People In My Neighbourhood: wanna buy a cricket?

If you were an old man in China, you might wander up to Wuyi Lu (three blocks away) to check out the cricket vendor's latest offerings.  For anywhere from 1 RMB (17 cents), you can own a tiny pet that you keep in a tiny box designed specifically for crickets.  You can feed your cricket leaves, bring it out for a cricket walk around the neighbourhood in the morning (still in its box, sadly, not on a tiny leash), and, on Saturdays, you can bring it to a local market for the weekly cricket fights, in which one cricket emerges victorious, having ripped the limbs from all other crickets.

Finding this cricket stand explained why one of my neighbours' blue toque always seems to be cheeping.  He keeps his cricket and its cage tucked into the brim.

I dream of purchasing my own cricket and training it to play Debussy, a la Chester in The Cricket in Times Square.  But what should I NAME it?  Prize for the best cricket moniker.

Melissa visited!

Before last week, the last time I'd seen Melissa was when I was about twelve.  We went to Sunday School together at the wonderful Garneau United Church in Edmonton, the most welcoming and diverse church community I've ever known, and where Grandma played the organ. 
So.  When Grandma and Melissa's mom discovered we're both living in China, we all made short work of planning for Melissa to come up from Macau - I'll go down there when it's time for a visa run in a few months.  It was a reunion with funness of epic proportions, and between reminisces of hymnals and Christmas pageants, we tore up the town.  Art supply shopping, gallery browsing, Bund strolling, Expo adventuring, dignitary meeting, fancy dinner eating, wine sipping, trendy bar going* - two days?  No problem. 

Highlights included:

• Me getting attacked by a Japanese toilet in a very fancy art gallery (I admit I shouldn't have pressed all those buttons)

• Skipping the four-hour line to the French Expo Pavilion by flashing our Canadian passports and walking haughtily through the VIP entrance

• Narrowly missing being lit on fire along with the bar at Bar Rouge - those bartenders are showy buggers

Thanks for the good times, Melissa!  Can't wait to hit the slots in Macau.  Just kidding, Grandma.



*Cute stuff in the mail to whoever can tell me where the heck I should put dashes in that sentence.

Oh haiii, Pearl Tower

Let the Expo shenanigans begin!  That's the China pavilion behind us.

*Sip* You were saying, Minister?

 

 

Expo is culture-sensitive.

There is a Hershey's store.  And they have Reese's.  EEE!!!  *Wiping chocolate peanut butter off face*

Vino at Glamour Bar - a definite thighlight

Drumroll, please

Congrats, Carla! You totally found the voice of Mr. Too-Cool-for-Poodle, and as such are the winner of the caption contest. I shall be mailing you something weird and cute. Keep your eye on the mailbox!

Crazy busy these days with volunteering (this time for a local theatre company producing a night of one-acts); baking with my new friend Bonnie, who's started her own small business; and studying. I'm really starting to look forward to coming home this summer... anyone up for thrift shopping marathons or long, leisurely afternoons perusing the shelves of London Drugs, let me know.

Post marathon! (or, This is what lazy blogger's remorse looks like) (plus: CONTEST!)

Mmkay, today's post is a post trilogy, because I've been up to so much lately that I didn't want to squeeze it into one entry. This way, you can read in installments, catching up with my latest cooking adventure, for example, and then grabbing a coffee and going to MEC and and eating Cheerios and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and other Canadian delicacies, and remembering the next day that you can still admire the flower selection at Shanghai markets and even

enter a contest!

Whoo!

I've taken a lot of pictures since coming here last fall, but I'm pretty sure this one sums up the challenges and contradictions of life in Shanghai better than any other. Best caption wins the weirdest prize I can find, but don't worry, I'll totes consider your personality and taste. All will be mailed lovingly to your home. Have fun!

Love, Claire

And the winner is...

(winner sneakily revealed in photo, which unsneakily reveals the amount of fun I have running contests from my apartment)


Congratulations
On the excellent use of
"Undulating" - wow!

(Secretly, the word
has always made my skin crawl -
But love the haiku.)

Just send the address
To which your favourite book
Should be delivered!


Ahem. Back to the random syllables of everyday speech/text. Thank you, everyone, for your wonderfully entertaining and syllabically satisfying submissions! Maybe we'll do sonnets next time. Which would be perfect, because as you'll see tomorrow, I recently made a purchase so exciting that it deserves every manner of amorous poetry. Stay tuned!

A haiku celebration of Chinese notebooks

Hi everyone!

Hands down, one of the best things about China - and, it seems, Asian countries in general - is the plethora of adorable stationery to be had at pleasingly inexpensive prices. It's hard to express the kind of excitement generated by particularly excellent finds of the paper variety (Aunt Maureen, I know you understand), so I've resorted to that old standby, haiku. Actually, it's not my old standby. But it sure will be; I seriously feel ten times more Zen than I did twenty minutes ago. Please feel free to use your own 22 syllables to vote for your favourite book - the winner will receive it in the mail, because I love sending stuff home.


When I am depressed
The notebook store cheers me up
Zebra bums: so cute!

Gambol's so stylish
"Most outstanding achievers"
I hope they mean me

The big fat pink "M"
And the blank pages are great
Also, it has weight





I hate computers!
iPhoto won't flip these pics
Sorry they're backwards :(

Also just realized
You can't see the Gambol text
Okay, here it is:

"Gambol notebooks, made with future technology, for tomorrow's most outstanding achievers."