Lazy Japs

It's often said that the Japanese are the laziest people when it comes to eating.

They're so lazy that they dont bother to even cook their fish before eating.

They're so lazy that they dont use spoons to drink their soup.

They're so lazy that they kneed some rice together, albeit delicately and with some effort, slap a piece of raw fish on top and eat it.

When they feel lazier than usual that they dont want to kneed the rice, they wrap a piece of seaweed around some rice and then eat it.

It's therefore a wonder why so many people love Japanese food, especially when they charge so much for being lazy.

My cousin and her son came over to shanghai to visit some weeks back.

Coincidentally or not, they came a day before Someone came to visit me. So it was a huge step up from my usual meals alone.

My secretary who does my receipts actually noted that I only eat in three places - every day dinner i eat at this Japanese curry rice place near where i live, every weekend lunch is at this conveyor belt sushi place i go to after badminton and then weekday lunch is the same thing - Japanese beef rice.

Oh my, I really just realised that all my meals are Japanese meals only after typing them out.

Im so sick. 

Christmas Prezzie

Because things are so expensive in Shanghai, I bought a simple gift for Someone this year.

Business Plan

It's 1:30am on a Saturday morning.

Im up in Beijing, unable to sleep.

Im doing up a business plan to share with my team when they all return from their leave.

A business plan for 2013, which will guide us to achieve our goals for the year. So that we can many many bonuses.

Cost of Living

It’s been three months here and it still shocks me on the cost of stuff.

Milk seems to be a big issue here.

I typically drink the better local brand – 光明, at S$2.70 per litre.

Then Someone comes and think we should drink something else.

We went searching around and found some Australian Pura milk. It costs a whopping S$11 per litre.

Looks like I'm back to 光明 or maybe UHT milk. 

Sometimes i wonder what is my true cost of living in Shanghai. 

Oreos

Gosh I saw a tube of normal-sized tube of Oreos selling at S$6 each.

*faint*

Looks like I need to buy some of these from Singapore when I'm next back.

Human Resources

It’s time for year end review.

As I have been with the team for only three months, I wanted my boss to also participate in revieiwng my team.

He will be flying in from Singapore to do this.

So complicated really. I had to attend a one hour briefing to learn how to fill in the forms. Then fill in the forms and discuss with my boss to get a unified view of the team.

As mentioned before, I have decided to promote one of my team members. So he has a decent score.

I have another member whom we gave rather low scores. Boy, I'm not looking forward to that review.

Another Weird Gift

I have mentioned the various gifts I get from clients once in a while.

Most of them are odd like there was once a pearl necklace and then there were sweet ones like the mangoes from India once.

One of the oddest ones came recently in this bag from a consultant.

Inside is a shirt. So lame. I guess it isn’t apparent that all my shirts aren’t off-the-rack ones with all the sweaters I wear over them. 

Tsk tsk.

Then there’s also a flyer for a new Japanese restaurant that her friend recently opened. So weird. 

Housing

We finally found a place that we liked the other day.

We actually viewed the apartment with another prospective tenant - a Caucasian guy.

Once inside, I immediately knew I wanted it so I put on my charm offensive.

I immediately spoke English and said we were from Singapore so that the landlord knew I wasn’t Chinese. Turns out she was Chinese but a citizen of Singapore but living in Hong Kong. She has an apartment in Singapore and obviously this one in Shanghai. She’s one of those Chinese people who buy apartments in Singapore and increase our residential prices, take up citizenship, etc.

I don’t really care cos we already have an apartment so I don’t mind if apartment prices go up. Wahahaha.

But we even shared with the landlord our desire to find a good tenant for our apartment in Singapore because it’s “just so important”.

A day later, I was informed by the agent that the landlord wanted a copy of my namecard.

I not only gave my namecard, I even sent her a copy of my linkedin profile.

Wahahaha. She agreed to rent it to us the next day.

Working on the paperwork now. Hope nothing screws up.

Extended Holiday

I have just been here for a little more than three months.



Someone has been here for two weeks.



Still a relatively short time here in the grand scheme of things.



So in the last few months, it's like I'm on holiday. On a holiday,
there's usually a tendency to pay more for convenience than so much of a
consideration of the value.



So in those months, it's just been paying and paying and once in a while
thinking in Singapore dollars.



This has got to stop if I want to save some money here.

Blog

Sometimes I wonder if having a blog means people contact me less because they read about my going-ons here.

Sometimes I think im a loner. I can read or watch TV all time and dont need to interact with anyone.

Then I wonder why i always want to buy the latest phones, since i actually dont use them that much. Haha.

Sometimes I feel like i'm a mixed bag of contradictions.

Circuitous

I know it's a big organisation but I still think it's a little weird that sometimes when my boss in Singapore wants to talk to me, he calls his secretary to call mine, so that I can put through to his secretary first and then to him.

He's a nice guy and all with no airs but it seems like a long roundabout way to get to me.

Home Cooked Food

Someone brought me frozen carrot cake fried from our favorite place in AMK. My father-in-law knows the guy and he told him that he's buying for me in Shanghai and the guy gave us much money.

So Someone bought me three packets of S$4 worth of carrot cake - deep frozen before boarding.

Here's her frying it to warm it up! w00t!

Another Reason Why I Dont Eat Veggies

Not that I need another reason to not eat veggies, but it's just weird buying veggies by the leaves.

Promotion

I'm actually thinking of promoting one of my guys. Still have to find out how to do it. Then justify. So troublesome. Almost makes me want to change my mind. 

Dried Up

It's so dry here that I have to apply body lotion all the time.

I think I mentioned this some time back.

Things got so bad that I decided to buy a humidifier.

My secretary noted that I liked colors because my pitcher is lime green, kettle is red and humidifier is orange.

Hair

Sometimes I find it trivial to even mention about haircuts, but
everytime I cut my hair here, I learn something new.



I cut my hair for the third time ever since I arrived in Shanghai. That
means I'm here for two months already.



The second time I cut my hair for S$8. That's a steal really. Then when
they were washing my hair, they asked me if I wanted to use a different
shampoo for S$4. Different shampoo for half the price of the haircut??!?
That, to me, is symptomatic of the situation in China - labour is cheap
(hence the cheap haircut) but imported goods is expensive (hence the
expensive shamppo). Of course I refused. I have my own imported shampoo
I brought from Singapore.



After I left, I found that he didn't cut much. Then I remembered someone
telling me that they will purposely cut as little as possible so that
you come back soon.



The third time I went, I made sure to tell him to cut hair. Then he said
me if I wanted a normal or special cut. Special cut means it's all cut
by hand.



I said, "If you don't use, then what you use??!"



His reply was "We wont use the electronic razor."



There's apparently a S$26, S$20 and S$14 variant of the special cut but
he couldn't tell me the differences. I suspect that he was trying his
luck.



I stuck with my S$8 normal one.



Always an adventure in China.

Hi!

I remember a time when I would say hi to new readers to my blog.

I havent had new readers for ages.

I think I lost some readers when I changed the blog address.

Some persevering reader actually tracked me down.

Shows how riveting this blog is.

Welcome back.

Lingshan Big Buddha Part Two

I was surprised to see that there are many more things than other than the big 88metre Buddha statue.

Here's a shot.



There was also a museum that showcased several jade (white, green, black) and wood carvings depicting various buddhist idols (correct phrasing?)

Im no buddhist, but i thought these were real intricate.



There were too many and I was too lazy to take my hand out of my warm pockets.

Here's an interesting one:



I sometimes forget that these guys are monks. You would have noticed that Monkey isnt there. My colleagues all went on to make monkey poses to complete the montage. Haha. I seriously thought that this was the purpose of the display - to have people pose as monkeys. All of them made the same pose - one hand curled up over the head and the other hand held up like you are holding a serving tray with your lips pouting. I even looked around to see if there was an instruction for a standard pose. Haha.

Alas the inscription read:



This was probably the part where the Tripeka banished Monkey during the battle with the White Bone Vixen.

I wonder why the artist chose this scene. He didnt have enough jade? Wouldnt it be easier if he chose the scene: Before Tripeka met Hairy, Piggy and Sandy.

Did you see how I made a play on the movie "When Harry met Sally"?

Tea

Hmm.. i just realised that this is another entry titled "Tea".

I wanted to share this pic of a tea table.



I saw this once in a client's office and here he has, all of the Chairman that he is, sitting there behind his tea table and making tea for us with a glass kettle, then using the tea to wash the cups and then throwing the tea away. There's a hole in the table in front of him and he'd dump the waste there.

Then he'll proceed to make another batch of tea. This time to drink.

I was so fascinated the first time i saw this because he was able to do these so deftly while talking!

Lingshan Big Buddha

Part of the Wuxi company outing was a trip to Lingshan Big Buddha.

I was somewhat looking forward to seeing some touristy things, then i heard that the lunch was going to be vegetarian. I thought the meal was going to be in the hotel so I thought I might just make an excuse to go to room and eat something. Then i realised that it was going to be at the Lingshan place.

The lunch place wasnt some restaurant but some large Expo-like hall and tons of people.



There were tons of people jostling for seats and oddly jostling for vegetarian food!!



I was the only dumbass there more interested to take pictures.

Really? Seriously?

So Im back to reviewing reports. Havent really done that for almost five years now and this time it doesnt get any easier because Im reviewing reports done by Chinese people.

I always thought Big V was going to be a problem, with her age and all. Older women are always a stubborn lot.

I was reviewing her revised report after I first made (many) changes. By the fifth page, I saw that she didnt make two big changes that i had asked for, i stormed to her desk to ask why.

For the first change, she went all stuttering and flustered and first said I wasnt looking at the right version, then said she should sent the tracked-changes version, then blah blah.

Never mind.

For the second change, she said she felt she was right.

SHE SAID THAT CITI BANK WAS SPELT AS CITY BANK!

She was sure. She had seen it before.

Of course I was right in the end. I cant fathom how any, ANY chinese can argue English with me. Who did she think I was?? I cant even think of many English-speaking people who can fault my English!!?!

I got A1 for PSLE leh! A1 leh!

I cant state my PSLE score though. It's a state secret now.

Tea

Because it's so cold, i started the habit of making tea in the office. Plus it's so convenient with the kettle in my room and Small V just takes the tea from my drawer and makes it for me.

One day, she noticed that I'd throw the tea bag after drinking one cup and told me that she can add more water so that i can make more cups with just one bag! I know one would do it at coffee houses, etc but I have never done it in a domestic setting.

That day, I felt that my head spinning at about 4pm so I went home. Kinda weird type of spinning and Small V asked if I was low on sugar. I was like.. "Me? Low on sugar?" In any case, I went home early to rest.

It stopped spinning after some time and then i just couldnt fall asleep until 3am! Then i realised that I had drunk three cups of re-filled tea in the office, and i had tea at lunch, then I also has bubble tea during, wait for it, tea break!

So i had five cups of tea. That's  probably why my head was spinning.

Expressway

Yet another pic of the expressway. Haha. I look out of my window when I want to think so expect to see more expressway pics.

Shanghai has traffic lights to highway entrances when they detect that the expressway is crowded. The traffic lights arent those that change color in a few minutes so it can be quite a wait on the ramp to enter the expressway. Kinda weird really.

Wuxi Again

Despite attending the conference last month in Wuxi, the Shanghai office decided to have the annual company outing in Wuxi again.

The hotel gave me a suite. I dont really care for suites because it's pointless when Im just one person. But it seems like the suites are decked in L'Occitane toiletries. So i took all of them. Ever since moving to dry dry Shanghai, I have earned an appreciation to body moisturisers. These L'Occitane ones dont come cheap!



Being in a suite also means one gets two towel elephants. It's so silly really. I had to dismantle them in order to use the towels.

Man Tou

I see my secretary bringing in a man tou with soya bean once in a while for breakfast.

Some days I feel hungry and I yearn for a warm piping man tou. It costs S$0.40 with meat and because it's from a well-known shop, it's certain (i think) that it doesnt contain cardboard.

So I told her, whenever she buys one, buy for me and I'll buy her breakfast.

So now a $0.40 man tou costs me $2.

Freezing

It's freezing in Shanghai.

It's 13 degrees in the day and 9 degrees in the night.

It's about four degrees cooler in Chongqing and Chengdu, where I was last week, but because it's dryer, it was more manageable.

It was so cold this morning that even the Chinese people complained. I decided that a Singaporean shouldnt been too brave or stubborn and fight the cold.

So I ordered a heater and it came the very same afternoon.



All nice and fixed up. The white grill in front is apparently for me to hang things to dry. Small V suggested socks??!?