I got home quite late last night from my outing to Shanghai. As I came out the lift onto the landing the family in the unit opposite were seeing their guests off and so I politely said hello. To my surprise I knew the next door neighbour, what are the chances of that. This was Tom who had been my first student when I arrived in China and I always new that this apartment block looked familiar, but now I know why because I had been here before, almost 12 months ago in fact.

So how bizarre is that? I just can’t go any where any more.

Yesterday myself and my friend Lydia went to Shanghai to see this exhibition on Renaissance Art and it was great. I’ve always enjoyed this period of history and more importantly Leonardo Da Vinci, who in my opinion was one of the greatest minds in history. So it was also great to see a real self portrait of the man, although the Mona Lisa that was here was a copy.

We were lucky enough to arrive early and so there was not a lot of people and for those that were there they treated this with respect, speaking quietly and moving about enjoying the feast that was on offer. After we had seen all of the exhibition, Lydia said that she had missed seeing the Mona Lisa and so we back tracked to the beginning going against the flow. Just as we reached the last doorway to that room there was a hoard of tourist entering and unfortunately the ambience of the place disintegrated in a heartbeat. When a tour guide is leading a group they use a microphone and small speaker which is usually way too loud and the sound quality is shit. And so we have gone for a quiet environment  to this dreadful rabble flowing through a healthy body like a insidious poison.

This has got to be one of the most annoying attributes of going to public places in China. The groups are way too large and they when they flow through a space they have little or no respect for anyone else. But as I said, we went early and so we were lucky to enjoy this exhibition before it got chaotic.

I hope to go to to Italy and see more of this wonderful artistic period and if all goes well then I might even be able to fulfil this dream in January or February next year. I’ve been putting off for too long a trip to Italy and so I think I will bite the bullet and make plans.

From Suzhou to Shanghai is only around 40 mins on the high speed train and this is very convenient but the problem is when you arrive in Shanghai, because it’s such a big city and although the metro system is very useful, it just seems to take a long time and many changes of metro lines to get to where you want to go. It took longer to traverse the city than to travel from Suzhou to Shanghai. Not my cup of tea.

But was it worth it? Of course it was………………it was a great exhibition and it shows you what can be achieved by man even although all around him is chaos and war. Although this seems to be a very romantic period in history, Leonardo was tasked with designing weapons of mass destruction. He created such detailed drawings of the human body that for many years these were used as a reference material and guides to help doctors. Some of the engineering solutions he perfected are in use today.

To find out more about Leonardo you can have a look here because I am too lazy to write anymore.

Leonardo

I got invited to speak at Toastmasters this evening about my travels and so I did a wee talk about India. Most important message I gave was” to watch where you step” because the cows leave so much shit everywhere and you don’t want to stand in it with your new sandals, although your feet might feel a little warm and sticky after the experience.

My new digs are at Zhongnan Jie which is very different from where I have been living. There are wide tree lined roads with a geometric layout, you can see that this side of the city has been planned and not just developed from scratch rather than redeveloping and area. I’m also right next to a raised road which is one of the main ring roads in Suzhou.

This is not good, the noise and more importantly the pollution that comes from this road both in the form of noise and fumes is quite bad. I walked to the other side of the road yesterday to go to a park and you can taste the air and it’s foul. I’m sure most people that live here will have breathing problems or some kind of lung disease. Another bad thing about this location is it’s not only one road that you have to contend with, there is one underneath too.

The tower block that I am in is only 18 floors, but I am almost surrounded by these monster 33 storey buildings. Great view but don’t fancy living all the way up here, especially after what happened in the UK at Grenfell. I’m on the 4th floor so I have a great view of the raised road and can watch the traffic go by when I’m having a shower, but if I can’t see it I can always hear it.

This gated community I am in is very large, I’m not too sure how many buildings are in it, but there must be thousands of people live here. There is a lot of security and you need to have a pass to enter and leave the complex. There are plenty of shops and convenience stores around of course the all important restaurants and yesterday I found a Muslim restaurant so I am happy that I can buy some tasty food. I was also surprised to find out that it was a little cheaper than my last place but I don’t think it is as tasty.

The house is comfortable and quite large so it feels good to have space. My hosts told me that when they bought this place 3 years ago it was 9,000 rmb per m2 and now it’s over 25,000 per m2.

My room has a double bed and the bed is rock hard, but I sleep like a log. Thankfully the house is double glazed but the noise still seeps through. At night it’s quite quiet but once the day starts that’s it, but then again I am living beside a very busy ring road.

The metro station is about a 20 minute walk which is OK when there is no rain. There are free city bikes at the west gate which I can take to the station which cuts the time a bit.

So I’m here or another 5 weeks and then it’s on to a more nomadic life for a few months hopefully. It feels a bit strange to be saying good bye to China but I do want to get away from the teaching and Suzhou for a while. I do know that I do not want to live in this side of town and especially next to a busy main road.

I need to buy another phone me thinks😆

I came across a new cafe and so I decided to come in and try the coffee. It was not too bad, but as usual a little on the weak side, but way better than Starbucks. 

I got a window seat upstairs over looking Shiqain Jie which is quite a busy street and so it was good just to while away the hours before I go to class. Across from me were two young ladies in their late 20’s that all of a sudden could not keep their hands off each other,  it was quite a floor show and quite unexpected. I was only feet away from them but they paid no attention to me what so ever. And I’m sure they didn’t notice the other folk nearby either.  After about 10 mins or so they calmed down a bit and decided to leave and no doubt get a room. All the time they were so wrapped up in each other that nothing else existed. 

Now in no way shape or form is this a complaint as I found it very entertaining but I was very surprised to see such an open display of affection by these two young ladies in public in China and plus the fact that no one else seemed the slightest bit bothered.

So there you go,  you never know just what your day will turn up. I might have to come back here again for another coffee😆

The old VPN is very intermittent at the moment and so when it does work it’s so good to use google and actually find what you want. Having to use Yahoo is OK for simple searches but if that doesn’t work you have to go to Bing and then you are just about ready to jump out the window………………………………

Autumn is coming to Suzhou and as you walk down the streets the trees discard their leaves without a care, much like many of the locals discard their rubbish.  This morning as I walked to the bus stop I saw at least 4 folk drop their rubbish and I thought to myself that this is something I must try.

I went for lunch and had some noodles, thick noodles and so it can get a little messy.  They were also quite spicy and on the snot scale of 1 to 5 then I would say they were a two,  where 5 is the spiciest. So because of this I had to blow the nose and was quite amazed at the amount of snot produced by these relatively mild noodles.

Anyway I don’t like to leave my snotty hanky on the table when I leave the restaurant as that’s pretty disgusting, instead I took it with me and thought that this would be a good opportunity to set my mind free from the shackles of western values and drop that snotty hanky on the ground as I walked down the street but you know as much as I tried and really wanted to fit in and be a real local I just couldn’t. Every fibre of my body resisted against that urge to conform.

I must report that I failed in my task but I am guilt free and once more I have contributed to saving the planet.