ISpyShanghai

<cue Shoe Tuesday music>

So Emma’s gotten herself a new job, and to celebrate she went to M&S and bought some new gear for work.

One of the things she bought was a new handbag…

 (note: apparently it’s not cool to buy handbags from M&S, but if Em doesn’t want her dark fashion secrets splashed all over the internets, she really has to take out some sort of restraining order).

Just an ordinary bag?

I don’t have an eye for such things but it seems like a nice enough bag to me.

Why, though, did Emma giggily inform me that it got a “Standing ovation*“  from a group of Chinese women she showed it to in an elevator yesterday?

Answer after the break.

*a standing ovation has slightly less impact when the audience is already standing, but let’s play along OK?

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Since I’m inevitably sliding away from film and into digital, and the smallest available memory cards now being 4 Gigabytes apparently (I remember when my computer only had 48Kb), I’ve got a lot of photos that I don’t post.

Including some photos that illustrate what a couple of you have been mentioning in the comments. First up:

If I remember rightly the glass covered hole looking down is way smaller the atrium itself, you know … so you are looking down from close to the centre and you see a spiral as the balconies have these sort of indented parts that are staggered.

Andy

It's a long way down

you’re not wrong Andy- here’s the spiral in question. I’m not a big fan of this kind of sheer drop, if there wasn’t a piece of perspex in the way I’d have lost my camera and lunch.

The bit at the bottom is where you check-in to the world’s second highest hotel (beaten by the new boy next door), the circles are the guest room floors.

By the way it costs around 2,500RMB a night to stay in the Hyatt in the Jin Mao, and around 3,600RMB a night to stay in the Hyatt in the SWFC. (Alternatively, I’ll let you have the broken bed in my spare room for 2 bottles of Tsing Tao and a copy of Viz). 

Next up, our old good friend WoAi who says

That park [People's Park] is packed with older people trying to find husbands and wives for their younger relatives every weekend.

WoAi

Shopping for love

CV for a BF

He’s right you know- every weekend there are people trying to pimp out their grandkids, kids and clients. Full translation of the advert above here, and to read what I already wrote about this here market, try here.

(btw I think it’s polite if we assume that WoAi hasn’t been trawling the trees himself, and instead just happened to notice the signs as he strolled from one designer boutique to the next)

Any other photo requests?

She’s been wanting to do it for ever and last weekend Emma finally managed to take me up the Jin Mao tower.

Jin Mao 1 - SWFC 0

The Jin Mao is a very tall building- 88 floors from toe to tip, and has been a favourite spot for tourists for years who go to marvel at the Highest Post Office In The World at the top (relax though, it’s just a little counter with some woman selling post cards), the views onto the city below (better views from the bar at the Shangri-La I reckon, but it’s a matter of taste).

Recently the Jin Mao has been eclipsed by Sheffield Wednesday FC (AKA the Shanghai World Financial Centre)- with queues aroudn the block of the new boy, and hardly anyone bothering with its next door neighbour. Ah how fickle the people can be. 

Admittedly the SWFC is slightly taller, and has a glass floor at the top which sounds pretty cool/scary (I once spent 15 minutes stood next to the glass floor of the CN tower in Toronto, building up the courage to stand on it, whilst schoolchildren lay face down and hammered the glass with their sticky fists). Compared to the elegant art deco design of the Jin Mao however, the SWFC is just a square, ugly, bottle-opener-looking freak of a building.

So chose class over glass I say, the Jin Mao is still Shanghai’s number 1 skyscraper in my book. And not just because it costs less than half the price to get in.

Not exactly full Marks

So I went to M&S in Shanghai at the weekend and am not sure which I found most shocking: the complete lack of Chocolate Digestive biscuits on the shelves, or the fact that this white guy was carrying his woman’s handbag.

The situation was worse than this picture shows- he was also humping round all of his lady’s damn shopping bags in the other hand.

UNACCEPTABLE!

ACTIVATE THE HUMAN FLESH SEARCH ENGINES!!

<cue Shoe Tuesday music>

On my recent trip to the UK to visit my brother’s new youngling I didn’t go empty handed.

Me making the blanket

I took him a full loaf of gingerbread, a coupon for 20p off Cranberry Juice, and a handmade patchwork blanket.

To be fair, 75% of the work on the blanket (OK, OK, 95%!) was done by Emma- I just cut out a couple of things and drew a few lines on the material before exploding into a fit of rage

(have you ever tried to draw a 75cm straight line, on a piece of cotton which keeps stretching and moving around? With an HB pencil? Whilst kneeling on a wooden floor? With a hangover? It’s not as fun as it sounds).

Still though, I’m happy to stake whatever claim I can to the finished product- it’s a little smasher.

Have a look here if you don’t believe me.

One thing that we should mention here though, is that what is good for babies is not necessarily good for adults. Peeing on your parents, drinking milk straight from the *cough* tap, and lying around on the carpet grabbing your toes are all fine when you’re a baby- but try it on your 18th birthday and you’ll get in trouble.

Similarly, all-in-one cotton romper suits, hats with teddy bear ears and (really, I cannot stress this enough) knitted boots may be cute on infants, but they are never, ever a good look for adults.

Knitted boots

Spotted (but presumably not bought) by Andy Best at Metro Town Mall, Zhongshan Park.

Are you new to Shoe Tuesday?
Do you find it slightly odd?
Do you wonder how it all started?
Are you avoiding doing some work?

Then catch up now with Every Shoe Tuesday Ever!

Blanket.jpg

Serious post today, normal service resumed tomorrow.

Richard Massey was born in Doncaster and went to the same school as me. He was two years older so I didn’t know him that well at home, but we both ended up in Manchester and after a chance meeting just before I graduated University, he got me an interview at the company where he was working.

I passed the interview and started at the same company, was looking for a place to live and ended up moving in with Richard.

For the next few years we hung out all of the time- working, living, drinking, and laughing together as he helped me change from being a student with no money to a young professional with no money. Richard was wicked fun to be around, singing at the top of his voice and pipping the horn to the music as we drove home on Friday night, making batches of Vodka Red Bull before we went out, and getting into trouble around town before crashing into a guilty health-binge of homemade soup and half-full cigarette packets in the bin on Sunday.

It was Richard who started me off on the whole travelling-for-work business- he had already spent new year’s eve in Hong Kong and a night in a Hungarian jail before I even started at the company.
Current workmates have still got plenty of stories about Massey 6 years after he left the firm.

After working in Manchester, Richard moved to another company, lived in Ascot for a while and was then sent to NYC.

New York was the dream posting for Richard- he had a huge company apartment near Wall Street / Ground Zero with a view of the Statue of Liberty, and the whole of Manhattan on his doorstep. When I visited in November 2003 he was having a blast; big nights out with great new workmates, using his English accent to try and charm the local ladies (although he confessed “It’s no good though James, they can smell the Donny on me”).

Unfortunately in the few weeks between the end of that trip and his planned visit to England for Christmas 2002, something went wrong.

Richard Massey went missing from NYC on December 19th 2002 (another link).

On Friday night, I got a call from home to say that the 6 year search for Richard was over, and the family had found his body.

I have no idea how his family must be feeling right now, I wouldn’t wish the 6 years they’ve been through on anyone- hopefully after bringing Richard back home they can get some kind of peace.

Not knowing what happened to one of the best friends I’ve ever had has been horrible, I still don’t know anything other than that he’s been found and is being brought home. It will be good to be able to talk about someone that I really looked up to with other people who knew and loved him, before this no-one really knew what they should or could say about someone who could come back into our lives as quickly as he disappeared.

Now I guess we can remember him.

Relax ladies, it’s stink proof!