(And why are you not?)

Some mornings, in the early seconds before wakefulness, I see in my mind a hot bowl of hei mee — prawn noodles. The bright yellow noodles in a pastel blue plastic bowl, swimming with shelled prawns, fried onions, and deep fried pork lard in steaming hot brown soup. And then I can almost smell it — the onions, the prawns and the lard in hei mee. But then I awake to find myself miles away from anything like it. In those moments, I really miss being in Singapore. It’s so cliche for an overseas Singaporean to talk about missing Singaporean food. I don’t even know why I think of hei mee, since it’s not anywhere on my list of favourite foods. But when I was still a kid with dorky glasses and a bowl-like haircut, my mother would wake me on Sunday mornings and take me to Whampoa to slurp up my Sundays’ hei mee. I guess that explains it. But why am I still here in Shanghai?

Opportunities

They’re here. They’re growing, and they’re here to stay. Eyes are on China, most are set on Shanghai.

Costs/Choices

Cost of living in Shanghai is not low, but choices are available to stretch your dollar, or your RMB, so to speak.

Clothes

Why buy clothes, shoes and accessories from the boutiques or department stores when you can get imported/to-be-exported clothes at the Qipu Lu Wholesale Market? Or get your shirt/pants/dress/suit tailor-made out of your own designs at Lujiabang Fabric Market?

Entertainment

Pirated DVDs: 5－9RMB depending on quality.

Pirated Wii Games: 5RMB

Pirated Software: 10 - ? RMB

Pirated Books: 10 - ? RMB depending on size, thickness, hardcover/paperback

Movies: Varies for different cinemas and titles. But generally, cheap in the mornings, half price on Tuesdays and after 10pm everyday

Bank

The minimum amount to have in your savings account before the bank starts to charge a fee is 500RMB. If you don’t have at least 500RMB, the bank will deduct 2RMB from your account every month you don’t hit the minimum.

In Singapore? It’s S$500 and S$2.

Transportation

Buses: 2-4RMB depending on distance

Metro: 3-6RMB depending on distance

Taxi: Starting fare at 12RMB, therafter 2.40RMB per km or equivalent waiting time. Midnight surcharge starts at 11pm, with the meter starting at 16RMB and the fare hikes by 30%. No surcharge for booking a taxi other than from dazhong company (charges 4RMB).

Very useful tip: You can haggle with taxi drivers after 11pm for a 20% discount if your journey is fairly long, and if taxis are in abundance where you are.

Everything

Accessories, clothes, shoes, books, software, computers, cameras, photo printing services, snacks, dog food, cat food, dog clothes, cat clothes, anything can be purchased on TAOBAO.COM and delivered to your doorstep! It is also currently my new past time.

Convenience

The months of winter are the hardest to leave the house. To gear myself for the almost unbearable Shanghai winter, I apply moisturizer to my face, slather it all over my body (it’s necessary for it to really be ALL over). I wear leggings, pants, a shirt, a woolen shirt, a jacket, a scarf, a beanie, earmuffs, gloves, and then strap on my pair of winter boots. What usually takes 15 minutes — getting dressed to go out — takes 30-45 minutes during winter. So of course being the bum that I am I’d much rather stay in, and the conveniences in Shanghai allow me to do so!

Food

Almost every eating establishment provides the service of waimai, which is to deliver your ordered food to where you are. In Singapore I’m only aware of food delivery restaurants like KFC, Macs, Pizza Hut, Sakae Sushi. In Shanghai, food delivery for any eating establishment is a given! To me, that’s a god-send! I realize I’ve become very attached to this convenience. When I lived in the wintry months in Vancouver, I had to get my ass out of the house if I wanted to eat decently, and I even had to tip them! I don’t know if I can ever get used to living without the convenience of waimai anymore.

Tickets

Other than the relatively lower costs of concert tickets, I can order tickets online and have them delivered to me at no charge!

There are several avenues of getting concert tickets:

1) Buy from the authorized dealer either at the ticketing office or online,

2) Buy from sellers on Taobao who are selling them at a cheaper price,

3) Haggle with scalpers lingering around the concert venue just before the concert.

To give you an example of how you can cut costs by buying concert tickets on Taobao, I just attended Zhang Hui Mei’s concert in the middle of last month. The listed prices for her concert tickets started from 280RMB (Jacky Cheung’s started from 180RMB). We bought tickets at 300RMB for 580RMB seats!

Airplane tickets can also be ordered through the phone or Internet and delivered to you at no charge.

Best thing is, you only need to pay after you receive the tickets!

The Heart

What else can I say, the heart is getting very comfortable in this adopted city.

Even though I’d still have to wait till I return to Singapore to have the hei mee I’ve been strangely fantasizing about, living with someone who can whip up a bowl of Laksa at will definitely helps a great deal. *big wide grin*

The first fall.

Waiting to see if it’ll blanket.

Okay. It’s been a long hiatus.

I remember not too long ago I was nagging friends to continue blogging even after they started working and didn’t buy into the excuse of “no time”, “too tired”, “don’t wanna face another computer after a day’s work”. Little did I know I would mutter these excuses to concerned online friends (all one of you) myself.

Hey come on, I spend 8 hours every weekday doing web stuff so at the end of the day, I’d really like some time away from the bad glares of computer screens.

But now I just might be needing the time at home to work on my own project which I’ve been procrastinating for far too long.

Haven’t chronicled my life in such a long while, I’ve forgotten how to. These days I’m writing stuff for the web primarily for robots, so.

Okay, here’s trying to provide updates on my life. Since I’ve become geekier, let the tech speak begin.

If I was a search engine, the search result for “love” has had a new top entry for the past 2 months, and is staying strong at the top of the index. Searching for key phrases, “amazing woman”, “most challenging lover” and “love of my life” would indisputably display the same first result. Pardon the tacky tech speak, call it an occupation hazard if you wish. She’ll be remaining anonymous though, and I haven’t yet thought of a good alias for her, but something should come up soon.

On what I do on weekdays, I’m training to be an SEO with an increasing focus on landing page optimization. Let’s hope it’s going to be as promising as it sounds.

I did say the woman in my life now will remain a Jane Doe, but her lovely Schnauzer, Pepper, is here to tug at your heart. *Cue awwwww*

Does it mean I speak impeccable English, can be referred to as an English grammar handbook, spout bombastic English vocabulary, or authorized to correct your English? Barely. If I’m qualified to do anything, it is to show you how ugly my graduation photo and certificates are (name and id numbers have been unskillfully removed by me):

Thanks to CG for sharing this song with me, What do you do with a BA in English?

What do you do with a B.A. in English,
What is my life going to be?
Four years of college and plenty of knowledge,
Have earned me this useless degree.

I can’t pay the bills yet,
‘Cause I have no skills yet,
The world is a big scary place.

But somehow I can’t shake,
The feeling I might make,
A difference,
To the human race.

I just sat for my final paper in university, possibly the very last one of my life. It was for my Shakespeare elective. Everyone left the exam room complaining about it, because the final mini-essay question was not in the text at all, nor did he give us any clue that he’d drop such a bomb. We studied excerpts from 9 plays: The Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Henry IV, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Tempest, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. But the critical exam question was on The Merchant of Venice! O, judge o you Gods, what fools he makes of us.

In spite of that, I’m very pleased. This university life is over. OVER! 

Since nostalgia hasn’t kicked in, let me say all this now. I’m so glad I don’t have to sit in those toilet-stenched classrooms with creaky fold-down wooden chairs paired with completely vandalized wooden chipped off tables anymore letting voices of boredom weave in and out of my semi-wakefulness, resting on my one too many photocopied copyright breached textbooks distributed at almost no cost. I’m even more elated at the fact that I don’t have to write on A3 brown thinner-than-toilet-paper exam answer sheets while witnessing how students are referring to small pieces of paper in their pencilcases, underneath skirts, or under caps. Or more recently, students leaving the classroom for the bathroom and miraculously filling up their papers with the right answers after they return.

I wish I could say I’m also done with the administration people in my university, but alas, I still need them in order to graduate.

Peace, ho! Studies and exams, I bid thee farewell.

Welcome to China. Since we cannot sh**t everyone who speaks of Ti*et or the Ti*n*nm*n m*ss*cr*, we have taken the liberty to clean the Internet for you! Proudly known as the Great Firewall of China, net nannies in China have helped BLOCKED sites that may contain misinformation. In the past few years, we have banned, and sometimes gave intermittent access, to blogspot.com, wordpress.com, livejournal.com, multiply.com, squarespace.com, and many other blogging platforms. From March 2009, YouTube has joined that list. Just this afternoon, Twitter has been added to the strength of the Great Firewall. We hope you are pleased to find the Internet in China to be free from, well, popular English community sites, which we believe are dangerous and inaccurate message spreaders. 

Afterall, what proves innocence better than the silencing of voices?

China blocks Twitter service ahead of anniversary

Tue Jun 2, 2009 7:35am EDT

 

By Lucy Hornby

BEIJING (Reuters) - Access to the popular social networking service Twitter and email service Hotmail was blocked across mainland China late on Tuesday afternoon, two days before the twentieth anniversary of a bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square.

Indignant users filled chatrooms with protest, after access to Twitter was denied shortly after 5:00 pm (0900 GMT) on Tuesday.

“The whole Twitter community in China has been exploding with it,” said Beijing-based technology commentator Kaiser Kuo.

“It’s just part of life here. If anything surprises me, it’s that it took them so long.”

Thursday is the twentieth anniversary of June 4, 1989, when tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square before dawn to quell weeks of protest by students and workers. China has never released a death toll from the crackdown on what it classes as a “counter-revolutionary” conspiracy.

Other Internet users reported not being able to access Windows Live, a service offered by Microsoft Corp. which also owns Hotmail, and also Flickr, an online photo sharing service owned by Yahoo.

“This is so frustrating. Now I feel China is exactly the same as Iran,” said a financial professional and avid Twitter user in Shanghai, referring to Iran’s May ban of popular social networking site Facebook.

Twitter is an Internet-based text message service that allows users to post updates — called “tweets” — of no more than 140 characters.

Users in Beijing reported accessing the service without difficulty earlier on Tuesday, and even successfully searching potentially sensitive words such as “Tiananmen.”

While professional and urban Chinese often use foreign Internet tools, including Twitter, Hotmail and Facebook, the vast majority of Chinese use similar domestic services that are carefully monitored for any sign of content deemed subversive.

Access to video-sharing site YouTube, owned by Google was blocked in China in March, after overseas Tibetan groups posted graphic footage of China’s crackdown on protests by Tibetans in 2008.

 

(Additional reporting by George Chen in Hong Kong; Editing by David Fox)

Article source: Reuters
More on Guardian.co.uk

I received the following text message from my class representative:

“通知：周四没来拍照的同学请发一张个人生活照到＊＊＊＊＊，最好是风景照，照相馆的人会负责PS上去”

(Notice: Those who didn’t join us for photo-taking on Thursday, please send a casual photo of yourself to *****. An ideal picture would be one with scenery as background, as the photography studio staff will be responsible for using photoshop to place you in the faculty group shot.)

The powers of photoshop.

Or the Chinese power of enforcing everyone’s “presence” in an important group photo?

I’ve been offered a full-time position with the company I’ve been working for in the past 2 months. It’s been on my mind the entire weekend, including my sleeping hours. 

Spent 2 hours on the phone on a long distance call with my mom, who went on in circles about my work, the salary, house rental, negotiation, and so on (with my dad in the background adding his 2 cents worth too). I asked her for advice on whether I should negotiate my salary, and she went on and on about money and the sums for rental, food, and other necessities. It’s no surprise where I got my calculative genes from.

I think she was pleased that I asked her for advice on this, as we haven’t moved our conversation beyond how cold or hot it is in Shanghai, and what food I ate for lunch/dinner (depending on the time of the day she called). Despite my obliging tone, I’m glad I spoke to her (and dad) about this whole issue, as they never fail to force harsh reality down my throat and bring me down from my complacence and arrogance. My brother, too, in a separate conversation, has surprisingly brought my attention to the importance of work ethics and good manners. 

I’ll be negotiating my remuneration package, despite the number of naysayers, because I know I will never let up if I don’t try now. I’m confident of what I can offer to the company, and I’ve prepared a mini speech for a talk with the boss tomorrow, so just hope for the best. I’ll consider again if he doesn’t change his offer. 

I’m looking forward to being a half-pat in Shanghai! A half-pat is a locally-hired foreigner, kinda like in between a local and an expat. You know, I’m usually a misfit in categories but this may be one where I fit perfectly! 

Read more about half-pats in China, and the salary expectation of expats.

More to come with that. But for now, here’s a really cool CV done by a Chinese graduate, aspiring to work in video production:

Realized this May 1st holiday was the first time I spent it in Shanghai. Made it a point to go out to look-see, and told myself, never again. Though I probably still will come next national holiday.

My macbook may be the one single possession in my life that saw through a month of research, scouting, and waiting. I’ve read up, compared prices, and waited for the best offer before bringing it home. Impulse buy, this is not.

I was hesitant at first, buying  a macbook in Shanghai. Forum users were skeptical too, most suggesting buying from Hong Kong or getting a friend to bring it over from the States.

I gave Shanghai a chance. There are parallel imports, stolen goods, and imitation goods for almost everything here. Parallel imports may suit our purposes better at times, like for phones, because wifi-enabled China phones do not exist. If you want a wifi-enabled phone, you have to either buy a parallel import (usually) from Hong Kong, or a stolen unlocked phone (that used to belong to some unlucky person). Or get yourself or someone to buy it from out of China. Nevertheless, there are genuine stuff in the storerooms in Shanghai, and my macbook was one of them.

China’s Apple site states the selling price of my unibody macbook to be 10,898RMB. Most electronic marts in Shanghai like Yolo obeys this price, while small shops in Xujiahui’s 太平洋数码场offer slightly lower prices, with the lowest being 9,500RMB for a Hong Kong set, with apparent proper paperwork. Best Buy was the best bet, displaying the macbook for 10,298RMB. But there’s more.

At Best Buy (Shanghai), you can buy a 10,000RMB gift card and get 3% rebate, in 3 working days. So they’ll give me, in 3 working days, an extra 300RMB, making a total of 10,300RMB, slightly more than enough for my macbook, when I only need to pay 10,000RMB. But wait, there’s more.

Labour Day holiday promotions (30 Apr - 4 May) throughout the store. Plenty of package deals, plenty of slashed prices, plenty of vouchers to be collected and lucky draw prizes to be won. And guess what? My macbook is going at a discounted rate of 9,999RMB. That’s almost 1,000RMB less than Apple website’s price! But I’m not done yet!

For every 1,000RMB spent during the Labour Day holiday, one will get a 100RMB voucher (Household appliances get 150RMB!) to use before 4 May, only applicable for regular priced items. But the store is crowded, staff are busy, and… customers  can feign ignorance. MissY and I tried our luck and received 900RMB vouchers to spend, thanks to their oversight. Best Buy Shanghai, your staff are not well-trained, and instead of getting pissed at their lacking in knowledge of the products, we decided to use it to our advantage, hope you don’t mind, though it’s too late. Call me cheapo if you wish/it helps.

If you followed me throughout all my calculations, I received extra 301RMB in my gift card, plus 900RMB in cash vouchers. We lugged home my macbook (9,999RMB), an epson printer + scanner (595RMB), a 320GB Hitachi external HDD (499RMB), and a case logic laptop sleeve (158RMB), paying only an extra 51RMB. That makes it a grand total of 10,050RMB in cost for all that we brought home!

I also have 49 coupons for the lucky draw, plus I’ll be receiving a 100RMB cash voucher for my points accumulation at Best Buy soon.

Now, this is my idea of shopping.