...at home again. i'm sorting through scripts and enjoying a lazy monday morning. mondays really aren't so bad when you are unemployed. however, it's a day of working on personal projects, so i thought i'd finally update the blog. it doesn't seem to me like i'm on the internet any less often than the past, but i just stopped blogging when i got back to canada. that should change, my everyday life is interesting dammit! well, every once in a while anyways.

however, this is what my morning routine entailed not long ago:



Smoking a hookah and drinking some coffee at a Chinese Cafe in Shanghai at around 9am. We generally got up early when we were traveling, and today was no different. Our hostel/hotel, known as The Phoenix, had the best restaurant that I ate at in Shanghai served breakfast really early, so we had already eaten our morning dose of fried rice before that. However, coffee is not commonly served at restaurants (not dripped and brewed coffee anyhow), so every morning was usually an adventure in looking for somewhere to buy coffee. Some times benign (Starbucks), sometimes surreal and genuinely interesting. This morning we were walking around underneath the park (rather than through it) and we followed some signs to a recreated 1930s Shanghai street. This time period is romanticized a little bit, in movies it reminds you of prohibition-era Chicago, but it was unique. The recreation of the street looked kinda cool in the architecture and the cobblestone, however, the modernity of the stores shattered any illusion that you were seeing a glimpse into the past. However, I'm not one to care too much about these creative anachronisms, so we sat down on the "patio" of the cafe and smoked some Shisha and sipped coffee.

Spitting in China is much more common than in Western countries, as it is not considered rude to spit in front of people. So everywhere you go, there is a constant barrage of loud horking. However, it's generally not acceptable to spit indoors. Some people do however, and the way around it is to spit into the garbage can or spit on it and then step on it with your shoe. The above recreated street was not outside, you can see even in the picture that the sky is actually painted on the ceiling, however many Chinese men stood here smoking cigarettes, spitting on the 'road', and generally gawking at katherine. This was par for the course throughout China.

True story. Kinda makes me feel really bored, even though i'm doing lots of stuff, but perhaps only actually working 2 weeks in 2010 is starting to catch up to me.

That's all for now, I was supposed to be working on stuff this morning, and it's already 11.

Peace
rob