whoooosh!

Whoooosh! That’s the sound of the fastest thing on land. At least, the fastest thing I’ve ever been in…we covered 19 miles in 7:20. That’s minutes and seconds, people.
Over the last few years, China’s been grabbing the top spot on a lot of things – biggest dam, tallest hotel, first commercially operated maglev train – and that’s the one I’m talking about. Back in 2004, right here in Shanghai, the world’s first (and maybe fastest) magnetic levitation train went into operation. Top speed during daily runs: 267mph! That’s over one-third the speed of sound – and you should see it, and feel it, when two trains pass each other. Some serious turbulence. I read that they got it up to 311mph during test runs but 267 is plenty fast enough for me! The thing floats just above the track and all of the propulsion equipment is in the track and not the train, for less weight and better acceleration. It’s a pretty cool concept although it’s apparently pretty expensive. They were considering building one from Shanghai to Beijing but I hear it costs 3x that of a ‘conventional’ high-speed train, so I don’t know if it’ll happen.
The train station is about 5 miles from the hotel so I walked down. The maglev takes you out to the airport, so I’m considering taking it again on Thursday when I fly out, although I’d need to take a taxi to the station because of all my luggage, so I may just taxi to the airport. I spent a few minutes at the airport scouting out the check-in lines before heading back on the maglev. Round trip was about $11 and I did shoot some video out the window when we were at top speed. Wow!
The station is adjacent to a subway line, so I went across and grabbed the subway up to the main part of town. Subways for me are kind of like sticking my toe in the local body of water: if I come to a new place with a subway, I just have to ride it at least once. The whole thing is pretty new (and they’re expanding like crazy) so it was nicer than, say the New York or London subways. In fact, as I was riding I was watching a video screen on the wall and a 2-minute commercial for the NFL came on! Not sure how well that sells in China, but with 1.3 billion people I guess they don’t need a high connect rate to be successful…
The only unsuccessful part of the day’s journey was my inability to find a Chairman Mao fridge magnet. I should have bought the first one I saw a couple of weeks ago but I figured I’d see more. Running out of time here, so that one may not end up on our fridge…they’ve got lots of other Mao-themed things like a wristwatch with him waving at you (that’s the second hand) and alarm clocks and other trivialities and minutiae. He must be turning over in his grave. I thought he was a reviled figure these days but I guess I don’t know my Chinese politics very well – his picture’s on every denomination. Maybe I’m thinking of his widow and the so-called ‘gang of four’.
The rest of the weekend passed relatively uneventfully. I got one last very long walk in, about 15 miles between the raindrops. It’s suddenly gotten a lot colder so even I’m carrying a light jacket, although still in shorts.
I debated about putting this in, but I’m gonna call it like I see it. I’ll go off-track here, and slightly off-colour, so skip this paragraph if you’re queasy. Many men are partial to Oriental women and of course, Shanghai’s full of Chinese women. In my personal opinion there aren’t too many pretty women here but I’m sure some men would disagree. But I got to thinking – even if you liked the women here, you’d have to ask yourself the next obvious question: “would I kiss that mouth?”. And I think the answer, 3 times out of 4, is probably ‘no’. Dental work and oral hygiene here is not a priority, or more likely, not available to most income levels. So there’s not always a lot of teeth in those mouths and the ones you see are not too clean. I hope it changes soon because they’re finding that dental health (specifically plaque buildup) is connected to overall cardio health. I think it is economically-related because all of my local co-workers have good teeth - in fact, one girl has braces.
Anyway, back to more pleasant topics. I write this blog in pieces over a few days, so my previous comment about not having the Mao fridge magnet no longer holds true. Came into work this evening and found, at my desk, a fridge magnet and a set of Chairman Mao playing cards, as well as a variety of 2008-Olympic-themed keychains. My locally-based coworkers are really being generous. Plenty of stocking stuffers for everyone. I just hope US Customs doesn’t get the wrong idea about my politics and sends me back to China. At least, not before I’ve had one good Mexican meal…I tried to get my wife to do a Mexican theme for Thanksgiving, but no go.
I’ve actually adapted pretty well to the night shift, but the weekends are tough. I remember when I was a youngster having to work on the grave shift at National Semiconductor for about 3 months when I was on a project, and I remember how difficult it was, and is, to maintain a normal lifestyle on the weekend. Unless you’re a bar-haunt, you can’t exactly enjoy weekends on grave shift, so you end up messing up your sleep pattern just to get some normalcy and daylight. Mondays are tough because you’re usually in sleep debt. This week’ll be a short week for me as I fly home Thursday afternoon, so I think I’ll just stay up after my Wednesday night shift and maybe be able to sleep on the plane for a change. Not sure how that’ll work because I’m booked in a middle seat, so it may end up being a challenge to stay awake through Thanksgiving supper as I regale everyone with tales of roast-tentacle-on-a-stick.
I just found out today that someone has requested my services so I’ll be employed a little while longer. This retirement thing is working out pretty well so far – a little job here and a little job there keeps the coffers full and keeps me from getting stale. My next trip in a couple of weeks is to the sovereign republic of Texas. Unfortunately I’ll be in the concrete portion of the state rather than the wilder areas I enjoyed on my road trip a couple of months ago. So if I post any blogs, they’ll likely be of the flavor “I can’t believe what that driver just did!”
I’ll end it here as I don’t expect anything noteworthy to happen in my last day-plus here in Shanghai. Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Take care everyone!