Newsflash! The Budget Gudget is over.  I don’t have the stamina for it.  Plus, on Wednesday, I pretty much hurled myself headfirst into a sea of taxi-riding, wine-drinking and dinner-eating-out.  It is so over.

Listening to India Arie right now.  And wondering whatever did happen to Lauryn Hill.  I was sure she was going to be the soundtrack to my life.  Then she done gone lost her mind.

Boo.

Physical Fitness Gym*** in Shanghai is running a promotion where you get a 2-month membership for just 59RMB.  When I heard about it, I thought:

•    Either the gym is going to be horrendously filthy and crowded or
•    There are going to be about 100 hoops I have to jump through to get that deal.

Wrong on both counts.

The deal… How to get it

Like most things in China, there’s the way you are told things are and the way things actually are.

•    The advertised end date for this promotion is April 15.  But if you call in to the gym, you are told April 30.  So, sign up sooner rather than later because no one can really say when this gravy train will come to a shuddering halt.
•    Initially I was told I had to have special vouchers to register.  Then I heard that I had to have a QQ account/number (I still have no idea what QQ is).  Then I heard that I had to be able to tuck both feet behind my ears and hum the Marseillaise backwards while whittling out a banjo with my front teeth.  None of these is true.  What you definitely need is your passport and a little bit of your inner actress (for when they ask you why you don’t have all the other stuff).  Be prepared to burst into tears, or at least display a quivering lower lip if it looks like things are not going your way.

Here’s the deal:

• Two months unlimited use of the gym facilities except between 17:30 and 20:00 on weekdays.
• You have to bring your ID (passport) along with you each time you come to work out.

How I went about it:
I had called ahead and been told by one of the trainers that it was basically a free-for-all.  He said as long as I was a new member and brought along my passport, I could sign up.  But when I got there the girl at reception asked me for my QQ ID or voucher, which, of course, I didn’t have.

When I got to the gym, the two guys who were signing up ahead of me also had neither of these.   One was a local who said he’d bring his tomorrow and was allowed to sign up right away.  One was a laowai who got so frustrated with the language barrier that he jacked it in and left.  Not me.  Not for under 1RMB a day.  I stuck it out.

The easiest thing would be to just get your Chinese friend to sign you up for a QQ account if you can’t do it yourself.  Or, if you are feeling particularly rebellious, you can just make up an 8-digit number, which is what I hear a QQ account ID is.  I know someone who went down this route and it worked for her. But they could check the validity of the QQ number while you are standing there and that would be pretty embarrassing for you to be caught in a big fat lie.  Like some sort of big fat liar.  So avoid the deception.  Go instead for the emotional manipulation and be prepared to weep like a little girl if 59RMB over two months seems like too good a deal to pass up.

I admit to going to Physical with some trepidation.  The gym got a solid kicking from City Weekend’s reviewers.   But having said that, how seriously can you take someone who writes in all caps?  Not very, I say.

The Good:

• It was pretty clean.  There were cleaners in the bathrooms and in the workout hall while I was there and I have definitely seen much, much worse.  The toilets were also ok.  The treadmill and the elliptical trainer both felt sticky on the grips (ew!), but, overall, I was pleasantly surprised
• The gym is huuuuuuuge.  There are dozens of every type of equipment.  I was just interested in cardio and stopped counting when  I passed 20 elliptical trainers.
• It was only a third full when I got there – around lunchtime.  So that is a sweet time to go.
• Everything inside is in Chinese and English.

The Bad

• The address that they advertise via Guanxi and local websites is, at best: misleading and at worst, downright wrong.  When you call to ask how to get there, the girl who answers the phone tells you to ask someone on the street. What?!
• It is very, very hard to find a) because they have done a lousy job of signposting it and b) there is loads of construction going on there at the moment.
• It is really warm in the workout area.  And we’re only in Spring.  They’ll have to amp up the aircon once the temperatures soar in summer
• I didn’t see any exercise balls or floor mats so the warm-down, ab-crunch-fakeout was a bit disappointing.
• Not only is getting to the gym kind of confusing, the gym layout itself could do with better signage.  For example there are two receptions (one where you get your key and one where you do the admin stuff) .  Both receptions have people on the phone and receptionists fiddling around with thick reams of paper.   If you don’t know you are in the wrong line, you will wait for what seems like ages before someone tells you where you should be.

How to get there.

Get out of Exit 2 of Huangpi Nan Lu Station and walk down HuaiHai Zhong Lu in the direction of all the construction.

The advertised address is:

1/F, South Tower, Hongkong Plaza, 283 Huaihai Zhong Lu (nr the cnr of Huangpi Nan Lu).

This is not right,  They are on the 3rd floor and the entrance is actually on Songshan Lu (i.e. turn left at the first set of traffic lights after the intersetion of Huai Hai and Huangpi).  When I went today there were loads of building trucks and workers unloading large chunks of cardboard.  They were also blocking the entrance that is just a large doorway (like a garage doorway) with a sign that says “To Cargo Loading Area”.  That is where you need to go in while construction is underway but you won’t see this sign until you are standing pretty much right under it.  So instead, look out for the stop for Bus 109.  Once you are at that stop (on Songshan Lu), you are right next to the entrance.  It is on you right if you are facing HuaiHai Lu.

***This information is based on my visit to the Hong Kong Plaza branch of Physical Fitness.  All references to directions etc. are accurate at the time of writing due to the construction that is currently underway.

Mad cow disease, E. coli, dysentery, dengue fever, typhoid, projectile vomiting, bilharzia, the Ebola virus, salmonella, pink eye, leprosy, cholera, Legionnaires Disease, athlete’s foot, lupus, acne,nervous dispepsia, glaucoma, snaggletooth, arthritis, …

Now I’m no doctor or anything so: How many of these can I get from ingesting raw cow?

Well done to Bulldog Pub who  saw fit to deliver me an uncooked beef burger tonight.   Not an underdone burger.  A raw burger.  How raw, you say?  Well, the mince was ice cold and blood red.

I don’t think I’ve ever been to Bulldog Pub. Unless it’s the place that used to do Music Matters a couple of summers ago on Wulumuqi Lu , in which case I did go once or twice.  But safe to say I am highly unlikely to ever set foot in there again.

After tonight, you couldn’t pay me enough to dress up in a Hazmat suit and walk past there**.   Because when a restaurant takes well over an hour to make your burger and then delivers it to you raw (after you have insisted that you want it well done*) then you know that you and that establishment are destined for the briefest of relationships.

Did I complain?

No.

Why not?

Because it was free.

When we placed the order, the food delivery service we called told us that the burgers  would take 45 minutes – 1hr to arrive.  We ordered around 8 and the food got there after 10.  In between, we chased up the order and were told that it had taken an hour to make and that because of the delay, we would get the meal comped.  It’s hard to complain when you haven’t spent a single penny.  You get what you pay for, right?  Except that I don’t remember shelling out for gastro-intestinal contamination.

I try never to write a review that is only negative because when I read a review that is a 100% downer I just assume that the writer has some sort of personal axe to grind. And I can honestly say that before tonight, I had no pro- or anti-Bulldog leanings.

What bugs me is not that the order was late, or even that they think up promotions and then don’t take the necessary steps to cope with the extra business (we were told the order was late because the kitchen was super busy*).  It’s the blatant negligence.  The I-don’t-care-how-sick-this-might-make-you-or-how-far-my-shoddy-efforts-are-from-what-you-must-surely-be-expecting aspect of it.  You will never convince me that the dude that put that burger patty onto the bun and into the delivery box and into the courier’s hands was thinking anything other than: I really don’t give a damn.   It’s hard to think of any other explanation that makes sense. And for that reason, I am struggling to find something for the plus column for this eatery.  Except, perhaps, that the burgers were big.  But considering I got a mangled clump of uncooked mince meat between the buns, it’s hard to even think of that as a good thing.

So this isn’t my Don’t ever order from Bulldog blog entry.  One narrow escape from food poisoning (fingers crossed!) does not a summer make, after all.  But in a Shanghai that has Blue Frog and Munchies and Gourmet Café and Kabb and about 1000 other places who do the same thing faster and better, why chance it?

*Worth pointing out that at no point did I actually talk to anyone at Bulldog – we dealt only with the food delivery company.

** Just kidding, you could totally pay me enough.  Go on, name an obscenely high number. Just for fun.

I’ve never been a fan of flying but about a year ago, on a trip back from the consumerist nirvana that is Hong Kong, our flight experienced some pretty bad turbulence. At the time, one of the stewardesses screamed and ran the length of the aisle to her seat. I haven’t been able to get on a plane since.

I tried flying to Hong Kong on Wednesday but heavy fog meant the flight was delayed by 4hrs. As the plan was to get in and get out in the same day, 4hrs proved too long a delay. I rebooked the flight for Friday and convinced myself that Wednesday’s abortive attempt to overcome my flying dread was a sure sign that my number was up.

So, having written a brief note bequeathing each of my Apple gadgets to the siblings I deemed most deserving, my shoes to the only charity I know which combines fashion-consciousness with humanitarianism (just because someone is starving and without shelter, doesn’t mean they’ve given up on looking good), handed my sister passwords to my online aliases and a list of websites she absolutely had to delete from my browsing history should the worst come to the worst, I set off again at 5am on Friday morning to face my fate. More fog. And a 5hr delay this time.

So, 600RMB in wasted taxi fare later, I decided to train it to Hong Kong instead.

Shanghai – Hong Kong – Shanghai Train Schedule

This is the most annoyingly confusing thing I have found online in while. Like they intentionally wrote the website content to make everything unclear. You can find out about fares here but the advertised discounts are not available if your journey originates in Shanghai – no matter what the website tells you. The schedule varies but right now, trains leave Shanghai on even dates (not even days, Mr. Data Compiler). So don’t break your brain trying to figure out what an “even day” is, or if they count the first day of the week as Sunday or Monday. To get to Hong Kong you leave Shanghai at 18:24 on the 2nd, 4th, 6th, etc. of the month. Trains come back from Hong Kong on odd dates. Setting off from Hung Hom Station in Kowloon at about 15:30pm. The schedule is subject to seasonal changes, though, so departure and return dates alternate.

Buying Train Tickets

This is kinda inconvenient. Train tickets to Hong Kong can only be bought from Shanghai Railway Station. And then only from counters 11 or 12. Counter 11 is tagged as an “English Speaking Counter”. The editor in me always wants to whip out a big black marker and scribble “English Service Available” over these words but the proliferation of military types milling around with batons puts me off. Like most major stations, Shanghai Railway station smells like a petty crime wave waiting to happen. That may seem like a rather specific smell but if you’ve been there, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you’re paranoid enough, you can almost hear the pickpocketers’ buzz of excitement as they thrill at the throngs of opportunity around them. Tickets are 725RMB for a space in the 4-person sleeper cabin and just over 1000RMB for what they call the en suite “deluxe sleeper”. I’ve ridden in one of these; let’s just call them “2-person sleepers” so nobody gets their raised hopes cruelly dashed.

Be sure to specify that you want the lower bunk, if that kind of thing matters to you (it’s slightly pricier – but only by a couple of kuai).

Check-In

This is exactly like at the airport except that a) you can leave it pretty late b) the waiting room is always full and really, really dirty. I mean really dirty. If, like me, you are on an African passport, expect them to ask you to take off your glasses, let down your hair, shimmy to the left, shimmy to the right and explain the very essence of your being and how it correlates with each aspect of your stay in China. This is either a very misguided seduction ritual or it’s profiling . Yum!

The Train

The T99 train, the overnighter to Hong Kong, is always clean (when you get on, anyway). The cabins are comfy, the bedding is crisp and white, there’s an electrical socket for you to recharge stuff, hangers for your clothes and in-train TV.

Dining Car

The first time we rode the train to Hong Kong, when we got to the dining car, one of the train staff was seated at a table picking the dirt out of her nails with tweezers, onto the tablecloth. The moral of that story? Stock up on sterilizing agents before you make this trip and bring your own food and utensils. Obviously.

Toilets

Well, it’s a public toilet. So…hold your breath and think of England.

Overnight trains to Beijing and Hong Kong are the most comfortable way to get to either city, if you are not in a rush. The route is scenic, the trains always punctual, you cut back on hotel charges, it’s mostly cheaper than air travel and, if you have a phobia like I do, you get to eliminate several nights of anguished terror in the build up to your departure.

I am a fan.

Once in a while I’ll go for drinks or a meal in Xintiandi or along the Bund and looking at the menu makes me wonder which deity’s DNA they are marinating the food in, so ridiculously astronomical are the prices.

So if you are anywhere along the Maoming Nan Lu area and want a little bit of “Italian”, you can do worse than Pasta Inn where I had lunch today.

What I liked:

1. The food. I ordered seafood soup (RMB29) to start with, they didn’t sconch me on the seafood and it was really very tasty.   So tasty that I’d wolfed mine all down before it dawned on me to take a picture. My friend had mushroom soup (RMB29) and she was equally pleased with hers.   Her penne (RMB29)  was luscious and creamy and the chicken wings (RMB29) I had (served with sweet and sour dip) were crisp and succulent.
2. The location. It’s very close to Huai Hai Zhong Lu and Nanchang Lu so a convenient walk away if you work or are out shopping in that area.
3. The menu. It has all the things I like on it – wine, women and desserts. Of course I only added “women” to make that a list of three things.  Otherwise it wouldn’t be a “list”, would it?  What is the word for something that is too short to qualify as a list?
4. The prices. We ordered two soups, my friend had penne and I had the chicken wings and we spent RMB116 (we didn’t get drinks)
5. The service.  It wasn’t spectacular, but it wasn’t hideous.   I call this a win.

What I disliked:

1. The chef. He did that nasal throat-clearing thing really loudly and for an excrutiatingly long period of time – while still front-of-house! – before spitting into what I can only assume was some kind of slosh bucket behind the bar.  That was so many kinds of gross, but there you go.
2. The real deal? I am not sure how Italian any of it was – other than the type of food served – everything else seemed to be Chinese.   Maybe they should park a Ferrari inconspicuously outside the entrance.  Just to amp up the authenticity a little.
3. Thing Number 1.  Seriously, it was beyond disgusting.  Don’t do that in front of the customers, dude!
4. They wouldn’t let me take a menu away with me.  It was just a piece of brown cardboard so I didn’t think it’d be that big a deal.  A lesser girl than me might’ve just stolen a menu and not bothered to be all classy and ask for it first.  A lesser girl than me might also have to remember to carry a bigger handbag next time in case such an opportunity presents itself again.
5. Thing Number 1.  Again.  I am struggling to get the visual (and the audio) out of my head.

Pasta Inn
132 Maoming Nan Lu (nr Nanchang Lu)
Tel: 5465 9816



I’ve wanted to go to hoF for ages.  Months.  It’s right opposite the All Days I go to to top up my transport card sometimes, so I wistfully press my nose against the window of this delicious little eatery and make tiny anguished mewling sounds pretty much every week.  They’ll be closed when I do it though, so it’s not creepy or weird or anything.

Yesterday, December 31, on Day 8 of my eight-day, carbo-loading spree,  I had to hoF it up.  And boy did I ever.

Of course I left it pretty last minute to make a booking.  The girl on the phone spoke fab English, and told me they were fully booked but if anything opened up she’d call me.

I expected that to be the end of that but then about an hour later Brian called and told me they could seat us at the required time (9:30pm) but that they’d need the table at 11pm.  “Brian” turned out to be Brian Tan, the owner.  Very friendly, and chatty and very open to the pickiness that overtakes the Jumbe clan when we are getting our dessert on.

My Dad: I don’t drink but I’d like something that tastes like alcohol.  And I want it to be a cocktail.  But I don’t want it to be cold.  I don’t want it to be hot either.  Definitely no hot cocktails.  And not too sweet.
My Mom: I’ll just have the………
Me: I’d like something New Yearsy.  Something not on the menu.

The prices are adorable too … wine for under 60RMB, most of the desserts for 30- 50RMB, the service quick and friendly and the place still low-key enough to not be crowded on NYE.

Hard to be certain, but I’m pretty sure the sensation I had when I took my first bite of the Marble Cheesecake must be what it feels like to hold your child in your arms that very first time.

If only complex carbohydrates weren’t the devil…

hoF

30 Sinan Lu,
Huaihai Zhong Lu
Near Huaihai Zhong Lu
思南路30号
近淮海中路

I’ve been in Shanghai for four years now and, if you are my friend J, that’s how long you have spent listening to me moan about how there is no good live music around these parts.

To be clear, by “live music”, I mean “live music that I like”.   Which, if you’re me, is the only kind of live music that matters.

Over the past six weeks I have been a bit obsessive in my hunt because I really felt like Shanghai had thrown down the gauntlet of “You think this is bad?  Wait till you go to Place X”  There is an abundance of plankton swimming around like big, talentless fish in a small musical pond here.

Now to the stuff I like

1.    House of Blues and Jazz: Straight in at number one.

I don’t know if I’m rating the venue or the band but who doesn’t like to watch boys soulfully strumming their guitars?  And, as ZZ Top so eloquently put it: “Every girl is crazy ’bout a sharp dressed man.” Never mind the  fact that I have a crush on three-quarters of the Mike Null band – the only one I’ve seen play – it’s the feel that they have for the music that is so easy to get on board with.

You go to some clubs and you feel that most of the acts have memorized all the cool riffs and you can almost make out the performers’ lips moving as  the count down the notes till they can bust out their “improvised” solos.  Mike Null and his band play the blues with feel.  Like it’s what they’re about.  It’s a little bit dirty too.  Enough to make you think you probably wouldn’t want to be in the same room as your parents while you watch them play.

What they wear: Suits.  Crisp.  Sometimes shiny.  Always smart.
What they sing: The promo stuff says blues, jazz and funk.   Who am I to argue?
When they play: Tuesday to Sunday (till the end of November)
Thing I like the best: All of it.  They are that good.
Thing I ‘m not such a big fan of: That they’re off soon.

2.    Carlton J. Smith – Park Hyatt
I’ve just been to see him tonight off a couple of pretty heady recommendations. And they weren’t wrong.  This man can sing. I spent much of the night willing him to do Al Greene’s Let’s Stay Together or Otis Redding’s My Lover’s Prayer.  Two of my favorite male vocals ever.  He’s that good.  And not in the oh-I’ve-been-in-Shanghai-so-long-any-old-guff-blows-my-mind-now way, either.  I mean this dude’s voice is soulful and brash and caressing and smooth in all the right places.  I was really pleased he lived up to the hype because I got there thinking, “There is no way you are going to be as good as I’ve heard”. But he was.  He really was.    There was also a band but I didn’t notice them because Carlton fills up the stage.  He is very, almost alarmingly, high-octane – but it works.

What he wears: Velour.  Black Velour from top to toe.  “Velour” is a word, right?
What he sings: He mixes it up.  Some Marvin Gaye, Beatles, Maroon Five peppered in amongst is own original tunes.
When he plays: Monday to Saturday (till February 2010)
Thing I like the best: Has to be the vocals.  That voice…I think if he sang the instructions to them,  he could get people to do pretty much anything.
Thing I ‘m not such a big fan of: Pudong (ew) and the Park Hyatt (92 floors up and zero view – that doesn’t seem very smart).  And the patrons are beyond posh.  Not so much “get down with the getdowns” as “Another cucumber sandwich, Nigel?”

3.    Cabaret – Gardenia Girl (I just gave her that name)
This one  is a toughie because the first time I went, I loved it.  Apparently the singer that night was just a stand-in.  She was really good.  She had this smoky, achy voice that I really, really dug.  Think Rachel Yamagata (*swoon*
) and you are close to what she sounded like.  She was backed by a band.  J and I went and were so into it we went again two nights later when the regular girl was back.  Back and very underwhelming.  I think that’s all I have to say about that.  So, back to Gardenia Girl…

What she wears: A gardenia in her hair – Billie Holiday style.  How can you not adore that?
What she sings: The usual standards, from “What a Wonderful World” to Alicia Keys’ “Falling”
When she plays: Never, unless the main chick is ill.
Thing I like the best: I had zero expectations from Cabaret.  So everything was a pleasant surprise.   Except the drinks prices.  Those were a nasty surprise.
Thing I ‘m not such a big fan of: The regular girl.  Sorry.

Honorable Mention

Redbeat.  Seedy?  You betcha.  Good anyway?  It used to be.  I used to love me a little bit of RedBeat action on Friday or Saturday nights when I couldn’t be asked to struggle with make up or dress like anything other than a hobo to go out.   The band before – with the three girls up front and the four guys jamming in the back – really worked.  It was fun and although they weren’t as vocally proficient as any of my top three, they made up for it in performance and charisma.  Plus Vincent’s guitar solos for Zombie and Sweet Child of Mine were so cool it was easy to regress to  1992 all over again.  The last two times I went, though,  the band seems to have undergone  a dramatic facelift.  Hello new faces.  Goodbye charisma and sparkle.  Boo.

Farewell good Redbeat band.  I loved you well

What they used to wear: The girls: very little.  The boys: hard to describe.  There seemed to be a lot of dangly strings and interlocking buckles involved.
What they used to sing: 80s and 90s pop and rock.  Oasis, Guns and Roses, Roxette, Tina Turner – a marvelous mish-mash
When they play: Who cares?  It’s not the same anymore.
Thing I liked the best: Cathy.  My favorite of the all-singing, high-kicking trio of girls.  She always gave us a shout-out when we arrived, even if she was mid-song.
Thing I ‘m not such a big fan of: The interlopers new people.

Just when my faith in true love falters, I see these beauties: 

I’ve just watched this interview with Jay-Z. Apart from the “I have Obama on speed dial” comment that makes him sound a bit of a prat, I liked the way he talked. He made sense. Except: 11 #1 albums? More than Elvis? I can’t even name 3 Jay-Z songs so have no idea how on earth that happened.  But each to his own, I guess.

I hate Leona Lewis’s new song. This is terrible news because I adore Leona Lewis. A. Door. I just think she is so lovely and she is the only person whose music I’ll actually buy. Well, her and Tuku – who I’ve just found out doesn’t even have his own website. I blame Ryan Tedder for the Lewis debacle. He is the most collaboratively promiscuous horror show of a songwriter ever. He obviously struck on a formula that works with Apologize ans Bleeding Love. But maybe take a break, Monsieur Tedder.  Formulaic? Check.  Tired?  Check.  Lazy?  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.   Like that Diane Warren woman who single-handedly subjected us to about a decade of terror by ramming Celine Dion down our throats with ballad after ballad of schmaltzy tripe. I would link to the Leona Lewis song but it truly is awful, so just imagine an awful song, and you’ve pretty much got the gist of it. I do love Le-Lew, though.  I’m a big fan.  Which is why this is particularly disappointing.

Ooh and I’m detoxing for the next eight weeks. Today is Day 1 and already I feel like I’m going to pass out from all sorts of withdrawal.

And finally, because I really didn’t have anything to blog about today, but wanted to blog – if that makes any sense – I’m feeling quite pleased at having just bought a really cool domain name. That’s what I do: I hoard domain names. Just in case. It’s fun.  And fulfilling. And really makes up for all those other disappointments and missed opportunities in life.

Sometimes, I’ll be walking along the street half listening to my iPod, half trying not to trip over my feet and I’ll just think “astridblue.com”. And I’ll marvel at how cool that sounds. And I’ll congratulate myself for thinking of it all by myself because it’ll surely come in handy should I ever start a quirky fashion label, or write a story about a Scandinavian hooker  Then I’ll dash home, whip out my credit card and get ready to buy the domain name from those people who I assume own the internet – and words – because how the hell else do they get away with charging me for either?

Then I’ll find out that someone has already bought astridblue.com and no, I don’t want freakin’ astridblue.info.  And then we’re back to disappointment and missed opportunities.  Moue.

I always thought you had to be one of those long established, extravagantly priced, we-don’t-really-serve-your-kind-here restaurants to be snooty and dismissive. Not if you’re The Fat Olive’s maitre d’ (if that’s what they’re called these days). Nope. Then you just wait till you’re barely past the embryonic phase of the restaurant’s life cycle before bringing out your alter-ego: Captain Curt.

On Thursday afternoon, we made a reservation for Friday night, for 3 people. Come Friday afternoon, both my would-be dinner companions canceled on me. Since I still planned on being hungry around 7, I called The FO and told them it would just be me. Below is as close to a transcript as we are going to get:

Me: Hi, this is Susan James (That’s right, I fake name restaurants) I’d booked a table for 3 people tonight
Phone Guy: Yes…
Me: Well, it’s just going to be me – I’d like to change it to a table for one
PG: I’m sorry, we don’t take single person bookings
Me: Sure, but I’m not making a booking, I’m amending an existing booking. You had already reserved my table, right?
PG: Yes, but I can’t hold a table for 1.
You: Oh, you won’t have to hold it, I’m pretty punctual. I’ll be there at 7.
PG: I’m sorry, but we don’t do that-
Me: Let me get this straight: If I come there by myself, at 7pm on the dot, you are saying that you’ll refuse to serve me?
PG: No, of course not. Of course not. Of course not. Of course not.

That’s right. I watched Frasier. I know that dining alone, though a little bit sad, is well within the bounds of proper etiquette.

On to the good stuff. The FO’s staff, the ones who don’t answer the phone, are fantastic. One waitress, Linda, was really charming, and friendly. She even knew all the ingredients in baklava (the other dessert choice was semolina). The description of baklava sounded truly awful but I was so impressed with her upsell I ordered some anyway. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t like it. But that’s was nothing to do with the food, it’s just what happens when a person who hates nutty or sweet things orders a dish made of nuts and sugar. Nicely done, Linda.

Service: Ashtrays were changed regularly. Desserts delivered promptly. We ended up sharing a table with another couple and between us we probably ordered about 10 glasses of wine. Two of those had to be reordered because the waitress forgot but both times she was very apologetic and, on a Friday night, it can happen to anyone.

Menu: Greek is not my thing so I really can’t say. Is pita supposed to be oily and bing-like in texture? I didn’t expect the bread to have been fried but it did taste good, despite my arteries’ protestations.

Wine: This was delicious. And at 38RMB a glass, it made it very easy to fall in love with all things FO. I was a little disappointed that they’d already run out of house red when we got there. Isn’t that kind of like George Clooney running out of charisma just before a date? Of the wines (Argentinean) they did have, we drank the Bodega Norton Malbec (38RMB) and the Lo Tengo (34RMB, I think – by this time we got to this one my note-taking powers had been acutely diminished)

Toilets: Sparkly, spacious and clean

Vibe: Mellow music. No frantic wait staff rushing around. You don’t have to yell to talk to each other and it feels like one of those scenes in the movies when a bunch of people are hanging out by the lake, there’s much laughter, merriment and clinking of glasses and then suddenly a body surfaces in the water and some shrieky drama student starts screaming. The corpse and hysteria bit, thankfully, didn’t happen. Just Morcheeba-esque tunes, the obligatory summery jazz anthem (Girl from Ipanema Pt.2,000,676) and people decompressing after a Shanghai week. We all know how those can go.
People-watching: Has a little of that self-congratulating vibe that I dislike so much about everything along the Bund. But the absence of a dress code – boys in shorts and flip-flops, girls in wafting summer dresses and cheery smiles – means that there’s a breezy balance between the posers and the…er…the non-poseurs.

Verdict: It’s nothing you haven’t seen before and they can probably get rid of the half used bags of cement piled up in one corner of the patio. But all in all I really liked the service. The prices are more than reasonable and there are worse ways to spend an evening than lounging around on plush white sofas drinking in the balmy Shanghai breeze and indulging a little bit of oenophilia with your friends.

6/F, Silver Court Building
228 Xizhang Nan Lu,
near Huaihai Lu

Reservations: 6334 3288

Here it is. Something I really enjoy. No sardonic disdain or snide derision writhing around in my words. Just a solid “Bravo” for the object of my enduring telecommunicative affection.

The Drive show on BBC radio 5 Live is the best thing on the radio. Bar nothing. Peter Allen and Anita Anand talk about the day’s UK and global headlines. These usually feature scurrilous politicians, kids stabbing other kids, men raping women, other women falsely accusing men of rape and diseases that are sure to kill us all, if the people so full of rage that they’re willing to obliterate themselves and everything around them in the name of a god who surely never intended his words to be used so cataclysmically don’t do it first.

But in amongst all that, Peter and Anita (you kinda feel like you’re on a first name basis with them) find a way to make you laugh, and to laugh at themselves and to shake you from the belief that it’s all gone irretrievably wrong.

I don’t often listen to the show live because it’s on very late (4pm – 7pm GMT) and because sometimes the lead stories are just too awful. Which is why the BBC’s iPlayer, with its “Listen Again” function, is a gorgeous little gizmo.

Yet you kind of feel, when listening to Drive, that you’d quite like to have a conversation with Peter, or a bit of a gossip with Anita, who loves shoes the way God intended. Unabashedly. The two of them are smart, funny and genuinely engaging people. And, when they don’t know the full facts of a story they are reporting on, they tell you just what they do know, and no more. No half facts and malicious innuendo.

They’re like two people holding up a mirror to the world and saying, yeah, you’re are pretty ugly but hey, there’s stuff to love about you too.

If only they could find a way to bring back the caustically gigglesome and genuinely empathetic Jane Garvey. Then, all would truly be well in Radioland. If nowhere else.