good job of everything. All by herself, she finds everything that needs to be done and does it. She's careful, she's willing, she never complains. Today I wish I had a very big house so I could give her a full-time job. |
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I met a really interesting young girl the other day, working at an advertising agency. She graduated from the Shanghai Maritime University with a degree in navigation, of all things. She studied GPS systems, radar, and all sorts of navigational stuff that qualified her to be the navigator on a ship. The first thing that occurred to me was that here might be the one woman in existence who has a sense of direction. She took one ocean voyage from Shanghai to Singapore to Malaysia and back home, and decided that was too boring a life and found a job here. She said that being the only female on the ship didn't help either. She must have been the only girl in her classes too. It's odd because she seems perfectly feminine, quite normal in all respects, and I can't really imagine how she thought she'd want to live her life on ships. She's got a neat personality and a great attitude; I don't meet many people like this one. |
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China's mobile phone system is infinitely superior to that of the US, Canada and Europe. North America in particular has a system that is fragmented, disfunctional, and horribly expensive. I believe China's system must be the best in the world at this time. An introduction: First, I go to any one of thousands of shops and negotiate the best price I can get for any phone I want. At the same time, I get a SIM card which contains my phone number and network connection authorisation. The card costs 20 RMB (about $4) but has 50 RMB of air time already on it. Then I insert the battery, turn on my phone and begin making calls while still in the shop. If my air time runs low, I stop at any one of thousands of places to deposit some money and replenish my account. I normally deposit 100 RMB (about US$14.00) at one time, and that lasts for about 4 months. Some people have service contracts for 1-3 years; I'm not a heavy user, so pay-as-you-go is fine. If I'm unhappy with my phone company, then I just pay to another company when I replenish my phone account. It takes no additional time or effort to do this, my phone number (and my SIM card) are the same, and I needn't change my phone. If I buy a new phone, I simply insert my old SIM card and everything is as it was. I can purchase a second (or third) SIM card and have different numbers to use in different cities, if I want to do that. No problem, and no cost. My costs for local calls are .10 RMB per minute - less than US 1.5 cents. Text messages have a flat rate of .10 RMB for messages sent anywhere in the country, and attachments can be included. Those prices are for sending - receiving is free. I pay 5 RMB (about US$0.75) per month for my internet connection, and that is sufficient for all my emails and whatever browsing I do. My total monthly cost for my Nokia smart phone, including internet use and email, is around 30 RMB (US$5.00). By contrast, in the US or Canada it would cost at least US$75 per month, and likely closer to US$200. For sure one of the best features is that the entire country is wired, even in remote locations. I was recently on holiday in Inner Mongolia and could happily send text messages while riding my camel in the desert. Try that in your country. It isn't only China itself, but the entire Asian region is seamlessly connected. I never have to think about service provider compatibility, roaming, and all the other restrictions If I travel to Beijing, I receive a text message near BJ, welcoming me and telling me my calls are now local calls. If anyone from anywhere calls me, the system knows where I am and my phone rings. I recently called a friend of mine in SH to invite him for lunch, and he said, "I can't. I'm in Vietnam." Try that in London or NYC. The entire system is transparent, inexpensive and efficient as hell. And the reason is that it was designed to provide total effective communication service to everyone in the entire country, and was not designed with 20 layers of fees to suck as much money as possible from every subscriber. For this reason, hardly anyone in China uses a landline any more. Usually, only companies have them, and even then most calls are placed to mobile phones. The UN estimated that China's productivity was perhaps 15% higher than it might otherwise have been, just from the almost universal use of mobile phones and their very low usage costs, especially for text messaging. |
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Many people have good friends in (or from) maybe half the provinces in China and most have friends and family back home. Whenever anything of consequence happens anywhere, communication is instant, with 800 million mobile phones sending text messages. We sometimes know of events before the news media. In related news, the governments use the mobile phone messaging systems to great advantage, something that may not exist anywhere else. We had a recent typhoon near Shanghai and the government sent out a typhoon warning to all the mobile phones in two provinces. 100 million people were instantly notified that the storm was coming, and were told what to do. That's a very effective and instant public-warning system that reaches almost everyone in only a few minutes. Also, the banks here will send you an SMS message each time a charge is made on your credit card. So if your card has been lost or stolen and someone tries to use it, you will know within two minutes and can call the company to cancel the card. |