Well-fed in the Med

I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I only revive the blog when I’m on vacation.  The solution that comes to mind is to go on vacation more often.

From the informal survey I’ve been conducting for the last couple of decades, it’s very difficult not to enjoy a trip to Italy.  As far as leisure destinations go it’s basically idiot-proof.  I ran across one person who went to Milan and declared their trip negative, but I’m willing to disregard that particular person’s opinion.  So when I touched down at the Naples Capodichino airport a few of nights ago, even though it was midnight, even though I had been in transit for eighteen hours and could feel my contacts digging into my eyes, even though I was in Naples, it was like bounding back into the arms of an old friend.  An absurdly charming and somewhat inefficient friend with great weather.

I had the very lovely excuse of my cousin Sophie’s wedding to escape to the Mediterranean for a few weeks, as she was nice enough to pick the insanely gorgeous island of Capri as the location for the festivities (seriously, can you imagine anyone moaning, “Ugh, I can’t come that weekend, I have to go to this wedding on Capri”?).  From California, getting here is best described as a pain in the ass—think SFO to Munich to Naples airport (plane) to Naples bed and breakfast to Naples seaport the next morning (car) to Capri harbor (hydrofoil) to Anacapri (car)—but it really did all melt away when I woke up to the subsiding booms of a summer thunderstorm, the first shots of orange light glowing through the clouds, and the soft, salty smell of a port city.  It’s been ten months since I had a real vacation (one that puts at least eight time zones and an ocean between me and the office), and I’d been getting to the point where the slightest hint of traffic or Whole Foods being out of mango chips made me want to scream like a provoked bear.  My usual mellowing-out methods of intense workouts, long steam room sessions, acupuncture, and chardonnay kept my inner provoked bear at bay to some degree, but the relief was only temporary and I’d revert pretty much as soon as I encountered someone standing on the left side of the BART escalator or overheard an uptalker (“I went to this party last night?  And they had like, the best sweet potato chips?”).  I probably could have taken off to Fresno for three weeks and been thrilled, so I am positively ecstatic to be in Capri.

The first thought that crosses one’s mind when approaching this steep white rock rising out of the dark blue Mediterranean is that it is almost ridiculously beautiful.  Not even just photogenic, out and out gorgeous.  The island is covered in trees, wildflowers, and vineyards, along with clusters of picturesque pastel buildings, and is crisscrossed by hairpin turns that swing out over the sea hundreds of feet below.  The harbor and the town of Capri are buzzing with tourists—this is where the day-trippers throng—but still manages to look disarmingly idyllic, while the road that snakes up to the smaller, quieter perch of Anacapri alternates between lush and shaded, with flowering vines spilling onto the pavement, and tracing the edge of the cliffs in the open, blazing sun while offering supremely dramatic views of the Gulf of Naples.  Capri is blessed in the looks department, and it’s hard not to get a little bit high on such beautiful surroundings.

It’s also pretty inescapable that a lot of money flows through Capri—seeing as it lost its “undiscovered” status two millennia ago when the emperor Tiberius decided it made a nice place for a weekend getaway, it’s been the playground of the rich and/or famous and/or powerful for quite some time now, and everything is priced accordingly.  Greta Garbo and apparently a fan, as were Grace Kelly and Prince Ranier, and these days Mark Zuckerburg, Leonardo di Caprio, and Beyonce number amongst the numerous celebrity visitors (I could go on, but if you really want to know where celebrities are vacationing, I hear that US Weekly is quite good at that kind of thing).  The classic place to stay is the Quisisana, a giant peach-colored wedding cake, though I’m told that these days the Capri Palace up here in Anacapri is popular as well.  The latter is the only place on the island you can get your Michelin star fix (“Ugh, I’ve gone three days without a balsamic reduction”), so there’s that.

Anyway, the money that comes through here ensures that the island is kept utterly perfect-looking.  The narrow streets are shaded by the kind of bright, typically Italian facades that exude a sort of blissful insouciance that can only exist in such a hospitable climate, an effect amplified by the bougainvillea blooming in enormous clouds over the white stucco walls of private gardens and the heavy, luxurious floral scents wafting out of the artisanal parfumiers (of which, yes, there are quite a few here).  Dolce and Gabbana, Miu Miu, and La Perla are all housed in spaces that would be worthy of an Architectural Digest feature were they not surrounded by buildings that are equally or even more beautiful.  It is genuinely difficult to find ugly architecture here, which is both delightful and rather surreal.  The villas and even the more modest houses all employ the graceful and open shapes typical of the Mediterranean, and the way they cling to the hillsides only serves to enhance Capri’s aesthetic appeal.

To quote the great Classical playwright Aeschylus, this doesn't suck.

Of course, the Mediterranean itself is the major draw.  Provided that one does not have a deathly fear of heights or head-on collisions, driving between Capri and Anacapri (or anywhere on the island) is a fantastic experience in and of itself simply because of the amazing views it provides from atop the cliffs that fall hundreds of feet to the water below.  On the walk to the Marina Piccola on the north side, you can pay the princely sum of one euro to walk through the shady and verdant Augustus Gardens and find yourself at the edge of a rock face that plunges straight down to shimmering and intensely turquoise water, rewarded by a view of little white yachts dotting the navy blue sea at the foot of whitish-grey cliffs that are if anything even more dramatic.  Don’t come to Capri expecting white sand beaches—this is the order of the day, and it is rather spectacular.

But the thing that has really set my heart abuzz?  The food.  Cuisine.  Victuals.  Munchies, if you are so inclined.  Oh, sweet Jesus, every single thing I’ve eaten here has been fresh, lovingly crafted, and mind-blowingly delicious.  I was told that the food on Capri was amazing, but somehow I didn’t fully process that.  The last thing I ate before getting to the island was a Salat ‘Take-off’” in the Munich airport, which consisted of steak strips on a bed of spring greens and was unable to completely conceal its true airport food nature.  I rolled into Anacapri at about 11 the next morning, perfect timing for a dip in the pool over at the Capri Palace and, when the rainclouds meandered over from Naples, a casual lunch, where they took my order of verdure alla griglia with a side of grilled chicken without a hint of attitude and seemed perfectly fine with my damp bikini bottoms soaking through the white linen couch.  (I should mention that we all gathered around a low table and piled into wicker chairs and an L-shaped couch to eat, which, as someone with an aversion to hard seating and sitting up straight, I found sublime.)

Outside, the vestiges of the storm rolled past and dampened the air, punctuating the conversation with soft booms of thunder, while we caught up with various friends and family from London and Santa Barbara and figured out who everybody else was over Pellegrino.  I was luxuriating in this strange relaxed sensation that I’d only felt on a couple select occasions in the last two months when the waiter presented a plate of flawlessly roasted and seasoned zucchini, carrots, and asparagus and no less than four chicken breasts crisscrossed with picture-perfect grill marks.  Now, I don’t know what they did to this chicken, but I can only assume that the original birds lived on a diet of Evian, truffles, and fairy dust because I had to set down my fork after the first bite and take a moment.  If someone had told me at that point that there was a religion that exalted this chicken as its deity, I probably would have converted.  I deemed the first 12 hours of my vacation a roaring success and made my way through three of the breasts, which would have been the perfect amount of protein if my post-lunch plans had included bench pressing my own bodyweight for the remainder of the afternoon (they did not).

That’s great, you may be thinking, but it’s a Michelin-starred kitchen.  They should probably be able to cook a chicken.  It was that night’s dinner that really sealed the deal, though.  The restaurant in question is a narrow little place called L’Angolo di Gusto, and within a few minutes of sitting down, the waiter, who it later emerged was the owner and husband of the cook, had placed in front of me a diminutive white dish containing half a cherry tomato, a petite ball of mozzarella, and a single basil leaf drizzled with golden olive oil and a light sprinkling of black pepper.  It was a classic amuse-bouche, a small but perfectly formed Caprese salad.

A word on Caprese salad: I love Caprese salad.  I have many fond memories of tearing up basil leaves over thick-sliced heirloom tomatoes fresh from my dad’s garden and eating the finished product outside on mild summer evenings, which, as one might imagine, is an immensely pleasurable experience.  After contacting a really lovely intestinal disease called shigellosis in India and swearing that if I didn’t die I would never eat or drink again, the first thing I actually had an appetite for was Caprese salad.  Despite the fact that it was mid-April in the UK, which meant that the tomatoes and basil were flown in from Israel, the mozzarella was rubbery enough that if you dropped it on a tile floor it would probably bounce, and the weather was distinctly un-Mediterranean, it was a brilliant re-introduction to solid food.  There’s a long and joyous relationship there.

The thing is that I hadn’t eaten any dairy or any tomatoes for at least three months (not by choice; that’s a whole other story).  So that bite and a half of Caprese salad in its ancestral homeland was, in a word, transcendental.  The texture of the mozzarella alone would have floored me.  Obviously it was homemade (like, seriously, duh), and the slightly firm chewiness of the outer layer gave way to a center so creamy and tender that it could almost be described as liquid.  It was the very essence of la dolce vita in the form of soft cheese.

The game-changing amuse-bouche was followed by a sautéed zucchini dish that I could never hope to replicate and grilled octopus tentacles drizzled with balsamic vinegar on a bed of fresh fennel, which is pretty close to my ideal meal.  It  should go without saying that the octopus was fresh—I’ve eaten enough octopus to tell the difference between an octopus that was fresh and an octopus that was schlepped in from somewhere else, thank you very much—and I have no doubt that they’d gotten it from one of the markets down by the harbor that morning.  When you look at the sea surrounding Capri you can just imagine the myriad octopi* trolling the depths and wrapping themselves around rocks and thinking, This seems like a good place to hang out.  As animals, I really like octopi; I think they’re pretty cool and kind of cute in their own weird sea creature way.  Hearing about the American tourists that caught an exceedingly rare hexapus in Greece and then cooked it struck me as particularly tragic, and I don’t think I could ever go octopus hunting, as apparently it involves diving down with a crowbar and hitting them over the head until they let go of their rocks. However, I like the taste enough that I manage to block this out when presented with a plate of expertly charred purplish tentacles.  My connection here might be even more poignant than the one with insalata caprese—some people can say “I love you” in 17 languages; I can order octopus in 17 languages.

Since the Caprese amuse-bouche and octopus, I’ve cleaned the local greengrocer out of cherries (they were 7.90 a kilo and, after having spent $12 on a bag of cherries back in California the week before, I couldn’t not take the deal), dined on edible flowers and young greens in a dressing of olive oil and juice from the famous lemons, and, at my cousin’s wedding reception, approached something akin to culinary nirvana.  The seasoned buerre blanc, rosemary-lemon sorbet palate cleanser, and rolled leg of lamb with a grilled peach and pine nut compote that was accompanied by its own tiny dish of smoked sea salt were all masterpieces in and of themselves, but the beluga caviar that we started with was utter perfection.  It was also served on heart-shaped dishes with little heart-shaped caviar spoons, which is a very lovely way to enjoy one’s caviar (as opposed to eating it out of the jar in one’s sweatpants, I guess).

What remains of my kilo of cherries plus one rogue plum,
which I'm transporting in a Carthusia parfumier bag, e.g. the
chicest possible way to transport fruit.

I know that whenever I talk about how much I love
caviar I sound like a total jerk, but I can't help the way I feel.

In short, I’ll confirm that Kate Moss was a tasteless moron for her whole “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” episode and that she really just needs to go away at this point.  If she’s been to Capri, and I'm sure that she has, she’s clearly done it wrong.

As an aside, my cousin’s wedding, which brought me to Italy in the first place, was easily the most beautiful I have ever seen in my life.  Between the ceremony taking place in the forest where Tiberius married Julia the Elder more than two millennia ago, watching the sun set over Ischia at the al fresco reception, the exquisite glass chandeliers flown in from Venice, and the flowers (oh my God, the flowers), it was the most gorgeous and amazing British-Californian-Arab-fusion wedding anyone could have dreamt up.  Many tears flowed.  With all this in mind, if I tried to shoehorn it into a blog entry that’s primarily about cheese and octopus, I’d feel like an ass.  Words wouldn’t do it justice anyway.

View through the trees of the forest.  It was pretty okay.

Imagine this carpeting the floor of a pine forest
and you'll get the idea.

Ischia sunset

Next on the itinerary are Naples and Pompeii; I’ve never been to the latter and couldn’t pass up the chance when I was so close.  Everyone talks about Naples being violent and a total shithole, which immediately made me feel sort of affectionate towards it.  On my brief stop en route to Capri, I spied some stunning architecture, some anti-Camorra graffiti, and quite a few bullet holes, which I’m guessing are Camorra-related, all of which I’m hoping to visit tomorrow.  Florence, it is not.

*I recently found out that “octopi” is not in fact the correct plural of octopus.  It’s “oct
opuses” or “octopodes,” but I can’t bring myself to say “octopodes” without feeling really, really pretentious, and “octopuses”?  Are you joking?  How stupid does that sound? 

Life After Uni: It's a Riot

I am fully aware that the last thing I posted is three months old, but I’m not sure that I can be bothered to make excuses or justifications. Erm...I've been busy? Anyway, here we are.

When it comes to the shift from university to ‘the real world’, clichés abound—stuff like ‘the beginning of the rest of your life’, ‘becoming a “real person”’, et cetera. If I’m entirely honest, though, I haven’t had one of those moments where I realise, with a hugely jolting shock, that, ‘Oh my God, my life has changed ENORMOUSLY!’ I suppose that was what was in my mind when I titled the blog ‘In Transit’, because this is meant to be THE transition. So I’m a little bit disappointed that I haven’t had some major epiphany. But then I thought about it. I’ve worked during the summer since I was fifteen, having done full-time summer jobs all through uni, so I’m used to working nine-hour days. I worked in a proper office job last summer, so I’m used to looking presentable, commuting and using my brain. I’ve had my own flat, I’ve had a salary, I’ve managed my finances, I’ve lived overseas, I’ve lived in a massive city. Is my ‘new life’ really that different, then?

Well, no. All of ‘adult life’ was kind of expected, in which case, thanks are due to my parents. Congratulations, Mom and Dad, you raised a kid who’s not having a nervous breakdown about replacing a light bulb (in all seriousness, I mean that—I’ve been really lucky to have the opportunities that made THE transition so smooth). On paper, all the stuff looks rather monumental...

1. I wore a sombre black robe and got handed a diploma (ie I graduated). For one rather surreal week, my family and I stayed in St Andrews and drank a lot of champagne. I had stressed that, although it may have been June and California may have been Barcelona-sunny, Scotland would be grey, cool and breezy. They soon realised that I was not exaggerating and expressed wonder at how I had survived there for four years. Anyway, one long, Latin-filled ceremony and one mind-shattering graduation ball later, I found myself on the Caledonian Sleeper to Euston, bidding goodbye to St Andrews and goodbye to Scotland. It’s not like I was heading off to war, and plans have already been made for a cheeky weekend back up, so this was a lot less emotional than it could have been.
























This is me, but edumacated

2. I signed a contract for a job in London. A few years ago, this would have been entirely unremarkable, but now that the global economy is in the toilet, it does feel like slightly more like an accomplishment. It’s in PR, which isn’t my dream industry, but it puts money in the old RBS savings every month, so...you know. Amongst other things, it gives me an excuse to shop at Banana Republic for things like grey pinstriped trousers, which, if you’re unemployed, just look kind of try-hard.
























Employment is SO cool!

3. I signed a contract for a flat, also in London. When I was in California for the three weeks between the end of term and graduation, my brother told me, ‘You’re going to be living in a hovel—just so you know’. Ted has never exhibited any clairvoyant tendencies (rather, any particularly acute ones), so I’m not sure where he got that, but it turned out to be wrong. There are a few cons—it looks a little like a crack den from the outside, our landlord is kind of a bitch, and I accidentally blew up the oven a few weeks ago—but the interior is lovely. It gets tonnes of light, has a massive and recently refurbished kitchen, and comes complete with a balcony. On top of that, it’s a stone’s throw from Clapham Common and the tube. We also have a lot of Caribbean neighbours with gloriously cool accents, and, true to the Caribbean stereotype, they listen to really catchy music and cook food that smells delicious. Allie and I are working on getting a dinner invite somewhere.
























We looked at a flat about two feet away from this sign. Unsurprisingly, we opted not to live there.

4. I established a routine whereby I commuted from aforementioned flat to aforementioned job. Every morning, I hit the snooze button a few times, pelt out the door about ten minutes later than I intend to, and squeeze onto a Northern line train whose person-to-space ratio rivals that of the Shanghai metro at rush hour. After my first week of work, I admit that I was so exhausted that, zombie-like, I boarded a northbound Victoria train instead of the southbound one that would take me home. I completely failed to register the stop at Green Park and got to Oxford Circus before I realised that something wasn’t quite right. It also kind of makes me hate the general public even more than usual—I find that my ‘excuse me’ sounds more like a threat than a request these days—but Clapham Common to Victoria is a short commute by London standards (thirty minutes).
























How commuting makes me feel sometimes

...but, let’s be honest, everyone does this (apart from blowing up the oven). Unless they get signed for a record deal or descend into hipsterdom. How I hate hipsters.

Things wasn’t quite expecting?

1. The worst riots London has seen in thirty years...in my backyard. I’ve been lucky enough to have avoided pretty much any kind of violent conflict in my lifetime, but as someone who’s never even been mugged, I can’t help but worry on occasion that I’ve got a bull’s eye between my shoulder blades, or maybe a flashing neon sign on my forehead that reads ‘WALKING UPPER-MIDDLE CLASS CASHPOINT WITH MINIMAL UPPER ARM STRENGTH’. Needless to say, when the news said that there were a thousand angry, fearless rioters making their way up Lavender Hill towards my house, I was a bit shaken. After Allie pointed to flames and hooded figures on her computer screen and said, ‘Look, we’re on the news’, the two of us, doing our best to seem casual, drew all the blinds and locked and barricaded our doors. My little chilli plant, which lives on our kitchen window sill, seemed especially vulnerable with its delicate green stalks waving in the air, so I tucked it behind the toaster. It then dawned on me that the looters were going after plasma TVS, not chilli plants, and that if a bunch of lawless yobs broke into my house, I would do better to worry about my laptop, jewellery, or skull. The riots themselves have stopped, but this whole thing, whatever it may be, is far from over. When people ask where I live and I tell them Clapham, I get a response that goes something like ‘Oh my God, was your flat okay?’, usually accompanied by a concerned and sinister ‘oooh’ sound. It’s as if I said that I grew up Darfur.

















What immediately comes to mind when I tell people where I live (photo actually taken in Croydon, I'll have you know)

2. Even ‘real people’ get excited about free food and free booze. Last Wednesday, we had a company rounders tournament and picnic in Hyde Park (company-mandated fun) that included a load of wine, sandwiches, quiche, hummus, crudités, and those delicious vegetable crisps that I wish weren’t so expensive. As we all clustered on our blankets and watched the sky fade to dusky pink, the main topic of conversation was, yes, the free food and booze. Similarly, the last half hour of Friday afternoons, which sees a company-wide ‘tea’ where ‘tea’ actually means ‘wine’, is when my coworkers are at their most animated. The cheese twists and chocolate buttons are practically hoovered up, the company manages to work through half a dozen bottles of sauvignon blanc in an impressively short time, and chatter fuelled by weekend euphoria fills the room. When, if ever, do free food and booze become less exciting?



















Cue mass hysteria!

3. A taste for seriously black coffee. As someone who fixes her coffee in such a way that it wouldn’t look out of place on a Viennese dessert cart, believe me, this was unexpected. I’ve found myself brewing coffee so strong and dense it could probably sit up and bark. Rocket fuel. Liquid crack black as the night. So intense that, if I brew a cafetiere and leave it in the kitchen downstairs, I feel obligated to leave a warning note. It leaves me feeling like that guy in Get Him to The Greek after he gets an adrenaline shot to the heart, which isn’t a good thing per se, but it definitely beats the sinking exhaustion brought on by, you know, being awake in the morning. I thought that caffeine addiction was just one of those office clichés, but it turns out that a good dose of it really does make work more bearable.














Me after my morning cup o' joe

4. There’s a fox that loiters outside my window at night. Yes, a real-live fox in Zone 2. What? Would you have expected that?















Hehehe!

I’m sure there are others too.

So. ‘Real life.’ All that I’ve come to conclude is that it’s not nearly as terrifying as everyone makes it out to be, but also that it doesn’t inspire some kind of massive celebration where there are champagne corks flying and everyone dressed to the nines.



















Hooray for not being a total screwup!

Not the next Aesop’s fables, but I suppose I can leave you with something about life being a journey, not the destination.

Hmm. That’s pretty milquetoast. Check back in a bit.

Nine things about Sri Lanka that are awesome

Yes, 'awesome'.

1. It's hot. It's sunny. It's so humid I barely have to moisturise my legs. My hair is returning to its rightful shade of blonde, my skin has sufficient colour so that I no longer look like I have some kind of wasting disease, and my stores of vitamin D are no doubt being replenished. The tropics are a thousand times better than any chemical drug. I am actively NOT thinking about how people start wearing shorts when the temperature in the UK climbs to a mighty ten degrees, because really, that is horrifically depressing.

2. Everyone-everyone!-waves and says hello and much of the time, they don't even want to sell anything. My suspicions are that the vast majority of the country is so chilled out because of the tropical weather. It's even more amazing just how friendly and smiley everyone is when you think about the decades-long civil war and the tsunami that recently hit.

3. There are monkeys everywhere. I know, I know, they're annoying, vicious, thieving pests, but in the same way that visitors ooh and ahh over the wild garden-destroying deer that live in Northern California, I find the monkeys wonderfully entertaining. We spent a good two hours watching a troupe of them swing from vines and chuck coconuts at our heads. Prepare yourself for a lot of pictures of monkeys. The other thing is that they look so ridiculously human. It adds to their odd and novel appeal, but they look so human as to be kind of revolting. The babies all look like little old men, and monkeys of all ages have those unnervingly human little hands and fingernails.

4. All the tropical fruit I dream of when I watch the rain lashing my window is spilling out of fruit stalls just waiting to be bought and eaten. There are the ones you just don't find in the west, like mangosteens, rambutans, custard apples, soursops, durians, and Chinese guavas, which are ridiculously delicious. And there are the ones you can technically buy in your local Waitrose-pineapple, bananas, mangos, papayas-but the ones here are so sweet, juicy and ripe that the ones you can buy back home seem like a different species. When I die, entomb me in a giant coconut. I actually love tropical fruit so much that if people knew the full extent, I would be deemed mentally unstable.

5. The rest of the cuisine here is actually spicy enough to put a bit of colour in my cheeks. It has been a long, long time since that has happened, and the burn feels fantastic.

6. Is it insensitive to mention that it's cheap? Well, it is. It's rather great to dine for about three pounds a head. The only exorbitant prices I've seen were for a box of cornflakes (530 rupees, about 5USD or three quid) and, oddly enough, a pack of spiced cashews.

7. Even though Sri Lanka lost the cricket World Cup to India last night, people were still celebrating by chucking firecrackers around and having dance parties on the beach. When I offered my condolences about the match this morning, no one really seemed terribly distressed. The most dramatic reaction I got was (wait for it!) a shrug. It's hard not to love a place like this.

8. The crows are for some reason very sleek and robust. Much better than crows elsewhere. I have no idea why this is.

9. The beaches of the southwest are exquisite. If I believed in intelligent design or God or any of that, I would say that he had a soft spot for this island, because the golden sand and turquoise water of Unawatuna are dreamlike in their sheer perfection. It is utterly unsurprising that the people here seem like they're in such good moods all the time.

You might have asked yourself, 'Why nine things?' That is because I wrote down nine things and then, to be honest, felt like drinking mango juice and reading my book. Oh, tropics, you beguiling thing, you.

Zai jian, Shanghai

Crying in public is, in a word, humiliating. The eyes go all puffy, your mascara runs, you feel emotionally naked, everyone around you starts shifting awkwardly, and there’s no better way to make people stare at you. And here in the People’s Republic, people tend to stare at me anyway. My white skin and yellow hair and blue eyes immediately establish me as a freak; let’s chuck in a few tears, because clearly I’m not weird-looking enough.

And yet here I am at the Pudong airport, in the middle of the night, four blazers, a scarf and a sweater next to me (I’ll explain later) and tears dropping off my face. Unfortunately, the heart does not care about these things when it is breaking. The sadness I feel at leaving China behind is so intense that I can actually feel it in my chest and my throat, a deep, pulling ache that won’t go away. Bidding Shanghai farewell is made slightly easier only by the fact that I know I’ll come back, but the pain is still there.

As anyone who has ever dropped me off at an airport/train station/bus station/ferry terminal knows, I have a horrendous time with goodbyes. I’m just bad at it, full stop. One of two things will happen. Option A: I drag it out for days, work myself into a state of deep sorrow and wallowing, and burst into dramatic funeral-style sobs at the check-in desk. Option B: in the days leading up to my departure, I procrastinate to the point that all I have time for is a fleeting ‘haveagoodsummer’ as I run down the street with frantically and badly packed bags hanging off every body part. Option B, I believe, is my subconscious way of avoiding Option A. I’m not sure if there’s a pamphlet or something on how to be less shit at saying goodbye, but if there is, I would love a copy.

I shall return, said General Patton. And so I shall. But when your heart feels like it’s been bruised, this sentiment is of scarce comfort.

Fast forward about ten hours, and I am back in the Doha airport. It’s autumn in Qatar, too, which means that it’s 40 degrees during the day instead of 50. Shanghai already seems so far away (which it is, technically—about 4000 miles), which is good in that I’ve actually left, so I can stop dreading it. Besides, since I landed in Doha, I’ve been distracted by this drunk Russian biznizman called, and I kid you not, Vladimir. Vladimir has about six gold teeth and proudly told me that he is part of the mafia and a krav maga master—you know, the martial art they teach to the incredibly fierce Israeli army? For the past hour, Vladimir has been trying to make conversation in extremely broken English, hold my hand, get my phone number, and have me visit him in St Petersburg. Wow, that sounds like a GREAT idea! I would tell him just to piss off, but the mafia connections and krav maga make me a little bit nervous. Maybe I should have pretended to be mute.

Anyway, my last few days in Shanghai may have been tinged with sadness, but they were satisfying. Shanghai is a great city for walking—rather, aimless wandering or ambling, which translates to sanbu in Chinese. I think that I’ve covered most of the ground around our flat, so I figured that it was only proper I say goodbye to all of my usual streets. In the days before my departure, the weather in Shanghai was been idyllic as well—sunny and a bit dry, with a cool breeze, and generally just perfect for being outside. Not to sound like a scrooge, but in Scotland, for much of the year, I hate being outside. It’s so incredibly beautiful, but it’s just too cold. So for the past few days, I’ve tried to savour the warm air and sun on my skin and remember what it feels like. Hopefully I can recall when I get caught in the St Andrews sleet without an umbrella (I’ve lived in the UK for three years; you would think bringing the damn thing with me would be reflex by now).

Embarrassingly, up until yesterday I had never been to Yuyuan Bazaar, which apparently is where all the tourists head straight away (as I found out when I waded through the throngs of Chinese and laowai alike). So I hopped on the metro and admired the delicate structuring of the pagodas and lavish decorations in the temple, all of which bring to mind the old dynastic China. One of my favourite Chinese traditional architectural features is the lines of animals marching along the upturned curves of the pagoda roofs. The more animals on the roofline, the luckier, or so the thinking goes. It was explained to me when I first visited Beijing, though, so I could be completely wrong. Whatever. I like the animals. From Yuyuan I made one final stroll down the Bund and watched the Pudong skyline burst into colour and light as dusk fell. The scale of the buildings is unreal—you have to see it to believe it. I’m not a huge fan of modern architecture, but it really is stunning. I’ve been to the World Financial Centre in all its second-tallest building in the world glory a few times now, but it has never failed to take my breath away. What really struck me, though, as I leaned over the railing and watched a black cargo ship steam its way down the Huangpu River, was the enormous significance the skyline carries. The sense of history weighs so heavily on you. Forget a picture being worth a thousand words; the face of modern China has spawned entire libraries of words. Deng Xiaoping, were he alive to see it, would be proud. I think.

As I was bidding the Bund adieu, I stumbled across a large half circle of Chinese tourists all staring at something on the ground. Feeling curious, I went to join them and was greeted by the sight of two dirty white hippie-wannabes, complete with dreadlocks, guitars and sense of obnoxious self-righteousness. They were strumming away and singing something (off key, naturally) with an upside down hat in front of them, clearly thinking that all the Bund's foot traffic would make it an ideal place for busking. You have to be seriously dim to think that China is a good place to do that sort of thing, but there they were in all their Asian backpacking glory. Sure enough, two police offers marched up to them and told them to get out (even if you didn't understand Chinese, it was pretty clear). I know it makes me sound like a bad person, but I laughed. I hope that, after I left, the two policemen told them to take a shower as well.

After my twilight farewell to the Bund and Nanjing Xi Lu, I savoured one last meal of good genuine Shanghainese food, which was a particularly sad occasion. When I was waxing poetic over the phone to my dad about epicurean Shanghai, he commented, ‘I guess you’ll be really and truly spoiled with regards to real Chinese food now—nothing in the West will measure up.’ I readily admit that I was a Chinese food snob even before coming to Shanghai, for which I blame/accredit growing up in the Bay Area. Now, I imagine, I’ll be unbearable. My apologies in advance.

I’ll admit that my last forty-five minutes in the flat was spent frantically chucking odds and ends into my suitcases and praying that they wouldn’t weigh more than twenty kilos (checked bag) and seven kilos (carry-on). I’d brought the big one down to the post office a few days earlier to weigh it, thinking I had most of my stuff in there. After fighting through the crowds of people shipping mooncakes for the mid-autumn festival, I had been relieved to see that it weighed in at a mere 16.5. Unfortunately, the aforementioned odds and ends actually weigh a lot. I’m not very good at gauging weights, but when I picked up the suitcases, they seemed a lot heavier than what they were supposed to be. As I berated myself for not just shipping a box back to St Andrews, I frantically started rearranging. Shoes are heavy, I figured, so I stuffed a few pairs into my ‘personal item’—the one thing Qatar Airways doesn’t weigh. My books—which are easily three or four kilos alone, went into a plastic grocery bag in a bad attempt to make them look like snacks. I was still left with the problem of my four blazers and wool cardigan, though, which I knew would add a few kilos. With a sigh I squeezed on the sweater and two of the jackets and folded the other two over my arm along with the grocery bag of ‘snacks’. Needless to say, managing the blazers, ‘snacks’, massive ‘personal bag’, carry-on and big suitcase was actually impossible. By the time I got to the check-in desk I was roasting in my myriad layers, and my arms felt like they were about to fall off from trying to carry everything. Plus I looked like I had a disproportionately bulky torso and had a sort of wild look in my eyes, as the hour’s drive from Puxi had given me ample opportunity to work myself into a worried frenzy about what I would do if my stuff was still overweight. Crying? Pleading student status? Paying off the clerk? Faking a heart attack?

As it turned out the clerk didn’t say a word. My heart slowed down to its normal speed, though I’m still carrying around the four blazers and cardigan.

Next stop, Heathrow. Then Edinburgh, and finally, back to my seaside home in St Andrews, which, last time I checked, wasn’t so popular with the krav maga master mafia thugs.

Shang-hi to everyone

Et enfin! A massive ni hao from Shanghai, which has been home for the last six days. The list of things I like about the ‘hai covers a bit of the basics, but a lot has happened since I got here—I had my first night out in this lovely energetic city, my first day of work at Riviera, went to gorgeous Hangzhou on Saturday, and, as of an hour ago, joined a gym! That last one is rather important, I think, because you simply can’t avoid delicious food here, and I would prefer not to have to ask for a seatbelt extender on my flight back to St Andrews. I have a feeling that I sweat a lot of it off, but I want to savour the tastes of China without fear of turning into a large white hippo.

So last Thursday, the night after I got here, one of the other interns was leaving after a four-month stint here and decided to organise a get-together at this place called Shiva Lounge, where Paul (one of the people who help me set up the internship and flat) knows the bartender Danny. Danny was nice enough to give us a two-for-one deal on Pimms, and it was actually really tasty because it was made with ginger beer and not that foul Morrison’s lemonade. A day in and Shanghai had already shown me something amazing—I now knew why I’ve detested all the Pimms I’ve drunk at St Andrews. Shiva also has some brilliant-sounding cocktails, and when two of the other interns—Jessica and Prudence, my flatmate and coworker at Riviera—got pina coladas, they looked sublime. I did have my first day of work the next day, so I wistfully closed the menu and told Danny that I’d get one some other time. In the blink of an eye he had made another pina colada, passed the cocktail glass into my hand and told me that it was on the house. Really, not a terrible welcome to a new city—especially compared to Natasha’s, Joe’s and my infamous welcome to Sfax, Tunisia, where we checked into what appeared to be a crack den, got followed by a slightly crazy guy, saw the slightly crazy guy get beaten up by the police, and spent the rest of the night giving a statement while they took our passports into another room.

A few hours after that pina colada, I woke up unusually bright-eyed for my first day as an intern at Riviera, which is about fifteen minutes away by taxi on Haui An Lu by Suzhou Creek (for some reason I feel a bit embarrassed that I haven’t seen the creek yet; all of my lunch hours have taken me in the other direction). I think it’s housed in a refurbished warehouse from the early 20th century, which of course brings to mind all these romantic images of old Shanghai, the Paris of the East, and its fantastically debauched ways. I was introduced to Henri, the key accounts manager and the person who interviewed me over the phone—I remember it quite clearly; if I’m doing academic work in my room I’m cross-legged on the bed, but because my landline doesn’t stretch that far, I was twirling around on my office chair somewhat awkwardly and wondering if the floor would be more comfortable. I suppose I should have taken a more thorough look at the website before I got there, to have some faces to attach to names—but the whole office seems quite nice. I have my own little table and white leather office chair, where I tap away on my laptop. Again, I’m not used to working in office chairs, but it would probably be wildly unprofessional to request a beanbag on the floor or something. Still, I bet when all the major CEOs have made it, once they’ve ushered their clients and colleagues out of their vast mahogany-panelled offices, they just flop on the couch and work with their laptops perched on their stomachs (kind of like I am right now).

The actual work I do as a marketing intern is the creation of proposals for major events for international corporations, especially hotels; for example, my main project right now is two proposals for Christmas galas at a few Marriotts throughout Shanghai, and I’m also working on the grand opening of the St Regis in Lhasa (yes, the Lhasa in Tibet). I do a little bit of research on the hotels (for example, I need to know whether or not the Hongqiao Marriott’s grand ballroom can be divided up into multiple sections, or what the main foyer’s dimensions are like), a bit of research on the market they’re aiming to attract to a given event (Christmas galas tend to be a bit more family-oriented than other events, but the Chinese, obviously not being overwhelmingly Christian, see the holiday more as an excuse to go out and party), decide on a concept and theme, and then formulate ideas as to how to translate the theme into an event (communications/PR, entertainment, decoration, food and beverages, giveaways, etc). I put all of this together in Powerpoint presentations, which are then pitched to the clients. Bang.

It's fun stuff, and I stumble across some really random s*** on the internet while I do it. Take this Caribbean Christmas gala theme. Today, for instance, I had this idea that there could be a performing magician, but, in keeping with the theme, he could be a sort of Haitian black magic voodoo-style magician. Very shortly thereafter I found that if you search for ‘voodoo’ on Google images, you will get some REALLY weird stuff. I also found out that this company makes a knife block in the shape of a voodoo doll; when you’ve stored all of your knives, it looks as though they’re stabbing a little orange person. A cool idea if you’re in the knife block-manufacturing business, but I don’t think I’d want it in my own kitchen.

As for something like the St Regis Lhasa grand opening, it’s obviously a bit different and, in some ways, more complicated. We also can’t exactly meet with clients in Lhasa for the morning—for those of you with hazy map skills, it’s a two-hour flight from here, plus you need special permits from the government in advance before going there—so I would presume that we’ll be doing conference calls from Riviera’s meeting room. It goes without saying, though, that I would have LOVED to go to Tibet on business!

Wait a minute, you might be saying. Isn’t the last thing Tibet needs a luxury hotel like the St Regis moving in? Well, from an historical/cultural/anthropological standpoint, yeah. Again, though, if I started making strident, obnoxious American-style objections about it, that probably come off as just a tiny bit unprofessional. As I proofread the proposal that had been put together, however, I realised that St Regis is really committed to making this a truly Tibetan hotel; there’s nothing about it that says ‘Han Chinese’. The grand opening features lots of traditional Tibetan dancing, music, food and general festivities and really seeks to give guests the chance to experience the local culture. Most touching, I found, was that the Hong Kong billionaire who’s financing the whole thing owns one of the world’s largest collections of Buddhist art, and is shipping them up to Lhasa to create a Buddhist Art Museum as part of the St Regis, so that guests and locals alike can take pleasure in viewing all these amazing artefacts. In addition to all that, you can’t deny that working with St Regis is rather cool. Perhaps they offer young blonde interns a discount? Or the loan of one of their trademark butlers?

Obviously there’s been more than just work; coming to Shanghai and just staying in the office would be a travesty! But I’m afraid that I’ll have to write about Hangzhou tomorrow, because it’s already half past midnight and I’m trying to get in a good sleep before tomorrow. It’s a full day, including a Mandarin lesson during my lunch hour (normally reserved for veritable culinary adventures around Huai An Lu!) and a ladies’ night in one of the tallest buildings in Shanghai that overlooks the Bund and features free champagne. Needless to say, there won’t be much time for a siesta.

Here are some pictures of our flat, though. It’s a really perfect little place, plus it’s on the eighth floor, which is extremely lucky. Ba, the word for eight, sounds like fa, the word for wealth, so all of China is clamouring to have eights in their life. Even airlines try to make their flights in or out of China as lucky as possible—my flight from Doha to Shanghai was 888, as was my flight from Beijing to San Francisco. The number four, on the other hand, is considered unlucky because in Chinese (si) it sounds very similar to the word for death. I’m not superstitious, but as they say, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.


1. The view up Yanping Lu, our cross street, from my window.


2. The kitchen and dining room, which gets loads of sun through the balcony windows.


3. Our living room with the gloriously comfortable L-shaped couch.


4. Looking up at our skyscraper home. I've never lived in a big world city and even I'm a little taken aback by how much I love it!

Hello, Shanghai...this might be awkward, but I should probably tell you that I'm in love with you

If you're reading this, it means that I've made it out of California/the UK/Qatar and into Shanghai, have figured out how to skirt the CCP's ban on blogging sites, and am finally getting my *** together and doing the blog like I promised. Although I'm kind of screwing myself over by being awake at 3am to write this-the girls and I are leaving for Hangzhou, about 200km south of the 'hai, in less than four hours-I figure that I've been here for three days already and should probably say a little something about the place. It's just bits and bobs, so don't expect great things.

What I like about Shanghai:

-the heat! Even when you go out at night, you don't need to wear a jacket. To me this is a beautiful thing. The flat has air conditioning, which I've never really needed to use in California or Scotland (HAHAHA), so it took me a while to get the hang of, you know, turning it on, so in short the air con keeps us cool when we're inside.
-the flat! It's on the 8th floor-eight being very lucky here in contrast to crappy 4-and has massive windows and a balcony looking out over Jing'an. We've also got an L-shaped couch, something I've always wanted. But Mom always said we didn't have space. Now that I am 21, I have space. As they would say in 1996, booyah.
-the flatmates/other interns/pretty much all the Westerners I've met here so far! They're lovely people that are obviously globally minded and well travelled; just living here acts like a filter. As in, I haven't met anyone here who thinks that 'Homeland Security is there for our protection' or 'Nick Griffin isn't that bad' or 'let's nuke the Middle East and start over'. Or at least they haven't said it to my face.
-the cost of stuff! Europe and North America are expensive. China, even in its most expensive city, is not. Enough said.
-the food! I simply cannot tire of Chinese food, and even if the unthinkable were to happen, I would have a host of other options at my fingertips. The bao and dumplings alone are enough to convince me to live here. Plus the majority of people in this city don't think I'm weird for liking things like tea eggs or bean curd-flavoured ice cream.
-the internship! aka the reason I'm here! I had my first day at Riviera and this is the first summer job I've had where I ACTUALLY GET TO USE MY BRAIN. And it feels fantastic. Plus I like getting to wear nice clothes and be in an office; it makes me feel like a real person. Marketing, so far, is interesting.
-the Expo! Drove past it on the way from the airport and the pavilions I spied from the car were definitely eye-catching. At some point I will definitely go and explore it. In the meantime, the city has been prettied up, spitting and honking bans are in place, and there are people from all over the world flocking here.
-there are obviously more, but finally, not to get all abstract, but the energy of the place! Shanghai feels so lively and exciting, but it's gracious at the same time. It's quite green, full of tree-lined streets and a few beautiful parks, and you do get that intriguing mix of rambling old apartment blocks with the washing all strung out to dry in front and massive sleek skyscrapers.

Things I don't like:

-stupidly, my camera cord managed not to make it to Shanghai with me. I will track down a memory card reader or something, but for now I can't upload any of my pictures. I'm sorry! I'm sorry!
-that my faithful hound Katia apparently sulked for days after I left. This makes me sad, though I think Shanghai is too hot for her, and there's not enough shady grass where she can flop on her side.




This is more her kind of scene.













The money shot of Pudong. Unfortunately, not taken by me.


In short, Shanghai is rather good. More later!