Week past...

one more week gone by...

the weeks seem very long... in a good way. like there's a lot of things happening everyday and time passes by slowly. in one hour so many things can happen.

we went to 南京西路 early this week... the train was super packed and we had problems getting out. still can remember, hanbin and carmen nearly couldnt get out of the train in time. the door was closing and hanbin, by himself, stopped the doors with his hands and pulled them open. then there was the hydraulic sound. damn cool lar...

at 南京西路 there got a lot of 小吃. there were so many things to choose from that we had problem choosing a place to eat. we ended up choosing this place that looked a bit like a restaurant that might have been slightly over our budget but ya... since we were already there. the food was quite good and we 7 people eat... 88rmb. damn cheap. next time if my family comes over, definitely will bring them there.

what else happened.... actually, most of the days we were at home watching tv and eating a lot of 外卖. dinner was usually the meal i dun look forward to most of the time. but lunch was always quite good.

Saturday was hanzhou.

initial plan was to take a bus from our place to hanzhou direct but den that morning when we called the bus guy and apparently his cooling water burst and he couldnt contact us and couldnt make it in time to fix it. so we decided to try our luck at the shanghai railway station... so many problems... wanna travel den just travel lor. complain expensive den dun travel. lol...

reach there and had like a long discussion about the tour package. well... sort of a discussion... erm... ya.

but in the end we still took the travel package the cost 231rmb in total which includes the two way train tickets.

the train wasnt as bad as expected. was much better than the movies. lol...

but the tour itself was damn cock... super hot and really damn rushed... went to 西湖and took a boat across to this small island and din even have time to take photos. and before we know it, it's off to the next place. saw a total of 5 other places and 2 sales pitch (the silk factory and the 龙井茶 store which had bad 龙井茶). 宋城 really is quite cool and had a lot of interesting things to do but we had like 20 mins in it and damn sian... the stupid bus was forever late and we rushed to wait and waited to rush... feels like NS. but it was still fun... more or less... hahaha

got loads of pics to upload... will be uploading them in a while

Group pics at cheng huan miao

lunch... this time the tang baos are better!








on the 9 turn bridge





us along the way out of cheng huan miao

Some hp pics

when bored at work and using a plant designing programme... its quite cool what u can do


cute sign


crystal tiger beer!

Day 17 - Drink your milk

Well... its day 17 and now here blogging...

time really went by quite fast this week while im on course and damn fast its now wednesday

Clarence still is sick with a bad bout of flu, but he ran like 4 rounds around this 世纪公园, which i seriously think is like 5km per round. i think...

Hanbin just ran finish with me but he had puffy eyes and a running noes yesterday

My roomie jianqing is recovering from his super sickness attack of diarrhea, flu and a weird throat and blocked nose.

Carmen, yanwen and me seem to be fine...

the difference? the 3 of us drink milk every morning. So drink your milk! lol



Poor victor isn't getting any better... apparently he crapped all over the toilet bowl and din clear up. When yingsin wanted to talk to him, he attituded her when she asked him to sit down to talk by saying "talk can talk like this". Then she said the rest of them are sleeping (it was 1130) and told him to lower his volume he just blasted off saying he always talk this loudly in hall and sang just as loudly. And when she said she's not trying to 讲 him, he rebutted by saying "don't worry, im used to being scolded already" or something like that... really hope things get better.

Anyway... i think im really enjoying myself here... it's somewhat like hall, when i get back home, got a lot frens around all bitching about their IA like ben tan and ting guan lol... my mum calls me very often (in a good way), doesnt feel like shes very far away. my sis msns me more often. seems like we have more to talk about when im gone than when im in singapore. always having people around, enjoying my 三八sessions with yingsin in the office... good shopping... good times watching drama serials... interesting dinners... well... it's just 2 weeks

going to upload more pics soon!

Always see the dentist

clarence is now in the toilet trying to get his retainers out... forgot to take it out be4 coming to shanghai...

yingsin had to get medication for her wisdom tooth

who knows what else... be4 coming to shanghai or any exchange programme.. .always see the dentist first...

your friendly dentist promoter

Ben Teo

My buys

so i bought quite a few stuff already... spent a damn lot... below are a list...

Harry Potter!!!
A pair of shoes
A towel...
and...


i think the belts are cool

the socks that ben tan wanted for 30sgd


not so real levis and a pair of berms


the polo tees i bought so far... not all for me. some to be given to frens

Qi Bao - Old China

qi bao

roarrrr


photoshot


the smu shot


old pagoda


drunkard


小龙虾... Clarence say its the small drain prawns


stoning

Photos from the riverside (The Bund)

1st week of IA

started IA and i must say... i'm super bored. can't wait for our training to start. really not equipped to do anything. have to wait till next week until the training starts, then after that... woohoo! i can do some real work.

first week of work so far?

carmen and yanwen's company bus met in an accident but they are alright

yingsin (my company mate) had a wisdom tooth problem and i went with her today to the hospital to look for a dentist. we went to like 3 different hospitals den we finally found one that had a dentist. damn a lot of ppl there... think of a polyclinic, the busiest you have ever seen, times 5 the number of people. that's the scene there. but surprisingly, it was super fast. unlike singapore where there are like 10 rooms to see patients and only 3 of them have doctors, here in china, they have 10 rooms with 10 doctors all fully utilized. quite fast... though the nurses damn bo chup... the ppl like really talk among themselves instead of working... but somehow... it works. lol.

clarence has increased number of labs going on at the same time... 1 toilet break a day and can only sit down after 1630

hanbin, who is in the same company as clarence has friday off but he's just going to work to accompany clarence.

me and jianqing are dying of boredom... i have had like more than 10 toilet trips, at least 5 cups of milo, 3 cups of vit C, 2 cups of honey jasmine tea and like 15 cups of water. 2 hour lunch breaks and ya...

well... that's it for now

back to 岁冈风云...

The Victor Post Part 2

The amount of stuff we have for victor is getting lesser now... in a way... it should be a good thing. Reason? One day in office when carmen and victor were together, one of the office staff came to them and asked who's free to.... before she could finish the sentence, victor put up his hand. It's good to be enthusiastic, makes NTU look good ya... erm... not really when you complain about the thing you volunteered for is just data entry and it's damn boring. so now lesser interaction with carmen and yanwen... now lesser stories.

so now for victor stories from his house mates.

First thing that I found out is that he is a night owl and he sleeps damn late. there is one living room in his house and he takes it up by himself watching movies and drama serials. In my house here, everyone is watching it together but there should be a reason why his house mates commented that he watches those shows alone until about 3 to 4 in the morning. Then the first thing they see when they wake up the next morning? The lights all on (tv if i not wrong is also left on), the toilet stuck and about to overflow, the main door left wide open... and ya... we have to pay for the utility bills.

His house mates also feel quite weird around him now. They wake up to go for lunch together to find him sleeping, they come back and still find him sleeping till like 4 in the afternoon... where got people go China and don't go around to explore. But ya... that's him. When they cook dinner together, he decides to be anti-social and go out buy dinner for himself.

And so one day, he decides to start this conversation;
Victor: hey, can my friend come over to stay for a few days?
Housemate: your friend?
Victor: ya
Housemate: your friend from?
Victor: from online
Housemate: from online?
Victor: ya, met from this site, haven't met the person before.
Housemate: so how long do you know this person?
Victor: about 3 days.
Housemate: and you want him to stay at our place?
Victor: it's a girl, so i think it should be alright. I joined this site and we are required to let other people stay at our place
Housemate: erm... you go ask the others can?

So the final verdict?

No.

To think i felt bad seeing him go for dinner alone... i thought his housemates pangseh-ed him and they were damn evil. but ya... he pangseh-ed his housemates. sigh...

me lost in shanghai...


after a big killing at qipu (mine is hidden in my bag)


big eats


at nanjing

The Victor Post Part 1

So today is the first day of IA and Victor, Carmen and Yanwen went to Sulzer together with another 2 more ppl. The 5 of them, together... into Sulzer Shanghai.

The standard thing to do is to go to the Human Resource office to settle the administrative matters and that is just what they did. But what one wouldn't expect an intern to do is to go to the HR office and say, "Can I change department? My senior said that I can't learn much in the current department I'm in (Technology Department), can I request for a change of department." So ya... Obviously his request was declined.

Next up was meeting the boss. And yes, we all do love interns who are enthusiastic... to the extent of asking everyone what can he do... like can he help in any computer stuff, data entry, make coffee for them, sweep their cubicle for them?! Initially its quite funny and people can take it as a joke, but when it doesn't stop... obviously everyone know he is serious.

So we have more... Where got people first day of work keep walking around and looking at what people do. Trying to be friendly? Yes.. that's all good... but till the point when it disturbs people? Obviously not! So the boss... the natural thing to do was to (as quoted) "(Snapped finger) Victor, come into my office now." and told him to go back to his desk. So if you can't walk around, might as well pull your chair in the middle of the isle, IN FRONT of the boss's office and try to talk to the other people aka Carmen and Yanwen. Talk... ok... make stupid remarks and disturb people's work? Gone case... First day... spoil the impression of all the NTU people who went or GIP.

And you think that's all? We haven't finish. So we got someone who overheard this conversation between Victor and a China girl who was working there at Sulzer. This is how it went (translated into english); (China Girl is CG)

CG: So how old are you know?
Victor: That's a really sensitive question!
CG: But you're a guy, why should it be sensitive?
Victor: Then you guess how old am I?
CG: How to guess how old you are?
Victor: If I tell you I'm 19, would you believe?
CG: Ok...
Victor: I look you right? I look like I'm 19 right?
CG: Sort of.
Victor: So how old do you think I look?
CG: I think you look 9 years old bah..
Victor: It doesn't matter how old I look, it's what's in here (points to his brain) that matters.
CG: I'm saying that it's your mind that is like a 9 year old, not how you look.
Victor: Oh... but I'm actually 29 years old.

As the conversation was too horrible to listen any more... it just ended there...

We will have more of 60mins with Victor... HOPEFULLY NOT! next time...

1st Day at work

super slack day at work... went to work, sat there for a while and filled up some weird form and slacked for even more.

finally they brought us to see the supervisor... talked to him for a while, then they showed us to another cubicle... slacked even more... slack and slack... then we looked around the cubicle and found some manuals and we used that to pretend to slack even more. sigh... super slack day...

lunch was super powerful. Rice can choose 2 meat and 3 vege, got a soup/dessert, another fruit, one more appetizer, even can take some man tou... lol

venture:
so the ppl at venture had it worse.. one of the project engineers juz quit and one of the GIP guys, jiesheng, had to take over him. He even had to sit in for the engineers meeting.

givaldan:
clarence and hanbin had it tough today. Lab lab lab... lab in chinese and 2 labs at one time. damn powerful. clarence now power in chinese up by like 4 levels. he had to do like 2 labs at one go and non-stop. finish work still nv finish yet... do until they cannot catch the shuttle bus.. damn sad case...

sulzer:
this one needs a whole new blog entry... the victor entry

My place (that i've been saying is quite cool)

woohoo... this is the mambo flooring im talking about and the living room... a bit messy but ya... this is the day 1 picture that we took when we first stepped in so its a bit messy. it is much nicer now.

GIP group pic

well... this is the first day picture of the whole group of us who went shanghai. if you see your friend in the picture, it means he or she is in shanghai now... lol..

ok... 1 week over

i think im adapting quite well to shanghai. maybe its because of the accommodations that we have. its really quite nice. feels a bit like a mix between hostel and home. got frens here like clarence carmen and hanbin. making a few new frens like jianqing and yanwen.

staying together really is quite fun. got loads to laugh about and ya... cant wait for work to start.

i found out that i went to a lot of places with my family on our last family trip to china. like my family was staying in one of the hotels along nanjing bu xin jie (nanjing no through road) which is currently the centre of everything and the place we have somehow walked through like 4 to 5 times within this week without knowing it. i went up the weird tall building by the bund with my family which we went for a sightseeing tour around. ah chuan brought me to cheng meng miao which i also have been before... i dunno... i thought going the same place twice would be boring but den... im having loads of fun. its really different going with different ppl...

lol... now trying to add pictures... need to exercise sia... sian

Blogging entries...

well... everyone is blogging themselves happy here. hanbing and clarence are doing daily entries.

clarence is nikefusion.blogspot.com
hanbing is http://overseaSGuy.blogspot.com

clarence uploads most of his pics but its mainly about him... still need to find an efficient way to upload photos. lol... until next time bah. check out their blogs, their entries more detailed. anyway what they go thru is really what i am going thru as of now. lol...

hmm... nearing the end of week 1

well... friday has come to an end and now preparing to go slp.

found quite a few interesting places in shanghai already.

we found the shopping heaven Qi Pu Lu.

we were at the weird river town Qi Bao.

we went to some pagoda near Qi Bao.

we found the super cheap damn nice food district juz along Long Hui Lu.

we went to the orchard road of china which is between Nanjing Dong Lu and Ren Ming Guang Chang.

the carrefour at da mu zhi

the shopping warehouse along Longyang Lu.

the huge national park along Hua Mu Lu.

and a few more stuff...

the food here is a bit saltier or a bit oilier, sometimes both. but i think im adapting quite well. the air here at longyang seems always hazy but den i think its not that bad. reasonable bah.

the water here is not portable but den the beer is cheaper den water. (i haven drank any yet... recovering from FOC and nv managed to stay awake to drink with the others)

the weather they said will be damn hot but until now... all i think is that the air is more stagnant rather than the weather is hot.

shopping is amazing but i have to control myself or else will really lose control. bought something for my sis already though.

the kfc is damn bad. the pizza is damn ex... but the small hawkers in the blue collar areas... DAMN NICE! the secret shops in shopping centres where the locals patronize... HEAVENLY.

jogging here got more to see but always scared get lost and the roads not very even...

the housing that the CPG provides is really pleasant to stay in.

it's quite fun to stay with the ppl in this house. really enjoying myself here in GIP china. already thanked clarence for psychoing me to come for gip with him. in a way... it's a good break from singapore. still miss the guys and girls in singapore though. wished that there were more of them here with me here but ya... they still talk to me a lot on msn so like dun miss them too much yet.

so as of now... my gip exp is a 8 out of 10.

spending...

currently im the biggest spender here in gip china out of my roommates.

clarence is at 1.2k
hanbing at 1.1k
jianqing at 1.6k
im at 1.7k...

i really dun recall spending so much but ya... im having fun.

need to cut down on spending until my money comes in... sigh...

China Post no.1

Cannot tahan liao... doing the Nueve post until damn kek... do 3 pages on Microsoft word still haven't finish. Will do up a china post first before i forget about everything... lol...

Day 0
The day i left. Loads of ppl came to send me off (together with clarence and carmen (though i still think the majority came from the ppl sending clarence off... lol)) But it's great to noe that the CBE family is so close knit. Nearly all of the nueve main comm came. Nearly all the seniors came and a few of the freshie GLs. Super touched.

Got quite a few gifts... i think the scrap book was a damn nice idea though somehow like some of the pages like not filled at all... a bit sad that not everyone wanted to fill it but bo bian... it was nice as it was. Wah wee wee also gave me some nice stuff which i wun post. Best fren clique gave me a damn nice pic which i still put behind my bed on the shelf here in china. Got a few other stuff like brownies and fridge magnets. all damn nice gifts.

Day 1
Woke up and had a weird breakfast on the plane which did not seem to have enough salt on the eggs... make that enough flavor on the eggs. Landed and met up the GIP ppl. went to the Shanghai NTU base camp (the GIP office in shanghai). They served us a buffet spread breakfast which was not too bad... den went to our place, address;

1880 Longyang Road, No. 46, Room 902
Shanghai China

Initially it looked a bit weird but den... i now think its damn nice.

Went to kfc for a horrible horrible lunch... where got kfc combo meals only one combo got the chicken one... and the chicken also so lousy... yuck

Went to metro to buy some stuff to clean up the house with after that... bought like toilet cleaners, floor cleaners, dishwasher, grease remover and a whole lot of other cleaning detergents. ended up spending like 500+ rmb... lol... worse part is... we had to pay for our own plastic bags. but the best buy of the day was the 12 glasses for 6.30RMB. damn powerful.

the cleaning up took a while but den after it was done, the house really looked not bad. me and jianqing went for some supper after that. jap sushi! woooohooo... we sort of covered up our little treat by buying supper for everyone else... lol

on the way back, met charlene and tiong and brought them over to our place on which they commented is damn nice... i think so too (we got the mambo flooring)

well... the first day ended like that... more or less

day 2
initially we wanted to go to the "market" to do some shopping but den we decided to go carrefour to buy some stuff like bedsheets first. the carrefour is located at a place called da mu zhi which directly translates to big thumb. but the chinese decide to call it thumb plaza.

went on a shopping craze. damn a lot of stuff to buy at damn low prices. the bedsheets were like going for 29.99rmb to 49.99rmb. we bought pillows that wun deform and pillows that had oolong tea smell. there were 2.90rmb slippers and bamboo mahjong sets. we took like a million things and ended up... 1394rmb. madness

after that we met up with the rest of the GIP ppl at ren ming guang chang to do some orchard road style shopping. i think i stayed around there before in one of the hotels with my family on one of our holidays but ya... it was quite nice walking around though we didn't buy anything at all. the highlight was our own food hunt where we just kept going around looking for weird stuff to eat. we had some imitation ice kachang, some pig fats biscuit (rou bing), lots of dumplings and the AMAZING SUPER POWER PACKED fried xiao long bao.

ok, so here's the story, everyone knew of clarence's craving for xiaolongbao so we all went around looking for xiaolongbao for him... the WHOLE gip clique. we finally found one shop so we went in to check out the prices. so i was standing on the stairs ready to go up when this guy pushing a pram came in and commented on the prices saying it was damn ex. then i told him that expensive one was for the crab digestives xiaolongbao and the normal one was like 3.5ormb per pc and he said it was super ex. he told us about this place where all the locals went for xiaolongbao and it was damn nearby. So we all followed him, out onto the big street den into a small street and into a shopping centre where we found a huge queue of ppl waiting to eat this fried xiaolongbao. Then one of us noticed that one girl was missing, yiling. She didn't have a handphone nor her wallet with her. was damn worrying. a few of us went out to look for her all over the place. took us like 20mins before we could find her. oh man... damn scary. she totally emo-ed. I can understand how she feels. its really a damn scary feeling.

anyway, after finding her, we had the amazing fried xiaolongbao which when i say is amazing, it really is amazing. the skin though thicker was damn flavoured. the soup was damn shioky. the mean was tender... woooooooo im in xiaolongbao heaven



hahaha... update till here first. damn tired. need a break

hm...

a bit delayed... but pls wait for updates. like keep moving around here in china. connection a bit weird. but doing my new entry. should be up by the end of this week