Fungus

So I'm in Shanghai. This is not fun. I thought summer was supposed to be interesting and relaxing and all that jazz. Instead I'm stuck in a city I dislike quite intensely, doing work that is neither fun nor relaxing. My Chinese is pretty good for a Singaporean; functional in a casual conversational context, but asking me to read a professional report in Chinese is pushing it a bit.

The big thing that strikes me about this place is how awfully messy it is. It's like they just decided to haphazardly build whatever they like wherever they like. Not exactly organised. It's like a game of Simcity gone wrong, one of those scenarios where you're given 30 years game time to fix a horrendously inefficient city. Office buildings of every shape and size are built all over the place, with a disgustingly bad sense of style and coordination. I mean, Singapore won't win many prizes for its aesthetics of urban design, but at least the buildings don't clash, and there's some sense of a city that grew intelligently, not exploded like a mess of fungus. Chicago is a pretty decent example of a city that has been built with some idea of aesthetics. Quite aside from all the supposedly famous architectural pieces, which I know pretty much nothing about, the buildings simply have some sort of similar theme despite their independent construction and looks. Walking throught he city, there is a feeling of walking through a cit with some sort of identity and history, where each area has a look and feel that is adhered to by each building in it. In Shanghai, the whole place is just a random jumble.

I know what this place reminds me of now. There was this game called Afterlife or something where you get to plan out Heaven and Hell. Heaven was your regular city planning exercise, but Hell was supposed to be inefficient, to make the afterlife unpleasant for its denizens. So Shanghai really does remind me of Hell. Hmmm.

Ok, the Internet is apparently censored in China, so I can't access blogspot weblogs, though curiously enough, I can access blogger. So I don't know if this post is going to go through at all, therefore I will not bother to elaborate at length on my topic of the day. Maybe some other time, when I'm certain it won't be wasted.