ISpyShanghai

In some ways, I did a lot of stuff this weekend.

I saw a guy called Jimmy Graham who used to play guitar with Hendrix, and must have been watching carefully because he now plays guitar in a very similar style to Hendrix every Wed, Fri and Saturday at a nice bar called Piccone. Ate dinner with Emma at a restaurant called Frankie’s (where they make a Pork chop that was definitely in my top 3 Pork chops of all time), played a lot of pool with Matt and a lot of table football with Fabien. I even went to the Urban Planning museum at People’s Square, a place Emma has been trying to convince me is good fun for about 6 months now, and that I finally now agree, actually is pretty good fun and not geeky (you were right Em, enjoy it while it lasts).

An enormous model of Shanghai at the Urban Planning Museum

Mostly though, what I did was waste huge swathes of time watching television on my sofa.

And here’s the rub. I like staying up late, and find it really really difficult to go to bed at a reasonable hour unless I have something important to get up for the following day. Work just about ranks on the ’something important’ stakes so I’m OK Sunday to Thursday, but at the weekend there’s nothing between the hours of 9am and 5pm that I’m keen enough on to warrant going to bed between the hours of 1am and broad daylight. I basically end up getting jet-lag every weekend by turning my sleep pattern upside down on Friday night, and then trying to pull it back to normal on Monday morning.

So my new plan is do find something good to do on either Saturday or Sunday morning / early afternoon. Good enough to get up for, good enough to go to bed for.

I’ve been looking through the ex-pat magazines and, whilst I’m open to suggestions, think I’ve got it nailed down to one of two things:
a Chinese Cooking Class and learning Kung Fu. Both have their pros and cons, and I suppose it really boils down to whether I want to end up fat and being able to swear in Chinese, or avenging the death of an old man.
Thoughts?