A few days back I went to an electronics store about 200M past the Best Buy in hopes of getting a couple more power plug adapters for cheaper than the 58Y that we paid our first day at Best Buy.  The place is called "gome" (probably pronounced Go May).  I found it because when we went to Xujiahui Park, and I saw a big sign that said "PCMALL" across Zhaoziabang Road, so I thought I'd check it out.

Initially, it felt a lot like a Circuit City or Best Buy.  But when I headed over to the section called "components" to get a couple of dealy-bobs (technical name), a salesman approached me.  I pointed to the 4 items I needed, and he got them off the wall rack for me, then proceeded to fill out 3 separate half-sheets of paper for them (2 power adapters, a VGA cable, and a Stereo-Miniplug -> dual RCA jacks).  Then he pointed me at a little counter in the back of the store that said "cashier" above it.  I walked back there, gave them the papers, the nice girl behind the counter tallied up the total, then stamped each of the papers, then printed up 3 receipts, each with 4 copies, and stamped all 12 copies and handed me 3.  When we ordered dinner last night, the delivery guy left us with probably 12 pieces of paper each that looks like an odd combination of money and lottery ticket.  When we bought a few toys from an overpriced toy store, you show them the toy, they give you a piece of paper, then you take that piece of paper, with the toy, up to the cashier, who takes your paper, and prints up a new set of receipts, one of which you get.  Plus you have to sign the credit card receipt.  THis place is totally paper-crazy.  For any random purchase, I wind up with at least 2, or more frequently 4 or 5 pieces of paper, generally container various stamps of some sort.  Apparently, the phunny-money lottery tickets we got when we got our first meal delivered were tax receipts.  The restaurant must buy them and give them to people to prove they paid taxes.  The way it actually works is that some of those receipts actually win money, thus providing an incentive to the customers to demand them, thus forcing the company to actually pay taxes.  There are so many things that, at first glance seem very nonsensical to me, but when looked at from a different perspective make perfect sense.  But I still don't get why everything has to be paper :-)

We arrived Monday night and had an interesting ride to the apartment (I counted 12 times when we were, quite literally, within inches of another vehicle, traveling about 50MPH).  Once we got in the apartment, I discovered I was immediately indebted to Alain Raitt, one of the CLR team's test managers.  He mentioned what the mattresses were like, and I remembered to pack an air mattress.  Our 3 bedroom apartment has 1 king size bed, and 2 queen size beds.  And each bed has what Americans call a "Box Spring" and nothing else.  For American beds, the box spring is what you put under the mattress.  Aside from that, the apartment is fairly nice.  It's furnished in 100% Ikea Black & Silver, with dark hard wood floors.  The bathrooms are very nice, though the water smells of something odd (and according to Frommer's it's not even safe to brush your teeth with).  We've got a 5 gallon water tank, which is now down by about 2 gallons.

The electrical outlets will accept 3 different styles of plugs, but not grounded American plugs, or 'directional' American plugs (where one prong is wider than the other).  We went to Best Buy & bought an 'everything' surge protector, which lets you plug almost anything into anything.  There are a couple of stupid things that we own that don't like 240V 50Hz, but all the computers & computer peripherals take anything from 100V-240V, and 50-60Hz.  We paid way to much for a printer for school work for the girls, and wandered around a big mall.  Elevators around here are A) tiny and B) rare.  I think the stroller is a total lost cause - too many escalators & stairs.

I think the biggest problem we've had so far has been trying to figure out how to work the heaters in the apartment.  Everything is written in Chinese on the remotes, so we couldn't really figure out how to get the heaters working.  We woke up last night at midnight to a bedroom of 28C (82F) and turned it off.  I don't think the girls minded too much, because it was so cold during the day (like 35F, with 20MPH winds...) that they were huddling under their sweaters, vests, coats, and for Chloe, her robe too!

We were supposed to go to the International Health Center this morning to get our health screening for our visa's, but last week the company that was doing that for us closed their Shanghai office, which I learned of because my e-mail to the woman who was supposed to meet us there bounced.  So I sent a slightly nasty sounding e-mail to 3 or 4 different people [I probably wouldn't have been so nasty sounding, except I was really tired] yesterday afternoon, and a very nice woman from Microsoft Law & Corporate Affairs called me and is getting things straightened out.  So now we have to go get some groceries, then talk to the apartment manager who's going to help us at the local police station to register with the local authorities.

Anyway, I'd better get going - the boy is running around here in his pajamas cutting a piece of paper into little tiny triangles, and we don't yet own a broom :-)