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!