[My Weekender] with Daniel Borin

Nightlife malaise and weekend chores with Daniel Borin - Feb 29, 08

Daniel Borin is a Co-Founder and Director at Enjoy China.

My initial reaction when I was asked to post "My Weekend" online was, "sure why not, there's heaps going on in Shanghai." Then, when I got to thinking about it I realized my life here has changed a lot over the last 5 years. I thought about the old days, when my weekends started on Wednesday and ended on Tuesday morning. I thought about when Park 97, Guandii, and Maoming Nan Lu were the center of Shanghai nightlife. It was a tight crew back then and when you went out ON the town you knew everybody IN town. But alas, those days have come and gone; Shanghai's nightlife scene has tripled in size, and the cool character of old bars and clubs has been replaced by the cookie cutter approach of Bund bars and mega clubs. Given, you can still have a great night out in Shanghai and there are umpteen choices, it just ain't the same.

Anyway back to My Weekend in the here and now.


Tonight (Friday), we are hitting Orden bowling alley at Hengshan Lu for the "Grand Finale" of our "Professional" bowling league headed up by Bryan "The Commissioner" Sun. It's proved to be heaps of fun and a refreshing way to pass the horrible Shanghai winter without resorting to dozens of DVD box sets. Following that we'll have dinner and drinks at The Grape, which is an old expat haunt on Xinle Lu. Later that night, we're going to celebrate Fabienne Pellegrin's 7th birthday at Lounge 18. It should be a big one as she only gets a birthday once every 4 years!

Saturday--I'll start by warming up the weekend with an early session of Hot Yoga at Y+ with my wife Yen. After being tempted by the smell of fresh quiche on our way downstairs past Ginger, we'll most likely opt to get out of our sweaty clothes at home, shower up, and cook some tasty scrambled eggs on toast. On the list of chores for the day is buying a new clothes dryer at Guomei. This job is made slightly less uninteresting by stopping by H&M at the Cloud Nine mall next door, and will most likely be followed up with looking for a few essentials from Carrefour downstairs. Saturday evening will likely be the one of the few nights during the week when we get to cook for ourselves, so we might stay in and grill some salmon steaks. In-home entertainment for us recently has been a "Boggle" set we bought in Australia or perhaps even a trip to our friend Bernarbara's for a game of "Seafarers of Catan" (you might want to google that--its HEAPS of fun).

Sunday--brunch at Azul with some friends! Extremely tasty and great value. Sunday afternoon is as yet unplanned and may end up being a sunny walk through the neighbourhood, rock climbing at the Shanghai Stadium or even a game of tennis.

Anyway, that's "My Weekend" this week.