I wake at 6:50am, but even now, the sun is high in the sky. If you woke up at 5am, you'd be able to see the sun rise lazily over the city, casting a pale, white blanket of light into the cool streets. The effect is a little unreal, and made me feel as though I was in the twilight zone the first time I saw it. As a result of the early sunrise, I have woken up on more than one occasion thinking that I was late, only to realize that it was still 6am.
I lug myself out of bed as best as I can and usually struggle out the door by 8am. I make my way through the stream of bodies on the road to the nearby shopping centre called Cloud 9 (aka 龙之梦）where I board bus service 922. Buses in Shanghai use an electronic fare card similar to Singapore's EZ Link card. You need only tap the card on a reader in the bus and you're good to go. Every trip costs 2RMB. This is the same regardless of the distance you travel or whether you pay by card or cash. Buses are clean but usually crowded. Something else about buses in Shanghai that warrant a mention are the television sets. Every bus has 2 that advertise Suntory and REEB Beer all day long. Occasionally the excellent programming is interrupted by a minor inconvenience like the 6pm news or a public service announcement by the police, but after that its back to the golden goodness of Chinese beer.
Work for me has been a monotonous cycle of cold-calling and following up with those who I called previously. Hence I won't be going into detail here. For those who don't know what cold-calling is, i can only say, lucky bastards.
Work ends mercifully around 645 on a normal day. After that its a simple case of conducting my morning routine in reverse. I enjoy watching the scenery on the way back. Evening is when you can see Shanghai in all its neon glory. Phone booths and bus station signs with tv screens on one side show advertisements that seem to beckon to the viewer and skyscrapers with huge news ticker screens exhort the public to march towards 'civillization' (ie. 文明社会). It is all just a little strange to see Orwellian proclamations sitting side by side with what looks like capitalist advertising on steroids.
I alight at the Cloud 9 stop around 640 and proceed to the central stage area where I meet my friends for dinner. We walk from Cloud 9 to a quiet little street adjacent to the mall and eat at
a quaint little place called 福申饭店 (literally translated, it means properous shanghai restaurant).
Food in Shanghai is mostly cheap. An average meal of beef noodles costs 4RMB, and dinner usually costs somewhere between 8-10RMB.
A word of caution is due though, because international franchises and chain stores cost much the same as elsewhere in the world, so you can expect Starbucks coffee to be out of the reach of poorer Shanghainese and roundly rejected by penny-pinchers like me. Don't expect me to complain though because I am thoroughly enjoying the local food.
The 2 fabulous looking pictures here are from the 兰州牛肉拉面 outlet near my apartment. I can't remember what the one above is called but the lower picture is of their signature dish -
beef noodles obviously. Both pictures come courtesy of my good friend and our resident lovestruck bloke Alex.After dinner we make our way back to the apartment slowly in the warm summer night. As we walk back, we pass by at least 3 different bullock carts selling items such as peaches, lotus pods and dvds.
When we get back to our apartment, we always like to end our evening by playing Dai Dee or chatting the night away.
By the time midnight arrives, we're all preparing to turn in and repeat the process again after a good night's rest.
