Mad About Shanghai

Romance of Travel

I love travelling ! And planes too!

Over the next few weeks, I am going to take a break from my usual posts about Shanghai and China share with you about my travel adventures.

Stay tuned !

For a start, let me post some photos of a very popular mode of transport for travel.

I didn't choose to be seated near the plane's wings but somehow I always get to sit nearby, allowing me to take some photos usually not seen when we are on the ground.

Enjoy !

Online Survey for Expats in Shanghai

A student at Maastricht University in the Netherlands is conducting an online survey for her Masters' thesis about expatriates in Shanghai. The survey covers mostly questions concerning possible problems expatriates can face in Shanghai and the reasons to choose a specific destination for a (longer) stay abroad. It would be great if some of you could find the time to fill it out, it should not take longer than 12 minutes.

This is the link to the online survey:

http://edu.surveygizmo.com/s3/1297795/Expatriates-in-Shanghai

It would also be great if you could forward the link to anybody else who is currently living in Shanghai or lived in Shanghai before. 

On the same note, if you are ok with a 20 minutes Skype interview with her, please let me know.

Downtime

Many apologies to my faithful readers out there.

This blog was down for about a week to to some technical issues. I managed to resolve this with the respective vendors. 

Glad to see this blog up and running again!

Thank you for your faithful support!

Newspaper

Some years ago, I was posted to Malaysia for work  for about two years. Whenever my colleagues from my home country visited me, they would bring me a copy of the newspaper from my home country. Even if it is a day late or two, it was very welcome because it alleviated my sense of homesickness and helped me keep in touch with the affairs back in Singapore.

When I visited a friend of mine in Tokyo some years back, I also brought her a copy of the newspaper from her home country. Needless to say, I got some free Yakitori that night ! 

I know there are many versions of digital newspaper out there in tablet formats but this does not match the real thing!

Next time you visit your friend or colleague based in Shanghai, bring him/her a copy of the newspaper if both of you come from the same country. It does wonders to an expat that has left his/her country for a long time.

Shanghai Tidbits

Absolutely my favourite drink.

Flight Tales: Saving a Damsel in Distress, Sort of

It was one of those flights I took from Singapore to Shanghai. I was in the queue to check in and noticed that it was a rather long queue, and for a while, the queue did not seem to be moving at all. 

It was soon I realised, there was there was a uni student caught in an excess luggage weight situtation. Apparently, she was on her way back to Shanghai with all her books and it grossly exceeded her allowance. She tried to reason, I think, to get a waiver of the excess baggage fees, without any avail. The counter staff remained adamant.

She began to unpack all her books from the bags. In one last attempt, she went down the line and asked if any one would be kind enough to help her by "sharing" the baggage allowance. No one helped. She got to the family in front of me and they replied they could not help too as they would be transiting Shanghai to Harbin.

Then she came to me. 

I have been a uni student before and I know how that feels, to pay grossly unreasonable excess baggage fees. Also, I had only with me a gym bag which did not weigh more than 10 kg.

I agreed to help her. 

I spoke to the counter staff on giving up some of my excess allowance, as my bag is only about 9 kg. They gave me a stern look, implictly suggesting to me that I should not help that lady and proceeded to warn me that if the lady is carry anything illegal, I would be fully liable as the excess contents would be tag under my name. She even told me that the untagging would be impossible.I felt they are not making sense as the stuff would not be even in my bag. All I did was to allow some of my baggage allowance to be given to her. 

As I have already seen that the items that are of excess weight are only books, I told the couter staff that they are only books only anyway and asked her to proceed.

Reluctantly, they agreed. The uni student proceeded to ask for her bag back to repack the books. This cause even bigger delays and the people in the queue were starting to get agitated.

Anyway, this was soon resolved and when it came to my turn to finish the check-in procedures, the counter staff told me they did not tag her baggage under my name and I should not have any worries should there be any contraband items. I remebered thinking that I knew that from the on set and their attempts to "smoke" their way to deter me from helping the student would not work. 

Behind that stern look, I could sense that she was impressed that I was persistent in doing a good deed to help a student.

When I was done, I turned to realise that the lady whom I helped was waiting for me. She passed me a chit of paper and when off. When I got to the waiting lounge, I opened that note and found that it was her telephone number in Singapore.

Well, I did not help her to receive anything recipocral from her. Before I boarded, I chucked that piece of paper into the dustbin.

Happy Lunar New Year!

Gadget Updates : Phone and Camera

I thought it would be a good idea to kick start the first post  of 2013 with a feature on the new gadgets I have been using to capture the photos you see on this blog and what I think of them. Also, these short reviews may be useful in case you are thinking of buying them for use this year.

HTC One X vs iPhone 5

Just a few months ago, my iPhone 4 developed an overheating issue. The battery, when full charged, could not last more than 30 mins when in use. Whenever I wanted to use some apps or to answer a call, the phone would heat up rapidly and shut down automatically when it got too hot.

As the phone was out of warranty, I brought it to some small repair shop for assessment. A faulty motherboard was determined to be the issue and cost of the unauthorised repair was about US$120.

After delibrating, I decided not to repair it and managed, to my surprise, sell it for about US$180. I think the buyer bought it for the parts or to resell after repairing. Anyway, I was just glad I got rid of it.

Once the phone was sold, the other task at hand was to select a replacement phone. I figured that since I have been using iPhones for the past 4 years (from iPhone 3 to iPhone 4), I would give an Andriod phone a shot. Also, I wanted a big screen phone. My brother who has been using HTC phones for some time bought the HTC One X recently and I thought it look pretty good.

I looked around some more. The next nearest phone matching my requirements is the Samsung Galaxy. Since I have never been a fan of Samsung products and the HTC One X was touted and reviewed many times by numerous publications as the best Andriod phone around that time, I bought the HTC One X.

The first impressions of the HTC One X is good. It felt solid when holding it, the bigger screen, compared to the iPhone, makes typing a SMS and surfing the net a breeze. However, despite the phone having a good unibody and solid feel, it did not feel as well put together like the iPhone. The voice quality matches the iPhone too but not when you put it in a speaker mode.

Photo taking wise, the quad core allows photo taking really fast in quick bursts. Photo taking in low light conditions also proved to be better than the iPhone 4.

The Google Play app store provides plenty of apps too. Andriod is also a superior OS compared iOS.

It took me a while to get acquainted with the HTC One X. Everything went well or so I thought, for three months.

I soon found the battery life of the phone to be abysmal and needs to be charge twice a day for even normal use. Each charge took several hours. The GPS function also acted weirdly when I am using the Nike GPS app for my jogs. The font size for SMS also changed the size on its own. Other ergonomics faults soon proved to be frustrating with the main bugbear being the process to silent the phone and volume control adjusts too easily when the phone is put into a pocket.

Needless to guess, I changed to an iPhone 5. At least the battery lasts me a workday most of the time.This time I got the white one since my previous two iPhones were the black version.

Canon S100 Camera

I have always fancied the Canon Powershot S Series. Since the Canon S90 was launched, I wanted to get one. Finally on Black Friday, I got the S100 at a good deal on Amazon as they were clearing stocks to make way for S110s which includes wifi and a touchscreen.

After tsome initial shots, I am impressed with the s100's near DSLR photo quality and output especially at low light conditions. This is a great camera to carry around on days when I dont feel like carrying my DSLR camera and in restuarants taking food photos when the lighting isnt ideal for phototaking.

Let me show you some sample photos taken with the camera:

Farewell 2012. Hello 2013 !

I just returned from Ho Chi Minh City.

Wanting to squeeze in a last minute holiday before the year ends, I made a three days trip there.

Before I leave to continue with the proceedings associated with the final day of 2012, I thought I would check in to wish all of you an advance Happy New Year.

Check back soon to view the photos I took in Saigon.

Happy New Year !

White Christmas

Just a few days more to Christmas!

Without doubt, this is one of my favourite holiday in the calendar year.

I remembered about 5 years ago, I was drinking coffee on a rather cold night with Vivian at a cafe at Huaihai road. It was just a few weeks before Christmas and the decorations for the season has all gone up at all the shopping malls. A boy walked up to me with a cup asking for money. Perhaps due to the Christmas season, his facial expression then, one of innocence, maturity with a tinge of desparation actually touched me. I think he, depsite his tender years, was trying to gather money for some purpose.  Since then, almost every Christmas, I wondered how that little boy is doing now.

I am sure all of you have your own fair share of Christmas stories too. If you have one, do share with other readers as well via the comments section.

As there is no sight of snow in Shanghai yet, I share with you some photos of snow but from Beijing, with compliments from my friend Angeline.