I saw the following brand label on a set of tires out and about in Shanghai this week “Disengaged Journeyer.” Sounds like a solo grunge band from the 90s.

I am always searching for a perfect coffee shop in Shanghai to get work done. (ok, i’ll settle for decent). Telecommuting and being on the opposite side of the world from your coworkers, means that every once in a while i just gotta get out of the house. So at first I spent alot of time perfecting my mobile command center of gear. I’ll have to do a post on that one later. But once I had perfected that, it not became a matter of finding a decent place to work.
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I guess people describing their setups is getting trendy now. So i’d thought I’d join in. I’ll start with a listing of my mobile work command center of gear. Something about living here and focusing so much time on optimizing certain parts of my life has sort of resulted in me becoming quite a bit Obsessive Compulsive about some things. And packing my bag and pockets for working outside the house *definitely* qualifies. Apologies in advance for the length of this post.
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For the longest time, life in China meant accepting that websites weren’t accessible or could go away at any moment. Sure there is anonymous proxies and things, but it just always seemed like such a hassle and it never really worked that well and proxies get shut down all the time. I always half-heartedly threatened to setup my own proxy on my linux box in the us…
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During our weekend trip to Harbin our local outdoor veggie market was torn down and secretly replaced with a Vegtable market nearby. No matter how short of a trip away from Shanghai, you always come back and something has changed.
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I found a little scrap of paper in my coat today that had a scribble from our Harbin trip. When we first got off the plane there was an ad on the wall for commercial office space with a tag line of “The minority is subordinate to the majority.” I’m not really sure if its supposed to be inspire or empower or what. I’m still not exactly sure how it ties into office space.

Grape Nuts. It has neither Grapes nor Nuts… discuss!
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We did a quick weekend trip up to Harbin, China to see the annual Ice Festival. Intensely cool ice things went along with intensely cold temperatures. Coming back to Shanghai, 40F now feels like a balmy summer day.
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Tonight I finally returned to “Noodle-O’s: The Place for Noodles”. Its one of three local dive noodle shops on our street. I think it has been like 10 months since I last ate there. For 3 RMB, I had the cong you ban mian (onion noodles) along with a cilantro soup. The noodles are made by hand to order.
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This Saturday we went to the book and stationary street of Shanghai, Fuzhou Road. They have a lot of great stores that I can totally geek out with all the pens. Being into pens, its alot harder to find people who appreciate nice pens.
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