Wednesday 20 October 2010

Shanghai daily life

Definitelly I know now that big city life is not my life. Well, big city maybe yes, but definitelly not huge, enormous metropolis like Beijing or Shanghai. It is far too much. I hate crowds and as I get into the crowd I want to run away.
City like Warsaw, Munich, Zurich is still ok, I guess I could also live in London, but that seems like upper limit.
I hate it that you cannot go as fast as you want but you have to follow the crowd, it takes ages to transfer from one subway line to another, and what´s more sometimes you have to wait at the platform until you manage to squeye into one of the carriages (Beijing experience).
Maybe Shanghai is now even more crowded because of the Expo, which is also crowded and honestly I wonder how all those ppl are patient enough to wait in those long lines to get into pavillions. I was picking only pavillions with short lines (about 20 mins waitiing, what was a lot already) like Mexico - really nice one and interresting, showing culture, backgroungs, history; Chile - I really did not see connection between their display and country itself; South and Central America Countries - not much to be seen and Poland - line was longer, but I desperately wanted to see it and eat some Pierogi (very popular pilish dish).
Pavilion was nicely done, but I was not amazed.

Expo
Expo
Expo, Mexico
Expo, Mexico

Yesterday I went to Suzhou, according to Marco Polo, the "Venice of the Orient" or "Venice of the East". Indeed one very beautiful line along the canal with small bridges, romantic caffes and art galeries lightened with red lampions.
It is also city of gardens (but not gardens as we know them - grass trees and flowers, they have man-made hills, pagodas, kiosks, pavilions, and water-features, all gathered together in a relatively compact area) and silk.
Funny thing when I arrived there, I did not know where to go to get into the city. But I´ve spoted european elderly couple and asked them. Finally we´ve taken cab to share to drive us into the city. When I wanted to give them money they´ve declined mentioning, that when they were students they also did not have too much money :-). How nice.
Wandering through the city I´ve entered small park, where in the middle there was dancing. I waa regreting so much that I was there on my own. Otherwise I´d definitelly be dancing there.

Dancing in park
Master-of-Nets Garden
Canal
Where are the owners?
Along the canal
Canal
Canal

I was terrified when I saw that my jeans are so torn, that they will not survive next laundry. I was terrified even more, whet I´ve realised how small chinese women are and how difficut it´ll be to get trousers here. But luckily I´ve found some in Esprit (I had to take the biggest size they had, of course). Maybe not the cheapest choice, but it did not matter too much. So my mission which I was convinced is lost even before it started was actually successful. The same as my waxing mission.
I went to Dragonfly and I must admit that they had really good service. So money paid was worth it. What surprised me, was how they did armpits. Not with regular wax, but with some pink, strawberry smelling silikon like substance. It was warm when she was covering my armpits with it and when it was cooling down it was getitng more hard. But it has worked very well.

I have one more mission today - Hong Kong tickets mission. I´m affriaid it can be a problem.....

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