Dogs and Kitties of the world

What: Little furry creatures who are blissfully unaware oh how much they make my heart tick.
Where: China, Europe.
Why: Taking photos became an addiction. It just happened.

Stefani aint sleeping tonight

I am living, or trying to live, in Shanghai.

Much to the amusement of the never tiring,ever staring Chinese men, I was just out in my pyjamas on the streets by myself. It was 3am, and I was in a desperate bid to find anything that looked remotely like it could help me.

Difficult. Do you understand chinese? ..... I dont.

My glands are so swollen and inflated I am toad lady.

What an unbecoming name.

An unbecoming name for a girl with an unbecoming illness in her throat.

I have sucked my way through a packet of chinese "watermelon frost throat lozengers" with no feeling of relief.

(Dont trust chinese packaging. There was nothing watermelon about them. They tasted more like spooning tigerbalm into your mouth. )

How wonderful to find myself feeling this way. Sick, the second time in two weeks.
The first time I got sick, my Chinese friend 'fairy', a true sweetheart, said ' Why are you sick? Its summer. Australia is too clean'.

My head wanted to say... "well actually fairy, have you noticed that air quality is really poor here?" It smells like rotten egg half the time. Did anyone tell you I dont DO eggs? I tried eating some fancy egg omlette thing for breakfast recently and I actually thought I was an egg the whole day.

Im going to stop talking about eggs and try and get some shut-eye.

Love:
poor, suffering,
whiney,
blimey,
chinese - grimey,

me.

Children

I am fortunate enough to work opposite Fuxing Park, designed by the French in the early 1900's.

One afternoon in this park, I was finishing eating my lunch before heading back to work, when I met a little Australian kid. I rarely understand anything in this city, and he suprised me. I looked up to hear this voice with an unmistakable australian accent saying 'Where are you from?'

The kid was sitting opposite me on a park bench, accompanied by his chinese babysitter. He was mid way through a messy crepe au chocolate, which made me smile, as I had eaten one a few hours before.

Our conversation went like this:

Boy - WHere are you from?
Me - Australia
Boy- Really? me too.
Me- Really, cool, where?
Boy- Byron Bay. I meet alot of Australians here you know.
Me- Wow, Byron Bay is alot different to here. Do you live here now?
BOy- Yeah, we moved here last year. I go to school near here.
Me- Do you like the weather here? Its always so hot.
Boy - Yeah, I do, its nice.
Me- I bet you miss the beach though dont you?
Boy- WELL OFCOURSE I DO!
Me - I do too. There are no beaches here.
Boy- I know. I just go to the pool. Its probably too crowded today.
Me - Have you made lots of new friends at your school?
Boy- Yes I have friends. I know everyone in my class. But they're not like my friends back home. I dont know why. They're a bit different here, you know? Not like us really.

Oh kids. This little person, with scraggly white blonde beach hair down to his shoulders, was easily the cutest kid in Shanghai. And yet, at the end of our conversation, (right before he proudly informed me that his mum was a Yoga teacher here)-- there was that honest confession, accompanied by his obvious sadness of finding himself in a place unlike home.

I have a friend who eats dog.

I made a new friend today. Her name is Anna. She's a Polish-born model who's lived in China for 6 years. What keeps her here? Her chinese boyfriend, work, and the food.

What does she eat? "everything, even when I go home in my country I cant stay for too long because I miss the food here"

A list of what I can remember ---
- Frogs
- Pig brains ( " yeah, ofcourse, I wish I could make you try them. They taste like tofu and egg white. I eat like five at a time" )
- Liver
- Intestines
- Tongue
- Neck
- Feet
- Snake
- Blood
- Crickets/cockroaches
- Dog (When she was sick it made her better, but then again, apparently "you can only eat this kind of meat two times a year, you know? Is Different."
- And, saving the best till last: bull's testicles.

This is a girl who talks more than me. So, adding fireworks to the wildly adventurous persona she has already presented to me(which has left me dumfounded), she moves on. Anna continues by telling me she "used to have a 1.8metre snake and a large bird eating spider which was 20cm in diamter and very hairy".

Oh, but she had to give them away.

She neglected to feed the snake for too long, and it coiled around her neck and tried to strangle her. Luckily her brother was there to save the day.

Her spider spat its poisenous hairs onto her leg when it was startled. Apparently it had been sitting in her lap when Anna's friend walked into the room, noticed the spider, and screamed louder than anyone anna had ever heard scream.
Anna ended up with a very swollen leg for a few days - however, luckily she was wearing jeans, which she was forced to throw away. Otherwise, I am told, "it could have been much worse."

What did her parents think?, I ask.

"Well my mum, she never went in my room. But it was okay, because I kept them in a...how do you say....aquarium thing."

Internship

I work at a very long table. It almost spans the entire lenghth of the office that is lined with computers and people on either side. This table holds about thirty people.
Sitting in such an arrangement means you get to know people pretty fast.

If I had a dollar for every time the man next to me burped I would be rich. Does this make you cringe? Thats just him adding his own melody into the melting pot of the background noise.

Speaking of noise, the lady opposite me is prone to use her vocal chords at maximum capacity multiple times a day. She makes a point of letting everyone know of her presence. This does my head in. She does not have a nice voice. The others, usually so quiet and well behaved in comparison, (always tapping away at their keyboards), respond to the loud lady's call by starting a comotion of their own.

The routine here happens like this: loud lady starts, everyone else gets fired up and makes themselves known too, at which point the czech director comes out of his office. Then, with him standing at the head of the table, you hear as many 'shoosh's' as it takes for everybody to be quiet.

....And there there is me. I dont understand chinese. I dont speak chinese. I dont know what is going on, ever. I frequently I wish I did, because they argue with such conviction, and always so publicy.

Then, all is quiet, except for the mobile phones. Constantly going off, it seems to be the 'in' thing to have a radio song for your ringtone rather than the standard ones that come with the phone. I hear new song remixes all the time, as everyone's phone rings simultaneously.

You may be asking about what the chinese business model is like.. . the rule is - there is no model. You do as you like. As far as im concerned, only the lady at the end of the table, two seats down from me, is actually doing work. Just looking around, everyone else's screens are showing MSN, blog sites, facebook...hows that for productivity?

Apparently here it is even acceptable to 'nap' whilst at work. The man next to me gets a second mention because yesterday he took about a half an hour nap on his keyboard, blissfully unaware that the boss was within a 5 metre radius of him the whole time. Absolutely nothing happened, and he wasnt woken by his boss, but rather his ringing phone -Mariah carey. Great taste.

Love me.


(in the time that I have been writing this he would have burped at least 20 times)

There is rain forecasted for every day until the end of this week. Rain mixed with pollution mixed with humidity makes the city smell - much much worse than it already smells. China you are so charming!

National sport: Spitting

Here, when somebody spits, it prompts a chain reaction. This can even influence ten people.
Here,when spitting, consider:
1. Aim/placement of spit
2. How much you wish to expel from your mouth
3. At what time you deem this appropriate
4. How loud, long and drawn out you can make the action.

This morning I bear witness to this on my way to work:

Man sitting on side of street decides he needs to spit. Man turns his head to one side in order to do so. Unassuming lady walks by at precisely this moment. Lady wears light grey pants. Lady's pant leg is now wearing the man's saliva.

Did you know that they employ people here to hold signs here reminding the population to be civilised? To not spit in public, to let others off the train first before you get on. To stick to one side of elevators, to be polite and be mindful of others personal space.

This is ofcourse, to 'make face', and look good in front of all the hundreds of thousands of visotors in Shanghai for this years World Expo. (which I have still yet to attend) What countries' pavillions do I see?... Which leads me to my next question which has been occupying my thoughts since I landed here -

Where to from Shanghai???

Getting around...by bus

"Bus travel in Shanghai comes with all the trimmings. There are GPS systems at bus stops, indicating how many meters away the vehicle is;onboard LED displays warn of upcoming stops;meanwhile TV sets seduce passengers with adverts. Sadly, none of that changes the essential hideousness of the experience." - Many thanks to my 'Frommer's Shanhai day by day' city guide for its honesty.

In this city, you cannot get a censored, edited, dulled-down, version of an experience.

You get the experience.

Whether you like it, or not.

Warning: people will be buying eyeballs in front of you in the supermarket queue. Warning: waitresses will spit so close to your food in a restaurant that you can be sure of at least some saliva having contaminated your food.
Warning: Your bathroom is capable of emitting garlic and onion smells whilst you are showering
Warning: Being stared at is no big deal. Having your ponytail pulled, and then being laughed at by the chinese farmer man with no teeth behind you on the escalator, IS.

Sink or swim:
Shanghai, meet Stefani. Stefani, meet Shanghai.

And so my story begins.....