Shanghai VS Dubai

Some may view Shanghai as glamorous, but it’s got its share of expat whiners. So how does it compare with Dubai, one of the richest, most exotic expat destinations?

According to this analysis, it’s got a lot of the same issues.

I’ll leave the item-by-item comparisons to you, but Shanghai still seems pretty good to me.…

Putin knows… t-shirts

The latest t-shirt design, inspired by an Economist cover (pictured below):

Putin knows

Putin” in Chinese is 普京. 知道 means “to know.” If you think it doesn’t make sense, you’re thinking too much. It’s just a t-shirt.

The black t-shirt looks better, but the white t-shirt is a lot cheaper. Blame CafePress.

I’ve been busy writing papers lately, so I haven’t been working on t-shirts much, but there are others in the Sinosplice Shop, of course. Thanks for …

Proxy Tricks and Flickr

The Great FireWall of China (GFW) is quite a nuisance, but I haven’t been thinking about it much lately. That’s because all Flickr pictures display fine for me when I have the Access Flickr! Firefox plugin installed, and Wikipedia, Blogspot, and others display fine for me since I started using an automatic proxy trick for Firefox which I first discovered on Lost Laowai. The combination of these two tricks satisfies most of my regular browsing needs. They most likely …

¿Dónde están mis pantalones?

Funny English on t-shirts is the norm in Shanghai, but I rarely see anything in Spanish (especially comprehensible Spanish). So I had to share this one, which gave me a chuckle:

Amusing shirt

Translation: “Where are my pants?”

I didn’t intentionally leave the girl’s lower half out of the photo, but yes, she actually was wearing pants.…

Chinky Toothpaste

This really does make me wonder how many brands of racist toothpaste are out there.

Chinky Toothpaste

Thanks to Roddy for the find.…

Alice in Karmic Chains

Term papers are keeping me from my regular blogging and t-shirt design amusement, but I had to share this little note I stumbled upon while researching Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for one of my papers:

Publishing highlights

1865: Alice has its first American printing. As was the case with most American books of this period, this was pirated from the British edition without any payment.

What goes around comes around, huh? Even if it takes 130 years……

The Filthy Foreigner Flaw

You may have heard foreigners complaining about sanitation in China once or twice. It happens. What those foreigners don’t know is that behind their backs, the Chinese are also talking about westerners’ dirty habits. Dirty bedroom habits.

Now, before I lead your imagination even further into the gutter, let me elucidate: it’s about showering and sleeping.

photo by Heidi McKay on Flickr

I believe it was in college sometime that I started showering in the morning. I considered myself …

Avast! Fails, Google Pack Wins

I’ve been battling viruses/trojans on my computer the past few days. I think I was using an outdated copy of Norton. The worst thing is that I think I got infected when I borrowed a software CD from a friend. There’s something especially sinister about a CD with a virus burned onto it.

I while back I used AVG. I like to use free software when I can. But then it failed me and I got infected with …

Digging a Hole to China: Fun with Antipodes

Watching the Simpsons Movie over the weekend, I was reminded of something I frequently heard as a child: “if you dig a hole straight down through the Earth, you’ll end up in China.” It’s not true, of course… you’d end up in China only if your tunnel totally missed the center of the Earth.

I asked some Chinese friends about this. Were they ever told that if they dug a hole straight down through the Earth they’d end …

Clever Ice Cream Names at Cold Stone Creamery

Cold Stone Creamery Logo (with Chinese)

Ice cream chain Cold Stone Creamery has opened a restaurant in the Cloud Nine (龙之梦) shopping mall in Shanghai’s Zhongshan Park. Priced well below Häagen-Dazs but still not cheap, the ice cream is passable. Still, I was most impressed with some of the names of the ice cream dishes:

  1. Berry Berry Berry Good: 非常莓好
    This name substitutes the (“beautiful”) in 美好 (“wonderful”) for the (“berry”) in 草莓 (“strawberry”). The result is a word that sounds

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