I take the bus to work every morning. It's been six months of daily bus rides, and they have become a part of my daily routine. Still, it's amazing to think what an overwhelming experience a simple bus ride used to be.

Buses are everywhere in Shanghai, and by virtue of their size, they act with little regard for pedestrian or motorist life. You'll often see them turn on a red light, which, given their size, creates an instant spectacular mess. As for their driving skills, well; I used to complain about Montreal bus drivers, but man, they're porcelain delivery truck drivers compared to Shanghai. Just holding on to the bar for two stops used to give me sore muscles from the constant stopping and going.

It goes without saying that Chinese buses have a tendency to be overpacked with people at rush hour. There are two bus lines that get me to work in the morning. Line 45 tends to be very crowded and at the time I get in to work, I have to stand for 15 minutes. Line 824 (pictured above) is slightly more pricey over long distances, but costs exactly the same for me, and always has sitting space. Naturally, I try to take the 824 whenever possible. It's cheap, too: a bus ride costs 2 RMB (25 cents), and if there are no seats available, it costs only 1 RMB!

Many buses now have magnetic card readers to pay for the fare, which means you get to use a single card for bus, taxi, boat, train and subway. Fancier buses, however, such as the 824, employ a woman to sell tickets. In the picture above, you can see her at the right. She sits by the door, sells tickets, and announces stops (even though a speaker system annonces it too). Oh, she also waves a small flag outside her window whenever the bus is about to stop, to warn bicycles not to drive between the curb and the bus on penalty of being squashed. That's China for you!

I'm going through 'Godzilla Toy Fever' lately, and I hope it stops because it's draining my wallet... I suddenly want to own Godzilla toys, and the urge is made all the more pressing that I have been especially prude in my toy spending for the last two years. (Ok, so I spent it on videogame consoles instead.) In Montreal, I used to collect insane toys for the heck of it, so I owned Kenta Kobashi, the Tick, Jesus, Freud and Godzilla as action figures.

Anyway... My (admittedly weak) will caved in yesterday, and I mail-ordered yet another Godzilla figure. This one is, in the words of Shin-Goji of Twisted Kaiju Theater, "Eight inches of die-cast, articulated kaiju fury." I make no excuse for the homoerotic overtones of that statement; this is a toy, by god!

Here, see for yourself... Bandai's Limited Edition Black Mecha Godzilla 2004:

If you're curious, I'm ordering it from YesAsia.com, a company with offices in Hong Kong that imports various items from Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea. They have offices in the US and they also deliver to Canada.

If you want to check out more Black Mecha Godzilla goodness, check out this Twisted Kaiju Theater strip. Not only does it superbly showcase the figure's awesomeness, it also involves, ahem, steamy gay sex with an X-Men Sentinel...

It's time for a new review on Future Shock! This time, I review Kelley Eskridge's first novel, Solitaire. It's my favorite SF book of 2004, and if this review can convince but one person to pick it up, then my mission will be complete!

There are some anecdotes that make me feel both very close and incredibly distant from my Chinese colleagues. Here is one of them.

One of my colleagues is an avid toy collector. He noticed the ugly Ultraman knockoff I got in Thailand, and we talked about toys a bit. He mentioned a store near the Studio that sells vintage Transformers toys from the 80's, and I told him how I almost bought a $150 vintage Shockwave because I had that toy as a kid and loved it. Turns out he was a huge Transformers fan in the 80's, also.

As it turns out, the Transformers cartoon was shown on TV in China, at the same time it was broadcast in North America. They saw the first series (the one with the original Optimus Prime and Megatron) at the same time I did. Transformers toys were also sold in China, but for many people, including my colleague, they were outrageously expensive. Optimus Prime was sold 150 RMB (roughly $20 USD) at a time when a typical dinner cost 2 RMB.


Needless to say, nobody in my colleague's primary school had a Transformers toy. My colleague dreamed of possessing Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots, the one who transformed into a van. So he made a plan: he visited the toy store many times, studying the way the toy was made, and understanding how it transformed from a robot into a truck. Next, he found pieces of metal, and with the help of his father, he welded the metal into a 3D sculpture of Optimus Prime. He used nails to make moveable joints, and a cardboard box to make the head, on which he drew the robot's face.

The result, according to my colleague, was rough and nowhere near as stylish as the real thing, but it transformed. The homemade toy was the sensation of the school when my colleague showed it around.

At roughly the same time, my brother and I shared about 50 Transformers, including Optimus Prime himself (owned by my brother; I prefered Decepticons.) It's funny how these two paths bring me and my colleague, at the same time and place, talking how we'd like to own a toy reminding us of our childhood: mine for the toy I once had, and his for the toy he wished he did.

There's a fascinating post-scriptum to that story: the name of Optimus Prime in Mandarin is radically different from the original, and, in my opinion, much better. It roughly translates to:

Pillar-That-Holds-the-Sky.

You may not know this, but I'm a big Godzilla fan. I used to own a reproduction of the original Godzilla movie poster at home, and I imported a Godzilla toy from Japan (said toy is resting in a box somewhere in Quebec.)

Anyway, last year, while enjoying a Sunday afternoon stroll in a park in Shanghai, I found a real ugly, cheap knockoff of Godzilla in a nearby store. Naturally, I had to have it. He's been adorning my desk ever since. Here is the lovingly-nicknamed Maozilla:

Anyway, today, I caved in to the 'Displaying cool Japanese toys' peer pressure I get from my desk neighbor Hugues, and I ordered an original Bandai Godzilla toy. I also picked up my favorite Kaiju (aside from Big G himself): Mecha King Ghidorah. Yes, I'm a 31 year-old kid.

Sorry, Maozilla... Your time on my desk is counted!

I'm not turning this blog into an update log of my SF book review site, I swear! There's just a lot of books to catch up to...


My latest review is of K.J. Bishop's The Etched City, a recent Fantasy novel who might well be one of my favorite of all time. Enjoy!

Remember the strange plastic surgery ad I previously spoke about? Wait for this one, it gets better...

(Click on image to enlarge.)

The Chinese characters say:

新年，新高度

Check the image of the woman, and you should be able to guess what this ad says... Yep, it's:

"New Year, New Size"

You go girl!!!

I'm slowly catching up on a 'review backlog' of books I've read and really want to comment. After that, the pace of reviews on Future Shock will surely slow down to match my reading pace.

Anyway, here is the most famous novel of the hard SF author whom many have called the modern Sir Arthur C. Clarke: Manifold: Time, by Stephen Baxter.

This pint of Guinness was enjoyed at O'Malley's, the largest Irish pub in Shanghai and the first in Asia. For the record, it's not as good as Montreal's Guinness (tastes more watered down and less bitter), and is nowhere near Guinness in Great Britain. But then, what did you expect?

I've seen a lot of dubious advertisements, but this one takes the cake. Check it out:

(Click on the image to enlarge.)

I want to take a moment to congratulate Francis, on making a huge, life-changing decision. Francis decided to throw away a well-paid, boring job, and go back to school to study his passion in life, photojournalism.

I think unknowingly, with my tales of throwing it all away and moving to China, I've inspired Francis to take a similar bold step and stop settling for the mundane. For this, I am honored and humbled.

Congratulations, buddy!! It's cliché because it's true: the first step is the toughest. I look forward to hearing you tell me, in a year's time, how you can't imagine not having taken that first, bold step out of routine and into the life of your choosing.

I have finally completed my entire webpage, including an update to my bio page! The biggest hurdle to completion, however, was to settle on a layout for an entirely different section of the site: Future Shock.

In that section, I will post reviews of SF and Fantasy books as I finish reading them. The books I like to read tend to be offbeat and little-known (although I do pick up the occasional bestseller), so the main goal of the page is not so much of gathering readers, than it is to keep a journal of the books I read, and perhaps get in touch with the occasional fan. I've consciously strayed from 'gimmicks' such as 'Critiques instantanées' in an effort to discipline myself to perform a proper analysis of what I read. Yeah, I know, stars are cliché as ratings go, but they do the job, so I'll stick with that for now.

Anyway, check it out if you like SF, and please give me your comments. I've opened up the section with my latest reading, The Year of Our War by Steph Swainston.

Since last Friday, Hélène and I have moved one step closer to being true Shanghainese. Case in point:

Yep, it's a Ubisoft-branded bicycle! The red one is Hélène's, and the blue one is mine. (Hence the red one's feminine tires and lack of bar.) Note that this is a genuine Chinese bicycle: basket at the front, a rack at the back...

Riding a bicycle in Shanghai is quite the experience, too. It requires the mindset of a locust in a swarm to survive, as you are constantly buzzing around with dozens of other bikes, buses, cars... This is not a place where you can race down the streets.

Next step now is to buy one of these huge raincoats with a giant clip that you can tie to the handlebar. After that, my transformation into a Shanghainese will be almost complete!

A funny anecdote that happened to me in Beijing over the weekend:

As you may or may not know, it's an annoying habit of Chinese people all over the country to yell 'Hello!' at foreigners. It's usually the only English word they know, and the reactions it provokes in old-timers range from mild irritant to rage-inducing annoyance. You might not think much of it when explained like this, but imagine it repeated to you every day of your life for a year and a half, and you might begin to understand. It doesn't help that most of the time, it's said in the tone of a kid saying 'Mooooo!' to a cow, to see if the cow will moo back.

In the hutong in Beijing, the locals are less used to foreigners than in (relatively) cosmopolitan Shanghai. Ergo, I get a fair share of hellos. The funniest 'helloing' I've seen in a while happened on Saturday afternoon.

As I was walking down the hutong, a guy right in front of me went from impassivity to a very cheerful, very loud 'HELLO!' As he said it, he extended his left hand in a friendly wave... And almost smacked a woman riding a bicycle and trying to pass him from his left.

The woman, nearly beheaded by an involuntary clothesline, threw a string of curses at him, while I snickered my way past.

I hope this keeps up, and the Government ends up posting warnings all over the country:

"Good citizens refrain from saying 'hello' to our distinguished foreigner guests. Not only does it annoy our foreign friends to no end, but it is a hazard to your fellow men."

I'm writing this post from Beijing, in a small Internet cafe near the sidestreet (hutong) where I stayed the last three days.

I didn't know I was coming to Beijing this weekend until two weeks ago. That's when Helene showed me a half-page magazine advertisement for Mutek Beijing. When I saw it, I knew I had to make it. There was no question of if or how. (For those unfamiliar with Mutek, it's a Montreal-based electronic festival that has been instrumental in putting Montreal on the map as one of the world's electronic capitals.)

Anyway, so here I am, my ears slightly buzzing from the delicate assault of two nights of experimental techno at Club Tango in Beijing. This was not the best techno concert I've seen, but for me, it was the most intense. There is something absolutely spellbinding in coming back from a techno concert by taxi, and pass by the Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square on the way to the hotel.

Aside from the music, I also partook of the local food, of course. I had Beijing duck last night, a whole half-duck just by myself, on which I stuffed myself without restraint. As I savored this, a man sitting across me at the same table (the restaurant was packed) was avidly suckling on duck heads, spitting the small cartilages on the floor besides us. (It takes a year and a half of living in China to realize he was doing this to be polite and avoid spitting on our shared table. 'Cultural Sensitivity' is my middle name!)

The more I visit Beijing, the more I love its food, its people, and its artistic sensibility lingering just below its austere surface. I'm definitely coming back, and sooner rather than later.