You hate them, right, but can you live without one (or two)? We are traveling with our iphones on international roaming, so we already have a working cell phone each. But international roaming is quite expensive. So we've gone and procured a local cell phone each.
Foreseeing the need, we brought two phones with us for this purpose. One of those was a China Mobile phone that has been passed on, like a disease, from graduate student to professor to professor (Miles being the last professor in the chain). This phone was easy to get working. We just had to buy some prepaid time and then get the credentials for that paid time into the phone. This is easy, which I know because I personally saw our helper do it for us, and she definitely didn't break a sweat. I don't think I could have done it for myself, though, as I believe she did it by means of a phone call to an automated system, that it takes some command of Chinese to navigate.
The other phone I brought with me turned out to be endless trouble, and in the end, never worked. It was a phone Sprint sold to us just for international roaming in Europe, years ago, back when Sprint was our provider. It's apparently locked in some evil way by Sprint. The China Mobile sim card we bought did not work in the phone. Some evil daemon in the phone's software pops up a dialog requiring some weird password to be filled in, and none of the passwords I know for the phone would satisfy the wicked imp. So, having already bought the sim card, I had to buy a local phone (simless) to go with it. My helper thought it would be educational to buy this from one of the myriad small market stalls one sees on any Shanghai street. This took about an hour (bargaining included; although I was happy to pay the full asking price, that would have been a shocking rending of the social fabric). The phone I bought surely says “Nokia.” Whether it was made by Nokia is far less certain. Perhaps it was, but just wasn't the new phone it was claimed to be. Every time it is powered on, it says “Enjoy Every Day!” How can one argue with that?
The search for an apartment is taking longer than we had hoped. Basically, the choice boils down to this: take an apartment near Fudan University, or take one downtown. Apartments near Fudan are quite inexpensive but are pretty basic. Downtown apartments are nicer, but cost more. The Fudan neighborhood is where Miles needs to be for work, but the cultural life there is pretty arid. Downtown is where the best restaurants are and where all the musical events we'll want to go to are. It is also where most of the Shanghai expat community live. As Miles will only be teaching one day a week (one marathon 3-hour class) and coming to campus another day a week, we are leaning toward taking something downtown. But our Fudan helpers only have contacts with local real estate people, so, to date we have only seen 4 local apartments. For downtown, we'll be on our own, and we only got started looking yesterday just as the real estate offices were going slow for the weekend. Hopefully we can see some downtown apartments tomorrow. Of the 4 local apartments, we found one that was nice enough to do some bargaining on. We are in a position to take that one if nothing works out downtown (assuming it's still available).
Meanwhile, we soldier on bravely in our posh Fudan hotel.
With not much happening on the apartment search yesterday, we took the opportunity to go sight-seeing, taking a walk through the old French Concession neighborhood. Pictures from that excursion may be found here.
I'll close this post with a little amusement. Sometimes, while wandering in Shanghai, one will encounter a sign (partly) in English that is truly a thing of wonder. Here is one such that I snapped last night with my iphone:
As you can probably make out, the shop bearing the sign mostly sells bags. We were both way too apprehensive to go in and inquire about the meat puppets. I just don't think we wanted to know all that badly.
In any event, look again – there's something else on this sign. “Since 2003” or the like on a business' sign is quite common here. Given the pace at which Shanghai is changing, “Since 2003” equates to “old established concern.” One even sees signs that boast “Since 2007”, which, presumably means “made it through the downturn (so far).”
Well, this meat puppet will sign off here for now.
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