Living in Shanghai

I read the New York Times and occasionally blogs about Shanghai at night to keep myself occupied and at the same distracted from the fact that I am in Shanghai doing the same thing I would do at home. News is interesting. Sarah Palin, for example, resigned as governor of Alaska today. Pakistan had a revolution and is also a country. Sometimes, I go to the shopping centers and hope to meet someone at a shop that sells coffee or goggles or Happy Lemons or books or water. That goddamn lemon! He's so happy! Why is that? Why does he have to give me that mischevious wink and grin from ear to ear and give me milk tea with tapioca balls at the bottom for five yuan, flaunting his delicious drinks in my face? "You know, I hear this stuff may be unhealthy for you," I tell the girl next to me. "But they're so delicious," she responds.

The happylemon. The last thing you see before you die?

Data entry has been terrible. You just enter the same stuff over and over again and hope it will mean something. I went to a bar in the white person district today for the first time today, after I ate dinner with his family. He barely knows anyone from his family in China due to the ocean that separates them. I'm skeptical about the bars because they are for westerners and I can't get that old lady begging for money out of my head even though everyone says she's part of some evil mastermind beggars union plot to rig elections in the Middle East or something, and besides, going to bars is the same thing I would do back home anyways.

A crowded place

We talked for a while and watched rugby and then walked around. Chinese women beckon to us to enter bars and Chinese men offer "good massage parlors." Vee-ho Vee-ho wu zi zangheyning I speak in my Shanghainese and they laugh because they know I've already heard about their scamming, I guess from the fact that Shanghainese know about scamming, but actually, I only read about it on the aformentioned blogs and forums about Shanghai late at night. I assume they are Xinjiang ren, or Uighur muslims, because all my relatives tell me they are, and I wonder if I'm racist. Is racism even in existence in China? I don't know. We sit around for a while and talk about our hometown and high school and elementary school and old friends. I challenge him to find a beer that's below 15 yuan and so we walk around on our quest, not planning to buy, only to see if there's anything below 15 yuan. He thinks I'm joking but really I'm just extremely cheap and will note the bar for some other time in case I want cheap beer. I can't believe we spent 100 RMB tonight. We find a 15 RMB beer and chat with the hostesses. I tell them that I can buy a 5 RMB beer at a supermarket and they snicker and then turn their eyes away. Their boss tells them to go on because we obviously won't buy anything . We walk on. Things are good but its time to go. The taxi comes and we speed off and I start talking to the taxi driver about everything. He's a good man. Glasses, thin face, been in this taxi-ing business for 10 years now. He's angry that they force him to work every other day but force him to work from 6:00 AM to 1:00 AM on the days he has to work. We travel a million miles and millions of people pass by. He compliments me and says that its impossible to connect with most of the people he picks up from the bar district due to language barriers, but I'm the first in which he could talk to. He has another hour to go before he gets to go home. I get back home finally, and read the New York Times.

Student dorms in Zhenjiang