After eating lunch Yvonne wanted to look at some more makeup. I waited outside the shop for most of the time, because they were playing dreaded christmas carols. I blacked out for a while, so I'm not sure how long Yvonne spent in the store.

The walk from the mall to the "Wild Insects Museum" was as short one. When we arrived we saw that it was 40元 per person. We thought that was a little too much to pay for some insects, so I tried to sneak a peek inside, to deterimine its worthiness. I couldn't get a good look, but we decided to pay and go in anyway.

The first display was terrible. Oh, it looked nice and everything: it was a glass-sided pool that filled a corner of the foyer area, with an island along the wall. The pool and island were visually appealing, but as the inhabitants of the island were ferrets, it reeked. Yvonne said it almost made her throw up, but she has never been around farms. I thought it smelled bad. With the tickets we had bought two bags of fish food, which we emptied into the pool for the fish. The ferrets weren't very exciting, so we moved on.

By this time we were starting to feel the loss of 80元. The next area consisted of a long pool that had a walkway running over it. The pool was filled with Koi and Goldfish. Half-way along the walkway was a fish pellet dispenser, from which we bought another bag of pellets. We felt pretty dumb for wasting all of our fish food on the Goldfish in the first pool, and for spending so much money. One area of the pool was sealed off, and had some small Crocodiles living in it. They didn't move much, even when we threw fish pellets at them, and I wondered if they were real. Later, on our way out, I noticed that one was in a different position. Either they were real, or someone is being paid to periodically shift some fakes.

At the walkways termination there were a lot of small terrariums, which housed snakes. There were many different types. Across from the snakes there were three large cages, which housed small monkeys. The monkeys were very cute, and climbed about a lot. I thought it a rather cruel joke to play on both the monkeys and the snakes, putting them directly opposite one another.

We turned a corner and found a large number of terrariums, most of which contained dead insects. A lot of the insects looked very nasty, like the Golden Scorpion, from Israel, purportedly the most poisonous in the world. Another hideous beast of note was the large centipede. Everyone hates centipedes. Amongst the dead terrariums of dead insects there were some live ones, and a few aquatic themed tanks. One had newts, another large water beetles, which are also disgusting. At the end of this section there was a tank of jellyfish. The tank had a colour-changing light shining into it, which made the jellies look very bright. It was entertaining.

Beyond the jelly tank we were surprised to find a staircase leading down. It lead to the turtle and lizard area. Turtles all look pretty much the same, and there isn't much I can say about lizards, other than they are interesting to look at, not to read about (unless you're me). There were a lot of both turtles and lizards, and they were all quite active.

After the turtles there was a large pool that was teeming with small goldfish. It had stones all over it such that one could walk around easily. There was also a swinging bridge, and a fake waterfall.

There was a little side room that had an owl, some bats, some goats, hamsters and rabbits, all in separate cages. Putting a large owl in the same room as rabbits and hamsters must have been another subtle joke. All of the animals were very clean and looked healthy. The goats were friendly and let us pet them, Yvonne needed reassuring that they weren't going to leap over their fence and maul her. The cutest thing we saw were the miniature russian hamsters, which were about the size of large mice. They were exceedingly cute, and it took a few tries to convince Yvonne that she should ask her parent's before buying one. The keeper happened to be in the room at the same time as us, he and Yvonne chatted about the hamsters. He was a very nice man, and it was evident that he really loved the little hamsters. He got one out to show us, and let us hold and pet it. It didn't seem frightened that it was being manhandled by creatures 200 times its size. It just sat in our hands and cleaned itself. I repeat, they were very cute.

The final area was one in which people could make their own keepsake, from standard arts & craft materials. Needless to say, we did not participate.

After the expectation-lowering experience of the first exhibit, the monkeys and snakes were really impressive. It got better as we went along, going from something I'd take a naughty child to as a punishment, to a fun and interesting place. I think we spent about two and a half hours wandering around. In the end I think it was worth it, even reasonably priced. The staff that we saw obviously cared about the animals, and did their best to keep the place clean. Yvonne observed that as the entire facility must be kept quite warm and humid, because of the origin of many of the animals, smells would be very difficult to control. Ferrets are quite smelly at the best of times.

Wild Insect Museum: recommended.

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Tags: China | Shanghai | Animals | 中国 | 上海 | 动物 | 猴子 | 蛇 | 老鼠 | 可爱 | 旅行

I like fish very much, and wanted to be able to spend as long as I wanted looking at them. It was for this reason that we left early. Unfortunately this meant that we were traveling during peak time. To get to the nearest subway station, one can either walk for a couple of hours or take a bus. Yvonne's parent's housing compound has its own bus, which has two stops: the compound, and the subway station. This is good because it means that it is never as full as the pubic buses, which stop every two minutes and accumulate passengers more quickly than ... a thing that accumulates other things quite quickly. The bus itself is rather low quality though, as the housing compound doesn't make enough from it to keep it in good shape.

The subway station was flooded with people who were all wearing one of three sets of clothes: dress jacket, black pants, black shoes; coloured "sports" jacket, sneakers, jeans; or a suit. This made keeping track of Yvonne simple, as she was the only one wearing pink. I don't really mind the crowds so much, as a big crowd provides me with many opportunities to shove people out of my way. People seem to be used to it. Yvonne and I always get on buses quicker than the average commuter, thanks to me either pushing her through the crowd, or elbowing my way along. As can be seen in the photo, people cram themselves into public transport vehicles quite tightly.

We transferred from line 1 to line 2, then got off at the wrong stop. One pays when entering the subway station, and then again when leaving, meaning that one could pay 2元 in the morning, ride the subway all day, then pay 2元 at night, if one so desired. We didn't want to do that, but were glad we didn't have to pay extra for a silly mistake. At the correct stop I saw an interesting thing on one of the walls, and took a series of bad photos of it.

The Shanghai Aquarium was just across the road from the subway station. I think it cost over 100元 per person, which was quite expensive. No matter, fish are worth any price (so long as that price is less than 150元). The toilets were acceptably clean.

The first area was what I would term an "introductory area" that served to remind forgetful customers that they had entered a large aquarium. The first area one was herded into consisted of various small tanks surrounding a large open pool, which housed a number of dogfish. There were some smaller dogfish trapped in what looked like blue plastic washing baskets. Customers were allowed to pet these lucky dogfish, and Yvonne did so. The small tanks housed ... small sharks. A lot of them were boring, small brown dogfish clones, so I didn't photograph those. I took a few photos of the more interesting ones though.

The next area had four large displays around the wall, with a cylindrical display in the center of the room. The cylindrical display contained some kind of special fish, and this was the first time it had been displayed publicly in Asia. I can't say if the fish looked like anything special or not, as we weren't allowed any closer than 1.5 meters. If there wasn't a guard hovering around I would have jumped the barrier and had a better look, but there was, so I didn't. We did break the rules later though. The displays along the wall were: sturgeon + some other fish; alligator/crocodile + ducks + some fish; some very large and strange four legged amphibian + fish; some fish (large). The sturgeons looked interesting. Typically, the alligators/crocidiles didn't move. Ducks are lame. The very large amphibians were over one meter in length, but didn't move at all. I would hate to encounter one while swimming, though I don't know if they could cause any damage. The large fish were nice to look at.

Moving on, into the Amazonian area. The Amazon is home to many species of fresh-water tropical fish. This aquarium had a lot of fish I hadn't seen before, like the massive Aripaima. There were two tanks with this fish, one was a standard, albeit very large, fish tank, the other was a tank with a tunnel running through it. I took a lot of photos in this area, and a video of the tunnel. There were a lot of other tanks, all of which were very attractively laid out.

Next area was Australian. This area didn't have many displays compared to the others, probably because Australia is mostly desert. The tunnel was lame, the inhabitants of the tunnel tank were drab. Also there was a model crocodile/alligator, which fooled me for a few minutes, until I realised, Crikey! It's a fake! There were two interesting tanks in the Australian area, one contained a lot of Rainbow fish, the other a Sawfish. Sawfish are great. It looked like it had a hedge-trimmer blade stuck to its face. I took a video of the Sawfish. The Rainbow fish were not worthy of video, as they are available in aquarium stores, unlike Sawfish. Saw(fish) III!. Ouch that one was lame.

Just after the Australian area I realised that I could change the ISO on Yvonne's camera. This meant that I could take much sharper photos, so I demanded we return to the start. To return to the start we had to jump the barrier and walk up the escalator that runs through the Australian tunnel. This was the rule-breaking I mentioned earlier.

After better photos of the first areas, we moved on to the African segment. This had only one tank, so I didn't bother giving it its own photo category. The tank was nice though, heavily populated with fish. A lot of them were brightly coloured, and I imagine many would be quite tasty. When fried and drizzled with lemon juice, of course.

Arctic followed the laughable African area. This had a display containing Penguins, which everyone loves. There was a tank filled with weird crabs, which looked like some kind of crap alien. There was another tunnel here, with Sealions. I took a lot of photos of one of the Sealions, because it was banging its head against the glass. This is standard Sealion behaviour, and is Sealion for: "Oh glorious Mike, thank you for gracing my cesspool with your presence! How may I serve?" "At ease, my greasy minion," I telepathically sent, "I will call for your services when the time is right."

Onwards, to the sea. This area held displays for both the sea and the sea shore. One tank housed a large number of Horseshoe crabs, which look odd. I think it is mating season, because I'm quite sure they were mating. One couple had flipped themselves onto their backs, and were flailing their legs in failed attempts to right themselves. Ha ha ha. There were Seahorses in the next tank, and some brightly coloured fish in another. A tank opposite to the brightly coloured fish had a lot of Shark eggs displayed. One could see the developing Sharks wriggling about inside their egg cases. Another tank had Lionfish, which are nice to look at. The highlight of this area though, was the Jellyfish tank. The rear of the tank was painted blue, which gave the impression that one was gazing into an infinite sea. Actually the tank was only about 40 cm deep. For some reason the Jellies were all swimming downwards.

The crown jewel of this aquarium is their 155 meter tunnel, which comes last. The tunnel runs through four separate tanks, each of which house different types of fish. I took videos of each. When shooting the video for the Shark tunnel, I thought I had set the camera to video mode, and pressed record. I then proceeded to walk slowly through the tunnel, moving the camera as if I was shooting a video, which I wasn't. I didn't realise that I hadn't been recording until I had walked through that entire section of tunnel, and when I did, I had to go back and do it properly.

At the end of the tunnel, there were two Aquarium employees handing out scratch tickets. We scratched out ticket, and saw we had won the "Starfish prize". The other prizes were listed on the back of the ticket, and were all similarly named. I assumed we had one a starfish shaped key ring. We walked to the counter labelled "prize claim", and handed over our ticket. The woman we handed it to started a sales spiel about how we were now eligible for a 50% discount on the gift shop's low quality jewelry. I laughed and said no, and wandered off. That type of thing is very common in China, one has to keep one's guard up, else run out of money fast.

After this we had lunch, which tasted good. I ordered the "麻麻辣辣牛肉饭", or "Spicy beef meal." The meal had three chilli symbols beside it on the menu, and was hot enough to warrant them. I had to eat it really fast because it was the type of hot that builds if one is not eating. After I finished I felt funny. Across from us were two Asian looking guys speaking with terrible British accents. It took me a long time to be certain they were speaking English, their accent was so bad. There are some awful English accents.

Lunch finished we went and had a quick look in make-up stores.

Next entry I'll write about the "Wild Insect Museum."

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Tags: China | Shanghai | Fish | Animals | 中国 | 鱼 | 动物 | 上海 | 旅行

Ok here is the post about the park, I've ranted enough about .Mac, I no longer feel like vomiting into an envelope and mailing it to them.

As one does in China, we took the bus to the park. The bus wasn't hellishly crowded this time, which was a nice change. I amused myself by memorizing the announcement, which is repeated after every stop.

Chinese: "车辆起步请拉好扶手。上车请主动投币。不设另找。请给需要帮助的乘客让个座，谢谢。"

In English it would be: "When the bus starts moving, hold on. When boarding the bus, pay the fare. Don't forget your things when you get off the bus. If there are old or sick people aboard, give them your seat. Thanks."

I recorded myself saying it in a podcast, for those who have fallen into a deep depression from no longer being able to hear my voice.

So at the park we finally arrived. Actually, the bus stop was miles away from the park entrance. We had to walk beside the park for some time before finding the entrance. Before we paid, I didn't understand why the park has such a forboding wall surrounding it. The all comes complete with iron spikes. I remember thinking that I wouldn't find it difficult to scale, considering my incredible agility.

At the park entrance there were a few knots of street merchants. We bought a kite from the one who yelled at us first, as we respected his enthusiasm. We bought the "vampire" kite, which is not a vampire at all, in fact it is a bat. A bat that looks as if it was assembled by a blind child. Good thing attention to detail doesn't mean squat when the item under examination is sixty meters above. He even gave us a spool of string for free.

The park ticket cost $2.

The park wasn't packed, but by New Zealand standards it was quite crowded. There were about three different couples having wedding photos taken that I saw. I'd say the park is a few hectares*, and has a lake in the center. There were a few boats floating around the lake, which looked like fun. We walked around for awhile, until that became boring. When it did, I demanded to be allowed to "ride the boats". We started to circumnavigate the lake, certain that we'd find the boat rental shack somewhere.

Before that we found a bunch of people fishing. I couldn't really believe my eyes, people fishing in the centre of Shanghai! There were quite a lot of them too, given the small partition they were fishing in. It didn't take long for me to realise that the fish they were trying to catch had been introduced to this part of the lake. Turns out that fishing is free, but taking a fish home is 8元/gram. Throwing the caught fish back is not allowed, anyone convicted of this crime is required to pay a fine. I took some photos of the anglers.

A short walk later and we had found the boat rental shack. Yvonne read the sign quickly, and I read the prices, because they all use the same numerals as us for numbers, unless one is in a fancy place, in which both Chinese and arabic numerals are used. I don't know why. The prices were 25元 or 40元. Before actually reading all of the sign, we agreed on the 25元 boat. Yvonne talked and paid the money, and we stepped onto the dock. The "dock master" took our ticket and led us past the nice looking boats to an area populated by blue pedal driven ones. It was not quite what we'd expected, but we didn't complain. Pedaling the boat around the lake was quite fun, not totally gay like it sounds. The main reason it wasn't totally gay was that we were a heterosexual couple. I quickly realised that my pants were too tight, as my testicles began to ache. I solved this by undoing both the button and the fly, and pulling them down a little bit. This made me much more comfortable. Pedaling at a comfortable pace caused the boat to travel slightly faster than the more expensive, electric boats. As the lake was quite large, especially from the perspective of one sitting in a pedal-powered boat, I set my phone alarm so that we'd have plenty of time to get back to the dock before our hour was up. This turned out to be an excellent idea, as Yvonne, the captain, was unable to pilot the boat in a straight line. Instead we'd travel in a series of 'S' shapes. I think she did this on purpose because I have been eating too much lately.

Returned boat, recovered bond. Bored of the park now, we headed to KFC. On the way to KFC we passed a kid carrying a rabbit in a tiny cage. I took photos so I could give animal rights activists another whine item. The kid obviously loved his pet, and was very cute. Yvonne asked him what the rabbit's name was, and the kid said it didn't have one. Yvonne suggested he call it "rabbit", and the kid nodded his head. I thought it was a good name. The rabbit-sized cage was another thing one wouldn't see in New Zealand. Oh the joys of China.

KFC in China, like I've said before, is quite a different beast. For NZ$10 we were able to buy the equivalent of two burgers, chips, a potato & gravy, another side, and a pepsi. I think that lot would come to about NZ$20 if purchased from one of the filthy New Zealand stores. Because we're in China though, the meals are also very different. I had a combo which consisted of: A "twister" as they like to call them (burrito style wrap), that was some strange flavour entitled "Beijing Sauce", three fish ... things, two chicken nibbles and a drink. Yvonne had five chicken wings, some soup and a strange pudding tart thing that I don't like very much. While we were eating a dog came into the shop, which obviously made the manager's day. There was a lot of yelling and chasing before it was expelled. It must have fled into KFC in an effort to escape the crazies outside singing their heinous christmas carols. Yes, they have christmas carols in China, and yes, they are just as terrible as the New Zealand ones. I really hate christmas carols.

KFC being eaten, we walked to the Grandma's house, where dinner was to be had later that night.

Dinner was fun, I was given beer. According to Yvonne, I am an alcoholic, therefore having dinner with her family is the highlight of my trip, as I at dinner I am given beer. I managed to speak with the relatives somewhat successfully this time, as I am no longer afraid they will challenge me to a duel or whatever. Actually I just wasn't very confident before, as they all speak very swift Shanghainese, making my attempts at conversation feel like I am butting in, since I can't understand what their conversation is about. I'm still not very confident, but they don't seem to get angry when I try to talk to them, so I try more often. I've managed to crack a few jokes, but as they have to be explained afterwards in fine detail, none of them have been successful yet. I still think they're funny though, which is the main thing.

Honestly we really are going to the big fish tank tomorrow, so I'll have some awesome pictures of fish to upload tomorrow night.

*I don't have any idea how big a hectare is. What I mean is: "the park was pretty big".

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Tags: China | Culture | Nature | 中国 | 文化 | 大自然

Went to the park yesterday. Didn't write about it last night because I was struggling with .Mac, which is terrible. It is like a dog defecated then rolled in it, then jumped up into your lap. I use a program called Rapidweaver to create and maintain this website. Rapidweaver is great, because I can't be arsed actually learning HTML/CSS/PHP, but I still want to make a website that doesn't look like I was limited to 5 colors and one frame. HTML isn't fun, not like C++ is, because I can't easily write cool programs with it, like my "How many primes below x?" program. HTML is lame, Rapidweaver is not. Anyway, .Mac is really awful. Every time I wanted to upload some changes to this site, I'd get some stupid ".Mac: unknown error" message. I've had other errors, so getting an error wasn't so bad, it was the fact that it would not only happen EVERY TIME, it would happen on seemingly random files, with no consistency. Errors like that make me think something is seriously wrong, so I bothered to do a google search on the problem. It seems that a lot of people hate .Mac. I started to regret impetuously jumping into this pile of filth, but as I had already, I thought I may as well try to fix it.

Turns out there is no fix for this error, only suggestions that I had already tried myself, as I'm not a complete idiot (though, as I bought a .Mac account, this is no longer certain). I tried about twenty more times to upload the site, with the same outcome. Utterly annoyed, I Googled: "dot Mac refund", and found a blog where some guy was bitching about his crappy .Mac account, and the hoops he had to jump through to get a refund. Excited by the prospect of having even ten cents refunded, as this would make me feel less of a chump, I a read through the terms and conditions, which stated that if a .Mac account is less than 30 days old (mine is), then the owner may cancel their account and receive a prorated refund. Hooray!

Finding how one is supposed to apply for this refund was not simple, but I managed it. I am now eagerly waiting for a reply to my message:

"Cancellation please:

I purchased this account so that I would be able to create a website with Rapidweaver.

This has not worked properly once, and thus I would like a refund.

Regards

Mike."

Take home lesson: Mac make great computers, but their .Mac service is more repulsive than a hobo's pants.

After managing (hopefully, Mac's response pending) to wriggle out of .Mac, I needed another place to host this glorious site.

I bothered to do some research this time, and was sucked into buying from the first hosting service I saw. The company offering this service is called "Hostmonster", which is an awesome name. Their service is cheaper, and better than .Mac. Like all real hosting services, they support PHP, which makes my life a little easier. Also they have lots of other benefits, which I can't be bothered listing. You can read about them here: www.hostmonster.com

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Tags: Awful | 讨厌