Olympics Fever

The Olympics is here!!

I have been busy catching up with my favourite games since last saturday. Shooting, Diving, gymnastic, volleyball. Anything that is shown on the tv, I watched.

The commentators here are also very professional which makes watching all the most interesting. These commentators are either ex Olympic medalist or ex coach of the national team. They give blow by blow account and explain the difficulties of the moves (for gymnast, diving etc) and explain the points the moves could get, and even point out when points are deducted.

So I won't be blogging until the games are over! Hoping Singapore can get a medal this time! Jiayou!!!

BTW, I now know how to sing the China National Anthem. Too many times the anthem were repeated. :p

My Typical Lunch Menu

Every day I have lunch with my local colleagues in the canteen at the building next door. The canteen serve set lunch at an unbelievable price. For RMB 8, you can have 3 vegetarian dishes and 1 rice. For additional meat, one just need to top up to RMB10 for 3 dishes mixed vegetable and meat rice.

Because it is so cheap, the canteen is always crowded at lunch time as the local working around the area flock over for a cheap and no frill lunch.

The canteen reminds me of a factory canteen where the workers queue up for food with their trays, mugs and cutlery.

Me queuing up for food

An average lunch of a Shanghai office worker.

And the food if you ask me, is just as unappetizingly as it looks. However, this is already considered "not bad" standard by the local. For me, I have to do what the Romans do. Not all my colleagues can afford a decent lunch (by my standard) which would cost roughly 30RMB. An average office worker only earn about 2to 3k RMB per month or even lesser!

A typical day to work

Picture says a thousand words. So I shan't write too much and let the pictures do its work.



Every morning I have to brave through the notorious crowd and underground system to get to work. The train is very packed until its skin touching skin. And who says the Chinese don't queue? This picture shows the people queueing and waiting for the train but ironically when the train comes, the queue just collapse and everyone rushed towards the door. Duh...

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Today was an unlucky day. The bus I was on had an accident and all of the commuters had to wait on the roadside under the hot scotching sun for the next bus.

Next I reached office at about 9.15am (45 mins late for work). All I have is a small little table and a secretary chair. A far cry from my luxurious cubicle when I was in CAAS.


Very pathetic but no choice. Got to bear with the meager facilities. Even the photostating machine and printer/ fax is of dinosaur period.




See, the photostating machine don't even have a feeder. I have to stand there and do photostating one page by one page. Argh.... Wait until cow come home.

Cat in Shanghai

Finally the Great Wall of China has relaxed abit and allow the netizen to access blogger website! Yeah!! I only discovered in June after I accidentally entered into Xuexia's blog to read that notorious blog which is now causing a big stir in the blogger world and Cozycot Forum.

I hope this is not a reprieve given that Olympics is just around the corner. If China relax its regulation, it should be apply to the rest of the blog website right? But still, I can't gain access to vox, LJ and Wordpress so that means that the current privilege is only for Blogger/Google. I am crossing my fingers that blogger will remain unblocked after the Olympics.

This aside, I am into my 3rd month in Shanghai. The Summer here is incredibly hot and humid. You just sweat the moment you step out of the house and office. The local weatherman report an average of 35 to 37 degrees but the locals say that the report is inaccurate saying that the actual weather is definitely higher than reported. The reason is because according to China law once the temperature hit 40degrees, it will be immediately declared a day off as the weather is too hot for any work. So in order to prevent that from happening, the temperature never get reported above 40degrees. 39 yes, but never 40 degrees. So smart right?

The room temperature is also unbelievable warm. Coming from a tropical country Singapore, I thought I can stand the Summer heat. But no!! The buildings were not build like Singapore where we have lots of windows and enjoy natural cross ventilation. Here the windows are small and I kept it closed most of the time due to the air pollution. Daytime, the indoor temperature can climb to say about 33 degrees which is equivalent to the outdoor temperature in Singapore. Can fry an egg on the street already.

My lift lobby is enclosed with no windows nor openings. I can assure you that it is very very stuffy if the MCST didn't switch on the ventilator for air exchange. ( which happens most of the time to save electricity) Even in Summer, they only switch it on occasionally. Argh..... I just hate waiting for the lift. One can get suffocated while waiting for the lift to come and it doesn't help that I stay at 20th storey out of a 31 storey building.

Oh they even switch off the ventilator for the lifts! You might think that I am staying in a run down local estate right? Hell no! I am staying in a high-end condominium in a prime central location!

My house is very small. No rooms for my shoes and clothes so things just get thrown everywhere. T is very upset with me for the mess. But I just can't help it. There is no space for my clothes in the cabinets and my winter clothes are still packed up in boxes tuck in one corner of my master bedroom.

I really missed living alone a big apartment!