Shanghai China Snippets Observations about living in Shanghai and China in general

The Jin Mao Tower in Pudong has been climbed bare-handed for the 3d time. This time Frenchman, Alain Robert, climbed 420.5-meters, dressed in a spiderman costume. (more…)

Thanks to China Black Hand I stepped into the wonderful world of single women in China that are disappointed in expat men.

There is already Chinabounder whose love for Chinese girls has caused some upheaval before and Fcuk! is the other side of the medal.

FCUK! introduces herself as follows:

China’s a rough place to live if you’re a girl. Sketchy, gross, clueless or just plain idiotic guys seem to cover the entire country like a bad case of the pox. A pox on the dating scene of the East!

This blog is to tell the good, bad, ugly, funny, horrifying aspects of dating in a rapidly developing country that says its adheres to traditional views of chastity but, in reality, oozes a hook-up culture. It’s a forum for the women of China to rant.

Both entertaining reads when in need of a empty headed break and it beats CCTV 9. Ok, that’s lame, everything beats CCTV 9.

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post. The review is as it is, a review and an honest one I hope.

The only moving I have done from Holland to China was by sending a small box at the post office. The rest has been stored in Holland and since then I have collected so many new things I’ll probably need a warehouse if I ever move to a new country.

More expats are entering China every day, at least it seems like that when I walk in the streets here in Shanghai and I bump into international faces around each corner. More goods will need to be moved as a consequence as many will like to take a piece of home with them.

For bigger stuff a transportation company can come in handy. Shoemacher Cargo ships everything from cars to boats, from household goods to just boxes. There are many companies that offer these services and as the Internet is more and more the first layer for sorting the good from the bad, having a useful website is key.

Shoemacher Cargo has a clean website that at first sight seems to offer a lot of information. A form for a quick free quote and rates for shipping. Digging deeper the quick free quote will take 24 hours, still fast but not as quick as I expected. The International Shipping Rates tells me to fill in another form, which annoys me. Don’t promise me something that isn’t going to happen. Rates for moving within the US are available.

They do feature online tracking which is nice if you like to know on which sea your antique desk is floating. In case the desk ends up serving in the fish class room they have insurance.

Not a bad website but needs some fixing on the user interaction.

I just upgraded WordPress to version 2.0.7 and if you haven’t done so, don’t wait too long as you don’t want to be hacked.

You can download it here.

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post. The first request received and per the guidelines I have to disclose this. It’s also test to see how this works out. The review is as it is, a review and an honest one I hope. I do get paid though for writing this:) And please comment…

Hotelreservations.com is, as you can conclude from the domain name a hotel reservation website. A great domain name, and that about sums it up. The website gives you the option to book hotels, motels, resorts, vacations rentals etc. Nothing really exciting given that there are already thousands of similar sites that provide this. When I received the mail, asking me to write a review I really wanted it to be something interesting to write about. I’m afraid it isn’t and in reviewing the website I’ll be frank.

The website is way too 1999. It has an ugly minimalistic design, cramped together for the 800 x 600 resolution. It has of course the necessary search boxes for finding hotels in mainly North American and European countries but it lacks anything appealing. It has no hotels in China available for the moment.

It may be that designing hotel websites like this, is a proven formula for success but if you’ve already the great domain name, why not spend some time on design and make the whole user experience fresher and clearer and more importantly make it 2006.

I noticed there is link, “write a review”, but there’s no page behind it yet. Hotel reviews are the first things I look for before booking a hotel. I want to read experiences from other hotel guests, did they like the room, was the staff professional, how was the restaurant. Hopefully that feature will be activated in the future and be open for honest reviews.

Hotel prices are said to be discounted to up to 70%, and a quick comparison with some of the competitors shows that they are not too much off from other hotel websites which is a good thing.

In the category, almost Friday, another Panda story.

Here’s the summary

Drunken immigrant worker (note that as always a distinction is made between city slickers and those beyond the urban border) Zhang visits Beijing Zoo, jumps into the panda enclosure, hugs the panda and gets bitten.

Nothing weird about that, invading on the Panda privacy should come with some repercussion.

Immigrant Zhang gets upset and, yes, he kicks the panda and even bites back. A bit weirder but ok, he was drunk.

Zhang is now in the hospital and clarifies his actions by saying: “I had seen pandas on television and they seemed to get along well with people. No one ever said they would bite people”. He must have been watching Chinese TV, oh wait, there are no other channels anyway.

And here comes the kicker. The [tag]Beijing[/tag] Zoo was asked for a reaction and a representative said that luckily Panda Gu Gu is “healthy.”

She also added, “We’re not considering punishing him now, He’s suffered quite a bit of shock.”

If Panda Gu Gu will be punished, I suggest the following defense line.

I have seen people on TV, mostly the news and they never seem to get along well. No one ever said they would stroke Pandas

Source: AP
Picture dates back to an article about panda insemination.

Well funny this Shanghai classifieds , it’s just from what perspective you look at it. In China there are no anti-age and other discrimination laws that prevent employers to be very selective who they hire.

It’s fairly common to see advertisements with age limits, at times combined with “female” only apply.

I hadn’t seen this one before (from the local expat magazine 8days) and I wonder what is meant here by immigrant. Is that a Chinese coming from the countryside or an expat trying his luck in Shanghai.

If anybody wants to apply for this dream job in China, let me know.