It has been snowing in Shanghai since last Friday, and my obsession with Glenn Gould continues. Today during lunchtime I was walking around in the snow humming, I must be losing it.
Last Friday I spent the entire day working on pitches for my boss and got roped into staying at the office with one of the associates to work on a pitch until around six, at which point I decided that I had enough for the week and went home. At home, I ordered a hummus pita, dolmeh, and a pepper and cheese on laffa sandwich from the mediterranean cafe, and drank shochu in my room while reading "American Psycho", which was of course very nasty and the diary-like tone of which is definitely carrying on into my writing today.
The chapters are quite formulaic in some ways and after having finished the book I think in many ways I would find it easy to copy the author's writing style. Each chapter begins with a laundry list style description of the characters present, fully itemizing each piece of clothing being worn and its respective designer, what is being eaten and drank by each character, and then going onto describe the characters' activities, which mainly include scoring coke, taking perscription pills, checking out women, and, in the case of the main character, murder. My cousin described "American Psycho" as "pure evil", and I have to say that some of the later episodes with the main character (which I read on Sunday) were a bit difficult to read, as they reached the point where they were rather nauseating. Friday night I read until about midnight, becuase I had a soccer game scheduled for the next day.
Saturday morning, the snow hadn't stopped and my firm was unable to field a full team, so we postponed the match and I returned from the field in Pudong to my apartment in Puxi and met with my tai chi teacher for some push-hands practice. I am currently learning the fast Wu style form, so we spent about a fourth of the class working on that as well as talking about some Xingyi teacher who is famous for being very violent- my teacher compared him to IIRC Yang Banhou, who was famous for 1) being a great fighter and 2) infamous because he never took a pupil, as he would injure anyone who tried to study with him.
Afterwards, I read more American Psycho and finished the bottle of shochu before dinner, which was Italian at La Isola Bella on Huaihai Rd. For appetizers, we had some parma ham and mortadella, and also an insalata caprese. I had linguine with speck and radocchio for a main course, and cassata with an espresso for dessert. Afterwards, we went to YY's for a friend's birthday party, but I was feeling rather tired because of the snow and ended up going home at around 2 am.
Sunday I woke up at noon with a stomachache. As my tai chi teacher was coming again at 2, I had a muffin and a hot chocolate at the starbucks across the street from my house (41 RMB, which is now over $5 thanks to inflation and the weakening dollar). Tai chi practice went ok, but my stomach still hurt a bit. After tai chi I took the metro to Shanghai stadium. Apparently, there was a Jay Chow concert being held last night at the Shanghai Grand stage, which is in a smaller building next to Shanghai stadium, but luckily the snow meant that there were fewer scalpers than normal. Climbing went quite well, as I managed once again to make it across the top of the overhang in the bouldering section, which I had previously accomplished last Tuesday while my friend wasn't looking, and then was unable to repeat for the rest of the day. Yesterday as I wasn't feeling well, I tried to concentrate mainly on footwork and moving smoothly in order to prevent my arms from tiring out too quickly. Also, the cold weather means that it is quite easy to get space in the gym, as it seems that many people are not interested in leaving the house while it is snowing and the only people besides me, my friend, and the staff were a Chinese guy with his girlfriend and three or four Euros who are, seemingly, always there.
It was still snowing as we were coming out of the stadium, and I had visions of crashed buses and squashed pedestrians as we meandered through traffic towards IKEA. I had swedish meatballs for dinner, along with about a mouthful of watery fountain pepsi, which I decided not to finish because the soda fountain is obviously hooked up to a straight line of Shanghai tap water.
I wasn't in the mood to ride the metro home, so I stopped off at my friend's place and continued reading 'American Psycho' on his couch while watching an Elizabeth movie starring Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh, with a scene quite reminiscent of the Blackadder episode entitled "Potato",and drinking a Coke and becoming -more-than-slightly- paranoid because of the nastiness of the book, to the point where I politely refused my friend's offer of a cup of tea because "you never can tell with people". After finishing with the book, I recommended to my friend that he definitely NOT read the book, and that if he was interested, that the movie adaptation was perfectly good, worth watching, and not nearly so nasty.
The Elizabeth movie had ended and so we watched several episodes of Frasier which to this day I have never gotten into, but which my friend quite likes. Never having been a huge Cheers fan, I had to ask my friend why exactly it was that Frasier and his brother Niles are so intellectual, whereas their father is a very down-to-earth former police officer.
After once again politely refusing a cup of tea(I have to apologize to my friend next time I see him), I went to Charmant for some noodles and a ginger coke. On the way to Charmant, the taxi I was riding in had a minor slide on the slushed-over Huaihai Rd., but we didn't hit anything. After Charmant, I decided that it would probably be a good idea to take the surface roads home, as I didn't want to gamble with riding in a seatbeltless Santana on an icy highway.
After arriving at home, I started reading "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations", which is the last of the four books that I borrowed from my classmate, the others being, "Bringing Down the House", "The Long Tail", and "American Psycho". So far it seems a bit denser than "The Long Tail" or "Bringing Down the House", although I am hoping that the author will remain objective. According to Wikipedia, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations has been accused of being Eurocentric, and gives "Guns, Germs and Steel"(which I quite liked) as an example of a book which focuses more on geographic factors, rather than cultural factors, which led to European colonial success.
I am also (only on the bus to and from work) still reading "The Sputnik Sweetheart" by Haruki Murakami, which shares several elements with Norwegian Wood, which I finished reading last November, including, notably, detached first-person narration by a male character, European travel, tons of references to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and lesbianism. No wonder Murakami's books sell so well (I laugh as I write this).
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