wandernut

Question is, which one? I can’t afford them all

Grammy Award-winning jazz maestros Al Jarreau and George Benson are performing in Shanghai this Saturday. Cheapest ticket RMB 480 (RM 240). Post edit: Cheaper tickets sold out. Only RMB 880 and above available.

Diana Krall is coming soon on October 9th.
Cheapest ticket RMB 500 (RM250).

And so is Avril Lavigne’s The Best Damn Tour.
Cheapest ticket RMB 200 (RM100).

Sigh.

I’m so damn tired today, I couldn’t be arsed to cook dinner.

I bought the Enjoy card recently. It’s RMB 299 / RM 150 for a card which gives you discounts when you dine at certain places, plus a thick book of dining and shopping vouchers, giving you free drinks or wine or more discounts when you spend a certain amount (and given the cost of eating out in Shanghai, easy peasy).

Yes, I’m quite a sucker for this kinda thing.

Anyway, I decided to use one of the vouchers they had for a food delivery specialist in Shanghai, called Sherpa. They basically have a list of restaurants around town, you order stuff from these restaurants and Sherpa delivers it to you (delivery fee depends on proximity of restaurant to your place).

Now my voucher is a “RMB 50 off for any purchase of RMB 50″. So if I buy some thing that’s 50 bucks, I just pay the delivery fee. SCORE!

In Sherpa’s delivery list, I’ve been eyeing the Reuben Sandwich from City Deli (a delivery-only sandwich joint) for some time. But it costs RMB 55 (RM 27), and I’ve been too cheap to spend that amount on a sandwich, despite reading rave reviews about how authentic it is.

With my voucher I’m practically having it for nothing. Wooohooo!
Yeah, that’s how my logic works. Tee hee.

Now, you know what’s really amazing about Sherpa?
You can order via MSN! Just add them to your contact list, and you can just IM your order. No need to pick up the phone. No forms to fill online. Just freaking double click to chat with the friendly person on the other side. And they’ll just send you the invoice via file transfer. Am thoroughly impressed.

Waiting for my sandwich to arrive.
Will review it later.

Half an hour later.

OMG! It’s probably the best sandwich I’ve ever had.

Layers of pastrami. Layers of thinly sliced Swiss cheese. Yummy sauerkraut (which they drained very nicely so the sandwich wasn’t soggy at all!). Crusty, nutty rye bread. There was even an entire gherkin (I only ate half of that).

I am a happy girl. And it’s really a coincidence that Dr.House’s favourite sandwich is a reuben too, ya know. Hee.

The service was great too. The call center called me to let me know the delivery guy was downstairs.

Smart marketing. Bribe your customers into loyalty and approval with a ‘free meal’.

Works for me

The past week has been pleasantly cool, peppered with intermittent rain.

Didn’t need to turn on the air con anymore. Not quite sure if summer is coming to and end, but the sun has been pretty shy of late. If the retail outlets are anything to go by, it’s definitely autumn. Tank tops and shorts have made way for wool cardigans, leather jackets and trenchcoats.

The weekend has been quite productive.
Went to Taikang Lu with MY yesterday morning, an artsy fartsy area in an interesting old lane house district. It’s got the usual art galleries, cafes, restaurants, all side by side with the old locals still living there.

Had some very good bacon at Kommune, probably the best I’ve had in Shanghai so far, and they also served very good coffee in cute little glass milk jars.

After brunch, I went to the gym. Feeling gung ho and guilty (after the bacon), I went for spinning class, ran for half an hour and did some weights. I knew I shouldn’t overdo it as the Nike Human Race 10km was on this morning, but I had time to kill. And while I was at it, I kinda killed my muscles. My legs were screaming murder. Then I took a leisurely slow walk from People’s Square to Portman’s along Nanjing Xi Lu where I met MY for dinner. People’s Square metro station was huge!

The walk took about 45 minutes, but it was interesting cos it was the ‘metropolitan’ area of Shanghai.

We ate at California Pizza. Pizza was good (we ordered Milanese, with Italian sausages, caramelised onions and mushrooms), pasta was OK (shrimp marinara), but it was freaking expensive (RMB 128/RM 64 for a pizza, RMB 118/RM59 for pasta). Good thing I had a 50% off voucher from the Enjoy card I bought. I wouldn’t have eaten here otherwise.

Woke up early this morning at 5.30am feeling like a stiff robot. Had half the mind to stay in bed but after all the trouble HF went through to help me get a place in the race (WK’s client is Nike), I’d be an idiot if I did. Went to the WK office at 6am, met up with HF and CY and hopped onto WK’s bus to Century Park. It was good to see K and HR again too, ex-LB colleagues who are now in WK.

The race was badly organised though. The roads were simply not wide enough for so many people. Apparently, it was a crowd of 15,000. It started to rain right before we were supposed to start, and it continued off and on throughout the race. It was difficult maneuvering around people who were walking instead of running, not to mention those who carried umbrellas. Goodness gracious. In a race? A little rain won’t kill you!

Oh well. That aside, I got a finisher t-shirt, which was pretty nice.
Good thing I got to the M size T-shirt booth early to redeem it. About 15 minutes later, the crowd swelled, and they ran out of M size t-shirts. People in the line (hmm, what line?) were pushing, fighting and screaming, as if their lives depended on it. It was quite a scene.

We later took the subway to People’s Square and went to the Nike flagship store where we each bought a pair of running shorts, and I got my Nike Sportsband. All using the 30% off voucher that HF got. Way cool!

After that, to commemorate Merdeka (ha ha), we went to a Singaporean restaurant to eat ‘Malaysian’ food - curry fish head, roti canai (not bad actually, or it could be desperation talking), Singapore meehoon, vege and fried kueh kak, washed down with pretty decent teh tarik (not cheap, about RMB 73 / RM 36 per person for the meal).

Went to Xujiahui after that to Shanghai’s version of Low Yat Plaza. Bought my earphones. The lights and people and noise made me spin a little but I found comfort in its familiarity. Quite pleasantly surprised to find the Canon camera I was eyeing was going pretty cheap. Not sure if it came with the international warranty though. Was too tired to ask.

Then I took the subway back to Nanjing Xi Lu to my bank. The ATM ate my bank card last night. The girl helping me was efficient and friendly, but I had to wait an hour for them to retrieve the card from the ATM (somewhere further down the street).

Dead tired. Zzzzz.

Soso was the smaller brother.
Leon was the bigger goofy one.

When I must met them in 1996, they were a family of 4 dogs.
Mac, the Lab mix, Princess, the Mini Poodle and their shaggy, white boys.

Mac died of old age in 2000, and now almost a decade later, the rest have aged as well. Princess is now blind, but still the manja little poodle. The boys have their old age problems, but would ‘play fight’ and prance about every now and then.

But Soso passed on today. A few days ago, he stopped eating and drinking water. The vet said it was poisoning, and it could have been a poisonous frog or toad, or someone could have thrown something into the house.

So sad. Now there will be one less dog to say hello to when I go to LY’s house.

Rest in peace, old friend.
May you run healthy and strong across the rainbow bridge.

Woof!

CY and HF got this recently. It works with the Nike Plus sensor which tracks your pace, distance, calories burned and so on, without the need of an Ipod Nano. And when you’re not running, it’s a sleek sports watch. How cool is that?

HF could get me a voucher to buy that and a pair of Nike Plus shoes at a discount. But after thinking long and hard, I couldn’t bring myself to spend over RMB 900 (RM 450) on a new pair of shoes and the Sportsband Kit (just so it has a little hole in it for the Nike Plus chip). But I read that you can use the chip without Nike Plus shoes, as long as you can secure it on your existing pair (with a shoe pouch, or stitched into the tongue of your shoe). Besides, my flat broad feet have never felt very secure in Nike or even Adidas shoes. So I’ll stick to my current New Balance for now, though I may check out Asics when my NBs wear out.

But I will get the kit (around RMB 350 / RM 175 after discount). It’s way too cool to resist. And last year, cheapskate me bought a mid-range heart rate monitor, which doesn’t measure distance or speed, so this kit will complement my HRM quite nicely.

Looks like I’ll have to wear 2 watches on my wrists then. One to measure my heart rate. The other to track my training. I probably shouldn’t wear them both at the same time. It’d look quite silly.

Another thing I need to buy is new earphones for my Ipod.
My Ipod is 4 years old. While the little brick is still going strong, the earphones have gone kablooey on me.

Old earphones VS what I wanna get!

And when I get to Hong Kong next month, I wanna buy these, the Canon EOS 450D (body only) with Tamron SP 28-75mm f/2.8 lens instead of the kit lenses (this Tamron is a better lense with great value for money).:

It’s MUCH, MUCH cheaper in Hong Kong compared to KL or Shanghai, and I can’t wait to start playing around with it.

I also need to buy a pair of boots, preferably waterproof for the coming winter.

I saw a pair of ankle boots in Timberland (Shanghai) in Black, at 50% off. Waterproof, but it was quite ugly and construction-boots looking. And still expensive at RMB 1000 (RM 500) after discount! I hope I can find a nicer looking pair, preferably calf high when I’m in HK.

Something like this would be ideal.

High enough for me to tuck my jeans in. Rugged yet stylish. Waterproof. Leather (I have this fetish for cow hide). Just a bit of height, but with a stable heel (I don’t know how people can walk in boots that have 3″ to 5″ heels). Ooooh, look at the pretty little buckle!

It’s the Timberland Women’s Waterproof Charles Street Lace/Zip Boot. Wonder if I’ll be able to find this in HK. Ya know, I like it so much, I won’t mind buying it full price. Doubt I’ll find this at the factory outlet in Tung Chung. Hee. I saw this pair in the UK Timberland website. It ships only within UK and to the US. Grrrrrr.

I did check out other boots from places like Zara and what not. But the designs were terrible. The material cheap. And at prices that were too ridiculous (RMB 1000+ for ugly, dusty PVC with kitten heels )

I also have a crush on this bag.
And anyone who knows me will know I’m not a ‘bag’ type of person. Least of all expensive bags. But when I saw this in a magazine, I felt a twinge inside. I love anyaman (weaved) stuff and it’s so pretty, yet casual. It’s USD450 online, but I would think it costs much more in KL. And as far as I know, they don’t have a Cole Haan outlet in beautiful tax-free HK.

Sigh.