It's good to know that I can still be a bit spontaneous in my life. Last Saturday, I went out to buy a pint of milk, and ended up buying myself a new camera AND a pint of milk! I know, I know – it's only a couple of months since I bought a camera, why would I need another one??? Well, this one is a digital SLR – a camera body you can change the lenses on. I got a Canon 400D, and I can use the lenses of my conventional camera on it. The photos are pretty good, although the files are enormous – only 100 photos on a 1GB card.
So I took my camera for a bit of an outing on Sunday. I went to the final of the tennis Master's cup. The stadium is about 10 minutes from work, which isn't very handy on a Sunday! There were free shuttle buses from Shanghai stadium – one metro stop up the line from my flat. Easy, I thought – jump on the metro, then meet up with the bus at entrance number 2. What could be easier?? Well, life is full of adventures! I got to entrance number 2, and there was nothing there. I wandered about a bit, but didn't see anything that looked like a bus to the tennis. Eventually, I found a sign with the Master's cup logo on – but I couldn't read it. A couple of Chinese women came up to the sign, obviously looking for the bus too. They could read the sign, and they asked some officials what the situation was – ahhh, they said – follow us. So, I did… into their car, and then 2 minutes up the road to the outdoor stadium. Silly me – I had gone to the indoor stadium! There was a queue for the bus, but I got on, and an hour later we arrived at the venue. It's an amazing building. It's enormous, but there is only 1 tennis court. There's some fancy engineering in the roof, which opens like a chrysanthemum – their explanation, not mine. The tennis was good – I saw the doubles final, followed by Roger Federer beating James Blake. My camera got a good work-out!
I started my Christmas shopping this week. I was in the supermarket, and walked past a cat food display. I had asked Sheila to take some Chinese cat food back to Koshka in September, and Mum says she loved it, and just scoffed it down. As I'm going back to Scotland for Christmas, I'll need to take her some food. So, at the cat food display, I picked up 3 packets each of 3 different flavours. The woman standing next to me said something – I don't know exactly what she said, but it was along the lines of 'nine packets of food, how many cats do you have?' It's as well I couldn't say that I only have 1 cat, and she's in Scotland.
You may have noticed that the weather has changed here in Shanghai. It's got cold and wet. It's not cold, cold. I'm still walking about in a T-shirt and jacket, but it's pretty cold in my flat. The temperature is hovering about 18 degrees in my sitting room, just a bit too cold to be comfortable. The heating in most places in Shanghai is pretty feeble. As we're south of the Yangtze, it's thought that there is no need for heating. I don't agree. The heating in my flat consists of the air conditioning units, and a little portable electric heater. The problem I had – how do I get the air conditioning units to heat instead of cool? I got the remote control and started pushing buttons. Nothing happened. Eventually I worked out that the battery was flat, and no signal was being sent. Ooops! I got hold of another remote control, and pushed some buttons – and the units sprang in to life…… blowing cold air. I'll be alright in the summer. I couldn't get any hot air out of them at all, so have been cuddling hot water bottles and my electric heater all week. Desperate situations call for desperate measures, so I took the remote controller into work for translation. Yes! I now know that those squiggles there mean hot air! Things are a bit warmer in my flat tonight!!
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