What The...

Only in China are people queuing for Pizza Hut...

Your Only Asset

I have been going to 华佗for regular tweaking of my neck and back. It has been good and if I don’t go for a long time, my neck stiffens up.

Despite his relative young age, he gave me some good piece of advice.

"Everything else, except your health is out of your control".

I know it's a little cliched but he mentioned this in the context of sleeping early and not overworking. 

He said the best time to sleep is at 1130pm because its the time where the cells in the body repair themselves the most.So i sleep at 1130pm nowadays. Sometimes even earlier, but this means I wakey at about 6am, sometimes earlier. 

I wonder how it works in different time zones.

Purified

I was back in Singapore during the Great Singapore Haze. That coincided with my seven-day MC.

That prompted us to re-think getting air purifiers for our place in Shanghai. When I first moved here, people said we should get one but each cost between S$800 – S$1,000! Too expensive.

We let that idea drift off naturally due to the prohibitive cost. The Hazy episode reignited (pun intended) the search.

After asking a lot of people and doing much research and contacting the distributor for discounts, we found Blueair.

There’s a big size and small size one. Big size for big room and ..you get the idea. Big one costs S$1,200 and small one costs S$600. Im not sure what we were thinking but we decided we needed two big ones at home and then I also got worried about the air quality in my office, so I decided to get the small one for my office

When the small one came, it was huge and it scared me to think how big the big one is. Here’s a picture of the big one.

I’m not sure how much you can see but the watch is there to add perspective. The watch isn’t a small watch.

How True?

I saw this the other day.

I really wonder how accurate this can be. 1% loss for China means 1% loss of neighbours.

Zhun bo??!? 

Need I?

Need i say anything else about why I posted this?

Delivery

I mentioned a lot about deliveries being a big thing here.

The downside about it is that you'd have to wait for it to come and it's not easy to know when they'd come.

So most of the time, id have it delivered to my office during working hours, even for groceries and toiletries.

This means that I'd have to bring them home, item by item. This means that my exclusive leather Tumi laptop bag is used to ferry body foam and the like.

Scammer

I received this SMS on my Singapore number the other day.

 I am actually very curious if it works but I dont dare to try.

Booked

We unwittingly shipped some books over from Singapore.

I said unwitting because i dont read some of them anymore and they add weight and they are just so bulky.

Anyway, some of them are here.

We chanced upon this lifestyle shop that was on closing down sale and saw this Umbra bookends. It said 三折, which i thought was 30% off. Then I realised that it meant 30% of the price! So from RMB400, it became RMB120.

Good deal plus i was looking for things to decorate my office with, plus i can leave the books in my office and save space at home.

Lawson

Because the city is so big but yet quite ubiquitous in many ways, with pretty much the same shops in the different districts.

We chanced upon this Lawson and i didnt think much of it except that the signboard seemed like it had more words than usual. Turned out that it was an ultraman themed Lawson.

Kinda weird. 

Milking Me Dry

Have i ever mentioned that imported fresh milk here costs almost S$11? And it's not cos it's at Taka. It's in fact a little cheaper here.

Follow Up

As a follow up to my earlier post, Someone went to queue for 45 mins for Uncle Tetsu the other day for the real one, not the one that no one queues for.

Quite fluffy and light but Im not sure if i'd queue 45 mins for it.

 

Technology #2

My company just got a new copier. Quite power one.

Now when I want to print anything, I have to flash my staff pass at the printer and then it'll print.

My company is already considered quite lax in security. I wonder how much more secure one can get to print/scan/photocopy something.

Long and Short of It

During the winter, days are short and the reverse is true for summer/spring. So whilst I complained that it was pitch dark at 5:30pm during winter, it's relatively bright at 7pm during summer time.

The hermit lifestyle i lead means that Im in bed by 7pm. Somehow it feels odd to be in bed when it's this bright.

Eagle Has Landed!

Someone landed last Wednesday and i got ready her "welcome package" to Shanghai.

1. Marriage certificate as proof that we are married
2. Stored value card of RMB1,000 for transport
3. My passport for registration with local police
4. A wad of cash (RMB5,000) to start things off
5. Relevant documents for health check up
6. Letter from ICA with a new sticker indicating her new address in Shanghai to be stuck onto IC

Technology #1

I managed to wriggle a new laptop from my office the other day.

The one they gave me when i first joined was so slow and heavy that I went to buy one for myself.

After a while, however, I wanted another one so that I could work at home and also didnt have to carry the laptop home the night before i travelled. So, i pushed and pushed.

Hee Hee.

 Crazy accessories that came with it. Came with an extra adaptor so that I dont have to kneel over to unplug it, then a portable CD drive that I probably wont ever use and an extra battery. Yes it's a big flat piece of battery that I can fix to the bottom of the laptop for prolonged battery life.

Cool eh?
 

Blood Drive

The other day, one of the new hires (the first one) came to me to say that she is going for blood donation and that as a company incentive, she gets one day off on top of not coming to work on the blood donation day.

I didn’t think much of it as I thought blood donation was a good thing after all. I was even contemplating giving blood except for the fact that I wasn’t sure of China’s hygiene standards.

Then the office manager came to me to inform me about my new hire’s off day. I asked her about the genesis on this off day thing and she said this was a company incentive because every company in Shanghai needs to send at least one representative for blood donation, else if there’s an emergency, our company will have lower priority.

That was shocking!

Plus it raised another question for me in whether my new hire was pressured to go to this because she was the newest in the company. Office manager assured me that she wasn’t.

I didn’t believe her and went to check with new hire. Ok, no pressure. Voluntary and got off day some more.

Ahhh, the hassle of managing people. Still have to care whether they’re bullied at work or not.

Did You Know?

CAPTCHA. Do you know it stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart?

It’s that irritating string of letters that you have to enter in order for the website to know you are a real human instead of a bot.

Here’s what I read in an article the other day “What most people don't realize is that their Captcha answers serve two purposes—and here we get to task unification. In addition to proving to websites that they are not machines, the users of Captcha are deciphering difficult-to-read words from printed texts. The system's inventor, a Carnegie Mellon computer scientist named Luis von Ahn, realized that by feeding into Captcha words that computer scanners can't read—especially the old fonts often found in older publications—users could help in the massive task of transforming printed content into digital form. Ordinary web surfers are helping to transcribe the equivalent of nearly 150,000 books a year.

Amazing!

Lazy Sleep?

I heard someone said he 下午睡了个懒觉. i did a double take and realised i was in China. No biggie here.

Beautified

Taiwan, Korea and Hong Kong are always known for their beauty products.

My friend in China asked me to help her buy some face masks when I was in taipei.

At first, i thought she told me to buy N95 masks. Haha. Things got clearer when she told me the brand.

The brand she wanted was on sale and on the first day I bought some for myself and tried one that night. It felt good! I then bought more boxes! Seven boxes for me and Someone and all the L'Occitane and Crabtree & Evenlyn toiletries i took from the hotel. W00t!

Searing!

I was complaining of the cold a while back right?

Then it got hotter right? 

It's now searing. 

Dont let this beautiful picture deceive you. It's 38 degrees. 

Intern Disaster

It was a disastrous start for the intern. I visited her one day after she arrived to see how she was and bought her a SIM card.

Although her place was close to mine, it was so hard to find that I went to two wrong buildings, knocked on two wrong units of the same number before i found hers!

The corridor was dark and dank and stinky. Scary!

When i went in, i found that the airconditioning was spoilt and it was stuffy inside! I offered to buy her a fan but she was a little dazed from jet-lag.

I then proceeded to help her put the SIM card into her phone. Kept trying but the phone just couldnt detect the network. Then i realised that perhaps it's because it's a locked US phone. Wasnt sure if it was that or the SIM card was spoilt.

I then arranged for her to move to a hotel for a night or two until the air-con is fixed.

Had to get her another phone on Monday for the SIM card to work.

YAWN.

Uncle Tetsu's Shop

There's this outlet at the Taipei Station. It's cheesecake by Uncle Tetsu. I saw thisin Shanghai as well. Long long queues because they only make 15 cheese cakes at one go. Each cake has to be hot stamped with their logo as well (??!?). There's also a queue at this Taipei station outlet.

 

 I couldnt be bothered to queue. Walking around the station, I saw another Uncle Tetsu outlet that didnt have a queue. I went to see it and found out that it sold another model - mousse cheesecake. Apparently, this isnt that popular cos no one is queuing. 

I bought one, thinking it cant be THAT bad. 

I was wrong. 

 

It tasted like the Fiesta cake that used to be sold in Singapore. Bleah. One round thing like this cost S$8 man. Totally not worth it.  

Taipei Station

I also heard that there are a number of restaurants and eateries and snack places at Taipei main station. I was a little disappointed at the quality of restaurants there actually.

In inner atrium looked quite quaint though.

Shoes Are Meant for Walking

I dont have many sneakers. I actually only have one pair. That's because when Im in Singapore, I usually just wear berms and birks. That's my usual look. Rarely does anyone see me in jeans.

With just one pair of sneakers, this is the pair that I wore for my holidays in San Francisco, Tokyo, Beijing, Colorado, Hong Kong and Thailand. Now, my only pair has a hole at the bottom.

Sentimental me is a little sad. It has literally brought me places.

101

One of my meetings in Taipei was at the Taipei 101. I was glad because then at least i dont have to make a special trip here. Like all super tall structures, it's a pain to find the right lifts for your level. Here's the view from about 3/4 way up.

 

Can you extrapolate from these pictures to know who i met?

Beefed Up

Another place that Someone raved about was this beef noodle place about 30 mins from where i stayed. It was supposed to be very lok kok with no proper signboard and all i had was an address and a picture of the outside. It didnt look appetizing at all!

 

 When I got to the place, I wasnt too sure because it looked similar but yet still didnt look too similar.

 

The signboard at the top looked bigger in my picture than Someone's. And there's a signboard on the ground in my picture.

I went closer to see what the signboard on the ground said: "We are the only beef noodle stall here. No pictures. Please be seated behind." Then i was chased away by a grumpy uncle. Thankfully the inside was much cleaner. Here's the 红烧牛肉面.

 

Very good but a little pricey at NT180. It didnt feel like it was enough but i didnt feel like buying another bowl.

Bubble Tea - The Origins

Someone was in taipei two months ago so she knew some of the more famous places to eat. Even though I usually feel lazy to explore, I usually make the effort if it's a new city. Taipei is a new city. She told me this place - 春水堂 - is where bubble tea pearls originated, so i hauled my lazy ass out of the hotel after a long day of meetings.

Here it is. Doesnt it sound like a brothel?

 

Given a nice corner seat on the second floor. It feels like those taiwanese milk tea places in Marina Square in yesteryear. 

  

Here you go: NT180 for a medium sized cup. Pearls are soft and numerous. Somehow lacking in springiness but the tea is good.

 

Credited

I have mentioned at least twice when I had to withdraw a lot of money to bring back to Singapore whenever I get a chance to come back.

I dont think I have mentioned why.

It's nearly impossible for foreigners to get a credit card here, even with a letter from your company stating your salary, etc. So my credit cards are still from Singapore banks so I need to bring my RMB back to pay my credit card bills.

I got a message the other day that Shanghai deputy head of Bank of China wanted to meet me the other day because they wanted to introduce some clients to us. I usually dont meet clients for first meetings but I had an ulterior motive.

As i expected, the deal they wanted to introduce us was crappy and towards the end of the meeting, I lamented how the queues were long at their bank and they didnt give me a credit card even though i applied twice.

To cut the long story short, they arranged for an RM to come to my office two days later to get my necessary documents. They even offered to upgrade my savings account to a premier one so that I can fixed deposit interest rates!

Best thing is they're going to come to my office to deliver the credit and debit cards to me this week. w00t!