First day arrived, Oli came to pick me up, went back, unpacked, drank a bit then slept. The next morning he went to work, I explored around little bit. The serviced apartment was in Pudong so like nothing much and the nearest shopping center was 10mins walk. I bought my own lunch, set up my working station, re-arranged the house and tidied up, then dinner.
I realised they dont use cash anymore - everything was mobile payment and it was sooo inconvenient for me as a foreigner because you require a China number and bank account to have mobile payment. So Oli had to pay everything for me first.
I met Fan jie, had really good nice chinese dinner at Andaz hotel and went back to drink more lol.
That weekend we went to Wuzhen - that's in another post.
The rest of the week nothing much except working at home and heading out for dinner, super-marketing at Sam's club, eating BBQ for dinner, eating Hong Jie Chong Qing Hotpot. It was hairy crab season so we bought some crab and had crab noodles at home. It was awesome.
I finally saw my Freedom Gundam.
The weekend was Halloween, we went to hit the clubs on Friday night, met Ada in Prada, had more drinks back at home and woke up with a massive hangover the next day -_-.
I didn't want to waste the weekend so I went out to explore Lujiazui and Xintiandi, everything was almost the same but different in a way. At night we had Chong Qing hotpot again and hit the clubs with his Tokyo friend.
The following week I went out more. I found out that there was a LV pop up store at an event space and headed down because I wanted to get their tote bag. I went in there, I couldn't find anything to buy, then came out again. I walked around the area and thought this might be the only chance I can get the limited edition tote bag and went back in again.
I was served by a young lady who was educated in US, and she spoke very fluent english. She explained the whole concept of the space, showed me some significant pieces of LV items and I was so wow-ed away by her story. She talked for almost 2 hours. I decided to buy the Amsterdam city guide book ($57) and got my tote bag.
The right place at the right time.
I went to explore the Bund at night, so many new building and shops omg. That whole stretch of road changed so much.
I finally had my Xiao Yang
31 Oct Tuesday night was my last night, I cooked BKT for Oli and Fan jie for dinner and we had a great time, had drinks after. She stayed next block so after she went back she texted us saying she left her slippers here hahaha so she went out barefooted lol. More drinks, I packed in the morning and Oli ordered a didi for me to the airport.
Summary:
I went to Shanghai without any expectations. I just wanted to stay there for a while and work from there, so now I know working from overseas is possible for my job. I was opened to a lot of new experiences in Shanghai, from food to supermarkets, I was introduced to new standards of living etc.
Sometimes I do felt like I was held hostage (like I told my friends) because everything had to be done via mobile and mobile payment, so it was so difficult for me as a foreigner to know the way of living in Shanghai without all those apps. And google and all my social medias doesn't work in China -_-. The money portion is always a problem.
But overall I was glad that I was able to stay there for a while. As usual, I bought a lot of things from supermarket and Taobao to bring back home - but not enough space lol.
It took me a while to finish this post (5 months?) because I was always held up by something and there are always something new coming.
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