apartments

Well it's about 2:17 PM in Shanghai on a very hot Saturday afternoon. It's 91 F outside but with the humidity, my temperature widget is telling me that it feels like 117 F. Needless today that it's hot hot hot. Anyhow, I think Josh came in last night around 3 after his massage, makes noises and then went to bed. When I woke up this morning, he was sleeping so I locked the door and then head to the subway to go meet Theresa since she's meeting a real estate agent for her apartment hunting. I took the subway, not crowded at all, get off at Jiangsu Road, walk around the corner to Le Residence, but i was a bit early so I thought I should hunt down a starbucks......FAIL MISERABLY. There were no starbucks in the direction I was heading, and you would think that in a city that has more starbucks than chinese restaurants....grrrrr. Well I was fanning myself with my map, walking around the street and I did manage to snap some pictures of the road I was on. It's the Jing'An district. Pretty cute area. Not as fancy as the French Concession, but still very nice.
I head back, met Theresa and the real estate agent, then met one of Theresa's Singaporean co-worker and off the 4 of us set out to see some apartment. The first one was close to her area, it's ok...the road to it was a bit...too real for me. The apartment itself is nice....LOVE the master bedroom and the master bathroom. In hindsight, i really should have taken some pictures for you guys to see.... For about 8000 yuan, it's decent. Housing in Shanghai is quite expensive...not as much as NYC or London, but nevertheless... Although for the place that you would pay about 1000 US dollars here in Shanghai, you couldn't get it any lower than 7 or 8,000 in the rest of the US. lol. Then we left to see another apartment a little bit closer to where Theresa works, it's right next to this uber posh One Park Avenue complex. These 2 apartments that we saw were nice. Love the blond wood hardwood floor. Nice view of the city, and for about 9000 yuan, not bad at all. These places are 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and maybe a study room if you guys need to have an idea. Then the real estate agent took us to the creme de la creme of semi-cheap living in Shanghai. One Park Plaza, the golden child of the area. Funny thing is that One Park plaza is right next to where we were and if you don't really know, you can't tell them apart from the outside. But as soon as we walked up to the door, 3 attractive white gay men walked out, who obviously just finished exercising...Theresa and I looked at each other and was like " yep, we have arrived." We walk in toward the club house area first. GORGEOUS GORGEOUS. All glass wall, then down to where the giant indoor lap pool is. Theresa and I heard someone playing squash so we went and checked it out...OH DEAR LORD he was a gorgeous 6'4 blond european who took both of our breath away. We shyly said hi and then left. Saw the pool, saw their dancing studio. yes, this apartment complex has a dancing studio next to the pool as well as a Kareoke room that you can reserve for your private parties. Then we came into the apartment on the 28th floor....it was to die for. 2 bedrooms, 2 bath rooms, laundry room, great kitchen, LOVE the living room. It was nice, and only for about 1500/month. I mean, for that price, the services that the place offer, the location, i can see why people are flocking to shanghai. Your money go WAY FARTHER here.

After that wonderous place, we went and saw a few more apartments even closer to work for Theresa. Nothing too special, I think Theresa might either take the One Park Avenue place ( albeit a little bit higher than her living allowance from the firm) or the 9th floor apartment next door to One Park Place that has the most adorable little study room and the most......SHAGTASTIC second bathroom....Think glass wall, gorgeous overhead light.....I'd want to shower there all the time. We were going to see some more apartments when Josh called me, he woke up and realizes that since I locked the door when I left, i apparently locked him in and he can't get out. HUH? yes, apparently in our apartment, if you lock the door when you leave, the person inside won't be able to get out....soooo human trafficking scenario. I had to say goodbye to Theresa and take the taxi home to get Josh out. It's kinda depressing going back to our apartment, which I need to take some p ictures as soon as I cleaned it up some more. I like our apartment, and it's definitely nicer than the Baltimore apartment, or the Buffalo one for that matter, but still....I was visiting the high life. lol. I figure that since there is nothing too exciting about the job, running around the city and having fun is what I'll end up doing for this 6 months...hopefully. I also planned on looking to make some guanxi ( chinese equivalent of networking) here in the city and see where it'll take me.

Although I don't know if Shanghai is ready for graphic design just yet....People are not very educated about design here, it is only about the price and not about the substance. My observation so far is that the city lacks a certain atmosphere of creativity. Everything is copied off of something, and piled up with glitter just to make it look amazing. I haven't spot anything super intriguing for me. I inspected some signs around these high end apartments and to my disappointment, they are just made to look interesting on a passing by, but when I really look up close, they're molded plastic. Don't even get me started on the font that these signs used....what the hell. I haven't seen a good tracked out Garamond here.... I think things need to compete against all that bright/flashy stuffs that people have to make it as tacky as possible. Have you ever seen a phone box with LED screen broadcasting commericals? yeah...that's only the tip of the iceberg. lol.

Well, enjoy this post all. Will write more later. Enjoy the pictures if I get it work.