Bit of a transition this past couple weeks, yeah?  From As I Lay Dying to Trampled By Turtles to Scissor Sisters this week.  I bet you didn’t even think I’d like them.  They’re on tour for their newest album, Night Work, and stupid Facebook is rubbing it all in my face via my friends’ photo albums and status updates.  As if the powers that be would ever permit a group like Scissor Sisters to play here.  Night Work came out earlier this year at the end of June, but I’m totally experiencing a renaissance with it now.  It’s so upbeat and fun, yet has its moments of melancholic depth.  I dare you to listen to any of these tracks and succeed in keeping your body completely still.  Impossible, I tell you.  Impossible.

There’s something more than a little bit odd about not being able to trust the local weather reports.

 There’s a good reason to celebrate this Friday evening. ChinesePod, the popular Mandarin learning tool, is turning five years old, and they’re throwing a party at Cotton’s on Anting Lu to commemorate their success over the past half-decade.

 Trampled By Turtles – “Wait So Long”

So, metal mania is finally over.  Haters rejoice.  I know I said last week that I’d talk about AFI and The Futureheads, but I really don’t see that being the case.  Not since I discovered this band Trampled By Turtles and their new album Palomino, released earlier this year.   There’s so much goodness on this album.  Every track is a winner, for sure.  I’d describe them as “post-bluegrass,” if I had to pin a genre label on them.  Life would be far more colorful if you could just describe bands as blends of other bands, but as the powers that be seek to pigeonhole us all, so were genres invented. Either way, we trade metal for bluegrass today

 Tianjin, the Shanghai of the north, for a bit of treaty port tourism. 

We check in at our deco hotel and then walk around the French concession area, dodging construction sites. There is no Bund and the closest thing to it, Jiefang Lu, is a pretty little movie set with smaller versions of Bund-like buildings squashed in together. The HSBC building in Tianjin says a lot about Tianjin/Shanghai comparisons – it is one fifth of Shanghai’s monolith. In the courtyard of an old apartment building we find headstones inscribed with Latin. I guess the bodies are probably under concrete. Finding somewhere for dinner is a trial, as prices are markedly higher than in Shanghai.

With a classical music schedule that is customarily clogged with an endless rotation of Swan Lake and the Nutcracker, Shanghai can often seem like a backwater when it comes to a varied orchestral repertoire. However, relief is at hand for fans of symphonic form. The late summer/early fall season sees a selection of world-class orchestras visiting the city, bringing wide-ranging programs of music to the stage.

You’ll most likely notice that we’ve got two tracks up this week. Two! Lucky you. It’s because I’m indecisive. AFI put a new album, Crash Love, out last year, but as I don’t keep tabs on what my favorite bands are up to, I didn’t find out until a few weeks ago. Conversely, The Futureheads’ new album The Chaos dropped in April, but up to this point I was preoccupied with other metally things and didn’t have an opportunity to break it down for you. Both of these albums are spectacularly poppy in their own ways and are an immense joy to consume.

So today (Friday) is hot as balls. The air conditioner in the restaurant my colleagues and I lunched decided to shut down midway through our meal. Things have only continued to heat up since Dave commented on the weather last week. Pouring sweat, we immediately dabao’ed our meals and headed back to the office. Looking down at my sopping wet shirt, I had an idea: I’d go home and shower.   I live only five minutes away from our new office, so it wasn’t too far out of the way. What struck me most about the drive was that the wind, usually a welcome refreshment, felt instead like being blasted in the face by ten hair dryers. Even at 50 kmph, the wind is hot. I wish my office were a giant swimming pool.

When the Renminbi first began ascending, a few canny expats asked why the prices of imported goods were not going down. Indeed at the foreign marketed stores, prices did not dip at all but increased steadily or remained stubbornly fixed. No doubt the czars of Cityshop, ParkinShop et al considered it was impertinence to expect lower prices.

When it gets this hot I can’t really think of anything. The heat dominates everything. Shopping is based on either a quick dash (as I’ve left the kids in the care of the TV) to the local convenience store, or after certain breaking point and agitated transit by sanlunche, the bulk of the day is spent with a book, some games and the kids at a café in our nearby shopping center. On those days, dinner becomes less of a problem, as there is simply no question of my being forced to endure the sauna that is otherwise our tiny kitchen. Not that I have much of an appetite in such weather anyway. In my mind, a cold Japanese beer suddenly looms as the perfect food for this situation. But I have yet to sell the kids or wife on it. One day, perhaps.