Health Inspection

To make things easier on themselves, the company my wife works for asked us to get tourists Visas in order to enter China. Then once we were in China they would help us to change those short term Visas into long term ones. Yesterday we embarked on part of that process – health inspections.

As there is a fairly large group of new teachers, we took a bus full to the medical center. I live in what they call the Pudong area of Shanghai, which is a relatively newly developed area of the city, across the river from the main part of Shanghai. For this trip we were crossing the river and getting into the heart of the big city.

It was a long bus ride.

Even before we really got going.

We loaded the bus around noon, but things weren’t so organized. Two ladies with lists of names were going around the bus making sure everyone was on board. They were petit ladies, and not very loud. Where what we needed was someone with a loud voice, shouting out names and counting “heres” what we had was little ladies whispering voices and hoping someone near knew where that person was.

This was a twenty-minute exercise. Even though all the paperwork makes statements like ‘we will not wait for you if you are late’ and ‘we will leave promptly’ it seems they were very concerned with making sure everyone was on board.

Once we got going we drove about three blocks before the bus pulled over to the side of the road and waited. Waited on what we were unsure. No one seemed to be getting up or doing anything but sitting there.

We were parked across the street from the police station where Amy and I registered a few days before and we began to wonder if perhaps this is where we were going to be given our check-up.

Maybe we were waiting for the center to be ready for us, or for a cop to waive us on. Who knows? But there we sat.

After another thirty minutes of this, the bus doors opened. At first I thought we were getting off, but no, on came a young looking Caucasian. With a big grin on his face he said “sorry guys” took his seat and the bus roared on.

Pissed is the word.

Seriously, you just made us sit in this bus for half an hour waiting on your sorry behind? What the crap?!? Sorry stupid guy. We should have left him behind.

Questions go forth to this cat about lunch and whether he ate it. Yes he said. He ate pizza. Sorry. Stinking. Son of a gun. Did I mention that we were not allowed to eat anything but a light breakfast because of the exams? No? Well that was the rule
Amy and I actually broke it a little by having some animal crackers, but still our hungry bellies grumbled and here was this guy making us wait half an hour on him so he could have pizza.

Dirty rotten so and so.

The bus moved us onward across the bridge and into the heart of the city. Whoa mama! Shanghai is huge. Living in Pudong we don’t see how insanely gigantic this place is. Huge 20 story apartment buildings rise out of the ground like Thor as far as the eye can see. Huge corporations jettison alongside them like bright steel mountains.

And on we go. It was a good hours drive, which when you add in all the waiting put us at about two hours travel.

Somewhere down a narrow street we stop at a little convenient store and buy junk food to eat when we are done with the exam.

We arrive at the hospital, which isn’t a hospital at all, but more like a medical center for Internationals. Inside they begin picking through passports and calling off names. Of course Amy and I are next to last. We shuffle into a room where we are given forms. And wait. We wait so long that some of the other guys are completely done with their exams before we get out of the waiting room.

Finally we are called and two ladies ask us some questions and give us a form to take to another room. There we take off our shirts and put on little robes and little baggies to cover our shoes.

Another room is entered and a nice lady takes our blood. Then we all start to divide up, going from room to room in no order other than whichever one is available. I hit the eye exam room first. Eyes exams are never a good experience for me as I am a bit colorblind.

Sure enough as I sit down I am presented with those little color tests. You know the ones I’m talking about, the little cards with a whole bunch of colored dots on them. Supposedly there is a hidden number buried somewhere inside, but much like those magic 3-D puzzles I usually can’t see a darn thing.

Doctor: What do you see here?
Me: Um, 99?
Doctor pointing to next card.
Me: Six?
Doctor: (emphatically) No!
Me? Nine? Ninety nine?
Doctor: No!
Next card is presented.
Me: I don’t see anything.
Doctor clearly angry circles a section of the card.
Me: Nine again?
A few more passes and the doctor tells me I have trouble seeing green. No kidding doc, I’ve known that since I was like five. But thanks for the humiliation.

I then do the eye chart which doesn’t consist of letters or numbers, but these little lines that kind of look like an “e” or a “w” or a “3” depending on which way they are turned. You are supposed to say which way the little figure is turning, but I only know this because I listened to the girl before me, not because of instructions from the doctor.

The weird part is I don’t look directly at the chart, but look at it in a mirror so everything is backwards. I have to shut that part of my mind off or I’ll wind up trying to reverse process the figure in my brain. Who knows if I get it right because I am shuffled into another room.

This is the ultra sound room. Now I’ve seen these on TV for pregnant women, and on House for all kinds of other things, but it is still weird. I lie down, undo my robe and the doctor gets busy with the cold, slimy stuff. She then rubs the camera thingy on my belly and my sides, pushing just a little too hard on my ribs, but I’m tough so I don’t say anything, just kind of silently grunt.

There is a full body x-ray, blood pressure taking, some touchy-feely to my belly and back, and a few other things I don’t remember. We’re then shuffled out where I find everyone stuffing junk food down their bellies.

We load the bus again and head home. For some reason, though it is the same bus and the same driver, the air conditioning isn’t really rolling. On the ride there it was on full blast and felt great. Now it is a slow, warmish trickle. But who the heck knows how to complain? Either nobody else was hot, or we were all in the same culture shocking mode of not knowing how to move forward and complain.

The ride was much faster this time and we made it home in about 50 minutes.

Food

Lots of folks have asked about the food situation around here so I thought I would add some larger thoughts. Basically my food consumption here falls into three categories:

Americanized: Obviously Shanghai is a big, international city. There are lots of Americans, Canadians, Europeans and other Western folks living and visiting here. We like westernized food and Shanghai has plenty of restaurants to suit out needs.

Many chains exist in Shanghai. I have seen McDonalds, Taco Bell, Burger King, Subway, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, KFC and Starbucks. There are also a number of American-like non-chains. Every Tuesday we go to a little hamburger diner that gives teachers half off deals. Just down the road is a little sandwich shop that has very American like food.

Chinese: Of course there are tons of little Chinese places to eat too. I'd like to compare them to American Chinese restaurants, but as I rarely ate in those I can only say they seem very similar. One major thing different from normal American restaurants is that they don't really do combos or an all encompassing meals. You order each food product separately and it comes in a big plate or bowl.

So if you order the sweet and sour pork, you get a big plate full of nothing but sweet and sour pork. Same with noodles and vegetables. All of this makes it better to each with lots of people so that you order a whole bunch of plates and then communally eat it. That's the other thing, these restaurants are set up so that everybody shares out of a communal plate. They don't really provide smaller plates for you to put your sample of food either, you just have to take it out of the communal bowl and eat.

Most of the places are pretty cheap, though it does add up when you start ordering lots of plates. This again makes it better to have more people as you divide the bill evenly. Strangely most of these places don't offer drinks other than some sort of flavored hot water. If you want a Coke, you buy a can from the local market.

Noodles: We've only gone to Muslim noodle joints, though presumably there are non-Muslim ones. Noodle joints are like Chinese fast food. They are fast and cheap and not particularly healthy. Basically you order noodles or rice that are mixed with various meats and vegetables.

Once again it is best to go with a group and order lots of bowls. We've eaten full meals there for less than 30 Yuan, which amounts to about three American dollars.

I suspect there are other options as well, but that's basically what I have eaten so far.

Grocery stores: Within walking distance we have two small markets. They are set up like the small markets you might find in an American city. They are a little pricey and don't have a lot of things, but they are convenient. Unfortunately some of the convenience is lost on me as most of it is geared towards local Chinese and not crazy Americans. You can't find basic things like bread or sandwich meat. There are lots of strange packages of noodles and things but as I don't read Chinese I am never really sure what is in them.

The bigger grocery store is Carefour and it is a taxi ride away. I'll get into taxis later, but lets just say if you want to go anywhere you've got to ride a cab. Carefour is like a super Wal-mart with groceries and various house hold goods. It is also super busy all the time. Imagine Wal-mart at its busiest, then multiply by about ten.

I don't know what it is about the culture, but people walk and drive and ride bikes in the most sporadic way. Basically you go wherever you want, whenever you want traveling the speed that you want, or if you prefer stopping at the strangest of places. It is just the way it is. So in the store people are everywhere doing whatever they want. Driving a cart you have to weave and wove and turn on a dime, stopping quickly then backtracking and moving around. It is nuts!

Carefour has good American like products, but also lots of weird stuff too. At their little broiler station they had a couple of plucked chickens hanging - head, feet, wings and all. There was also something that resembled a headless Dachshund, but for now I am pretending it was a fox or some other small animal.

In the cold section it isn't unusual to see duck heads and chicken feet. What meat there is to eat on those, I don't know, but there they are.

The sea food is where it gets really weird. They have big aquariums full of all sorts of live things. From fish to eels to bull frogs and turtles they all just sit there, ready to be picked up and eaten. You know I'm not really that squeemish, and I realize people eat these sorts of things and I've even had fried turtle, but it is very strange to see them still alive sitting there looking at you.

I've yet to eat from a street vendor though they are all over the place. Usually they serve meat on a stick, and as that doesn't' seem all that sanitary I'm waiting on somebody to point me to one that they know to be ok, before I dive in.

Quick Pix: Subway Sign

I hope to get a cell phone soon, and that with a camera. There are far too many wonderful little things to see roaming this city to not snap. The big camera is too bulky to take everywhere but a cell camera would be perfect. This is a sign on the subway that was too priceless not to post. It was taken by Brian and stolen from The Bates Dynasty.

Pictures, Focused Thoughts

I have not taken my camera out of my bag. This is shocking, I know. The truth is we have not really gone sight seeing too much so far. The one time we did go somewhere I could have taken good pictures, I didn't know we were going there and didn't take my camera. Soon I'm sure we will plan some trips to picturesque spots and surely I will take good pictures.

As for regular, daily life kind of shots, I've just been lazy. I keep thinking we'll be here for a year or so and those pictures can wait. Now that we have internet I guess I'll actually get around to taking those pictures and posting them.

As a secondary reason I'm also still trying to get a feel for things around here. Even though I am an obvious white guy and thus a tourist, I don't want to be even more blatant as the white guy with the really big camera. Most of Shanghai is pretty safe, they say, but I don't want to push my luck and have my camera stolen so soon.

No worries though, pictures will come sometime soon.

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A number of people have asked about various things - food comes immediately to mind - and I have some good replies in my head. Actually I have some good posts prepared in my mind on a variety of things, but have yet to write them. So far the blog has been mostly daily life kind of things, more of a travel diary than a focused blog. With the internet connections and a more organized schedule I hope to write larger essays on various things such as the food, and the area in which we live and the school and such things.

So keep tuning in kids, there is much more excitement to come.

My First Day As A Tutor

As the whole teacher thing doesn't seem to be working out, I am back to trying my hand as a tutor. I think/pray/hope this will actually work out for the better, but we shall see.

Brian has been tutoring a middle-aged woman for awhile now, and today was the day to see if she would take to me as to give Brian more time off. The woman and her husband are fairly wealthy and she has more or less taken the last year off to learn English. Her plan is to learn as much as she can now, move to Singapore in January, learn even more there and then travel the world.

Thus she wants lots of tutoring. Lots and lots of tutoring. So much tutoring she has already invited me to live with her so that I can tutor at every moment.

She lives in one of the high rise apartments about a 15 minute taxi ride from SMIC. She is on the fifteenth floor and has a lovely view of the big park in PuDong and the excellent Shanghai skyline. she is also a bit of old China which unfortunately means she isn't too fond of air conditioners. It was a good 85 degrees inside and we all sweated together.

Truth be known, I am not really a teacher or a tutor. Though at one time in my life I thought I wanted to be in that line of work - the thought of sculpting young minds and all that - but in the last few years I much prefer the company of a good book, an excellent film, an artful album and my computer. My social skills have dropped quite considerably in the 2000s and the reality of it all is that though I do enjoy the company of a few good friends, mostly I don't really like talking to people.

Call me a hermit. Call me Howard Hughes. Just don't really call me because I'm busy watching the Sopranos.

All of this is to say that the two and a half hours of tutoring was exhausting. Brian did most of the work and still I had had enough in about half an hour. She speaks decent English in that I can understand what she is saying, but that I have to really concentrate on her words and gather lots of context.

She wants very much to learn and in that way she is a good student, but she is older and slower and she will take great effort to get her to where she wants to be.

She has a book that her and Brian have been studying and at first I will take over that, but I'd like to come up with some other things as well. For instance I think I will record some shows off of NPR and the BBC and have her listen, and then answer questions. I think we will allow time for conversation as well.

I've painted kind of a negative picture, and that isn't exactly all correct. This is something I can do, and I know there will be rewards from it, but it is all overwhelming at the moment. It isn't really something that brightens my eyes when I think about it, as it is no longer something of a career goal. But I do think it will be nice to see her progress and find ways to help her move in the right direction.

Brian and I are supposed to come up with a plan this weekend on how I am going to take over and how I am going to get her prepared for her worldly travels.

Wish me luck.

Connected To The World

We finally have internet in our home. As we have two lap tops we went with the wireless version. Unfortunately we still need to buy a wireless card for our Dell, so it is still stuck to a wire in the extra bedroom. But that is doable until we start getting pay checks.

Actually the Dell is giving me all sort of problems beyond being connected to a cord. I meant to have it fixed before we left and just didn't. It periodically runs super, extra slow and I can't figure out why.

I've ran all the anti-spy, anti-virus stuff to no avail. I jut now tried to do a system restore, but for some reason that little bit of software won't even come up! Curses.

But yes, the Apple works swell and we're all connected. Expect more updates from now on. Also expect some cosmetic changes soon too as I know the blog looks kind of random.

China has killed my wordpress blog. I cannot log into it at all. So it shall remain unchanged until maybe next month when I hope to obtain my own webspace and url. Oh the changes one must make when one lives in China.

Lots Of Updating

Obviously I've just done a lot of updating. Brian, Bethany, and Amy are all at school dealing with orientation and cleaning. It will be a very rough day for Amy as they are cramming tons of information into her skull and making her do all sorts of paperwork.

Me, I'm sitting around kind of bored. So I went to Brian and Bets to update the blog. Some of it may sound odd reading it all at once as it was written over the last week at different times.

China is proving quite difficult with the blogging. I still cannot figure out how to make my own comments. So again, if you have commented don't get mad if I don't reply to them. I simply cannot do that. I'm thinking about doing a weekly blog just to answer the comments, but I'm not sure that will work either, as I'll probably forget what the comments were.

My wordpress blog is even more difficult. It rarely lets me log in at all, and even when it does it is super slow. I had planned on getting my own webspace anyways, so I may get to that even sooner.

Anyways thanks to everyone who has read and commented thus far.