Author: samuel-thorpe@live.com.au

Hello! A new blog entry for you all to enjoy. This one features a local park that is near our apartment. One of the rules that helps make sure I do not plummet into a state of disrepair is that I need to go explore places and get out of the apartment. Being an unemployed leech I get way too much free time and this helps to fill some of those hours in my day.

This equisite park located literally a 100m walk from our apartment contains a little world of trees, plants and some wildlife (a squirrel and a kitten, both of which I was unable to capture in both a photo and my hands). The meandering paths crisscrossed the park and seemed to have no real purpose except to let you enjoy more of its depths. I walked past a little fitness playground as well as a lovely pond full of some truely enormous goldfish.

There was even a small bamboo forest to enjoy as I strolled through and for a moment forgot that I was in fact in one of the largest cities in the world. One thing about Shanghai is that are actually quite a lot of electric cars on the road, making it a huge amount quieter than even adelaide.

(In the photo below you can see the bamboo forest to the right side of the photograph)

One of the things I keep getting surprised by is just how much green there is around us. Everywhere seems to be stuffed with trees, plants and everything else. I think this due to an effort that the government has been making to combat the serious pollution that was dominating the cities in previous years. While there are definitely times that you can smell the harsher side of city living, it really is incredible the effort that has been put into creating and clearly maintaining these places.

After not a very long time…I sweating because it is still unbelievably hot and humid. So I quickly retreated back into my airconditioned apartment and deemed it a small success to keep myself sane.

Plus I met a really cute cat and a golden retriever on my walk.

That’s all for now!

Talk soon xx.

S.

Well. This happened. Last night we went on a lovely food tour around Shanghai with Claire’s work colleagues (<—this does not look spelt right to me). It was a fun little adventure where we took a couple of train stops to a near by district and went to five different food styles.

Our frist stop was soup dumplings with various fillings (mostly pork, which yes I actually ate. Shocking I know!). Me not knowing that a soup dumpling literally had a little soup inside it, attempted to eat the whole thing and proceeded to get unexpected liquid down my throat. This in turn caused me to hack and cough uncontrollably and look like I was an absolute noob at the simple act of eating. I even ate the dumpling that contained crab. Again suprising myself! If you haven’t guessed yet (most of you already know but one can dream that other people outside my friendship group will read this) is that I am quite a fussy eater. I don’t generally like pork unless its bacon or ham, and definitely do not like most seafood either. I did at the start of this year proudly not throw up when I managed to eat an oyster with our lovely friends in Tasmania.

The next place we went to was where the real fun began. The deepfried and spicy Grasshoppers. Yes i did in fact eat one and yes they were surprisingly….okay. Claire ate at least 10 and was completely unfased even when I handed her one with wings attached. A braver woman than I. The others were also much braver than myself and munched down on everything that was served at the table (the hoppers were the most interesting). There was a soup, as well as a sort of scrambled egg dish that i believe had flower pods in it.

Place number three was where, in my opinion, the food got really good. A beef and flat noodle dish and what they called a pineapple bread (or something along those lines) which they stated contained no pineapple at all. It was simply called that because of the way the top looked when it was baked. Apparently that’s a pretty common thing. They also brought out roasted duck and BBQ pork (which i tried and founda actually really good!). The laughs and conversation continued as we finished and made our way to a little hole in the wall food place that gave us some sort of flat bread with squished meat inside. By this point I was quite full and really didn’t have much room to try a lot of it. Again I ate a pork filled bread, and was surprised that it wasn’t awful.

Finally the food tour came to an end at another place that seemed to specialise in skewers. We had a small spicy lamb skewer and finished up with the group around 9pm. After this everyone went their seperate ways and we found ourselves walking to a bar nearby with some of Claire’s new found friends to continue the laughs and entertainment for another few hours. It was a truly lovely evening and it’s a great feeling to know that we haven’t made a huge mistake uprooting our lives to try a new experience.

Well that’s it for now I reckon. I really should be taking more photos but i’ve been getting caught up in the moments and enjoying life. I’ll try better next time.

Talk soon xx.

S.

P.s. My editor is currently at work so this is probably full of errors. Enjoy yelling at your screen whenever you see a mistake.

So if you follow my Instagram, you will have noticed that I infact have bought a new PC! When you buy a new PC (for those of you who are uncool enough to not be a part of the PC MASTER RACE!)there is a lot of redownloading and authenticating (are you a robot?), chasing passwords down and just a whole lot of remembering. Now my brain…does not like to remember. This makes the process of logging back into all my shit that much more difficult. Plus! On top of that is the fact that we live in China. A place notorious for making things just that little bit harder when it comes to the internet. Not to say that it’s impossible, just a bit more fun!

*cough*

Anyway now that my PC is sort of set up I have made contact with some friends at home in an easier way. Thank the gods for discord! It makes things feel a little more homely.

Now, on to the juicy stuff. I’ve been sick! My lungs have decided that breathing is for wimps and have instead insisted that I be blowing out huge chunks of snot and lung bits. It’s been a great experience.

We also met one of our neighbour who happens to own a massage palour! She gave us a lovely discount on our first massage and it was just amazing.

We met some of Claire’s fellow colleges and went out to dinner to a few lovely little places, including in the Former French Concession. The below photos are of a little market that we explored.

This place is just giving up more and more of its true splendor. We recently walked past the Louis Vuitton ship made out of what looks like part hull and part luggage. The crowds around this store to just have a photo taken in front of it was simply absurd.

And finally we come to today. We are currently sitting at home relaxing while we wait for Typhoon Dolphin to hit south of Shanghai. There hasn’t really been any rain or much wind yet so hopefully it ain’t too bad!

Talk soon all! xx

S.

As the title suggests we have finally settled in to the apartment :D. It’s an absolutely lovely two bedroom place on the 11th floor in a district called Jing’An. We are about 15 minutes from the CBD and it is delightful!

The last couple of days have been a wild ride. Let’s start with the day we got into the apartment. We were picked up by some friendly ladies from Claire’s work and a driver who helped us load our ungodly amount of luggage into a van. We then took the roughly twenty minute drive in sweltering heat and finally arrived at an incredibly shabby looking set of apartment blocks. The first thought was…uh oh. What on earth have we gotten ourselves into. I was very much judging the book by its cover. There were cars stacked three deep (yes literally cars parked with absolutely no way they could get out) and there was a little security post. Need less to say when we did locate our building and walk in, the feeling got a lot worse.

We took the elevator up to the 11th floor, found our door and the ladies from Claire’s work opened it up for us. Boy was I shocked when the inside of the apartment actually looked like the photos. Safe to say that we had infact made a great choice with our apartment, I was just a little too quick to judge. We have a FINGER PRINT DOOR HANDLE! The future is here!

Anyway we are now happily in our sexy apartment with a great view! Especially at night.

A fun thing to do was go to IKEA (which is honestly exactly the same as home) and buy everything we needed to stock up our apartment. I always forget exactly how much you need to buy when starting out fresh. All of the things.

In the days before we moved into our apartment we did have a little bit of extra exploration of Shanghai, including the Yuyuan Gardens which was actually pretty awesome. Although again we did this in peak heat which sort of ruined the atmosphere.

We also did some great walking around and shopping, which I have to say…there is a daaaamn lot of shopping you can do in this place. Markets for trinkets sit right next to top boutique items, with food and drink vendors scattered between. It really is such an interesting experience. One of the markets we went to was inside an old temple or something along those lines. Honestly I am not sure! Still very cool though.

Finally, we have just been doing a bit of exploring around our apartment. Nothing too wild as we have a few big days ahead of us. I have to get a medical :D. I guess to make sure I ain’t gonna be no burden on society because I am an unemployed schmuck.

Oh! And Claire found a great Australian pub called The Shed where she can watch all her Rubgy games. Those of you who know me well will be glad that, yes, they do indeed sell chicken schnitties. And boy was it damn good. Plus they sell one of my favourite beers!

Well thats me for now. Enjoy this next photo of one of the dishes we had as a side for our Korean BBQ last night. I didn’t even notice until afterwards.

Talk soon! xx

S.

P.s.

Here’s an action shot I forgot to upload when we were waiting in Hong Kong for our flight over.

Yes I’m pretty sure I am asleep there.