wandernut

The past week has been pleasantly cool, peppered with intermittent rain.

Didn’t need to turn on the air con anymore. Not quite sure if summer is coming to and end, but the sun has been pretty shy of late. If the retail outlets are anything to go by, it’s definitely autumn. Tank tops and shorts have made way for wool cardigans, leather jackets and trenchcoats.

The weekend has been quite productive.
Went to Taikang Lu with MY yesterday morning, an artsy fartsy area in an interesting old lane house district. It’s got the usual art galleries, cafes, restaurants, all side by side with the old locals still living there.

Had some very good bacon at Kommune, probably the best I’ve had in Shanghai so far, and they also served very good coffee in cute little glass milk jars.

After brunch, I went to the gym. Feeling gung ho and guilty (after the bacon), I went for spinning class, ran for half an hour and did some weights. I knew I shouldn’t overdo it as the Nike Human Race 10km was on this morning, but I had time to kill. And while I was at it, I kinda killed my muscles. My legs were screaming murder. Then I took a leisurely slow walk from People’s Square to Portman’s along Nanjing Xi Lu where I met MY for dinner. People’s Square metro station was huge!

The walk took about 45 minutes, but it was interesting cos it was the ‘metropolitan’ area of Shanghai.

We ate at California Pizza. Pizza was good (we ordered Milanese, with Italian sausages, caramelised onions and mushrooms), pasta was OK (shrimp marinara), but it was freaking expensive (RMB 128/RM 64 for a pizza, RMB 118/RM59 for pasta). Good thing I had a 50% off voucher from the Enjoy card I bought. I wouldn’t have eaten here otherwise.

Woke up early this morning at 5.30am feeling like a stiff robot. Had half the mind to stay in bed but after all the trouble HF went through to help me get a place in the race (WK’s client is Nike), I’d be an idiot if I did. Went to the WK office at 6am, met up with HF and CY and hopped onto WK’s bus to Century Park. It was good to see K and HR again too, ex-LB colleagues who are now in WK.

The race was badly organised though. The roads were simply not wide enough for so many people. Apparently, it was a crowd of 15,000. It started to rain right before we were supposed to start, and it continued off and on throughout the race. It was difficult maneuvering around people who were walking instead of running, not to mention those who carried umbrellas. Goodness gracious. In a race? A little rain won’t kill you!

Oh well. That aside, I got a finisher t-shirt, which was pretty nice.
Good thing I got to the M size T-shirt booth early to redeem it. About 15 minutes later, the crowd swelled, and they ran out of M size t-shirts. People in the line (hmm, what line?) were pushing, fighting and screaming, as if their lives depended on it. It was quite a scene.

We later took the subway to People’s Square and went to the Nike flagship store where we each bought a pair of running shorts, and I got my Nike Sportsband. All using the 30% off voucher that HF got. Way cool!

After that, to commemorate Merdeka (ha ha), we went to a Singaporean restaurant to eat ‘Malaysian’ food - curry fish head, roti canai (not bad actually, or it could be desperation talking), Singapore meehoon, vege and fried kueh kak, washed down with pretty decent teh tarik (not cheap, about RMB 73 / RM 36 per person for the meal).

Went to Xujiahui after that to Shanghai’s version of Low Yat Plaza. Bought my earphones. The lights and people and noise made me spin a little but I found comfort in its familiarity. Quite pleasantly surprised to find the Canon camera I was eyeing was going pretty cheap. Not sure if it came with the international warranty though. Was too tired to ask.

Then I took the subway back to Nanjing Xi Lu to my bank. The ATM ate my bank card last night. The girl helping me was efficient and friendly, but I had to wait an hour for them to retrieve the card from the ATM (somewhere further down the street).

Dead tired. Zzzzz.