After four days of continuously talking from 9:30 to 4:30, my voice has finally gone for a toss. I was expecting this to happen on wednesday but it held out till Friday morning. The work i came for is almost over and I will be leaving for Madras by tomorrow.

We went and saw many places in the evenings. People’s Square, the Bandh, a traditional Chinese market etc. It has been loads of fun so far. I was a little low yesterday morning but I got over it by trying to stop thinking about it.

Here are some pictures

The view from my room on the 32nd floor

The Science and Technology Museum entrance

Some flowers near the Louis Vuitton show room

A nice looking lit up ghost like thing

On a funny note,I have taken to asking my chinese friends the meaning of any rubbish I think of. So yesterday I asked them what is the meaning of ‘kwa kwa’ because I heard one of them say that in her sentence. She looked at me very seriously and replied ‘Ah,. That is dog’s noise’.

Leaving you with my best picture of the Shanghai skyline as seen from the Bandh. I wish I could have taken this at night but even this was very very beautiful.

Filed under: my travels, Uncategorized

Pudonging

I left Madras at the crack of dawn to reach the long queue in the airport. It felt like the whole world was going or coming from somewhere. The airport is at its crowded best from 12:00 am to 9:00 am. After standing in long long (dong dong) queues, I finished checking in and was waiting to board the plane.  The first flight was uneventful because I was frightfully sleepy. So, though there was a tv and a book, I went off to sleep and woke up in time for landing. The HongKong airport was huge and like I was walking down various paths inside a glass bottle. As I walked out of the plane ( I was one of the last ones to walk out – despite the fact that I had made a rule for myself to scramble out of the aircraft as fast as possible and run to the immigration queues) I saw my old friend from Infosys.  Everytime I am in transit, I either make a new friend or meet someone I already know. In the Dubai airport, I made friends with one girl who was going to Sudan. We hogged sandwiches together and I almost missed the plane.

Anyway, after meeting this girl and catching up on all the old gossip, I walked off to my gate. I was dying to have a cup of coffee and spotted a StarBucks place near my gate. There were some stale looking blueberry muffins(not because of what follows!!) and coffee. I ambled over to the stall slowly while imagining the steaming coffee I was planning to have. The lady at the counter cheerfully told me that she would take US dollars and pay me back in HongKong dollars( or what is it called?) I already have some useless dhiram coins from my last dubai airport, some dollars with Chinese yen to soon follow.  So I did the ultimate good girl deed for the next one year. I said no to the coffee and sat down in the waiting area. Began reading ‘Two states’. It is like a nice tamil movie except that it is much better because it is a book and I dont have to endure ugly heroes. Everyone can look like Mani ratnam mouna raagam people in my head when it is a book. I mean Karthik and NOT mike mohan

The flight from HongKong was awful to say the very least. It was like a bus and everyone was so stinky. The thought of China had engulfed my whole nostrils( which were already burning due to lack of humidity in the previous plane) with a very pleasant Chinese bubble smelling of seaweed. I also made the mistake of enthusiastically spraying Eternity for men – calvin klein in the hongkong airport on my left wrist. That stank even more than the food a hybrid ( Chinese bruce lee type +krishna pillai type) sitting next to me was consuming.  So everytime I rubbed my nose, the eternity of calvin klein for men began to make me want to hate calvin klein for eternity.

After several long minutes of humming ‘mmm’(when i am motion sick, i have psyched myself into believing .. or maybe it is true.. that humming helps me prevent food from wanting to gush out of me) aimlessly, we had a horrible bumpy landing.

Pudong airport welcomed me with sunshine, dirty smell and a long immigration queue full of very happy looking Europeans( of course i am being sarcastic!!! they complain everywhere. .havent you noticed? when they are not complaining, they are looking snooty. Or cracking jokes)

Filed under: my travels, Uncategorized