ISpyShanghai

Well you knew this would come didn’t you?

 

My moustache is doing my head in- it’s all itchy, ginger and generally wrong. So unless you donate some money to prostate cancer research, you don’t get to see it.

I’m sorry, but that’s the kind of world we live in these days.

Donate here

 

In spirit this is part of the Movember charity drive, although I’m cutting out the middle man and donating straight to Prostate Cancer research.

In the Yu Gardens- Shanghai’s #1 tourist spot there is a restaurant sign that says:

“Dumpling stuffed with the ovary and digestive glands of a crad” 

It’s been photographed more times than Paris Hilton’s knickers because -hey- Everybody Loves Chinglish!

I’m not so easily impressed though (”Crad“? that’s tourist stuff).
If you want the real hardcore chinglish, the next level shizzle that’ll make your eyes sizzizzle, you need to go to a Hong Kong restaurant that opened recently near the Bund.

The Chinglish in this place is so thick with meaty goodness that they should sell the menu as a souvenir at the door, along with t-shirts that say:

Why have Hamburger when you can have the Dyadic Bittern of a Tide Goose Movie? 

I was grabbing a bite there on my way to watch “Quantum of Solace”  (007/10- keep the fighting, but more Bondliness next time please) and nearly missed the start of the film because I was taking so many photos of the names of dishes.

I’m going to get the address off Emma in fact, because the food was actually really good.

In fact maybe the people behind this place are a whole level smarter than we imagine and the funny dish names are, in fact, a clever marketing ploy! Oooh psych.

Click below for my absolute favourite anyway- I don’t know how they come up with this stuff, I really don’t.

click to read on… »

Last night I worked until 5am PROTECTING YOUR AIRPORT (I’m kind of a modern-day Spiderman) so am resting at home right now.

Woken from my slumbers this morning by the intercom being rang over and over again, I picked up the little phone and asked the guy at the gate what he wanted:

Food delivery
It’s not mine
Food delivery
I didn’t order!
Food delivery
But I didn’t..!

No matter, the security guard helpfully buzzed him in.

As the elevator made its way up to my floor my mind was racing:

Why aren’t Chinese security guards forced to watch “Leon” in basic training?
Can I physically overpower a 15 year old manchild in my dressing gown?
If I manager to batter him to death and throw him down the stairwell (oh that’s right, I know some moves!) will he actually have food in his bag? Would it be wrong to eat it?

Turns out he had the wrong address, and now I’m really hungry.

 
click to read on… »

How does this image make you feel?

 

I mean honestly, deep down.

How does it make you feel? 

I’m sorry you had to see that. If I was you, I wouldn’t look at this idiot wearing Crocs either.

Around this time of year in Her Majesty’s Perfect United Kingdom Of Britain we remember people who died in World War I and the follow-up: World War II. 

November 11th is Remembrance Day and on the 11th hour (of the 11th day of the 11th month) there is often a minute’s silence to commemorate the dead in shops and offices back home.

Around that time every year, many many people buy red paper poppies to wear on their lapel. If there are any TV presenters that still aren’t wearing a poppy by November 8th- the BBC can expect to get hundreds of angry phone calls complaining about a lack of respect and why we should bring back hanging.

 Why poppies you ask? Because on some of the battlefields in Flanders, poppies grew after fighting stopped and some guy wrote a poem about it:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
“In Flanders Fields” 
 Lt.-Col. John McCrae

 

And now people in Shanghai can join the fun- Marks & Spencers (West Nanjing Road, be careful on the escalator) is selling Poppies!

So far I’ve only seen one person actually wearing a poppy here- it looked very smart but I can tell you- his character is not my favourite.

movember.com

Clever software people (like me, but presumably without a job or girlfriend) have hacked the software on lots of different Canon compact cameras. They’ve come up with new code to run which lets you play games, shoot RAW photos (don’t ask, it’s geeky) and…..shoot timelapse photography! 

So where I used to use a setup like this: 

 

I can now use one like this:

To make videos like this (sorry about the darts being in the way):

Did you spot

• Our resident American waving an American flag?
• A canoodling couple?
• WoAiZhongGuo in a suit?

If you’ve got a Canon camera (like my Ixus 50 / SD400), the hacked software is called CHDK.
Basic info about it is here. Lots of technical help here and the timelapse script I’m using is this one.

The Science & Technology Museum subway station (Line 2) is mainly famous for its giant fake market. This is where tourists go to enjoy the whole “What price you want to pay?” dance with vendors selling “tribute” watches, fake handbags, dodgy luggage, snide golf clubs, dubious drinking straws, knock-off baby lotion etc. etc.

The Shanghainese walk straight through all of this nonsense and take their kids to the huge Science & Tecnology museum just across the courtyard.

At least 4 stories high with way way too much to see in the few hours I was there. Intellectually the museum is geared towards kids (the Natural History section is all roaring Lions and Spider exhibitions) but what the hell- I’m 30 years old, I’m done with learning new stuff anyway.

 

 

The first stop was the E-Arts (like normal art, but it needs a plug) exhibition called eLandscapes which was full of 360 degree projections onto domes with people wearing polarised glasses for that 3D experience. Amazing, amazing stuff that’s hard to describe (and harder to photograph), I didn’t realise that techonology had come this far to be honest.

 

Next up “The World Of Robotics”- which wasn’t exactly as up-to-date.

I was hoping that the whole section would be staffed by automatons who could arm-wrestle, quote 12th century persian poetry and then fly me to the gift shop.

Instead I watched a robotic arm sketch a bored child’s portrait for 20 minutes.  Tokyo in the year 2012 it was not.

The main attraction of the whole place though is the Imax cinema- of which they seem to have 4. The one we picked was showing a Pirates film where Leslie Nielsen and Eric Idle fall into various booby 3D booby traps as your chair vibrates and water drops from the ceiling.

 

The “Pirates 4D” movie was funny, scary and something an 8 year old boy would talk about for the next five months. Mandarin-only, but you don’t need subtitles when 3D bees are appearing in front of your eyes and stinging the chair.

eLandscapes Festival - Free
Science & Technology Museum entrance (adults) - 60RMB
Pirates 4D Movie - 40RMB
Dodgy “Cariter” watch- “I give you good price, look-a! Look-a!”