Undiagnosed

Author: samuel-thorpe@live.com.au

  • The Adventures Of Moonsie And Me Part 1.

    We have finally arrived at our next post! This section shall contain all the fun that Moonsie and myself had while Claire was gallivanting in the desert. After Moonsie arrived and we had a lovely time, before finally Claire abandoned us, we proceeded to have a jam packed few days. This included going to Suzhou, Hangzhou and Disneyland! First on our list of Moons related adventures included Suzhou. Around 30 minutes by super train (like 300kms an hour), we arrived at the lovely city.

    Here is an action shot of me attempting to get Moonsie mid jump. It was a mild success. Suzhou consists of this lovely network of canals and streets, that are a completely different feeling than that of Shanghai. Still ridiculously big compared to that of any Australian city, Suzhou had a more rural feel (funny that…considering it was still packed to the brim with people).

    Having a plan (that I definitely in no way had creative input), we set out to explore the city!

    In the background you can see the old city walls, which I will admit I was totally confused for a second trying to work out if the great wall extended this far (it does not…). Further into the city we marched toward the tourist spots. It was becoming apparent that we were venturing to places where there seem to be less tourists. More not so suble stares and glances (obviously because im super handsome and not because Moons is a blondie).

    Our wanderings brought us to a very popular area that was just incredibly beautiful and interesting. The above canal was one of many that seemed to permeate this area of the city. Making a wrong turn we accidently ended up in a more…lets say dodgy seeming area.

    Thinking that this was the right direction we continued along and just expected it to end up being the right way…well eventually we did come across a place we were able to get a little boat. Which was very cool and got to show us another awesome part of the city.

    Having realised after our boat trip ended however, we had infact gone in the completely wrong direction from the way we wanted to go. A quick Didi trip back to the right area later we found the ACTUAL main street that we intended to find originally.

    Filled with markets selling all sorts of things, we wandered down and simply enjoyed seeing a part of the world I never thought I would experience. Dodging scooters and people we got to see marvels, food stalls and clothing shops.

    We even got to see a lovely garden called The Humble Administrators Garden. It is listed (quite deservingly I might add) as one of the five great gardens of China. It was a splended walk through with sweeping gardens, gorgeous pools filled to the brim with water plants and areas for peace and contemplation. As you can see below.

    It even had a section of Bonsai trees that were spectacular. Filled with all kinds of clearly ancient trees that had been lovingly cared for.

    There was one Bonsai that was out of place but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

    It seemed like it was a little too big, but I am not a gardener so i’ll leave it to the experts.

    And finally we headed back to the train to make our way home for the evening. A big rest was had, so that we could wake up and do it all over again.

    Thanks for reading part 1! I will be playing catch up with the posts because a lot has happened recently. Thanks for sticking with me my beautiful readers.

    A special thanks to Moonsie for making me go to this truly splended place.

    Talk soon xx.

    S.

  • FINALLY!

    I am finally doing an update post about the crazy month I have had. Firstly lets start with going home to Adelaide to pick up my second favourite girl. Maple. Who as I write this, is yelling at me because I am not paying attention to her. As my friends know, I flew back home to Adelaide to collect my little ball of anger, stopping overly only for 6 days. I also got to greatly surprise my two best friends who I had not told I was coming back, with one responding “what the fuck” and the other responding “what are you doing here”. I shout out to Adriana for helping plan and surprise the besties.

    My flights home were easy and quick, although I am still upset that I was AGAIN deprived of the magnificence of Terminal 4 of Singapore airport (I will see it one day!) as I only had a 3 hour stop over and apparently that wasn’t enough time….which I still doubt. I finally made it home to this little potato. To which I might add, completely ignored me when I arrived at our friends house who had been so fantastic in taking care of my baby.

    I got to have a little enjoyment while also fretting about the last of the paperwork I needed to do so i could ship my very reluctant cat half way across the world. (She is now just super angry in our new place instead of being super angry in Australia).

    This trip also involved me going to Brisbane for 3 days due to having the need for Maple to be checked off and seen to not be forthing at the mouth with rabies. Instead she just has a bit of a drooling problem (not sure why, she just likes to make things a little more wet and awkward i guess). I spent 2 days hanging out in the hotel room and sneaking in a very excellent viewing of The Book of Mormon, which if you haven’t seen it (it was my third time), it is honestly the greatest musical ever.

    Now comes the fun part of the story. Flying from Brisbane to Shanghai via Seoul, with Maple in the cabin at my feet. Thankfully she got to have some good drugs to help her chill out, although it did not stop her from meowing every time I accidently moved my foot and nudged her carrier. Thankfully! The trip was surprisingly uneventful, even when I had to take her through airport security, holding her in my arms while the carrier when through the x-ray machine. The joys of loving your cat. All the crew were incredibly lovely and helpful with this journey and even with my mishap in Seoul, accidently walking half way across the airport thinking my gate was in that direction….all while carrying Maple, we made it to Shanghai with no problems. Customs went as smoothly as hoped, even though I was terrifed I had missed some piece of paperwork and was going to be told that they would not accept her. Finally we made it back to our aparment where we were greeted by my incredibly supportive and loving Claire, who immediately wanted to start annoying Maple to make up for all the lost time. Needless to say that had maple had the choice, she would absolutely have never travelled here willingly.

    As you can plainly see, she has settled in and is now spreading fur at a truly insane rate as her body went from Australian winter to whatever the hell Shanghai feels like doing at the moment (lets just say it was hot as hell 2 weeks ago and has now suddendly decided it wants to cool down).

    A new post will be coming sometime soon about the rest of our adventures and the two friends that visited us.

    Talk soon xx.

    S.

  • OkOk Club And Other Things.

    Sorry its been a little bit since my last blog update. For all my many followers… Feel free to spread the word of my glory!

    On the weekend I was invited to a little dive bar called OkOk. One of Claire’s work peeps found out that I very much enjoy metal music and also Dnd. Need less to say Claire immediately palmed me off to this new person and said have fun! It worked! Having earlier been invited to a small pubcrawl (which actually ended up only being a single pub) I set out for my frist glimpse of nightlife in Shanghai. It wasn’t a spectacular pumping club or bar but it had a great atmosphere and live bands! Which were actually really good. There was this chinese fella who was absolutely belting out Chop Suey and nailing it! He was pumping up the crowd, rocking out and when the song would finish, he’d transform back into this somewhat timid man, switching between english and (what I assume was) mandarin.

    (this photo was of the first band, I did not catch any of the bands names)

    Yes I am aware I am a terrible blogger. I forget to get names and photos all the time.

    Each band that appeared, three in all, had great talent and the club got quite packed.

    I even met another teacher from a different school! And on this coming friday we are going to mexican! This seemed to be a huge place for the expat community and everyone I talked to seemed to be regulars. It’s been an amazing experience meeting people who have lived in Shanghai a few years, as they all have small gems that have helped.

    On a side note, I have attempted to visit the Shanghai Natural History Museum TWICE!!!! First time…I walked the 1.5kms to the museum only to find out that…infact it is closed on Tuesdays. The second attempt I tried, I did not have my passport and so I was unable to purchase a ticket. Something that I had not even thought about at the time. You know what they say though. Third times the charm…. Here’s hoping.

    A final photo for you all. Just a small teaser of what’s to come when I do finally make it to that dang museum.

    I have no idea what it is. And now you can wonder what it is too!

    Talk soon xx.

    S.

  • A Nature Walk

    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.

  • Nom Nom Nom/Other things

    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.