LoveJY

Went to Zhujiajiao yesterday with Ricky and his friend visiting from the States. It’s a small water town, kind of like a little Venice of Shanghai, but quiet and quaint. You can walk along the river, but you can also venture into the residential alleyways, where we saw this little guy. It looked like he was planting something in a small pot. Anyway, we saw into the homes through countless open doors and windows. Lots of people playing majang or hanging up laundry. Life seemed so simple and uncomplicated here that I couldn’t help but wonder…

a random collection of some of the more memorable moments in may…

i thought about just leaving all of these little pictures without any explanation, but i thought it’d be more fun if you actually knew what was going on in all of these. maybe next time, i’ll just leave a slew of photos for your viewing and guessing pleasure, hehe.

for the may 1st holiday, ricky and i went to visit my parents in chengdu. it appears that in preparation of the expo, pudong airport suddenly became the popular place for strange silver people. we also saw a couple sitting in some of the waiting area seats with their silver laptops.

in chengdu, we visited the excavation site of the jinsha ancient civilation (discovered in 2001), which is estimated to have existed about 3000 years with a sudden disappearance, comparable to the inca’s. 

there ricky found an interactive touch-screen which wasn’t running the proper informational software. he managed to find his way to ‘paint’ and proceeded to create his own version of …   what should’ve looked something like this:   .

engrish in chengdu. 

we also visited my parents’ new apartment on the 33rd floor! this is the view looking down from their laundry room.

back in shanghai, i usually cross the suzhou river  on the way to work, and from the bridge i saw a group of migrant workers playing cards and laughing in the early morning. 

this was actually one of the first nice weather days we had, so you can guess how much we miss sunshine, if this is considered a nice day.   

we went to the expo, and this was on the way to one of the entrances. (almost) completely empty. 

there were tons of people once we got in though, and we heard that to get into the chinese pavilion, you have to wait at 6 in the morning for a reservation ticket that gets passed out at 9. we settled for a picture on the outside, except it wouldn’t fit in the picture even though we kept backing up, because it was just too darn huge. our estimation was that it was about 40-50 stories high. 

didn’t get inside too many other pavilions, but we made it into spain, which was cool for the most part until we got to the end where a giant baby god-robot stared down upon us all.  

really cool concept for the uk pavilion, but being as it was very small and not informative about the uk at all, it makes us wonder if england is just good for having 60,000 seeds (which were actually provided by the kunming institute of botany) 

i also permed my hair the day before. tada, uk pavilion from the back, on gray astro-turf. 

we had dinner one night at a xinjiang restaurant where at about 9pm a few studly xinjiang men came upstairs to sing and make us dance with them. quite the unexpected exciting night.  

on a rainy night, ricky and i randomly stopped at an outdoor cafe outside jing’an park. see previous post. 

mouse at work! apparently it ate a poison pill and so it was slowly dying my coworker tried to sweep it onto a dustpan but it had a second wind and started scampering away. the girls screamed and i chased it down with a trashcan. the janitor later came to take it away. 

maybe i should bring my kitty to work. all the fruit shops here have cats to keep away the mice and other pests. my kitty is a weirdo; i found him chilling on the side of my bed with half of his body hanging off the edge.

i woke up one morning at 5 because i had to pee, walked into the living room and got blinded by the rising sun. while i was taking this picture, i had a feeling my aptmate was going to come home, as he often does at crazy hours. strangely enough, as soon i clicked the button, i heard his key in the door. 

ricky and i got an electric scooter! well i’m planning to take this one so ricky can get a bigger and faster one. i rode it home for the first time tonight, and it was really fun but scary maneuvering through people and odd obstacles, not to mention other scooterists on the sidewalk. yes, we all ride on the sidewalk.