Saturday, July 15, 2006

Update in ranking of SH: 4/10

The past week was crazily busy at work, with lots of high level meetings and political emails flowing back and forth. It was a bit tight and I worked till 2:00am Friday nite but I'm glad that I was able to deliver what I promised. I tried my best and I'll let the results attend to itself ;) Anyways, today I met up with Miki's friend Eva in SH, we went to watch Superman at "Sun Tin Dee" where most of the foreigners are, the movie cost a bit more as it was in English version - afterall, it would be strange having Superman speaking mandarin and I would never tell what da heck he will be talking about if he translated Kyrptonite... ha ha. Afterwards, we met up with Eva's friends and went to a drink and for authentic SHnese food. It was really interesting, and I wouldn've never known of such a place if it wasn't referred by her friends. Anyways, I have decided to upgrade the ranking of SH so far mainly due to two observations the past week:
1) Family ties: The family ties here are pretty strong, and you would see many families walking out on the street, and adolescents attending to their elderly grandma or granddads. In Toronto, it would be difficult if you see that much families walking outside. And almost virtually impossible in Japan as youngsters only hung out with people their own age and am busy with work - sorta negliecting their families.
2) Feeling of Warmth: Last Friday, the company was selling old computer parts - mainly old things that was inherited from the company that our corporation bought. My colleages were running around quite happily and were trying to bargain for a deal in the cafeteria auction. These comg of w
puter parts were things that we rarely even look at back in Toronto and would just put it in the basement until it runs to EOL where we would drive it to the local recycling plant. Strange, I was also amongst one of them running back and forth cheering on my friends to win a bargain. Two of the members of the team got stuff - two old Pentium III machines, some SDRam, and a used monitor. I had a strange feelinarmth - with these old machine as the channel connecting the hearts between several of us as we tried to bring the old worn down system back to life while our hands were all covered in dust and rust. It was a strange feeling since I admit that I am not quite a sentimental person myself - usually these type of stuff happens only in movies in this new age. Mmmm.

2 comments:

akaie said...

I can't believe the chinese government really has the time to investigate every message and delete those which they believe are anti-government ones. Thanks for leaving me comments at your busy time.
I'm very glad you find more pros about SH otherwise it is hard for you to stay there for 2 years.
I have seen documentary about people living in poverty and picking old computer parts for living. It must be tough to see them face to face. Similar to what I am going through now, it is not easy to watch people suffering but this is part of the reality.

Edmlee said...

Nice to hear from ya! 1yr 1yr... ha ha... hopefully it doesn't turn out to be 2 years ;)

Yeah, today I went to my colleague's place too (he's the most seniour of them all), holy cow; it was the first time i've seen where locals live and it was definately an eye opener - the place was like the size of my university dorm but the conditions were much worst. Wow, i'm gonna have an update of my funny encounters this weekend soon. Take care!