1 Year Anniversary.

Love

China Day 27 - Hectic

Its close to the end of my OITP and im so looking forward to going back. I'd miss a little more things here that i initially said i would miss though.

The Shopping, i love the variety, The food/healthy breakfast, I like how without fail, i would eat eggs and watermelon everyday. Especially watermellon, i have it almost every meal. The Ice cream from the cafeteria. I love the fact that it is free flow.
The good, non humid conditions, I hadnt had a flu since getting off the plane.

I'd miss all of that.

But nonetheless, these are not everything.. I cant wait to get back to my loved ones. I cant wait to see the familiar faces again.

Well, i know i havnt been blogging much, Its because im too busy shopping, or too busy resting. Its mind boggling to write a blog when youre knackered from a whole day in school then lots of shopping, its just nicer to sit infront of the computer, and absorb information rather than tell it.

But the days are ending soon and i only have so little time to shop, so i guess, ill have to go on shopping marathons already.. god, i hate staying so far from the city..

Happy Anniversary Love

I'd like to say, that today, this day of the month, on the 9th, its a special day. Its a special day, because it marks another month I share this special connection with another person.

I love you Sharlene. I miss you with all my heart, and i cant wait to get home..

For now, ill just pretend you were here, and all would be well :)

China Day 14 - Wasted day

I slept till 12 today.. tried to wake up for breakfast but didnt want to get out of the really warm bed. Tried to get up to put in the laundry but didnt want to move away from the bed.

So i slept till twelve. and boy, i love it.

2 Weeks have actually gone. Like seeriously. Im still intact, and infact, the time is passing quite quickly.

The things i've grown fond of here are the barbequed lamb, the variety in the shopping stuff, the weather, and playing soccer. Practical lessons too.

Otherwise. Bleah. nah, im not coming here again..

Today my group of 7 people ventured into the wilderness to look for lamb sticks. and lamb sticks did we find.

Bleah, im lazy to continue a witty blog post, so youre stuck here with my factual boring "history lecture"-esque story of what i did today.

We found food, firstly, the Lamb sticks that im so fond of. If i didnt tell you before, its one of the best food here. Or not, THE BEST. (i havnt tried the damn duck tho, which is still sitting in my fridge as we contemplate how to eat it properly)

Anyway, then we split into small groups and shopped. Till 3, before we sat and ate (3 people ordered 20 dumplings for an equivalent of 1.20 Sing dollars. Whoopie. I was too filled up with lamb and 20 cent icecreams to bother eating more than 3.

So since the place wasnt interesting, i split with the group and decided to go shop in another place alone. And i loved the freedom.

I was a bit lost as it didnt look like anything in the maps, so i just went to the nearest building, and shopped, then to the next one, and the next one. Eventually rounding the large circle of malls and coming back to the same place.

Empty handed, i still had a few more minutes to go, so i walked out of the circle of malls, down to the streets at the back. Nothing much either. Oh wells.

Tired, i must have walked for miles. So i headed back to the station, then met my group at this restaurant near the hotel and watched them have dinner. I wasnt hungry yet, so i decided to take back some macdonalds. I love their chicken sandwhich..

Anyway, slept a bit on the bus back to the hotel, but it only made me more sleepy. And then here i am.. uploading photos and blogging, not really feeling any pinch despite the fact that theres a mini test tmr, and my results for my semestral exams are coming out tomorrow. hmm. bleah, im confident okays. Cept for calculus of course.

lol this pic gave me false hope.

China day 12 - Soccer

The day was overcast, grey and cold.

Nonetheless, it was a more interesting day at school than usual. I dont know why but i was completely knocked out during the morning class, like, sometimes, i would forget to reopen my eyes after blinking.

The first hour was okay, i dont know why but i was quite in a good studying mood, then after that i kinda became really flaccid..

Lunch came as a gift.. I didnt want the teacher to spot me being all floppy the whole day, and i was glad that lunch time came. I slept a bit more while the class slowly emptied the classroom and made their way to the cafeteria some 10 mins away.

Then, having heavy feet, i dragged my way there by myself. Listened to "Rage against the music" and put the song "sleep now in the fire" on loop.

Food was semi good today, as it was a public holiday and no one was using the cafeteria but our group, so they cooked french fries and meat, more "children friendly" foods.

Went back, and it was practical time. The teacher brought us to the workshop to point out the components that we have learnt in the classes..

but because its a big group, only a small amount of people were able to fit in the confined spaces under the aircraft engine, so not everybody understood what was going on..

I tried to get as close as possible to listen however, sometimes the other people are talking too loud and sometimes the teacher shifts position and im unable to see what he is referring to..

So i always had to go back and ask my friends, which are usually as confused as me. oh wells.. time to study the manual then..

The fun part came when some people wanted to dismantel one of the engine fan blades.. And he let us do it.. then he also assigned groups to dismantel simple things.

Another group got to dismantle another engine, which had much larger blades.. and our group got to dismantle the engines rear bearing case..

So we got our wrenches and started un screwing. Heh, and when the cover to the bearings finally opened. Gosh, the smell. 1 words keeps coming to my mind. "chao chee bye".

I dont think it smells anything like smelly body parts though, more of.. other stuff.


I dont know, but it smells godly funky, like lots of dead fish or squid, with a coppery smell. with lots of other funky undescribable smell..

JQ says it smells like someone rubbed his shit with salted vegetable and left it in the bearing case for a while to decompose.

Anyway, it was all fun, the oil looked like squids ink, with a tinge of navy blue in it. But i suspect its not the real engine oil, but just some oil used to preserve the parts when its stationary.

So that was fun, and since its a friday, 2 groups decided to go out to play soccer..

It was really fun, and i had never ran so much recently. The weather really helps keep us comfortable, and i think the other guys played the full 90 mins.

Scored 2 goals, :) happy that my skills are still there, just dont have confidence on the ball and also making silly mistakes.

Oh wells..

So im back home now, with no pictures in hand after a fun day. heh. srry.. i got lazy with the camera.

Ill bring my camera along the next time round, i promise. :)

It'll be another 2 weeks more before i get home.. and i cant wait.

Sharlene would be going to HK for 1 week, so thats good too since she hates staying at home.. at least it would keep her mind occupied while im away so she wont think about being lonely..

Yay. im in quite high spirits, probably cuz of soccer today too ba.. mmmm

hehe hope you like it sharlene :)

China Day 11 - Shopping

Today was a good day, though it didnt start out as what i would have liked.

I woke up at 7am, and thought, ahh, wth, ill go back and sleep.. Since i have always waked up at 7.40am, i still have another 40 mins of sleep..

Apparently JQ woke me up again at 7.40, telling me that he was going out already, so usually, ill get up then and start preparing for school, however, this time, i dont exactly remember why i decided to sleep more.

So the next time i woke up was when my group leader and JQ burst into my room telling me to wake up. I thought it was a joke. Hahaha

I was still in a daze, and part of my mind was still trying to look for sharlenes skirt, cuz i dreamt that i was in her room. Lol

I got out in like 2 mins. It was a record. But i never been this late before, and when i finally got up on the bus at 8.22 (the bus should leave at 8.15), everyone in the bus clapped for me.

Gosh how embarrassing


Nonetheless, school was tiring as usual, but i was really fresh cuz i found out that i could bring tea to the classroom, so i brought some down from the canteen..

JQ was shocked at the amount of coffee-mate i put in my tea.. (i was trying to make milk tea using coffe-mate).. haha \


Anyway, it kept me awake even though everyone was falling asleep around me.


I had plans for this night, and it was to go out and shop by my self since i hated being in groups. That plan was foiled when the teacher assigned us by groups. So i was stuck to the group for a long time and couldnt go around by myself.

So i basically brought them to where i shopped earlier on, then we broke up into smaller groups and me and another guy went shopping. We walked really quick since he was looking for specific things and we skipped a few floors. Saw a lot of things that sharlene would like, or i'd like sharlene to have.. haha tempted to buy a lot of unnecessary stuff..

Then after that it was back to the hotel, but not before having my dinner, eating a 60Cents stick of lamb that is so damn nice, that i'd consider going back there just to buy it again.

yumm..

No pictures, unfortunately, cuz i intend to go out alone initially and didnt want to get mugged.

missing someone..

Although i havnt been talking about her in the previous past blog posts, it doesnt mean that i have completely forgotten about her. for the way i write blogposts while overseas, i try to recount what has happened during the day, and i gets a bit cold, since i dont put any thoughts outside of what subject is being discussed.

But for those who want to know, shes always constantly on my mind. Whether it is during breakfast, school, during practicals, dinner, and at night. Every small fragment of a memory with her, would replay..

Most of the times, its the simple advice of, "come back in one piece". Others are more emotional, like the last time we danced together, or that day in the cash exchanger stall. Sometimes its calculation, of how long more can i stand being away, and ill imagine the week without each other, and then become sad.

1 month is a long time.

The more cheerful memories are the more recent ones. Her playfulness and mischeviousness, even while on skype with her. Her constant attempts to make me like gay/fat/hairy guys, or nasty pictures of fat people wearing sexy clothings.

Others that really makes me smile is when i imagine her sleeping soundly, or doing any other mundane activity. The peaceful smile on her face while she sleeps, or the look of concentration when she is at work, makes me smile easily.

And without fail, those memories would always make me smile to myself.


Shes a special girl, especially special to my heart. I love her, and it doesnt change, just like how she will always be special to me. in her own lovely ways. :)


<3

China Day 8 - School as usual

Today happened just like any other school day, and i have nothing much to talk about, or share about...

We started on a new topic today, and it is going to take us 6 days to complete this topic. One of the longest topic during this course.

We are learning about the engines now, and the proper maintainence of the engine. Our teacher assures us that what we are learning, is the same as what the people in the real world are learning, as engineers for the pratt and whitney engine.

Im quite flattered. We are just still students. And we already can say that "hey, i know how to maintain that engine". And at the end of the day we would have a certificate that proves it.

Fantasies aside, theres nothing much to talk about. I didnt take pictures the whole day till at the end of the day, after im back in the hotel room.

The sky was beautiful with a wisp of clouds, and planes were landing at the airport.

So i took the opportunity to take photos of planes. and they turned out quite well..

It was so nice too, when the sun shone into our room, but because of the limitations of the camera, i couldnt take the scene because either it looked too bright, or it looked too dark.

Took some pictures from JQ's camera too, cuz i was lazy to change my camera lens to a wider lens. will get those photos from him later...

Other wise, that was the day.. a nice resting day..

China Day 7 - Shopping

Its sunday, and today, the class is split into 2 groups. The majority wanted to go to a theme park (costing some 35 singapore dollars), while the rest of us, seeing that its not worth it, decided to go out alone by ourselves..

Since we were incharge of our own plans, we only woke up at 11 plus and took the 12.30 shuttle bus out to town.

I woke up late so was frantically running around asking the receptionist and staffs about the various shopping areas and stuff..

Luckily, one of my group members is quite fluent in chinese, so i grabbed him from his little chat group in the lobby and got him to translate what i wanted to say. hahah

What i found was 2 additional shopping areas that we havnt heard of (its mostly for locals) and also, i found out a place full of warehouses that sell stuff.. Hmm so its all good, as i have many more places to go already.

After that, when we boarded the bus, no one was quite sure what the teacher had planned to bring us today, so i asked him and he told me it was this old shopping place full of antiques and shit.

and im like thinking, oh sian. So i told him about my plans to go shopping and also, since the new shopping place is quite close by, i told him that we could visit that place after we finished the antiques place...

So we walked the antiques place, and it didnt really entirelly peak my interest, it was quite boring. The place just had lots of custom jade or stone stamps, (those chinese type), jade seals, lots of painting shops and brushes. The pace was slow, and i was impatient, heh.

We finished walking the East street, but now we were looking for food, we walked on further, till we found a decent looking place to eat at. We passed by many shops on the way, but they were dingy roadside shops, and we didnt want to get a stomach ache.

The food wasnt good. I ordered beef and potato rice, but there was like 95% potato and 5% beef. It wasnt really a good stall anywawy..

After lunch, we walked back the way we came, as the teacher wanted to visit the West street now, i couldnt take the slow pace anymore, so i decided to form my own group and go to the shopping place early.

Me plus JQ and Jasper split from the rest of the group, and we headed off to the shopping center.

We didnt really know where we were going, so we wandered around, when we reached the place, emerging from the subway exit, it was quite an amazing sight, before us stood a few shopping malls, from high end looking ones to low end looking ones.

And what caught my eye was the pedestrian bridges. It was very large and had open air escalators. It was the first time i have seen escalators in the open air, i always thought they werent really weather resistant.

The first mall we went to was full of high end shops, so we went outside, slightly demoralised, but we aimed for the older looking buildings across the road, so we went there.

On the way there were those street stalls, and we shopped. It was good shopping, and i bought a nasty singlet. Juicy coutoure shoes were going at 5 singapore dollars. wow.

Jasper bought a watch for 10 singapore dollars, its a really nice watch, and we managed to get it down from like 20.

After that, we visited the ajacent shopping mall, and boy, it was a Girls heaven. 5 of the 6 floors were girls stuff. And we still shopped like crazy :)

We all agreed that it was a good shopping mall, better than the one at the famous silk road.

After shopping, we went back to the silk road place to catch a 8.30 bus. Nearly missed the bus because it came too early. Luckily, we all managed to fit into the bus, as it was already filling up quickly.

Went home, plopped our stuff down, and i got ready to upload the pictures of the loot. heh.

Anyway, it wasnt a really long day, but it was definitely a good day. I realise that whenever i split from the main group and form my own little group, we always get to see more things and have a better day than the rest.

oh wells.

As usual, photos will be uploaded later :)

Day 6 - China, forbidden city

A free day today, yet we still had to leave the hotel at 8. Our teacher had booked a bus for the class and we were to head to the forbidden city and also visit the temple of the heavens today.

We first visited the temple of heavens, which consisted of 2 large circular temples and really really large flat pieces of marbled floor.

It was quite meaningless without a tour guide, explainig the history that happened here, and to us, it was just a large expensence of space that was quite awesome.

Thinking of it now, it was probably filled with thousands of people or prayer materials or something. Yes, its quite meaningless without a tour guide..

We spent a huge amount of time in the temple of heavens, which was quite a wastage since there wasnt much to see in the temple of heavens. But since it was a large group, (not to mention, filled with complete i****s, they were so distracted/amazed by stupid things that they kept stopping to take photos whenever they saw something amazing.

An example? People using a large paint brush, painting caligraphy on the floors using just water. My classmates spent like 10 mins taking photos and being in awe, and then when they finally moved ahead, they realise that there is another man doing the same thing, and they would be equally amazed.

God.

We spent a good morning in that silly place, and then after we had lunch, we set off to walk to the forbidden city, through the tian an men square.

Yes, the place that has been shown on countless occasions on news and stuff. Im actually in it. And its impressive. Seeing the large Chinese flag flying up high over this epic parade square brought some pride to me. (oh man)..

It got me thinking why singapore did not have such things that made singaporeans proud. bleah.

The place was huge, and magnificient, only marred by the constant smog that blankets the city.

Pictures would never describe how big it looks in real life, its one of the things you must feel for your self. And not to mention, the sense of Epicness is heightened by the fact that so much history has taken place there.

We walked some distance, but we didnt really mind, the weather was cool and it wasnt as humid as it is back home. Soon we were at the gates of the forbidden city.

And boy, how epic was the wholle thing.

I had my wide angle on my camera yet its so hard to even capture everything due to the scale.

The buildings of the forbidden city are built atop high walls that are like 4 stories tall, and the buildings are about 4 stories tall to. So added up, you can just imagine how high and large the whole place is..

The pace was a lot faster this time, Vicky, our guide from pratt and whitney was rushing us through the forbidden city, and we barely have time to stop and take pictures.

Considering how spread out we were, due to the fact that some people were left behind when they wanted to take pictuers, while some are ahead of the group, its quite surprising that we had no problems of missing persons during the entire trip.

Forbidden city looks exactly like in the chinese shows. Remember theres always this scene where this messenger is running through the many doors, past guards, down the center of the palace, to eventually pass the msg to the emperor while panting heavily?

Totally true. And actually being there, you can really tell why. The distance you have to cover while running to the emperor, is really long.

The whole scene looks more epic in real life too..

Im sure a picture tells a thousand words, so ill leave you with some pictures later on.. i have a ton of pictures to sort through today... hmm

thus, im just posting this post up first, for those who are curious.. heh..

PICTURES!