Find your oasis
My working week is 6 days and they can get pretty long so it is important to relax when you get the opportunity.
Hotel office
Monday and Wednesday mornings I finish classes at 11 and my next one are at 3.15 so instead of wasting theses our on travelling back on the other side of the river (to home or office) I have decided to stay in Pudong and find another substitute office. I choose Sheraton Shanghai Pudong because my family are loyal members of the Starwood preferred guest program. It means, for example, that I get 20% discount on food & beverage and super service since my father also is a Lifetime gold member. I am very happy with this luxury hotel environment and delicious 5 star food for lunch.
Dining with friends
Since there are so many British people in this company they have found a very English Pub/restaurant downtown in Shanghai, called Mr. Harry (recommended by trip adviser as well). We had dinner and drinks there this Saturday and I enjoyed a typical western food, steak with French fries, as a nice contrast to the Asian everyday food. Maybe I will go to IKEA one day as well to enjoy some meatballs..
Chinese friends
So far I have to local friends. One is my colleges girlfriend and the other one I met for the first time yesterday. He is a friend of a friend who found me on Facebook, we got talking and had some mutual interest so we went for a Sunday brunch.
He works with indoor design and does contemporary art part time. Finally I found someone here that is also into art and culture! He liked Scandinavian design and is right now working on a project for a gallery in Stockholm opening (hopefully) next year. So we could help each other out with useful information, like a culture exchange. This Sunday afternoon he showed me his studio with a lot of interesting pieces he has done and currently working with. What he liked about Swedish interior design is simpleness and the clean lines and and he said Japan is very influence by this in present time as well. It got me thinking of a Japanese contemporary composer, whom I met in Austria, and did a project with last year. We agreed on making a 2-dimensional piece in terms of putting sounds together and me creating choreography and performing it with just moving from one side of a room to the opposite one. The setting was clean in terms of white costume, white walls, no props and in a way the idea of less is more. Maybe like Scandinavian and Japanese indoor design? That lead us into discussing how an idea can be transferred from one form of art to another and collaborations. We also talked about contemporary art in different arenas and he recommended a couple of museums. I got to see some picture from an exhibition of his friends that he went to the other day. It was a mixture of fine art and performing art with lights sliding/running down black walls and robots paining blue strokes on white canvas. I will try to go this week and also see it for myself because it looked very cool and interesting. It was not a business meeting or anything, just 2 friends having a beer and talking, but it got me inspired so we will definitely see each other more.
Massage
There are massage studios everywhere and I tried a couple of different ones. My new Chinese friends and I share Blind massage as favorite. Because other senses strengthens when another one weakens they are very good “listening” to what my body needs. That is at least my experience after visiting a 30 min massage for about 65 Kr. There massage studios is by the always visited by a lot of people from different backgrounds and a weekly activity for many Shanghainese! I get the impression that it is more common here to go for a massage after work than to the gym. Both gives you relaxation from work and is good for your body and brain but in different ways. I am not going to argue on which one is the best alternative but it is an interesting difference in how you prioritize working with your own health in different cultures.