Chapter 359

The girlfriend and I woke up reasonably early, took the dog out, and headed to the train station. I parked the car underground and we got on the train to Shanghai soon after.

My assigned seat was 2C, and there was a bald, elderly, senile looking man already there. “Oh, I’m supposed to be in 4B”, he said after pulling his ticket out and squinting long and hard at it. So I went to 4B, and lo and behold there was another 老头 sitting there. “Oh, I’m supposed to be in 5D” I guess I can only laugh at the situation, as he was gathering his stuff to get up I told him to not bother and did the triple-swap.

So the two of us were separated, but it’s only a one-hour ride. I started reading a book called “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” by Haruki Murakami, on a friend’s recommendation. I think Murakami is the most overrated contemporary author, his novels are mundane as hell, with nothing happening for hundreds of pages, until there’s a talking cat or a portal to another dimension or some other mystery trope lazily dropped in there with no explanation whatsoever, and also creepy sex scenes he was clearly masturbating to when writing them. Kafka on the Shore is the only novel of his I liked, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and 19Q4 can eat a fat turd. However, this collection of essays on marathon running is quite interesting.

We arrived in Shanghai and took a taxi to the French Concession. She had booked a room in some old crumbling building turned into a hotel, and the clueless-looking guy there said we can only check in at 2. I argued a bit, “It’s the policy, it’s the policy” but he eventually just gave us a room, which was all ready and made up to begin with. If I was a non-confrontational carpet like I’m sometimes condescendingly told to be (you know, in our Chinese culture, people value harmony, do u knwo~) we would have frozen our testicles off for a few extra hours.

(Also, gotta love how much they value harmony, as if you don’t constantly witness impotent rage shouting matches here)

Anyway, the spirits were high at the beginning of our mini-vacation. We dropped our bags, the girlfriend went to meet a friend and visit an art exhibit, and I went to the jiu-jitsu gym. There was a Christmas open mat followed by a little party. I got smashed pretty hard by all those strong grapplers, except one, who was at my level and whom I had a nice back-and-forth with. A good time was had by all. Then we ate pizza, I was ravenously hungry but only ate a few slices, wanting to keep some room for dinner.

I had a chat with the Polish guy who teaches the gi class. “Are you considering moving to Shanghai?” It sure would be nice. I really like the city and all that can be done there. Let’s see what the future has in store.

Conveniently, our room was a few minutes walk away. I dropped my sweaty rags, took an icy shower and headed out on a rent-a-bike. I found the restaurant she had booked, a French bistro called La Pétanque, and ordered a kir apéritif. She arrived soon after, and we had the set Christmas menu for two: salmon tartare, little pieces of toast with foie gras, a steak, a halibut filet, a tiramisu, and some overly decadent ball of chocolate, with a glass of red for me and white for her. The portions were comically small compared to the amount of food I usually pour down my fat gullet, but we were quite full at the end, given how rich the food was. It was absolutely delicious, but not much more delicious than a meal at a Sichuan restaurant which would have commanded one fifth of the price tag, or even a som tam/lab moo/sticky rice combo on a Bangkok side street that would have cost twenty times less. Still, it was worth it, we can splurge a bit sometimes and do something special. Also I have to nod with approval at the music that was playing in the restaurant (at an appropriate volume), some great stuff like Suprême NTM, Massilia Sound System and a bunch of French oldies.

We walked for half an hour in the bitter cold to a bar with a wide selection of bottled beers, she got some fruit ale, and I got a Belgian quadruppel clocking in at 10.5%. Then she went back to the hotel and I crossed the street to go to the Yuyintang for the second time this month for some good live metal action. Four bands were on the bill, first were Conch, once again playing their crushing sludge metal with their backs to the crowd, and then Loudspeaker, with their rage-fueled crust assault. Fucken hell, it’s the second show in a row where the booker starts off with those two amazing bands, it’s a bit unfair for whoever is set to follow them.

...or at least that would be the case if the said band playing third wasn’t the mighty Tractor! I bought their self-released demo Sexy Big Butt in 2011 and fell in love with it, and now I was finally seeing them live, a decade in the making. In fact, I didn’t even know they still existed, I thought it was just a side project. They were absolutely great, with their fast riffs and d-beats at the crossroads of punk, 70s heavy metal and hard rock, led by a short chubby unemotional bassist in a helicopter pilot jumpsuit and sunglasses.

The next band, Holokastrial, was the only one moving away from the power trio format, a five-piece playing some rather generic brutal death metal. They were not very tight unfortunately, and as such the rhythm section wasn’t always perfectly on time and their music lacked the punch it could have had. Still, it wasn’t that bad, like I said in the past when brutal death metal is done well it’s the best musical genre on this planet, and even if it’s done imperfectly, it can still be enjoyable.

I rode a rent-a-bike in the bitter cold all the way home and crashed.