Just another standard Saturday in Shanghai

One feeling that you often get after reuniting with your parental units after a long absence is a feeling of frustration. This is usually the second-last stage of several fluctuating feelings that you reach after unbridled joy, reminiscence, and familiarity. I've now passed that feeling of frustration as we've once again achieved our familiar Beckenham Family equilibrium.

Reaching this point of even flux has meant that we can now move in-sync as a unit. When this happens, we're much happier. Thus, today was probably the best family day during my parent's visit to China.

So what did we do?

Our day started off in true Beckenham tradition. Slow, easy, and no rushing. I watched several episodes of 'The Glasshouse' which I obtained through the AussieTorrents website.

Later, reviving an old tradition, my father accompanied me to Reign Design's quarter final against the Shanghai Bar Association (lawyers, not alcoholics) in the Shanghai International Basketball League. During the week, we learnt from another RD player/lawyer Adam that the SBA team was already planning their party post-game. We definitely think they got their wires crossed somewhere along the line, as they obviously were partying too much before the match and failed to turn up. 1-0 RD. We're now deemed to meet Santa Fe next Saturday (probably the favourites for the title in our league). We spent our match time playing full-court intra-team match which was a good work-out.

During this, Linda and my mother explored one of Shanghai's best flower markets at Cao Jia Du (near the corner of Changshou Lu & Wanhangdu Lu). When I arrived home this evening, I was met with some great flowers that were promptly arranged and displayed in our new home.

The boys and the girls met up for lunch at Element Fresh at the Portman Centre. I love eating Element Fresh food. My mother summated the elegance of EF by stating ".... it doesn't leave you feeling heavy like the food I've eaten in China". We all enjoyed awesome sandwiches and fresh juices or smoothies. Tasty.

We then popped over Shanghai Railway Station to visit the Huan Long Mall Photographic Market. Along the way we got side-tracked. In a true Shanghai serendipitous moment, I learnt that there's a far more gritty North Railway Station Square (duh), that is distinctly separate from and hard to navigate between the more familiar Southern Railway Station Square. In our attempts to rediscover the location of the Huan Long Mall, we stumbled across one of Shanghai's Optical Glasses Markets (San Ye Glasses Market). My mother ended up purchasing 2 new fashion-frame glasses with progressive prescription lenses for RMB 1100. Pretty good deal as far as they were concerned.

Once finding our way through the warren of the Shanghai Railway Station Metro Maze, I finally purchased the Canon Digital Rebel XT EOS 350D with kit lens that I've mentioned earlier. Happy days! Now I can take some serious photos. I've been playing around with it a little so far today and have posted some images from my afternoon on my Flickr page.

We enjoyed a night in with my loved ones. Drinking beers, talking, about to enjoy some great food which was followed by a movie.

Bliss. What a good day!

Tags: Basketball, camera, China, Element Fresh, photography, flowers, Shanghai