Dingle Speaks

Well, I finally got discharged from hospital on Monday after spending the last 11 days there.

I mentioned this before but I’ve been very impressed with the service there and the knowledge of the doctors, much more so than the expat clinic I normally use. My biggest concern was being able to communicate when H wasn’t with me, but basically it seemed like everyone spoke a little English, everything was fine, even when going to other departments for X-rays etc.

For the last few days they moved another guy into my room, a businessman from Wuxi, he was nice enough despite our disagreements on room temperature (I wanted the A/C set to 20C and he preferred it switched off with the window wide open, for reference it’s currently 37°C in Shanghai).

On my last day he called in one of the English-speaking nurses as she walked past.

He spoke to her in Chinese, “oh, he wants me to translate something” she said

He spoke again in Chinese in words I recognised well enough.. “He says that you are too fat”

“I see” I replied, he spoke some more.

“He says that you should do some exercise”

“oh, well thankyou very much, I’d never thought of that, I’ll give it some thought”

“and he wants to know why you can’t speak Chinese”

“BECAUSE I’M TOO FAT” I replied in Chinese, which thankfully brought the whole thing to a close.

To be fair he was a nice guy though, we exchanged business cards as we left and promised to look each other up next time I’m in Wuxi / he’s in Shanghai (we never will..)

The cost was pretty reasonable though, during my stay I had 105 procedures (according to the receipt at the end), everything from MRI, CT scans of my brain, various X-rays, bone density scans, ultrasound (yes, including my balls again, you’re not allowed to stay in hospital unless you get ultrasound of your balls), reams of blood tests which make up the vast majority of the tests (typically inject me with something and then take blood regularly throughout the day to monitor my reaction to it), oh and 11 nights stay at the hospital at 300RMB per night.

How much can you imagine that would cost? In the west it would be a fortune right?

Well, the total bill, including the 11 nights stay came to 9700 RMB, which is currently about 920 GBP, amazingly cheap. The CT apparently scan cost an amazingly cheap 200 RMB, which I still can’t believe..

For comparison consider that my expat clinic typically charge me slightly more than that for my annual “specialist” checkup which comprises:

1. 15 minutes of me re-explaining my condition and the medication because the “specialist” apparently hasn’t even glanced at my notes
2. the specialist saying, “ok, let’s test your blood and see how it looks”, ending the appointment
3. me asking one or two questions for which the answer is invariably “hmm, i’ll have to look into that”
4. me getting a blood test
5. another appointment to get my results, basically “everything looks ok, carry on as normal”
6. a reminder about my previous question in which I’m asked to be patient, it will take some time

Don’t get me wrong, I know that the expat clinics have some excellent doctors, but unfortunately not in the field I require.

If you’re reading this and you have a complicated medical condition then give a Chinese hospital a try, be selective though, go for one with the national reputation in the field you need to be treated, normally a department associated with a university.

You know those summer sleeves that you see Chinese ladies wearing on the street to keep the sun off them?

I mean these ones:

I mean, what are they all about? ok, you don’t want to get a suntan because it makes you look like a farmer, that’s fine, but why buy short sleeved clothes and then buy something else just to cover your arms? Why not just buy long sleeved tops in the first place?

Thankfully, I saw this thrifty woman in the hospital lift (I knew some good would come out of my stay), she had a neat solution which allows her to wear short sleeved tops without spending a penny extra on summer sleeves

Yes, they’re the sleeves from one of her husbands old shirts…

With a strip of elastic holding them together.. Apologies for the blurry pic, she was a hell of a fast walker…

Yesterday on my break from the hospital we went for foot massage, which in retrospect was one of the worst ideas I’ve had in a long time.

They clocked my green hospital band and asked immediately “why are you in hospital, is it because you are so fat?” then spent the next ten minutes brainstorming possible reasons why I might need to go into hospital (including other customers naturally), which were all basically “because he is so fat” wrapped up in different ways.

This carried on until I got H to shout at them and remind them that I’d come there for a foot massage not medical advice.

They shut up and the lady continued my foot massage, but every time she massaged a different part of my foot/leg she would stop, point at the offending area and state “so fat” to her colleagues in Chinese while they all nodded grimly..

Also, she gave me the hardest foot massage of my life, apparently thinking that she could cure me of whatever it is that’s wrong with me and with me being non-specific about my illness (which was probably that I was “too fat”) she just assumed it was everything and subjected me to an hour of torture.

Let’s be clear, I don’t go for foot massage because I think it’s going to cure anything, I don’t believe that there’s a tiny spot on the sole of my foot that is connected directly to my spleen or my eyes. No, I just go because it feels nice and it’s a relaxing way to spend an afternoon.

Now that she thinks I’m sick I can basically never go back there ever again, it’ll be like this every time

How Chinese people see me:

How I really look:

As you no doubt know I travel a lot around Asia and get to stay in some pretty nice places as well as some not so nice places. The place I’ve been staying for the last 4 days and for the next week or so falls somewhere in the middle, it has a somewhat splendid view and reasonable service but the staff seem hellbent on poking me full of holes and telling me what I can/cannot eat or drink for all manner of inconvenient chunks of the day ..

The room wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for either, sparsely decorated and uncomfortable seating, the dealbreaker for me though was the twin bed, which is likely to be occupied by a stranger at any point. Although thankfully after much complaining it’s so far remained empty.. The price isn’t too bad either, 300 RMB per night for a downtown Shanghai stay, although at one point the nurses insisted that I had to stay in the intensive care ward because I was a foreigner and the nurses there all spoke English (1000 rmb per night and every injection/procedure is charged at 2 or 3 times normal rate). We insisted that this was not acceptable and eventually they let us stay on the ward I needed to be at and then it turned out that most of the nurses spoke English anyway… Do they get commission or something??

It does have a decent TV though, but no DVD player. I’ve already checked round the back and I’ll be bringing my dvd player back with me along with a pile of dvds. (they let me home for the day as no procedures today), oh a private bathroom too, which is very welcome!

Oh yes, did I mention they poked me full of holes? Here’s a snippet, but I’ve honestly lost count of the number of times they’ve taken blood or injected me with something, it’s approaching 15 to 20 times so far I guess, I’ll have nothing left by the time I get out..

Here’s something interesting though, have a look at the nurses blood sampling tray:

Absolutely no rip-open sachets except for the needle. Everything is still in glass vials. They dip a cotton bud in the brown stuff and wipe it round your arm, then inject, then use a cotton ball dipped in alcohol to clean you up, which is great except when you squeeze to stop the bleeding you get drenched in alcohol, which in retrospect is probably a good thing rather than a bad thing, some of it probably gets absorbed into my bloodstream..  Also, note the bloody needle in the plastic tray from the previous patient, no sharps bins here. continue reading…

Has anyone noticed the escalator inbetween line 9 and line 1 at Xujiahui? I’ve been meaning to mention it for a while but kept forgetting to take a pic. It has to be one of the most pointless in the world:

Yes, it only comes halfway down and then there are steps for the rest of the way… Why????

At first I figured that they needed the flat section inbetween the escalator and the steps but then I noticed that there are steps either side of the this that just come straight down to ground level without the flat section so this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Did they order an escalator that was too short??

Then to top things off, because of the recent escalator disasters in Beijing and Shenzhen all escalators of a similar design in Shanghai have been closed until they can be inspected. My morning commute (no driver right now) now takes an extra 5 to 10 minutes as I have to queue to crawl up the stairs at Xinzhuang.

H dragged me along to a photography trade fair last weekend, which all sounds the wrong way round doesn’t it, it should be me dragging her along to these things right?

The show was called “Photo and Imaging Shanghai” at the Shanghai Everbright Convention and Exhibition Centre on Caobao Lu and is apparently one of the trades most influential shows.

We arrived pretty early, 9:30 or so I guess and the show was already buzzing and quickly turned into a nightmare as we had to fight our way through crowded alleys filled with hordes of middle aged men dragging extremely large cameras around taking photos of pretty much everything they could lay their eyes on, Canon L lenses were all the rage, and the longer the better.

The show was a little disappointing to be honest, there was nothing you couldn’t see at Xing Guang but there were about 10 times more people, plus pretty much every stand had a huge PA system pumping out incredibly loud music which mean’t that we sped past most of the stands with barely more than a glance, not to mention the girls with megaphones…

The main stands catered for the camera holding tourists and took the opportunity for some free advertising by having models on their stand in front of their company logo, I took some photos (purely for the blog you understand..)

The Metz stand, you should have seen some of the filthy looks I got when I started taking pics through the crowd with my iPhone, at one point I thought I might be chased away by tripod yielding fanatics..

These girls went to all the trouble of actually picking up some of their companys products (wireless flashes if you’re interested), nobody seemed to care about that though..

Leica, the busiest stand by far, there must have been 30 guys bustling to take photos

This stand got it wrong completely and went for a guy in full royal wedding style military regalia singing karaoke, nobody cared..

Anyway, for me, the most interesting area was over in props, some of the most amazing backgrounds, anything you could think of, and the most outlandish props, here are a few favourites:

continue reading…

Couple of random pics from recent days

Abandoned stretch mercedes (well, it was damn long anyway) seen during a walk with H. Been there for quite some time judging by the flat tires and the amount of filth

A guy selling a big turtle on the highway to work. Poor thing was tied to the end of a stick (presumably so it couldn’t bite him) and pretty much half dead already, he had give it a tap to make it flinch to prove it was still alive to the interested guys in the van in front.

Edit; another day another turtle

And another:

The big news this week is that I’m an uncle! Again!! My sister had a baby boy earlier in the week making an older sister of my niece Millie (I can’t believe she’s so grown up already), we’re all very pleased for them, they’ve got the perfect family now! I haven’t seen any photos yet though, HINT MOTHER!!!!

Difficult to follow that, here’s some photos I took instead!

Last weekend I met up with a photography group called Shanghai Exposed in the Jewish Quarter in Hongkou. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, I’d been along to a few flickr meets when I first arrived in Shanghai (mainly with the intention of meeting girls.. I was young, free and single!!) but I never took any nice photos with the group, it was more of a social event, and I’d made plenty of friends outside the group so I stopping going.

Anyway, I’d not really taken many photos for about 3 years but I started again recently and heard about the group on Fiona’s blog and thought I’d give it a go.

They mostly meet in the daytime during the week which isn’t so good for me but have occasional weekend meetups, which is where I ended up last weekend, in the pouring rain..

They were a nice group and I actually took some semi-decent pics for a change, a few of them were featured on Shanghaiist this week (just shows how standards have dropped…), anyway, enough babbling I’ll just get on with it

continue reading…

Good lord, I just realised it’s been a while since I posted anything.

How about a picture of a guy pooping in a bush to tide you over until I think of something to blog about??? Yes I thought you’d go for that..

He parked up and walked a few metres before assuming the squat, out of respect for his bicycle you know, he’s respectful like that..

It was my birthday a couple of weeks back and I was thrilled to receive a gift from none other than Balticninja (and when I say none other I mean that literally he was the only person who bought me a gift).

Anyway, let’s have a look at it

There we have it, a splendid rechargeable shaver by SODY, which judging by the font must surely be affiliated with SONY right? It’s the U950-SW by the way, top of their range (probably) and has some splendid features, including:

• Korean writing on the box suggesting that this is an imported item. Although you don’t even need to see the Korean writing, you can tell by the quality alone that this is definitely an imported item and definitely not some cheap tat knocked out by the guy down the street with a factory in his kitchen.
• “Trimmer designed for long and soft FIR”. Hold on I’m getting all confused now, is this for animals? or should I take fir literally, is this a topiary aid?
• Endorsed by Mr Bean.. I mean, what the hell is all that about, what kind of fool chooses Mr Bean as a suitable product endorsement figure? they might as well have chosen Mr Magoo, at least he’s well shaven I guess.

Onto the back of the box

“Everything you’ve heard is true”… What???? Everything about this razor? Everything about Mr Bean? Everything about everything??? I hope it’s one of the former two, Jamie from school once told me that if you don’t spit out the seeds when you eat tomato then when you’re older a tomato plant grows out of your belly button, I’m praying he’s not right about that one, I’m sure one or two have slipped down while I wasn’t paying attention.. Mind you when he was a bit older he was a firm believer that if you had sex in the shower the girl couldn’t get pregnant, and look where that got him..

Anyway, onto the item itself. Well, it’s compact alright, just a little bigger than a zippo lighter and with integral recharging plug (which interestingly is a type A plug, rather than the type C used as standard in Korea these days, probably rendering it illegal for sale in Korea). It also has a little beard trimmer that pops out with the flick of a switch.

I flicked it on and gave it a go, well, I immediately understood the endorsement by mr Bean as it felt literally (in the two seconds between switching it on, screaming, then throwing it back into the box) as though I was being shaved by mr Bean.. Hold on, did I say shaved?? I mean epilated. The shaver failed to cut a single hair on my face, although it did manage to rip out a few chunks of hair from my cheek, down to the root.

I spent five minutes assessing the permanence of damage in the mirror before deciding, ruefully, that the shaver was far too nice to ruin by regular use and that I should consign it back to the box with a quick dust-down ready for wrapping for the next birthday/wedding I attend.

Thanks very much Baltic!! (When was your birthday again??)