Losing Your Wallet

Losing your wallet is always a pain, no matter where it happens. I lost mine about three weeks ago, I’m pretty sure it was pick pocketed on my way to work. Luckily there was nothing really important in it, just some cards to bank accounts and like keycards to buildings. I keep two wallets, one with all my American stuff and another with all my Chinese stuff, so there was no cross over issues.

Taking care of getting the cards back was a mixed bag of fun and adventure. I have two banks here, China Merchants Bank (a checking account and a credit card) and Bank of China (just a checking account). The CMB Credit Card came back to me within a week, but the two ATM cards are a total mess to get back and BoC is the worst. I had to go back to the branch where I opened the account, fill out some forms including presenting my passbook and passport.

After all that I figured they’d just give me a new card (since the ATM cards in China don’t have your name on them, they’re just cards linked to your account). Nope, I actually have to go back to the same branch office two weeks later with a claim slip and pick the card up.

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Quite a Month

RedYawning suddenly came back online. I can’t really figure out why but I’m not complaining.

It’s halfway thru August and the weather keeps getting hotter in Shanghai. It looks like it’ll abate soon but the heat index today was 105F and yesterday was the hottest day of the year (in terms of the raw heat) at 38.2C. Yikes. In the spirit of summer I also decided a while back to try to get more active so I’ve been doing yoga twice a week, playing squash once a week and hitting the gym once or twice a week. It’s acutally worked out quite well and I’ve been at it for a few months now. There’s a small but fantastic yoga studio named Y+ in the French Concession (Fuxing Xilu at Huashan Lu) with good teachers, good students and an awesome cafe in the same building. I’ve been spending a lot of time at Ginger, given the free wifi, good sandwiches plus a decent staff (a rare find).

Also in the month of August I’ve managed to lose my mobile phone, a RAZR V3 by leaving it in a taxi and lose my wallet this weekend by who-knows-what method. I just can’t seem to find it. Thankfully no important documents where in there, just some cash and a bunch of local bank cards/etc. Outside of that, my family and my high school friends are coming by in September I’ll have lot of visitors soon enough.

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