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!

On going away and coming back...

Firstly, apologies for the delayed silence. I actually had 3 blog posts written and ready to go, but none of them are time-dependent, so I think I’ll save them til later.

Anyway, as most of you know, I’ve been back in the UK for almost 2 weeks, and returned to Shanghai last week.  I know, I wasn’t in Shanghai for very long before my first trip back.  The reason being that I had stuff booked in the UK I didn’t want to miss, so I arranged for this trip to come out of my home leave flight allowance so I could afford it, and my boss (who has now left) approved the holiday so it was all sorted.

I was so excited about coming home and I think in all honesty it made those first few weeks easier, so even on low days I knew it wasn’t long before I was back. I think that’s the key here – making sure you have trips/breaks planned so you always have something to look forward to.

So, my trip home. It was awesome. I never thought of myself as hugely patriotic, but living away even this short time has changed all that I think. I was so glad to be home, and not just because of my family and friends – I actually missed England too. Especially proper tea.

It was a packed agenda. Standon Calling festival, then a few days in Whitby with the family, then a quick trip home, then over to Maidstone for 2 days with my new agency before flying back, so I was pretty busy.

What I did notice is the ‘I’ve come all the way from China’ card is pretty handy. The best use of it I found (apart from getting out of the washing up) is to use it to meet your favourite band, which is what I did at Standon. We found a nice security guard, I played the ‘I’ve come all the way from China for this’ card, and got to meet Paul Smith from Maximo Park!!!! It was worth moving to China just for that!!!!!

So coming back was a real mix of emotions, which was not helped by the fact that I had 5 minutes to make my connecting flight from Amsterdam to Shanghai so I had to sprint (yes, me, sprinting, not pretty) across Amsterdam airport and only just made it. And then when I got back to Shanghai, I was nearly in a taxi pile up on the motorway which wouldn’t have ended well (and was a typical welcome).

I was sad to leave, but I’m also excited to be back. This is just the start of my experience here and there’s so much still to come. And it was nicer leaving and knowing what I was coming back to, nowhere near as scary!

Things I learnt from being at home:

There’s never enough time. You can’t see everyone you want to, and you’ll send yourself crazy if you try.

The sky is blue!

We never appreciate how lucky we are living in the UK. Being able to drink the tapwater, seeing blue skies, green spaces, family nearby…it could be a lot worse.

After living in China, your definition of a place being ‘busy’ and someone else’s will be drastically different.

Not having to use a VPN makes the internet so much quicker

Finally, I wanted to say a big thank you. I have been overwhelmed by the amount of people reading this, and coming home and hearing everyone say they were enjoying it means the world to me (especially Anne, who can’t normally even open her laptop! ;)).