I’m at my friends Glenn and Lisles in Syydney.. nice day here.. I’m using their computer to add pictures from my earlier post.. more on today later tonight.
-jc

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I’m writing write now from somewhere over the pacific ocean… no actually.. I think we’re already over Australia ! . I was sorry to leave Shanghai.. It’s such a cool and lively place. It’s hard getting on a plane that isn’t heading home.

   As I said last night, It’s a 10 hour flight.. it passed incredibly quickly. I fell asleep through the movie ‘Borat’  twice.. I’ll bet I’m the only person who’s ever broke down at that movie.. There’s a scene where Borat is on his knees crying about something… it just triggered something..   Anyway.. I’m looking forward to being back in Australia… Tonight we’re going to see some sort of amazing fireworks display at the 75^th celebration of the Sydney bay bridge.. I’ll let you all know how it goes..

      Well.. back to yesterday. Our last day in Shangahi was great.    I  did a very fast walkabout through the city with my friends Mandy, Takeo-san, Karl-Hienz, Deb and Philipe. We began at the Old Town which is architecturally beautiful if a little touristy. We all did a bit of  shopping for home. At the center of the Old Town is the beautiful YuYu gardens.. They are part of a 400 year old manor house. It was so cool to walk out of one of the worlds biggest cities into a quiet, green oasis. Occasionally you’d get a view of a modern skyscraper peeking over a quiet waterfall or hear a train going by.. but for the most part, it was a different planet.  Here are some pictures of the Old Town and Yu Yu gardens

 

   After the park we went back to the crazy cafeteria again. I had fried square things, fried thing with eyes and tails.. a tentacle thing bigger than my head.. nothing had names.. no one spoke English.. it was ordering blind. It was wild.. What’s even funnier is to see the names of some of the dishes we didn’t get.. (I hope)   Enjoy the food

 

It was just after lunch so we walked across to the French concession. It was the centre of a French colonial presence here for many years. Evidently in the early 20^th century it was called ‘the Paris of the East’. It had nice architecture…full of upscale. Shops and restaurants. It could have been anywhere.. It was not for me.

At that point my friends and I headed back to my hotel. They jumped on a subway and I ran up to the north part of town and got some more fancy multi-color LED’s.. The streets were PACKED on this saturday !

I went back to one of the stalls Hua Pin had helped me negotiate. The same people were there.. but this time, no interpreter ! Then I discovered the ultimate negotiation tool . I complimented their beautiful children.. I got what I was looking for at less that half the price of my first visit. For what it’s worth, the things I bought are less than 25 % of the price  I could buy them in the states.   On the way home I wandered through a market that had mechanical tools, lathes, milling machines, welders… Oh for a bigger shopping bag ! All three of my boys would love this place.  Max and Gabe.. you have got to come here with me sometime.

 I didn’t need to leave the hotel until 5:30 so I took my time getting back to the hotel.. Even so.. I got back there in plenty of time.. or so I thought !.. My cell phone time was still one hour off !!!  We had to jump in a cab for the airport  the moment I got there.

(Not before I put a SamStone in one of the plants in the lobby)

 

I had the cab drop me off at the Shanghai Maglev Train station. This is one of the worlds only 2 trains that instead of ridding on wheels, it floats on a magnetic field created by super cold superconducting magnets.. It makes the 35Km trip from Pudong to the airport in 7 minutes (!)..compared to the hour it took me to drive it last time.  It has a top speed of 430KM/hr  (over 250MPH)/.. but today we only went 300km/hour.. that’s about 190mph.. and it was silent !

 

I got to the airport in plenty of time.. I uploaded my pictures to my laptop.. but didn’t have the bandwidth to upload them to MySpace.  As I was looking at my pictures, I noticed another theme… I call it lost in translation.. For your watching pleasure.. here are a few of my favorite near misses on translation.

 

OK folks.. I think we’re landing soon.  I’m looking forward to meeting up with my friends in Sydney in a couple of hours.. More from there…

I love you all… G’day Diane, Max, Gabe and Sam.

-jc

ps.    This is what I always do right before I check out of a hotel