I simply don't understand how China can have so much yogurt and SO LITTLE CHEESE.
I'm experimenting my way up the cheap Chinese wine price scale. 12rmb($1.80)/liter = officially too cheap. Tastes like really terrible sweet punch punching you in the stomach. Thankfully my colleague just recommended a good shop for wine deals. This is how he described the place: "It's a DVD store that also sells lady's undergarments, but if you look on the floor next to the counter there should be boxes full of imported Spanish wine for only 35rmb($5) per bottle!" (imports typically cost $10+)
I had my official Chinese health inspection this morning. Other expats had prepared me appropriately, but it still proved an experience to remember. It's an amazingly efficient system where they simply garb you in a robe and shuttle you from room to room where they test/poke/prod you. Highlights included an ultrasound and a full chest X-ray - WHY?? I have no idea. But the ultrasound tickled painfully and she spent like two minutes jamming the thing against my ride side. I guess she eventually found what she was looking for?
Got my first paycheck today - in the form of a huge wad of cash jammed in an envelope (their largest bill is 100, and I get paid like 10,500/mo.) Luckily I'll have a Chinese bank account by next month, but I just realized I have no simple way to get this money into my American bank account in order to pay off my American credit card. Life is hard.
They had all these typhoon warnings last Friday for the weekend, but Typhoon Morakot ended up kind of dying out before it reached Shanghai. It did some damage down south in Fujian province, but the most I saw was a bike blown over and some heavy rain. I hate to be the one to wish for disaster, but I at least wanted some minor flooding and inside-out umbrellas!
For some reason it was never quite clear to me until now that hurricanes and typhoons are the exact same thing, just in different oceans.
Turns out the personal space and consideration policies of the subways and streets in China also translate to clothing stores, where I was endlessly jostled in the isles of H&M yesterday. If somebody wants to look at the shirt DIRECTLY next to the shirt you're looking at on a rack jammed full of clothes, apparent code of conduct is simply shove you and your chosen article out of the way (whilst your hand is still grasping for it.) I found it more funny than annoying, probably just due to my mood at the time.
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