Sino-psis

went thursday night for a swim. was thoroughly enjoyable since i hadn't been swimming in over a month. however, the circumstances in which i was able to swim were a bit on the odd side, but, you can say that for most things done in china i guess. first off, jena scott and i took the bus there and went to gate 5 of shanghai stadium, where scott was told would be the youyongguan (swimmin' hole). but, alas, no luck. so we walked back to other side, one stop earlier on the bus, and finally found the place amid a mishmash of restaurants, gyms, shops, and random places that were a part of the stadium grounds.

so, we went in and had to go back outside to buy a ticket to get in, went back in, had to backtrack and get a "medical exam" which was a lady with a stethoscope stamping something and giving these cards to us, okaying us to go swimming. i guess we looked like healthy foreigners, no need to probe and deeper than that. went through the requisite locker room nekkidness to the pool and discovered that we were about the only ones without swimming caps. ah well, we like to stick out. also, everyone wears speedoes. like europe, and everywhere else but the US. in that case we don't like to stick out.

the swimming area was chaos. there were two lanes in the middle, dividing the pool into the wading shallow area and the frenzied deep area. signs hanging above the deep end alluded to three main channels, one a slow lane, one a fast lane, and one that was for unilateralism only. who knows what that meant, cuz just like in the streets of shanghai, people were cutting others off, swimming straight at another person and swerving at the last possible moment, and, if they had had horns, honking at one another. i certainly got kicked a couple of times, but i gave as good as i got. the pool was lengthy enough that i felt like i was getting some exercise at least. i stuck to the breast stroke mostly, cuz that way, half of the time i'm above water seeing what obstacles are in my path. the mark of a good driver, looking ahead on the road.

the shallow side was less stressful, so we did a little water yoga and then took off. hungry hungry water hippos as we were, we charged around outside until we decided on a section of town to eat in, went there, and picked a place that just happened to smell faintly of urine. just our luck. but it was thai and the food was good, and they had some thai milk iced tea that demanded we get seconds. i had thai food again last night. i do need to go down to that country and thank the chef. smack my lips a couple of times in his/her presence.

heh, i was someone's saviour last night. coming back from the kangaroo bar, one of the member's of my cab needed to stop quickly, had a lil bit too much to drink. it was easy to tell the cabbie to pull over, my friend's a little sick, yeah, right here, stop, thanks.... but to those in the back, it seemed like magic that i could get that accomplished only seconds after alina had clapped her hand on her mouth. i think it was more due to the driver's experience (he had plastic bags in his glove compartment) but i got thanked multiple times on the way back home for that one. nali nali.

it is kinda interesting how all the foreigners congregate at certain bars without really knowing how they all got there. they can't have all planned it, but they all show up at the same place. magnetic fields of language groups. maybe, would be impossible to prove, but maybe, when a languages come in contact they affect the other slightly, so, when a chinese speaker hears an american, his chinese alters imperceptibly, and that dominoes to whoever he speaks to, she speaks to, etc. so a wave of language rolls outward, bunches of them, all rippling into one another, causing splashes that allow the foreigners to triangulate one another's positions. like bats, using waiyu radar to ping off other people until they get so close they can use their sense of smell from there on out. all done subconsciously thought and with amazing speed. a phenomenon in shanghai.

speaking of going out, yo tengo hambre, onaka ga suita, wo e si le, ahm hongry.

chow