Are we there yet?

Ok, you caught me; I have been slacking on the blog entries. So brace yourself for a long one. I am amazed at how quickly my days go by here. Everything just takes so much longer. “What takes so much longer Bill?” you say (and thank you for doing so, it provides me a good transition to explain). Well, for starters, just getting around. Most nights we leave the apartment to eat or experience the city. Our regular jaunts are the Jing’an Temple subway stop (in Puxi – downtown Shanghai), Times Square (they have one here too, it is in Pudong), or the Superbrand Mall (not quite the size of the Mall of America, but it is a couple stories taller- with one of them housing an ice skating rink, also in Pudong). This is how it usually works. We head downstairs from the 21st floor taking the stairs. Ok, we don’t take the stairs or even know where the stairs are located, but I wanted to have you think we were being fit for a minute. After a very short elevator ride we exit the apartment and either wait 10-15 minutes for the Yopark (a leasing company Medtronic is leasing through) shuttle to take us to the Superbrand Mall and/or the closest (least walking subway stop) or we walk 20 minutes to Time Square. Walk? Why not bike? Well, even the locals state that it is not very safe to bike - this being largely to do with the traffic which I will mention in a later blog. What? The suspense is killing you… ok I will tell you now, whiners. Traffic here is uh... interesting. There is one basic rule as far as I can see and since this blog is going to be a long one (sorry) I will add an activity at this point to retain your interests.

Can you guess what the basic rule for traffic is?

A. Follow all of the traffic laws closely.

B. The most efficient way of traveling is to move in an orderly fashion (there are 20 million people here can you imaging the chaos otherwise)

C. Whatever gets you were you are going the quickest is acceptable.

Hold your breath here it comes… And the answer is… C. What does that mean really? Well here are a couple of examples. We have discovered that red lights are really more of a suggestion not a mandate (the suggestion being, if there is perpendicular traffic - those likely to hit you - you should stop; if it is parallel there is no need to). A key word to note here is "should". If you feel that perpendicular traffic is slowing you down you could find a way though it. Another example is which side of the road you need to drive on. It is officially on the right slide, but if the car in front of you is too slow and you will not immediately be hit by opposing traffic feel free to drive on the left side. I am not talking about just passing a car in the left lane. I am talking about continuously driving in it to avoid all traffic occasionally swerving back to the right when opposing traffic gets heavy. And the last example is a must to explain as it is mirrored where ever large crowds – of people or cars - are (this being almost everywhere). Lines are for tourists. The fastest way to get somewhere is to slowly push and inch your way through the crowd. Imaging 75 people crowding around a 2 person wide escalator inching there way or 4 lanes of traffic trying to all converge into 1 lane of traffic all at the same time. So, long story long – bike if you want to, but I won’t be!

So, I bet you forgot about what I was originally taking about. Feel free to take a coffee break and skim through the blog again to find out. Or read the quick recap and conclusion. A trip to Times Square will take you 40 minutes of walking round trip. A trip to the Superbrand Mall will take a 10-15 minutes to wait for the shuttle, a 10-15 minute shuttle ride (through traffic that will haunt your dreams) followed by navigating in a huge mall filled with tons of people. The 3rd option of traveling to Puxi starts the same as the trip to the Superbrand Mall or Time Square. They both have a subway stop, but it depends on whether you want to walk or not. Following that you enter the subway – called the metro here – or “De Tyeah” (my best phonetics) in Chinese (I will enter a separate blog for these). After a quick ride and a short walk you find yourself at your destination. I don’t know where the time goes, but it takes around half an hour to go anywhere in Pudong and an hour to go to Puxi. Note that we never travel more than 10 miles to Puxi. Again I apologize for the length of the blog, but each time we leave the apartment we feel as exhausted as you fell after finishing this blog.