I knew I had landed in China when my interaction with the immigration officer ended up in a slight tussle even before I had cleared immigration. Well turns out that I have nearly no page left in my passport to stamp anywhere so the immigration officer decides to stamp my passport on a clean empty page (page reserved for amendments/endorsements) even when I kept saying to him don’t do stamp that page and he looked at me with a blank look and stamped the passport (kinda like dude watch me do it)…..Oh you have no idea how I controlled myself and just decided to walk away from the counter cursing (in Punjabi) :-) Oh well when now I go to the passport office to get new pages guess I have some explaining to do there.
Rain and Johan (Shak’s roomy) greeted me at Shanghai airport. We hopped on Wei’s (Shaks’s buddy) car and we were on our way to the bachelor pad. On the way Johan gave me present for my birthday, book on living in Shanghai (which I left there for him to mail me :-), he told me that it was birthday of a good friend Ying Shin tonight as well and if I was up to it I could join them. After a quick shower and change of clothes Johan and I were on our way to Pier ? (a new place in town). On the way I saw something I had not seen in ages, VW Santana 2000, I thought these cars were long dead, guess not as it is the main taxi in Shanghai and still co-produced by China and VW till this day. As we sat in the taxi I heard for the first time a white guy speak Chinese and trust me the words coming out of his mouth all sounded the same “Chiefo Shant tay lou” I mean no matter how he said it and whatever accent didn’t matter cause just like me the taxi driver did not get it either….lol…. Well after saying it several times the driver finally caught on what Johan was trying to say and took us to the Pier (Johan told me, he has to try several times in different ways and when the drivers finally get it they are like I know where that place is why didn’t you say that before). Anyway before I forget those folks who plan to visit Shanghai anytime soon here are some good tips written by a good friend of mine Shak…..
We arrived at Pier and went upstairs to the top to get a view of the city and wait for Ying and her friends to arrive. In the mean time caught the Germany vs. Sweden game for a bit and just like that Germany scored two goals and caught completely derailed Sweden from their game. By the way the place was pretty dead, so we made our way downstairs to get some refreshments and meet up with the others getting together for Ying’s party. I met up with 15-20 odd folks in the next half an hour and trust me nearly all of them were commercial real estate agents. I mean the market is so hot in Shanghai seems like that is where the money is and that is what folks want to do. I also met up with birthday girl Ying and she was pleasantly surprised to find out that is was my birthday as well and we really hit it off from the word go. I guess us fellow cancerian’s know how to get along very well. After a while when thing did not pick up at the Pier, it was suggested that we head towards Bar Rouge. Now I had heard stories from Shak about this place, I mean this is a very exclusive place of where folks what to be seen, kinda like want to be present to be part of the “IN”crowd.
Once we got there I knew immediately why Shak used to rave about this place. It was situated right across the “BUND” and you got a beautiful view of the river, pearl TV tower and other buildings in Shanghai. The next several hours here pretty loud and engaging :-) Had some interesting conversations and one by one started to see people disappear (now you all know where….u are smart folks!!). I think around 3 am, Johan and I decided to leave the place to get a grab a bite to eat and we made our way a nice Turkish place. The kebab’s here really hit the spot and when we finally got back to apartment it was almost 4:30 am. Time to go out and explore Shanghai, well that was not to be, Johan suggested we leave around noon and make our way to Old Town.
Pretty beat up I was ready to crash, but not before I got a call from Zaina, Zaid and Humera to wish me Happy Birthday and then it was lights out and sweet dreams…Wow if this is how the time was going to be in Shanghai, I was definitely not going to be able to blog at all :-)
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