Blog Formatting Issues

Sorry to anyone who reads some of these posts and wonders why there seem to be a lot of extra unnecessary lines in between some paragraphs or pictures. The reason for this is that different browsers do not read the content the same. So when I write my post using my Google Chrome Browser, I often have to hit 'enter' many times to get things to turn out the way I want them to look. But I recently viewed some of my posts using Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, and some of them look quite ugly. From now on, I'm going to just enter everything in normally, which may look odd for people using Google Chrome, so my apologies!

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PMM

Shanghai Cuisine Tours

This new venture that my boss has got me working on has been a good experience so far. I've been working with web-designers and programmers to try to improve the web presence of 3 Dumplings (and to improve the actual content on the site itself, it still needs some help), but it's too soon to tell if anything that I've done has made a difference. Hopefully site traffic will pick up here in the next couple weeks as search engines crawl it and include it in people's searches for things related to the services we offer. I really enjoy working with web-based companies. My internship with Athletes' Performance last summer in Boston was what originally sparked my interest in getting involved online. My boss, Ace Bhattacharjya was a great mentor and taught me a lot about online initiatives. CorePerformance.com was a fun project to work on for a few months. After my experience there, I created PMMCornholes.com and RodtrimInteriors.com for my father and I (the latter needs a lot of work, still). This past spring, at school, I had a chance to help a close friend improve his web presence for his landscaping company - WasmerBros.com, and that was my first real time spent with Google Adwords. So now, I'm taking everything that I've learned from these 4 experiences and combining it to hopefully provide beneficial results for 3Dumplings.com. So far, I think I've been pretty successful.

As of now, I have created 5 Adwords campaigns for 3 Dumplings; one for Shanghai Cuisine Tours, one for Shanghai Market (Shopping) Excursions, one for Chinese Cooking Classes, one for Shanghai Nightlife Tours, and the last one is an image ad campaign which will be advertised on websites outside of Google, what is called the 'Google Display Network,' (sites such as about.com, food.com. nytimes.com, businessweek.com, youtube.com, gmail, fandango.com, cheapflights.com, entrepreneur.com, and many more) and will come up on these sites when things like 'Travel, Nightlife, Shopping, or Cooking Classes' are part of the content on the site. Here's the image ad I created, we may use this, or go with something else that a more experienced graphic designer can come up with :-) I wish I knew a thing or two about Photoshop...

None of the campaigns have been launched yet, but they're ready to go. We're waiting to see what kind of traffic comes to the site on a regular basis without the help of advertising, so that we have some base-data to compare our future advertising efforts to. Essentially, the main goal is to drive traffic to the site and, in doing so, hopefully getting customers to purchase some of our tour offerings. One tool that we're using to gauge our traffic and our visitors is Google Analytics. It's a marvelous tool that Google offers (one of many) and it's entirely free. If you have a website or blog or something and you're not running Google Analytics, you really ought to consider it. It's easy to install and it allows you to see how many people are visiting your site, what they're looking at on your site, where they're coming from, and more. You can set goals that you want to achieve, and for someone running adwords campaigns, like myself, you can see what keywords people are typing in to find you. This allows us to narrow our keyword selections for future campaigns. Google Analytics has graphs, charts, all kinds of cool gadgets, I'm on it every day.

On a different topic...

I have yet to get my hair cut. The plan is to go tomorrow around dinner time. Today, my Mandarin tutor taught me some words and phrases that should allow me to successfully communicate what I want done to my hair, so I guess we'll see how that pans out for me!

I want to send out a special thanks to the new viewers of my blog :-) Hopefully you've had a chance to catch up and you've learned all about what I have been up to over here in Shanghai! It's been quite the adventure (many adventures), and I'm having a blast. Stay tuned for more posts soon!

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PMM

Ohh Boy, This Food...

The food here is like nothing I have ever had. Growing up in the Midwest part of the US, I never really became the type of kid who would adventure into trying new foods, especially ethnically diverse foods, but that has all changed since my recent travels. Yesterday I ate ox's tongue, moving/half-alive shaved clam, turtle tail, seaweed, fried banana, and monkfish liver. Some of you may read this list and say, 'ohh I've had these foods, it's no big deal,' and some may not, but for me they were all firsts. Most of that stuff was pretty delicious, while some of it I hope to never eat again :-) I believe that the majority of these dishes were Japanese, not Chinese, but it was nonetheless a personal adventure. The not-quite-dead shaved clam was probably my least favorite thing out of the many foods that I tried yesterday, it was tough, chewy, and bland...not the best.

The cuisine of Shanghai is quite interesting to me. It is not the standard 'Chinese Food' that you'll find at your local Panda Express, that's for sure, and I have been told that Shanghainese food is quite different than the food of different parts of the country.

Fried noodles, dumplings, hot tea, soup, cold chicken, tofu, crawfish, frog, duck, and pork are the most popular foods that I have come across at local restaurants...fried rice dishes don't seem to be quite as popular as I had hoped, but you can commonly find a side of rice at most places. Vinegar, ginger, and red chilies are often used in the preparation of many dishes, and almost always come on the side of every main entree.

I recently got sick, which I do not attribute to the food that I've been eating as most people around here tend to do. It was not fun. Being sick back home, where you can easily find medicine and have no difficulties communicating your problems to the people who can help you makes being sick a simple task to handle, usually. But here, it's not easy. I picked up some sort of cold, likely from a roommate, and I also contracted 'fever blisters' on my lips. I made an attempt at trying to go to a nearby pharmacy, after researching some of the ingredients in the medicine that I needed, but I found very little success. Imagine me standing there acting out my symptoms with my hands and some noises, while the pharmacist hands me boxes of medicines that I can't read. So I decided it was never going to work out and I had better take a translator with me at a future date. I did that, and it worked out much better. I got the right medicine, and my lip problem vanished after 3 days of meds. As for the cold, I'm still battling it, but I think it's going away. It often amazes me how difficult seemingly simple tasks can become when you add a language barrier into the equation. It always makes for a good story, though. =)

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PMM

McDonald's - Restaurant or Home?

I recently came across this article in the China Daily which touches on a situation that occurred on my street, at the local McDonald's restaurant, just a couple weeks ago: China Daily | My Kind of Place

It seems that many of Shanghai's 24-hour fast food joints have turned into sanctuaries for homeless Chinese citizens, and the management at these establishments are having a lot of trouble keeping people from using them as their own personal bedrooms late at night. It's an interesting story, and it's something that I've personally noticed while passing by these restaurants late at night. Both the 24-hour KFC and the McDonald's down the road from my apartment have at least 20 people sleeping on the tables and booths between the hours of 11pm and 7am. It often hinders you from getting that late night ice cream sundae which you've been hoping for after a long day.

The stabbing that the story describes is not something that happens often, so please don't be worried about my safety. The area that I live in and everywhere that I've visited in Shanghai all seem to be quite safe in comparison to some places that I've been back in the U.S.

While I'm on the topic of the 'Sleeping Chinese' that I had mentioned in an earlier post (Sleeping Chinese and Poor Translations), I might as well share some images that I have collected during my adventures throughout the city of Shanghai which show how common it is to find a person napping in really any societal setting:

Here is a young boy sleeping on the front porch of a Xujiahui restaurant after watching the USA-Ghana World Cup game through the window.

This bus driver is catching some Z's while he awaits the tour group that he just dropped of in Pudong.

Here's a lady who need a nap in the local KFC after a long day's work.

This guy looks like he was forced into going to Starbucks at his girlfriend's command, and the caffeine in his frappuccino just wasn't enough to keep him from passing out on the comfy green couches in the dining area.

(Side note: Unfortunately, team USA got knocked out of the World Cup tournament by Ghana yesterday, for the second WC in a row.

Which means that I won't be able to rock my big red/white/blue Uncle Sam hat and American Flag on the streets of China anymore...aside from our 4th of July party at the brewery. But it does mean that I won't feel obligated to stay up until 5am watching World Cup matches anymore.)

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PMM

Internship Update

As pointed out by a few loyal followers of my blog, I have not been providing much information about my internship, and that's really the reason I'm here is to gain an experience in a foreign work environment. So here it is...

Lately, I've been working mostly with the brewery, Closed Door, and 3 Dumplings. I'll start with 3 Dumplings, because I haven't even told anyone about it yet, it's new, so let me explain. Kelley and her two friends (Cathy and Pauline) recently began a website that offers tours of the city of Shanghai. It's mostly directed towards food-related tours, so they provide customers with an opportunity to see Shanghai through its incredible cuisine varieties. You can do market (shopping) tours, restaurant tours, nightlife tours, and also take cooking classes. Check it out at 3Dumplings.com...

Currently, I'm working on some SEO (search engine optimization) and online advertising, so that people will be able to easily find 3Dumplings.com and will hopefully use it to tour Shanghai! It's a good thing I took that Google AdWords class at Albion this past semester, or I'd be wondering aimlessly around the web trying to figure this stuff out. It's great to enter a real-life situation with knowledge that you've obtained from school, being able to utilize things that you learn in class is really a great feeling. It's nice when your boss says 'research how to do this' and you don't have to because you already know. With this project, I've been educating Kelley just as much as she's been educating me...it's been interesting. It'll be fun to see where the website goes from here.

As for the brewery, I'm continuing to plan for our 4th of July party coming up. I've been assigned to the task of organizing a Boat Race 'Chug for Charity' Beer Drinking Competition (teams of 5 compete in a bracket-style knock out tournament of drinking mayhem), as well as a Pie Eating Contest (blueberry pies, no hands...it'll be incredibly messy and funny). Here are the registration forms that I came up with for these two events:

I'm also helping to make the transition from the original BCB location (which closed down when the current location went up a year ago, but is now used as a 'warehouse' to brew the beer), to the new location which will open on September 1st of this year. We've been taking a lot of inventory and sitting with design teams to build the layout of the new place. It's been very interesting to see what all goes into opening a new restaurant. It's a lot of work, that's for sure. I imagine I'll be helping move things and set things up once the new location is ready to be furnished! Oh boy :-)

As for Closed Door, it's being shut down. The whole 'private social club/restaurant membership' deal was not working for people, and it's impossible to change the license of the building over so that it can be used as a working restaurant, so it just has to be shut down. I guess some things have to end so that new things can begin. All of the staff from Closed Door will be moved to the brewery and be used there, so it's not a total loss for everyone involved.

I haven't gotten involved in much regarding the Molecular Martini Bar lately, which is kind of a bummer, but I'm hoping to dip into that some more very soon. Kelley and her business partner (Eduardo Vargas) recently had a meeting with some investors for the big project, so I'm hoping things will start progressing here in the near future and hopefully I can get involved with a lot.

More to come soon. I lost my cell phone, it just disappeared on me last night. So I have to go out and buy a new one! I'm also going to hopefully get a haircut today, we'll see.

USA plays Ghana on Saturday at 2:30pm EST (2:30am on Sunday, my time)...it should be a fun game to watch!! Wednesday's game was craaaaazy, everyone was going nuts around here, it was a great moment for American Sports history =) I've got my own soccer happening tomorrow as well, another 7 v 7 game with the Shanghai Puxi Lions. Should be fun!

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PMM

Can We Do It??

This post doesn't really have much to do with China, I just want to share some things with everyone...

The US team has had the opportunity to appear in the World Cup 8 times. In each of our past appearances, we've lost EVERY game 3 that we've played. Today is our chance to make history. We take on Algeria in game 3, and we need to win.

Out of a total 27 games played in the World Cup, the US team has won only 6 of those games, tied 5 of them, and lost 16. It's about time we add some to the WINS column! What better time to do it than when we really need a victory. By beating Algeria in t-minus 7 hours and 30 minutes, we will be accomplishing three things: 1) We'll have broken the curse of game 3, 2) we'll show the world that we're better than those crappy British, and 3) we'll move on to the round of 16 where we'll play in a single elimination, bracket-style tournament until we're knocked out (which hopefully isn't for a while!).

The best outcome that we've ever gotten in a World Cup was the first ever tournament in Uruguay in 1930, and we made it to the semi-finals. Lately, the best we've done is make it to the quarter-finals in the Japan-Korea 2002 World Cup. So this year is a huge opportunity for us. I wish more people in the US would be more open to supporting the sport of soccer in our country. Many Americans are missing out on something that brings great joy to billions of people around the world. There are countries out there whose team did not qualify for the World Cup this year, such as China, and the Chinese are fraught with disappointment because of it.

So please turn on your television to ESPN in 7.5 hours (or check out the gamecast on ESPN.com if you're at work) to watch the US tear apart Algeria in their 3rd game of the 2010 South Africa World Cup Tournament. It is sure to be a great game.

An update on my internship will come soon!

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PMM

The Little Things

I've noticed that when I DO make a post on this blog, usually it is due to some big event that I want to tell everyone about (aside from yesterday's haircut issue). But the little things often get left aside, and really it's the little things that make this trip such a great and interesting experience. This post is dedicated to the little things...

Being in a new place on the other side of the world, you often notice things that seem interesting, entirely different, or just downright obscure. Here are some examples of those:

China cold. This refers to the seldom 'coldness' of beverages offered to consumers in China. (It's something that is popular in Europe as well, I believe)...but cold in this country means room temperature, since hot drinks such as tea are very popular, and China cold screwed us this past weekend. Paul (new roommate) and I went to the local supermarket to stock up on some beers for our empty refrigerator. We picked up the standard 600 ml bottles, 3 cases worth, and we headed home. Of course they were not chilled at the store, and we were not interested in drinking room temperature beer if it were in our power to prevent it, so as soon as we got home we threw 2/3 of them in the refrigerator and 1/3 in the freezer, since the refrigerator is very slow to cool things. The plan was to drink the freezer beer first, and then move up to the refrigerator beer. We reminded each other many, many times that once the fridge beers were cold then we would move the rest of the freezer beers to join their comrades upstairs. Of course, we eventually forgot about the 12 bottles that were being quickly chilled in the freezer, and we soon progressed to the fridge beers without giving it a second thought. In the morning, we woke up devastated to see this mess...

The beer obviously froze, and in the process expanded. Glass happens to be a material that isn't very good at expanding, and so most of the bottles broke, but for some of them, the caps flew off and the frozen beer oozed out. We lost many delicious Suntory's on Sunday morning, a very sad day. It's still a bit of a sore subject around the apartment, so we try not to bring it up :-)

The 'not so' man purse. In Shanghai, many men wear purses as part of their everyday wardrobe.

These purses are not manly in any shape or form, they are legitimate woman purses. =) Often times I'll see a big brand such as Louis Vuitton or something around a man's shoulder, and I find this fashion statement very interesting. Men do not seem to be bothered by wearing pink, either.

These two things, which would be seen as very 'non-macho' in the US, are commonly accepted by society around here. Too bad I forgot my purse and my pink shirts back home!

Chinese Innovation. Originally, before I'd come to China, I would have rarely associated these two words with each other. But now that I've been around Shanghai quite a bit, I've noticed some very innovative things that catch my eye. Take for example this 'bike rack for umbrellas,'

created so that people can leave their umbrella at the door and lock it up so that they know it's safe while they shop. Or the lightning fast creation of a bed comforter as seen here at a nearby market. And last, but not least, the user-friendly and incredibly convenient Shanghai Metro - it's a miracle to lost interns like myself.

Google. I found this very ironic sign the other day...

Why is it ironic? Because it is what seems to be a Google office in downtown Shanghai, China, but there is no Google China. There's a Google Hong Kong, to which all mainland Chinese Google searches are redirected because Google has removed its Google.cn site due to too many searching restrictions set by the Chinese government. Google.hk offers uncensored searching opportunities for people in mainland China, so Google has taken advantage of a loophole that it found within the nation's 'one country, two systems' philosophy...interesting.

More 'little things' to come hopefully on a daily basis.

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PMM

A China Haircut

I need a haircut soon (as you might be able to notice in my pictures below), which isn't looking too promising for me...

I don't really need to spend a bunch of money and go to some kind of hair salon - which seem to be all over the shopping plazas around here. I'm looking for something more like a small barber shop, like back home, you know. And I think I've found a good option, but it seems a bit sketchy. They charge only $.85 USD for a haircut.

I don't know if that's a good sign or not. It definitely accomplishes the 'cheap' side of what I'm trying to go after, but I need some quality in there as well. Maybe I'll sit outside of the barber shop a few times and see how the guys look who come out after their haircuts. But still, even if it does seem legit, there will be the dilemma of not being able to explain exactly what I want them to do to my hair. It's not a difficult explanation, I just don't know how to do it in Mandarin. Sooo, maybe I'll take a translator, or maybe I'll just wing it and hope for the best. I could also ask some American guys at the brewery where they get their hair cut, and maybe there's a more western place to go that will provide a less frustrating experience, and probably less of a good story. Decisions, decisions. I may end up having to just cut it all off and hope that it grows back soon if things don't go as well as one would hope!

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PMM

The Shanghai International Football League

I have most definitely accomplished my goal of playing some soccer here in Shanghai...

As mentioned earlier, I went to a team training last Wednesday and played small-sided games for a couple hours with a bunch of French guys. They play for a team called the Shanghai Puxi Lions in the Shanghai International Football League,

with many other teams containing players from a variety of countries. Needless to say, it was some great soccer and I had a lot of fun. Upon the completion of our pick-up games, they invited AJ and I to join them this Saturday (yesterday) to play with them in a game against the British. We agreed almost faster than they could finish asking, and so yesterday morning we joined them for a 7 v 7 game. The league was surprisingly much more legitimate and organized than AJ and I had expected it to be. They gave us these badass jerseys to wear for the game (you always play better when you look good)...

And we crushed the Brits, which was a good feeling after that crap performance the USA gave against England a couple weeks ago. :-) The final was 9-2 and I was fortunate enough to have knocked in three of those goals for the Lions. I'll tell you what, the British most definitely tend to be a bunch of foul-mouthed, obnoxious, and slow-moving soccer players. And the French aren't any better, with their often dirty diving and falling to get a call from the referee, but the game was a lot of fun. Although it was probably one of the hottest days that I've ever experienced in my life. It was 38 degrees Celsius, which is over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It was also very humid, and the sun was out (oddly, as it never comes out in Shanghai) Of course our jerseys were black as well. But after the final whistle, they invited us to play again with them today, and it was a crazy good time:

The Shanghai Premier League put on 'Mini World Cup Tournament' which was South Africa 2010 World Cup themed, and each team chose a country which it would represent.

Most teams chose the country where most of their players originate from - so the Spanish team had mostly Spaniards, the Italian team mostly Italians, and the British team mostly Brits, etc. But the Puxi Lions (mostly a French team, but today was made up of guys from Germany, Algeria, USA, Mexico and France), chose to take on a more happy medium approach to its country selection, and we chose South Africa as our team. Overall, the tournament had 9 teams: Italy, Spain, England, South Africa, North Korea, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, and Brazil, all made up of players from over 25 different countries.

It was a pretty great thing to be a part of. Our team played a total of 6 games, beginning in the group stages (coming out 2nd in our group after tying England), and then successfully beating Italy and North Korea to make it into the final Championship game against Spain. Unfortunately we were too tired and couldn't put on quite as strong of a performance against the Spaniards to take the 1st place trophy home, as we lost 0-1, but 2nd is nothing to complain about! After the tournament, we went to Latina (the brazilian restaurant that sponsors the Lions and paid for those awesome jerseys that we wore) for the trophy ceremonies, lots of beer, and some food.

Overall, the day was a pretty sweet deal: great soccer, a free tournament polo (with the SPL tournament logo printed on the back, pictured above), our team captain bought beers for the entire team the whole time we were at Latina, and everybody was a ton of fun. They gave us all South Africa 2010 World Cup Vuvuzelas (those small horns that you hear being blown during the world cup games by all the fans) to blow during the trophy ceremony...super annoying, but a ton of fun to play with.

We also filled up our team trophies and passed them around, taking turns chugging some kind of alcoholic beverages from the them :-) (Apparently a norm in various parts of the world for soccer players to do after tournaments...cool with me!)

Soccer continues to prove that it is a great sport which can bring together people from all walks of life and all parts of the world. I don't know of any other place on earth, aside from the actual World Cup, that you can take guys from over 25 different countries and give them a chance to compete in some very high caliber, highly competitive, and incredibly fun soccer...Shanghai seems to be a city of many opportunities! I can't wait to see what else is in store for this adventure.

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PMM

The Dairy KING

Well, today was pretty fantastical. Mostly because my many trips to Dairy Queen have finally paid off...

First of all, when I rolled up to the DQ window on my bike, the lady behind the register took one at me and smiled. She knew exactly what I was there for - a large chocolate oreo and brownie blizzard. (You know that you've got to change something about your diet when you've become a regular at the nearby Dairy Queen) So I paid for my tasty treat and then made my way over to the other side of the counter where I awaited the ice cream. The girl mixing my blizzard turned around after she'd finished, and she handed me my cup, but I immediately noticed that something was wrong about the way in which she gave it to me...she'd done it the American way! Right-side up. She never flipped it to prove that it was so thick that no ice cream would fall out of the cup (as previously mentioned in my 'Why Are They Laughing At Us?' post, the servers at Dairy Queen have to give you your blizzard upside-down or it's free). Right away, I pointed out the fact that she had forgotten to flip it over. She hesitated, then immediately denied it. So I went over to her manager and gestured that she had never turned it upside-down for me. Her manager asked her if it was true. Then the girl got the most disappointed look on her face, stared down at the ground, and shook her head in embarrassment. Clearly I had won the battle. But it wasn't over yet. The manager was sure to solve the problem. He reached out for my blizzard and said, "I try again, I try again," (his best English) thinking that he could just take it back and flip it over real quick to relieve his staff of her goof-up. I was having none of that, I wanted my free blizzard! So I pulled it back and said, "No way dude!" Then I pointed to the writing on the cup: "SERVED UPSIDE-DOWN, OR IT'S FREE." They had no other option but to give me my money back =) A feeling of personal victory and sheer happiness swept over me. It was the best tasting blizzard I had ever eaten!

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PMM

^^^Blog Title Improvement

I change my blog title, (well, I gave it a title - there wasn't much of a title before, just quotes that I liked) as you probably noticed when you saw the massive Chinese characters at the top of the page thought that maybe you'd accidentally gone to some weird Chinese site :-)

Here's a quick lesson in Mandarin: 在上海的美国人的冒险 are the characters at the top. All together, it means 'The American's adventures in Shanghai' (at least that's what I was trying for, haha it may be incorrect, who knows). 在 means 'in' - 上海 means 'Shanghai' - 的 shows possession - 美国人 means 'American' - 冒险 means 'adventure' --If you put it all together literally then it sounds very much incorrect, so think abstract =) It is pronounced: "Zài shànghǎi dì měiguó rén de màoxiǎn"

Now you can say that you learned something interesting today.

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PMM

Ahh Finally, Some Footy and Fake North Koreans

Yep, it's called football around here...as it is everywhere else in the world, except for the U.S. - the great sport of soccer.

Thus far, the most popular sporting event in the world - the World Cup - has been quite interesting. Japan beat Camaroon, Portugal and Ivory Coast tied, Germany whomped on the Aussies, Slovenia is in 1st place in the U.S.'s group, and Brazil barely beat N. Korea. Speaking of N. Korea, apparently there were a couple hundred super dedicated fans supporting them at their game in South Africa against Brazil yesterday. But guess what? Word on the street is that they were not North Korean at all, instead they were Chinese actors who were hired by a North Korean Sports Committee to attend all of the North Korean games!

I read that very few people, essentially no one, in North Korea can actually afford to get to South Africa for any matches, nor can they even get a visa to leave their beloved country, and since the Chinese team didn't make the tournament, Chinese people have put forth their best effort to cheer on all of the other 'Asian' teams (Japan, N.Korea, and S.Korea) - talk about international relations! And Americans wonder why soccer is so great :-) ...maybe if we played more soccer, more countries would like us.

With the World Cup happening all over TV screens every time I turn around (even in McDonald's restaurants), it's been tough not being able to play some soccer around here.

But that's all about to change :-) ...AJ (an intern I recently met) and I are heading out to the Jing'An district to play with some French guys from Next Step Connections tonight at 8pm. It costs $7 USD per player to rent out the field, an easy price to pay, because I'm very excited to finally get to play!

I'll let you know how it goes!!

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PMM

A Visit to the Hospital...

Scary title for a post, ay? Definitely. I got back to my apartment at about 5am yesterday after a long and eventful night. Let me explain...

Three of my close friends were in a taxi to meet us at a bar for drinks. They were cruising down a main street, moving very fast, when a big black SUV swang over trying to do a u-turn from the other side of the road. The driver of the SUV was not paying attention at all (the way that many Chinese often drive in Shanghai; reckless and unconcerned), and he nailed the front left side panel of their taxi. My buddy Rich was in the front seat (220 pound Division 1 linebacker), no seatbelt and no air-bags...his head busted open the windshield and needless to say messed up his face REAL bad - he somehow stayed in the vehicle though. Blood was everywhere, and glass was stuck in places it shouldn't have been. The accident miraculously took place in front of a shady hospital, and luckily no one involved lost consciousness. Rich ran into the hospital and got some temporary stitches and some glass shards removed until we could arrive to take him to the international hospital for real treatment. When we got there, we ran in to see him and he looked horrible, you couldn't even see his skin behind the red all over his face, and he asked us "Guys, do I look okay?" Obviously he didn't, but there's no other answer to that question in that type of situation except for, "Yea man, you look great, you'll be fine." The taxi driver walked away 100% fine - he was the only one buckled up. Ibbi and Venice were in the back seat, they ended the day with a few stitches on the face and some bruised ribs/sprained legs. Rich needed well over 30 stitches on his forehead in the end (I sat in his hospital room while the doctor stitched him up with no drugs, it was like a military doctor stitching up a soldier on the battlefield, lots of screaming and swearing). CAT scans turned out fine, but they kept Rich overnight for some more tests. We called their parents to let them know what had happened (Imagine getting that phone call from China, Mom and Dad!). All three of them were troopers through the entire experience though. Ibbi and Rich were cracking jokes the entire time and I was encouraging them. We just wanted them to be okay - what better way to keep them positive than to maintain a sense of humor, right!? Rich convinced his doctor, who spoke very little English, that they should go out for shots of Whiskey after the stitches were over :-)

...Turns out the guy driving the black SUV was drunk behind the wheel. He accepted full responsibility for what happened, and is paying for all of the hospital bills.

It was supposed to be Rich's last night in Shanghai...Quite an interesting way to end a trip to China. Here are some pictures of Rich and his mess of a situation (he wanted me to snap some shots of his war wounds...this was after they had already cleaned him up quite a bit):

He's doing fine now, and walks around with a turban-like wrap on his head. He's heading back home on Friday now.

I've decided that I'll be riding in the front seat of the next taxi that I get into (the front seat is often the only one that has a working seatbelt), and I'll be putting that thing on!

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PMM

Sorry!!

Multiple new posts coming soon...I apologize for the lack of motivation that I've had lately. They'll be good posts, I promise :-)

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PMM

Team America

USA 1, England 1 ...

"WE'RE NOT BRITISH ANYMOOOORE, ANYMOOOOOOOORE"...this was the chant that was screamed from the lungs of many Americans after Clint Dempsey's tying goal during the game just a few short hours ago.

A group of friends and myself went to a British pub for the game (I convinced them we'd be fine as long as we talked as much smack as the English did), and it was a great time. It was too bad the US couldn't pull off the victory, but we were lucky to get the tie so I'm pretty happy with the result. The Brits started getting quite annoying after their 6' goal early on, but they stayed pretty quiet between the 30th and 90th minutes of the game as the US picked up the attack a bit. Thank god for Tim Howard in the net.

If we can tie England, then we can certainly take on Algeria and Slovenia no problem.

GAME ON.

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PMM

Language Barrier - Yessir

I have to say, this Mandarin Chinese language is a well put-together piece of machinery...

Aside from the 4 different tones that are used on vowels and the odd characters that all seem to look the same to me (不要打开这扇门, 否则将承担后果 = do not open this door or you will suffer the consequences...I would definitely be suffering some consequences if there were no English translation readily available for that one), this 'new' language that I'm learning seems to be easier to learn to speak when compared to Spanish or English. Sentence structure is relatively easy: time + subject + place + verb + object. Making a pronoun plural is quite simple in Mandarin, you just add 'men' to either 'I, you, he/she' - as opposed to English or Spanish where there are many forms of pronouns. Possession is also pretty easy to handle - pronouns don't change, you just add 'de' to something to give it possession ('I' doesn't become 'mine', it just stays 'I'). As I've said before, tones definitely do make things more complicated because you can say 'ma' 4 different ways to mean either 'mother, horse, linen, or scold' and 'tang' can mean either 'hot, soup, lay down, or sugar.' So I guess context clues and proper tones are important in those cases.

I have gotten somewhat decent at being able to introduce myself and ask someone who they are, how old they are, who's in their family, where they're from, as well as asking directions, telling a taxi driver where to go, ordering food, cheering for my favorite soccer team, and some other various things. Although yesterday I did run into a problem with a taxi driver. He thought I was saying a street name that I wasn't, and I may have been pronouncing it wrong, so he took me around the city of Shanghai for quite some time until I realized that we were definitely not heading in the right direction (at first I thought maybe he knew a shortcut). I finally signaled to him that the street I needed was entirely in the other direction and then I coached him in turning left, then right, then left, then straight, etc (good thing I kinda knew where I was going). He was a nice guy and seemed to understand that it was somewhat his fault as well, so he didn't charge me as much as he should have, which was nice.

When I get into a bind and don't know what to say, my brain often directs itself to the only other foreign language that I know - Spanish - and I'll sometimes start saying something in Spanish before I realize that is not at all correct :-) It's good that most Chinese people are pretty helpful people who are willing to work with you to figure out what you want to say!

Since I'm not learning the Chinese characters, and I'm just focusing on speaking for the time being, it isn't too overwhelming to learn the language...I just have to remember what means what and which tones I need to be using on which vowels. I imagine that by the time I am finished with my time in Shanghai, I will have mastered the art of sign language, because I very often use my hands to describe things since I have no idea how to say many things that I want to. I have begun carrying a small notebook in my pocket in which I write down simple phrases and words that are necessary to know for daily interaction with people.

I think I'm catching onto the language a bit faster than some of my friends (although some arrived in Shanghai with classes under their belt already), so that's good to know. My tutor is super helpful because she'll usually ask me what kinds of conversational situations I've had problems with throughout the week and then we'll work on learning real life conversations and we often roll play with her as the taxi driver or waitress and me as the customer.

It can often be very frustrating not being able to converse as freely as you would hope to, and I understand that you cannot learn a language in only a few months, but I'd really like to have the ability to converse simply and understand people...hopefully I can accomplish that within the 8 weeks! (Yep, just over 8 weeks left here in Shanghai. Wow - some of my friends are beginning to end their internships and are getting ready to leave for back home within the next week. It's too bad they can't stay for the entire summer) I'll have to make sure I take proper advantage of the next 2 months I have here!!

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PMM

Please Comment!!

I don't actually know if anyone ever even reads my blog :-)...

So maybe if every once in a while you could leave a comment after reading something on one of my posts that intrigues/bothers/excites/disturbs/inspires you, that would be much appreciated!

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Thanks to all.

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PMM

The Ultimate Internship

I have to say, I am loving this internship. It is easily becoming the best job I've ever had. Aside from the fact that it's unpaid, it seems to be perfect in every other regard: great hours, great projects, not too heavy but not too light of a workload, great people, everything seems to be falling right into place. On top of that, it's almost as if I'm being paid because I eat at least one free meal (either lunch or dinner) almost every day of the week...it's glorious!

I ended my apprenticeship as a waiter last Thursday and I sat down with my boss for a few hours to discuss what I will be doing for the next few months. We talked about things that I would be doing in relation to marketing, pubic relations, market research, business operations development, design planning, finances, and more. It has truly became an entrepreneurial internship, because it offers me an opportunity to dip my hands into all aspects of the business world, as any entrepreneur might experience, and I'm loving it :-)

My boss owns four restaurant establishments: the Boxing Cat Brewery, Cantina Agave Taqueria & Tequila Bar, Iiit! Cafe, and Closed Door Italian Restaurant and Lounge, along with a 5th that's in the works - an upscale Molecular Martini Bar. They are all very different and so far they have all provided me with excellent opportunities to learn...

Currently, I'm working on specific projects for the Brewery, Iiit! Cafe, and Closed Door.

For BCB, I'm helping to plan some big events coming up - such as World Cup game promotions and parties from June 11th - July 11th, our 1 year anniversary on June 13th, and a 4th of July party (I'll leave the date up to you on that one). Today we actually met with some people who run the Shanghaiist.com, a blog/news site that does a lot of promotional stuff throughout the city, to discuss our 4th of July party which will be co-sponsored by them so that we can get the word out about it very easily to people all over Shanghai. We decided that we're going to do a 'Dukes of Hazard' theme, and we're going to do a costume contest, boat race (beer chugging competition), pie eating contest, as well as a bluegrass band all during the event. In the near future, I'm also going to be helping with various projects to move forward with the creation of a new location for the brewery, which should be a lot of fun.

For Iiit! Cafe (pronounced 'eat'), Kelley wants to establish a new location, which we scoped out today. Currently the location is a Costa Coffee shop, but she says it's shutting down (hopefully not because they aren't getting any business).

It's in the main floor of a tall office building down the street from where I live. She has some qualms about this space because she feels that there are not enough non-Chinese people going by on a regular basis. Apparently about 70% of her customers are either American or European and so she wants to ensure that those types of people will be readily available to eat at the cafe during the day. The peak hours for Iiit! are 11am-2pm, so I have been put on the task of sitting at the coffee shop during those hours for the next couple days to do some 'market research' on the types of people coming, going, and passing by the place. =) It should be interesting!

For Closed Door, I am working on some various marketing projects to help with the conversion of the restaurant from a 'restaurant' to a 'social club.' It's a real cool setup that she's got going...there are no signs on the outside of the restaurant, just the address (808) on the door, and it's not really a building, it's in the middle of a big cement wall of many different shops.

You can't just open up the door and walk on in (hence the name), you have to knock. Then a person comes to the door and opens the small wooden window to see what you want. If you have a reservation, you're in. If you don't, you're asked to call ahead of time maybe later on in the week or something. But it is open to anyone - at the moment. As mentioned, they have to change to a 'social club' because they had an issue with their licensing. It's a very weird and hard to explain situation, but essentially, the government busted in a few weeks ago and took all of their files/receipts/customer information/etc because they are not operating legally due to some zoning/licensing issues that are hard to understand and I don't know much about. So they're changing from an open restaurant to a private social club with food. It'll be a very similar concept, but people will have to be members to eat there, so we're not sure if it will be successful or not but we're trying hard to ensure that it will be!

In regards to the Molecular Martini Bar, Kelley is trying to take a new worldwide concept and bring it to Shanghai for the first time. Apparently, in hot spots all over the world, there are new bars popping up that are offering martinis using a technique called 'molecular gastronomy.' This bartending method uses an avant garde cooking approach to mix cocktails through an understanding of scientific processes of various ingredients.

Apparently, different things such as gels, powders, foams, sprays, gases, fire and more will be used to mix drinks - crazy stuff. It's a trend that started in Paris about 4 years ago, and has spread to the Americas as well as Asia, but has not yet hit Shanghai...It will in September though! The projected opening date for Kelley's new project is September 1st, 2010. So it should be a lot of fun to help plan the very first molecular martini bar in Shanghai. I've seen some of the financials for the venture, and it seems to be a very low-risk high-reward opportunity with some great potential to be a huge hit if done right. I can't wait to see where it goes. =)