On Friday we were talking in the lab about where Bo lives (as in when she's in China not here!). I was looking at her address and trying to decypher it, 'cause it looked strange (well strange to me). I thought it'd be a good idea to find where she lives on a map and then it'd be easier to follow. Well, Google maps doesn't do China :( We got it down to it being somewhere in Shanghai - which is quite large (having a population greater than a third of the whole of the UK's!)
Then came the problem of her not actually knowing where in Shanghai it was! Was it north of the river or south? Then it came clear that she didn't really know! Took her long enough to realise the river I was talking about was the Huang Pu (ok, so I didn't know it was called the Huang Pu then, if I lived in London I'd have known the bloody big river I was talking about was the TrentThames.)
So, yeah none the wiser as to what her estate looks like, 'cause we couldn't find it. It's near the north apparantly, miles away from the river. <shrug> There's something in me that makes me feel sad that she doesn't really know where she lives, and isn't really aware of the city she lives in (she was amazed I managed to find the city in the first place by knowing whereabouts(ish) it was in China and zooming in.) Maybe it's me who's too inquisitive and thinks everyone should be - but I'm slowly gathering that any infomation the Chinese folks in my lab have learnt is because they need to know it, any other information is only learnt when they need-to-know. So, apparantly, there's no need to know where she lives because she knows what bus number to get, or can just get in a taxi and it'll take her there!
I've just started thinking... if you're not inquisitive, or it's been nadgered by your bringing up - why do a PhD? which is surely based on a thirst for knowledge? (I'm sure I know the answer, I'm just not saying!)
Ah well.
Whilst looking around the satallite images of Shanghai on Google Maps I found this which I thought was kind of funky - sort of shows how quickly (ish) development is occuring over there- I don't know how long there was between the two images being taken!
