This weekend I enjoyed my first games of softball in Shanghai. I was introduced to a couple guys by a friend at work who needed people for their team. I must say it was quite a nice time. Our team is made up of about half American and half Canadians. While softball is important to them, it would seem drinking is priority one. I met them at Oscar's Pub, which is sponsoring our team, at about 9 15 Sunday morning. In addition to having a small bus that got us to the game, they had a large cooler of beer ready to go.
The field was a little ways away but was quite nice. It's a well-organized league, and we got in two games on Sunday. There were few highlights apart from us losing both games (one close, on embarrassing). I actually hadn't played softball since senior year of college, so I was pretty happy that the rust wasn't too intense. They have me playing shortstop but I have no idea why. Anyways, it was a good mix up softball, bullshitting, and drinking. Also, one guy one our team dislocated his shoulder diving for a ball. Good times all around.
The people on my team are almost all older. I'm the youngest person and most people seem to be in their mid late 30s. While that kind of put me off at first, I soon realized most of these people are quite, shall we say, young at heart. One guy, in particular, is called Canada. He's 42 and acts like he's a 16 year-old on meth. Everyone is just fun, nice, and doesn't tend to throw up too much bullshit.
The interesting thing about this league is that there is quite the mix of teams. Some teams are mostly westerners but other teams are groups of expats from all over the place. The second team we played on Sunday was entirely from Japan. The expat population here is interesting. It's relatively tightly knit, as there just arent that many foreigners in the city. I must say though, everyone is extremely nice and happy to meet new people. I guess living here makes meeting people that you tend to already have things in common with a special occasion. It makes for a fun atmosphere. In the US, I tended to stay within basic social circles. Making attempts to meet people and broaden horizons almost seemed taboo. Here, it's pretty much a social free-for-all.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
The Wild Wild East
All good suggestions by three of the four people who read my blog. Your contributions will not be forgotten. However I feel I finally have something to write about - not having anything to write about!
I sat down for an interview today for a story I'm working on. I met with a guy who works for a hedge fund here. I expected a 10-15 minute chat, it ended up being an hour long discussion of how China may be the most exciting place on earth.
So far, I've struggled to have anything to really write about. I've attempted to avoid things such as "oh man, the taxi drivers here are carazay!!!1!!11!" and "boy, the Olympics have really opened this place up." It has been difficult to come up with good observations that aren't completely idiotic (for references of idiotic observations please see my last post) and I've been trying to figure out why. Perhaps I know why.
The interview/chat I had today left me pretty much dizzy. This guy, Sage, has been in and out of China since 1987. I literally asked about 6 questions and that yielded about 45 solid minutes of diatribe on topics ranging from the internet (what I'm writing about) to the economy, expats, and most everything else. At the end of this meeting I reached one conclusion.
This place is, essentially, Mars. Up can be down, black can be white, dogs and cats can live together, etc. I suppose for my time here so far I've attempted to relate most of the things here to stuff I'm familiar with, usually things stateside. That's a big mistake. You can do it, of course, but you're really shortchanging everything that's important. The differences are far more impressive that the similarities, the similarities are almost inconsequential when compared to the differences.
If you were to get deeply philosophical on this, you could argue that nobody would be able to give a truly effective viewpoint on China. The base assumptions I make about anything and everything automatically cloud any observations I could make, rendering them half-truths at best.
I had read a reasonable amount about China before coming here. I would not say any of it was wrong or misleading. Instead, it's like giving somebody a look at a Monet painting from 10 feet away - "cool, it's a semi blurry picture of people standing near a lake" - without allowing them to check it out up close. Sure the big picture is somewhat clear, makes a reasonable amount of sense, but without seeing it up close you can't quite understand what makes it impressive.
The guy I sat down with kept using a great word to describe China - chaos. Things often time don't seem to make sense. Not that there isn't logic behind individual happenings, but you can rarely extrapolate that logic to other areas. Like the points in a Monet painting, everything seems to be happening independently but somehow coming together to make some sort of picture.
Obviously, I don't have a very good grip on what I think, let alone how to describe it to other people. I guess that's part of the difficulty of writing about things here. The general narrative is elusive and may not even exist. Hence, be prepared for a strange, mind-numbingly confusing posts in the future. If anything, it should be fun to watch me try to figure this stuff out.
I sat down for an interview today for a story I'm working on. I met with a guy who works for a hedge fund here. I expected a 10-15 minute chat, it ended up being an hour long discussion of how China may be the most exciting place on earth.
So far, I've struggled to have anything to really write about. I've attempted to avoid things such as "oh man, the taxi drivers here are carazay!!!1!!11!" and "boy, the Olympics have really opened this place up." It has been difficult to come up with good observations that aren't completely idiotic (for references of idiotic observations please see my last post) and I've been trying to figure out why. Perhaps I know why.
The interview/chat I had today left me pretty much dizzy. This guy, Sage, has been in and out of China since 1987. I literally asked about 6 questions and that yielded about 45 solid minutes of diatribe on topics ranging from the internet (what I'm writing about) to the economy, expats, and most everything else. At the end of this meeting I reached one conclusion.
This place is, essentially, Mars. Up can be down, black can be white, dogs and cats can live together, etc. I suppose for my time here so far I've attempted to relate most of the things here to stuff I'm familiar with, usually things stateside. That's a big mistake. You can do it, of course, but you're really shortchanging everything that's important. The differences are far more impressive that the similarities, the similarities are almost inconsequential when compared to the differences.
If you were to get deeply philosophical on this, you could argue that nobody would be able to give a truly effective viewpoint on China. The base assumptions I make about anything and everything automatically cloud any observations I could make, rendering them half-truths at best.
I had read a reasonable amount about China before coming here. I would not say any of it was wrong or misleading. Instead, it's like giving somebody a look at a Monet painting from 10 feet away - "cool, it's a semi blurry picture of people standing near a lake" - without allowing them to check it out up close. Sure the big picture is somewhat clear, makes a reasonable amount of sense, but without seeing it up close you can't quite understand what makes it impressive.
The guy I sat down with kept using a great word to describe China - chaos. Things often time don't seem to make sense. Not that there isn't logic behind individual happenings, but you can rarely extrapolate that logic to other areas. Like the points in a Monet painting, everything seems to be happening independently but somehow coming together to make some sort of picture.
Obviously, I don't have a very good grip on what I think, let alone how to describe it to other people. I guess that's part of the difficulty of writing about things here. The general narrative is elusive and may not even exist. Hence, be prepared for a strange, mind-numbingly confusing posts in the future. If anything, it should be fun to watch me try to figure this stuff out.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Medal counts and boredom
I have no desire to figure out something interesting to write on and then attempt to finding an interest perspective so here's a smattering of random thoughts.
- I primarily work with two people from Britain and one from the US. It's a relatively fun dynamic, particularly when it comes to the Olympic medal count. The British are doing quite well this year and my coworkers are beaming about it. The US, by comparison to previous years, is doing somewhat crappily. As such, I get minute-by-minute updates on who has won what. It does appear China will finish with the most gold medals, proving once again that Democracy just doesn't work.
- It seems to rain at least once a week here, if not more. And by rain I don't mean a slight drizzle, I mean pouring monsoons. I've already been caught in a downpour twice. On a completely separate note, there seems to be a severe dearth of overhangs on the streets of Shanghai.
- Learning Chinese is pretty difficult.
- My visit to Hong Kong was pretty fascinating. For being a pretty small island, the amount of massive buildings make it seem much larger. It's more Western than Shanghai, but in a slightly annoying way. One thing that is fascinating - you can walk entire blocks without touching the road. Most buildings have enclosed raised walkways that connect buildings. Otherwise it was about how I expected, busy, crowded, and full of Westerners.
That's it for now. i'm going to try to post some more pictures soon. Additionally, i really have no idea who is reading this/what they want to read about. Please, please tell me what you'd want to see here otherwise this thing will die the same death as the australia blog
- I primarily work with two people from Britain and one from the US. It's a relatively fun dynamic, particularly when it comes to the Olympic medal count. The British are doing quite well this year and my coworkers are beaming about it. The US, by comparison to previous years, is doing somewhat crappily. As such, I get minute-by-minute updates on who has won what. It does appear China will finish with the most gold medals, proving once again that Democracy just doesn't work.
- It seems to rain at least once a week here, if not more. And by rain I don't mean a slight drizzle, I mean pouring monsoons. I've already been caught in a downpour twice. On a completely separate note, there seems to be a severe dearth of overhangs on the streets of Shanghai.
- Learning Chinese is pretty difficult.
- My visit to Hong Kong was pretty fascinating. For being a pretty small island, the amount of massive buildings make it seem much larger. It's more Western than Shanghai, but in a slightly annoying way. One thing that is fascinating - you can walk entire blocks without touching the road. Most buildings have enclosed raised walkways that connect buildings. Otherwise it was about how I expected, busy, crowded, and full of Westerners.
That's it for now. i'm going to try to post some more pictures soon. Additionally, i really have no idea who is reading this/what they want to read about. Please, please tell me what you'd want to see here otherwise this thing will die the same death as the australia blog
Thursday, August 7, 2008
The Phlog Phart 1
I'm going to try to post some interesting pictures here and write somewhat amusing captions about them. Here we go.
I'm not quite sure if it's a problem with my camera, or there's really this much smog. I'm guessing the latter. This is a pretty random photo of downtown Shanghai. Nothing really notable other than the fact that you really can't see that far.
This is around the block from my house. It's a random storefront for Spyker automobiles. There's a Bentley one not too far from it. There is a good amount of money flying around this place.
There are also some pretty poor people here. Like every good journalist I enjoy stating the obvious and backing it up with choice examples.
Condom machines are scattered around the city. There seem to be some of them on almost every block, probably to help reinforce that whole one child thing. This one appears to be advertising AIDS. I'm sold.
And here's both of those things, sort of. In the foreground, a semi-ghetto area. In the background is Pudong, which has some really gigantic buildings. Dichotomies are fun!
I'm not quite sure if it's a problem with my camera, or there's really this much smog. I'm guessing the latter. This is a pretty random photo of downtown Shanghai. Nothing really notable other than the fact that you really can't see that far.
This is around the block from my house. It's a random storefront for Spyker automobiles. There's a Bentley one not too far from it. There is a good amount of money flying around this place.
There are also some pretty poor people here. Like every good journalist I enjoy stating the obvious and backing it up with choice examples.
Condom machines are scattered around the city. There seem to be some of them on almost every block, probably to help reinforce that whole one child thing. This one appears to be advertising AIDS. I'm sold.
And here's both of those things, sort of. In the foreground, a semi-ghetto area. In the background is Pudong, which has some really gigantic buildings. Dichotomies are fun!
Saturday, August 2, 2008
The Daily Commute
I've done this a few times now, and it's always pretty thrilling. In addition to taking the metro system or cabs, one mode of transportation is to ride motorcycles/scooters. They're actually pretty efficient in traffic since they don't really abide by basic traffic laws and can weave in and out of traffic. It's also slightly terrifying.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
"How are you" "Oh, I'm horse-tiger"
The language barrier here is probably the most shocking part of my time in China thus far. The only non-Westerners that appear to speak english are business people who need it for work. Otherwise, fluent english is quite rare. Most of my communication is comprised of pointing, wild gestures, and gentle sobbing.
Shanghai has it's own language, known as Shanghainese. Evidently Shanghainese and Mandarin are completely different and mutually unintelligible. While my Mandarin level is still extremely low, I have begun to notice when people are speaking Mandarin and when they are speaking Shanghainese. The differences I notice now are on very basic levels - speed, inflection, etc. Most everyone from Shanghai speaks Mandarin, but the majority of conversations going on around me are in Shanghainese. So much for complete immersion in Mandarin.
The title of this post comes from my first Mandarin lesson. My tutor was going over basic responses to the question "Ni hao ma?" - how are you? Among the typical respones is this little gem - "Mama haha." I have no idea how I put the correct tonal punctuation on those words, but there is some. Anyways, "mama haha" means so-so, or ok. However, if you were to translate each word directly it means "horse tiger." At the time I found this hilarious.
And now for the link - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7530720.stm
That's right, alcoholic tree shrews! In addition to being a whimsical/interesting piece, I would like to direct your attention to the caption for the picture. I admire the BBC's attempts at alcohol humor, but let's leave it to the professionals. Even a layman like I could see that the appropriate caption would have been "This bud's for shrew."
Shanghai has it's own language, known as Shanghainese. Evidently Shanghainese and Mandarin are completely different and mutually unintelligible. While my Mandarin level is still extremely low, I have begun to notice when people are speaking Mandarin and when they are speaking Shanghainese. The differences I notice now are on very basic levels - speed, inflection, etc. Most everyone from Shanghai speaks Mandarin, but the majority of conversations going on around me are in Shanghainese. So much for complete immersion in Mandarin.
The title of this post comes from my first Mandarin lesson. My tutor was going over basic responses to the question "Ni hao ma?" - how are you? Among the typical respones is this little gem - "Mama haha." I have no idea how I put the correct tonal punctuation on those words, but there is some. Anyways, "mama haha" means so-so, or ok. However, if you were to translate each word directly it means "horse tiger." At the time I found this hilarious.
And now for the link - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7530720.stm
That's right, alcoholic tree shrews! In addition to being a whimsical/interesting piece, I would like to direct your attention to the caption for the picture. I admire the BBC's attempts at alcohol humor, but let's leave it to the professionals. Even a layman like I could see that the appropriate caption would have been "This bud's for shrew."
Monday, July 28, 2008
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.
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.
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