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?

Lots of growing left to do!

Lots of cleaning too!

I like the furry rug!

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).

It gets worse than this!

Changing at People’s square.

Looking out to Pudong

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

Pudong by night.

After the typhoon…

*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”….

We have finally arrived! The trail here has been long and complex and we still have a a fair amount of administrivia to conquer before we can consider ourselves thoroughly settled, but the worst is behind us and the summit is in sight!

We are currently living in a serviced apartment provided by the company in Xu Jia Hui which is a nice central district with excellent shopping and lots of great places to eat. We’ve been busily looking for a more permanent place to live, and think (fingers crossed) we have found a nice place in Lu Jia Zui - just across the river from the office. We’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime we are really loving Shanghai and very happy with our decision to move here, even if it is a bit ungodly hot at the moment. Thank goodness for AC! My Chinese seems to be holding up ok, most people can understand me and I can manage basic communication, though my vocabulary is very limited. Unfortunately, I do very much struggle to understand what people say to me in response! They all speak very fast and use lots of words I don’t know! Still, English doesn’t go very far here, so I’m very pleased that I have a bit of a head-start in the language stakes.

Here’s a few pics from our first few days here in Shanghai:

Our temporary place in Shanghai.

Chinese Sign Language!

Our compulsory visa medical.

Well, this blog has gotten horribly out of date recently as we’ve been run off our feet. So here’s the nutshell update of the last four months.

There! That was a heck of a lot to cover in five little bullet points. So I’m going to pretend that the first four didn’t happen yet and concentrate on the last. I will circle round to the others in the next few weeks once I get all my photos sorted!

The long and the short of it is that Claudia has managed to secure a transfer to Shanghai with her current company Morgan Stanley, so we’re going. Just what I’m going to do there we’ve yet to establish with certainty. I was very keen on the idea of being a kept man, but the likelihood of that appears sadly to be shrinking. The odds-on bet at the moment is that I will get a job with Morgan Stanley also working in their IT department. I’m in final negotiations at the moment so I won’t say more in case I jinx anything!

Claudia is leaving on Friday for three months training in Sydney while I stay on in London to see out my current contract and tidy up the loose ends like renting out my house. The plan is that she will fly direct to Shanghai from Sydney in mid-July and I will meet her there.

We both pretty excited to say the least. It promises to be a great chance to make some real progress on improving my Mandarin - something I’ve been studying for some years now - and getting to know a side of my heritage I’ve always felt a bit cut off from. China is definitely on the move and it will be really exciting to be able to see the changes from a ringside seat.

We don’t know how long we will stay - the transfer is technically indefinite - but we expect to stay for at least two years except in the unlikely event that we decide we really really can’t stand the place. If all goes well, I’m also seriously considering starting an MBA in June next year. There is a a really top-notch EMBA program run in conjunction with Tsinghua in Beijing and Insead in Paris which would be fantastic for me as it would give me links to both China and France. The program runs over 18 months, so if that goes ahead we would be committed to Shanghai until at least the end of 2010!