Not Human Oriented
Don't look to the subway lines as an alternative to urinating against the wall, as Yu Jiaking of the Shanghai Rail Transport R&D Center tells us, "There are no bathrooms in subway trains". With the subways trailing at an average speed of 35 kph, the new subway lines stretching 120 kms across Shanghai will take nearly 2 hours from end to end. Transfer complexes will be build midway along the line, since Mr Yu tells us, "long-distance subway lines are not human oriented".
I wonder whether it's more human oriented to add to the commute by requiring passengers to transfer to other trains (and grab a quick break along the way), or to add toilets to the subway cars.
Your thoughts?
Labels: Shanghai subway
Toilet Stop Challenges
The next time you're desperate and choose to urinate against a wall (seemingly acceptable behavior in Shanghai), try to pick a place that is free from current demolition activity.
It seems that on September 14, Chen Jiuliang became desperate. While urinating against the corner of a wall, the wall fell down. Part of the area was undergoing demolition at the time (this is Shanghai after all - it's either going up, coming down or scheduled to be renovated). Unfortunately for Mr Chen, the wall crushed and killed him.
The court case seems to hinge on whether Mr Chen was engaged in a reasonable activity - urinating against the wall - or an inappropriate activity - collecting scraps as suggested by the police report.
Well, either way, it's advisable to stay away from demolition sites.
Cryptic Headlines
Recently, we've been studying the headlines in the Shanghai Daily. It seems like a good "brain-based" exercise to keep our neurons fit. within 3 days, these delights appeared. I offer you the following to parse and see if you know what the article might be about:
Longer subways divided to allow toilet breaks
Maternity care goes on speed dial in Pig Year
Family of man killed on toilet stop sues
Graveyard tries to attract more tourist
Labels: brain-based exercise
Illegal TV channels and a new expat low
Abruptly, seditious channels like Disney, Cartoon Network and StarWorld*, disappeared from our TV. A few days later, a note from the compound management arrived saying that they had been ordered by the government to remove these channels from the transmissions within the compound. They were, however, working on the issue and hoped to have it resolved within 30 days.
You know your life as an expat has sunk to a new low when you feel compelled to go en masse to the local Texas BBQ promptly at 6 PM on Wednesdays, take over a room, hassle the management to change channels, turn down the restaurant sound system and turn up the TVs so that you can get your weekly fill of Simon, Paula and Randy. The sad thing might be that while the margaritas were great, the sound wasn’t, and we were hard pressed to be able to distinguish who was really singing well from who wasn’t.
Over 5 weeks later, still wandering to various other compounds and restaurants to participate weekly in reality TV, compound management remains unable to reconnect the “illegal” channels, though they are working on the “legal” ones (those were the ones I was obviously not watching). But, to hold on, as they are working on a solution. Well, I don’t want to know what the solution is, just whether it’s time to go invest in an “illegal” satellite dish of my own!
* StarWorld shows American programming such as Desperate Housewives, Oprah, Scrubs, My Wife and Kids, Grammy Awards, etc.
Labels: expat, StarWorld
