An unexpected addition to the family
No, Claudia isn’t pregnant!
I was on my way to work on Thursday and in the middle of downtown, outside a bunch of offices, I came across this incredibly dirty bedraggled kitten which was clearly too young to be out alone. No doubt the sensible thing to do would have been to ignore it and carry on with my life. Certainly many of the locals reacted with horror, concern or at least bemusement at the idea of adopting it. But honestly, could you have walked on by?
Unfortunately we’ve had to have him put up at the vet (for a small fortune) until we move into our new place in mid-August as the serviced apartment we are currently in doesn’t allow pets. Good news is that the vet seems happy that he is in fairly good condition, and there are no immediate signs of any nasty diseases - fingers crossed. We’re still working on a name for him (”Damned Lucky” springs to mind).
Meanwhile I’ve had my first week at work. Which has been interesting. Still very much in the orientation phase, so not much to report yet. Overall though, it’s quite nice to have the sort of stabilising / normalising routine of going to work. The metro here is really something else, terribly crowded, even by London standards, so luckily our commute from our new place will only be two stops. Here’s a sample of the crowds on the tube (the first picture was taken *after* enough people had gotten off that I could get my arm free!) and the view from my office window (I’m a few desks away from the window unfortunately).
We’ve done only minimal sight-seeing so far as we’ve been house-hunting a lot, and Claudia has a lot of study to do for her CFA exam in December. Still, we’re really enjoying eating out here. The food is really good - there’s a huge range of choice, even for us vegetarians - and ridiculously cheap!
Alcohol is outrageously cheap also. The other evening we went to the local hostel bar that Claudia has found and had cocktails. It has a fantastic seventh floor terrace with a view out over the bund (see the night shot below). Now granted it was happy hour, but still, two large cocktails each for a total bill of 100RMB (about £7GBP)?!
In a separate incident, on Tuesday night we managed to get caught out in the open for the tail end of a typhoon*. This is considerably less exciting than it might sound. That morning I had looked out the window and seen that it was very windy and thought “no point taking my umbrella to work in that wind”. Big mistake. That evening, on the way home, the wind died and the skies opened up! We both got absolutely drenched from head to toe!
Vegetarian Dim-sum at L’arbre de Provence
*Interestingly, it turns out that the word “typhoon” is one of the few words in English derived from Chinese. The Chinese word is tái f?ng (??) which in turn probably derives from tai ? (great) and feng ? (wind). An alternate possibility is that the tai in question really is tái ? - Taiwan - the southernmost part of China where the typhoons typically hit first.
The only other Chinese word I’ve found so far that has appears to have made its way into English is canteen. Now, every online etomology I can find would have you believe that canteen derives from the italian cantine and ultimately from the latin “canto” or corner, but I think differently. I think the Italians nicked it from China via Marco Polo. The chinese c?n t?ng (??) translates literally to “food hall”….
