Cool!

I needed to cool a kettle of water that was recently boiled.

It was so cold outside that I put it on top of the shoe cabinet and opened and closed the door like a fan to bring the cold air in. Haha.

Moving On

The lease on our Shanghai apartment is expiring at the end of January.

We will be moving out because the place is getting too small for us. I think we underestimated the amount of space additional winter clothing would take.

End January isn’t good because it’s CNY then and it’s a pain to get anything done during that time, plus the fact we will be back in Singapore.

With the dates pulled forward, it seems like we will be moving in three weeks time!

Quite tiring really. We moved to our new apartment in Singapore in Dec 2011, then moved to Shanghai to a serviced apartment in October 2013, then moved to Shanghai apartment in February 2013 and now we are likely moving in December 2013. We would likely be signing a two-year lease on this one so hopefully we will be more settled.

YAY!

Bought two more Lightning to USB charging cables again when I ordered something online.

YAY!

Though a bit of a downer cos I wont use it until I get my Mini.

Yumz

My legal team actually last came from Singapore in early October.

It was the first time they came ever since I moved here.

They asked me how life here was and I told me basically how it's an effort to find food we trust and how we missed Singapore food.

Head of Legal told me to tell him what I needed the next time he came.

Before he came this week, I was surprised he remembered and asked me.

After some deliberation, we decided to be thick-skinned and asked for:

Two pandan cakes and one kueh lapis!

YAY!

Chopped Sticks

Perhaps Im talking too much about disposable chopsticks.

Remember I mentioned that I bring these to work to stir my drinks?

Someone told me recently not to use disposable chopsticks that come seperated as opposed to those that are stuck together.

There's a chance that the separated ones have been recycled.

*GULP*

There goes this one...

So many things to consider when living in China.

Mentor

I recently wrote this email to my first boss:

"Dear 

I was recently asked to be part of a mentorship group to mentor promising and high potential individuals within .

One of the mentor preparation sessions required us to draw out our career journey and our mentors along the way and list out the mentors’ characteristics.

Whilst doing that, I thought about how you gave me my first job and also guided me in the formative years in my career and I wanted to drop you a note to thank you.

Have a good weekend."

His reply came as follows:

"Dear Cornball,

You are a rare gem and I thank God for bringing you into my life.

It's a joy to journey with you.

Thank you for your encouragement which came at the right moment.

Have a blessed weekend."

I thought it was sweet but yet a little too mushy. Haha, but it did warm my heart.

Journey to the East

The stadium where we watched the badminton tournament is far out in eastern Shanghai. It's in an area we have never been before but we heard there's a good Singaporean restaurant nearby. Because we couldnt find a cab, we walked 1.2km in the cold searching for it.

The person who introduced was said it was called "Tues Restaurant".

Turns out, it was called:

It was well worth the walk!

Best carrot cake I have eaten for a long time! Certainly can fight with Chomp Chomp and the likes.

The two of us ordered that, plus prawn paste chicken, plus curry chicken and rice plus hor fun! Haha.. yes it's a lot I know but hey, it's very far from where we stay!

We even dabao-ed two portions of carrot cake back to be frozen and re-heated another day. Hee hee.

Disappointed?

I am sorry that after a relatively short break from blogging, all you got was a picture of banana and pineapple pies.

It was a stressful week for me this week.

My President was in town and so was my legal counsel. They were here to help me close this particularly tough deal to close. To date, the company has been trying to close this for more than two years now. Tough and rather unreasonable client.

Therefore, the whole gang was in town to close them.

I learnt a little on negotiations through this episode. Legal team arrived on Sunday night for a full day of meetings on Monday. Then my President came in on Monday evening, ready to step in on Tuesday to clear some big ticket items over lunch and then the both sides' working teams returned to our office to trash out the wordings and the details. All this time, my President stayed in my office, ready to step in anytime.

And then at about 5:50pm (it was almost as if everyone wanted to end on time and not do OT), everything was settled and then everyone shook hands, hugged and took pictures.

Now, all that's left is the drafting and our legal team has the unenviable task of getting all the documents ready signing ceremony on 4 December.

I think my work is done for now. At least it's a deal in Shanghai, which is a big city.

Yummy!

Macdonalds and other fast food chains always pride themselves with maintaining the purity of their menu globally. In recent years, they have started to localise their menus.

I recently saw this at the Macs.

My favourite item at Macs is actually the apple pie. Now, they have it in pineapple and banana! Two of my favourite fruits!

OUCH!

All these flying here and there has taken a toll on my back and neck. Time away from Shanghai also means I cannot visit 华佗.

I have now resorted to bringing my laptop to my pantry where i can stand and work rather than sitting all day.

Expensive Tickets!

One of the things we were excited to do in China before we moved to Shanghai was to... watch live badminton games.

We watched some games before in Singapore but I actually dont really like to watch because you need to pay 100% attention or else you will miss the beautiful shots. There's no repeats like on TV.

In Singapore, we typically get some free tickets from some lobang. We dont have any lobangs in Shanghai.

I was shocked to see that it was S$60 per person for the Saturday matches and S$100 per person for Sunday's finals!!

With prices so expensive, I'd better keeep my eyes wide open for every shot!

 

Almost the same price as a musical in Singapore. Maybe musicals here are cheaper given people arent so cultured here.

Mirroring

Saw this crazy guy in Beijing.

He could write big Chinese words properly and in mirror image simultaneously.

Settled

After a whole load of travelling which included Taipei, Singapore, Cebu, Hong Kong, Foshan and then Beijing last week, finally I can settle back in Shanghai.

Plus now that Someone is back, I can kick back and enjoy some home cooked food.

Here in Shanghai, fishballs are different from those in Singapore. They dont have fishcakes here. So we have to bring these two items from Singapore.

There they are. Glorious fishcakes.

Sticks!

Ever since I moved to China, I started to make my own drinks in the office. I probably have at least seven kinds of teas in my drawer, milo, cereal, etc.

I have many cups which exasperates my secretary because she says the cleaning aunty has difficulty remembering which ones belong to who and therefore cant bring the cups back after they're washed.

We have a nice pantry in the office but it's very deficient in terms of cutlery. So I end up bringing disposable chopsticks to work be used as stirrers.

We havent been eating out much so my supply is now lacking.

Decided to spend S$2 to buy 50 pairs. That can last me 100 days!

w00t!

Party!

I attended a house party some weeks back.

I tend to attend more of these when Someone is in town because she's the more social one and my version of a perfect weekend would be badminton in the morning and then the rest of the day spent watching TV with a bubble tea in hand.

Anyway, I digress.

The hostess is a Thai and her husband is a Singaporean, who quite coincidentally was my secondary school junior, but I never saw him before. That's another blog on "Small Small World".

This Thai lady and her husband are very wealthy. I think their individual families are wealthy. They each drive a Ferrari here and I think that while Ferraris are relatively cheaper here in Shanghai. Driving it here in such a dirty place is such a waste of money. I mentioned their wealth really because i think she is quite airy fairy and seems to live in her own world.

For the party, they decided to host this in another apartment that they own in Shanghai. It's a 300sqm apartment with a view of this:

That was the Huang Pu River, in case you didnt know.

First of all, they apparently dont have plates there so we were responsible for bringing disposable cutlery.

The cuisine for the night was supposed to be Thai. 

But by 1pm on day of the dinner. she hadn't informed the groupchat of 16 people where the dinner will be and what time.

I told Someone it's as though it was a "Diner en Blanc" - secret location, secret time.

We eventually got the time (7pm) but at 6pm, we were told to come at 730pm instead because the food took longer than expected.

Then 20 minutes later, she messaged again to say we can come at 7pm now. Diao.

On the way there, we were informed that her husband bought more food and she's angry and she decided not to make tom yum soup. Someone in the chat had to beg her to make before she changed her mind. In the end, there was tom yum soup.

When we reached there, I saw mountains and mountains of food. Upon closer inspection, it was a huge mountain of hokkien mee, huge mountain of carrot cake and huge pool of curry chicken. That was mind boggling for me. It was a whole cacophony of mixed emotions. My mind was swirling at the copious amount of food but yet my brain is telling me this isnt Thai food! This is Singapore food.

Then..

Then i saw the Thai food.

Two tiny take-away-boxes-sized portions of pork (which turned out very nice), one normal sized plate of chicken (very dry) and two normal sized plates of vegetables (not my cuppa).  That definitely wasnt enough for 16 people! And of course tom yum soup. There wasnt really enough so everyone got 3/4 bowl of it.

No wonder her husband went to get extra food. And he even got it at my favourite Singapore restaurant here. But man, to begin with Singapore food here is expensive, and with the amount of food he bought, I think the hokkien mee alone was at least S$100! There was so so much food that most people could bring back and we ate the hokkien mee for lunch the next day - enough for two of us!

What a bimbo! If her husband didnt save the day, we would all have gone home hungry.

Boring no?

Someone and I are rather boring travellers I feel. I think the bulk of the blame lies with me.

Because I cherish every meal and dont want to eat a bad meal or waste a meal eating a bad meal, if we go to cities/locations that we have been before, we will usually eat at the same and familiar places.

When we were in Taipei, we ate at the same beef noodles place three or four times during our seven days there. We went to the same ice cream place five times. As if to prove my point, we will be going back to Taipei at the end of the year again.

We have gone to Beijing three times ever since i moved to Shanghai. We eat at the same Peking duck restaurant all the time and we go to the same mall all the time and we go to the same hole in the wall BBQ skewer place. This time we had more days and we ended up going twice to the same duck place and didnt go to others that my friend recommended.

A little more on this tiny skewer place. We always come here because Someone get to know this place years ago and the "satays" are cheap and good.

Here's the menu. We ate so many sticks and only spent RMB44 for two of us.

Company Outing

Im not sure if I blogged about this before.

Every year my company does a small outing to somewhere outside Shanghai.

This year, they chose some places that I (and i suspect a lot of the Chinese colleagues) have never heard before. The response wasnt that great. I even tried to wriggle out by scheduling a work trip during that period.

For some odd reason, I opened my big mouth and suggested paintball. Everyone got excited. Apparently, they call it 成人CS here. CS presumably meaning Counterstrike.

So it's an afternoon of paintball, then dinner then KTV. I heard there's going to be a competition. I wonder if i should prepare a song ahead. Hmmm...

Connected

When I have some time to spare, I usually like to take the train back to Shanghai when I'm in Beijing.

Although it's a five-hour ride compared to a 2.5 hour flight, the time saved in checking in earlier, etc and the near ubiquitous flight delay just means the train is more reliable.

Plus I can use my portable wifi thingy.

So here I am, laptop on, wifi on, laptop on with TV. Makes five hours zoom pass faster than 300km/h.

Simple?

A lot has been said about some things being life’s simple pleasures.

Some things get more pleasurable but yet not much simpler when things are in scant supply.

A friend brought from keuh lapis from Jakarta and gave us a small piece.

I have never been a big fan of kueh lapis but boy, it tasted so so good.

Near-Death!

It’s never a good thing after a near-death experience to travel to a shopping haven.

After such an experience, it’s normal to think that money doesn’t matter at all. That money is an object outside life.

With this mentality, coupled with the impending winter, I sought to buy a coat while in Hong Kong.

After a zeroing into one, I realised that it is actually more expensive than in Singapore. And Singapore is more expensive than Europe.

I have always been a believer that most things worth doing needs some effort.

That began a search. A search on which countries in Europe is the cheapest and correspondingly where I have a friend whom I can ship the item to so that he/she can send it back to Singapore where Someone can bring back for me.

UK, Italy, France, Germany…

Once I identified that UK is the cheapest, I then had to decide if I used Fedex, UPS, DHL.. my UK friend told me Royal Mail would be the cheapest. I even had to choose the fastest option to make sure it made it to Singapore before Someone left Singapore.

After some nail biting, which included the tracking site of Royal Mail being down for two days, it’s finally by my side. For all my efforts, including shipping costs, I saved S$800. YAY!