Saturday at Ikea

When I moved to Shanghai on an 18 month work assignment in early 2008, I rented a furnished apartment in the Xintiandi area.

I soon realized that I needed to get some additional stuff and decided that the big new Ikea near the Indoor Stadium would have what I required.

So I went there one Saturday to do some shopping.

I was very surprised to see that in China, well at least in Shanghai anyway, a visit to Ikea appears to be more of a social event and a day out, rather than a trip to the shops…

Relaxing with friends....

People seemed to be enamored with the “Ikea ambiance” and were settled in for the day – relaxing on the various lounge settings as if they were at home.

I tried my best to sneak some photos so that I would be able to illustrate this post, but it was not easy as they clearly did not like being disturbed.

I felt somewhat like a dinner party guest who had overstayed his welcome!

Then I thought that if this was what it was like in the lounge furniture & fittings area, what was happening round in the bedroom furniture section….

I'm worn out....

Sure enough, people were stretched out half asleep on the beds and several looked like they were having a nice nap, oblivious to the throngs of people passing by.

I did my best to sneak some shots of the sleepers, but my paparazzi skills are not what they should be and I failed miserably…

I promise to try harder next time!

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Don

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Feral scooterists

We heard the first one before we saw it! Sounded kind of somewhere in between a chain saw and a garden whipper-snipper and my first reaction was it was that either it was some kind of joke, or maybe an Indonesian version of the Mad Max movies was being shot nearby.

Vespa scooters are iconic in their own idiosyncratic way, and there are so many of them in Indonesia that look as natural there as they would on the streets of Rome.

But the feral version is not the type Audrey Hepburn would ride.

Ubud Scooter Rally

Indonesian creativity - Vespa style

Anybody who has spent any time in Indonesia will be well aware of the people’s ability to make the most of what they have. On my travels through the archipelago I have seen many examples of mechanical contraptions crafted from a variety of parts salvaged from the scrap yard, but the feral Vespa’s are in a class of their own.

The basic theme for the ferals seemed to be create the weirdest form of two & three (or more…) wheeled transport possible, load it with as many “scooterists” that can squeeze aboard and then ride it from as far away as possible to attend the rally in Ubud.

Scooterists

An Indonesian feral scooterist appears to be a cross between a hippie, a bikie and a rastafarian. Age does not seem to be a barrier as the oldest scooterist I spoke to was 71 year old Rusno who together his mate, 65 year old Kohir, Rusno had ridden their feral Vespas from Balikpapan in Kalimantan!

A distance as the crow flies of 800km, but involving some rough roads in Borneo & crossing the Java Sea by ferry – truly a journey not for the feint at heart….

Feral scooterists

Wandering round the football field and talking to the scooterists was an interesting experience, because despite the wild look of the ferals, they all responded to my request to take photographs politely & positively and seemed to relish the attention.

Check out the full Feral Scooter Image Gallery on this link

of mine, Scott Breeding, out from our company’s headquarters in the USA. Scott is quite a character – well read & traveled with a real passion for what he does and a seemingly endless stream of great one-liners. It was a great three weeks and we got a lot done, but my liver was greatly relieved when he finally left….

I showed Scott how to ride the Shanghai Metro (http://www.exploreshanghai.com/metro/) and he used it almost daily to get about – as I do myself. However in his second week he witnessed something special which motivated him to compose the following, which I thought I should share:

scott-breeding1“I’ve been in Asia about a month, and in here in China for almost 10 days.  Since I got to Shanghai, everyday I ride the subway to work.  Because of the unbelievable traffic, at rush hour the train is much faster than a taxi…cost makes no difference…train cost about a buck, the taxi ride about 10.  The train takes about an hour, but cabs take twice as long.  I have to change lines half way there which is an adventure.  I’m usually the only foreigner on the train, but nobody bothers me.
Almost nobody speaks any English at all.  Most ignore me completely, but some of the older passengers stare…like I’m from another world.  I read the China Daily and carefully try to appear completely absorbed in the odd ways the official media spins the news.  It’s always very quiet…the universal big city attitude of studied indifference.  No joking, no music…seemingly very civil.   But tonight on the way home, I witnessed one of the most disturbing events I’ve ever seen.
First, people in Shanghai dress very well..much more stylishly than a comparable city in the US.  The trains are all new, fast and hyper clean…no graffiti anywhere.  Very few cops anywhere to be seen, although crime is not uncommon.   Pickpockets and grab-and-run purse snatchers are out there…not as bad as Rio, but still out there if you’re not careful.  Service in the hotels for Westerners is barely just

ok…even though they are trying really hard.

The people are just naturally aggressive and not at all gracious…very used to fighting for everything they have.  The guttural, tonal language is amazing to listen to…very odd the way speakers have to modulate the volume and pitch to make the words have their intended meaning.  It’s facinatin

g how a Chinese speaker can talk so mildly to me in English but take on a completely different personality when they start speaking Chinese to one another.

Tonight the train was crowded…not insanely so, as some nights are…just packed.  We pull into one of the two dozens stops on the way home, and a  woman just next to wear I’m standing gets up from her seat to get off the train.  Two young well dressed professional women rush for the prize.  This is the usual scene…you don’t ever want to get between a Chinese subway rider and an empty seat.  Oneelbows the other and slides quickly into the seat, but the other doesn’t like losing out.  She starts to speak harshly (relatively) to the other woman, who then yells back.  The still standing women then attacks the other…I mean hair pulling, hitting, kicking…the other viciously fights back.  This is pretty odd, but it gets weirder.  Nobody does anything…the woman sitting next to the battle just watches. Nobody even says anything…not a word.  The car is completely quiet except for the heavy breathing and occasional bitter words from the combatants.

And it goes on…3 or 4 minutes to the next stop…fighting the whole way.  They’re getting tired and winded…they end up in a clinch, panting.  Hands full of hair…getting in a blow when they can.  Next stop…doors open, people get on and off….doors close we’re speeding up and they’re still fighting.  A little rested now, the standing girl finally able to wound the other who’s now bleeding form a scratch on her face.  Nobody says anything…the battle continues.  We slow for the next station…doors open, close…the train speeds up and still they fight in the little space they have…most fellow passengers watch impassively, the others ignore them.

Finally…finally…the train stops and the still standing woman breaks from the clutch and staggers off the train.  The other leaps up and goes to the door to shout after her.  Here’s the odd thing…nobody takes her seat.
I want to go home.”

The general rule of thumb when visiting PNG is to get through Port Moresby as quickly as possible and on to your final destination. There is not much to see in the national capital and accommodation, which was always expensive, now borders on plain extortion…

So, unless you intend to go by boat, this means you have to fly and pass a few hours in the domestic terminal.

Internal air travel can be unreliable & the main carrier Air Nuigini  (www.airniugini.com.pg) seems to suffer a disproprtionate amount of flight delays & cancellations, although in fairness my last two trips have happened without a single issue.

But I have spent many an hour waiting for delayed flights in the domestic terminal and this is the reason I have developed somewhat of an aversion for the place…

So it is with great delight that I am able to bring you the exciting news that cafe society has arrived with a bang at the domestic terminal!

No longer do you have to choose between hunger or a dodgy meat pie and Nescafe at five in the morning as you wait for your early morning departure.

You can now select a capuccino or latte to accompany your half decent sandwich as you wait for your flight to be called.

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is one of my favorite places – it has some fantastic diving and an amazingly diverse & incredibly rich interior. However the country is very much in the developing nation category and is likely to be so for a long time to come given it’s strong tribal nature, poor administration, endemic corruption and minimal infrastructure. But it really is one of the last frontiers and a fascinating place to visit, once you have got through Port Moresby that is!

Moresby has a pretty bad reputation, principally because of the random and occasionally very brutal nature of the rascal gang attacks. The basic problem is a general lack of employment opportunities in the country, so Port Moresby tends to attract people from far & wide as it’s the seat of the national government and it’s administration that soaks up a hugely disproportionate amount of the national revenue.

Unfortunately people don’t find the pot of gold they are looking for and with an unemployment rate of around 60%, they turn to petty crime.Tales of car jacking, rape and the occasional murder make the situation seem pretty grim, and the “dim-dims” & wealthy locals are relatively easy targets – so all the hotels, businesses & housing compounds have high walls with razor wire.

The biggest growth industry was security guards until “big oil” came to town chasing the large reserves of natural gas in the highlands area to the northwest of Port Moresby.

When you talk to expats who live in Moresby however, you get a slightly different perspective and although they can all relate stories of near misses or people they know who have been attacked, they all seem to get on with life regardless and so I wondered if it’s really as bad as it seems?

Apparently the violence is a lot more serious for the locals than it is for the expats, because the expats who are held up or robbed are rarely harmed – just hand over what you have and that’s it.

Whereas with the locals serious violence is usually associated with the robbery – the reality being that if you rob an expat and don’t harm them, no serious follow up occurs by the Port Moresby police. But if the raskol hurts an expat, then the police have to be seen to do something.

The locals however get no help from the police….

I arrived in Moresby on Sunday on my way to Tufi (www.tufidive.com) where I will be based for the next three weeks as I commence a book project with the resort there – check out my diving blog for more information if you are interested in diving

As the flight to Tufi was early on Monday morning I had to stay overnight in Moresby and had booked a room at the Ela Beach hotel, near the downtown area. I felt I should at least have a walk around and see the beach but had been warned about carrying anything of value, as it could be the catalyst from an encounter with a rascal….

So after leaving my watch, wallet and DSLR in my room I headed off with my point & shoot camera to see if I could survive a walk along the beach!

Rascals, or raskols as they are called locally(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raskol_gangs) , operate from the squatter settlement camps such as “six mile” near the international airport. But they don’t walk round with a sign on their backs indicating their profession, so to the untrained eye it seems that everybody is a potential rascal.

The thing that always strikes me about Port Moresby is the way that people seem to sit about everywhere. I noticed this on my first trips to PNG, which had been organized so that we would arrive soon after lunch and catch the onward domestic flight in the afternoon.

However this required a short walk from the international terminal to the domestic terminal, much of which appeared to be lined with potential rascals sat about watching the dim- dims and their expensive camera bags!

In actual fact I have never had a single problem either at the airport or when I have had to stay over in Moresby, but then again I had never left the safety of the hotel…. then when I was here three months ago, in transit to Milne Bay, I was taken out for a meal in the downtown area and was surprised at how normal everything seemed to be, apart from the security guards outside the restaurant.

Walking along Ela Beach did feel a bit scary, mainly I think because people look at you, rather than completely ignore you if you were doing the same at Sydney’s Bondi Beach!

The attention adds to the tension (paranoia?) and 45 minutes later I am back at the hotel feeling like I have survived a close encounter with the Taliban!

Conclusion:Well I have to say that Port Moresby is not my favorite place, particularly now that hotel rates have gone from ridiculously expensive to downright extortion. But was I actually threatened or really scared, no…. but that is not to say that something could not happen but leads to the general conclusion that a little caution goes a long way!

When I first came to China on business about 6 years ago, like most first-timers, I was somewhat startled by what is eaten by the Chinese…. it seemed that anything & everything could go into the enormous variety of food dishes available here.

I later learned that there is a local saying that the Chinese eat anything with legs on, except the tables & chairs…

I met up with a friend the other night in Beijing and over dinner we ended up discussing the Chinese preferences in their meat, fish & poultry dishes and it became very clear that what would end up in petfood in the west is considered by many here to be the very best parts of the meat.

To prove this to me, the next day he took me to the eastern suburbs market - a huge sprawling area where it appears to be possible to buy everything that is available in China…. but we were not looking for army surplus boots or pots & pans, the meat & fish area was our designated target.

Well… I can tell you that it’s not a place for the faint hearted or vegans!

Literally every part of a pig, sheep, cow or bull seems to be available and my visit started with an encounter with the pork area where I was confronted with a very discerning shopper selecting a large quantity of pig’s intestines.

A little further down the aisle was the not so little piggy who went to market and never came back…

Apparently roast pig’s head was very popular a few years ago and there were a number of restaurants in Beijing that specialized in serving it.

Before moving on my friend tastefully positioned another nearby pig’s head so that I could take a posthumous portrait.

Prior to entering the beef area I paused to admire a fine collection of pig’s tongues – another highly sought after delicacy.

The beef area had a range of meat cuts and cow & bull organs and appendages, the first to catch my eye being a pleasing array of freshly skinned tails.

The next culinary ingredient surprise was the bull’s penis area….

I am assured that a soup made from this delicacy is not only delicious but just the job for a flagging male libido and, in the rare event that it did not do the trick, fried or grilled bull’s penis is guaranteed!

As you can see the bull’s penis specialist was delighted to show me his selection….

From the beef area we entered the lamb & mutton area and were greeted by a brace of sheep’s heads complete with their full compliment of brain matter….

Next was the poultry area and the interesting fact that chicken feet are the more highly prized part of a chicken and fetch a much higher price than the breast or leg.

This is apparently  because most Chinese believe the taste of the feet is much better than the rest of the chicken and there is a strong belief amongst Chinese women that eating chicken feet will make their skin smoother & nicer!

However, I have since been corrected (thanks Eileen…) that it’s a delicacy because of the way it’s cooked, with the texture working well with chilli black bean sauce. 

The fish market area has  a large array of fresh & sea-water fish and it was very interesting to see how the fish-heads are more highly sought after than the fish bodies and apparently fetch a 40% premium.

There was an unusual assortment of fish internal parts that I neither recognised or, at that point suffering from organ & appendage overload, cared to ask about….

 The cold weather has brought out a new variant of the well known Shanghai pajama – a heavy duty, lightly quilted winter version! I was quite taken aback when I had my first sighting while wandering around the old part of the town near where I live.

I was even more surprised when I realized that the winter version could also be used as part of a tag team when popping out for some groceries from the market!

So you can imagine my amazement when later the same day I saw a very dapper individual using a very nice pair of tartan blue winter pajamas as part of his routine to engage with the opposite sex!

And I was simply speechless when it appeared to work!

Maybe I should buy a pair….or two!

Every time I get in a cab in Sydney I get an irrestable urge to talk to this new breed of driver, because they nearly always have a story to tell and it’s often about how they made the journey from their home country to Australia. It always impresses me how they have just got on with what they had to do in the face of often daunting challenges.

In Shanghai however, the luxury of a conversation is not one that I have been able to enjoy because of my inability to speak Mandarin…. so I have taken to reflecting on the lot of the city’s taxi drivers as we weave through the streets, swapping lanes with gay abandon! 

First of all it has to be said that it’s a tough gig and certainly not for the feint at heart – driving in Shanghai (or anywhere else in China for that matter) is more of a blood sport than a pastime and my first journeys in the standard VW Santana taxi were spent worrying whether I would have all my limbs at the end of the journey.

However, not only do Shanghai’s taxi drivers take all this in their stride, they are also generally very helpful and also very trustworthy – twice I have left my phone in the taxi and got it back by having somebody call the taxi company to patch us through to the driver.

That said, it would appear there is more than just the inherent danger of driving the roads of Shanghai associated with being a taxi driver, because all the taxis have a protective plexiglass shield around the driver and a chrome guard rail. All of which combines to give the cramped interior of the VW Santana a less than homely feel about it….

The thing that really impresses me about Shanghai taxis, is that you can pay for your fare with your metro pass.

Shanghai’s metro is first class and I use it most of the time, but if where I am going is not on a metro line then it’s time to brave the traffic and get a taxi. The same electronic pass that is used in the metro can be used in every taxi in Shanghai – you simply put your pass on top of the dashboard meter and the fare is automatically deducted.

How easy is that!

Shanghai is without doubt the most dynamic & cosmopolitan city in China. Its exotic reputation as the “pearl of the orient”, was gained in 19th century, when at one point there were over 60,000 foreign residents living there.  It was known as a place to get rich quickly and was built on the back of the opium, silk and tea trade, but it had a dark side of slavery, poverty and diabolic working conditions for the “have-nots” which led to the formation of the communist party in a house literally located just down the road from where I rent an apartment. Today Shanghai is the epitome of modern China – bustling & busy, full of confidence and hell bent on making money.

So what is it with the pajamas?

Pajamas appear to be to the people of Shanghai what tracky-dacks are to Aussies, shell-suits & football shirts are to Brits and socks AND sandals are to Germans…. Basically a badge of honor worn in the face of all normal conventions of style, taste and decency!

I must be honest and state that there is a hospital just down the road from where I live and so I see more than my fair share of pajama clad perambulators, but other expats I have discussed this phenomenon with confirm it is quite normal to see their neighbors strolling about in the street in their pajamas. This is particularly so at the weekend where the slept in pajama seems to be the leisure wear of choice amongst the Shanghai cognoscenti!

Well, as promised here is the long awaited sequel to “the haircut”…

Today I ventured back to my “local” shops and my trusty barber Mr. Liu, as usual we conversed by sign language, but being the consumate professional he is this was no barrier to Mr. Liu’s tonsorial efforts and I emerged from his chair suitably remodeled and ready for another two weeks in Shanghai!

I have to admit that Mr. Liu was rather perplexed as to why I should need to take a photograph of myself in the barber’s chair and my sign language failed to convey my message that I had no intention of legal action….