The plot thickens...

As it turns out, my professor has a daughter. I worked out as much when I was in his car on the first day and noticed a few dolls in the back seat. It wasn't until a few days ago I found out she happens to be 22.

An early phone chat and a little preliminary research (rumours in the dept.!) turned up that she also happens to be beautiful, charming, speaks a handful of languages and has a wonderful oriental accent (perhaps less than surprisingly). Needless to say, she sounded way out of my league.

So, when my professor called me up on tuesday and asked if I'd like to go with her to the leaving party of a French student she knew from her exchange there, I jumped at the chance! My French is highly spurious (A grade... at GCSE!) but the promise of european food (cheese, beer, wine!), a beautiful daughter and some international students was too good to miss!

The party was at an apartment near to people's square, a very plush affair with plasma tv, great view, and several rooms - very Canary Wharf. The international students were two very charming French couples (one below, our host is in the middle), a lovely Japanese girl, four very squeeky Koreans (also below), and the class chinese teacher (they all took chinese lessons together, and were omore or less at my standard, so we chatted bemusedly in our pigeon while the teacher and the daughter corrected our grammer!).

My first beer in China was, ironically, budweiser, but it still tasted good. Had lots of food and chatted to a long time to one of the French guys who's working in a nearby Chinese city for another month and a alf, who has invited daughter and myself to go and stay one weekend if we're free, which sounds awesome.

Afterwards the two of us headed over to see the Bund by night, were mobbed by beggers and kite salespeople, drank coconut juice and took blurry photos. Even by night the C19th British arcitecture looks drab, but the East side of the river is amazing in all the light. She has let on to me that her father plans to invite me to dinner one night - I've promised to act surprised - for a Chinese feast and some real Baijiu (Chinese spirit. Apparently her father is quite a drinker!). Can't wait!



Back row: Korean, Me, Daughter, Korean Korean
Front row: Host, Korean, Host's boyfriend (who has invited us to stay)



Beautiful people!

Bliss

Today has been blissful. Following the savage defeat I inflicted on the mosquito hordes at The Battle of the Quick Clap last night, I have actually woken up with NO NEW BITES!

Mosquitos here are much more savage than those in England, and its a lie that they only go for people with B-type blood, I'm O+ and I've been bitten about 25 times since I got here. I've erected a great mosquito wall of China around my dorm to keep more out

Some photos

Some photos from the last few days that entertained me...



Shanghai has always been the backbone of the Chinese economy and it's not hard to see why. Wondering the streets you'll see countless examples of Shanghainese ingenuity, like ths clip above - this enterprising Chinese has struck upon the idea of a book and grocery shop - now THATS synergy!



More diversification here - but don't I recognise this popular Chinese shirt and suit brandname from somewhere else...?



After travelling half way round the World I was more than surprised when I wondered into the canteen to discover that it was in fact Trinity College halls. A later, more through investigation revealed my early mistake.

(This one came out a bit dark alas)


Now swimming is a big hobby of mine (in fact any water sports really), so I was naturally overjoyed when I found out that my campus has a swimming pool on it, 8 RMB (50p!) an hour after a 'health check' ("Are you healthy?" "Yes" "Here's your health card, that's 5 RMB"), so I brought my swimming shorts from home specially.



Perhaps I'm a slightly conservative dresser in the water, but I hadn't forseen this being a problem. However, the old Chinese lady at the desk had different ideas. She laughed her head off when she saw them - "tai da le! tai da le!" - apparently the chinese are much less repressed in the water, and they wouldn't let me in until I bought a pair of trunks 'chinese style' (for another 30 RMB!), and although it thankfully hasn't come out too well in the photo they leave NOTHING to the imagination...

Early day faux-pas

I was told that there was almost nothing I could do that would upset the Shanghaiese. True to form, here are the first few faux-pas I've racked up in three days:

• Don't get into a taxi on the left hand side. Remember, like the rest of the world, Shanghai people drive on the right so you might get hit. (In fact they seem to drive on every side) And your driver will get irate
• When having a meal with others with lots of dishes, don't pick any of the dishes up
• Don't hang your umbrella on the seat infront of you on a bus
• Don't growl friendly-ly at a little kid who points at you in the street
• On Nanjing Road, there are people who collect empty plastic bottles from bins since they can sell them to recycling companies (big thumbs up, by the way) for a bitof money. If you have an empty bottle, don't give it to them directly and DON'T look at them. Instead put it nearby where they can get it themselves or they might think you're gloating (does anyone else thing this is so the wrong way round?!)
• On a similar vein, don't give fen (very small denomination, 15 fen is about a penny) to beggers. Wish I got a photo of the begger moaning at me! I didn't realise quite how worthless they were, my minder had to gve him a yuan to get him to go away!
• NEVER NEVER NEVER suggest to a visiting expert from the US who is chairman of one of the councils over here during a presentation that a 2 million tonne cut in carbon emissions (equivalent to the CO2 emissions of Scotland) from a single 1-kW solar panal might be unfesable (you could've trned the air conditioning off and we'd still have been cool for days...)
  

Shanghai

finance vs. fashion, finance vs. fashion... oh dear!

So I've been a bit lame about updating this blog. I'm putting it down to not being able to view it (hanks PRC) although at least I can get the BBC, contrary to my expectations!

I arrived a couple of days ago, on the 30th. Have so much to write about. settling in, red stamps, money counters, hot weather, maglevs etc.

Most exciting (!!) tho was today. The last couple of days have been mostly settling in and desperatly trying to relearn the year of chinese lessons that have drifted over exam term. Love the almost total immersion (have been helped out greatly by a grad student here, Tang, who is also using the chance to polish his english, admittedly much much MUCH better than my chinese at the moment!).

Today, we went to pay my tuition fees, and i lost my wallet on the bus! this has never happened to me before, could it happen at less convenient time?! Luckily, Eurotrip buff that I am, I had all my not insignificant stash of renminbi in a pouch around my neck under my shirt. however, it had my HSBC card AND my barclaycard inside (yes, it sounds silly in retrospect to me to), as well as a few other bits and bobs and $5 USD that i was going to use to buy a beer in moscow airport on the way home (damn barbarians don't even accept euros yet, let alone the queen's silver).

Well, there's nothing like deseratly needing money from a uk account that you dont have the debit card to any longer to catalyse a rapid study in international money transfer methods, and calling the uk from abroad. HSBC china weren't very helpful (at the risk of being condescending, i don't think they've got the conceptof free banking over here just yet. as soon as they heard that i didn't have the account plus - "VIP account" as they called it - they didn't really want to know). Luckily mother has just had a rather large tax rebate so was able not only to cancel the cards for me from the uk, but also send an emergency £300 across via western union until the replacement debit card arrives. They have my maximum regard - money arrived in about 5 minutes, which was longer than it took for the queue in China Agricultural Bank to clear, and they are also great incidentally, great transfer rate, wish I'd done my cash there the other day, would've got about RMB 150 more!

Anyway, since we were in town anyway, we went formy first tour. We saw lots of tall buildings in funny shapes, big rivers, and drab C19 british bomb shelters. Went to browse a few malls, can't wait to go back with a bit more ready cash, tho the prices certainly weren't bad and the shop assistants very friendly! they had suits for GBP 30ish, and some very nice polo shirts for about a tenner. Only thing that held me back from the suit was I heard you can get some very good tailored ones for not much more.

Of course the morning's excitment had left me with a critical decision to make. I could either risk becoming a victim of financial crime again or else do the unthinkable and commit the worst crime of fashion... (see above i think - does anyone know how to put them at the bottom?)

Mio

So a friend of mine (the one I went to school with, for those of you who know me) has become a professional blogger, at http://www.miodestino.co.uk/blog/author/murph100min/. He is MIOMAN, telling us what we already knew about doner kebabs in order to encourage us to buy lingerie for our girlfriends. Such a sales technique.

Although I think Gardies are the most likely benefactors...

Itinerary

Exams are over and more prep is called for. Mother still wonderfully helpful regarding insurence (reading this mother of mine? Your hard work is appreciated)

Itinerary

（1）Basic research for photovoltaic physics and nano-semiconductor physics

（2）Fabrication and characterization of opto-electronic thin film materials and devices

（3）Practical and applied advanced PV materials to solar cells and modules

（4）Visiting other related laboratories and centers such as state-key laboratories and institutes of Chinese academy of sciences.

They're meeting me at the airport, so I may not be able to take the maglev into town - of course the long-time dream of any physics graduate...