Pretend Spectacles

I noticed someone the other day wearing glasses without any lenses. Just the frames.

Then I started to look around and saw that this was actually a thing. I've turned it into a game. One point for a girl. Two for a boy.

The other morning I saw a dwarf on the metro wearing pretend glasses. That's probably 10 points.

Metro coming back from work:

Starbucks this morning:

Qingdao at the weekend:

Phone-shop-man

My telephone bill was due at the end of July. I went into the Chinacom shop to pay, as that's the way it works here.

I gave the phone-shop-man my telephone number and he typed all my details into the computer. "How much do I owe?" I asked him.

"Don't know. It's past the 1st so I can't see your bill."

At this point I realised that I would have to guess how much I owed. After a few weeks in China this is the logic one comes up with. Sometimes it works.

I handed phone-shop-man 300 RMB (RMB =Yuen =  Kuai)

He typed on his keyboard for a minute or so and then asked "Invoice or receipt?" pointing at to two piles of blank forms behind him. One white pile. One pink pile.

"What's the difference?" I asked.

"I...I can't tell you"  he replied with a blank stare. 

It was my move.

Something inside me told me receipt was the right answer.

"Receipt" I said. It was a 50 50.

"Receipt is for personal. Invoice is for business" phone-shop-man replied

I had guessed correctly.

Chocolate is Money

I bought some water at the airport in Qingdao at the weekend. Cost: 6 Yuan.
I gave a 10 Yuan note, was handed my water, and two small bars of chocolate.
"Si (4) Yuen" I said pointing at the cash register.
"Chocolate! Chocolate!" they said waving me towards the door.
I pointed at the register again but was cut off by "Chocolate! Chocolate!" and the same hand movements.
I picked up my money-chocolate and left.
"What just happened?": a common question for me lately.

Thames town

One Saturday we (the rigging department, but mostly me) decided to have some fish and chips. What better place than a fake English town about an hour on the metro out of Shanghai?

I think this is where the fish and chip shop used to be: it's closed for business. No fish and chips for us.

Here I am standing in a fair copy of Milton Keynes, a new town in England with absolutely no character. This seemed to be the architect's theme: recreate the less well known parts of England. There's even a CCTV camera to capture the Friday night drunk fights

Me and  Mr. Churchill

Suddenly it's Bath or Kensington

A view down one of the many streets

It would be incomplete without a church

And we saw so many brides having their photos being taken.

This is Oxford Street. The fella on the right is Darren: the intern I spent the night with in a hotel in Hangzhou.

So since there was no fish and chips we finished the afternoon with Lunch on the only restaurant in town. Czech beer in a Ukrainian  restaurant in a fake English town in China

McDonalds doesn't sell burgers for a few days

McDonalds weren't allowed to sell meat for a week or so. Click on the image below for the full story:










Decided to go into McDonalds to see what they were still selling. Here's a picture of their menu:

They have fries, milkshakes, and filet-o-fish. The rest is covered by white sticky bits of paper cleverly hiding the big macs and other assorted illegal meats. I had to look closely to see what they'd done.

Looking at the signs behind the counter it would appear that I'm in a McFlurry/fish restaurant. You can see the fella behind the counter waving his hand. He was shouting "No Photos! No Photos!"

This was the same week as a brief black death outbreak in Yunan province:
    link---->   chinese-city-locked-down-after-brief-appearance-of-black-death-plague/   <----link

The most peaceful place in Shanghai

I started the weekend in Zhaojaibang Road metro station at 6:15am. Just a few people on the platform, and soft classical music playing on the PA system. The best bit was they were also playing bird songs: a dawn chorus. It was quite lovely.

6:25am the peace was brought to a swift halt when the all "BING BONGS" of the PA  system started and the test card on the metro monitor was replaced by public information films telling you very loudly not to be loud on the metro.

You're firenork on let ur colore em go h,oh,oh!

A lot of people wander around with complete jibber-jabber written on their clothes. Here's a great example. After the top paragraph, the writing descends into a bunch of random key hits: