July 16 – How to look stupid in a foreign country.

Lesson 1. When you come up to a door be sure to read the little sign that says “Push” or “Pull”. I was trying to get into the MS building right in front of main reception and ended up pushing the door into the carpet that they had laid down for the rain a few times before realizing I should be pulling on the handle. The security guard was probably wondering how I got hired to work at MS in the first place let alone be sent to Shanghai as an “ambassador” of the American people. Go Stupid!!

Lesson 2. The subways in Shanghai announce the current and upcoming stops in both Chinese and English. They also tell you which side of the train you will depart from. While traveling back from KTV I was on a train line I had never been on before. My stop was coming up and the recording said get ready to exit from the “left side”. Left and right is always relative to the direction the train is going in so I stood up, got in front of the door and waited for the train to stop. Well in this particular case this was an older train station and the exit side was actually on the right. By the time I realized what I had done wrong the train had come almost to a complete stop and when I turned around a number of passengers were staring at me. Good thing I blend in or I might have felt really dumb.

One day on the train Adam and I were talking about if they ever had problems with the recordings getting out of synch with the stops. The answer is – yes. One night a few weeks back Julie and I were on the train and it was wrong which caused a little confusion for some of the passengers. A small group of girls weren’t quite sure if they were at the right place or not and almost got off a stop early. Hey look - I'm not the only one that looks stupid on the subway. Just the tallest, most obvious one. :-)

My watch band broke the other day when I was putting on my backpack. Paperclip to the rescue! I figured that was easier than trying to find a new one which would ultimately involve a lot of pointing and gesturing and eventually lead to someone trying to sell me skin cream or something completely unrelated to a watch. Yes - that is how it goes here.