Shanghai Adventure - Amongst the Clouds

I was stuck in the sweltering hot kitchen yesterday, trying to get some work done when I needed to talk to Chu WenJian about some Navstar stuff. After our quick Navstar chat, I ask him about some paint brushes. He tells me he knows local shops that sell those. So I tell him that he should show me the shops sometime. So he says "Ok! Let's go." And grabs his keys and ushers me out the door. 4:30pm and we're walking out the office door.

First we go to Anta, it's a sports shop like a Nike store. I told him I wanted some shoes. Turns out Chinese shoes are narrow, way too narrow. No shoes for me. So we head to FuJio street and start looking for brushes. These are all local stores, for local artists. The cheap brushes cost 4rmb, the fancy ones 20-80rmb. Depending on what kind of hair they use. Hair ranges from the standard sheep (I think he meant goat, but I'm not sure) to the fancy ones made of wolf hair. In the middle somewhere there's rat and fox and something kinda like a fox, but not exactly a fox, smaller than a fox and kinda not fox like. Clearly it was one of those paint brush hair animals, you know the kind... right?

So we shop, we haggle, I buy brushes. The lady in YuYuen selling her brushes for 260rmb down to 110rmb when I walked far enough away was clearly a rip-off. These brushes were the real thing that local artists use to make their paintings and they were way cheaper. Unless of course you were looking for a fancy gift set. Then those were expensive, in the same way that eating out for supper here at a fancy restaurant is expensive. They're expensive if you think RMB is worth a lot. But it's not. So a fancy set of brushes might set you back $20 or less, if you haggle right. I'm white, so I can never haggle right, the prices always start really high. Haggling well for me means I might be getting near the local asking price, not what a local will end up paying.

Done buying brushes, we walk by a bakery on the way home, I had to stop in and get something. I ended up with 2 different kinds of pork buns, one orange dough ball, one black rice cake and one box of seaweed covered peanuts. The orange dough ball was delicious, the black rice cake tasted very oily, I didn't really like it, and the pork buns are awesome. The peanut thing is funny, it's like peanut brittle except more peanuty. It's like eating peanut butter with a hint of nori.

On the way back to the office we encountered a cute Chinese girl who totally bitched out Chu WenJian. Right after she scolded him he hopped up on the sidewalk. I thought she told him not to walk in the street, but it didn't make sense cus everyone walks in the street. Turns out she works at Telenav, and she was chewing him out about skipping work. I told him to tell her that we were having a "walking meeting" but she was long gone before he admitted what she had said.

I got back in time to make plans to go to Cloud 9. It's a bar up on top of the Jing Mao tower. Autumn, Jorge and I went to supper at a sushi place near the bar. It was normal sushi, very fresh fish, very tasty. Then we headed up to Cloud 9. The bar is all in black and has a great view outside. The windows are about 10 feet from the side of the roof though because it's in the tapered top of the building. So you can't see straight down.

The bar served us the most expensive drinks we've had in China. I mean normally we pay 10-20 rmb for a big beer, 500-700ml but here 20 rmb probably gets you a napkin. One pint of draught tiger beer from Singapore, 85 rmb. One Black Label on the rocks, 85 rmb. One highball called a "unicorn" 90rmb. Then you add a 15% service fee (there's never any tax on anything in China, it's always included in the price). The 15% service fee is probably their way of making Americans feel right at home. Anyways, the total bill for three drinks: 299 rmb. A full sushi dinner earlier that evening: 316rmb. Getting totally ripped off for drinks in the highest bar in the world: Priceless.

At least the service was good, we asked for a table by the window, they told us none were free. We said we'd wait, and they told us to sit at this table and they'll get us once a window table is available. So we did, not really thinking that we would ever get a window table. Ten minutes later, we had just gotten our drinks and the waitress tells us there's a window seat free, and to please follow her. Cool. When each of us finished out drinks the waitress politely asked if we wanted another, and when we turned her down she just walked away. When the last of the drinks were done, she asked if we wanted more and we said no thanks. She left us be, we even had to call her over to get the bill. Once we paid our bill we probably stayed there for another half hour taking up premium window seats and nobody bothered us. We took a walk around the bar and then headed home for some sleep.

This morning I woke up sweating. My AC died or something because my room is back up to 25... this sucks. It took four days to get my room down to a reasonable 20 degrees, now it's cranked up to 25. Apparently I wasn't the only one with the AC problems, everyone seemed to be complaining about it this morning. Hopefully they'll have it fixed by sometime today so that my room starts cooling off.

I had breakfast at the street cart, some orange juice and some vegetable blend. The veggie blend had a picture of lettuce on in as well as carrot and oranges. The only things I could read on the bottle was that it was 100% pure juice, that it was 300ml and that it contained 7+7. I don't know what 7+7 but I'm assuming 7 veggies and 7 fruits. It tasted mostly like carrot and orange juice.

It's crazy sweltering hot in the kitchen where I work now since I lost my corner office. Not that the corner office was any cooler, it was probably hotter. But the point of this is that it's not cold or air conditioned in the kitchen. This QA girl sits in front of me, she was rubbing her arms, kinda like people do when they're cold. I'm sitting there thinking that it's weird because I'm sweating like a fountain. Then she puts on a jacket... Boggle! Apparently 25-30 degrees is bone chilling cold! Clearly jacket weather.

So work is boring, I get some stuff done, chat with Autumn, do more work, sweat a lot, eat some seaweed peanuts, sweat some more, consider the effect of cotton mouth on global warming and then make plans for lunch. We went to a HongKong style restaurant. I ate pigeon and goose! Yummy! Pigeon is to chicken like lamb is to beef. Compared to pigeon, chicken is flavourless. Compared to lamb, beef is flavourless. Pigeon has a strong flavour though, not for the faint of heart. It's got a little kick of what I can only describe as liver. It's not a huge liver flavour, but it's there. As it turns out I like liver, so 95% of people reading this are shit out of luck. Sucks to be you liver hating masses.

I'm thinking of heading out this afternoon cus it's so hot and coming back later to work. I still need to hit the shops before I leave. Maybe I'll go now.

I know I haven't been updating pictures, I promise I will, but the connection sucks from the kitchen. I kinda gave up trying.