American in Shanghai

A few art-day photos from Brilliance West Mall and Moganshan area.  

I was fortunate to attend the "Soul of Shaolin" kungfu masters show at the Shanghai Theater Academy last night.  It was a delightful show of contortions, fast motions, drama and jumps.  One of the most fun moments was when a fellow in the next row shared his popcorn with my colleague!

I took on a small translating job for a friend who wants to send a container of some souped up refurbished motorcycles to the US so we visited a couple of shops to check it out.  One of the shops also offers some 1 day or weekend tours. 

A couple of photos from October 24, 2009. 

This is only a test of sending a post via email; here are a few photos near my apartment.  The blue and green ones are where I live.   The water is Suzhou Creek, just over the bridge around sunset.    

Don't forget where you parked it

I have a problem with reading. I love to read. The better the book, though, the more in-depth it is, the slower I go. Like I've been reading Sidney Rittenberg's "The Man Who Stayed Behind" and it is taking over a month. I cannot read it every day. It is so much. And so great. It is the history of his life and the birth of modern China. He was there. He lived it and fluently -- not a little -- extremely fluently in Mandarin, participated. I cannot rush this reading. I am fascinated by it. Everyone who is interested in how the current China came to be should read that. I am also reading Derek Sivers' ebook -- I love it but I need to re-read several things. The drawings are really funny, too. This is about how to succeed in the music business, in particular if you are an independent musician. An interesting and thought-provoking read.

Some friends and I gathered for teppanyaki last night. Teppanyaki is a Japanese style of grilling your food right in front of you while you watch the chef's cooking style. This was a charming restaurant scarily devoid of people, not because it wasn't good, but because most of the local population had returned to work from the long vacation yesterday. This place had the air conditioning just right, an exhaust fan that was not loud but did the job of removing the oil-smoke, and "old" Chinese brick walls. Teppanyaki is not something I eat very often because it is like a gastronomical exercise. You order whatever you like and you can eat as long as you like. It sounds kind of sick but over a couple of hours and matching meat with vegetables is actually very delicious. I'm partial to mushrooms. We had beef, lamb, ox tongue and some kind of clam; green pepper, two kinds of mushrooms, asparagus and eggplant. We kept reordering the green pepper and mushrooms. Th

OK, it is not an exact replication. But there are the same colors, similar layout, and creepy feel that it is an imitation nonetheless. If this is big brother's answer to the American-owned international Facebook I am not buying it. I seriously advocate for Facebook founders to sue these makers in international copyright court. www.niwota.com - use google translator if you need to. I guess the joke is on me, since I actually enjoyed using Facebook to keep up with family and friends back home.

par·a·digm (pār'ə-dīm', -dĭm') n. One that serves as a pattern or model. A set or list of all the inflectional forms of a word or of one of its grammatical categories: the paradigm of an irregular verb. A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline. [Dictionary.com] >>>Yesterday I had dinner with a new friend and musician. We were discussing all sorts of personal life choices, dreams and hopes. I love music and I love being a musician; providing a source of joy to others as well as teaching that is very important to me. But during this conversation when he kept saying he hoped I could get back to the states, it suddenly occured to me that music, while I intensely enjoy that it fuels my livelihood, is not my goal. Strange. But I felt a distinct shift -- momentary, yes, but it was there -- that I have a goal. One overriding life g