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Forklift 2

Forklift

An otherwise mundane trip to a big supermarket on Saturday morning turned into fun for Max when he discovered a forklift a bit like Grandad's.

This would never happen in India

Well behaved traffic. Everyone wants to go one way while the opposite direction is all but empty.

Shanghai you impress me. Delhi I miss you.

Liquid gold

Custard I have tried to make has ended up very lumpy and even the kids wouldn't eat it. Found a little carton of Paul's custard in a supermarket that stocks imported groceries. Nevermind the price; the kids are enjoying every drop of it. Who knows when it's on the shelves next!

Sshhh don't tell Zara

This place is a multi-level Barbie branded kids spa on Huaihai Road. According to wikipedia it has the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of Barbie dolls and licensed Barbie products . A four year old's dream.

Post script..... after posting this, further web searching revealed that the Barbie Shanghai store closed to the public in March 2011. Kiddie facials priced at RMB680 (about a hundred aussie dollars) was probably a significant contributing factor towards its demise!

Lanterns in trees

Red Chinese lanterns along Huaihai Rd. This is the China I had imagined. Not many bikes on this particular road though - maybe they're afraid of the buses. A sticky 34 degrees today.

Pork

Ham, bacon and other general pork products were hard to find in India, so we didn't eat a lot of it while living there. Turns out the Chinese are big pork eaters. This man's shop is just down the street from Zara's school and he is selling cured pork, shrink-wrapped. Something close to parma ham or prosciutto I think. He's also into duck as well judging by the back wall of the shop.

Superman (watch)

Max got a $3 Superman watch from the markets. I think it adds a year to him.

Kid art

We received a box of kid craft goodies from our departing neighbours - including a basic set of watercolour paints and a wide bristled brush. Zara is quite taken with all of this and has, quite independently, set about commissioning one or two works a day. She proudly hangs them on her bedroom cupboards.

Here are a few of my favourites...

Handbag

Heart Lollypop

Fireworks

Rapunzel

Butterfly

Bargain hunting

Saturday morning. Tanja needed to buy some thread for some sewing she is doing. On our trip to buy mangoes, we passed a haberdashers who stocked threads of many colours. A whole roll of brown thread cost a pricely sum of half a yuan (7 aussie cents). Dust off the Janome!

Bad photography, cute kid

Friday night

Dinner out tonight. The kids will be babysat by our housekeeper.

We are planning to eat at Lost Heaven. It comes highly recommended. Strange name but hopefully the food is good. Picture below is a screen capture from a life-saving iPhone app called Hi Shanghai. If I turn the phone on its side it will display the address in Mandarin - perfect for non-English speaking taxi drivers.

Photo shoot

A surprisingly professional setup for taking licence mug shots.

Pass or fail?

Driving licence day today. Thankfully we are exempt from taking the eye test.

Working for a living

You really need to click on the photo (to enlarge) to get an idea of the precariousness of this shop on wheels.

Underground trains

Zara is silhouetted by the Shanghai metro / underground train network map. Tanja catches the metro to and from work every day. The kids and I use it to get to and from school and ballet (though this may change next week as we hope to have our car by then). Most places we go costs 5 yuan, or 80 cents, and the kids both travel free. There are 11 different lines to catch, covering more than 420kms. Surprising to me, the Shanghai network is longer and busier than the London Underground, and has a handful more stations. Shanghai has the fourth busiest metro in the world. Tokyo, Moscow and Seoul take the top 3 spots, with London coming in at an unexpected 11th.

The train system is uber-efficient too. Shanghai is bigger, population wise, than Delhi and Bangkok yet does not have near as many traffic problems.

Zara is roughly pointing to the area where we live, on Line 2, west of the city centre - though not as far out as she is pointing.

Playground fun on Tuesday morning

Morning yoga - 8.15am

In the park near our place - on the way to the subway station.

Mesmerising Moller Mansion

I happened across this place on Friday in downtown Shanghai. Despite its other-worldly ethereal look (thanks in part to the Hipstamatic photo app) it turns out that the building has no significant historical link to Shanghai's past. The gardens were pretty cool though.

Here is some background courtesy of NY Times Travel website:

Garish, hideous, and mesmerizing at the same time, it's hard to take your eyes off this gigantic gingerbread mansion. An eclectic mix of architectural styles from faux Gothic to Tudor, this mansion of brown-tiled steeples, gables, and spires was built by a Swedish shipping magnate Eric Moller in 1936 for his daughter, who envisioned the house in a dream. The flamboyant house, with its marble pillars, chandeliers, dark wood paneling, and beautiful stained-glass windows epitomized the excesses of colonial Shanghai.

Playground view

The compound, thankfully, has decent kids play equipment. Our balcony on the 3rd floor (unfortunately?) looks directly over it. Here Max lazily sips his Sunday night after-dinner digestif and thinks about all the fun that can be had on the slide tomorrow. This week I also hope to plant up the planter boxes hooked over the balcony railing. Mint and basil are on the top of the list.

Off we go to ballet

Footpath hazards

Dripping morning washing

How's the serenity?

A street in Shanghai's former French Concession - 1 km or so to the main business centre of the city. Taken at 8.45am on a Friday morning on the way to Zara's summer school. Hard to believe Shanghai is a city of more than 20 million.

Ballet

Zara has started beginner ballet at a small music/arts school and goes Tuesday and Friday afternoons for a 45 min class. Even though it didn't take much convincing to get her to dress up in pink frills and pink slippers, enrolling her was more about getting us out of the house, meeting others and seeing a bit more of the streets of Shanghai. Turns out the school is tucked down a little laneway in the former French Concession area which is an absolutely stunning part of town. The streets are shady (tree-lined), clean and relatively peaceful. And unlike the area around our apartment building, there are no noisy elevated highways or 12 lane roads to negotiate. We take the subway four stations from our place to the Shanghai Library stop, then a 10-15 minute walk to the school. Max sometimes comes along for the ride.

Thirst for knowledge?

During a time when bookstores are closing their doors in Australia, today I came across the biggest bookstore I have ever seen, on Fuzhou road near The Bund. 7 floors in total with cafes, specialist stationers, maps, school essentials. Easily 3 or 4 times bigger than the big Borders stores in Australia. Bigger than the main library at my uni in Brisbane. I noticed the number of people sitting and reading the books. More than flicking or perusing, these people were reading the books cover to cover. One old man I saw was even making notes from what looked to be a history textbook.

Fix it

Max is trying to screw a fire hydrant cap back onto the hydrant. His back-seat pram street commentary usually involves pointing out "broken" things, bikes that have "fallen over", or "big trucks".

This was taken outside a subway station on Line 10 - Shanghai's newest subway line. As well as being new, it is clean, relatively uncrowded and most of the stations we've used so far have lifts - a lifesaver when pushing both kids in the Phil n Teds.

For medicinal purposes

Here is Zara very happily carrying a basket of drugs prescribed after a quick trip to the local doc.  The kids arrived with the tail end of a cold and it wasn't getting any better a week or so after landing in Shanghai - so they got to pop some Chinese-made antibiotics, plus some antihistamines to help them adjust to the air here.  The big scarey internet says that China is breeding antibiotic-resistant superbugs as a result of over-prescribing medications (http://shanghaiist.com/2010/02/08/chinas_superbugs_threaten_global_he.php).

Kids off to summer school

This was taken about 8am one morning at the bottom of our building.  School starts at 9am but we've got a walk to the subway station, ride the subway 4 stops, then a nice 15 min walk at the other end.  Hence an early start is necessary.  It feels like a miracle every time I manage to get both kids up, dressed, breakfast, bags packed, hair done, shoes on and out the door by 8am.  Often there's tears and tantrums - but not on the day this was taken.  Maybe all the stars were aligned!

Bikes

Lots and lots of bikes in Shanghai. Push bikes, electric bikes, scooters and motorbikes. Electric bikes are very common - cheap to buy and run. Pavements are marked with white lines that delineate bike parking spots. This photo was taken on An Fu Road in the former French Concession area.

Shanghai supermarkets

Shanghai is quite unlike Delhi in many ways. Buying groceries is a good example. There are many options for buying groceries here. The French supermarket chain Carrefour and the UK's Tesco both have stores throughout the city. These are mega sized hypermarkets selling everything from TVs and clothes to general food items. CityShop is another option for food, specializing in imported items like cereal, biscuits, cheese and deli items - all with a corresponding "imported" price. I go there from time to time to get some things that Carrefour don't have. The kids love the mini trolleys at CityShop.

Fishie fishie...

We inherited fish and a tank from our neighbours who are leaving Shanghai shortly.  None of us have ever kept fish before, so a little apprehensive.  After a couple of hours of hard toil yesterday cleaning the tank and rocks, happy to report that all fish survived the first night.  No toilet burials yet!