Did you notice that ...

• .. .train tickets have changed every-so-slightly? In a move to make the process more friendly to visitors from abroad, train stations are now printing the departure and destination city names in English, just below the original Chinese. Since the departure time and car/seat numbers are written in the other international language (numbers), the only thing left to fully interpret a ticket is the bottom/middle/top character on sleeper train tickets.

• ... the city government has been messing with our schedules a lot lately? First off, June 1st was Children's Day (which is turning into a second Valentine's Day; geez, thanks a lot, Shanghai's-white-collar-workers). Second, Lujiazui metro station and the famed Bund Tourist Tunnel were shut down early at 9pm on Children's Day for an undisclosed "special activity"; anybody know the details? And third, thanks to the upcoming meeting of the alliance of Euroasian states known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Shanghai city government has ordered all elementary, middle and high schools and government offices to work over the coming weekend and take the following Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off (the 14th through 16th). This is in the name of security, as the police close down traffic in parts of Pudong. The frustrating part is that business are recommended to follow their own schedule, which may mean a mismatch in work and school schedules. Ah, there's nothing to make up for bad planning like ... bad planning!

• ... there's a Carrefour going into the Cloud Nine Plaza shopping mall in Zhongshan Park? Yeah, that's the mall where you can get onto the roof because the upper floors are still basically a poorly-guarded construction zone. Sources say that the real estate company that built the place tried to run the supermarket by themselves for a several-month test period, but that after a while they gave up and ceded the place to Carrefour. Now banners line Changning Road and the Zhongshan Park metro station announcing the new owner, but the opening date of the store itself is strangely absent. Well, word on the street is that the doors will be thrown open on June 8th. But take as a rumor only; random mall security guards have been known to be wrong in the past ...