Huangshan

The photos are up on my facebook.

GIP Shanghai FAQs

Well... people have been asking and I thought rather than just keep telling them the same things over and over again, i've decided to do up a GIP FAQs to ans any questions that they may have.

These questions are answered to the best of my knowledge

About work

Q. What companies are there? And what do they do?
A. Venture - Electronics, MAE, EEE
Schering-Plough - Pharmaceutical, CBE & BIE
Givaudan - Fragrances (Lab work), CBE
Emerson - Process Control Automation, CBE, MAE, EEE
CPG Facilities Management - Business, NBS & Engineering
Wilsonn Partners - No idea
Univac - Software, duh... computer engineering
Sulzer - Distillation and separation, CBE, MAE, EEE, NBS

Q. What is the pay like?
A. For those I know of:
Venture - 2.8k
Schering-Plough - 2k
Givaudan - 2k
Emerson - 3k
CPG Facilities Management - 2k (this one is i think)
Wilsonn Partners - No idea
Univac - ?
Sulzer - 3.2k (But have to pay for own lunch, But... comes with ice cream! 6RMB/Lunch)

Q. What do you do at Emerson?
A. Process Control Automation, not dealing with the actual process control but mainly doing the controller's panel design, instrument indexing, hardware and software, component design, documentation, visual basic programming, access, and a bit of weird stuff here and there.

Q. Which company do you think is the best? and why?
A. Depends on what you want. Though i feel Emerson is good, companies like Givaudan, Venture or Sulzer may give better work appraisals in terms of grading.

Q. Which company has good welfare?
A. I only heard from Sulzer, Givaudan and Venture but among theses, Sulzer gives a lot of free goodies like BOXES of peaches, mooncakes and stuff. Emerson has lots of stuff in the pantry and good food for lunch and dinners (and dinners are provided along with reimbursement of transport when you OT). The other 2 are just average

Q. How is the work environment?
A. Good, the colleagues are super nice and are always willing to teach, so long as you are willing to ask. Good supervisor also.


Accommodations

Q. How are the accommodations?
A. Not too bad... quite similar to HDB at home.

Q. How did you get the accommodations?
A. Through this company CPG Facilities Management, the one the GIP office in NTU liased with.

Q. How much do you pay a mth?
A. Per person, SGD 200/mth for 6 months. together with a 2 mth deposit so total is 1.6k for my whole stay (400 will be refunded if there is no problems with the house once we leave). An additional SGD 60 (one time payment) for internet set up & payment of bills services. Another 20SGD for internet for 6mths

Q. Are the conditions good?
A. Ya

Q. Is it accessible?
A. Next to Train Station (MRT), CPG does a good job in finding places near train stations

Q. How are the rooms?
A. I chose twin sharing, so we have 6 people in a 3 room flat with one living room, a small dining room and a kitchen + 2 toilets

Q. Is it far from work?
A. I stay at Pudong area, which is near my work place. so not that far. CPG will tell you how far your place is from work and will find you the best place to stay in. There are 2 main areas in shanghai, Pudong and Puxi. Half the companies are in Pudong and half the companies are in Puxi

Q. Which are is better?
A. Puxi has more of a night life and a whole lot of shopping. Pudong has a reasonable amount of shopping (less den puxi but still like the entire orchard amount of shopping). But my company is at pudong, cannot choose to stay in Puxi, too far


Food

Q. Hows the food?
A. A bit more salty, a lot more oily

Q. How much do you pay for food?
A. About 3RMB to 25RMB for a normal meal. 20RMB to 50RMB that for a good restauratnt meal. 50RMB for a normal buffet and up to 200RMB for a really good buffet. oh ya... a whooper costs 13RMB

Q. How's your company food?
A. I can easily say, one of the best in GIP Shanghai (but then... there aren't many companies to compare)


Expenditure

Q. How much do you spend?
A. Depends on how you want to spend, Budget you can spend about 100 to 150 SGD per mth, if you don't budget, i have heard of people spending up to 1.1k SGD per mth

Q. How come so much?
A. Shopping and traveling

Q. Hows the shopping there?
A. Good, if you come to Shanghai, let me know, I will pass you a list of good shopping places and the prices you can get stuff at

Q. Traveling?
A. Nearer places cost between 200 to 400RMB for a 1 day trip, 300 to 500RMB for a 2day 1night trip, and up to 1000RMB for a 3day 2night trip. My household is going Inner Mongolia for 5days during the break, the should cost us at most... at most 4000RMB.

Q. Groceries?
A. Carrefour, Our Lotus (like Sheng Siong) and a lot of mini supermarkets for all your needs

Q. Any others?
A. Bought an Iron with an Iron board, a set of cooking stuff (ya... i can cook a bit), hangers, clothes washing stuff like pails and detergents and other toiletries


Scholarship

Q. What about it?
A. Don't know, i didn't apply for it. But i know of people who applied and didn't get. And i dunno which part is the deciding factor


Weather

Q. Hows the weather?
A. Summer goes up to 40 degrees. Autumn is cooling, can be like genting so bring a jacket. Winter, haven't been through it but ya... heard its damn cold.

School

Q. How does the AUs work?
A. 6AUs of electives, can be made into 3-3 AHSS PE + GE/UE or 6AU AHSS PE or 6AU GE/UE

Q. What schools are there?
A. Fudan and Jiaotong

Q. Which one is better?
A. Ranking wise, Fudan is best in Shanghai, 3rd in China. Jiaotong is 2nd in Shanghai

Q. So?
A. Fudan you get to use the main campus which is quite cool and even has its own museum. Jiaotong is a branch campus.

Q. Distance from home?
A. For pudong people like myself, it takes about 2hours to get to either school so there isn't a difference. For puxi people, its nearby

Q. What are the school days?
A. Friday and Saturday.

Q. So many days?!
A. For Fudan, you can request to push the Saturday to Friday so you have a really packed friday but that means you can go traveling during the weekends. For Jiaotong, there are only Saturday classes for the 1st half of the sem.

Q. Exams?
A. I think Jiaotong has no exams but has essays. Fudan has 1 exam in which your batch will choose between 2 topics on which one you want to be test upon. Essays also are needed

Q. Any others?
A. I know Jiaotong brings their students to places like nanjing for travelling, Fudan doesn't but i still think Fudan is more fun. lol


Others

Q. Confirm can get GIP?
A. No idea, heard a lot of ppl got GIP, not sure if there is enough places for everyone but the sem 2 gip has 2 times as many space as sem 1 gip
I will update this once I can think of any other questions

Q. Overall how do you find GIP?
A. Fun


Well... I think thats all for now.

long dated post...

can't really remember when was the last time i posted, nor can i remember what i posted about...

but ya... lots of things have happened.

1. Facebook!

Started uploading my pics on facebook. too many pics to upload one by one here on blog.

I think the link is http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=599260499

go check it out and add me

2. Wuxi

Wangjian brought the whole lot of us to wuxi for a day trip. Clarence, Hanbin, Carmen, Yanwen, Jianqing, Yingsin, Jason, Eileen, Jianyou, me, Beibei (wangjian's gf) and Wangjian himself = 12 ppl.

Nv knew there was such a place known as a place as wuxi but when i went there... WOAH... damn cool. At first when we reached, wangjian found us a tour agent and i could see everyone's faces turn for the worst because of the experience they had in hangzhou.

But... the tour guide was damn zai. not only did he know what he was doing, he was damn friendly too and always offered to help us take grp pics.

we went to 三国城 first where we rushed in to catch this show. at first i was like... "let's just catch the first show and just skip the next one... sure damn boring one" man... was i wrong. Imagine the chinese shows where they have wars with the generals on horses riding around and fighting... well... got to see that in real life there. damn cool!!! they did stunts and loads of stuff on the horses ya... had a lot of mud splashed on me.

without even considering, we went to the next place to wait for the next show. and it was even better! heck the lousy singapore wushu performances. this one was much better. hanbin took a video of the whole show. how to describe it... in terms of gymnastics, if i could do juz half of what they could do, its better den most of the cheerleading gymnastics i've seen so far. in terms of the wushu, it's their living, of course its damn zai. if u have a place to go to... u have to go here.

and thats not the end, all the chinese serials where they have the royal palace and all... this is the place where u can find all this buildings... we even managed to catch a filming in progress.

played with swords, played with the weird obstacles, took a million pics... and that's only half the day...

next up was this 湖... i think its called 太平湖. cant really remember... but should be correct... its 5 times bigger den singapore. in the 湖, there's an island... and in the island... there's another 湖, which from the short of the 湖, it looks like an ocean. really beautiful place... just add me on facebook and see for yourself.

3. Family gathering

my parents came over to shanghai for a visit. brought them to the place behind my house, 龙汇路 for dinner on the first night. the first restaurant we went to, we sat down and they served us some soybean drink which i drank almost immediately... only to find out they din have what i wanted, 小龙虾. so we left. the next restaurant we had an overdose of 小龙虾, buy one get one free. lol... though the meat is very little... but its still nice. well... if any of you come shanghai to visit, this is one of the restaurants i will bring u to.

the next day my dad went hangzhou for some business and ah chuan (my cousin) took a half day off and bought my mum out to shop... my mum bought a luggage to filled it up with her shopping... madness... well... we went to 南京西路 at 吴街路 for dinner. one of the best places in shanghai to get food.

on friday, brought my parents to 上海科技馆 to do even more shopping. brought them to the A&F shop and many other places to get loads of stuff... but at the end of it... i din get anything at all. lol...

when my parents came... really felt like i missed them a lot... thank God they came. even if it's only for a while.

4. Huangshan

if you been to china and haven't been to 黄山, you have never and i mean NEVER been to china. It is the most beautiful place i've seen in like a damn long time. because it's autumn, the weather was damn good.

The scenery... oh man... it was breath-taking, awe-inspiring, captivating... i can just keep going on... and it's like no matter how many pictures i take, i can't seem to do justice to the sights i see there.

The first day we reached, we reached quite early and there wasn't a queue to go up the mountain. we got onto a cable car to get about halfway up the mountain... on the way... i fell in love with the view. wait... i fell in love with the place even before that... on the bus to 黄山, i was already in love with the place for it's beauty. anyway... back to the point. after the cable car... it was like another wow... it was another trigger happy photo taking session.

we were about to climb up 天都风, the 3rd highest peak but due to the eminent thunder, we couldn't do so... at least not that day itself... the tour guide said he would check the weather out the next day at 4am and let us know if it clears up and we catch the sunrise which was to be at 5.44am and climb the peak... kill 2 birds with 1 stone...

i woke up at 4.43am... i was like "we are going to miss sunrise! and miss the chance to climb the peak!" changed up and immediately woke some of them up, yanwen quickly changed and went up with me to go look for the tour guide... his reason? (Translated to english) "I thought you all didn't want to climb the peak." i was like... wth!!!! went back down the room and rushed everyone out and by 5.12am, we were at the front door of the hotel. not even properly equipped with a torchlight or even a raincoat (it rains at least 202 days out of 365 days in 黄山), we rushed out of the hotel. what took us like 1hour to get to the start of 天都风 the first time round, we took less den 10 mins to get there that morning... that started the climb...

think of vm... times 2... maybe 3... i think times 3... and a bit more... thin air, cold, wet, bad stairs, not much support, not much safety, at least 1000m above sea level... but the thought of the sunrise kept me going...

when you thought u were reaching the top, you just see another flight... and another after that... it happened to me more than 4 times i think... damn demoralizing... but by the time i reached the top... man... the feeling was amazing.

Reached at 5.45am. but it was too cloudy to see the sunrise. quite disappointed. waited for the rest of them to climb up, hanbin... den yanwen... den carmen...

we took a few pictures and took a break there. we really couldn't see anything at all and all nearly gave up until... we saw a slight glimpse of a peak of a mountain in the distance. we were damn excited. we waited... i prayed even more (had already started praying before that), and boom... there it was... the breath-taking, the awe... you know what i mean, view.

we stayed up there for another hour plus taking pictures... "天都风" The 3rd highest peak, the most difficult to climb and the steepest. At 1810m, we reached the peak.

There were other places like 非崔谷(at least i think it's written like this). It's a valley with small water falls and crystal clear blue water. another amazing place. a must see when at 黄山.

There were other places we saw like this shop that sold 蛇毒酒. one small cup of it cured clarence's one mth old cough (at least for that day). bought a lot tea, tasted the world's best 黑芝麻 at the 老街. saw some olden houses...

overall... i rate 黄山 as my most unforgettable trip as of now.

5. OT

Last but not least... like to say... started OT-ing. only chance to get things done in office. lol... but ya... it's fun with free dinners like subway, KFC or jap food.

OTs are always quite enjoyable. lol...


Remember to add me on facebook to see my pics... will be uploading 黄山 soon