shanghai (part 2)

hong kong & shanghai trip (continued)


let the pictures speak for themselves...


because.


yes. i'm too lazy to describe.

at hongkong airport!



duck rice with veges and octopus(??) at Mei Xin Maxim! super good, as you can already tell, the rice was the best! fragrant with that right bit of stickiness that i absolutely luurve!

omg. my fave drink in hk, some milky thing with black sesame ice cream and gui ling gao...heavenly!

Xu Liu Shan!! HK's most popular drink store! it's like every where, literally. every street i turn, i'll see one store. it's not that awesome what...i think i could make it too. we tried the watermelon drink with bird nest and jelly. alright lar. everyone said that it's super good but i think it's just okay, nothing uber uber fantastic about it...

Messy streets of hong kong! street vendors selling their paraphenalia by the roadsides!


and my dad snacking AGAIN!! gosh. i hate going on holidays with them cause they're always always eating every few hours!! old people arhz, only think about food, sighs~

then we flew off to SHANGHAI!!


My aunt's house in Shanghai! Super nice & cosy! Very expensive too. it's a good thing, it's paid by her company.

the locals around the area. i didn't take these pictures, my dad got up in the morning to take these snapshots(fyi, i was still fast asleep on my -very very hard- bed). it's a good thing they didn't notice. i wouldn't be surprised if someone beat my dad up for invasion of privacy, lolx.

oh, and the sun rises at around 4+am in shanghai!!! it's crazy! i thought my watch was broken when i checked my watch and it was 5+am yet the sun was shining super brightly outside. for a minute, i thought i was dreaming.

we went to the supermarket at the nearby shopping mall!

Look at all the PAOS!!

And look how they make their noodles!! really interesting! Didn't try it though:S they added veges and walnut sauce and tons of other sauces. D.E.L.I.C.I.O.U.S.

And then there were ham ji peng & tau guas too...

Look at the ostrich egg!! it's HUUUUGGEE! the one in the middle!



Oh, and did you know, it's against the law for shops to give plastic bags to customers??!!! Some crazy law set by the authorities in a bid to reduce pollution!! But that means we had to bring extra plastic bags wherever we went and sometimes when we forgot to bring, we had to carry out items of purchase around, really really dumb and irritating. grrr. i am like anti-anti-pollution now.

we also went to the gu chen which was filled with old buildings, typical of the old china and several touristy shops inside.

Look at what we saw! A hole in a wall, and whaddya know! People gambling inside! hurhur.




and that's with kayden, my cousin's doggie!! soooo adorable! but he poos EVERYWHERE, even in my room!! i thought i'd die of suffocation.




Bu Xing Jie! And we also ate Beijing Peking Duck there!

Typical Shanghainese food, oily and saltish! but nice!

Taken near 2 of my fave places in Shanghai - Science & Tech Musuem (famous for illegal vendors selling fake branded goods) & Qi Pu Lu (wholesale market)!

After about a week in Shanghai, we headed back and made a stopover in Hong Kong once more, where we stayed in a run down flat right smack in the middle of tsim tsa zui. It was a hostel meant for people on tight budgets, e.g. backpackers. The owners bought over a few apartments and changed the area into a hostel concept.

hmm. the corridor looks creepy here. as though it was taken straight out from some ghost flick.

and then there was Langham Shopping Centre! with my fave store - H&M! i wish they'd realise Singapore's market potential and open a store here already!!

hall supper!

HALL 16 SUPPERRR!!!!

went back to hall on wednesday to support my dear mojo-jojo's performance!


they performed a few acoustic songs, some of them were my faves such as Bic Runga's "Sway", The Killers' "Mr Brightside" and "Someday We'll Know" by Mandy Moore and The New Radicals.


they were awesome. ah! i reminsce of the good ol' days of smash inc!






it's so good to be back in hall again. though i hardly know anyone's left in hall, everyone seems to be a freshie now! gosh. i miss e lot who has left.

e buffet was good. surprisingly. corz it was pretty bad for the past 2 years. they had dim sum and honeydew sago! Yum yum. Me and lynette totally snacked on the buffet before it even commenced cause the girls wouldn't be able to eat once they started performing.

took lotsa pictures with my ol' friends from hall and my grand junior OG, Ronin!

Picture(left): (from left) wood, lynette, me!

Picture(right): me & cute sonia

Picture(left): Ronin & Chicanos!

Picture(right): me & huiting


Picture(left): (from left) king man, me, huiru, huiting & shyong wei

Picture(right): (from left) me, freddie & lichang

Picture(left): yong fu, king man, me & huiru! Boras rox!

Picture(right): xinni and i

Picture(left): xinni, yenni, me and huiting

Picture(right): chee heng(my ktv junior) & i

Picture(left): meijin and i

Picture(right): jap boy masaaki okasaki's band!!

Picture (left): chu bang (good-looking junior), xinni, huiting & i

hall 16 has made uni life for me so much more interesting. looking back, i don't know what i'd do if i didn't have the chance to stay in this wonderful place where i met and forged so many new friendships. it's no longer the same now, with all the fresh new faces (ah, even more cruel reminder of the fact that i'm already old and in my third and -gasp- final year!!) and it probably would never be the same fun as i had when i was in year 1 and 2. but i'd never the forget the memories it has left behind. we were the pioneers. and my heart will alwaz be with hall 16!

we had lotsa catching up that day. then went for supper with jo, eugene & benard. by the time i got home, it was 1+am, i was tired and sleepy. totally crashed and burned on my bed.

MOF!

met up with Luvena (my dear friend from UNB who came back to Singapore for the holidays)and Bee.

i FINALLY got to try MOF(Ministry of Food) ... ...

not fantastic though.

ate Tan-Tan ramen (y in the world would someone wanna give such a stupid name is beyond me). didn't like the smell of the minced pork. i could practically visualise the pigs being slaughtered just so they could become flavouring to my ramen :S not such a nice thought.

the desserts were very tempting, with the red bean pastes, rice dumplings, soft serve ice cream, back sesame paste, etc etc.

in the end.

i resisted temptation. (hurray!)

but i'm starting to regret every bit of it... i'm dreaming of my ang tau sa already...

after which, we went to kai kai at Bugis Village and i saw the most ridiculous packaging yet...

it was an exfoliator cream that said...

" XXXbrand, gets rid of horniness".

omg. seriously.

just went out to vivocity to watch Dark Knight.

it was awesome.

psychotic.

and violent.

just my cup of tea.

Back!

BACK!!

from the land of xiao long paos, rice cakes, mao zhe dong, very real fake branded goods & loud (rude) people....

SHANGHAI!! & a short 2 days in HK!!

These pictures, if you were wondering, are not from photostock! They were taken on my plane ride to Hong Kong :) it was such a gorgeous sight, so good advice everyone should heed: TAKE MORNING FLIGHTS!! THE VIEW IS MUCH TOO INCREDIBLE FOR U TO MISS OUT ON!!

My shanghai trip was in one word: AWESOME! and ermm... EXPENSIVE. We bought so much stuff, we had to buy an extra luggage(a fake mont blanc luggage) and it was filled to the brim! My best buy was a MULBERRY LEATHER BAG i got from the Science and Technological Musuem MTR basement in Shanghai!! It looks exactly like the pictures below except my bag is slightly lighter in colour.

>>> MULBERRY BEATS LV, GUCCI, MIU MIU, BURBERRY, CHANEL & all the BLAH BLAH BRANDS HANDS DOWN

I shan't blog about the trip in this entry though cause i've yet to upload all my pictures :S

We basically stayed in my aunt's apartment at "kang qiao ban dao" at Pudong. It was a three-leveled villa that was well-furnished and super pretty, with good security and a beautiful, serene lake just beside the house. The pictures above shows the mail box (don't ask me why i took a picture of the mail box, i have no idea either, i must have been pretty bored or was probably trying to act creative) as well as the neighbouring bungalows in the estate (on some days we'll walk around the neighbourhood so as to get to the big mall that is 20mins walk from my aunt's place).

My cute, lil' tomboy-ish cousin!! If i'm not wrong, the building behind is the clubhouse of the whole estate.

My colleague said that in Shanghai, millionaires are just a stone throw away but i don't think it's true just yet, judging from what i've seen and heard from locals. There's still plenty of poor people around there and the pay there for a sales assistant is only 1500rmb (meaning about 300SGD) per mth! Which Singaporean (in the right state of mind) would be willing to work for that measely sum???? My aunt's part-time maid is so poor, they can't afford fish and only save it for special occasions like new year. Sometimes, they can't even afford meat and she became a vegetarian because they had no money to buy meat.

WE SHOULD COUNT OUR BLESSINGS...

There's sooo many people in Shanghai alone, it's almost unbearable, 18million people!! Every weekday, u'd see tons and tons of people walking along the streets every single damn place. and i wonder...do these people ever need to work??!! what the heck are they doing strolling about on a 3pm afternoon on a week day? Even the trains are jam packed at these times! They'll literally shove you in until you feel suffocated. i daren't dare to imagine what it would be like taking the train during peak hours.......let's just say i wouldn't be surprised if someone actually died because he was being shoved and suffocated from the crowd. Competition is fierce too with the huge population, according to Siyi ( my cousin's 18 year old tutor), even people who come from good universities aren't guranteed a job.

I'm glad i'm from Singapore. Really.

at least of i don't hafta worry of dying in the public transportation

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FESTIVAL OF PRAISE (3rd AUG 2008)

Wendy, Me & Myrna at Kallang Indoor Stadium!

Just came back from FOP at the indoor stadium. this year the PARACHUTE BAND & Reuben Morgan came to lead praise & worship. i was kinda apprehensive about going for this year's FOP cause Delirious was not performing this time round, and they're the only Christian band that i actually like. but they were good nonetheless, Parachute had good vocals but the only thing that bugged me was that they left all the songs i knew to the very end!!!

And i thought the sermon was awesome too, i hardly ever, EVER praise a sermon (other than those preached by the ex-gay preacher, i can't remember his name at the moment) but i really thought today's preaching was good. Mark Conner was hilarious and what he said impacted me. All day, we expect people to do things for us, we go to church and hope for blessings upon us, we want the pastor to preach a good word for us, we want people to do things for us but we should stop this selfish behaviour and start adopting a SERVING attitude. We should be ready to serve the Lord and make sacrifices for him. When we die, we'll be asked 2 questions:

1) Do you know God?

2) What have you done with your life in respect to your relationship with God?

I don't want to die in a months time and say that "life was fun, i got a lot of stuff, i've been cool". I want a purpose, i want to serve God in things that i am best at doing but what??

I pray for a purpose, a goal, a dream.

Something to follow to the very end.