que pasa

...the new natural wonders of the world!

Saw this deck of slides of the newest natural wonders of the world.  Some are breathtaking.  (Some were photoshopped a bit too much though)

Turns out I'm not the only one who's a fan of Mac's breakfasts.  In my past 3 visits to this particular Mac's near my place, I've noticed this bunch of 6 middle aged men who sit in the middle of the restaurant and have energetic discussions about various topics.  I say various topics because they're speaking Shanghainese, which I don't understand.

They're there every week, before I arrive and stay around after I leave.  They're having a great time.  Talking rather passionately, as if they're discussing on some very important matter.  Then again, they could just be bitching although they wouldn't looks so amiable if they were, bitching gives you a pretty mean facial expression while you're at it (take it from me, I know). 

I guess there comes a time when you can no longer do the Boys' Night Out or Girls' Night Out.  That time is probably when you're married with kids and should be spending nights at home so you can hang with the kids before they sleep.  Or when you're too old and just can't hack the late nights anymore.  So the workaround is Boys' (or Girl's) Morning Out, where 1 parent stays at home to hold the fort with the kids while the other goes out.  Or because you're finding it your body prefers earlier mornings to later nights (which seems to be the case as you get older). 

Trust me, these guys are having a good time.  They sit with their coffees or teas and they move one of the small tables to join together with the one they are gathered around to form a comfortable table size of 8, and then they just sit around and start debating/discussing.  It's just cool to see that they're comfortable in a place like Mac's, which usually comes across as a place for the young to youths to people below 35.

When I grow old, I wanna be like that too.  I wanna have a bunch of friends I can do Sunday breakfasts with in air-conditioned comfort.  Preferably Mac's so that I can have my Sausage McMuffin with Egg at the same time, and oh, that arabica-coffee-beans-brew too :)

Facebook blocked in China.  UGH.  Just as I was having fun with the status updates...

Some of you have probably seen the soap The O.C. and enjoyed the drama that was going on there.  I'm seeing The R.C. over here, live.  The Residents' Committee.

The other night, when i came home, there were 20 people gathered in the lobby (which made it feel rather claustrophobic actually) talking at the top of their voices.  In shanghainese.  On the way up, I asked the other passenger what was going on and my memory is fuzzy on this, but she either said that they were talking about the new R.C. or changing the R.C. 

Some of you know what I'm talking about.  In every private estate, some residents get voted into a committee to represent the interests of the community and make decisions for the public good.  Turns out over here, in my 1 block estate, it's time for elections again (and it's time to please the people) or we just changed the R.C (and they wanna flex some muscles, like the first 100 days of the President coming into office).

So, we've had

• that old billboard torn off the wall (exposing these small square toilet-looking mosaic tiles)
• the dingy "reception" office/apt on the ground floor renovated (it now has a new coat of spanking white paint on the wall so bright that it blinds you when you come in, and it took like 2 weeks to get it done too so you couldn't possibly miss it)
• the crappy cracked leather sofas that were sitting in the what-we-call-a-lobby removed leaving no place to sit (though to be fair i didn't think anyone was sitting on them anyways)
• the cleaning crew come and scrub the floors of said lobby smack in the middle of the day when there was tons of traffic and did not look any better for the cleaning (but it's almost as if they wanted to make sure everybody knew the cleaning crew came)
• new white zone lines painted for the bicycle parking section (not that you didn't know where where it was before with the 50 plus so bikes parked in the same area)

Maybe they'll do something really useful and and offer each apartment a few free hours of cleaning service...