I Want a Divorce!!

It all started on Sunday evening when my cell phone decided to jump in the toilet. Immediately I recalled a similar incident in the winter of 2006, when my phone took a dip in the hot tub with me and it took me about a month to get sorted out properly. And that was in America. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, I suppose.

I quickly tried to salvage my little information buddy by separating the battery case, battery, SIM card, and the phone itself on a dry towel and placing this towel directly under a heater running at full blast. I was all ready to go to bed in this situation when I realized that my phone is not only my phone -- it's also my alarm clock. So I had no real way to wake up in the morning. I do have a regular desk clock in my bedroom, but I'd long ago given up on using it as an alarm clock, which is especially disconcerting given that it's a Fungdo brand, which is well-renowned for its quality. (That's a joke, people.)

Luckily, I still have my American cell phone with me, and, for WHATEVER reason, it still gets a signal in China. It's on Digital Roaming, but it can pick up the correct time, which means that I was able to use it as an alarm clock Sunday night.

So all's fine and good. I figure I'll give my phone a couple days to dry out, and if it doesn't, I can pick up a cheap one at Carrefour.

So I came home from work on Monday, all set to check out my phone and see if it's working yet. I walk inside, flick the light switch as usual, and step towards my bedroom door -- and stop.

The light's not on.

I flick the switch a couple times again to be sure. No dice. Oh great, I thought. Somehow, even though the only things using power right now are my laptop in sleep mode and my fridge, I've managed to trip the power again. This does not bode well for the coming months.

I step outside my apartment and go to open the door to where the breaker is.

It's locked.

No, that can't be.

Yes, it can.

Now I'm frantic. My power is off and the only way I know how to get it back on is barred. And I have no cell phone. And I'm, um, in China. And I don't speak or understand Chinese very well.

I find my flashlight (so glad I brought that to China) and my landlord's business card (so glad I kept that out where I can get to it easily). Then I gather up my keys and wallet and head for the gate entrance to my apartment complex. The guards there seem pretty nice and friendly whenever I say hello, so maybe they'll take pity on a poor lao wai.

I'm halfway to the guard station when I think: when's the last time I checked my mail? For those who don't know, in America, I hardly ever check my mail. Ever. The past two years, my roommate was the one who checked it since he worked from home all day. And I so rarely get information via snail mail anyway - what with these new fangled computers and Internet doohickeys.

But maybe, just maybe, there's a power bill sitting unpaid in my mailbox. So I turn around and open it up - and sure enough, amongst a bunch of folded-up fliers and ads for random junk, I see the two distinctive red ovals that mark a fa piao. The only Roman characters on the paper are a symbol for the Beijing Olympics and the words "State Grid". The date reads 2008-2-19.

Oh crap, I think. I'm delinquent. They cut off my power. It's 7 PM at night.

I step out the door again and head for the guard tower. In my mind I'm like, okay: the first words out of my mouth will be Ni hui shuo Yingwen ma? "Do you speak English?" On the off chance that they do, then, good, should be much easier. However, it is 99.99% likely I will have to whip out the Zhongwen. Let's see - what do I want to say here?

I decide on two phrases:

1. Qing bang wo - "Please help me"
2. Wo de jia bu hao - "My house is no good"

(Stop laughing)

That's all I can do. I don't know how to say "light," "door," or "locked" or "My power's off."

This is all in the 15-second walk to the guard house. I walk up to the guard house and, after determining that the guard can speak "a little bit" of English, proceed in order as described above. I punctuate this by pointing at the light in the room. He understands - "Your power is off."

Woohoo! Score one for the American.

He squawks on his walkie-talkie for a bit and calls someone. "You no pay bill" he said (or something to that effect). Then he points to a sheet of paper on the wall - "You call them." Ah, now, time for the "I don't have a phone", or mei you shouji. Wo de shouji bu hao. These I know how to say, so I do. He offers to call them for me on his cell phone, and does. Of course, it's like 7 PM, so nobody answers.

D'oh.

So I call my landlord and explain the situation. Which is tough - he speaks halfway decent English, but I speak to him so rarely that I feel like I have to remind him who I am every time ("Wo shi gao mei guo ren, zai Dingxiang Lu jiu yi ling, we went shopping at Jialefu ..."). It's like a missed connection on Craigslist.

No wait, scratch that -- he speaks quarter-decent English. Maybe, if I'm feeling generous, third-decent English.

I pass the phone off to the guard, who explains things in Chinese. I get the phone back and my landlord re-re-explains the situation to me.

Yes, I'm a delinquent. I'll pay tomorrow -- wo you qian. But is there anything I can do tonight? Jin tian wan shang ma?

He promises to call them and ask. I guess he has some super-secret number that the guard doesn't. He asks for my phone number and again, I bust out with the Wo de shou ji bu hao. Hahaha. I really need to learn how to say "broken." So the guard gives him his cell phone number, and tells me zhe li deng yihuir - ("Wait here a moment.")

After 5-6 minutes, my landlord calls back to report a failure. No dice. I pay tomorrow - tonight I'm without power. He says "You can pay tomorrow. The address of the company is on the bill. Go to the one on Fudian Lu." And we hang up.

I'm pretty proud of how calm I stayed just then. I figured, what the hell. It's certainly not freezing outside. I won't be cold at all. I can go to Carrefour, buy some batteries for my flashlight, eat dinner at the Thumb and just kind of hang out for awhile. At home I've got a fully-charged iPod and an entire season of The Simpsons to watch. Then I can go to bed kind of early.

So that's exactly what I do :-) I also check my cell phone, which has regained 90% of its functionality. It turns on and the numeric keys work -- but the menu navigation buttons do not. Oh well - at least it's a start.

Luckily in the morning, there's enough hot water for a regular-length shower. I don't know how that happened, but it did and I'm thankful. It's light out so I get dressed and leave easily enough without running into things. But today I wake up earlier than usual, because I have to go pay my bill.

Which is part two of the story.

I look at the fa piao. Like I said earlier, there are no useful Roman characters on it - no Pinyin or nothing. However, I have an ace up my sleeve - I know the Chinese character for lu, or road, after having stared at it on the subway maps so much. (To me, it looks like a little man waiting to cross a street while a car passes in front of him, with power lines overhead. Yes, I'm serious.)

So I look for the character, and sure enough, on the back I see lu, in tiny print, about 10 times, along with associated road names and street numbers (which are in Arabic). So my power company has like 10 locations in Shanghai -- beautiful. There are even phone numbers associated with each one.

I can't read these addresses and I don't know how to get anywhere they say. But I know who can do both of these things - taxi drivers. Which, thankfully, are plentiful in this city. Damn, sometimes I really enjoy this whole not-driving thing.

So I have 10 addresses and a way of getting to any one of them. However, I am cursed with a geek's brain and must optimize this problem. It's not enough to go to one of these places - I want to minimize the amount of time it'll take me to get there, pay, and get out - so that I won't be too late for work. I don't want to end up in Hongqiao by accident.

So which address is the closest to me?

This is the query I attempt to pose to the guard at the gate who, obviously, is not the same one from last night. I start out with Wo yao gei ta men qian - "I want to give them money." I flip the paper over and point to the section with the addresses. Wo bu zhidao zai na li yi - "I don't know where." Qing bang wo again.

This line of questioning is, of course, woefully indirect. What I want to say is - "Which of these addresses is closest to here?" I could say, or approximate, every word in that sentence except for "close". And I don't think I could pantomime it, either. So that's why it takes 10 minutes and the assistance of a man in his PJs walking his dog in order for me to hear the words "Fudian Lu".

Ah -- that's right! Fudian Lu - that's what my landlord said! I had forgotten since last night. Now which one of these addresses here says Fudian Lu?

Ahh, he points to Fudian Lu 92 - Fudian Lu jiu er. (If I'd been smarter, I would have noticed that it's the only one listed that has three characters - one each for "Fu", "dian", and "lu" along with the numerals.)

Because I'm supremely happy at this point, I say zai na li - "Where is it?" This wastes precious time, as the nice man proceeds to give me directions to Fudian Lu which, of course, I can't really understand. Nor do I care, because I'm going to hail a taxi anyway. So when he closes with Ni ting dong ma? ("Do you understand?") I respond with.

Ting dong. Ming bai le. Hao de.

("I understand. I see. Good!")

After thanking them both profusely (Tai xie xie le), I hail a taxi, gesture frantically to the address on the fa piao, breathe a sigh of relief when the driver appears to know where it is, and I'm on my way.

Whew.

In the cab on the ride over, I can't remember how or why I struck up a conversation with the driver or if he struck one up with me - but I said Zhe ga shi wo de fa piao - "this is my receipt." He must have noticed me playing with the bill and looking at it. I hand it to him to look while we're stopped at a light, and of course, he can read it and so he understands my situation. He points to the due date, which is 2008-2-19 if you're still with me, and says something. I don't need an interpreter to realize he's saying "You're late!"

Wo zhidao - "I know". I laugh and try for some comic relief. Zuo tian wan shang bu hao - "Last evening was not good". Which isn't 100% true, but still. Hehe.

It turns out that we're going to Pudian Lu - I have mis-heard everybody up until now. Pu because the street is near the Huangpu river. As we approach, I look up and see blue tile roofs on the houses -- rows and rows of them. Now where have I seen these before? Zai Jin Mao Da Sha ba shi ba lou. On the 88th floor of the Jin Mao tower last week, this very same section of housing caught my eye, because it's a big swath of bright blue in the middle of the area nearby. Now I'm right in the middle of it.

We make it through heavy morning Shanghai traffic and I see the building. The logo on the door matches the logo on my bill. Luckily the pay station is located right in front of the door. I manage to pay the bill with only some mild hilarity that ensues when the teller asks me to wait a minute while she checks my account, only to confirm that I have to pay some late fees. She speaks pretty decent English, so I leave with the full confidence that my power will be restored within three hours.

And so it was.

It takes me about 20 minutes to hail another cab, and another 45 or so to get to work -- only 45 minutes late, natch. As I was relating this story today to my co-workers at lunch, I learned some important facts about Chinese life:

• You can pay your utility bills at most convenience stores.
• Wo de jia bu hao is colloquial for "My home life is not good" which is usually what people say when they mean "I want a divorce." So there you go. Now the gate guards think that I'm having domestic problems ;-)
  

Now -- about that water bill ...

p.s. I must impart that, at any time, I could have called one of my Chinese co-workers, given that I had a working land-line phone and a list of their numbers handy. However, in the midst of everything that was going on, I did not think about this option. But if I had, I might not even have called them, because that would have been way less fun.

Blue

I stepped outside today, saw a clear blue sky, and immediately thought "Jin Mao!" The pictures I took from my first visit up there, back in November, were kind of hazy. Today I went back and took some more pictures. You don't waste days like these in Shanghai. Unlike in Austin, where I was always like "Oh, I don't need to take advantage of the nice weather today - it's guaranteed to be this nice for at least the next eight months", in Shanghai (at least in the winter) when the weather is clear and blue like this, you get your happy ass outside!

I set the white-balance mode on my camera to its fluorescent-lighting setting, which resulted in this dark-blue overtone that I think looks kind of neat. The toughest part was capturing the shadows of the clouds while still keeping the picture itself light enough to make out.

First, some pictures to prove the sun was out in force today:







Then some from the Jin Mao:



Just beautiful. I wish the city itself had come out lighter. But still. I'm not complaining.



This one probably will be my new computer wallpaper.



Or this one ...



I could see all the way into People's Square. Notice the white balance is set to "Auto" on this one, so it's not all blue.







Afterwards I walked down the street to the Oriental Pearl Tower and took in the view from its top floor, which was slightly less impressive. Okay, much less impressive. The only thing worth seeing was the twin peaks of the Jin Mao and the WFC standing side-by-side, which is a view you obviously won't get from the Jin Mao itself.





These could probably use some lightening-up, but I'm lazy.

The full set is here.

Another pic, this time of the metro plaza near my apt:



And some more interesting (I think) architecture:



At the Oriental Pearl Tower, I met this guy Elias from Bavaria who also was doing some sightseeing. He's in a situation similar to mine: he is in Shanghai on a work visa for 6 - 7 months. He's a little bit newer than I am, so I took a certain delight in giving him tips for navigating the city, telling him how to pronounce the area he lived in, cluing him in to this party I'm going to on Saturday, correcting his pronunciation of "fa piao," and teaching him how to day "I'm German" in Chinese. Haha. I won't lie, it was a good feeling to be able to pass off some knowledge to someone who's newer here than me :-) I see this situation all the time at work - we have someone who's been there for three months teaching the person who has been there for two weeks. It works out well that way for all parties involved. Same thing here. After all, the best way to learn something is to teach it yourself!

I came home from the sightseeing excursion to find my aiyi finishing up her first day on the job. Holy shit does this place look so much nicer than yesterday. She not only cleaned like I asked her to, she did all my laundry, organized all the stuff I had laying around, unpacked my last suitcase, and folded everything that was already in drawers or the closet. Wow. I am very impressed. And, well, yeah. I could get used to this :-)

I think I misspoke in my post yesterday. I maybe should have said "hoity-toity" instead of "bouregoisie," because the latter term implies labor exploitation and class struggle. I didn't intend to convey those ideas, because I certainly don't feel they apply to this situation here. I don't think hiring a maid is exploitative in any sense. After all, I am putting money into the local economy and increasing her earning power without acting like a robber baron (I hope).

I mainly was talking about not wanting to spend money on tasks that I could do myself, because I would consider that a wasteful endeavor, e.g. something that a hoity-toity (HT) person might do. (If there are any HTs reading this blog, you are exempted from this overanalysis.) But considering what she's charging me and what she did for me today, hoo boy, I would not call that wasting money at all :-)

And in a larger sense, if you're paying for a good or service and you're happy with what you get for the price, it's not wasteful (in a monetary sense) at all. Like there is a certain price point at which having my laundry folded would become, to me, wasteful. Just to throw some numbers out there, I might pay someone fifty cents to fold my laundry, but I would not pay anyone fifty bucks to do it, because I would consider that amount wasteful. At fifty cents, I don't think I'd consider that wasteful. You see what I mean. Man, I've been reading the Freakanomics blog way too much.

Plus, "hoity-toity" is way more fun to think/say.

I Have an Aunt

So, I'm about to head out to go ice-skating, except I'm worried they will not have skates for my giant American feet, haha. My friend humorously described this lack of inventory as an "untapped market", which made me laugh. You will not be surprised to learn that she works in PR :-) But I'm on my way out the door, so we'll see if they can dig up a special pair just for me.

I spent the afternoon today shopping at Carrefour for cleaning supplies. Not for me, mind you - but for my aiyi. Literally this word means "aunt" (Hi out there!) but colloquially it refers to a maid. Yes, that's right - after almost 2 months here I am breaking down and hiring a maid. I resisted for so long because, well, I am used to cleaning (however infrequently and half-assedly) myself. And I don't like the idea of paying someone to do something that I can easily do myself. I guess it makes me feel, too, what's-the-word -- bourgeoisie. (Icky.) But the dust is piling up and I'd rather spend my time sightseeing (and ice skating), and Tim recommended his aiyi who he and his wife have employed for over two years. So I hopped on the spoiled-expat bandwagon. I'm mitigating this feeling by still doing my own laundry and food gathering/cooking. It's just the scuzzy floors that will get a cleaning. She's coming tomorrow at 1 or 2 PM.

For whatever reason, the mop/broom aisle in Carrefour is the home turf of like 6 different salespeople who all try to push (pun totally intended) brooms on you the moment you step in the aisle. Nowhere else in the store has anyone else tried to offer my something. But there's like 2 - 3 people giving broom/mop demos in this particular aisle. Even when I clearly had a broom and mop in my cart already, they were still trying to hawk their merchandise, haha. I have no idea what's going on there or why that aisle is so popular with the type-A employees.

So I regaled you all in the past with the tale of my heating units and how I wasn't sure I was using them effectively. Turns out I was right. After several weeks of procrastination I brought the units' remote control into work and asked my boss to read the labels for me. I discovered I'd had the unit on "Automatic" instead of a specific "Heater" mode. Also I now can use the high-powered mode and have the fan blades oscillate to heat an entire room better. Coupled with the slight rise in temperature (I think it was 8 - 9 degrees out today) I'm feeling a bit toastier. Asking my boss to read the labels on my remote control brings me back to that embarrassing feeling where I know what I want but don't know how to say / ask for it, haha. But I swallowed my pride and it turned out to be a good thing (as I would imagine usually is the case) :-)

I've been eating some badass food, too. On both Thursday and Friday nights I had food from Guizhou province. The food is spicy, but not nearly as spicy as Sichuan or Hunan food. They have some interesting dishes too, including worms, bees (yes, bees!), dog meat (perpetuating a stereotype), and steamed turtles. I have to admit, I'm really curious to see what a meal consisting of bees and turtles will taste like. I'll let you all know what I find out, and of course I'll bring my camera along for the ride :-)

I also saw one description on the menu that was heavy on the Chinglish - apparently the dish contained "Jew's ear." I saw that and was like fuck, I'm getting out of here, ya'll aren't taking my ears!!

Tonight I go for the hat trick as, after ice skating (if I can indeed do that) we're going to a Hunan place. No rest for my tongue :-)

Small anecdote: I was discussing Chinese and American leaders today with my tutor, where I found out the Chinese refer to Dubya as "Bushi", which, when said out loud, sounds pretty close to how you would say "is not" in actual Chinese. I liked that. And she taught me how to say "Clinton," and then she said another name starting with an L. And I was like, "Hillary," naturally assuming that she would be the woman most closely associated with Bill. But Joyce (my tutor) was like "No, not Hillary, not his wife -- [this other woman] can't be president." I literally had no idea who she was talking about, so I kept saying "I really think you mean Hillary" and just assumed Joyce was mistaken.

But it turned out she was trying to say "Lewinsky"!! I cracked up for a couple seconds there, just because, you know, I don't think most Americans think about that incident anymore, but apparently that's not the case overseas. Oh, the legacies we weave without even thinking about it . . .

Words & Food

Today was the first time I've been able to say it's actually warm. I even took off my big heavy jacket on the walk from the Thumb Plaza to the metro station. Of course, it's all relative, as today's temperature was something like 7 - 8 degrees C - hardly "warm". But given the past month of crappy weather, I'll take it. Oh yeah, and the sun came out. It was pretty nice :-)

I went to the Shanghai Art Museum today. Half the stuff my guidebook said to visit wasn't there, haha. Either that or I was just not good at finding it. There's not much English or Pinyin to be had, so I just walked around and looked at all the pretty pictures for awhile. There were a couple of which I wanted to buy prints, but the gift shop didn't seem to have them. I need to learn the word for "buy". Um, I'm sure it's in my phrasebook. I also need to learn "live", "need", "with", "there", "here", "after", and "like". Probably all also in my phrasebook.

The great thing about having a language tutor is that I can come to her and say "Help me learn these words." In fact I might text message her with these words and ask her to come up with sentences designed to help me learn and remember them. Word. (hah! no pun intended!)

I'm getting better at recognizing words I know when people say them to me. That's pretty cool and empowering. So I am having more mini-conversations with taxi drivers and waiters. In the morning when taxi drivers have talk radio on, I'm starting to recognize words like "today", "want", "have", "you", "me", and so on, from the vocabulary that I actually know and can speak. Baby steps man -- baby steps. Today I saw a billboard for Heilongjiang - and immediately knew that means "Black Dragon River". That's a pretty badass name for a province, if I say so myself.

In fact I was watching a bit of TV this morning, and there was some commercial for skin moisturizing cream on - Garnier, I think. (Amusingly, the announcer pronounced it "Gar-nyer", where in America it's pronounced "Gar-nyay", which I guess is the correct way to say it in French.) I heard the phrase gao keji, and immediately went - ahh, I know what that is! Because two metro stops I say the most are Shanghai Keji Guan and Zhangjiang Gao Ke. Ke is technology (first tone, anyway), ji (fourth tone) is science, and gao (first tone) is tall. (We all know why I know this word.)

So gao keji, in the commercial, literally means "tall science and technology". In this context though, gao probably means something like "advanced". Combined with my knowledge of how these commercials are all the same, e.g., they all try to convince you they've uncovered the secret formula for eternal youth, I could infer that the voice-over was using this same technique of persuasion in China. Not that there's anything especially interesting about that - I'm just happy I was able to recognize the words in a normal, everyday context.

Another funny phrase involving gao is Ni he gao le. This literally means, "You drink tall" which makes no sense. But colloquially, this phrase means "you're drunk", and if you think about it, it kind of makes sense (at least to me, anyway). This one is easy to confuse (when either speaking or listening) with Ni hen gao le, which simply means, "You're very tall". A way to make it easier is that he is first tone and hen is third tone, so if you get your tones right, I guess there's less of a chance of insulting someone accidentally.

In other, smaller triumphs, I went shopping yesterday at Carrefour and bought vittles. It took me a couple trips to load everything into the taxi, so I knew I wouldn't be able to carry everything up to my apartment by myself, not in one trip anyway.

Solution, you ask?

As we stopped at my door, I said to the taxi driver, Wo gei ni er shi kuai bang wo. This translates to "I give you 20 kuai help me." I could have added zhe ge ("this") while pointing at the bags, I suppose, but I got my point across. He understood and helped me carry all my bags upstairs. Victory :-)

Speaking of er ("two"), it's pronounced like "ar" (as in "yard"), and it's first tone. So every time I say it I'm reminded of the sound a dog makes ("arf arf!") and I feel a little silly because I feel like I'm barking at someone in the way a small dog would, haha.

Also speaking of er, you only say that when you're saying the numeral two. When you want to say "two of <something>", you say liang. So if you want two bottles of water and you say Wo yao er ping shui, you'll confuse people. What you need to say is Wo yao liang ping shui. But if you're giving a street address, you'd use er. Don't ask me why this little rule is in there. But it's confusing :-)

Back to Carrefour, or Jialefu as it's called here, I bought a pot and a pan. So now I can boil (and fry!) the frozen jiaozi that I bought, which is way better than microwaving them. They also make for a much better dinner than a pack of Bugles and some rice crackers. (I'm such a bachelor.) I'm really starting to enjoy all the different kinds of dumplings - jiaozi, xiaolongbao, and wonton. They're cheap and delicious. Good times. I guess it's in my blood, and all, given that I grew up being served kreplach every so often :-)

I'm not sure if now's the time to explain how I've been living here almost two months and my refrigerator was not plugged in -- but, I guess I just did. The funny part is, I didn't even notice, because it's so cold here. All the bottles of water I had in there were cold, so I had no reason to be suspicious. Yesterday I dropped something behind the fridge and had to look back there, so I noticed, hey, this thing's not plugged in! Now the fridge light turns on when I open the door, and I'm like -- oh, right, that's supposed to happen -- I forgot.

Back to Jialefu. You know you've made it in China when your company or product is blessed with a Chinese name. For example, KFC is known as kendeji which, when said out loud, vaguely sounds like "Kentucky". Same thing for places like Washington DC, Houston, Italy, Canada, Budweiser, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, McDonald's, et al.

Aaaaand I am looking into booking a trip to Beijing at the end of April. Randomly enough, a friend of mine who I used to carpool with to Hebrew School in 3rd grade is in a play that is touring through China this spring. The tour is not coming to Shanghai, so I'm going to plan to meet up with them in Beijing.

Masked Scottish Techno DJs

nighttime 002
Originally uploaded by ryry9379

I have many stories to update since Thursday, but it's 1 AM and I'm tired. For now, enjoy these new photos. Some are of my apartment complex at night. I've put them in the Shanghai - Home set.

Many parts of Shanghai have a crazy neon glow at night -- I'm going to have to do a couple special nighttime photo shoots, especially down places like Huaihai Lu and Lujiazui.

The other set comes from Thursday night's techno meetup with the Void Shanghai crew.

Again -- more later :-)

Fotografias!

home 013
Originally uploaded by ryry9379

Check out my apartment building. I think you could fit all of Columbia, MD in here ...

Picasa seems to be blocked from China, so I've switched to Flickr. View all my photos here. There are the ones you're familiar with from my visit in November, but there are a bunch more that I took today.

Shrimp Flakes and Baby Steps

Saturday morning (Friday night for you all) I woke up and called YAC (yet another co-worker) because she was supposed to hang out with me during the day. We included two other co-workers (they are so common around here!), the ones that I ran into at Carrefour/McDonald's the previous night. We met up at the Shanghai Science & Technology Museum metro stop and took the train to ... well, I don't know where exactly, but we ate breakfast at a place in Puxi called Abbey Road. No, there was no Beatles decor, and they weren't playing music or anything like that -- for shame! You'd think with a name like that ...

I had the Berner Rosti, which is ham, eggs, bacon, potatoes, onions, and cheese all mixed together and fried in a bowl. It was delicious. Deeeeeeeeeelicious. On my way out I picked up some English-language magazines, including a copy of That's Shanghai. I also noticed a magazine with a big picture of Carl Cox, one of my favorite DJs, on the front. I flipped through it and saw it was all in Chinese, but it's obviously a magazine about the club scene in Shanghai. So I took that, too, just to look at the pictures and see the names of DJs I might like :-)

After that we took a cab to a Best Buy somewhere downtown. The goal was to get me a cell phone. The store here is a massive four-floor endeavor, smack in the middle of this gigantic road interchange connected to a metro stop and several other malls. (If there's one thing you can do all day in Shanghai, it's shop.) We looked around for about half an hour, and my Taiwanese coworker represented me well to the staff, but I decided to go somewhere else to get a phone. "Somewhere else" meant an electronics mall just down the street a little bit. Here again is a massive multi-story building that sells nothing but electronic gizmos. Computers, laptops, TVs, DVD players, cell phones, video games, digtal cameras, MP3 players, etc -- it is a geek's heaven. Everywhere you look you see Samsung, Nokia, Gateway, Lenovo, Sony, Benq, LG, and so on ... I'm talking about an entire floor of a mall devoted to just MP3 players and computers. Cell phones were on the third floor.

Buying a phone in China is not like buying one in the US. In the US, you choose a carrier, choose a phone that they offer, and sign a contract for a year or two to use that carrier. In China, you buy a cell phone (any kind you want) and then buy a SIM card for that phone. The SIM card gets you a phone number and a certain number of minutes to use. To get more, you just go to any kiosk and recharge your SIM card. It's pretty slick. There's no contract - it's pay-as-you-go. This mentality is starting to make its way to the US, I know, but you are still limited to phones that the carrier provides for you.

After wandering around a bit and looking at some of the phones, I settled on a Nokia 3110c. Nothing too fancy but does everything I need. It is an unlocked tri-band GSM-based phone, which means that when I get back to the US, I can find a GSM carrier and use this phone with them. Sweet. I learned the word for "tri-band" is apparently san ping or something like that. (I probably messed that up - I didn't get a chance to see the word, and I'm a visual learner.)

The phone's pretty slick. Once we got it to display English characters, I was off and texting some of my coworkers. I was poking around the menus and found out that to access the games, you select the "Magic Box" option. If only :-)

After that, one of my coworkers wanted to look at getting a shirt made, so we took a cab over to a fabric market. This place is three floors of stalls crammed together - each stall has a designer displaying their wares - all sorts of shirts, jackets, socks, suits, pants, vests, hats, dresses, and so on. The deal is you pick a fabric and pick a design, then the designer measures you. In about a week, you come back and pick up your custom-made clothes. You can pick a pre-made design from the stall or you can, for example, bring in a magazine and show the designer something in there that you like. In fact, each stall had a supply of fashion magazines to look through. A lot of my coworkers come to this place, or others, to get this kind of custom clothing done. I'm sure I'll end up doing it myself at some point :-)

The place was enormous and crowded (much like Shanghai itself), and I saw more lao wai there than at any other place so far. We probably walked around for an hour while my coworker looked at various stalls and designers, looking for something he liked. Now when I say custom, I mean custom. The stalls with shirts in them each had 10 collar and 10 cuff options on display. Everything is negotiable.

As we were walking around, my cell phone buzzed with some incoming text messages. I checked them and the sender and message were both in Chinese. In my brain that equals spam! So I quickly complained that I had signed up for phone service 10 minutes ago and already I was getting cell phone spam. My coworker looked at the message and said "That's not spam; those messages are from China Mobile welcoming you to their service and telling you who to call if you have any questions." D'oh :-) She showed me the characters for "China" and "Mobile", which led to a 20-minute discussion on how to pronounce zhong guo (China). I tried hard to get the tones right. At first she told me zhong was in high tone and guo was the falling-rising tone. I must have sounded like a complete idiot because I literally repeated "zhong guo, zhong guo" over and over again, out loud, for like 20 minutes straight. Can you imagine walking around a mall and hearing a Chinese person saying "America. America. America." to themselves over and over?? Hahaha. Oh well, good thing I have no shame. And hey, that's the best way to learn, right? After a little while we ran into one of her friends, and she told us guo is in the rising tone, so I was even saying it wrong!

That led to a discussion on accents, because my co-worker is Taiwanese. We talked about how to pronounce the zh sound. For whatever reason I've been having difficulty with that. Here's the thing: when I hear my Chinese coworkers say "zhong", I hear "tzong" (that's the closest I can get, phonetically, in roman characters). But when I say "zhong", I force a j because that's easier for me, so it comes out more like "jhong." They tell me I'm speaking it correctly. But what I say doesn't sound, to me, like what they say. So I was a bit confused :-) But it's all about accents. I still don't know enough of the language to know what is "correct" and what is an accent (or that it doesn't matter). Hey, as long as people can understand me, I guess I shouldn't worry about it :-)

She also taught me the word for leather, which is pi ("pee"). However what that really means is "skin." It's highly dependent on context. If you walk up to someone on the street and say "wo yao pi", what you're saying is "I want skin," which is insanely creepy. But if you walk up to a clothier who is displaying jackets and say "wo yao pi", he understands you are saying "I want leather." Which, without the noun jiake (jacket), is only slightly less creepy :-)

After my impromptu Chinese lesson (I hope to be be having many of these), we split up. Three of us took a cab back to my area, because we all live there. These other two co-workers, who've been here for a couple months, showed me around the Dingxiang Lu area. I'm within walking distance of Thumb Plaza, a shopping center with tons of places to eat. I'm also near the Renaissance Shanghai Pudong Hotel, this grand opulent building. There are sports bars and family marts all around. Very cool.

Oh, I forgot. My co-workers told me that my power outages most likely are caused from having all three heaters on at once. This might be overloading the circuitry, especially during the day when the entire building is also using its electricity. Nice. I'm just so used to central heat and not thinking "Ok, I'm going to move into the living room, gotta turn the heat on in there." I guess the good thing is that, again, I will never take central heat for granted again :-)

Anyway, I got home and rested for a bit. Then it was time for dinner with YAC and her husband. We went to the Thumb Plaza and ate at Bi Feng Tang, a chain dumpling restaurant. (I went to the one on Dongchang Lu during my last visit.) I didn't order anything exotic on the menu, but I let me tell you, there were some descriptions that made me jump, haha.

I walked home from there, and it was only about 8:45 PM or so. Maybe even earlier. I didn't want to go to bed just yet, so I decided to be adventurous. I packed up my camera, Lonely Planet guide, and my Mandarin phrasebook, and hailed a cab to The Bund. In Chinese. I'm not gonna lie -- I was very impressed with myself :-) What I said to the cabbie was "qing Waitan" which means "The Bund, please." I practiced saying this in the elevator on the way down (I had plenty of time -- the elevator is really slow) because I was worried I'd mess it up. That's why I had my guidebook, so I could point to the Chinese characters if necessary. But no, he understood me on the first try, and off we went. Woohoo :-) Now, asking to go to the Bund is a bit pointless, since the Bund is a mile or so long, so in the car he suggested dropping me off at the corner of Nanjing Dong Lu and Zhongshan Lu, to which I agreed.

I got out of the cab, paid, crossed under the street, and just walked down the length of the Bund. I had my camera and took a couple pictures, but they all suck. I really need to learn how to use this camera; the automatic mode doesn't work very well at night, and the night mode is too blurry. It's a pretty fancy camera; unfortunately for me, I just don't know anything about how to use it properly :-) Anyway here's the one that turned out the best, I think, of a guy playing a saxophone right on the Bund:

At the end of the Bund, where there are stairs that go back down to the street, I saw a sign for I Love Shanghai Lounge, which is apparently underneath the Bund. I recognized the name from a this Shanghai web site that I read, and there was no cover, so I headed in. It's a Western bar, so the couple people that were there were white. I just sat down for a bit, relaxed and listened to the music (some kind of jazz/hip-hop) and took it easy.

I asked a waiter if they ever had house/techno DJs play there, and he said yes, on Friday night, and to talk to the owner. So I did, and the owner was like "I don't know what he's talking about - we only play hip-hop here." So I have no idea what that was about :-) The owner is Jeff. He's from Seattle and has been in Shanghai four years. He moved here originally to each English for three months, but he's still here as the owner of a bar. Neat :-) Before I left, I bought a t-shirt with their logo (in Chinese) on it.

After a little while, I got up and headed back up the Bund to Nanjing Dong Lu. I walked westwards until I came to where the street dead-ends into a plaza with shops on either side. I just kept walking, going inside stores that looked interesting, but mostly just meandering. A little ways in, a Chinese guy passed me in the opposite direction and said "Hello." I answered "Hey" just to be friendly, but this guy stopped in his tracks, turned around, and walked next to me the whole rest of the way. We chatted about nothing really; I figured I was helping him practice his English skills, which is cool. Actually his English was pretty good.

At the end of the plaza I said goodbye, hopped into a cab, and headed home, satisfied with my first solo adventure in Shanghai. This morning I woke up early (again) and snacked on a pouch of Shrimp Flakes ("with natural iodine!") while writing this blog entry. Mmmmmm.

Zai jian!

Icebox - The First 12 Hours

The flight and touchdown went fine. I ate the first meal on the plane, some sort of chicken-and-rice dish, and it sadly upset my stomach for the rest of the ride. But the day was saved thanks to the iPod I'd bought a couple weeks previously, because I was able to watch like 10 episodes of South Park, and listen to tons of music, during the flight. No need for in-flight entertainment when you've brought your own :-)

I made it through customs and baggage claim just fine, even though I had five total bags (three suitcases, a carry-on, and my laptop bag) to manhandle. It was really helpful that I'd done this before in November, so I wasn't worried about anything. I knew exactly what to expect.

I met with two of my co-workers and a driver in the "receiving line" outside customs. The receiving line literally are these lanes that you walk through with metal rails on each side (kind of like the lines you go through to enter rides at theme parks) that wind this way and that. The railings are absolutely mobbed with people waiting for friends or acquaintances to exit customs. You see tons of people holding up signs with names on them, signs with tour group names, signs with hotel names, and so on. I quickly found my co-workers, and we were on our way.

After a quick 30-40 minute trip back into the city area, we arrived at my apartment. I live in a series of high rises off Dingxiang Lu, near the Thumb Plaza, which is where I ate Pizza Hut last time. I'm close enough to The Bund to see the World Financial Center from my window. I think I'm also near Shiji (Century) Park. Other expats from my company live here or near here, which helps me feel at ease. I'm on the 18th floor, which technically means I have a great view, but in reality it means I have a great view of the other skyscrapers next door ;-)

The driver left us, and my two co-workers and I went up to my apartment to meet my landlord, Qian. Very nice guy, super-helpful, and generally put me at ease. When I walked into the apartment, I was struck by how ultra-modern it looks. It's furnished quite nicely, at it's a lot nicer than where I was living in Austin, "nicer" in the sense of "looks like it came out of a Wired magazine showcase." Haha. It's two bedrooms, which is cool, and there are two actual beds here. Two balconies also, and each bedroom has a pretty huge windowbox -- or whatever you call those areas in front of windows that you can use for sitting down. There's a desk, a living room table with some chairs, and a bathroom including a washing machine. No dryer though - I'll have to investigate that :-) There's a nice living room with a TV and a DVD player. I'm glad that I am not used to watching TV for entertainment, because I think the only English station I can get is CCTV 9 and I don' think I could stand to watch that for more than 20 minutes straight :-) There's no oven but there is a microwave and a two-burner stove, plus a refrigerator and freezer.

Speaking of freezer ...

I was a little surprised to see there's no central heating. Obviously I've taken this for granted while living in America. Let me assure you, after one night here, I never will again ;-) The living room has a giant tower in the corner that acts as a heater, and the two bedrooms each have one smaller wall-mounted unit in them. To put it nicely, uh, the heat from each unit doesn't reach very far out into the room ;-) The living room unit heats the area directly in front of the TV, so if you're in the dining area or kitchen, you best put on some mittens. The unit in the main bedroom is on the wall opposite the bed, so let's just say I slept in some warm clothes last night :-) The unit in the second bedroom is just above the desk where I'm typing now, though, so at least I'm pretty warm as we speak. Also, to get hot water, you have to specifically turn on the water heater and wait for it to warm up. Whew.

There's probably some super-powerful mode that I haven't discovered because the buttons are all in Chinese. I'll have to ask someone to help me with that, but in the meantime, I might have to investigate getting a couple more space heaters ...

Okay, enough about that. After meeting with the landlord and getting the tour of the place, such as it is, the four of us went to the Thumb Plaza, just a 5-minute walk or so, to eat. Mmmmm. I'm not sure why Qian came with us. My coworkers said that it wasn't normal for the landlord to spend a couple hours with his new tenant. We were all confused why he wanted to hang out with us and go shopping, but hey, I wasn't complaining :-)

Since I wasn't that hungry, I deigned to eat at McDonald's. I figured I wanted to check it out at some point, and I didn't want to do it at a time when I had a big appetite. In line we actually ran into two NI expats that I met last month, and they teased me for eating at McD's on my first night in China :-)

The McD's is attached to a Carrefour, a store that's like a grocery store on the lower level with a Target or Sears on the upper level. I'd sketched up a small shopping list including things like alarm clock, pillows, shampoo, detergent, etc. So the four of us went shopping! Qian was super-helpful. He took my shopping list and ranged far in front of my coworkers and me, helpfully asking people where things were and pointing out things I might need. Again, I'm not sure why he was being so helpful, but I definitely appreciated it!

At one point we stopped to try on slippers, which was hilarious and involved the four of us and two store employees, plus a couple customers who were passing by. None of their merch looked big enough for my lao wei feet, and I was right -- even though I tried on and bought a pair of XL slippers (the biggest or second-biggest pair they had, I think) when I got them home they turned out to be too small to walk on. Anyway the Carrefour staff was making me laugh because they kept pulling pairs off the rack, or pointing to them, and speaking to Qian in Chinese, and he would translate in decent English. They spoke very excitedly and gestured a lot. I felt like I had a couple of manservants with me :-)

Buying bedding was also pretty fun. I was looking for sheets, pillowcases, and a comforter. Of course, comforter doesn't translate into Chinese, so I had to explain kind of what that was. And I think I got one. What I ended up with is something that is the size of my bed and has this weird plastic-y feel to the outer lining. It's pale yellow and looks like it belongs in a hospital. My co-worker said that I'm supposed to put a cover on it, but I'm confused by the idea of covering a blanket, and the one cover I got with my sheet set doesn't fit it. But hell, it's warm, so that's all I cared about last night :-)

Carrefour sells tons of package-style bedding, and we went back and forth for a couple minutes over which size and color I needed. Of course these discussions are all among Qian, my two co-workers, and anywhere from 2 - 3 store employees who happen to be helping us. I just stand there with a smile on my face, nod at the appropriate time, unable to understand anyone unless I ask them to translate for me, and laugh at the absurdity of what is taking place before me :-)

One small tidbit: I picked up an alarm clock for 77 kuai (colloquial term for yuan) and paid for it at a separate instore location with my debit card. Unbeknownst to me, my bank's fraud detectors went off (Uh oh! Purchased something in China! Identity theft! Identity theft!) But the purchase went through. This came back to bite me when I tried to check out at the front register with the rest of my purchases -- my card was denied!! Luckily I had another one and was able to use that.

(I'm pretty happy that Carrefour took Visa in the first place -- most places here don't. It'll be weird dealing with mainly cash again after so long of a plastic existence in the US.)

After that I picked up a couple bottles of water, because I don't feel like getting dysentery from my tap, and some snacks like green tea cookies, Pocky, and some variety pack including rice puffs and pea-flavored crackers. Mmmm.

We loaded my purchases into a cab and shuffled off back to the apartment. I said goodbye to everyone and they left. I set about unpacking not only my purchases but also my suitcases. I kind of failed at the latter, but I was tired :-)

As I was putting my sheets on my bed, the power went out all of a sudden. I panicked for a split second but then remembered that I'd packed my flashlight from home. Genius! I managed to find it and suddenly I had light. I wandered over to the phone (thankfully, my apartment comes with a land line) and called Qian, who said he'd call someone right away. About 10 minutes later I heard a knock at my door. It was a security guard for the complex, I think. He showed me how to turn the power back on -- basically, just outside my front door, there's a room with the 18th-floor circuit breakers in them. All he did was flip the switch and presto, the lights came back on. That made me happy :-)

I wonder what caused the outage in the first place. The door has a lock on it but seems to be unlocked. Maybe some punk kid got bored and came up to the hall and started flipping switches ;-) At any rate, this happened a second time in the night, but at least I know how to fix it now. I might talk to Qian about making sure that door is locked (and that I have the key to it), because that's really unsafe.

After those escapades, I finished setting up my purchases. It was only 8 oclock, so I tried to watch a DVD. I almost succeeded :-) The disc inserts and plays just fine, but the TV and DVD remotes are all in, of course, Chinese. I fired up The Matrix but noticed it had subtitles. So my first thought was: okay, let's turn off the subtitles. (They are distracting). But how? The answer: press buttons randomly and see what happens!

After about ten minutes I succeeded in getting to the DVD's main menu. From there I was able to turn off subtitles. But unfortunately, the picture started showing up in black and white. Curses!! I spent literally another thirty to forty minutes trying to fix the picture. It wasn't that way before, so I knew I must have pressed some button to cause the change. But alas, it was not to be. I did succeed in getting the DVD player to display its options in English. And I think I memorized where the important buttons (including, ironically enough, the Subtitle button) are on the remote. But alas the DVDs, they have no color! I checked the TV itself which was in color, so it's got to be something with the DVD player. I even put in another DVD to test it and it was still in black and white. So, again, I'm going to have to get someone to help me fix this :-)

By this point it was like 9 PM and I figured I'd stayed up late enough to deal with the jet lag appropriately. I got in bed and watched some CCTV (exciting!!!) before passing out.

I woke up around 7 AM this morning, so I got a decent night's sleep. I checked my email and found an alert, the one I talked about earlier, from my bank. Their instructions said to call them immediately. I was able to use my computer and Skype to call in and resolve the issue.

Today I'm supposed to call another co-worker (they're passing me around like a hot potato) and will attempt to purchase a cell phone. I'm supposed to meet up with another one of them (co-workers, that is -- not cell phones) for dinner.

Zhong Guo!

I've arrived! I have 'net access at the apartment. Pics to follow :-)