Thoughts in Strife An anthology of the incomprehensible thoughts of Strife

Day 2 of my Shanghai experience

I didn't blog on day 1, but I think it's okay for this post to be a 2 day summary, considering most of today so far was work related, and thus I can't reveal much

I started my travels with my boss, and we took a flight from KLIA to Shanghai Pudong airport via MAS flight MH0388. All in all a pretty uneventful trip, the usual fare. The flight was 5 hours long, and we left at 9.30am. In flight food was so-so, some sad nasi lemak with shrimp sambal, but at least the extra sambal went along with the bread. There was some blueberry cake thingamajig which was awesome, and some fruits. Also awesome was the Magnum Mini dessert that we got, but I couldn't partake thanks to my now-chronic cough.

We reached Shanghai at 2.30pm on the dot, with lots of tail wind getting us where we needed to go. Temperature was 3 degrees Celcius. Apparently they're having a weird cold snap at the moment, as the temperature was up to 18 or so Celcius about a week back, but hey, it's still just coming out of winter into spring, so anything could happen. Safe to say though that we won't be seeing snow any time soon though, thankfully.

Hotel's pretty awesome, a nice 5-star place called the Renaissance Shanghai Zhongshan Park Hotel. Our package includes freaking internet, hence me posting this shit up XD. The video should be up later, so you'll get to see what I mean soon.

We had dinner with a couple of colleagues from our office over here, which is just adjacent to our hotel. Saves our commuting time, which is great, which ultimately saves me money too. We had some traditional Shanghai styled food, like Sweet Lotus stuffed with rice (very little rice), some wild herb dish, chicken/duck/pork in a semi "bak kut teh"-ish style (at least the taste, but it wasn't a soup), a large piece of pork, and also a Szechuan styled dish of bullfrog. Yes, bullfrog. Tasty stuff, I've got to say, and I'm told that over here they actually rear the frogs, similar to what the French do with escargot, where they don't pick any old rubbish snails, but rear them specifically for food.

We finished up with some noodles (apparently the rice and noodles are more of a pre-dessert, rather than part of the mains like we do in Malaysia), and a dessert called Tangyuan. Dessert was then followed up with a short guitar session as we explored the shopping mall since my boss spotted a music shop. The brands were quite lackluster, perhaps a few local brands, a small selection of Epiphones, and a lone Fender. This would've been fine if they sounded good, but none of the acoustics I tried appealed to me. After that we split up and went home.

I ended my day watching Megamind on my 37" Aquos, plugged into my laptop (all cables and stuff provided! this is an AWESOME hotel!).

Today was interesting, as after we finished up the morning session of our meetings, we headed out for lunch with a few colleagues, and tried out the local fastfood, called UFF. No idea what the full name is, but doesn't matter, the food is GOOD, and the price is CHEAP. A set meal which cost 18 yuan came with rice, some garlic beef curry with potato, beans, cabbage, and steamed egg. I added a coke for 2.5 yuan. It was great, far better than McD, although I'll still check that out, as I heard that there are some localized dishes at KFC and McD's.

After hours we checked out the Carrefour in the mall, and I saw a treasure trove of instant noodles. Bought one to try, and going to get more on the trip home XD

That's all for now, signing off.