Find of The Week

Got this from a friend who works for 3M. Here's a little piggy to clean up your pig sty.

Happy St Pattie's Day

A large portion of my ancestry is Irish and my birthday is in March, so I LOVE St Patrick's Day, and apparently a large portion of Shanghai does as well. According to the Irish consulate Shanghai has the largest population of Irish people out side of Ireland. Saturday was the third annual St Patrick's Day parade here in Shanghai. In the parade there was a large green dragon and Celtic tigers. I wanted to take Bean to see the parade, but Dam had to work, and I did not feel confident enough to battle a crowd here in Shanghai quite yet, but there is always next year!

Pass it along

Finding things in Shanghai can be a little bit frustrating. The city is humongous and stores close or move locations all the time. I have been searching for a sewing machine ever since I arrived in Shanghai, and no one seemed to know where to find one. Finally I found an address on the web: 7th floor of the New World City shopping center at Nanjing Lu (road). This shopping center is located at the People's Square subway stop (line 2). Best way to get to it from the subway terminal is exit 6. The New World City shopping center is more like a large department store than a shopping mall. Instead of individual stores that you go into each store is an open display. It took me a while to finally locate the sewing machines (they're located next to a set of escalators), but I was happy when I did. I had a choice between Singer, Janome (or Juki--I can't remember), and Brother. The Singer machines started at 998 rmb and the Brother machines started at 1100 rmb. The sales ladies for all three machines were quite helpful and very informative.

No Chiquita Bananas

Bought bananas the other day. Guess what company harvested them? Doritos! I guess they make more than just chips.

Laundry day

Alright, I desperately miss my washer and drier!! Each apartment in our complex is furnished with a washer, but driers are seen as a luxury. Most people just hang their clothes out on their balcony or off poles that hang outside their windows, to dry. I've always had a drier, so this concept is quite foreign to me. Since being here in Shanghai I have gotten used to laundry taking a day or two to dry. Dam says that the time required to dry the clothes will become shorter once it starts to warm up.

The Little Things

There are a few little things that annoy me about living in China:

1. Almost everywhere I go almost everyone wants to touch Bean. I spend a good portion of the time at the grocery store just slapping people's hands away. I'm still learning how to say my child has TB in Mandarin (one sure way to make the person turn tail and run).

2. People drive their mopeds, motorcycles and electric bikes on the sidewalk. These drivers will not stop for anything (except a larger vehicle). Adam has been clipped a few times by them.

3. Forget personal space--it does not exist here. If you or your shopping cart is slightly blocking the aisle that you are standing in people here will not politely ask you to move. They will ram you with their cart or push past you. When waiting to get off of the subway if you are not pressed up against the person in front of you someone will try to squeeze them self into the space you have left.

4. Most everything that you buy here is pirated. If you want to buy the real thing you have to pay three times as much as what it costs in the States.

...and there are things that amaze me about China:

1. China is a family oriented culture. There have been a few times that I have been adventurous enough to ride the subway with Bean alone. Each time that I do I will have complete strangers offer to help me (the subway is not a stroller friendly place).

2. The transit system is very easy to maneuver. Station names are printed in both Mandarin and English and are announced in both languages.

3. Corner veggie/fruit stands. You can access fresh produce almost any where and for the fraction of the price of what they cost in the stores.

4. Everything is pirated. I can get DVDs for less than a dollar right after they are released to the theaters, books for a fraction of the price, and purses that are pretty close to the real thing.

Still Trying to Figure This Out

Dam and I have an oven in our apartment. Apparently ovens in China are a luxury. Not many people have them. Then again mostly westerners use them. Well I decided to try my hand at making oatmeal cookies. It is so weird to mix batter with a fork when you are used to using a KitchenAid mixer. Luckily, a few days earlier, was able to find baking powder, baking soda, and Crisco. All of the local stores do not sell these products. To obtain them you have to go to the "City Shop", which is full of food imported from the United States, Great Britain and Australia. After tinkering with the oven for over half an hour I was finally able to get it to the right temperature. I'm not sure what I did wrong, but the cookies did not look like oatmeal cookies from home. They didn't taste bad, just something was off that neither Dam nor I could figure out. In the end we put peanut butter on them to make the cookies more appealing.