You know that song by Albert Hammond, “It Never Rains in Southern California”? Peak at number 5 of the Billboard Top 100 in 1972? No? Well, I think the same can be said about Shanghai. “It never rains in [Shanghai], but girl don’t they warn ya. It pours, man it pours.” Cheesy, I know, but I guess the same can be said about any top 10 singles released in 1972. I’m just generalising here. I can’t name any other single released in 1972. The only reason I know this is because I just wiki-ed the song before typing all of this up.
ANYWAYS, the point of all that was to say that it rained today. A lot. I even bought another umbrella. Well, the 15 yuan umbrella I bought from the old lady on the side of the road was a horrible umbrella. Not only did it turn inside out with the slightest bit of wind, it turned inside out when I was in my hotel room trying to open the poor thing. So I looked out of my window this morning as I was leaving the hotel and the skies were blue so I decided against bringing the waste-of-15-yuan out. I’m not quite anal enough about my skin to carry around an umbrella to shield me from the sun (my 50 spf sunscreen will do just fine thank you). I ended up investing in a 50 yuan umbrella at City Super (my love) at the new IFC mall (my other love). Pretty good idea considering it started pouring with rain as soon as I started my 20 minute walk back to the hotel from the metro station.
That said, I’ve achieved a lot today. I put money down to “ding” a flat (the landlord agreed to the 6-month let), I then opened a bank account with the Bank of China (some confusion about my ethnicity here), I then went to the Bund and did some sightseeing. Though I went through the god awful sightseeing tunnel (I don’t recommend this). Basically gave some weird 4 minute light show with a commentary in English and Chinese about random things (I think at one point the guy said “HOT MAGMA”, and at another he said “SOMEWHERE BETWEEN HELL AND PARADISE (evil laughter)”).
ridiculous. and for 55 yuan! should've bought another umbrella instead.
Not wanting to go through that again, I refused to leave Pudong by the same method. Instead I found my way into a new Shanghai version of my FAVOURITE mall in HK, IFC Mall (thank you Sun Hung Kai Properties for actively taking over the world). It’s not quite open yet, but I was very pleased to see that my favourite extortionately priced Japanese supermarket, City Super, was open and fully stocked with random shit (I wouldn’t have it any other way).
But the day didn’t end on a high note because of the rain. Ugh.
Before the rain...
I’m not too sure what I’m going to do tomorrow.
