This is the roller skating ‘rink’ that was outside ABIE. As you can see, they’ve just set up some stuff around a corner of floor space. Business was booming on this day though.
So I already talked about this trip to Shanghai and returning, but I found a few more photos that I wanted to share, like this one of the bulls in the Shanghai sculpture garden. It’s not the most special photo in the whole world, but it’s nice and I wanted to share it.
I’ve talked about this before, but hotels in Shanghai all had robots at this point. If you order room service, you would usually find a robot delivering it. I was pretty shocked the first time it happened to me. I have tried to get the robot on video, and I have made multiple orders at hotels for the express purpose of getting the robot so I could video it, but it just never came together.
The company that made the elevators in the hotel is named Schindler. I thought that was a bit surprising.
I’ve had stomach problems my whole life. I’ve had a weak stomach and I’ve had difficulty finding medical assistance with that. Well, I’ve mentioned before that hospitals in China can be pretty terrifying. Olga recommended this hospital in Shanghai, and when I went there it felt just like hospitals in the USA. I made a preliminary visit and they scheduled me for a gastroenterology, which is terrifying but it’s also very exciting to be making headway on something that’s plagued me my whole life.
Another thing that was really nice is how well everyone at the hospital spoke English. I am okay with having to do my best working with someone when ordering food or playing a game, but when someone is planning to pump you full of drugs and then stick a camera down your throat, you want to make sure you are communicating clearly.
So, one thing I have always heard about in China is that when you stay in a hotel people will slide these little cards advertising prostitution under your door. I’ve stayed at a bunch of hotels in China, and I’ve never seen a single card like this in the hotel, but on this particular trip to Shanghai, I did see some cards thrown on the sidewalk outside the hotel where I was staying. I started to pick one up so I could take a picture of it for this blog, and then I realized that I probably didn’t want to touch the card and I probably didn’t want to be seen picking up the card. Explaining to a police officer that I just wanted to take a picture of the card for my blog would probably not fly. So how did I get the picture above? I belong to a couple of Facebook groups for foreigners. At some point, someone brothel with a VPN, or some scammer with a VPN, posted this to the group. It seems awfully bold of them, but then again, what is Facebook going to do? Call the local police? They’ll block the account but it was probably a fake account anyway. I still, to this day, have never gotten a card in my room. I don’t want to solicit the services of the card, so I’m okay with that, but I’m not okay with the fact that the cards exist and are being given out at all, because sex trafficking is a horrific practice.
Naturally, I have even more pictures of buildings I thought looked cool, that I haphazardly took out of the window of my taxi. I was always hoping I could find a way to learn more about these places, but beyond asking friends, who usually didn’t feel like being helpful in this regard, I had no way of ever figuring out what any of these places were.
And perhaps it’s a bit silly of me to think these buildings are so interesting in the first place, but a leopard never changes its spots. Look at the weird thing on top of this building and the cool bridge thing going to another building. How do you not find that interesting?
The subways in Shanghai have little dots that light up to show where you are and where you are going. Super helpful! I wish every subway in every city had this.
You know what I don’t find helpful, when two trains share a track and they describe them thusly. The words ‘first’ and ‘next,’ in this context, could be synonyms, or antonyms. It’s the sort of unclear language that I’ve come to expect when dealing with people who know little if any English and are charged with translating stuff. Also, I don’t know when else I would mention this, but in British English the first floor of a building is what Americans would call the second floor, and what Americans call the first floor the Brits call the ground floor. So that’s an example of first meaning second. Language is confusing.
We made a stop at the Shanghai Zoo, and I didn’t have time to visit a zoo on this particular trip, but I snapped this photo of the post at the subway station and made a mental note that I should check out the Shanghai Zoo because according to the pole, they might have a walrus, and I’ve always wanted to see a walrus in person.
In the interest of making blog-worthy life experiences, perhaps I should have tried the messy cod burger, but I couldn’t help but feel it was probably gross and not worth the calories. By the way, I just learned that the Chizza, which premiered in Chinese KFCs, is now available at American KFCs, so that’s surely something we were warned about in the book of revelation as one of the harbingers of the apocalypse.
Charged LBH 