A Yorkshireman in Asia...

After a week back in HK spent largely getting drunk with my uni friend Andy before we both headed for Australia for our fellow university friends James and Laura's wedding.

Myself and Andy headed to the Airport on Monday October 8 with Andy's flight at 6:10pm and mine at 6:35pm. The amusing thing though, for me at least, was that I arrived in Brisbane a full nine hours before Andy.

The reason for this was that I was flying with China Airlines, who had only a short stopover in Taipei, whereas Andy's flight was with Air New Zealand, and they had to go all the way to New Zealand for a five hour wait until he could get his next flight to Brisbane.

It was the culmination of three weeks of work. Having been at the tournament since the opening game way back near the start of September it was finally the last game of the tournament as Brazil took on defending World Champions Germany.

It was a fair match up as they had both been the best sides in the tournament with Germany having not conceded a goal and Brazil being free-scoring in attack. It promised to be an exciting encounter!

I woke up around 11am and headed out to by a present of some shoes for my GF. This was horrific as I spent nearly three hours trawling round shoe shop after shoe shop finding ones I was sure she would like. Eventually, with my feet preparing to mutiny, I found some I felt sure were her style, bought them and returned to my hotel. I also bought myself a new MP3 player to make up for the disasterous one I had invested in earlier in the week.

(Going back to the shoes when I returned to HK and presented them to my GF she greeted them with a cry of 'their old woman's shoes!' and hence there in was the end of my shoe purchasing ventures!)

I got to the stadium around 3:30pmish to get myself set up with the first game of the evening, between the third and fourth placed team kicking off at 5pm. This was between Norway and the USA, which the latter came out on top.

After that was the Final and as expected it was an exciting game that Germany in the end came out on top of to complete a successful defence of the title.

After writing copious amounts of reports, quotes and follow ups I headed back to my hotel around midnight, stopping off at the only place I could find open for some food.

It was a local restaurant and they had no idea what I was saying and vice versa. In the end we established that I wanted something spicy so off they scuttled and about 45 minutes later they produced a plate of shrimps in their shells covered in pepper type stuff and nuts. It was nice enough but very fiddly -  I wasnt quite sure whether I was meant to eat the crunchy shell on snap it off like you would with a walnut - but I eventually polished off what I could and headed home to finish packing and get some sleep before waking at 6am for my flight.

Well, having been living in Shanghai for over two weeks my time was finally coming to an end. While a nice break, there is only so many films in the world I can watch in my hotel room before the whole thing becomes a bit samey.

On Saturday I had a bit of work to do in the day, there was a press conference with FIFA President Sepp Blatter in the Grand Hyatt hotel in Shanghai - the one designed like a stalk (think thats the right word!) of bamboo.

I got there just after midday and was pysching myself up to put a question to him in the press conference but, after an hour of waiting for the open questions session I finally got my chance, only for Mr Blatter to dismiss my question! Great! Ah well, all wasnt lost as off I went to gorge on the free food.

It was there I met a journalist I had first come across a year ago, funnily enough also in Shanghai and he mentioned a little get together he and some journos were having that night. I jumped at the chance to join them having had only sparing human communication outside of work in the last few weeks.

So, after writing up my stories, I met them at a little Thai place in the northern part of Shanghai for some food. After the meal we went on for drinks, ending up in a bar I had been to a few nights previously called Judys Too.

At about one am I decided that as it was the World Cup final the next day I'd head home for some kip.

Wednesday evening was the first semi-final of the Womens World Cup, Germany v Norway but I had the rest of the day free so I woke at 11ish and decided to go and investigate a Clothing Market where all manner of fake and knock off goods were said to be available.

So I got the metro to the station for the Science and Technology Park as the market was said to be inside it. And so it was, a series of corridors with the shop owners sat outside trying to entice you in with promise of cheap dvds and the like.

I wandered down but was really hungry and fortunately came across a nice little Brazilian restaurant that had really nice food on offer. I had the steak sandwhich and a coffee to stock up on energy and headed back out to have a look round the market.

Almost the first shop I came across I made the mistake of showing interest in an 'Ipod' and the guy enticed me to look at it further.

I then made my second mistake of asking how much and he said 400 RMB (25 quidish). I then offered 250 RMB and he seemed to fake disappointment before accepting my offer. I later realised why he faked his disappointment as said 'Ipod' turned out to be near less than useless by the time I got it home as not only did the alleged 8GB memory disappear to just 100MB (meaning about 20 songs instead of 500) the battery was as good as non existant as even a whole night of charging gave it only about 10 mins battery life. Ho Hum, you live and learn.

Today was a rare bit of proper work, hadnt done this for a week or so, where I needed to go out and get my own quotes for stories.

At 2:30pm there was an open media session with the USA team ahead of their semi-final game with Brazil on Thursday, so I woke up around 11ish and then went to Duolun Road to get a new caligrophy drawing for James and Laura's wedding as I accidently spilt Green Tea on the other one. I tried to kid myself it made it looked aged but in reality it clearly just looked like someone had spilt Green Tea on it.

 

So off I wandered to Mr James Feng's little place on the cultural road, he was away having his dinner but his assitants allowed me to wait in his little work studio thing till he got back.

It was while sat there I saw catwoman. Now I wish that by catwoman I mean the one of Halle Berry fame, i.e a woman in acatsuit, but noooooooo. My catwoman had to be some really really old woman who I saw across the road, scratching her arms up and down a tree trunk. I thought at first maybe she's an artist that is doing some bark design or something on paper. But, after 10 mins of good, vigorous arm scartching she turned round and proceeded to wiggle her bum across the length of the tree trunk. Riggggghhhht.

(Oh by the way the catwoman reference is because my cat always used to scratch himself against trees in a similar manner.)

After I got my new parchement thing I went off to the Westin Bund Center Hotel to get my quotes from the USA team, who were preparing to leave for Hangzhou.

After I'd got back to my hotel and wrote up my piece for work I had planned to go out and find somwhere to watch the Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations. This was a holiday for the Chinese where they spent time with family and ate mooncakes due to their being a full moon in the sky.

jHowever it seemed, for obvious reasons, everyone was using taxis and I couldnt get one at all so I gave up trying went for my tea and called it a night.

 

Today I had a little bit of work to do, woke up just before midday befoe organising holidays with my boss then sending two articles into the office before going off on my second FIFA Tour.

This time there was a few more people than the last one. The Thai guy was along again while three Nigerian fellas also came along.

We were taken to Old Shanghai and, more specifically, Yu Yuan Gardens which was built nearly 500 years ago. It is a really nice place found in the middle of the city just off the Bund and seems a world away from the busy city just on the outside of it's dragon shape wall.

 

So after an hour or so wandering round there with our Tour Guide explaining the history of it we then had a look round the Bazaa just on the outside of it, where I got some postcards because finally, after a year of travellling various places with work, I've finally got myself organised to send postcards.

To be honest its not for the want of trying. I've always bought postcards in each of the places I've gone to but then I've not had time, and struggled, to find a post office. As a result I take them back to Hong Kong thinking I'll slyly send them from there...but I never do!

After our time in Old Shanghai we went for a wander on The Bund before getting back to the Stadium where we left at about 5pm.

In the evening I was chomping at the bit to get some English grub (no point trying local stuff everyday since I live in China!) so I got directions for O'Malleys Irish Pub and went there.

It took me all of one second to pick Fish and Chips from the menu and a pint of Kilkennys and I sat back to watch the Twenty20 final, superb!

Got back to hotel at around 10pm and then chatted with my gf on msn before watching films for the night.

 

 

Today (Saturday) was a pretty quite day, in terms of work I had one match to cover in the evening and then two previews to write for Sundays games so it was pretty steady.

I went out to look around the near by shops on North Sichuan Road, found somewhere that did really nice western sandwhichs so bought one to eat for my dinner and another for supper later in night.

The game I was covering kicked off at 5pm so went back to my hotel to do my report on it and then watched England crash out of the World Cup at the hands of USA.

I was then debating whether to go out again that night but decided against it so had a meal in the hotel and then went back to my room to watch a film before sleeping. Pretty uninspiring day!

Well on Friday I had a tour that had been arranged by FIFA in the afternoon, so I woke up lateish (around 11) did a little bit of work then went off to the Media Centre where we getting taken for the 'tour'

There were only four of us, myself, two Nigerians and a Thai fella and we got split into two groups; the Nigerias went together and I went along with the Thai lad.

Now this tour was supposed to last three hours, it was of a road called Duluon Road which is a cultural street in Shanghai that has retained much of it's original style from over 100 years ago. A lot of well-known Chinese writers and the like lived on this street.

It was quite cool to see the old style buildings and there were lots of curio shops lining the streets. I came across some fella who was apparently a well-known calligropher and I managed to get him to draw a piece that had two of my friends names on in Manadarin and the year of their marraige, which is this year. So that sorted one of their wedding presents out!

After one hour we were done, there wasnt a lot to see to be fair that would last three hours and, perhaps annoyingly, it was only a five min walk from my hotel so I suppose I could have done it all by myself! Not to worry.

In the evening I decided to investigate some of Shanghai's nightlife. It was a little confusing at first as it is different to HK nightlife where everything is all next to each other. In Shanghai, or at least the bit I went exploring, required me to take two seperate taxi journeys.

The first place I went to was Xin Tian Di, an area that had seen the first national congress of the Chinese Communist Party but had now seen its historic, french influenced buldings turned into restaurants and bars.

It is quite upmarket and I decided to have dinner at a German restaurant there which was really nice food, and then I had one drink a little walk around and the decied to get a taxi to another area called Maoming Lu as I had read about a Sports Bar there called Malones.

So I went there,. had a drink and sat amongst a few of the other bar flys there and decided to move on after a beer so had a walk down to where some bars were and found a place called Blue Frog which looked good, stayed there for a couple of drinks and then checked two more before getting a taxi back to my hotel. Not too bad a night but there is only so much fun you can have when out drinking by yourself!

 

Well on Wednesday I didnt do much at all as I woke up quite late, went to sit in the park opposite for a little bit while my room got cleaned then for the remainder of the day I didn't leave the room bar to get some food later in the evening - which was interesting to say the least but I'll come to that later!

 First off, the reason I didn't do much on Wednesday was two-fold, I was due to report on a couple of games but because of Typhoon Wipha they got cancelled and also because of said Typhoon, I couldnt do anything outdoors as it was raining heavily.

I had contemplated heading in to Shanghai to make a long-overdue exploration of the city's nightlife but, because the media had hyped up the typhoon I knew my mum would have kittens 10 times over if I went out so I decided to stay in and watch films all night.

The Typhoon was in the end quite comical as, although I will bill it up as being massive to all and sundry when I return to HK, it proved to be a bit of a damp squib.

It rained a little. Oh and I saw an old man get his flatcap blown off but that was it. Was quite funnt today watching some weather bod coming on the tv looking somewhat embarrassed to state the 'Typhoon' hadnt gone quite as expected. First it hit land miles from where they thought it would and secondly it calmed down to nothing more than a storm. Shame really would have been exciting!

Not as 'exciting' as my experience at dinner time anyways. TI was, merrily munching on japanese food in a restaurant I'd found near the hotel when some drunk (im guessing) guy started spouting off in mandarinon the table behind me. His shouts didnt appear directed at anyone in particular but after 10 mins of good solid shouting he decided to come and stand by me, tap me on shoulder every now and then and bark some more mandarin at me. I told him, best I could, I had no idea what he was on about until management came and kicked him out. Strange though...

Well today I was a little more active. Got up at 9:30am, went back to sleep again. Woke up properly at 11am got kicked out by room cleaning so went to Shanghai centre to explore Nanjing Road (the big shopping street since the 19th century) and then go for a wander round Peoples Square and Peoples Garden.

Had a stroll round and when I got to Peoples Square was walking along with my headphones on listening to music when a Chinese girl stopped me to say hello. She was with another girl and two guys and she started blabbering on about where I was from etc why I am here and so on. They were apparently students from a city called Nanjing in mainland China, by the end of the idle banter they asked if I wanted to go with them to see some stuff to do with the tourism festival thats on here.  Bugger that. They probably were geniunely nice and curious people but I didnt fancy ending up later in the day down some alley handing over my wallet or something so I said I had to go to work and off I went.

 More wandering about and this time on my way back to the Metro a girl stopped me to say I was 'very handsome' which was nice and if she could walk with me for a bit. Bugger that again. Again, may have been well meaning but I'm not taking any risks so I used my work excuse and went off again.  Crazy shenanigans here in Shanghai!

In the evening it was busy as I covered four of the WWC matches before getting some food and a couple of beers and heading back to my hotel for the night. 

 

 

 

It is a good job I did my big day of exploring on Sunday as the biggest typhoon in Shanghai for a decade has just hit!

Yesterday was a decent weather day and after waking up about 12:30pm I went to Starbucks for my sandwhich, coffee and people watching, then went to the park just across from my hotel.

It was a surprisingly nice one as it appears to have been designed to be like an English country park, it even had a 'village' called Sunflower village where the one building in said village was designed like a country cottage pub. looked very authentic (thought the inside did have the look of a working mans pub about it!) and it was nice because with the high trees that blocked out Shanghai's towering skyscrapers it was possible to forget you were in China for a minute and feel like being in the Lake District back home.

Well, for that image to be maintained you would have to ignore the numerous old Chinese people doing Tai Chi and, more strangely, Karoke! A few old guys had got a Karoke machine out in an open square in the park and were banging out Mando-pop (prob not the right term to be honest but in Hong Kong Catonese pop music is Canto-pop so I decided for Mandarin pop should be Mando-pop...maybe!).

After my little stroll I disappeared back to my hotel and apart from a brief stint down at the media centre where I wrote my solitary match report for the night, I remained in my room watching films - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the movie and Planet Terror, Robert Rodriguez's half of Grindhouse.

 Today (Tuesday) Typhoon Wipha decided to make an appearance. I awoke, again at about 12:30pm, to heavy rain outside and after my now fast becoming daily food and coffee at starbucks I dashed through the rain back to my hotel where I did nothing but chat to my gf for most of the day and sort a few things out.

In the evening I went to the stadium to cover the USA v Nigeria and North Korea v Sweden, did my stories and again  that was it for the day! More a holiday than work to be honest!