Categories
foooood in china

moon river diner

some people have asked what do i eat everyday here in china, so i think a series of posts on “what can you eat in shanghai?” are in order. a brief disclaimer:

1. if you’d like to find out how dogs, cats or rats taste, you’ll find the series disappointing… the strangest thing i ate here were frog legs – completely by mistake (no menu translation available and the dish looked like chicken on the picture…)

2. i do eat chinese food most days, at lunch, when i have someone to help me order it. i have a few favourites which i’ll try to cover. mostly though, shanghai is such a big and international city that we don’t feel the need to stick to noodles and rice. i hope i can show you why.

3. i’m not being paid to do this.

that said, meet moon river diner!

at moon river diner

moon river diner is a an american style restaurant with a very typical/cliché look-and-feel, hearty burgers, maccaroni and cheese, tacos and salads, apple pie, sundaes, all day breakfast (pancakes, waffles …), bottomless mugs of coffee, smoothies and lemonade! isn’t it just like in the movies?

ah, and there’s even a jukebox and a popcorn stand – popcorn is served as the appetiser for the meal.

we came around for today’s dinner, i ate the waffle breakfast (with fruit, egg and ham or maple syrup) and paulo had the mushroom burger (with hash browns and salad). here are the obligatory pics, which you can click for larger:

mushroom hamburger   waffle!

our diner :)   the jukebox!

they were absolutely delicious and decadent. :)

nice bonuses:
* the service is cool and the waiters don’t “hover” you.
* the music is ok (nice volume and selection) as long as you don’t sit too near the stairs, where one can hear the music from upstairs as well as the one from the floor where you are :S
* they have wireless – it isn’t terribly fast, but it works.
* the place is huge but quite cozy, with a deli on the ground floor (sandwiches, bread, etc), and a sort of bar/lounge on the last floor. i heard it has a patio, but i’ve never been there.

so there you go, this is the place we go when we feel like pretending we’re in the states. :)

moon river diners' menu

info:
moon river diner (jingan)
66,77 yuyao lu, near xikang lu
the new factories, building #1

Categories
geek

the only upgrade this mac is getting…

… is more stickers! :D

v2.0

click on the image for an overload of notes on flickr. oh, and do you have stickers to trade? let me know! :)

(previous version, a couple of months ago.)

Categories
links and ideas postcards postcrossing pretty things

off with her head!


can the queen be put to a better use?, asks graphic designer and illustrator jamie wieck. well, apparently the answer is yes – he build a set of really cute cards where the queen stamp plays an important (and original) role.
here’s what he has to say:

“Something unique about British culture is the annual sit down after a bloating Christmas lunch to watch the Queen deliver her seasonal message on TV. Well I that, and to watch somebody die/get married/get-married-then-die on Eastenders.
Inspired by this image of annual togetherness I created a Christmas card that needed the Queen herself to complete the image – after all Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without the Queen.

But for the anti-royalists amongst you I figured it was only fair that the Queen should get a comeuppance of sorts…”

check out his website for lots of other good questions.

(via oh joy!)

Categories
just life links and ideas photography

short reminder

“whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. boldness has genious, power and magic to it. begin it now.”

goethe

Categories
in china

baby steps, people, baby steps.

times are changing. just last week, from on day to the other, china announced the law that portugal dismissed a month ago: the ban on plastic bags.
from june onwards, there will be a tax on plastic bags at supermarkets and all thiner bags will be banned. tibet regional government wants to go a little bit further and ban all kinds of plastic bags in the region.

the planned outcome?

“With the right enforcement — that’s always the tricky part — and education campaigns, the upshot in China could be huge: China Trade News estimates that the country of 1.3 billion people must refine 5 million tons, or 37 million barrels, of crude oil every year to meet demand for plastic bags, which are used at a rate of 3 billion bags every day. Three billion. If that estimate is right, that means China uses as many bags in one month as the U.S. uses in a year–or that would mean that every day each Chinese citizen uses twice the amount of bags that each American uses.”

or “To put that into perspective, it would take Iceland about five years to use that much oil, but the USA would use that much oil in less than two days.

which is huge. australia came to the same conclusion and is studying a similar measure to the one planned for china:

“Australia is also considering a plastic bag ban, for implementation in 2009. But as Planet Ark founder Jon Dee points out, “the fact that China desires to do it in less than six months, I think is a sign that … we could do it faster than that.”

He continues: “The fact that the biggest country in the world, the biggest users of plastic bags, are moving to ban them … is extremely important, because if it can be done in China it can be done in any country in the world.”

quotes from treehuggershanghaiist and china time blog.