Royal Ascot in the rainy season.
Couple of notable events this week. The rains have arrived in Shanghai. Coming from the UK we are used to the damp, the waiting for it to either stop raining or to start. The last few weekends have been damp on the golf course, however with the warm temperatures rain wear is not needed. Today awoke to light rain, teed off and the thunder came down and about two inches of rain. When I arrived home noticed a small puddle of water on the side in the kitchen. Puzzled wiped it up and went for my nap before lunch (tee time was 6.12am). At lunch noticed a damp patch on the ceiling in the corner of the kitchen – emailed the site agents.
Sat watching the TV heard a splash splash, water coming in through a light in the kitchen. Bucket under the light – call the site office. Five minutes later gushing sounds near the kitchen. Frantic call to site office, workman arrives just after my Zhongwen teacher. Sometimes timing is everything
He removed a light, gush of water, the air con vent, more water falls to floor. The stone floor is now as wet as outside. Upstairs to one of the spare bedrooms. Water all over the floor. Looks at the door to the balcony – water above the sill!. The drain on the balcony was blocked. Balcony is about 6ft wide and 20ft long. There was about 5in of water on it. In bare feet we unblocked the drain with a massive sucking sound and the water drained away. Quickly we unblocked the drains on the three other balconies.
Leak stopped, and floors now mopped and dried. Would have been fun trying to understand each other without my Zhongwen teacher. Have to wait for ceiling to dry before lights can be reinstalled and a couple of the wholes to be patched up.
Was invited to a party at the Moller villa in the centre of shanghai to watch the ascot gold cup. The event was hosted by the Shanghai race club, (http://www.theshanghairaceclub.com/) I was invited because I was British and my friend wanted to understand more about what was going on. The building was the home of Eric Moller, which is now a hotel. It has typical English country house feature inside and some blue and pink patterns on the outside. http://www.mollervilla.com/en/five-1.asp
The event was made to sound like a high society event and there would be a lot of people there. There was more space than people. After having spoken to most of the attendees, eaten our afternoon tea sandwiches (at 8.30pm) and cakes, we were left with a couple of hours to kill. The organiser had invented a board game which was being demonstrated, so we went to play. The instructors explained the game in Chinese. It was a card game, where you bet on finding out which number card was taken out at the start of the game. Despite the Chinese instruction still managed to win. As I had won and thought I could manage to win when I played again asked the price of the game. 25,000RMB for a box, four metal playing tokens, a few cards with numbers on them, and some poker chips! Don’t have to sell many of those to make a living, but you need to know enough people who need to spend that money on such a game.
The highlight of the evening arrived – the hat competition – it is royal ascot. David Kwok presented the prize to the best hat worn by a lady. Fortunately my friend won a night at the Mandarin hotel in Hong Kong. She was an easy winner.
The race – oh we didn’t see that – the internet feed was only good enough to show the occasional still photo, so we saw the last horse entering the stalls, the back straight at a distance and the winner in the paddock.
Don’t think I will go back very quickly. Bizarre and not my sort of crowd. Fortunately I had good company and it beats writing reports.
