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All week there has been cadet like training going on on the oval, we suspect with the new Senior 1 kids. I know we keep going on about the heat, but seriously, there could not be worse conditions to do this in. These poor kids. We have been woken every day this week by the sounds of hundreds of kids marching and yelling. And no, no, I don't mean we've been woken at the lazy hour of 10am or something...oh no, we're talking 6:30 here.
There is a lesson to be learnt from this picture, and it's not for the Chinese (as in - you don't put tomato and parsely as a garnish to chocolate cake). Oh no, the lesson is for the laowais. Never order anything in a western looking establishment, especially in Shanghai without checking the menu prices. Coffee and a glass of coke cost 60 yuan. We can eat dinner for that. The cake was free.
Oh my god! It's Hello Kitty heaven! You couldn't begin to imagine the products in this store...or the prices...but it was very amusing nonetheless.
In very exciting news...E-MART HAS OPENED!!! We checked it out today, and from what we could tell, fighting our way through the 20,000 odd people who were there, it's seriously good news! Above is the lovely man who drove us home in his little rickshaw/pedicab thing. We haven't taken these yet but for 5 yuan to get home, how could you refuse (and that was us being ripped off). We have however decided that said vehicles are never to be used at night. Above we are comfortably positioned on the footpath...things got a little more hairy as we crossed an intersection..at right angles. So yes, E-Mart has arrived and our lives have become all the easier. There is, amongst other things, a fully stocked gigantuon supermarket/department store thing along the lines of the horrifying Carrefour, which not only stocks western products but also has meat in fridges (oh the cleanliness!), wine, toiletries, and an enormous range of fruit and veg. Much also to our delight is the KFC and a Japanese Amijen Ramen (or whatever the name is) which caused unparalled happiness. I tried to take a sneaky video of the 43 checkouts (that isn't a typo) but needless to say the place is huge and absolutely CHAOTIC. I look forward to many incidences of trolley rage.
When we took Nick to our previous supermarket, we were a little disappointed as the place wasn't as jumping as normal. On the way out we spotted a bit of a crowd forming and figured we would go have a look. Well, what do you know, random snake charmer...and not just any old snakes but bags of COBRAS!!! Holy toledo! We took a pic and then departed as we weren't really wanting to hang around to see what was going to happen. Only in China would you walk a metre away from a freaking cobra at the market.
And finally, the real reason why this post is entitled "The Twilight Zone". On Monday in Shanghai we tracked down a bookshop. Whilst there we also happened upon a Japanese place and decided to sushi it up for lunch as sushi is a long lost dear friend to us. What ensued was basically a slapstick comedy put on for our amusment...or increasingly, for our frustration. Here is the classic example of Chinese "service"...and I don't just mean lost in translation type stuff here.
We sit down, order from the menu. We order: a lunch type plate thing that had an assortment of sushi, a plate of crab rolls and 2 sprites. Out comes the lunch plate, soon enough the crab rolls follow. We tuck in. No sprites arrive and we are both pretty thirsty and there wasn't any tea so we call over the waitress. Ask where are the sprites, she writes something on the dockets (when you eat here a docket of what you have ordered is left on the table and items are crossed off as they are brought to the table) and then goes and punches something into a computer.
Few minutes go by, no sprites. Call over waitress again, same thing. Writes something else then goes to the computer.
More minutes pass. In the meantime, a second plate of crab rolls arrive. We are still hungry so figure we will eat them. Call over waitress again, tell her not to bother with the sprites, we don't want them but could we please have the bill.
Bill is brought over, for pretty much double what we expected. We query this, only to get vague stares and then the waitress wanders away. Call over another waitress, get a menu, explain what we have eaten, that we didn't get the sprites etc. She prints a new bill, which is the one photographed above. So, we had 3 dishes all up, yet our bill states we had 10 dishes. Sigh. She wanders away. Another waitress arrives with another plate of crab rolls. We literally have to push her to get her to leave the table without putting the rolls down.
Call over another waitress to try and explain again that this is not our bill, because as far as we can tell, there are 6 sprites on that bill, when we only ordered two, which we never got. We decide it might be best to head to the counter at this point....which is when another waitress rocks up with a plate full of octopus tentacles! What the hell?! Stop bringing out the bloody food and sort out the bill!! She doesn't believe us either that we didn't order these and insisted they were ours.
After another 5 minutes of pointing out said dishes on the menu we finally get a sum that resemebles what lunch should have cost!
Inept. There's that word again!
