The Goodyear blimp is making slow circles above Zhangjiang High-tech Park right now.

Now that I live in Pudong and have a full-time job out here, I don't get across the river to Puxi that often, so excuse me if this is old hat to you. But there's two things that wowed me when we went to pick up Jodi's parents at the South Railway Station the other day:

1. The Metro City (Xujiahui) globe is now covered with LEDs and flashing psychedelic patterns at passing pedestrians and cars. Actually, this is the second time I've seen it but it still floored me. Also, the development along Zhaojiabang Rd is really picking up steam.
2. There's a Lawson on the platform of the Lianhua Rd metro station. I've never had to ask the cashier to hurry up with my change because a train is pulling up in front of the convenience store, but I just couldn't resist a Meiji chestnut-red-bean ice cream. I wonder how many times that happens each day.

Our favorite 麻辣烫 malatang place at 南方商城 was torn out, but I picked up there-and-back tickets to Beijing for next weekend while we were at the train station.

From one of my favorite under-appreciated writers:

Radiohead’s music is shot through with a sense of irreparable loss, of things that might have been had we gotten there earlier, the way things we might have been if we had the courage to do something when it needed to be done. This is not in the lyrics–it’s in the music as a whole.

Thom Yorke’s caterwaul is The Howl made aural; a Western, male, first-world, plangent, half-hearted protest against a life and status quo that one is powerless to change. There’s no macho call for revolutionary violence to overthrow the status quo–Radiohead is, for the most part, apolitical. But anything that emotionally charged is really, if you extend it far enough, a critique.

I'm finishing off the last of my black and purple M&Ms.

A few days ago Charlotte learned that if she looks directly up when she is sitting on the lap of somebody, she can see the face of the person who is holding her. Charlotte looks very cute from above.

(She's sitting on my lap pinching my arms as I type this.)

There was an interesting article in the Shanghai Morning Post that said the location at Longyang Rd where Suning electronics is opening was also bid upon by Best Buy, who was looking to open a second Shanghai store in Pudong. Best Buy also has their eye on a location near the Babaiban (Yaohan) department store, but delays have postponed the opening of that store. In the end, Best Buy decided to go back to Puxi to scout a location for their second store.

Thirty-three hours and three airplanes later (with a bassinet on none of them), we're back in Shanghai. It felt good to be back in our own bed -- for five hours, in my case.

moneyinabox in "SH: absence of true party culture? Help!" in the SmartShanghai forums:

I don't get frustrated with the Shanghai or China scene anymore. I have stopped trying to compare it to New York or London. It completely sucks, but it is what it is and people can dream and make huge plans, but it's all rather a big waste of time. The only people who are going to change anything are the Chinese and they'll do it in their own time and in their own way.

One-Eyed Panda's Journal - "Thoughts on Listening to Cantonese":

Since there was two or three people ahead of her, she had to wait for a while. After we were there for about five minutes she started to get really angry. Yelling at the staff for her tea. The staff were really good, they told her in Mandarin to calm down and be patient and then took her receipt and a minute later passed the woman her tea. I don’t think that we could see this happening Shanghai. The staff would just yell at the person and the person would probably just yell back.