Make A Rose in the Toilet...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUiJyvmqZh0


More things to make in the toilet...
http://www.origami-resource-center.com/toilet-paper-origami.html

More Origami videos
http://www.origamivideo.net/category.asp?PAR=models&SUB=rose

How to Order Chinese Food Dot Com - Main Page

How to Order Chinese Food Dot Com - Main Page
http://www.howtoorderchinesefood.com/

Useful website to learn how to order dishes in Chinese... Shows pics of the dishes as well...
Done by Ben Ross

Interesting article on Shanghai Subways

Article compares LA Subways built from 1990 and Shanghai Subways, and the result and image are both scary slow and scary fast...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-transit25aug25,0,5699726.story?
coll=la-home-center

Badminton competition in Shanghai Tomorrow!

Really want to take part!!!! But I haven't played in 5 months!!!

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2007/200708/20070825/article_328589_1.htm

My Life is beginning to have a subtitle

Had a Double language exchange last night, I seem to find myself double translation when I go to these exchanges, or talk to a Chinese person that is learning English.

Whether I do the translation for their benefit for mine or theirs I'm not sure!

Even do the same talking to my friends, seem to slip into the Chinglish process carrying the conversation in English and mix of Chinese... was doing that before in Canto, but am now doing it in Mando.

It's that same sort of feeling when you watch a chinese movie, with subtitles to translate in English or when you see a english pirate movie with Chinese subtitles...

Studying Chinese in Shanghai, China

A couple of my friends recently have asked me about doing what I'm doing...

Information About my Chinese School....
[Good if you arrive @ the odd time of the year, and the school is government registered]
School: Mandarin House
Website: http://www.mandarinhouse.cn/
Locations: 1 in Beijing and 6 in Shanghai
Where: Jinqiao Centre, Downtown Centre (Urmulqi lu), Pudong, Hong Qiao, Xujiahui, XiantianDi.

Other details:
General program: http://www.mandarinhouse.cn/course-1-1.htm
9am -12.30pm with a half hour break in between, Monday - Friday, This is the key program,
Prices: http://www.mandarinhouse.cn/chinesecourseprice-1.htm
Average cost only per month for the above is 400 quid, however if you add on extra tuition in the afternoon, an hour or 2 then will cost 600 quid,
This is particularly helpful if you find it difficult to keep up in group class, or if you just want to get ahead a bit more. Tuition is 1 to 1.
Class sizes are from 4-10 people max, starts from very basic ni hao, program concentrates on everyday chinese and using Ping Yin.

Dates when they start....
Jul 23, Aug 06, Sep 03, Oct 08, Nov 05, Dec 03

Anything else to know: You can pay by Credit card, and if you mention my name you get 1 free 1-1 lesson and 5% discount on lessons.

Other links
http://www.shanghaiexpat.com/Channels-learning.phtml
http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/shanghai/listings/community/schools_language/

Other school I recommend, that my friends go to, which is cheaper in the long run if you can take time off, in a School year...
E.g. Sep- Jan or Feb-July

This is the Shanghai Jiao Tong University,
Please bare in mind that most people that go are of Chinese Origin, very rare will you find someone from US or UK that will attend unless they have a Chinese background already...
the technique in teaching here is different from the Private Chinese Schools that I have listed above, as they focus on Hanzi (simplified characters), and have many different classes to focus on grammar, sentence structure, everyday chinese and some other things.

It's a lot tougher, but the program is a lot better!!! I didn't go, as I arrived late in March so missed much of the program. I wanted to also continue studying
through the summer.
http://www.sie.sjtu.edu.cn/page/en-page/long_term.asp

A new program has been developed for Europeans and Americans, but I have no idea how easy or difficult the program is...
http://www.sie.sjtu.edu.cn/page/en-page/tesehanyu.htm

Champagne Brunch

Well on Sunday, managed to cross one more thing off my Shanghai to do list...

Had a Champagne brunch at the Westlin Bund Centre, what this is basically a buffet with Champagne set @ brunch time like around 11am-3pm. (was told this use to run to 5pm in the past as well)

Basically this is a very popular thing to do in Shanghai, there are other venues available and for cheaper too, but have no idea what the quality of the food will be and how many they can host.
So what's the cost of this.... well it's 480 元, which in British monies around... 32 quid.
Obviously not something you do often often, but lots of my friends had different news to share, to a new job, to marriage or something else...

My impression, well its fantastic thing to do, they offer a lot of different western foods from seafood, to Jap Sushi, Roasts and so on...
They also have an open bar upstairs, with the 2nd floor buffet. Everyone has access to both buffets on ground (1st floor) and upstairs (2nd floor).

Atmosphere is also good, they put on enteraiment with classic music to start with using a live orchestra and also have opera singers to follow. Other entertainment include dancing, marital arts and many others...

It's very friendly towards kids too, with some stalls that will make toys for kids.

Deserts seem to be good too, they offer fresh made chocolate cakes, sweets, ice cream, fruit and lots of other sweet delights...

Only down side we got seated right next to the escalators, essentially the 1st table that everyone has to walk past to get to the main seating circle on the ground, so we didn't get a quite free flow of champagne, and was away from the stage where all the performances took place...
Despite this, was great to chill out with friends, chat, catch up and drink and be merry!

So if you have the time and the cash a Sunday brunch is definitely something to do...

My pic link... * not all photos are mine, they are tagged on my flick link.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/livestrongjon/sets/72157601564211464/

Cool link for new chinese words of the day

This is a sample of the ones I picked out... check it out... it's quite interesting and funny...

话题女王 (hua4ti2 nu3wang2)
hot topic queen
This term refers to women who always live in the spotlight of mass media and many people just love to watch and listen to their love stories or scandals. The typical representative of such women is Paris Hilton.

白纸男 (bai2zhi3nan2)
virgin man
This term, which translates literally as “white-paper man,” refers to those men who have never dated a girlfriend or never had any love experience before. Chinese tend to use the term “white paper” to mean anything that has never been tapped or violated.

骨感型 (gu3gan3xing2)
boney clan
The term means the boney type. Young women who desire a slim figure often follow the example of boney fashion models strutting the catwalk. However, many people see this trend as unhealthy and unattractive.

朝九晚无 (zhao1jiu3 wan3wu3)
working overtime
This term is created by employees who always work overtime. They have borrowed it from the common phrase of "nine-to-five" working hours and then changed the last character "five" to "no end," since both characters sound nearly the same in Chinese.

斩熟(zhan3shou2)
rip off a friend
It’s a not-so-rare phenomenon these days for someone swindling his or her friends, colleagues or even relatives for financial gain. They usually sell fake or substandard products to their friends by abusing the latter’s trust and friendship. It’s particularly common for those involved in pyramid sales schemes.

半唐蕃(ban4tang2fan1)
half-Chinese
This a Cantonese term that refers to people, behavior, manners, language and culture that are half-Chinese and half-foreign.

信息洁癖(xin4xi1jie2pi4)
ungoogleable
This term refers to a person for whom no information appears in an Internet search engine, particularly Google. This is because either the person purposely makes himself or herself anonymous on the Internet or he/she doesn’t exist. The term can also refer to the fact that a word, name, place or thing cannot be found through online search engines.

少女系男生 (shao4nu3xi4nan2sheng1)
sissy boys
It refers to those young males who resemble their female peers both in look and behavior.

手滑了/手抖了 (shou3hua2le0/shou3dou3le0)
slip of fingers
The Chinese phrase means “a slip of hand” or “a shivering hand.” This phrase is often used to explain a simple typo in writing as, more often than not, office workers are using keyboard to type text into computers.


http://www.shanghaidaily.com/buzzword/

Avril Lavigne Concert @ Shanghai

Went to my 1st Avril Concert yesterday as well as my first concert in Shanghai, China
Well the concert took place @ Shanghai Qi Zhong Tennis Centre, which by the way is the furthest part of Shanghai I ever travelled to......
It's down south... but if you thought of it in London terms... it's like travelling to Kent from North London...
It doesn't show up on any of the english maps, or online ones (unless chinese map)
Tickets for this event were from 200 元 to 1200 元 (13 quid to 80 quid)
We bought 800元 ones (53 quid).

Well one of our friends (Jon. S) organized some cars to take us down... and took us over an hour and a bit to get there.

We were late over by 40 mins, but when we got there she was just coming on stage, so we were happy we didn't miss anything... Here there are no pre acts to warm up the crowd or anything... they just come on...
Overall the concert was good, recognised most of the hits from "Let Go", the 2nd album "Under my Skin" and the new album "The Best Damn Thing".
She did talk to the crowd occasionally between songs, and tried her hand @ chinese as well, only clear words I could make out were "Xie Xie 谢谢", gotta give up to her for trying... and the China crowd just cheered even more... *just because?
Atmosphere was good, most people were bopping along or air drumming, or air guitar... some even dressed up as the punk Avril as well...
Only downside there was nothing to eat or drink... just free samples of Vodka by the sponsor Solid Vodka.

Our seats were ok, box seats with a really good view of the big screen, and Avril was probably the size of a mini Transformer... check out the *vids / photos for the view... (*vids on facebook)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/livestrongjon/sets/72157601475176341/

The 2 girls bopping on top their seats in front of me

Towards the end, people seem to have a habit to throw the glow sticks off from the balcony, so when you ready to go, just go...

More pics ... (*vids are on my facebook)

Flickr alternative in China?

Just read this on the webware website,

Google will now allow you to expand past the usual 1 GB limit on photo storage via their Picasa application

Well, Google is now offering consumers the ability to buy additional, or overflow, storage when they reach the free limit in Gmail or in Picasa Web Albums (2.8GB and 1GB, respectively), instead of having to pay for more storage in each program separately. Eventually, other applications like Google Docs & Spreadsheets will be included.

Prices range from $20 per year for 6GB of overflow storage to $500 a year for 250GB.

Orginal link http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9758290-2.html

Speaking in another English...

Just realised a passing comment from my personal trainer,
She said...

You can can tell the expats that work oversea's, how you tell is that the way they speak their english... they know how to rephrase and how to slow down their english so that non native speakers (aka locals) can understand them better...

Essentially if you want to work out here you got to change your english and don't be so proud all the time if you have to dumb down your english! You must appreciate english is not everyone's first language and thus ten times harder to listen too... and even harder to make jokes.

Green Tea and Whiskey

Green Tea and Whiskey yeah you heard right, seem to have this mixture more often then you might expect... seems to happen most of the time whenever I go Karaoke...

Well mixing red bull and Whiskey here sucks.... only can try Whiskey and Coke, but the Whiskey most of the time isn't that great... so best to always stock up at the duty free when you fly in...

Bright side, more girls seem to enjoy that mixture as a result.

Made 3 Wishes in Class today...

Today for Language exchange I selected a topic... the discussion / question was...

If you were Omnipotent for the day? What 3 things / wishes would you do?

• What would be the first thing you would wish for?
• Would your wishes be to bring luck and happiness for yourself or for others?
• Would you wish for more wishes? To live longer? Or to have no worries for life?
• Would the 3 wishes benefit you that much more?

如果你有一天的超能力，你希望做那三件事？

• 你希望做的第一件事是什么？
• 你希望给别人或你自己带来快乐和幸运吗？
• 你会希望有更多的愿望吗？活得更长一点。
• 过着无忧无虑的生活？
• 那三个愿望会给你的生活带来很多好处吗？

So my 3 wishes were:

• To be Omnipresent, to be everywhere at once, so I can do everything, instead of saying I'm busy or not in the country or busy studying / working and so on...
  
• To Have enough money to start my own business empire
• To have happy friends and family with no worries, so I don't have to worry about them, get stressed out, worry about them, should I care a bit, or care a lot and so on...

This is what some of my students wished for...

• Money, so they don't have to worry about things
• To work less
• To own their own business
• Travel the world
• To be forever young
• Have a house in every country + city of the world

To my surprise they also asked some different questions when it came round to the Chinese session, they asked me...

• What would you do if you had one month left? (3 things / wishes)
• What would you do if you had one day left?

• 如果你只有一个月的生命。你做什么？
• 如果你只有一天的生命，你做什么？

So I answered...

• I want to go round the world, go into space and spend my last few days falling asleep on a beach.
• I would climb a mountain and snowboard all the way down.

• 我想去环游世界，去太空。用最后的几天在海滩睡觉。
• 我想去爬山用滑雪板从山顶一直滑下来。

Trip to Hangzhou

So on Friday paid a trip to Hangzhou to have a look around.
Hangzhou from Shanghai takes around 1 hour 30 mins. And it normally costs around 88 Kuai approx... 6 quid for a return ticket.
Trains leave from Shanghai South Railway Station, This is the newest Railway Station recently built. Reminded me strongly of the Architecture in Pudong and Beijing Airport.
It's quite cool v nice waiting area in the centre of the room, and separate tunnels to take you off to the train platforms.
Well Left on a train @8am so that most of the day can be spent in a cooler weather exploring... well this is what we had hoped.
I took a friend along visiting from US, she friend of a friend spending the last week of her business trip checking out the sights.

I wanted to visit Hangzhou since all my teachers always keep mentioning it in my lessons, and it's also not too far away to do on a day trip. Normally most people link up Suzhou and Hangzhou as a weekend trip, both places similar waterside towns and gardens.
Background on Hangzhou 杭州
Has a population of 6.16 millon, and has inspired poets, artists and people for centuries. The west lake is the most famous. It's place in history is in the Song Dynasty and Marco Polo visited in the 13th century remarking it was one of the most splendid on earth.

My thoughts
It's pretty easy to get around, the city itself is only so so big... particularly if your only doing the tourist things. Many tourists Buses service the hot spots to visit and will cost from 2 Yuan to 5 Yuan per ride.
Most of the locals were very friendly towards us, and kept talking to my friend a lot. Her mandarin is pretty good and I think girls are always more approachable, to sell things or advice.
It worked out quite well, as most locals warmed to her and we got a lift from a stranger as well walking up into the tea villages he charged us 20 Yuan.

Weather itself was pretty hot for the whole day, it got cooler after its started raining after like 3pm ish....

Things we visited were the West lake, trek up to the waterfall (really disappointing that one...), walk around the Tea villages (a local woman tried to invite us into her house after she got really chatty with my friend but she gave us a great tour explaining how much land each house got to harvest tea leaves and lots of other things too...) and walked around a fair bit.

Hangzhou has pretty modern cars running around the city (eg the taxis) and it's pretty clean.
Like Suzhou don't judge Hangzhou by the station when you get off the train, its a typical area with loads of people waiting, selling things, eating, sleeping, shouting and so on...

Hangzhou for tourist things can really be done easily in a day, only thing I missed out on I think was a tour of the canals in a boat, or of the lake. (have done canal tour before in Suzhou)

Photo link...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/livestrongjon/sets/72157601206285127/

Steak and Jin Mao Tower

Well on Wed, went out with a friend to see the Jin Mao Tower which is the biggest observation deck in Shanghai Which stands @ 340.1 meter high.
The view is from the 88th floor which the lift takes 45 seconds to travel. Speed 9.1m/s
Cost around 60 -70 Kwai to go up.

Shot inside the Tower... @ the bottom is the restaurant

Steak
Some of my friends are heading off to Malaysia to get married... again, and for celebrations ate @ Xintandi @ Moon's Steakhouse.
Now Since I haven had a really great steak in a long time, felt great to go eat. My Friends have great taste, although seemed pricey for Shanghai, it was good..... came @ cost of around 581 Kwai for steak and wine (approx 38 quid) . I was a little late and missed out on starters.
Check out the pics...
The place has a lot choices on the menu, so you can get various different cuts, weights, styles, meats and so on... So you are spoilt for choice when picking....