Apartment and Office Views

Today's weather: High = 10 Low = 2
Sunny

In keeping with the Shanghai is home theme, I found two pictures came naturally, one from my 6th floor apartment window, the other from a financial office downtown I visit frequently.





This weekend was quite productive. Got all the marking done, cleaned house, finished a masters degree assignment, and went to a 'cell group' of which I have now become a leader for. Long story. Another post coming soon.

Managed a visit to the China Telecom office to have the internet installed, yet again, at my "new" apartment. 4 months later I finally got around to it. Amazingly, the the technician showed up a mere day later, on a Sunday no less. Exact same guy as at my previous apartment! Coudn't believe it. All was not successful, however, as there are software glitches. Oh well, some other time.

Earlier on Friday, a visit to the police station for successful registration of my address.

Then, getting gas in the scooter was quite the ordeal. Due to the ongoing bugaboo of gas stations that refuse fillups in these unregistered pests, I now have to scour the inner and outer suburbs to find stations that work. Unfortunately it's a case of 'who moved my cheese' and I have yet to find that wonderful 'Cheese Station N' or gas station N. Worse yet, I ran out of gas during the search. A local filled up a pop bottle with 10 RMB worth of stale gas from some motorcycle shop. This helped me keep searching for the next gas sation. Then finally, a station accepted me. This ould end up being real annoying if it happens every weekend. Time to get out those jerry cans and come up with a more creative solution.

Finally, made some inquiries about multi-currency banking. HSBC is the obvious choice for what I'm trying to do, as I basically want to set up a tri-currency bank account in US dollars, Chinese RMB, and Thai baht. With the routine business I do in all three of those currencies, it only makes sense to get an Asian-based account in those currencies. The only caveat with HSBC is the minimum balance requirement. Even so, we made an appointment.

As expected, there is a lot of 'ma fan' (trouble) with international money transactions in mainland China, so a trip to Hong Kong will be inevitable at some point to set up the type of account I want. Even so, the HSBC in Shanghai can at least get the ball rolling for now. Ironically, Shanghai has ambitious plans to be global financial center, but Hong Kong has them beat by leaps and bounds.

Meanwhile, a HK run would also be a great opportunity to get a new Montague folding mountain bike, an IPAD, and a notebook computer.