Route for blind people

When you walk on Shanghai roads, you see and actually feel one really bumping line that is made of brick. It really hurts your feet and damages your shoes and heels. You find this bumping line everywhere you go - big roads, small, even metro has it. It's so annoying and drives me crazy, my poor shoes suffer so much. At first I thought it's separation line for walking and riding bicycles, something like you have in Belguim for example.

But NO! I learned it later that this bumping route is for blind people! How cool is that, ha? The tiny thing - being here for almost a month I haven't seen a single blind person!

Shopping

I post this especially for Lena as she just asked me this question.

What can I say about shopping in Shanghai? IT SUCKS...It really does.. The first thing is that everything is so damn expensive here: clothes, shoes, lingerie, cosmetics, etc. The word "sale" is unknown to the customers and sellers here, it just doesn't exist. There are two major segments existing in Shanghai:

• Premium shopping - Gucci, Givenchy, Armani, Marc Jacobs .. well you got it .. And Chinese people DO buy it a lot :-o
  You can see people in the center on Huiahai Lu or Nanjing Lu going with all these bags blowing away thousands of RMBs just like that..it smells like Tverskaya in Moscow, doesn't it?



• Market shopping - this is what you would find on Izmaylovo or Cherkizovskiy rynok in Moscow. The low quality products at low prices, though sometimes I see low quality at high prices. But I think the sellers just see the loawai (foreigner) face and raise the price.

For the middle layer of shopping of course you can find such brands as Zara, Vero Moda, Promod, etc, but the selection is focused on the Chinese market and the design is a bit weird for me and the proportions are odd as well as sizes. But what kills me the most there are no SALES and it's summer!!! What are they doing with old collections I wonder? May be next time I go to the shop, I'll just ask, can be quite an interesting conversation
Still I learned that outlets do exist, and found a good one for shoes - Foxtown (1F, Shanghai Mart, 2299 Yan'an Xi Lu) not far from Yana's house. Will definitely be back! They even have Guess shoes for reasonable prices! Mmmm.....

There's also a fake bags market that I have already discovered. You can find all the famous brands there LV, Hermes, Channel, etc for 100 RMB of course you have to be careful and know exactly what you want and how it looks in original to be able to choose the good quality fake...lol..I'm not so good at it, need to educate myself via Internet and brand shopping. At the same market they can sell you a nice Samsonite suitcase for just 200 RMB, so next time I'm in the airport I will not be fooled with all these Samsonite around me pretending to be originals...hehehe...

As for me I'll be doing my shopping in Prague and duty free, unless I find the way around :=)

Catching up

I have finally found the way to continue my blog and feel so happy for that reason! So it's my 3rd week in Shanghai and I'm still living in the hotel (( Oh, I wanted to complain to Radek about it to get some support, just a sec, will drop him an email. I'm writing this post in my outlook at work to publish it later on. It's been a loooong 6 day long :-O working week for me and on Friday I'm not able to think or to work anymore :-P Sent a message to Radek and feel a bit better…
So as I missed almost 3 weeks just a brief catch up on latest events:

• Flew to Shanghai Business class - life-time experience!!! Can I get more champagne and caviar please?




• Arrived to Pudong airport which impressed me at the passport control where they receive the satisfaction feedbacks from the passengers with the help of little device that has satisfactory buttons. I pushed "satisfied". Later saw the same in the post office. Do banks have them as well? Hmm… all government statuary offices? Need to investigate deeper.




• Checked in Saturday May 16 in Dong Hu hotel, 5 mins from my office.




• First weekends were not so exciting, I was just catching up on sleep to get over the jet leg.




• Monday went to office which is in K.Wah center right on the Huaihai Lu (you see I'm memorizing all these Chinese names and Lu means road..) My IBS team seems quite nice and friendly…so far at least. Here is my cactus that grows next to my working place...cute, ha?




• During the week I was working hard and long hours and my body was still adjusting to new environment, food, water - which is btw really really bad, air - which is btw really, really bad and jet leg was still there.Though with all the mentioned above I did a very good job during a week in finding new people in Shanghai and through FB and Skype met nice people. Sasha was the first one to go out and have beers with me - nice, funny and smart guy. We still keep in touch.




• Then comes next week and Tuesday with Yana (I met her on the internet as well) . It was a fantastic night, we both really enjoyed it. I got free invitations to an art exhibition with free drinks and wine and finger food (it's one of the advantages of being a foreigner - laowai- in China that you get free stuff like that from time to time) from my real estate agent (the one who can't still find me a home, it's chinese way of doing business, baby). It was our starting point, we both looked cool and glamorous. I think I drunk half a bottle of wine just by myself and of course I wanted to continue the party and so we did. Catching a taxi (which are really cheap here! Thumbs up for that!) and driving to a club, need to ask Yana for a name. It turned out that we both have the same fav cocktail - Long Island, yeh, right - it's the killer. Oh, my, we were dancing like crazy..just like it's mentioned in the list "You know you've lived in China too long, when….You go to a nightclub and jump on stage, go crazy dancing cos the locals think you are a movie star… and so do you! " LOL

• Next day after the party was BAD, BAD, BAD and above that I had to go for the medical check-up early in the morning…how they could find some blood in my alcohol is still a question to me…lol…The worst part of the whole night before is that I hardly remember the way home and my conversation with Radek at 2 am on skype…Honey, I'm really sorry for that…you know, I'm a bad girl sometimes. And why in the world do I have all these bruises all over my body: was I beaten in the club or it's the impact of bad ecology in Shanghai? Hmmmm…puzzled...




• First holiday in China - Dragon day! It was a three day holiday, which I enjoyed a lot. I met more people and Gulnara led us to the park with boat racing which we hardly saw. It was so so crowded and reminded me of my home town when celebrating any big event the whole city goes to Zaliv and gets loose :-)




• The following week started from Sunday and was too loooong for me. So happy it's over now!

Yaeh hooooo!!!!

My dear friends, I'm very happy to inform you that I have found the way to continue my blog, even that blogspot is banned in China! Thanks Gulnara for helping me out :-) Please stay tuned and i'll keep you updated on my life in so different Shanghai!

The farewell is over, it was a great party! I'm really happy many people showed up and I had a chance to spend time with them and say bye...We continued at Jane's place afterwards with lots of buzz of course. Martini and juice did its job and I just passed out on the couch at 2pm. It was so weird to see Jordan and Katya lying on the floor when I woke up at 4 pm to wash off my make up and change clothes. What in the world happened since the time I was gone to sleep? :-)
In the morning I made "diner" breakfast and three of us Jordan, Marsha and I swallow down omelet and it felt so much better after. Now Jane is back from work and going to make fajitas...mmmm...yami, yami, yami...

This is so crazy to get all the things ready...am really tired and looking forward for this transition period to be over asap. So I already moved out of my apartment and staying with Jane at her place, there's also her cousin Marsha. It's actually kind of cool to live 3 girls in one apartment :-)
Today it was my last day in Moscow office, I bought some desserts and had little after lunch dessert break. The main farewell is tonight at Temple Bar just near Krylatskoe, I'm expecting around 25-30 people: friends, ex-collegues from EERP, collegues from InBev...can't wait...Think I'll get drunk and forget about all these problems I've been facing last days...Tomorrow 5.30 I'm leaving for the airport and at 21.20 the plane is taking me to CHINA!!! Still hard to believe it and can't picture myself in Shanghai yet!

It's high time for me to start!

So I just got this idea to start my blog about my assingment in China! Yeah, baby, it's China!!! Am gonna be based in Shanghai! Here I come!