The Adventures of Daniel Kwan

Home is where the ‘puter is, and it’s in Shanghai.

The airport by my place seems to have different levels of traffic everyday. The noisiest days were still the first two days I arrived. Since then there’s generally been only a few noticable flybys per day, and not all of them were loud.

With the noise mostly gone, there are just two other major annoyances. First, the shower area is tiny. Second, I have to use three different keys to get into my apartment. I’ve pretty much gotten used to those though.

There’s a Tesco supermarket just a few minutes walking distance from where I live. The place is huge and they sell everything. I’ve been going there nearly everyday for stuff like instant noodles and power strips. The place is ridiculously packed on weekends.

Still no internet. Hopefully will be installed next week.

Well I’m in Shanghai now.

I was wrong, the place I live isn’t that isolated. There is a metro stop nearby, though that line doesn’t connect to the rest of the metro system (yet). And apparently there’s an airport very close by because every few minutes a jetliner flies by overhead. My apartment’s right next to a supermarket and other stuff, so there’s always a bunch of people around. It sort of reminds me of Mos Eisley from Star Wars, with all the planes and weird people.

Anyway, I’ll write more after I’ve taken some pics, and when I get internet at my place. Could be a while.

Seven hours until my flight.

My place in Shanghai will be way out in Minhang District, at someplace not even on maps of Shanghai. It’s part of Shanghai, but nobody knows it, and I bet nobody wants to live there. (Kind of like what Stockton is to the Bay Area.) The Shanghai Metro goes everywhere in Shanghai, but not my area. I’ll be way out in the corner, away from everything. Remember those pictures of Shanghai with the giant skyscrapers and super malls? Yeah. Not my area. Oh, and I just found out my place won’t have internet.

Seven hours for me to change my mind.

One week to go! I started packing today. Gonna have two large checked baggages and two carry-ons.

I’m bringing some of my studio equipment with me to Shanghai. If my company ends up getting me a 2-bedroom apartment (because 1 BR apartments were all out last time they checked), I’d like to use one of the rooms as a ghetto studio. If I get a 1-bedroom then, I dunno, maybe I’ll sleep on the sofa. Or maybe I won’t have a studio room. Or maybe I’ll have the studio stuff in my bedroom around my bed. Seems a little creepy that way though.

Actually I don’t even know if I’ll have a bed, or any furniture. I didn’t ask, and I never looked inside the buildings. (The outside looked really nice though.) I just assumed the place would be fully furnished. All I asked was will I have internet, but my contact at the company doesn’t know yet. There better be internet.

The TSA is gonna go through my checked bags again. They always do. (They leave a note.)

I took some photos of the Blue Dawn Studios staff last weekend. They do video and photo coverage of events, and have funny names like Andrew Ho and Wilfred Poon. Jeffrey Kou’s name is boring. They’re based in San Francisco.

Go see the rest and larger versions here on Flickr.

I’m listed as a Featured Blogger on ShanghaiStuff.com! Woohoo! I’m rarely on the front page of anything except my own websites so this is pretty cool to me. I’m not sure if the Featured Bloggers change everyday though. If that’s the case, bleh, whatever. [Update: Haha it lasted a week, until I posted photos of protesters in SF and risked getting the website blocked in China. Whoops.]

My blog there is different from this one. Click here to go to it. I have a separate blog there because I don’t think anyone who reads this blog (if anybody reads this blog) would care about what I’m doing in Shanghai. For instance if I mention going to Wujiaochang in Yangpu District on this blog, it would just look like fobby gibberish.

But if you are interested for whatever reason, go take a look. I’ll be using it to chronicle my time there. And if/when I do any photo shoots there I’ll still write about it on this blog. I’m not there yet so right now it just has my thoughts on moving. Here’s the RSS for it.