Still figuring this thing out

My friend Jarret makes a good point in one of the comments to the previous post. He pretty much asks why I'm not going to write about controversial things such as the Olympics. The first reason is that I want this to be more of a "man-on-the-street" type blog. It will pretty much just compromise things I run into on a daily basis. Secondly, I really don't feel like pissing anyone off. I will be looking to tackle really basic, everyday scenarios including......food poisoning!

A slight warning: although I don't end up getting particularly sick, some of you might get kind of grossed out by the rest of this post.

I met up with a couple friends from France on Friday night for dinner before heading out to a bar. I was pretty excited because this particular bar is on the 26th floor of a building on the Bund (the area near the major river running through Shanghai) and is supposed to have breathtaking views. We decided on a small, european cafe near my apartment. After a dinner consisting of a decent pizza and soda, we walked down the block to meet up with a couple more people. We had been standing on one of the street corners for no longer than a few minutes before I began to feel extremely ill.

By the time our friend Jerome showed up, I was surveying my options of where I could vomit, which included the street and a small green area that was currently being watered by some guy. Jerome attempted to have a conversation with me as I sat there nodding and holding my stomach. Finally the last of our party arrived and I announced that I was ditching them due to impending stomach fireworks.

We were only a block from my place so I stumbled home, attempting not to chuck on any innocent bystanders. By the time I made it to my apartment building, I was feeling a reasonable amount better but still pretty off. I laid in my room for a while and eventually felt pretty OK. The rest of the weekend I ended up feeling fine.

Yes, indeed this has been a boring story, but it speaks to something that a reasonable number of people fear about life in China/Shanghai. From what I understand, food poisoning is not too much more common here than anywhere else. Just like in US cities, if you eat at shady places, you're going to run risks. On the other hand, I would be lying if I said there did not appear to be more of those shady places in Shanghai. Seemingly every block has 4 tiny little restaurants that are comprised of a kitchen and eight seats. I can't even really blame the place I ate, considering I really only felt bad for a few hours and of that time I only felt legitimately sick for about 10 minutes.

As of right now, I'd say the food has been pretty good. Lunch usually consist of eight dumplings (which costs a total of 5 rmb, or about 80 cents USD). Those go down pretty well everyday. I figure food poisoning may or may not be a running story throughout this little excursion, thus I decided to write it up. Perhaps I'll look back on this as a one-off outlier. Or perhaps this will be the first of many.

Anyways, this entire post has been more or less and excuse of why I don't have anything interesting from the weekend. Sorry kiddos. Enjoy the link.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/25/AR2008072502255.html

Pretty great column on how perceptions may not be reality when it comes to thinking about China.

Also, vote in the damn poll.