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This is my first update in about 8 months. Vox is one of many web sites blocked in China and I have had to abandon this site for a while. I have only been back in the U.S. for about a day. Right now, it is about 4:30 am (thanks jetlag!). Shanghai is a crazy place. If Beijing has history, then Shanghai has style.
It has a population of about 20 million people and the city never sleeps. In a city this size, Shanghai is surprisingly safe. Violent crime is low. People, especially foreigners, will likely have more encounters with beggars and pickpockets and need to exercise the usual common sense precautions (don't flash large amounts of money, keep your belongings close to you, be careful when walking around bar streets late at night, etc). I sometimes need to walk somewhere at night and, as a woman, I rarely feel unsafe.
I really love people-watching and simply wandering side streets just to see what I can see. I've seen street-side fish markets where Styrofoam boxes of fish are arranged in neat grids outside in the summer sun. I've seen men and women strolling casually down the street dressed in pajamas and house slippers. In the summer, sometimes all the men are wearing is a pair of briefs, flip flops, and a cigarette. Children in split pants relieving themselves in the street. Bicycles fitted with cages filled with live chickens and the chickens being slaughtered to order on the street corner. Boys doing skate boarding tricks in the parks. People dancing en masse in the park. Returning to the main streets, I see much of the same things I would in the U.S. Shopping malls, coffee shops, book stores, art galleries, and so on.
While home, I plan on indulging in some things that are hard to come by in China. Decent Mexican food, clothes that fit (sometimes it seems that clothing for Chinese women maxes out at a size 2), and just being someplace where I understand the language and cultural norms. It feels good to be back in the U.S. but I know that I'll be missing my Shanghai home soon, too.
How funny is this? I only wish that these came in packs of 3 since my cat, when he pukes, likes to be thorough and get all entry points of the room. Available from PETA.
Hey peeps:
I'm keeping another blog to keep people up to date with us while we're living in China.
http://pocket-calculator.blogspot.com/
We're selling our house, which has made us accelerate a few home renovation projects. Specifically, we tore down hideous wallpaper in the dining room and hall bathroom. Here's a sample of the lovely stuff in the hall bath:
Which reminded me of this sketch on Conan O'Brien where they're looking for a new Jerry Seinfeld.
(oh, and corrrrnn nuts :) )
I've been tagged by kcat. According to the rules, I am supposed to share 5 facts about myself and then tag 5 more people. This reminds me of an exercise in the 4th grade where the teacher passed around a roll of toilet paper, telling us to rip off as many sheets as we wanted, but we had to take at least 2. Once everyone had torn off some paper, she then told us to write one thing about ourselves on each of the sheets we had taken and then share them with the class. I had torn off about 6 sheets, but managed to stuff 4 of them into my desk while she was explaining the exercise to the class. I was really shy then. So here are my 5 facts:
Fact 1. I broke my left wrist when I was about 10. I was playing 'Chicken' on the monkey bars with another kid. I needed to wear a cast for 6 weeks, 4 of those weeks with an over-the-elbow plaster cast. The remaining 2 weeks I had a below the elbow fiberglass cast. It was the summer and I wore a plastic bread bag over the arm when I needed to take a shower or when I wanted to go for a swim.
Fact 2. I grew up in rural Minnesota. This is why I love Garrison Keilor and Prince and Spam and Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and Post-It Notes. I admit to voting for Jesse "The Mind" Ventura (hey, I was young!).
Fact 3. I have also lived in Michigan, New Mexico, Indiana, and Georgia. My husband and his family are from upstate New York, so we have managed to live in most of the major regions of the (continental) U.S. with the exception of the west coast.
Fact 4. I spent a month studying fruit bats in Australia. Flying foxes. The big bats that can weigh up to a kilogram and have wingspans of a meter or more. I was studying mating habits and it was really unnerving at first to have a huge amorous bat hooting and hollering while making a beeline for you.
Fact 5. I am a fan of Dr. Who. 'Nuff said.
O.K., the next step here is for me to tag 5 more people. Any volunteers?
One of my favorite internet distractions is the aptly named Prime Number Shitting Bear. Guess what it does.
The PNSB was hosted by a Finnish student and sadly, the link no longer works. If anyone can help me find the PNSB, I'd be eternally grateful.
As previous posts may have indicated, my cat is very important to me. We first met in Albuquerque, NM, about 8 years ago. My husband and I were newlyweds living in an apartment on ABQ's west side. We are both cat-lovers and wanted to get one, eventually. At that time, we didn't think we were in the best of circumstances to have a pet. We were planning on grad school and would likely be moving soon. Behind our apartment complex was a park (actually a scrubby wasteland of tumbleweeds and abandoned shopping carts) and next to the park was a church. Across the road from the church was the strip mall where our gym was located. Once, on our walk from the gym, we encountered a half-grown kitten in the park, dirty, but so sweet. Without a second thought, we gathered him up and took him home. We surmised that someone had dumped him in the park. There was an empty box next to him and it would've taken colossal effort and a miracle for him to have arrived there on his own. The nearest homes were a few blocks away, surrounded by 8-foot adobe walls. If he had managed to scale the walls or at least found a way around them, he would have then had to cross a 4 lane divided road or walk through the strip mall and across a 2 lane road to arrive in the park. Entirely possible, but it seemed more likely that he was abandoned.
Since that apartment, we have had 5 different addresses in 3 different cities and 3 different states. Albuquerque to Indianapolis to Atlanta and now to China. My cat has been on a plane more times than my husband's grandmother (cat -2 grandma -0).
I've been doing research on the internet on how to bring a cat into China. It really does not sound too difficult. The cat needs to have a full vet exam and have completed health certificates. Once in China (at least in Shanghai -- Beijing may be different), there is a 7-day initial quarantine period in which your cat is impounded at a special government site after which, if there are no problems, the cat can can complete the remaining 23 days of quarantine at home. I've found some odd things in my search. One web site offers (unofficial) pet passports. Another site recommended taking high quality passport-sized pictures of your cat, front and side views (who can get a cat to pose on command?!). I've also discovered that there is a vet in Shanghai called the Shanghai Naughty Family.
I don't think I'll have a problem with having enough high quality pictures of my cat. Here's a few of my favorites that I might share with the Chinese government :).
