Chris’ Blog

Hello Everyone,

For those of you who don’t know, Christine and I decided to move to China. The company that I work for, Dowslake Microsystems transferred their operations from Ottawa and I was part of their operations. I have moved into an apartment in Shanghai and Christine will join me once she has finished school in April or May.

China is quite a bit different than any other place I’ve every been. You have to pay for everything in cash. For my apartment I had to pay for three months at once (about RMB 15000). There’s a picture of me with about RMB 8000. Everything you eat usually has the head attached. I attached pictures of that as well. Since I’ve been here I’ve eaten: frog, rabbit, crab eggs, Kentucky Fried Chicken, fish-head soup, and I think one day I ate windpipe although I can’t be sure. Today, I apparantly ate a pig testicle. Well, actually I only ate half.

Spaghetti sauce is very expensive, but you can buy 10 kg of rice for about one dollar. It’s almost impossible to find baking powder, but it’s okay because nobody has an oven. People are for the most part very friendly, but nobody speaks English and they like to stare at you. They’re always very interested to see what I’ve got in my shopping basket. Last night I was at the grocery store and I had a package of muffins in my basket. A woman stared at it for a good amount of time. I would have told her there was a whole wall of them just two aisles over if I knew how.

You can’t buy an electric mixer and I Iearned that you can’t make pancakes in a blender. I’m very thankful that I brought some Roger’s Golden Syrup with me.

If anyone is planning a visit to Shanghai, come and visit. I would give you my address, but it’s in Chinese.

I’ve already found a church that I can go to. It’s for foreign passport holders only although I’ve never been asked to show my passport. They must know that I’m not from China.

I attached a few pictures of my apartment and some food, oh and a wad of cash. I’m starting to like the cash. A wise guy always carries his money in his pocket.

That’s it. If you have any questions, let me know.

I almost forgot. I visited the Shanghai aquarium. There are some pictures of that as well. There’s also a picture from the bathroom at my work. I’m not sure if I want to know what bumf is. Oh yeah, and the washing machines here are crazy. They twist your clothes and make them about two sizes bigger than they were before. Only rich people have dryers.