Dropped my camera

Ug, dropped my small camera and it split open, I managed to push it back together and it still works, for that I am grateful. I do want a new slim camera, this one is about 6 years old and a bit clunky, but I have to tell you it's a great camera. I don't need a slim camera for my purse. Tony got this one for me for Xmas and it has never let me down. And Tony generously offered the use of his fancy Canon camera. Doesn't he know I have been using it? And I have actually claimed it as my own. I have been shopping for a new lens, you know one of those zoomy type things. Yeah sure I'm a professional and really need a new lens! I guess I best read the booklet before I invest any money into the fancy pants camera.

I dropped the camera at the wet market near our apartment. A wet market is an outdoor market selling vegetables and meat/fish. OK this one is in a covered concrete like alley. I like the fish area (albeit stinky) because the fish are swimming around live in their pots so you know it's 'fresh'. I have not 'ordered' one yet but I may get up the courage to do so one day. Here I found the clover like leafy veg we ate the the vegetarian restaurant last week. I bought some to cook up. It really is clover, how about that! Cost for about a half pound was $1.00 USD.

I also bought some flowers at the flower store on my walk home from the wet market. Pretty, yes? I spent what I thought was a lot for flowers, RMB 70 for the tulips = $10.30 and RMB 110 for the Lilies (8 stems) = $16.18.

My Favorite Things

After 39 years and 11 months and 28 days I finally lived in a house that had a public /county water and sewer! Be still my heart!

Now for those of you who have never had a septic tank or your own water well on your property seriously you haven't been missing much. Hard water, and years of visits by the "honey pot" if you want to keep you septic tank happy and healthy. Perhaps your well runs dry at precisely the time you are out of town and your mother-in-law is watching the house, $1,500 later and a new well is dug, but with much hang wringing and worry. OK, so if you don't know any better you think you don't miss much with this public utility thing. Wrong! I can tell you I have secretly coveted the mindless flush of anything down the toilet or the reckless pour of oil down the kitchen drain - ah the luxury of it.

And now we lived in Glen Allen, VA, a community developed in 1994 or so and equipped with all the modern conveniences.

Yes, I flush it all down the drain, I grind it up in the kitchen disposal and let it run right down the kitchen pipes. A bit of hot water after the oil pour keeps my pipes clog free....so far....I hope.

And now here in Shanghai I live no differently then in Virginia! This country too offers me the opportunity of the mindless flush and the reckless pour down the sink, including a kitchen garbage disposal - except for this little thing...... I am constantly losing small items down this disposal. Generally I see it sticking up out of the drain so no harm, except this last time.

I am a frequent grinder of egg shells - why not I say! And the sound is rather crunchy which I confused this time with the sound of metal. Oops. I heard the crunch crunch and then the sudden STOP! Ugh. I peaked in and didn't see anything so I thought I just jammed it up - a price I am willing to pay to be able to experiment with what can and cannot go in the disposal.

OK willing to pay if it doesn't cost much, i.e. I can fix it. And I am quite handy if I dare say so myself! I walked away from the crippled disposal and was really really bummed, was this the moment that I would have to change my reckless ways? To be cautious with what goes in the disposal which in turn will force me think about what goes down the drain? No, no I said to myself......if you think Tony was listening or even knew of this small drama you're kidding yourself. While I am sure he would have some thoughtful comments, he did not live with septic for almost 40 years, ok he had a brief stint of it in Ridgefield, CT, but he just couldn't understand this deep feeling I have, you have to live with septic for years to really appreciate how I feel!

I returned to the jammed disposal and gently snaked my hand into the dark hole (certain that it would instantly begin whirring and take off some of my digits) and felt around. I ran my hand along the rounded wall and success(!) a metal object jammed between the metal disk of the blade and the drum. This is a picture of the munched up spoon and a healthy one from the kitchen drawer.

Things are back to normal, my reckless ways will continue and the pleasure I take in them will know no bounds. I have happy tingles running up and down my arms even as I write this!!

Great Shoes and Other Shops

This Saturday has been splendid and I have been having such a good time walking around and just looking at the store fronts. I love these shoes in the window, I wish I had a place to wear them. Then of course some store fronts just make me laugh and these are located in a very nice neighborhoods.

Still Looking for my magazine, ~that's shanghai~

Beautiful Saturday, 50 degrees in the sun, no wind, perfect for a walk and to find a magazine stand that sells my magazine. I found Food and Wine, Esquire, National Geographic, Cosmo, Car and Driver, Better Homes and Gardens, all in Chinese - which I thought was pretty neat. But no that's shanghai magazine. I think I am going to have use the sticky finger approach at one of the coffee shops.

Bentley Shanghai

I was just walking around and saw the Bentley car dealership, closed of course for Chinese New Years. The dealership is located about 3 blocks away from Nanjing Rd, the 5th Ave of Shanghai. It would be hard to find and easy to miss if you didn't know the address. There is a street on the other side of town that is one car dealership after the other, I guess this is too high end to be stuck next to Shanghai VW Santanas or a Geely.

I love the door handles, don't you?

Dried Food Store

Here was an interesting store I passed by yesterday in my quest for the magazine, a dried meat and fish store......or maybe they are smoked, or maybe some were pickled. Here are a few shots, what do you think?

Buying a Magazine

Today I went out to buy a magazine, in particular, a magazine called ~that's shanghai~, it's a magazine with listings of upcoming events, restaurants, and other helpful and interesting information about the goings on here in Shanghai. I have been getting mine 'free' at the local coffee shops or restaurants that leave them laying about. I asked my pal Kathi where she buys them and she said that in the past 2 years that she has been here she has never paid for one. Well I don't frequent as many coffee shops and restaurants as she does and it is not on my mind to lightly lift one from an establishment when I am enjoying a meal or a coffee. So today I decided to find a newsstand and buy the newest issue.

Being Chinese New Year...I have mentioned that haven't I?? So much is just shut down. Now don't get me wrong, there are plenty of restaurants and shopping open for business but most smaller establishments are just shuttered for the week. Here is a picture of the newsstand closest to our apartment - closed. I know that this massive celebration will be over on Friday or is it Saturday? And then I hope I can buy a magazine catering to my expat ways.

Here are pictures of our street, Nanjing Road, all dressed up for Chinese New Year!

Shanghai Godly Vegetarian Restaurant

The weather this week has been stunning so far, sunny and mild about 55 degrees F, or more in the sun!!! As Tony has the week off due to the Chinese New Year, we decided to take a nice walk and find a vegetarian restaurant that I had read about for our lunch. Turns out the restaurant itself was on Nanjing Road West, which is the road that we live on. Nanjing Road is a major city road sort of like 5th Ave in NYC. And the stores on Nanjing are similar (Chinese style) to 5th Ave.

I found these 2 pictures on the Internet to show you what Nanjing Road use to look like in 1911 and present day.

We found our restaurant no problem, about a 20 minute walk from the apartment. The restaurant has a wonderfully pleasant atmosphere and the food was exceptional. Here is a picture of our meal, well most of the meal, we had already devoured the green leafy veg with mushrooms when I remembered I wanted to take a picture. Oh well. We over ordered so that we could have leftovers for dinner. The meal consisted of the green leafy veg with mushrooms (our favorite), no idea what the actual plant/vegetable was, it looked like green clover, you know what you find in the grass at home. The 'meat on the stick' was described as grilled lamb kabob with spicy powder. This was actually trumpet mushrooms dipped in a light light crumb or power and grilled, the texture was just like meat and the flavor was great! We ordered the hot and sour 2 mushroom soup, we keep forgetting they serve soup as if you were a party of 4, this has been our experience in every restaurant so far. Then 3 kinds of noodles, which was just like a noodle dish we have had called Shanghai noodles and we don't know what the "3 kinds of noodle" meant as it only had one kind of noodle in the dish. The last dish was shredded "chicken" in a chili sauce. This was the one dish that we could have completely done without. It had a nice spice and was tasty and it had all kinds of neat ingredients, pine nuts, peas, chopped mushrooms, chopped tofu, chili peppers and well I'm not sure what else. I think the "chicken" part was the Tofu. But it was overkill at that point, too much food, and the other dishes tasted even better, even though we thought the "chicken" was really good.

The cost for the whole meal was RMB101 = USD$ 14.85. We could have done with half of the food and the bill would have been half too! Next time we'll order more conservatively.

Chinese Lunar New Year Crazy Amazing!

These pictures do not do justice to the fireworks display we experienced last night. The fireworks began at sundown 5:30p -6:00p and continued nonstop until 12:30a or so. The noise from 11:30p to 12:30a was incredible. I can only describe it as 25 marching bands going at full tilt with drums only! The sky was littered with color, smoke and ash and the acrid smell of burnt fireworks. Everyone, I mean everyONE....OK maybe every family in Shanghai lit fireworks. From every street corner and courtyard they were being fired off!! The city was all aglow with flower like bursts of color! The pictures above I took from our balcony shooting north west with a visibility of about 5 miles in spite of the smoke and ash. It was not a still night, there was some breeze so the smoke was moving along. I circled the 'fireworks' in white. Since I don't know how to shoot at night and by the time I realized I should take some pictures it was past midnight and I became frantic to get some shots for you to see. Had I thought about it sooner I could have set the camera to rapid fire and probably even have figured out how to do 'night' shooting. I did bring the book for the Canon camera, which is the camera that I used for these shots. I will start reading the book so I can better capture pictures for your viewing pleasure!

These pictures are shot from the south west corner of the balcony straight down on to the street below. It was incredible. You can see sparkles of light behind buildings which are just other fireworks being shot off on other streets. I circled them for you.

Dinner at Bali Laguna

Saturday night we went to a wonderful restaurant called Bali Laguna, it's about a 10 mintue walk from our apartment building situated inside the JingAn Park. This is our second time eating there, we really enjoy the atmosphere and the food. Both times we sat in the glass enclosed balcony, same table as the first time. This area overlooks the pond, I am sure it will be spectactular in the spring and summer.

We had a lovely appetizer of cold vegetables with a spicey peanut sauce, followed by a whole grilled fish with a spicey curry paste on top. We also ordered a little rice and a vegetable called Morning Glory which looks and tastes just like spinach. All in all an enjoyable evening.

Here's Tony after he saw the fish!

We didn't want to leave so we went to the bar and had one more glass of wine.


Here are our bartenders, this was there last night of work as Lunar New Year is on Sunday and they will be closed for the next 5 days.

Hershey Kisses with Hazelnuts inside

On Tuesday I had lunch with a new friend by the name of Kate Hayes, who I met at the American Woman's Club of Shanghai. She is into everything Chinese, she wants to live like a local and try to experience the Shanghai life. We decided that lunch was going to be at a local restaurant. This may not sound interesting or impressive except that if you go to a local restaurant you may not be able to communicate on any level, waving your hands pointing to someone elses lunch to indicate that you want that for your lunch may not work. And although Kate has started her Chinese lessons she is woefully unprepared to order lunch at any 'local' restaurant. And I have not started my lessons so I would be no help at all.

Never fear, as I had done some research to find a restaurant that was healthy and where we could read the menu. The restaurant I found, Laokele, claimed to not use MSG, and made healthy noodles. Spinach noodles, carrot noodles and plain egg noodles. Noodles are a big deal here, everyone eats them. Also the menu had English translation so it was easy to point and order. Kate had the noodles with asparagus and bacon in a light cream sauce and I had the carrot noodles with chicken in a beefy stew like sauce, or beef broth if you will. This is a picture of our neighbors table with the asparagus and bacon dish his companion had the spinach noodles. When our dishes came I was so hungry I forgot to take a picture of our meal. We also has a 'health' smoothie, carrot and pineapple it was very tasty. Our lunch of 2 pasta dishes and 2 smoothies came to RMB 59 or $8.68 USD. After our lunch Kate wanted to go to the NEW Hershey's flagship store in Shanghai, right on Peoples Square. She was in need of gifts to distribute for Chinese New Year. It's part of the custom to give gifts. The Hershey store is a co-operative with a chocolate factory in Shanghai, so the chocolate was not made in the USA but here in Shanghai. It tastes wonderful. The Chinese like to get their fingers into everything instead of just importing the items. Creates more jobs, etc, etc. It's the same with Volkswagen, many of the cabs are VW's but they are made here in China. We had a lot of fun browsing around the store, I picked up a few boxes of chocolates for staff at the Shanghai Centre where we live. One big box for the doormen (it seems every 4 hours or so the staff changes and there is a new guy stationed at the door, so doorMEN, instead of doorMAN). Also a box for the tech staff with whom I have become very good friends with as our wireless keeps jamming up on us and we have to have help to restore it. We were given some samples and I am now in love with the milk chocolate kisses with the hazelnut center. Each Kiss has one hazelnut inside, so good. They also plied us with some hot chocolate milk, very tasty!!!

Real Estate

Shanghai has been sunny and warm these past weeks so I have been taking a lot of walks trying to learn my neighborhood. Here is a chart with the average temperature and rainfall. Shanghai for the most part seems quite mild, but there is a wetness to the air that makes you chilly to the bone at times.

[hide] Weather averages for Shanghai
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Average high °C (°F)	8 (46)	8 (46)	13 (55)	19 (66)	25 (77)	28 (82)	32 (90)	32 (90)	28 (82)	23 (73)	17 (63)	17 (63)
Average low °C (°F)	1 (34)	1 (34)	4 (39)	10 (50)	15 (59)	19 (66)	23 (73)	23 (73)	19 (66)	14 (57)	7 (45)	2 (36)
Precipitation mm (inches)	48 (1.89)	58 (2.28)	84 (3.31)	94 (3.7)	94 (3.7)	180 (7.09)	147 (5.79)	142 (5.59)	130 (5.12)	71 (2.8)	51 (2.01)	36 (1.42)

I have been taking pictures of the various building trying to gain an understanding of what Shanghai looks like. Shanghai is a mish mash of architectural styles as far as I can see. What I do know is that it is rare to have central heating so these buildings are cold. I studied the window at the Century 21 store front trying to figure out the cost of renting or buying an apartment but it was all Chinese to me.

I love the picture with the laundry and the bacon all hanging out to dry!