One Man in his Time Plays Many Parts

Today a lot of the people gave there mock presentations of 20 minutes of a class for comment and criticism from the instructors. All I could think is how the hell am I going to keep with up for an hour and a half at a go. Though no one I've talked to has said that it's really hard to teach here I just have no earthly idea how I'm going to do this. I just have this feeling that I'm going to get up there in front of all the students, who are basically my age, and have them look right through me as if to say, "you don't have any idea what you're doing, do you?"

Besides panic about teaching we spent a bunch of time in the afternoon and early evening down by the main river and on a boat cruise around Shanghai. The city is amazingly pretty at night. While the buildings are more spread out then lets say a Manhattan so it doesn't have a similar sky line, all the buildings have these amazing light displays on them. The most impressive was on the side of the Citi Bank building which had what was essentially television quality picture streaming up one massive face of the 50 story tall building. Other building had all manor of flickering lights on them to make for a truly dazzling display.

The other day we were on top of what is now the second tallest building in Shanghai. The tallest building, built right next to it in sort of a giant fuck you, opens to the public in about a month. Even though it was a little bit overcast, actually it had just finished poor but more on that in a second, I could see just how far Shanghai stretches. While it's not as concentrated as New York the number of 40+ story buildings that stretch in all directions around the city is just mind boggling. It gives it a sort of Blade Runner feeling of an endless city. On the viewing deck they have some well placed shops which offer little freebies to attract customers. For example every visitor to the top receives a free pearl shucked from a clam in front of your eyes, your right Mom they really do have a lot of pearls here. Then they go about trying to sell you an over priced necklace to go with it for your theoretical girlfriend. In fact the only person who bought one was the guy with hid girlfriend on the trip.

The street vendors in the tourist areas are also amazingly pushy not dissuaded by my usual tactic of just looking away and nodding my head no. Some people told them no in Chineese, Bu Yao, which really seemed to amuse the vendors. The bargaining here, which can be done on almost everything, has a huge price rang to it. You can get something like 90% off what they first say sometimes, which is probably still paying too much.