TGIFAINLOTM (Thank Goodness It's Friday And I'm No Longer On The Metro)

Friday again. Another week has gone by in a blur. I don't really know where the time goes. Today I had an interview with a recruiting company who places people with various companies here in Shanghai. The office is across the river in Pudong so I did some recon yesterday to figure out about how much time I needed in order to get there. The office isn't far from a metro station, so that is what I used to get over there. Really not a bad commute during the afternoon hours.

Of course, all that changes with the morning rush hour.

The Shanghai metro has a main north-south artery, which is Line 1. The east-west one is Line 2. Lines 1 and 2 intersect at People's Square, which is undeniably the busiest metro station in Shanghai. I needed to ride Line 1 to People's Square and then transfer to Line 2 and take that to Pudong. Simple, except for the fact that that is the basic plan for a million other people. The metro station near me (Xu Jia Hui) is a fairly busy one and the car was full going to People's Square. At the intermediate stops between Xu Jia Hui and People's Square, it was a struggle for people to exit and to cram themselves on board. Once we reached People's Square, the train literally emptied. There couldn't have been more than a handful of people left on the train. I elbowed my way onto the escalator (take that you pushy old woman with your pointy handbag!) and got swallowed up in the sea of people transferring to Line 2. Once you exit the train, you go up a flight of stairs and through a tunnel in order to get to the Line 2 part of the station. There is a bottleneck at the beginning of the tunnel and at the end. I wanted to take a picture of all the people in the tunnel, but I knew that there would be no way for me to accomplish that without having the camera jostled out of my hands or me being swept unwillingly away with the crowd despite my efforts. So I kept moving. I barely made it onto the Line 2 train. My purse got caught on the door and I had to work to free it. Even though there wasn't any room to move or to breathe, still more people crammed themselves into the already overfilled cars. And there were hundreds of people left who didn't make it onto this train and had to wait for the next one to arrive. To get an idea of how closely packed we were, get out 4 cans of sardines. Open all 4. Lay one can in front of you. Take the contents of a second can and stuff them into the first. Repeat with the third can. Now take the contents of the fourth can and cram them into the first can with all the other sardines. Use as much force as needed to put the lid back onto this can of sardines. That is about how full the car was. You needed a big shoe horn to cram the last 3 men onto the train. I suppose the Chinese should be thankful that they are so slightly built. Maybe they're built like that from cramming onto trains. I don't know.

Emerging from the metro station into Pudong is a bit unsettling. It's hard to believe that this is also Shanghai. Pudong really feels like a different city than the rest of Shanghai. I suppose that is because Pudong was more planned than the Puxi part of Shanghai.



Things went well in my interview and the ride back home was uncrowded and uneventful. I went to Malone's American Cafe (which I think is actually Canadian) for a hamburger and fries. I have been craving a burger for a while now and Malone's is pretty good. I had the 48 RMB (6 USD) lunch special, which included soup and a salad. Don't eat the soup. Tomorrow I think I might get a burrito and salsa. Yes, I think about food frequently. No matter where you walk, there seems to always be something cooking. Or, as Eric might say, it sometimes smells more like something is dying and decaying.

Right now it is late afternoon and I'm feeling a bit tired. Maybe it's from walking all over in heels, which I never wear. I'm trying to rouse myself to get some bread. I know I'll feel more energized if I can get myself moving; it's just that first step that is so hard. Alright. Time to go.