The weird and wonderful.

Alright so I've been a little absent.
After New Years I finally started learning Chinese and went from working full-time to only the mornings so hence the limited time I had to really think and write about life. Though I don't think I ever really think about it, it always ends up coming out as word vomit regurgitated during my last 15 minutes at work.

Here are some stories that I thought I should share, mainly because I can't seem to erase the images from my mind.

• About a week ago I was walking home after class and came upon some used sanitary products strewn across my path. It was gross. I think a garbage collector's package thing must have exploded while riding past. It was gross and I felt a little sick. Actually this also reminds me of driving behind a garbage truck on the way to Zhujiajiao "The Venice of Shanghai", and when I say 'garbage truck' I mean a large truck, not a pick up, with huge netted sack of garbage just casually strapped to the back of the vehicle. It took about five minutes of open windows and heavy breathing to ventilate the car.

• A couple of days ago I passed some bird feathers scattered across the pavement and realised that the dark liquid around them was blood. I'm not sure where the bird went. But there was it's blood, and and some bits of it. Funnily enough, the first thing that came to mind was that maybe someone had killed the thing here in front of this garbage bin to cook and eat. 

• The other day I was waiting for my sandwich in a bakery on Wulumuqi Rd and got to witness a grown asian man throw a tantrum across the street. He was yelling and flailing his hands in the air, grabbed a street cleaner's hat and threw it across the road onto the windscreen of a car followed by a couple of empty cardboard boxes that bounced off other cars waiting for the traffic light to change.

• About a month ago, I got on the subway to go home. I noticed a dishevelled man staring weirdly at me but shrugged it off. Before I knew it he had moved over and put his arm around my shoulder, murmuring incoherently and reeking of alcohol and filth. I screamed and ran to the other end of the train.

• A while ago I was walking to the subway and spotted a huge white thing the size of an elephant drifting down the other side of the road. Turned out it was a man on a bike with bits of polystyrene tied down around him. There were five huge bundles and from a distance could have (I swear) been a huge white cloud floating down Xincun Rd.

Can I just say, the nightlife in Shanghai is incredible and shits on everything at home in Sydney. I mean I already knew that clubs back home weren't worth the cover charge, let alone free entry. And being a woman just puts the icing on the cake.

Ladies nights can involve free flowing champagne, free cosmos, free frozen margaritas, free sangria, free tequila, or just free EVERYTHING until the wee hours of the morn! How do these places make money? And this happens in incredibly nice places and not in dirty holes that people would not be caught dead in.

Seriously what is this place??

Shanghai photo diary pt. 2

HEY GUYS HAPPY NEW YEAR!! As you already know my phone was stolen a couple of days ago which means my whole photo diary thing has gone down the drain (damn the development of shameless photo documenting with the ease of the iPhone) and also that I've lost all my photos from before and over Christmas as well. Sad face :(

Hoping to get some photos off some friends though (aw shiet Shel has friends, dw it was only temporary) because I ended up having the best two weeks and it's given me hope that the next month and a half won't be so bad after all...

From a weekend trip to Chongming, an island in the north of Shanghai. Yeah I didn't know Shanghai had an island either. Nommy BBQ squid

Veggie market with the old man; and a teddy bear/dog with a rank beard.

The Shanghai Metro a.k.a. no less than a nightmare during rush hour. Also (left) I  really don't get the whole horn beanies I've been seeing everywhere; some weird homage to devil horns?

^^^^^^ GOD I LOVE HOT POT ^^^^^^

View of Xujiahui from a window at work.

Yeah you heard them, no Crocs on the escalators!

The most adorable restaurant drowning in old people memorabilia. Mismatched chairs, lamps, fresh flowers, candles, whosits and whatsits galore and thingamabobs aplenty. And an awesome cave a vin. I will update this when I find out the name/address of this place. Somewhere in the French concession (of course).

HUSKY PUPPPIIIIEEESSSSS. Seriously look their faces, tell me you're not dying inside. My badminton coach's (yes I'm taking classes to get in touch with my Asian athleticism, let you know how it goes) husky had puppies and brought them in one day, they're three months old and are named Honey, Lucky, and Doodoo (yeah I know poor thing got name after poop).

Left: amazingly cheap noodle/rice/dumpling place. Fattest bowl of handmade noodles for 12 kuai that I barely managed to make a dent in. Right: A Taiwanese dessert called baobing... made with beans and ice and milk and unidentifiable plant jelly stuff...

So, Christmas in Shanghai. I've seen some of the most extravagant Christmas displays, though always outside big shopping malls and it's because Christmas here is more of a consumerist ploy... it's not officially a public holiday and kids don't leave cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for the reindeer and people don't wake up ridiculously early to open presents and then have champagne breakfasts and gorge themselves on food and alcohol all day with the family/friends.

At midnight I was drinking Chianti in a wine bar on Julu Rd, amaretti cookie in hand and caressing a small celebratory shot glass of mulled wine and then made it to a pub and two clubs where I saw the largest number of foreigners in one place at one time since I got here.

In recent news..

So yesterday my phone was stolen, my Australian one. It's not that big a deal in terms of my ability to communicate but I did lose 13 days of photos and all my notes from Europe. Just focusing on the fact that my wifi won't turn on (it's permanently greyed out) and the location services don't work so the value they saw in pickpocketing an iPhone has probably been halved. And now that they've turned it off, they can't turn it on or use my sim becuase there's a lock on the phone and my card, and it's all been cancelled anyway.

#suchislife

Shanghai photo diary pt. 1

1. She's so cute I can't stand it.
2. Crossing roads has never been so difficult. I think your best bet would be to blindfold yourself and hope that no one runs you over..
3. Metro.
4. 5. 6. Wandering through the French Concession. My favourite area so far, it's like a hybrid of Shanghai and the West with old housing complexes down numbered avenues and streets lined with platane trees and boutiques.
7. I wonder if people actually notice this.
8. Street mugs?
9. Street tofu! Yeah I ate it. No I didn't spew (thankfully).
10. Bus.
11. 12. 13. 14. Tianzifeng. A pedestrian-bazaar-maze-thing filled with cheap asian stores and boutiques and restaurants and cafes.
15. 16. No idea where this is or how I ended up here. There were a lot of old Chinese men playing cards.
17. A lot of stuff was influenced/built by the french...

wo de zhong wen jiang de bu hao (still)

So I don't think i've given this place enough credit.

All I've done is whine about this place, even when I was here last time in June. It's just very very different, and the fact that my background in Chinese means that wherever I go strangers expect me to be able to communicate and understand how this place works and in return get splutters of confused Mandarin.

I think one of the things that has sucked most about not knowing the language is that I can't eat at those awesome hole-in-the-wall restaurants because I can't read the damn menu. And from looking at past posts I'm pretty sure you can tell that food is one of the highlights of travelling/living for me, so it's kind of depressing when I get hungry after exploring for a while and end up in some westernised chain store thing eating a sandwich that also costs three times as much as an awesome noodle soup in a tiny local eatery.

It's crazy seeing how fast everything is going up. Aside from all the high rise buildings, I've spied so many boutiques among local grocery stores and restaurants and behind buildings only accessible by hidden laneways, and in some areas, boutique restaurants offering foreign cuisine. New cafes I've seen seem to like the idea of all-day brunch.  More photos soon!

1. 2. Flying with Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong was actually great. The first/last time I'd flown with them was domestically within China a couple years back and it was horrid, so you can imagine my surprise when they had spacey comfy seats and touch screen entertainment systems!
4. 5. 6. Hong Kong to Shanghai
7. 8. Massive shopping area above Xujiahui station and where I'll be working for the next two months starting next Tuesday. Thank god I don't have any money left.
9. Educating Guo Guo nice and early.

Shanghai, I'm trying to love you, but you're bringing me down.

Ni hao from Shanghai!

I've penetrated the webosphere to attempt to update, it's been an ass not being able to access Blogspot, and now that I've finally gotten on it turns out the photos I have on here are actually being stored somewhere and are also too big so I have to go through and compress them all before I can upload any more and get up to date with all this!

I'll get there soon enough.

In the meantime here are some friends that are abroad!

My travel buddy; Chelsea

A homie living in Londontown; Maddi

Elle who just left for South America!

Things I miss already

• Milk
• Yoghurt
• Bread
• Avocados
• Being able to freely use the internet
• Road rules
• Company
• A decent gym
• Being able to see the stars at night.

Thongs and boardies

I got home today.
I knew I was in Sydney the second I saw 3 guys strutting side by side through Arrivals donning thongs and boardies, and then multitudes more in the following couple of minutes. I hadn't seen that in 4 and a half months..
I felt like I was inhaling in honey for the first 20 minutes I breathed it all in again. Like the humidity and opposing seasons to where I'd come from had thickened the air.
The smell of Aussie flora streamed through the open window on the way home, and burnt incense floated through the upper floor of the house when I finally arrived.
I ended up sprawled on the sand under the sun with a coffee the way it should be made.

It almost feels like I never left, but I did. Everything is familiar but my insides feel so different, like they've been rearranged, and I have so many vivid memories and feelings now stored away that feel like they've appeared from nowhere.
I will never be able to sufficiently express how grateful I am for every single person that I met during my 135 days abroad. And extra special thanks and a million hugs to Chelsea and Judith.

I haven't nearly finished with this, I have three weeks at home to catch up, and I'm now leaving again after those three weeks, but to China for about 3 months.