Spring moving into summer is probably the worst time in Shanghai - or anywhere abroad if you’ve spent most of your life in Seychelles. When you’re walking on the streets and a cool breeze blows against your face and through your hair, you start to feel very misplaced.

Summer in Shanghai is the absolute worst. Right now, I’m in my room and I can feel the heat burning my skin. Unlike spring time, summer doesn’t come with the cool breeze. For about 2-3 months, it’s like swimming in hot water because from June-August it’s both very hot and humid.

Just 2 weeks ago, I finally switched the heater off and in about a couple of days I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to switch the aircon on. Back home, people don’t really think about the temperature. People just wonder whether it’s going to rain or not, period. It’s amazing how different life is here, and I didn’t keep a blog on my first year so I don’t even remember the little things.

At this point, I do think about missing Shanghai when I eventually have to leave (did I mention how awesome this place is?). I’m anticipating the extreme reverse culture shock I’m going to have to endure when I go back.

There has been numerous changes in Seychelles since I left (according to what I heard):
- Apparently, the buses now use smart cards and people can now choose to pay a little more for the public aircon buses (which did not exist when I was there).
- There’s a new building called Bodco and there’s either a restaurant or a pub somewhere in there, as well as a supermarket.
- The Seychelles rupees is now 8 rupees to the dollar after devaluation. It used to be 5.5688 to the dollar in 2004.
- Mandarin is being taught after class, in some schools (e.g. Plaisance).

That’s pretty much what I can think of right now. No doubt there’s a whole lot more that nobody really bothered to mention.

Seychelles aside, Shanghai’s had a whole bunch of changes too…
- From only 4 metro lines in 2004, there’s now about 9 lines (see? I even lost count!) that stretches all the way from the CBD to Songjiang (what I like to call the outskirts of Shanghai).
- I also noticed this building next to the JinMao Tower…where did come from??? I didn’t see it a couple of months ago, LOL.
- Ooh and language! The first year I got here restaurants couldn’t deal with anything but Mandarin. Now you’ll find English menus all over the place. Small Chinese restaurants will have pictures in their menus, so eating out is not a problem anymore (esp. for people who can’t read characters). This is why my Chinese is actually quite underdeveloped - ‘coz you can actually live here without understanding 90% of the language.
- The staring thing the Chinese used to do at foreigners is a whole lot less obvious than a few years ago. You can’t go to a place and not see a foreigner - so I’m pretty sure the Shanghai residents are already used to seeing weird skin tones that they’re not accustomed to seeing on themselves. So if you’re a foreigner and someone’s staring at you, that person’s probably new to Shanghai…or just very bored.
- The bund thing has changed. They’ve diverted the traffic (something along those lines) so instead of seeing the fab bund view from inside the taxis/buses, it’s a construction area.
- Let’s talk about currency…China’s economic boom is pushing them to constantly undergo currency revaluation. Renminbi is now at 6.9 to the dollar. Back in 2004, a person told me that it was at 8.3 but when I was here on late 2004, I only caught it at around 8.1 to the dollar. Interestingly, someone’s predicting that it’ll reach 5.x by the end of this year. At this point, it’s just better to hold RMB than USD esp. if you’re not doing anything with your cash. LOL. Allowance for Seychellois students have decreased dramatically, esp. because we are sent USD and not RMB. Worst of all, cost of living in Shanghai is also increasing…it’s not even funny.