May 4, 2010

Eating at 400kph

First thing I must address: Greetings from Shanghai!

Yep, based on context clues you might have guessed that my family and I have jetsetted to mainland China, more specifically Shanghai, because of a certain expo you might have heard. You know, the one with the watery mascot.

Whatever the case, Shanghai certainly has urbanized even more since the last time I came (which was about 6 years ago) and at night Pudong is quite the spectacle. Highways draped with blue neon lights, French roofs illuminated with subtlety, malls slathered with all sorts of dancing patterns... much of Shanghai is full of life and energy.

But since it's the first day, we had to check in the hotel first, and in the process, sit and eat some sunflower seeds in Shanghai's 400kph bullet train.

At the lobby was free Wi-Fi, so the first instinct was to check Twitter.

It wasn't loading.

And there I realized that I was in a Communist version of the Internet; a land where the government denies Twitter, Facebook, or for God's sake, Friendster's existence. So what's free Wi-Fi when you can't get inside sites like, oh, Blogger?

Then again, I concede that you don't come to China because of the Internet, that's for countries like Japan and Korea.

Because of traffic we got to the hotel a bit late, so we had little time to freshen up for (a rather cold) dinner, which was being paid for by someone else.

That someone else is part of CKSC's board. That means: 1) we got into a CKSC Alumni excursion and 2) Mrs. Espino is with us.

Then again, I shouldn't think about CKSC, I should just get excited about tomorrow— when we actually go to the Expo.

And in case you were wondering, yes, the weather is mighty cold here. Like naturally fresh air-conditioning.


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