There was a considerable no. of friends who sent us off at the airport. There was a large group from NTU TKD, such as cheng yi, changyan, sebast, kuan rei, randal, ee onn, jirong, xuanie, shijie, daniel, wenxiang, jf & xi’er. Some of them even came down after training, like all the way from boon lay… omg… seriously from one end of sg to the other… *touched*
Then there was my DIP group! Too many to be named… but well, they were really nice… gave us a photo frame with photos (& msges behind), a piglet soft toy and a single rose bouquet! =) Oh, and I finally got my “bday polaroid pics” from wee keat that were taken at jp’s fish & co on the last day of DIP… hahaha… there were even ‘happy bday’ msges written on the postcard!! =P
the piglet soft toy frm DIP grp! =P
My insinyur Persians also came down! Haven’t met up with them in a long while… really sad that I couldn’t join them for this year’s insinyur… *sigh* I kinda knew that my mom would slaughter me alive if I’d gone for the camp, so yeah..didnt dare to trifle with her just before I leave for china… moreover, I had some very important stuff to do just before my trip, and so I had to make sure I could get all my packing done earlier to ensure that I would have time to settle my stuff the few days just before leaving… oh yah, forgot to mention that my beloved persians even bought a cake to ‘celebrate’ our departure? Haha... -_-“ special mention goes out to jun & angie! Apparently, they bought me this photo frame that had some ornamental design by the side… no wonder they were asking the photographer to take our pic off-centre... Haha… oh, and angie even had freshly baked macaroons for William & i! wow… good stuff… glad that jun & I got you the recipe book! Worth the investment… =P oh, but the blur her (as usual) forgot to put this liquor choc that was meant for me into the paper bag, so well, she told me that she’ll take pics of the choc and gobble it down herself after all… -_-“ and jun, thanks so much for the huge favour k!! (wait, favourS rather...both day & night...) you're really a great pal! yah, i owe you gifts from china... =P
Next, my beloved 04s65 clique! Haha… thanks quintet! Haha… kiet, yj, sam, chin… really glad to see all of you!! I thought you guys wouldn’t be able to make it, but seriously, appreciate you guys coming down… especially when kiet has work the following day! Thanks for the jap goodies & card! I’ll slowly enjoy them in china… I’ll be keeping them for nanjing (where I might be feel lonely & emo more often)… haha…
Also, not to forget my beloved hc tkd juniors! Jieying, meiying & liwen…I love u! =) haha... (oops…I love my other frens too) anyway, really touched that they specially sent me off despite having school very early the next morning, and 2 out of 3 of them are westerners… >_< hope you gals didn’t keep dozing off during lessons on wed? special thanks go out to the rest of cfc who couldn’t make it… don’t worry, I could feel your love… =) I definitely appreciate all the gifts, cards and photos! I’m so gonna miss you!
Well… I’d really like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all who had specially gone down to the far far away changi airport to send me off… even for those who couldn’t make it but sent their well wishes through cards or smses, thanks a lot! really touched to see so many of my wonderful friends just before I MIA from your lives for 6 months…
I’m really proud of myself for being able to hold back my tears… I told myself to be strong, coz I don’t want any of my friends or family to be worried about me while I’m away from this familiar homeland… so to all of you out there, don’t worry, I’ll take care of myself and stay away from pickpockets, sex maniacs, and any other suspicious characters… =P
Since it’ll be another 6 months before we next meet, please await my return in dec, most likely 27 dec (sat)! haha… looking forward to meeting you again… dakishimetai~ =)
for more departure pics, view my online album at http://picasaweb.google.com/celest8787/DepartureForGipChina
or my junior, meiying's album at http://picasaweb.google.com/tan.my90/CelestSFlight
Arrival in Shanghai Pudong Airport
Gosh… first welcoming event that we experienced was 3 very fierce women having a heated quarrel with a security staff… all local Chinese… the women were shouting at the top of their voices, gesticulating aggressively… gosh.. intimidating… and I thought my mom was fierce (oops)… haha… jk… she’s not lah (sorry mom >_<)… but well, back in sg, the security personnel would usually just diam diam and suffer in silence, apologizing to the travelers or something… but sorry, not in china.. haha… the security staff was obviously bu shuang, and just argued back… chung, hong, charyeot, kyongre, sijak… >_<
Oh yah, must mention something not very smart that William did (oops)! Hahahaha… first thing when we arrived at the airpot, we decided to visit the washroom… the smart him habitually took a sip of the tap water after washing his hands!!! Haha… mind you, it’s china tap water, not sg tap water… can you imagine how his taste buds must have felt… hahaha… ok, not that bad lah… I guess the taste was just like a mixture of bleach, unknown chemicals, particles, solvents, etc… yah… that’s about it… nice taste yah? =P
Ok, shant be so evil… anyway, when we were collecting our luggage from the conveyor belt, I kinda panicked… coz I couldn’t recognize my luggage!! Haha… shucks… I was super blur, forgot how my smaller luggage looked like… it was black in colour, typical hand luggage on wheels, with no obvious difference from most other hand luggages… >_< but thanks to william’s bright red luggage that came out just a bit earlier than mine, I managed to tyco-ly find my luggage… *phew* oh, and with the troops of aggressive people crowded around the conveyor belt, squeezing in between to lug your dua baggage out is certainly no mean feat… >_<
First meal in China
We bus-ed down to the NTU GIP office, where we had our first meal in China… our breakfast consisted of fake小笼包，rock hard 包子& a bowl of porridge. Haha… ok, to do it justice, it wasn’t THAT bad… we were hungry, so yah…anything decent would suffice… =)
Apartment in Shanghai
Our apt in shanghai is a newly renovated place with 2 bedrooms… the master bedroom is huge and spacious… super nice… king sized bed summore… but sigh, too bad, I’m sharing a room with William, so we cant possibly share a bed?! Haha… yah, so we have to make do with the smaller room (kids’ room?) where there’s a double decker bed… I’m sleeping below and william’s sleeping on top… ok, wait… that sounds wrong… I mean, I’m sleeping on the lower deck, and william’s sleeping on the upper deck… =P
here's a pic of our double decker bed:
I’m pretty satisfied with our apt, location wise and all… it’s pretty accessible, about 5mins walk from 陆家浜mrt station, which is only 3 stations from this central interchange mrt station called 人民广场(people’s square)… it’s like city hall mrt, except that it’s linked to 3 different mrt lines… but anyway, now I can fully understand what shijie meant when she said “getting onto the train at ren ming guang chang can be a bitch” hahaha… it’s seriously damn crowded during peak hours, and people really push and shove to get on or off the train! Like hello…? Are you guys rushing off to reincarnate?! (sorry, direct translation from Chinese: 赶着去投胎) haha… it wasn’t exactly a marvellous experience… like some people can be really rude and rough… if ladies are not careful, it’s very easy to “bei chi dou fu”… >_<
After putting down our stuff in the apt, we went to a nearby hypermart, called century mart, to shop for various household items… tonnes of stuff to buy… detergents, insecticide, cups, flasks, pots, pans, cutlery, pillows, blankets, mineral water, etc. oh yah, china’s supermarts do NOT provide free plastic bags!!! Gosh… can you imagine how we’d look, hugging all the items without plastic bags?! No choice, we had to purchase the plastic bags and luckily my mom brought along this cloth shopping bag which we used as well… alright, come to think of it, I guess it’s pretty good that china made such an environmentally friendly move to ‘ban’ the giveaway of free plastic bags… I thought about it, and well, it isn’t too much of a hassle to fold a cloth shopping bag and keep it in your handbag when you go out, so you wont have to keep using so many plastic bags and damage our environment… it’s just a matter of getting used to it I guess… and if you really need the plastic bags, they do sell it at the cashier, and they’re not that ex… so yah, a little trouble goes a long way in saving our environment! Singapore should adopt this too… =)
Oh, our first dinner in china… guess wat we had…? KFC!!! Haha… like you must be wondering… there’s KFC everywhere, so many outlets back in sg….why on earth would we wanna eat KFC all the way in china?! Haha… well, we shopped till really late, and everyone was starving & carrying too much stuff to walk elsewhere in search of food… so we decided to make do with KFC, which was right beside the hypermart… decent food at a decent price… =)
first dinner in shanghai:
After dinner, mom, will & I cabbed back with all the purchased items while sharnice & louise (my 2 new housemates) strolled back to the apt. apparently, they had ALMOST gotten knocked down by a car on their way back! Which reminds me… in china, seriously, ma lu ru hu kou!! It’s damn dangerous to cross the roads here… I’ve no idea what the traffic lights or pedestrian crossings are there for… or the lane markings on the roads as well… every single lane on the road seems to be a 2-way, up to the discretion of the motorists…>_< the drivers here are really too zai… keep cutting lanes and making illegal turns everywhere they go… even as you cross the pedestrian crossing when the green man lights up, please do NOT assume that you have the right of way coz the drivers, motorcyclists & cyclists will totally make you feel like you’re jaywalking! They’ll horn like nobody’s business and yah, you’d better give way to them… it’s man vs car… take your pick… >_<
Day 2 – 24 Jul 08 (Thurs)
We had a simple lunch at a Chinese restaurant… the food was quite alright… but the tea was disgusting… tasted like cigarette butt ashes+water… I prefer the good ol’ mineral water… but the experience concluded with another taste of our fired up Chinese locals display of their aggression… there was this woman scolding the waiters & waitresses just as she was paying the bill… we couldn’t really make out what the din was all about, but the woman was just making such a scene that curious heads kept turning to see what the commotion was about…well, her behaviour simply reminded me of the Chinese saying “泼妇骂街”… >_<
food at the chinese restaurant:
some tofu thingy...
糖醋小排
esparagus with mushrooms
glutinous rice with pork
After lunch, we went to this elecronics store to get various electrical appliances - water filtration+dispensing unit, iron and rice cooker. The goods were delivered to our apt, and William accidentally broke the dispenser coz he didn’t know that the filter was not properly attached and as he was taking the dispensing unit out of the box, the filter dropped onto the floor and cracked immediately! Luckily the store allowed an exchange, or we would have wasted quite a bit of $...
I went off with mom while the rest went back to the apt. we went down to recce the shanghai train station coz we were supposed to take the railway train from shanghai to nanjing the following day. 上海火车站is really very “杂”… there were many people, some of whom were labourers or wanderers… the whole place was really hot and stuffy… shanghai’s weather is really disgusting… if you thought sg was hot, think again… you can feel the heat once you step out of the house… so at the poorly ventilated train station, can you imagine the long queues of people in front of the counters, all sweating profusely, crowding around… and some of them, for some unknown reason, like to stand very close to you! It gets really uncomfortable coz you’re wondering why they cant just keep their distance! Are they pickpockets, or trying to take advantage of you?! There was this guy who approached us and started asking us loads of questions, like where were we heading for, which country are we from, etc… damn suspicious… he was like smiling in a very 奸manner… scary… wonder what he might have up his sleeves… >_< we basically ignored him and told him we were busy, and quickly walked away… the train stations are basically very dangerous, or so we’ve been warned… lots of pickpockets around, so you really gotta be careful of your belongings… we bought 2 1st class train tickets to nanjing… it’s ex-er but safer and more comfortable… abt S$25/ticket. Anyway, we also recceed 静安寺，the station near my company's shanghai office, where I’ll be reporting on the following morning.
After all the traveling, my mom & I headed for 南京路步行街, one of the most popular tourist spots in shanghai… basically 2 long rows of shops… it’s supposedly the only street in shanghai where no cars can drive on… but well, it’s china, what do you expect… there were still a few cars who sorta drove onto the street…
We had dinner at this Chinese ‘fast food’ chain called 大娘饺子 , food was average… we tried this satay-like 烤肉串too… I think南京路步行街 has nice lighting at night… all the neon signboards hanging by the sides of the shophouses… it’ll be nice to just take a stroll along the street with your loved one, after a nice dinner at one of the restaurants… =)
蟹鲜小笼包
三鲜云吞
When we got back to the apt, my 3 other housemates weren’t around yet… when they got back, heard that they couldn’t locate the Carrefour that they took great pains at trying to find… specially traveled to 上海体育场站 but the Carrefour was too elusive… but well, at least they chanced upon this nice shopping mall with lots of nice restaurants, and had a good Italian dinner at some café cartel-like place… the set meal only cost them about S$6-7! Shall visit that place with them again some other time… =)
