Touring, touring, touring

Greetings from Shanghai, where the word on the street is FASHION. Or perhaps, CANKLES. It is a blustery 20-something degrees Celsius, which means unusually warm and humid. Many women here sport shorter skirts in honor of the blatant effects of global warming. Others are still holding out for fall weather, selling faux-fur-lined puffy vests* from street corners and squinting up at the sky as if to say ¨Hurry up and get cold so I can sell more gaudy furry vests to unsuspecting tourists for a ridiculously inflated price!!!¨

* (Note: I do not understand puffy vests. If it is cold enough outside to warrant a down, puffy vest with furry lining, is it still warm enough to have barely covered arms? I do not know about you, but my arms are just as important to me as my torso. I would be seriously upset if I lost just my arms to frostbite while wearing a gaudy purple puffy fur vest that I bought with good money in Shanghai.)

On the street, I saw a couple wearing sweaters of the exact same shade of purple. I reasoned that they had only just started dating, and probably weren´t living together yet, maybe because the girl (let´s call her Judy) has a very strict father who wants Judy to live at home while helping with the family lacquer business, and the guy (Terrence) lives in an apartment with three other boys, all of whom are too smelly/crude/unimpressive to introduce to Judy just yet. After all, they just started dating. I know all this because two people who lived together and got dressed together would never intentionally wear this same color purple on the same day. Unless, of course, they did it to keep from losing each other in the crowd. Which is entirely possible.

Yesterday on the train to Shanghai I made up a game called How Many Disney* Songs Can You Sing Off the Top of Your Head In 5 Minutes and the answer is 13.
* (Songs from Anastasia and Ferngully do not count because they are not from Disney, but I sang them anyway so that makes 18 if you count them).

I also made a game called Make Up Your Own Inspirational Disney Hero Song As You Sing It and this is what I came up with:

¨(pounding drums in the background)
On this journey, I don´t know where I am going
But I know that this way is true
Show me a sign! (drumbeats) so IIII can find...
The place where I will find youuuu

(music swells! Hero stands precariously on tree branch/cliff/moving object and looks into distance)

Here I am! All alone! On a journey for trrrruth...
I don´t know, what to do
So I am counting on YOUUU
Give me a sign! Let me leave!
This pa-aast behiiiind...
(music swells back down)

Help me find the waaaay
Away from who I waaasss...
Onto something newwww...
Wiiiiiiith yoooooooooou.¨

Then Jeff Schmitz* asks ¨What movie is that from?¨ And I laugh to myself and say ¨I just made it up.¨

* (Note: Jeff is not surprised. Jeff knows every Disney movie soundtrack ever produced, including all the gospel parts to the opening of Hercules.)

I just finished a room-service dinner, which was described as Wonton Soup and Plain Boiled Chicken With Shanghai Style. The plain boiled chicken part was quite enticing although I admit I was a little curious to see what Shanghai style was...

Well, when it arrived, it looked like a normal piece of boiled chicken, sliced and arranged in a little filet. How delightful! Except that when I flipped it over, all the bones and gristle and rib-part-things were still attached. Shanghai-ed, indeed!!

I cut away the bones and ate the meager leftovers, and am now preparing to go out for noodles with Lindsey*, my roommate, who a few hours earlier called me the Human Jukebox.

* (Note: Lindsey has tattoos on her leg and her back. She also has good-smelling body products. I smell them when she´s not looking.**)

** (Her bath products, not her tattoos.)

Lindsey is giving me a funny look. Noodle time!