Day 2 - Sept 30

Jetlag woke Alex up at 3am. He started endless lines of questions that kep Andy up and finally woke all of us. Being hungry while the rest of the household is still asleep, we decided to venture out on our own for breakfast around 6:00am...

There are lots of senior citizens exercising in the common areas of the complex, on the side walks of streets, just about every corner. Some of them line up by the dozens and follow one leader, others are on their own. Some group is doing the typical Tai Ji Quan and others are waving around wooden swords or even doing latin dance. Yes you heard me right. They were dancing in the street to mamba and samba...

The traffic on the streets are still light. Most stores are not open yet. The air has the familar sweet scent from the Huang Pu river's water. I can always taste the fragrance even in their faucet water here. Although the water here is harder than I remembered. My hands feel reall beat to wash in it for long. It's a good thing I don't have to do dishes here. The house keepter/cook comes daily and takes care of all the cleanning, gorcery purchases, cooking and laundry. I always have to get used to the fact that someone else is busy doing all these while I'm just sitting around chatting or watching TV. I never have this kind of break in the States. So I have to keep reminding myself that she is paid to do this. But I digress.

Comparing to 2001, there are many more new stores on the streets near where my parents live. They reminds me of Taipei and Tokyo streets with all the advertising posted in the display windows showing all the too-familiar brands' logos except with Chinese names. There are Sprite mascot painted buses, Danon yogurt in the corner convenient stores, P&G shampoo/conditioner products lined shelves, Herbal Essence, Vidal Sasson, Johnson & Johnson...the list can go on and on...

The area on Xian Xia (仙霞) Rd. is known as the little Taiwan of Shanghai. However, the latest shopping center is actually named "Los Angeles" where they copied the format of a typical L.A. Chinese center where stores and shops lined up in a semi-circle with parking lot in front center of the center. Aside from the smaller scale parking lot, the rest quite resembles the center we see on Valley blvd. of San Gabriel area of L.A.

We found a local street vendors who make bao-zi and pot stickers fresh in the morning whee hours. The pot stickers are sooo good, Alex must have ate 5 of them before we got home. However, I'm sure there are plenty of animal fats or grease used in it.

===============================================================

The first order of business on my agenda, planned out by my mother, is to hit her favorite salon to get a hair cut. Me being me and working at Siebel, have not visited my barber for the last 3-4 months. I'm due for a cut no matter which way you look at it. So I went. Her hair dresser is a young man in his mid-twenties. He is extremely thin, too thin to be a male fashion model. His thinness made his long slender fingers look even more extreme and un-natural. But those fingers must do great with sorting hairs. Both of my parents go there always once a week. Since it's so cheap to get your hair wasthed and blown dry, prepped for RMB10, they use their service just for that once a week even when they don't need a cut. However the girl who washes their hair and the hair dresser really don't know much about my parents. According to them, I'm a chatter box compared to my folks. I guess I am an open-book to them. I know this is something my mother would advice me against. "Keep things to yourself." She always say, "Don't tell people everything." She is always on the defense. I don't blame her being so. I don't think I can survive as well here as she did. But I enjoy chatting with them. They're also insterested in asking me all kinds of questions once they found out that I'm visiting from America. There are silly conversations ranging from 'why air planes now-a-days really could flight all the way across Pacific without having to stop half way' and 'America's aircraft carriers lingers near China not because the fighter jets cannot make it across in one flight' to 'how astronomical the amount of money an average software engineer makes in California vs how much of that money can really be saved...'

If you're wonderring what I did to my hair, you will have to wait for my latest picture posting... :)