Jin Mao Tower

This week I had another colleague of mine in Shanghai for company. We did a lot of shopping and roaming around before he left for Bangalore. Shopping we bought so many watches and one that I bought is like an old age watch. You can see the mechanism of the clock. And supposedly branded as Omega. If the company guys see this they will commit suicide. These guys fake or have replicas of almost everything in this world. Rolex, Gucci, Mont Blanc, Polo, Tommy u name it they have it. It can be a shoppers paradise. I was even advised not to carry clothes ;-). Yesterday we went to this place called Jin Mao tower. This is the fourth tallest building in the world. The first being in Taipei, second in KL: Malaysia, third in Chicago. I have been to the second tallest building. This building is 420.5m high and has 88 floors. The place has The Grand Hyatt hotel hosing itself from 56th floor to 87th floor. The other floors have offices and the 88th floor is an observatory for the public and tourists. Another interesting part in this building is the elevator that shuttles people. Boy o boy the speed of the elevator is 9m/s…..in less than 50sec u r up up an away. I wonder if superman can do that. AS soon as you get out of the elevator you can see the oriental pearl TV tower. The view from that height is just mind blowing and stumps u at the first instant. You can see the Huangpu river taking its course through Shanghai. You can see a couple of more spots but the binoculars. Then in the centre of the observatory you could peep down. Boy people fearing height don’t do it! It will surely take you for a toss. What you see is the Hyatt fully illuminated till the 56th floor. Just awesome. I was wondering how it would look in the night, I think we should be there when the night falls. Shanghai can be seen in its true, magnificent and bright colours. For dinner we went to our ex director and current director for Shanghai place. He had asked the cook to cook Indian food and I must say she has learnt well from him. My colleague was very happy to eat Indian food. His place is like heaven for me, phew what a place he has to live. Ah I was in love with that place. But then you need to be at that place in your career to be there. Long way to go !!!

Too Hopping

This week I had been to one of our cutomer’s plant. It was a nice exposure to see all the parts being made and assembled. When I was back in shanghai on Friday a friend of min was back in office and things were cooking already cooking up of what to do over the weekend. At 5:30 in the evening we took a cab and went to his hotel where he was staying and went to a café near-by where we had to meet another friend. Here we ate some food….it was more or less like dinner. This was at 6:30PM, yes the Chinese eat their meal very early. I had rice with fried prawns. It was good. There was frog also to eat….yew. from there after freshing up in the room we went to this place called Malone’s on Tongren Ren Lu. This is an American café and they serve you good food n beer. When I entered the place it was like a different world. Just Americans and Europeans. The waitresses here speak very good English and the crowd is also good. We came to this place at around 8:00 PM. There is a live band playing here and they start playing at 9:30. we wanted to see the band playing so we waited for some time. There are actually two girls in the band who do all the singing apart from the drummer, two guitarist and a pianist. These girls have really sweet voice and they know how to entertain you. They started singing and all the crowd their was just listening to them to singing. There were singing mostly pop and country songs …there was one song from U2 after which they took a break at 10:30PM.
Now we changed the base, we went to another place called Judy’s Too on Maoming Nan Lu. This place is kinda a pakka joint for having beer, dancing and maybe hooking on to somebody. As usual some more beer and dancing. When we came in the crowd had not yet gathered. And the dance floor was mostly occupied by some girls . there were these pali girls guessing here, two of them dancing like hell and they did not want to dance with anybody else. I guess they were lesbians. Well thenas the crowd poured in and it was our time to get on the dance floor. I was not willing to dance, don’t know why it didn’t get my dancing shoes turn on. I just sat there and had my beer. Sometime later my friend along with a girl came to me asked me to dance with her. He he he I said ok and during the time that we dance with her I came to know that she is from Philippines. She asked me to buy her a drink I said ok. The interesting part is that they don’t drink booze, they drink milk. The again I was back on my stool for sometime and on the dance floor…chuma dancing . Then I danced with another girl also from Philippines . I danced with her for two songs and it was the best that I did while I was in Judy’s too. Then around midnight I could not take it any more, I was tired and wanted to sleep. But this friend of mine got hooked to a Chinese girl and was making her dance her like hell. She was also enjoying though. The Chinese do know how to enjoy. It was around 1:30 AM in the morning that we took a taxi and went to another place called Cincinati. I don’t know where it is. This place has the ambience of an European street. We went to a bar called Rendezvous. Here also the atmosphere was the same as in Judy’s too. We just had a beer hanged out for about half an hour and went to another placed Judy’s. all the places that we went till now are open till 2 in the morning, except for this Judy’s which is open till 5 in the morning. By the time we reached this place I was damn hungry and had to eat something. We had a pizza before going to Judy’s. We did not drink here. There were girls who were dancing on a pole, not naked though. There was one huge girl in all aspects hardly wearing anything…phew I was wondering how the hell can she tolerate the cold. I was bloody freezing. The entire day it may be sunny but once the sun goes down, that’s it is freezing cold and if it is windy you are done. From this place we went to play pool and TT in the adjacent building. Heh he he pool and TT after getting drunk. Finally we went back to the hotel at 4 AM.
In the morning I came back to my room and had a nice shower before going to the Westin hotel for lunch. Ah this place is like heaven. Very good. It is a seven star hotel and went there specifically for food. Had a Mexican drink (not getting the spelling). The food was really good had sea eggs (brinjals), dumplings, dim sum, spring rolls, duck and a beautiful fish. We also got sparkling water to drink. It is also know as soda water. Actually it is carbonated water with essential minerals in it. It tastes good also. The food was filling. From there I went towards the Bund but landed up in Yu Garden. This place is like traditional Chinese, the buildings are like what we see on tv or in movies. And more interestingly the entire place sells only and only Chinese artifacts. I guess it is the best place to but some souvenirs. The weather was bad, cloudy, windy and damn cold….brrrrr…..from Yu Garden I went to meet some more friends and then we went to a Japanese restaurant. A nice place to eat. The scene is like it is a rectangle table with on side for the chef and the other three sides are for the guests to sit and eat. The chef makes all the dishes in front of you and serves it hot. Huh it was a long time that somebody was serving me fresh hot food. What all did we have apart from Asahi Beer (Japanese beer and the glasses in which it was served was more than a pint) had fishes (which all I don’t know), prawns, lamb, mutton, mushrooms(I don’t like it), vegetables and to top it up fried banana ice cream. Yes banana was fried and put on the ice cream. The most exciting part is when the chef makes the fire and the flames go up…ooooo it was so warm.:-)
Oh I had lots of beer and fish and at a stage I was like a heavy rock. So after havin and elaborate and heavy dinner we went to KTV ( Karaoke TV ). Chinese are very crazy about this place. You get to sing the songs. The lyrics come up on the TV screen and you just have to sing along. It was fun, although there weren’t any songs that I could understand. At around 11:45 we all left to get back to our places. Now as I am writing this I am wondering what to do today???

Downtown Shanghai

This is my first weekend in Shanghai. To kick start the week end my office colleagues here hosted a dinner party for the entire team to welcome me to Shanghai. Wah kya baat hai!! The dinner was in a hotel in downtown Shanghai. Our office in a industrial area and the ride is really long. You need to cross the river to go to downtown shanghai. We rode on and on and on and it was a long ride and when we entered the downtown shanghai called as Puxi, you can see that it is very colorful and bright. Then we were in a elevated road all the time and reached a major junction where you are like on top of the world. It looked like we were at least 6 floors above the ground. It was a major interchange to change directions. The roads would just wind in and out. And then we reached our famed destination. We were riding in a BUICK (these are made by GM in shanghai). The restaurant where we were supposed to eat was based on the Xinjiang province of China. This is present in the north of China bordering with Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. These guys are known for the Goat/Sheep meat. They are mostly Muslims and they have inherited their culture and religion mostly because of the Silk Route. I was made to sit in a position where in you can see the stage. I was told that there will be a show by a troupe which is traditional Xinjiang. Their folk culture. And the first thing that came in was the beer; it was called BLACK BEER, a local brewed beer in Xinjiang. It was black in colour and looked more like a cola and beer taste was not there. And then came the first meat of the meal. It was horse meat!!! I said ok….i cant eat that. Then came the goat meat and it kept on coming. It taste good, preparation was more the Indians do but a little cooked. Some of them not all. There was capsicum masala which was spicy and yummy. And then after we were done with the Black Beer we got the Harbin Beer another Chinese beer. The sad part of the beer was that it was not chilled. Later I learnt that the Chinese did not know how to drink beer. There was this kebab of thing cooked on a strong stick, it was good. Then the entertainment starts. A girl came out and she started dancing to the tunes of Xinjiang music. She came to our table (we were sitting on a big round table) and started dancing and she pulled in John (our chief engineer) to dance with her. It was so entertaining. The nest event from her was balancing a stack of six cups on her head. She got one more person from our team (Dave) to balance a cup on her head. The next one was belly and booty dance, and the favorite target was me to dance with her. He he he he he I just went der and showed the lady how to shake it!!!! It was fun. Then there a couple of Chinese and Russian songs. They were melodious and emotional song. I got to know the gist of the songs that were being sung. And then John and other two guys had to leave as they had landed in shanghai earlier day and were tired. And then the mood on the table was very light. We got more beer and did Gumbhe (bottoms up) Chinese love to do that. And as we were drinking there was the last show and again I got a chance to dance with the lady on the stage this time. Oh boy it was fun. Some crazy steps and moves which made sense to the Chinese. It was around ten when we left the restaurant and headed back to my hotel. On the way back we passed through the Shanghai TV Tower. It is very very tall. Ever since I have been here in Shanghai the weather has been changing from cold to chilly to sunny to rain. Keeps fluctuating.

The next day Allyn and I decided to go to Puxi and check out some electronics in a big mall. Allyn is a Japanese bachelor born in Canada and now working in China for the past 9 months. He is a interesting guy, he has this attitude of traveling and experimenting. He is guy who takes calculated risks. So after breakfast we headed to the nearest Subway station which is Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. We took a taxi and went there. We boarded the train to go to People’s Square. Here we had to interchange to another line and though may as well have a stroll on Nanjing road. This road is like Brigade road in Bangalore. Crowded lots of people and many shops offering you so much to buy. We did not walk the entire street just a little bit and then took a deviation as Allyn wanted to get some screws, there is this street which sells only hardware. After he got his stuff we went to the subway and took the metro to our destination Shanxi where the electronics mall was supposed to be there. When we reached Shanxi there was nothing, Allyn was confused and called up one of his friends from office and came to know that we are 3 stations behind. So we got back and went to Xujiahui. Interestingly if you are a foreigner in Shanghai there are a lot of people who wants to be friends with you and sell stuff to you. DVD and watches and shoes and things like that. When we got out of Xujiahui subway, we just entered the mall where only and only electronics goods like cameras, hard disks, computers, laptops et.al are sold. It was a like fish being sold in a fish market only that not @ of a kilos. I just wanted to see and feel Shanghai as language is a big problem here, and this was a nice opportunity and exposure. I checked out a couple of stuff. Now we were hungry and went in search of food and landed in a hotel serving only dumplings. We got goat dumpling, veg-n-chicken dumpling, peanuts, Tofu , Kombu (a sea weed) and cucumber. Yummy all of them tasted so good. Allyn was specifically looking for some hobby kits. While searching for it he dumped into one of the sales girls who recognized him. They had earlier met in a mall in Pudong. Here we tried ask them about the places where Allyn’s stuff was available. After we got the address we went in search of the place by foot. The search looked like a never ending one. But finally we ended up in a place which was selling only consumer electronics. Huh what a waste of energy. So we came back to our hotel in metro and taxi. In the Shanghai Science and Technology museum grounds people were flying kites and roller skating. What a way to keep yourself busy.