I enjoy shopping. Sara doesn’t.

Luckily, my sister’s best friend from home up flew in today and we had pre-coordinated a massive multi-day shopping spree. Here’s an excerpt from previous email communications with her:

“Oh! I want to buy glasses too!! Maybe we can go together and haggle a good price for both pairs? I want to get a regular pair that’ll be really different from my main ones (I’m wearing a super retro looking pair these days) and also some prescription sunglasses. (I’m pretty good with negotiating…but you’ve probably learned a trick or two from your dad…) … Am definitely up for shopping – need to update my wardrobe with more artsy/design stuff and less corporate looking stuff. So, can I propose that we try shopping on Monday?”

This is how I felt after reading her reply:

Meet Alicia:

^’MERICAN

Alicia grew up in my neighborhood and I’ve known her for as long as I can remember things. She’s an Architect who’s currently a student at the Royal College of Arts for their Innovation Design Engineering program. Super cool, eh? She’s basically doing what I want to do.

Meet Sam:

Sam is a Mechanical Engineer from Bristol, UK (not Tennessee). He’s also in the RCA IDE program. He has a yellow and pink hat, orange pants and is basically awesome. He could probably dunk a basketball over LeBron based on my assessment of this photograph. He’s doing exactly what I want to do.

Alicia and Sam (A+S from now on) had just flown in from Beijing; where they were working on a class project. We meet at the People’s Square metro station and ventured off to the glasses market.

Our objectives:
Alicia’s: Artsy glasses and sunglasses
Sam’s: Color contacts.
Mine: Artsy glasses and sunglasses.

The glasses market was located inside a mall outside of the Shanghai Rail Station. The glasses market was situated on Level 5. An electronics and photography equipment market occupied Levels 3 & 4, respectively. This place was basically like the Singapore electronics market I visited last year; multiple levels of sweet sweet temptation… I viewed this place as one huge test of self restraint…

Upon setting foot on the 5th floor, we were immediately bombarded with hawkers trying to sell us glasses, fish, and firecrackers (actually they only sold glasses). We started off in the back of the building and sifted through 4 or 5 shops. We eventually found a shop near the center of the complex and dug-in for the afternoon.

Alicia found her two pairs pretty quickly although color of frames became a hot topic. I found a pair of aviators pretty quick and had some trouble finding a pair of regular glasses. Sam found some blue contacts but they couldn’t order them in quick enough :-/

After what felt like a few hours of denying initial offers, some yelling/arguing, futile attempts of begging/pleading, and a few hurt feelings, we were able to hug it out and agree on the following terms:

Alicia’s total cost: 280 RMB for glasses + sunglasses ($40 USD)
My total cost: 200 RMB for glasses + aviators ($30 USD)

Kübler-Ross was onto something…

Afterwards, we met up with Sara and Tony to go to baller Sichuan restaurant. We got to the place and there was confusion over our reservation. We got it sorted out and were sat in a private dining room. We immediately started ordering food since no one had really eaten the entire day. Tony was a bit bummed that they had changed their menu a bit…

Then he exclaimed, “OH CRAP, THIS ISN’T THE RIGHT RESTAURANT!”

Having visited a Ninja Academy earlier in the day, we stealthily escaped our mistake while our servers were out, and we headed to the correct restaurant (one floor up) via fire escape.