Category: in china

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in china

so how was the chinese new year?

in a word: crazy. or genious. :D
i don’t know how to describe it, since i had never seen anything like this before. on time blog, someone wrote “…roughly the same as Christmas Eve (with the pyrotechnics of July 4 thrown in.)”

it was like being inside a computer game where you conquer and win everything and then at the end of the level everything erupts in joy and fireworks. something like that. surreal yet inexplicably beautiful, putting any fireworks show i’ve ever seem to shame. the city just exploded, and for hours wherever i looked there were fireworks, or strings of firecrackers on the floor!

here’s how it sounded like from our little window on the 31st floor: chinese new year.

crazy, right? as if you were in the middle of an air raid. i bet that if china had been attacked at midnight, no one would notice.

(and we can still hear them sparsely, now and then. yesterday we had to interrupt a movie we were watching more than a couple of times because we couldn’t hear anything with the noise… )

Categories
in china

新年快乐! happy new year!

before it all gets too crazy (china is about to turn into a “warzone”, with all the firecrackers), i just want to quickly say that a lot has been going on, through ups and downs, busy productivity sprints and mellow lazy days – hence the lack of regular posting as of lately.

today is a special day though: it’s the last day of the year of the pig. china is entering the year of the rat, with noisy fireworks celebrations. it’s their way to send out the old year and invite the new one in.

happy new year!

i like new years, whether chinese or not, so here’s wishing you all a healthy & wealthy year of the rat!

ps – i need to go outside. all this new year fireworks is making me itchy! :)

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in china

the snow

snow berries

“the snow outside looks like someone is sprinkling powdered sugar on this pancake world“.
the phrase is not mine, but it fits perfectly to the kind of weather we have been enjoying here in shanghai. white skies, soft snow, freezing cold and icy roads and bridges. it’s fun for us, while the power supply is still stable and we can use the ac to (mildly) heat the house.

today though, when we entered the elevator, it didn’t move! instead, we heard a guy talking above us… no idea why the elevator wasn’t out of order if someone was fixing it, but it managed to scare the hell out of me – i’m not too fond of malfunctioning elevators.
we managed to get out, i calmed down and we walked the 31 floor downstairs since the other elevator was quite busy and frankly, i didn’t really feel like using it.

from what we hear though, all around china the weather has been giving people a much harder time – especially now, on the week before the chinese new year, the most important holiday week on the mainland. it’s the time of the year where migrant workers return to their home villages to spend the holidays with their families (their “christmas”), so it’s kind of sad that this is stopping people to get where they’re headed. adding to the usual seasonal shortage of train and bus tickets, there are also people stranded in train stations and airports all around china, because of delayed or cancelled flights/trains.

and it has just started snowing again…

Categories
in china

say what?

a piece of chinglish hidden on today’s chinese lesson. can you see it? :P

say again?

Categories
foooood in china

wagas

the wagas we usually go to, on nanjing road, is a small cozy place hidden down on the basement of citic square (a rather expensive looking mall). don’t let the location or the (fake?) eames chairs + fancy wallpaper scare you though, the place is good – the kind of restaurant you wish for on a weeknight, to just wind down in a comfortable surrounding, with good food.

w23

yesterday, i had the roasted pumpkin spaguetti, with spinach, pinenuts and feta cheese, and p. chose the pasta du jour, a bacon, asparagus and cream mix. for drinks, we always choose the same here: the honey-ginger-lemon tea for me and the indian spiced tea (kind of chai) for him. now look at that:

indian spiced tea   ginger, lemon and honey tea

roasted pumpkin pasta   bacon and asparagus pasta

doesn’t everything look so yummy and colorful? easy, relaxed food for uncomplicated dinners, i say!
they also have quite a selection of wraps, salads, smoothies, muffins and all kinds of healthy food. oh and illy coffee… and discounts on evenings and breakfasts… and free wi-fi… and quick friendly service…

wagas6
info:
wagas
LG12A, citic square,
1168 nanjing xi road
near jiangning road

ps – we were introduced to wagas by some portuguese friends in our early weeks in shanghai, and i think the experience was nothing less of a turning point in our dining routines. this was probably the first restaurant where we realised that dining out well, affordingly and in a nice environment was not difficult in shanghai – we had probably just been searching in the the wrong places.

since then, we haven’t looked back on our plan to test-taste as many restaurants as possible (well, within our budget anyway). this series of posts has only made me more curious to try new places and spread these flavours and sights to the world out there. i’m in full blogger-reporter mode here, happy, excited and inspired. :)

today as we were leaving to work, i saw p. looking for some cables on our cables nest/bucket. “what are you looking for?”, i asked. “the camera battery charger”, he said. “you don’t want to run out of battery when we go out for dinner, do you?”

:) :) :)