Sydney here I come!

So when I first arrived in London and was spending some quality time on the couch, in a flat of 8 guys ( I know small flat), I met Aussie Dan. He was running out of money and decided to pack it in, go home and join the army. He told his father and voila, more money! I also helped out by rooming with him and so in that inevitable progression I graduated from dosser to flatmate.

..... Now the reason I'm telling you this? Funds are running low and I thought it'd be a good idea to go visit my old roommate Aussie Dan. So I'm off to Sydney. More later.

Censorship?

K. Well incase you didn't know web access in China is censored. Problem is I can't read Chinese and don't know whether I'm being blocked or it's just a bad connection ....... what I have noticed is anything with a ".org" URL seems to haave a problem loading e.g. wikipedia.org . hmmmmmm you know just can't trust people who do something for nothing!

Sleep

Well between jetlag and a late night out on Saturday my sleep paterns have been completely distroyed! I was much better off when I was waking up at 5 every morning. Got no energy and am never quite sure whether I should be awake or asleep. Nevermind, tomorrow evening I move onto Beijing.

I guess I should also tell you something about Shanghai, for some reason it's perfectly ok to wear pajamas in public. Not just picking up the newspaper but full on shopping for breakfast!!

Fun with Touts

So Touts are the guys who try and pull you into thiere shops, scam you or just generally sell you stuff. In China like many places it all begins with "Hello", now you may want to engage them. Today when I started talking to a couple they were so into their patter that when I told them my job was "unemployed" they replyed "ahh very good work".... hmmmm well I think so too.

Anyway, at some point I decided I'd had enough of this and so when ever any touts gave thier "Hello" I just responded in Serbian.

Tout: Hello
Me: Negovorim Engleski. Govorim Serbski.
Tout: hhhuhh Hello
Me: Ne resumem, Da li govorite Serbski.

and my favorite part:

Tout: Do you speak english?

Now you've got to be careful not to respond to the English. And when you can see they've given up finish off with a "Nema Problema!!"

Shanghai bulldozer

So while the rest of the worlds mega-cities struggle to deal with immigration and the preservation of old ways and old buildings in the face of development , Shanghai throws all caution to the wind.

Don't be mistaken, Shanghai is not Communist in any way shape or form. However, the government does have a strong role in the central planning of big projects , kinda like Muldoon (for non-kiwis he was a funny guy and PM, called a snap election drunk once) i.e there is no Resource Management Act. The government wants to build something it builds it and no one gets in the way. Obviously there are winners and losers in all this. Ironically the winners are probably what would have been called bourgeoise in the past.

Also unlike many other cities Shanghai actually has a foriegn residents target! Mind you it's only 5% and given the abundance of cheap local labour the unions (joke) don't have to worry about those "forigners stealing our jobs". However I get the feeling that outa-towners are treated like forigners, generally fill the low paid jobs and are never quite given the same level of respect or opportunites. Shanghai (like most places in China) even has it's own dialect that others can't really understand. I mean it's important to know where ones from!!

Well all this political cynism has got me hankering for some nice, uplifting, morally- simple, socialist realism (today's pic).

Starting the day: Their way and mine

After a quick and safe breakfast at McDonalds (don't start!) I returned to my room. The room bobbed around me and everything developed a soft edge. 6 hours of vivid dreaming and sleep paralyisis later I grogerly came to. I guess that's jet lag.

This morning I wake at 5am (go figure) and decide it's about time I got coffee. Now at this point I need to clarify something. In NZ (esp Wellington) we have very, very good coffee as good as anywhere in europe and better than most (esp London) . So we don't go to starbucks unless you want some frappa thingee ( I guess if it's a hot day drinking one is excusable). However, in the rest of the world a starbucks is often the best if not the only decent espresso around.

However , while I enjoyed my espresso (from starbucks) all the Chinese appeared to be gathered in groups starting the day the apparently healthy way, with a spot of Tai Chi.

Maglev

Very, very unprepared for Shanghai, but nevermind, a quick look an hour before the train landed and I figured out where my hostel was. Took the Magnetic levitation train into town at 430Km/hr then caught the lovely clean, air-conditioned Metro to the end of the line and a taxi round the corner and I'm there easy as that.

It's currently 11am unfortunately my body thinks that it's 4am and is still trying to figure out why I got up at 2am (especially as I've still got a cold) !!! Oh yea hows that cold going in Acton?

The queue II: Torrential downpour

Another hour waiting outside the Chinese Embasy , this time in a torrential downpour. Now when I say downpour I mean tubes shut due to flooding! However, I got a Chinese visa !!! Also seem to have aquired a cold but I blame that on London not the rain. On the plus side a made friends with an expat currently living in Shanghai while in the line, so at least I got a beer buddy.

So 3 nights to go now, luggage to purge and repack, people to see and research to be done, busy ,busy, busy!

Be nice to Americans

Coming from NZ makes traveling pretty easy. Locals usually consider NZ inoffensive and believe it or not sometimes exotic. However, while attending my final church session (no it's not an actual church) on Sunday a comedian reminded me of the constant harrasment our traveling American comrades often face. Generally, they only have to face political tirades from people like myself but in one case I was told of, a european man on discovering a girl was from America swiftly showed her his finger and walked off!! The irony is that most traveling Americans are highly critical of the current administration ...... well apart from the guy who defended Fox news by telling me it was better than CNN or "Taliban news" as he called it, apparently he hasn't seen BBC.

So in case there's any confusion I actually like Americans.

Choose a government ... oh but not that one

Couldn't get the elected government to say what we wanted. So now there going to install a pupet government in Palestine and then when civil war breaks out we can reassure ourselves that arabs just can't handle democracy!

The queue

...... and I thought English lines were long. The queue to hand over my application for a Chinese visa was 3 hours long. Lucky I've had so much practice. If everything goes to plan I pick it up next Tuesday.

Oh and here's an idea why can't we train passport control officers to say "welcome to NZ (or whatever other country)" !!! Really where are the Tourism Ministries in all this? Passport control, your first meeting with a new country, allways cold, often downright intimidating and why? I'm sure they could ask all the same questions with a dissarmingly pleasent manner!

Dosser number 4

Back to London, back to Acton, everyone speaks English and I have easy access to a washing machine. Oh and I'm dosser number four, so 12 people in flat!

Back to London

Well thats europe, back to London tomorrow. Munich has been great and I´m more convinced than ever that NZ beer has a long way to go! Really NZ does a lot of things much better than most of europe wine, food, government but not beer, not at all, doesn´t come close!! (Though there are some notable exceptions including my favorate Emmersons )