A couple of little observations

I have to write a note about Sherpa’s. It is, without a doubt, the best invention I have seen since I’ve been here. Basically, it’s a takeaway delivery service, a bit like Just Eat. The difference is everything, and I mean everything, can be delivered, and all in one go as it is delivered by them, not the restaurant.


For example, you and your friend are having a night in. You fancy pizza, they fancy a sandwich from Subway. Go on the Sherpa’s website, order both, and they’ll arrive at the same time with the same driver. You can pay cash, card, or via WeChat (yes, really). You can also order alcohol, and not just with food, you can place an order for just booze and they will bring it to you. And its free delivery.

My favourite thing is the fact that it has the most random of places listed. In the UK, Just Eat, Hungry House etc just tend to be kebab shops, Chinese and Indian takeaways and pizza places. Sherpa’s has everything. McD’s, Subway, Starbucks, your favourite pub that serves food, the little Pho shop at the end of the street..everything. So you could order burger and chips with a side of nachos from the Dog and Duck and they would bring it to you. Apart from the damage to your waistline, it’s a foolproof system!


A few more things to talk about this week:


Rain. As I write, it has been raining for four days without stopping. And it’s not like UK style, light drizzle, ‘that fine rain that soaks you through’, it’s big, fat, torrential rain that doesn’t stop. But it’s also still hot, well to me it is anyway. T’internet is reporting that it is the coldest summer since 2000 here, after last summer was one of the hottest.


Personally, I’m OK with the rain, this is for two reasons. One – with the heat as it was I came into the office soaking wet and with hair like Monica from Friends when she goes to Barbados anyway, so it makes no difference to how I look. Two – the rain actually helps the pollution drop. Our levels have been on a par with London’s, and even lower, for the last few days. It's rather nice to be able to go outside and breathe.

One thing the rain is not great for however is taxis. Taxis are impossible to get in the rain as everyone takes them instead of walking so there seems to be a real shortage. Your only hope is the maroon dodgy taxis no-one else will take, which leads us nicely onto..

Taxi colour hierarchy. One of the quirks about Shanghai is there is only a handful of really big firms, and a finite number of taxi colours. Generally, each firm has its own colour of taxi and that's it. So you have red, maroon, gold, white, blue, dark blue, teal and green and that’s it. And every expat will tell you which colour they rank as best and it’s generally all different (for me it's the teal ones but someone else swears by the gold. And I nearly had a massive crash in a blue).

The one thing we do tend to agree on is that the red and maroon taxis are the absolute worst. I have yet to go in a maroon taxi, and that’s for good reason. 90% of them aren’t official taxis. They are poorly maintained and don’t often run from a meter. It’s perfectly common practice when standing at a taxi rank to wave off a maroon one if it pulls up and wait for the next one instead. You can also tell which ones are dodgy as they have an ‘X’ in their registration plate. So it would seem its OK to run a dodgy taxi, but we’re going to warn customers but putting an ‘X’ in the registration!