City Weekend | Day In The Life: Pat McCombs

Here's my DITL Article, which will be published for the September 2010 edition of the City Weekend Magazine ;-) It's too bad I won't be in Shanghai to get a copy of the print! - They said they'll send me a digital version though - not as cool, but still pretty awesome.

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8:30am: A loud pounding is coming from a few floors up, it’s the daily morning construction of my building. I’m forced to wake up. Refusing to actually get out of bed until my alarm goes off in 30 minutes, I play a quick game of RISK on the itouch – world domination yet again.

9:00: Shower

9:10: Gmail, CNN.com, ESPN.com, Woot.com, Google Analytics. Thank god for internet (or Chairman Mao).

9:35: I cook up four scrambled eggs with our very limited stock of kitchen-ware. Cut some pineapple, and eat. Eggs, peanut butter, jelly, bread, and pineapples are the only foods that I actually know how to do something with in the kitchen.

9:40: Time to get working on today’s projects. I’m seeking out and comparing the prices of some local car/van rental transportation companies for www.3Dumplings.com, a new Shanghai cuisine tourism venture that my boss has recently started.

12:30pm: The door bell rings. It’s my Mandarin tutor, Linda, and she’s ready to teach me. I, however, am not so ready to be taught. I use too much English to actually retain the Chinese, so my tutoring sessions are frustrating when I cannot remember yesterday’s lesson. Her classes are always fun and pretty crucial to my daily navigation through Shanghai, so I buzz her in.

2:15: Time to bare the heat of the Shanghai summer. I jump on my bike and join the other crazy street travelers. After being nearly sandwiched by a taxi and a Nissan Teana, I make it to the local Yang’s Fried Dumpling for sheng jiang bao and noodles. Fantastic.

2:45: I’m off to Cantina for a meeting with the boss – Kelley Lee. We chat about the new location for the Boxing Cat, she makes sure I’m accomplishing things, and before she heads to probably her sixth meeting of the day, she encourages me to try a new tequila from a potential supplier…I’ll never turn down a free margarita.

4:40: Head over to the Cat to finish up work for the day. I lock my bike up out front, and sit down at the bar with the laptop.

6:05: Kelly, my girlfriend, skypes me from the U.S. She makes sure that I made it home safely last night after a 13-game winning streak of beer pong at I Love Shanghai. My buddy Paul and I found success in showing the talents of a few American college boys.

6:40: I waiver between the quesadillas and the chili nachos, both are heroic dishes in my eyes. I finish up my last bite, and wonder why there couldn’t have been 3 quesadillas on that plate – Mike Solovey clearly knows what he’s doing in the kitchen.

7:00: I hang out at the brewery for a couple more hours and finish up some work. The atmosphere in the restaurant makes for a perfect ‘office-like’ workspace for me, not too busy, laid-back, great people, and good American tunes coming through the speakers. Plus, who doesn’t love the constant smell of delicious micro-brewed beer? It sure beats the Nut Brown Ale that my buddy John and I tried to concoct in our kitchen last summer.

9:20: Off to Dairy Queen in Xiujiahui. I’ve got to leave the brewery by 9:20 so that I can get there before they close in ten minutes.

9:26: I roll up to the DQ window, the clerk notices my face. No need to order, she already knows what I want: a chocolate oreo and brownie blizzard – LARGE. As the girl behind the counter turns to give me my blizzard, I’m desperately praying that she’ll forget to flip it upside down when she serves it. ‘Served upside-down or it’s free’ – it says it right on the side of the cup! She flips it over and hands it to me. Damn, almost.

10:00: I give a ni hao to the security guard at the gate of my apartment building. My roommates are starting up some pirated episodes of Chuck, a series that I’ve recently become a huge fan of. We’re halfway through season two.

12:05am: I post on my SHANGHAI’D 2010 blog. Tell readers from back home all about my week, share some success stories, complain about the heat a little bit, show some pictures of friends and I enjoying the city, and I try to call it a day.

1:00: Still messing around on my computer, I should be going to bed, but I’m just too distracted – trying to figure out ways that I can improve my website, www.pmmcornholes.com. I open up Photoshop and try for a new logo, but no luck, maybe tomorrow night.

3:25: Sudoku for ten minutes until my eyes can’t handle it anymore. I finally pass out.

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PMM