Merry X - Mas !

Hey there,

I wish all of you out there a merry Christmas !!!

I hope you are having a great time with your family and friends and you can forget all the busy stuff around for a while !

All the best... :)

First trip downtown

Hey guys,

I am still alive, still fighting my way...

Okay, here are some updates from my first tour to downtown Shanghai (sorry, just some quick infos, it´s late and I am terribly tired...):

• found an original Munich Paulaner restaurant and they even sold "Glühwein", the typical German Christmas drink...but I do not think I will try that one here
• in the city, you can buy everything luxurious as non - fakes as well, the same huge stores as averywhere
• Chinese have more Christmas decoration and stuff than anybody else
• saw some narrow, old streets with lots of tiny, cheeeeeeeaaaaaap stores with all kinds of stuff
• learned that I should only take the green/blue taxis, the other ones give foreigners sightseeing tours through the whole city, even if you just want to go straight up the street
• saw a real buddhist temple, impressive
• visited the only real traditional area of the city, really beautiful
• went to a nice tea house
• saw a lot of Koi fishes
• went to a Chinese garden, the Yu Yuan Garden, totally beautiful
• had some traditional Chinese food - nothing extraordinary like dog, thank God, but delicious stuff
• went to the bond and had a view on the famous area across the Huangpu River, but it was really rainy and did not look that nice
• Visited People Square
• my conclusion: interesting city and worth visiting, but I really do not have to have that so often, too many people and I have also seen some not-so-nice-to-see things, so I will definetely not go there every weekend, as long as I do not have any visitors and will show them
• my laptop crisis still exists, but I will be able to rescue my data somehow, at least that...
• due to my sleeping bag, I am no longer freezing at night
• my personally happiest news are that at least three people will come and visit me as long as I am here so I will not be all alone the whole time, I am so much looking forward to that !!!

Alright, that must be enough for now...I will get some sleep now. Good nite.

Can it become any worse?

... alright, one more thing and I am totally freaking out.

Funny thing: the data partition on my laptop disappeared over night. No, I did not lose my mind. It is just gone. No more software (well, why should I need Word for writing my thesis anyway?). No more data (I did not like all the seminar papers I wrote the last semester anyway....and luckily I only wrote about 10 pages of my diploma thesis already...). No more music. No more....anything. Well, maybe it appears again tomorrow. Just took a day off. Whatever.

Remember the electricity going off on Monday? Happened three times last night. The first time I decided not to call a colleague for translation, just went down and looked so desperate they knew something was wrong, maybe they remembered me from the last times (water and electricity). The guy fixed it, 10 minutes later again. HA HA HA! Well, at that point I needed a translator to tell them that this happened too often! Well, then two guys had a look. Some device in my apartment must be responsible, I should please find out which one and they would fix it. They left the door to the main power station on the floor open so I could fix it on my own then. One more breakdown that night, but I could not find out what was responsible.

Woke up this morning shivering and totally cooled down. Water in the shower changed from burning hot to ice cold. Actually, I wanted to buy another blanket tonight, but I landet at a store for sports equipment. The best thing I found here so far! I bought a sleeping bag which is supposed to keep you warm till below 0°C. In combination with the other stuff, it should keep me alive now. By the way, it only costed 35 € !

And to be honest, there is still one positive thing in my apartment. The washing machine. Its a Siemens one - Chinese programs and standard, but still okay. And the only one all the others here - including Chinese people - have ever seen in China which does not only wash with cold water, but which uses actually hot water! See, I am lucky person...

Lesson of the day: Traffic

Okay, what did I learn so far?

Pray before you cross a street - it could be the last thing you ever did...
Well, a German guy told how the traffic system works: by weight. The first to go is the big truck, then a bus, a smaller truck, the regular car, motor cycles, bicycles and at the very end stands the common pedestrian. Do you think, just because you are standing in the direct way of a car - maybe because you have a green light and the cars crossing actually a red one - it has to stop? Or at least to slow down? HA HA HA! Not here... And if no car runs you over, the other pedestrians might do. For no reason, but just because you are walking or standing where they want to be, no matter how much space there is next to them. Just for no reason.

And I was out for dinner for the first time today...well...in a Brazilian restaurant...I am sure I will have enough opportunities left for Chinese food!

Finally in Shanghai

...hey everybody, I am still kind of alive!

It is now the second day in Shanghai and I am not so sure right now if I am so happy about the fact, that I will be here for 96 more days (yes guys, I am already counting them down...). Here is what has happened so far:

Sunday

• arrived at 8 am at Pudong International Airport - if you have ever the chance of taking a Chinese airline, do it, it is a funny experience!
• I was speeding with 431 km/h through Shanghai, taking the transrapid to the city
• moved into my appartment, 29th floor, with an awesome view at the city
• first shopping tour to Metro (yes, the German one), trying to buy a mobile phone: first trouble, because nobody understood that I did not want a contract but a prepaid card --> finally found a poor guy at the cashier who did not look Chinese (and therefore was speaking English) but spoke Chinese and had to help me
• next issue: there was no water running in my apartment, neither in the bathroom nor in the kitchen; unfortunately, there was again nobody speaking English --> finally found the "office" where I explained (do not ask me how...) that there was a problem in my apartment, so that one guy followed me and checked it
• the rest of the day, I was freezing my butt off in the apartment - unbelievable if you consider that I walked just in a sweater outside!

Monday

• survived first ride with the subway
• office of SAP Labs is really awesome and my colleagues are all very nice
• had chicken feet in my soup and did not see it before I had eaten half of the soup - bon apetit!
• directly went to Metro again after workto buy a small heater for my apartment - I hope that one in combination with the two airconditioners should keep me alive the next months

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• well, right now, the lights went off in my apartment and so did everything else as well...great; luckily, I am sitting in the office next to a German student - she is speaking Chinese and is living in the same house as I...

So much for the moment...take care!