Neighborhood

After much griping from padre, I'm finally posting pictures of my new neighborhood. This is my building. Don't worry, my apartment is much nicer than the outside. And the downstairs has a greasy hamburger joint with great banana milkshakes which delivers to my place for free. Does life get any better?

This is the view across the street as I exit my building.

These are traditional shikumen houses below my living room window.

Tearing up the lane. When I took this picture this one old lady barked to her old lady friend, "Why is the foreigner taking a picture?" I told her "because it's interesting." Then she asked if I was a teacher. And I said no.

Another alley near where I live.

My walk to work.

More walk to work. There's always lots of construction. You can't go a block without running into some bamboo scaffolding or a dude sledge-hammering the sidewalk.

Turning down the alley toward my office.

Funky mailboxes across from my office.

Funky office/Converted House

There you have it.

Dress Up

Saturday I went to an Earth Day event put on by one of the international schools at the Shanghai Zoo. Actually, the school is located within the zoo, which is pretty cool because there's lots of greenery and all these big picnicking lawns for kids to romp on the grounds.

There were booths set up representing the different countries kids are from. My friend and I tried on these traditional hanbok at the Korea booth.

Last year I did the qipao in the studio in Taiwan. Next on my list is kimono.

Afterward we walked around and looked at the animals. For the record, Taipei Zoo is nicer. Lots of people were throwing popcorn and food at the animals, and I saw some rapping on the glass. Ahem, also not behavior I saw displayed in the R.O.C...

Coming to a Kitchen Near Me

Chef Mike and I were returning home Monday night from a successful haggling-for-pillow-covers plus eating dumplings and Krispy Kreme (yes! we have that!) run, when we spotted this bike cruising down Jiaozhou Lu (the street we live on).

Swill oil. Collected before our very eyes. We watched the bike dude pull up in front of a parking garage and walk in with a plastic bucket and some sort of scraper.

"Should we follow him?" Chef Mike asked.

Yeah, why not. My stomach turned a little bit as we crept in. I pulled out my Canon PowerShot, like we were on to some real Woodward and Bernstein shit.

We sneaked down into the parking garage, and split up to case the rows of cars in opposite directions. A couple minutes later the security attendant showed up behind me and asked what I was doing. Caught, damn. We still hadn't seen where dude had gone with his bucket and his scraper. As the attendant escorted Mike and I out (nicely of course, we're laowai) the guy we'd been stalking showed up behind us with a bucket full of foul-smelling frothy liquid. The security attendant had not come down to collect that guy, just us, apparently his presence was condoned.

Outside I watched bucket man pour his foul brew into one of his black drums. What is this? I asked. He confirmed it was oil. I asked if it would be used for food. He smiled and shook his head, no. I asked what the oil would be used for and my Chinese failed me. I don't know what he said. So then I took his picture.

Who knows where it went. But at least you get the idea. Some food professor who studied this estimated one in ten meals eaten in restaurants in China is made with dirty oil.

The next morning I showed my co-workers these photos and outed myself as a PRC newbie in the doing.

"Oh yeah." They shrugged, as if I'd told them the most mundane story they'd heard all week.

But I know you folks back home will be impressed.

Moganshan

Maybe the trick is to upload photos in the morning? I got these up with almost no problem, and then I tried to upload a couple more and my vpn kept timing out. Anyways, these are almost a month old now, they're from when I went to Moganshan - this bamboo-covered mountain four hours outside Shanghai.

I was visiting this new accommodation (Moganshan has been a Shanghai getaway for decades, at least) that's run by a bunch of mountain biking fanatics.
They took us biking through the bamboo. "Oh it's half an hour and back" turned into a four-hour off-road bike road, which was a bit much for my tastes.
But it sure was pretty!
It's nice to see something green once in awhile.
Tomorrow morning - pictures of my neighborhood!

Update

So here's the deal on my little bro:

He is currently the number two seventh grade pole vaulter in America, according to Athletic.net

He is also in third place among seventh graders nationally for the 100-meter dash.

He is 24th in the country for high jump (again among seventh graders).

It boggles the mind. When my family visited Taiwan, Billy showed me how he could - with a running start - leap frog over my dad. This was a very cool trick. But now that they're timing him and taking measurements - we know he has real skills. 

Another almost-blogless weekend. I spent Saturday and Sunday out with friends. Different friends, different places. It was fun. I think I'm finding my element. If Undersundog isn't enough Leslie, you can skip over to Urbanatomy.com - my job website. Today I called home and my dad complained about the fact I'm not blogging, and I complained about the fact the internet is half-illegal over here, which makes it really hard to post pictures, and a "that's what you get for living in a totalitarian shit hole" was what I got in return. Thanks, pops. I do want to post pictures. I've even been taking them around where I live! Tomorrow, tomorrow...

NUMBER TWO!

MY BROTHER IS CURRENTLY THE NUMBER TWO POLE VAULTER IN AMERICA

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Another Mid Weeker

I have pictures. On my computer desktop. I want you to see them. But when I do find the time to blog, and then I even turn on my vpn and try to upload pictures, and it's suuuuuuper slow and doesn't work ... the result is a huge de-motivater.

This weekend I traipsed into Shanghai Fashion Week with my media credentials and got to take my seat by the runway before the civilians. Free flow grey goose martinis. Lots of people way more fashionable than myself. 

Last week I got an advanced tour of the Australia Pavilion at the World Expo site. Then there was the Avatar-themed banquet at the Marriott ... Last year, all of these things would've warranted their own blog posts. Right now, I seriously don't have the time. There's still a lot of organizational stuff I'm trying to tackle at work. I'm hoping my load will lighten somewhat down the line. 

But the takeaway is, my job is pretty sweet. And the perks are super fun. 

I was walking through the Expo site - with about 100 Chinese journalist - when I caught myself thinking "this is basically a glorified, multi-million dollar Australian chamber of commerce ad." I mean it was, but it was also the World Expo, and I got to see it before everyone else. That's pretty cool.

Sometime after my family went to Cambodia and before I reached high school the idea "international journalist" first sprouted in my pea brain. I remember thinking that I really liked "journaling" in my diary and that I would like to do something like that overseas. I didn't have any idea who would read it. But that half-baked adolescent idea - that's what I do now.

Sophomore year of high school, my guidance counselor was talking to me about college. I don't remember where I said I wanted to go, but he said something like, "Well do you want to live in that city? Because most people end up living where they went to college." I remember getting a sinking feeling in my stomach. It was a defiant feeling - I didn't like him telling me that college was the end of the line. Where I went to college would turn into the rest of my life. It seemed so final, inescapable. And I was only 16.

Thinking back on those things, I feel like I'm doing what I should be right now. Though I also think it's natural for us to reflect and pick anecdotes that make our stories make sense. Life needs a narrative. Alaska, Los Angeles, Oregon, Taiwan, Shanghai. That's mine. So far.