ES received such an email from a manager: Dear Eng Sheng, Please walk anytime. Regards, XXX oh no, he's going to be sacked and sent back because he's too talkative and probably leaked out some company secrets! guess what? the manager actually meant to ask him to drop by his office! wahaha... so scary! --- for five yuan, i bought a copy of the map of the shanghai city the first week i was here. it has since become my buddy, especially on the few occasions when i went out alone. but there's something on my map which i find rather funny. two "english" words: shanghaishi jiaotongtu (上海市交通图). have you noticed many chinese things are always accompanied by "english" names, in the form of hanyu pinyin? are these names for foreigners who are non-chinese speakers/ readers? but when i picture myself as an angmo tourist, the existence of the two words made up of alphabets doesn't make any difference, because the words don't mean a thing! and this trend is rather prevalent in this country. hmm... --- discovered a good hangout near my office, the shanghai bookstore 上海书城. it's just five minutes walk from my office,a six-storey high bookstore, "borders" the chinese style. it's about 2-3 times bigger than our borders, selling mostly chinese books. bought 2 books yesterday, one by 几米 and the other by 张曼娟. the books are really cheap compared to back home. i paid 42 yuan for the 2 books, which, after conversion, cost about 10 sing dollars in total! bargain leh... there are cds and cassette tapes (!!) on most of the chinese albums too. hee, planning to buy karen mok’s latest album, just to relive the memories of listening to cassette tapes. anyone wants me to help buy chinese books email me ok? :D