here’s the best possible picture at the moment of the new kids in the 88, dongxin road: grub and lilo, on a rare moment of quietness.
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Tag: china
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running on empty on the lunch break
i’m waiting for my dumplings to arrive. shrimp and egg yolk steamed dumplings that i can’t wait to get my teeth on, and that are running late. *sigh* meanwhile, a short updates on the last week or so.
* the bad parts: we went to the hospital a couple of days ago to get some antibiotics for a dear infection of mine that comes back once in a while (nothing serious). and p. has come down with a cold. the weather has been terrible. hot and wet. feels like every time we go out, we’re entering the locker rooms of a steamy swimming pool. we start sweating and it’s hard to breathe, and everybody tells us this is just the start. we survive by minimizing our outdoors errands and hopping into an air conditioned room whenever we can. which is not healthy and can cause these occasional summer colds. it sucks.
by the way, thumbs up for huashan hospital,’s foreigners clinic. english speaking personnel, polite and helpful, terrific installations. not that expensive, even.
* the good bits: one of the places where we found salvation from the heat was Garden books, a bookshop on changle lu that sells imported english/german/french books, as well as postcards and moleskines. a little hidden heaven that comes with a cafeteria.
also, we made time to visit city shop, a local (?) supermarket chain that boasts a wide selection of western products and food. no kidding! they had nice bread, roasted chicken, cookies and cereals that we recognized, actual muesli (not the kind of mixed porridge that you boil for hours before you can eat it), cheese, vegetables and whatnot.
and the best of all, they had a fair range of celestial seasonings teas! ever since we visited the celestial seasonings factory in boulder i have been a fan of their teas, not only for the flavours, but for the care and attention they put into each of the packs they produce. the people there are nice beyond courtesy and were actually very helpful when p.’s asian porsche broke down in their parking lot, on a hot september day. :)
celestial seasonings puts a smile on my face and makes me dream of going back to colorado. we got the imperial white peach tea, apple cinnamon spice and the honey and vanilla chamomile tea, which should be enough to keep me dreaming for a while.
we didn’t find paulo’s dear dutch vla in city shop though, but i think shanghai must have a campina importer, somewhere. it’s a matter of time till we find one, or we start making our own.
* the so-so: on other news, we’re headed to hong kong tomorrow, to take care of some visa-related bureaucracy. hopefully, when we come back, we’ll be “legal aliens” (literally, my application paper for a visa reads “alien application”), and most importantly, we won’t have to worry with entering/leaving china for a year, because we’ll be free to do it whenever we want to.
i’m curious to see how much of china is there in hong kong, and how much of britain/europe is there too. hong kong is celebrating its 10th anniversary of the return to china this week, so the city should be vibrant with life. sadly, it’s a one-day trip, so we won’t have much time for sightseeing, but we’ll gather some impressions and perhaps the appetite for further exploration.
(photo of the celestial seasonings tea tasting room by electra-cute)
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about the stories.
saturday night we went to a pecha kucha night here in shanghai. it was the first such event i attended, but the 6th that sinocities organized here.
pecha kucha is a night for designers or creative people to meet and share their ideas, portfolio and projects. each is given a precise amount of time to speak of whatever they want.
the place where it was held is called “Yangshupu Factories” and is a bit far from the city center, but worth a visit. a subtle maze of trees and lakes, with slippery dark stone paths and plants hanging on bamboo branches. when we got there (almost an hour in advance), we had time to delight ourselves in a slow coffee, relaxing on an outside patio beside a pound. the bushes around had some sort of xmas lamps on them, as if sprinkled by fireflies. :)
in the back there is a coffeehouse, hidden in a two-story building, where the organization had spread some chairs that were clearly insufficient for the number of people that decided to show up.
despite never having attended one such event before, i had high hopes for the it, but the end result was just so-so. photographers and architects showcased their recent works in succession, but most lacked the skills on how to present it right.
that was exactly the problem for me, especially because we saw too many photographers eager to show their portfolio, which turned out to be either plain uninteresting (but that’s just a matter of taste perhaps) or a mess of unrelated (best) photographs.
i tend to think that you always need a story. you need to convey something to people through your photographs. there needs to be a sequence, fictional, emotional or factual circumstances, an explanation or a connection, no matter how irrational.
but there wasn’t and in the end i thought, although some of them had good pictures, they had just wasted the opportunity to explain themselves. the why, the how, what sparkled their interest, what had they felt when portraying those people or places.
nonetheless, i liked some of the architectural projects that their authors explained. innovative with simple details, and very real.
my favorites? a presentation by Olympia Kazi on critical mass and a surreal presentation by a mechanical engineering student on herself, life and poetry. very non-sense, fresh and yet daring, engaging and amusing.
check out the pecha kucha website to see if there’s one happening near you!
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mind this gap
a semana passada deixei a minha contribuição no mind this gap, uma iniciativa da dona Maria, que tem por intuito perceber o que leva os licenciados a sair de (ou voltar para) portugal.
deixo-a também aqui. pode ser que algum leitor mais hesitante nos siga o exemplo e se aventure… :)
Ana Campos, Engenheira de Sistemas e Informática. Shanghai, China
Como muitos destes testemunhos, a minha aventura começou numa experiência Erasmus, no norte da Holanda. Seis meses na Universidade de Groningen que se estenderam em mais seis, num estágio numa empresa na mesma cidade. Durante esse ano morei com pessoas de todo o mundo e aprendi mais do que em qualquer outro. E percebi que, como alguém dizia, “Home is where the heart is”.
Depois de um ano na Holanda (eu) e 9 meses nos Estados Unidos (o namorado), achamos que o rumo era a Ásia, desta vez juntos. Enviamos currículos, fizemos entrevistas à distância, investigamos, tiramos notas, abrimos mil e uma vez o Google Earth, na tentativa de perceber a geografia de uma cidade distante. Escolhemos Shanghai porque nos atraiu o potencial da maior cidade da china, que combina o dinamismo de uma mega-metrópole e a diversidade da cultura chinesa.
Não viemos por falta de emprego em Portugal, ou motivados por questões financeiras. Viemos para fugir da rotina que se acomoda naqueles que ficam por território seguro e conhecido. Viemos pela diferença, pelo choque cultural, pelos cheiros e sabores, pelas coisas que não se aprendem nos livros ou na semaninha de férias no estrangeiro. Viemos para fugir ao crédito à habitação, ao carro pago às prestações, às pequenas coisas que nos amarram aos sítios de onde nunca mais temos coragem de sair.
Por isso em Abril embarcamos num avião e cá estamos, felizes e empregados, a descobrir aos poucos uma cidade nova. Daqui a uns anos, quando nos fartarmos ou quando nos picar outra vez o bichinho (ou as saudades) e nos mudarmos para outro continente, volto a escrever outra entrada. Até lá!
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25!
i’m 25 today.:)
ps – obrigado a todos pelos votos de parabéns! valem sorrisos quando se está tão longe dos amigos e da família. :)