2 November 2011
Still raining
November is supposed to be the dryest month in eastern China, today it rained all day and is still raining right now.
A story I forgot from earlier, like Taipei, in many parts of Shanghai each store is responsible for their own piece of footpath (sidewalk). They hold an annual competition to see who can polish this the best. Of course this means as soon as it rains, I fall flat on my ass in a puddle and feel like an idiot. Until 2 more people did the same in the same spot!
Then this evening, I saw some more people slip over in other locations, one guy on stairs seemed to be badly hurt, he jogged off with a severe limp holding his leg, not sure why he decided to jog.
My evening rain walk took me along Huahai Lane, which is like Orchard road in Singapore, full of Cartier, Tiffanys and Rolex shops, it seems to go on forever.
Of more interest to me is the food areas under all the department stores.
Of more interest to my missus back home, KFC stores in China sell Portugese egg tarts, and the twister combo meal comes with one. They are 30 cents each and look authentic to me, maybe I will have one.
At one stage this evening I had 2 people chasing me trying to sell me an umbrella at the same time, they then stopped and argued with each other. Also, the streets are surprisingly dark at street level, above your head is a lot of neon but this seems to make seeing where you are going even harder. Add to this, electric scooters on the footpath. These things are incredibly dangerous.
Driving is hilariously bad, I have seen a few cars going the wrong way up a one way street, everyone leans on the horn all the time, not quite to Indian levels but certainly the 2nd worst I have seen.
Also traffic lights only apply if theres cars coming in the other direction, as a pedestrian you have no right to cross the road ever, even when theres a walk sign. Busses and taxis in particular seem to completely ignore traffic lights, even if theres other cars coming.
Finally, if you have a car and the road seems busy, why not use the footpath for a block? If pedestrians are in your way, feel free to abuse them out the window with your hand on the horn.
It all seems very dangerous, especially in the rain.
Random street view from an overpass.
The apple store. Actually one of 3 I have seen so far. This one has the best lights, and someone across the road selling Steve Jobs RIP tshirts.
You can walk along under the freeway flyovers which is quite cool, especially when its raining. The freeways are impressive.
6 floors of made in China electronics. They had lots of great stuff actually, media players I hadnt heard of. They seemed to work great on high definition mkv, many of them had been loaded with Avatar.blu.ray.rip.1080.hidef.LoL.mkv.
New world something or rather department store was impressively large, with an ice skating rink on the top floor.
My food court dinner, it was dissapointing. Pepper beef I think, the beef was ok, but not hot, and basically just a huge amount of rice underneath which I barely ate.
Which meant I could get some excellent wasabi flavoured chips. They have these at Waitrose in the UK, I recall them fondly.