Foreign Memories

Beijing Trip, 7th - 14th December 2004

2004-12-15T10:47:00.000+08:00

6th Dec 2004, 1030pm

arrived at changi airport, checked in.. and ready to go on board CA976 *Air China*

7th Dec 2004, 630am

arrived at beijing international airport and it was freezing the minute i stepped outta the airport. we were immediately targetted by hoards of drivers offering us a ride at ridiculously high prices. they were rather intimidating, but that didn't bother us. :) after confirming that there's a room at the hotel mom stayed in the last time she went to beijing, we were approached by this lady who offered to send us to 爱华宾馆 ( ai hua bin guan ) at a reasonable price. and boy, beijing drivers have superb driving skills and horrendous driving attitude - they use the horn every 10 seconds, 'cheong' red light all the time, 3 cars in 2 lanes, drive in the opposite directions, don't give a damn about zebra-crossings and psdestrains.... basically, the cars can go on all areas, as long as there's ground/space. there's traffic jam 24/7, and basically, many would say that the zebra-crossing areas are not for pedestrains, but for zebras.. i cringed in my cramped backseat with mommy, clinging on to our dear lives as the driver weave in and out of trucks, lorries, bicycles, cars at high speeds.

the scenery during winter is as gorgeous as ever. :) i love the bare trees! and the architecture!! haha.. took quite a few of them and here's two taken in the cab. :)

food in beijing is, erm, quite terrible, except maybe for the higher priced restaurants. the breakfast that greeted us at the hotel was not quite to our liking. i love the singapore-style man-tous, but not these!!

they don't look very appetising, do they?

after a erm, light breakfast, we proceeded to the hospital to visit my mom's friend's (aunt xiaocui)baby girl, who's just recovered from pneumonia and is waiting for us to go home. :) it's business rightaway, with me sleeping through the one hour plus journey to her house as my mom discussed all the cheongsam stuff with her. *yawn* haha.., anyway, her baby's so cute and she's got such a beautiful name, 许蔓琪 (xu manqi). :)

oooh.. 小蔓琪 xiao manqi!! :)

08th Dec 2004

first day of restocking! we went to 木樨园 (muxiyuan) wholesale centre early morning to get silk fabrics. they are super heavy man.. and to think my mom bought 10metre per design she chose, you can imagine the weight. thank god the wholesale centre closes early, at 530pm (haha!!) or my arms will break carrying all those fabrics for her. anyway, it gets dark really early during winter, for by 5pm, it looks as if its 12 midnight..really can't get used to it.

next, we went to 前门 (qian men)'s 瑞福祥 (rui fu xiang), this famous silk store to get this particular piece of fabric that couldnt be found in 木樨园 (muxiyuan). took some photos there! :)

we got back to hotel and was surprised to see so many tv programs on tv! there are at least 20 channels, and guess what? i stumbled upon this really nice hongkong drama serial, 谈判专家(tan pan zhuan jia), and the way beijing channels show their tv programs is so shiok!! three episodes at a go! :D and you know what? i finish watching the last episode on saturday, before i leave on monday! haha... and to think i was frantically searching for the drama's vcd during the next few days. :P speaking of vcds and dvds, they are dirt cheap in china.. S$2 per piece. didn't get much though. couldn't carry them... our luggage is overweight with all my mom's stock... :( and er, got a new god pa in beijing! this lecturer from hangzhou (dr xu) cum manager at one of the fabrics shop for god knows what reason liked me so much he wants me to be his god daughter. anyway, to cut the story short, he's a nice fatherly guy and he's serious about being my godpa. he treated us to dinner at his place together with his shop assistant and brother-in-law a few days later. :)

09th and 10th Dec 2004

these two days were once again devoted to buying fabrics and chinese-style jackets. the latter was bought at 亚秀市场 (ya xiu shi chang) and 天亚 (tian ya) got the cosmetics i want at 亚秀 (yaxiu) and 天亚 (tian ya)! and lotsa nice bras :p and very pretty 肚兜 (du dou) :D haha.. and i realised one thing. china's toilets never changed since i visited 10 years ago! they don't use doors!!! the public toilets in the streets are still doorless and disgusting as ever. the ones in the shopping centres, have doors that can't be locked. i saw this cleaner mopping the cubicle floor as one old lady was shitting. that old lady even smiled at the cleaner!! YUCK! stinks BIG time! tian ya's toilets are slightly cleaner.. but their doors are still unlockable..

the sign on the cubicle door in tian ya's toilet, reminding users to flush.. how poetic...

11th-14th Dec 2004

the rest of the few days was mainly lunching/dining and mahjong with my mom's friends and colleagues, as well as my newfound erm, godpa. they always say doing business in china is all about 关系 (guanxi aka relations/pulling strings). how true. my new godpa found my mom a new seamstress from hangzhou who can tailor-make cheongsams and other apparels at significantly lower prices. all's not set yet, though.. she wanna see this new seamstress' sewing skills. hmmm. but i think if this new one is really better than aunt xiaocui and her workers, it ain't very nice to change either. nevertheless, i guess the business-world is like that. its all about personal gains.

aunt xiaocui's manager, xueliang wanna be my god pa too. i think chinese men are crazy about being godparents or something. he wants my mom to bring me along again , and offered to let us stay stay in one of his apartments the next time. these people are scary. eeps.

anyway, these are photos taken at dr xu's place. :)

godpa(dr xu) and us

xu's bro-in-law, dr xu, us and xiaoyang

the 13th was spent walking the area near our hotel, called 红桥 (hongqiao). we wanna look for daddy's torchlight and we found it! :) got scat a lil' watch here.. hee :) and i got these here too!

i love slippers! :)

the little red book! haha.. quotations by mao. :) there's english translation in there. :)

mommy's got keychains! she can use the cheongsam on for her shop key. haha :)

then we decided to go 王府井 (wang fu jing), beijing's orchard road for a bit of shopping. we didn't get anything from that place in the end because it was too pricey and non-bargainable. heh. and we have no more space in our luggages anyway.

王府井 :) the new maroon coat is given to me by godpa (dr xu).. quite nice :) just a bit to big.. heh

mommy :)

between the giant vases!

the last day was spent at the mini workplace, for some last minute alterations of the cheongsams and more mahjong at xueliang's place. the mini workplace has got a cute lil' puppy!! :D i tried taking a pic of his face but was afraid he'd pounce onto me ( he's rather active..) so i settled for a back pic of him. :) then we went xueliang's place again for mahjong. damn bored when they were playing mahjong. was surfing the tv channels when i spotted singapore's drama serials, nezha and ben yue (the latter by christopher lee and fann wong) on air. sighs. boring shows. was watching table tennis - china vs the world. wow, china is still as egocentric as ever, fancy just chinese players against the top players from other countries. well, guess they had a reason to be - they won all 5 foreign players. anyway...

oooohhhh :) i like his lil' t-shirt

zhang xueliang's dog, quite friendly and dumb looking.. haha

was really bored and started fiddling with my camera. saw that zhang's living room has got quite alota paintings that depict the scenery in ancient china / temples. they look so real! very beautiful. :) took some photos of them!!

the doors look so real..

i love ancient wooden doors!

cool man..

14th Dec 2004, 1130pm

finally, on board CA975, home sweet home. its been a tiring week. :)

mommy and me on the plane :)

hongkong trip, 2nd - 10th july 2004

2004-07-14T02:44:00.000+08:00

The 3rd HKUST International Fencing Invitation Tournament

2nd July 2004, Day 1

0800 we reached changi airport, packing all our foils into danny's roll bag, worrying that it woulnd't get through the customs.
0940 phew, all check ins are done and we're ready to board CX736! :)

ready to go!! heehee. too many cameras!:p

the flight was kinda shaky, with endless turbulences. did i mention i always love to be at the airport til the very minute i step into a plane? somehow, i always have this sense of foreboding whenever i'm inside an aircraft. eeps. but thank god, yiqing and scat were there to calm my nerves. :)

my wonderful plane mates! :)

1440++ after a shaky 3 hours plus flight (the is one of the most turbulent-hit flight i've ever taken!), we're finally there! :D the hongkong university of science and technology (hkust) got some ppl to pick us up. i must say it was all kinda awkward at first. things were made worse with our inability to speak/understand cantonese and they don't really understand our english. i must say they were just as blur as all of us. oh well, but they were very, very nice hosts nonetheless. :) to save costs, we lugged our luggages took a bus down to the campus. correction, two buses. the bus journey was about 2 hours......

klutzz and me on board bus 91M, holding hk's version of our ezlink - octopus card :)

the scenery along the way was beautiful. along the way, i thought we were back to singapore's psa site along keppel road. haha.

does this look kinda familiar? :p

finally, after 2 hours worthed of bus rides (i must say their buses from the airport interchange were very comfy. our superbuses are inferior. but i can't say the same for bus no.5, which we transfered onto..), we're finally at hkust! man, their campus is so huge! much bigger and more difficult to navigate than nus. i think we climbed about 4 or 5 mini hills, crossed about 5 corridors, took more than 10 lifts and went through approximately 10 doors to finally get to our hostel rooms. it's a maze, boy!

this is where we stay, undergraduate hall II

finally, we settled down in our rooms. this was taken in kluttz's and my room. on far left is alex, our new friend and fellow fencer from imperial college of london. :)

the hkust campus is alot better than nus. the campus is surrounded by seas and mountains that construct a long, continuous painting along the corridors. u'd never get tired of walking around the school because the scenery is absolutely gorgeous!

check this out. so pretty rite? i mean the background scenery. as well as us lah! :p

after touring their campus, we heading to the canteen for dinner. finally! all of us were starving. (dragging our luggages up and down the lifts and walkways is very exhausting you know..) their food portions were huge. sigh. a pity we didn't know or i coulda shared my meal with scat. can save money. hee hee. their canteen food's really good. check this out.

some cheezy, fishy noodles. quite nice! :D

*****

3rd July 2004, Day 2

woke up, tired, at 8am, after an unfruitful attempt to get some rest the night before. klutzz and i kinda took turns to wake up. not used to the bed? hmm. anyway, just like competitions in singapore, the events started about an hour late. :( sighs. used to it, i guess. i didn't do well for the round robins. okie, lemme explain. when we begin the competition, all participants will be split up into poules, where we'll fence everyone in the poule we're in. in each bout, the person who gets 5 points first, or gets the most points within 3 minutes wins the bout. the better you fence in the round robins, the higher your overall ranking will be. i half-screwed-up my round robins. i was ranked 16 and was to meet the person ranking no.1 in my second direct elimination round. sighs. i hate to be ranked in multiples of 4, cos you'll definitely meet ranked no.1, who will of cos beat u flat in less than a minute.

hee that's me! :)

oh well. didn't come with the mindset of winning anything anyway. :p yiqing did really well in her round robins and got by the first elimination round. she won the next and was ranked 4th. haha, as i mentioned, if ranked in multiples of 4, you'll meet the no.1 girl. she did, but she put up a really fierce fight. nevertheless, despite losing by a wee margin, she was entitled to a joint bronze medal! :D

our medalist and the guest of honour, whose name i can't i remember.:p

the guys had a harder time because in almost all competitions, the males' standards are very high. its kinda sad that we don't have enough guys to form a team for this comp, so they don't have a go at the team events the next day.
after a long day, we went for dinner and later, grocery shopping at park n shop, their version of our econ minimart . :) got almond chocolates! :D

4th July 2004, Day 3

team events!:)

of cos, the events started way later than was stated in the program sheet. spent the time eating breakfast. we got bread and some chocolate cream from park n shop. :) expressed the creativity in me using the choc cream. hee:)

uncanny resemblance?:D

haha. scat-lookalike..hmm.. looked like scat or yiqing?

as all our individual rankings were quite okay, our team was ranked 4th from the start! :) we fenced the macau university team, which was ranked 6th or 7th, (i can't remember). they were really nice and even gave us keychains that carried their uni crest. :)

this is the front.

back..

anyway, we beat them! :) and went on to our next round, facing the team from hongkong's city university.

ready for the battle.. :)

they were good boy. we got thrashed 45-10, and was only qualified to fight for 3rd/4th placing in the semi-finals.
something happened in the semi-finals (of which i not gonna mention here) and we won! :D we got team bronze! :D hee hee.
their prize-giving ceremony started at 6pm, and for a long long time, we've got something to look forward to in a prize-giving ceremony. haha.

hee, the girls' team! :D

team nus! :)

after dinner, we set off to the hotel in which we'll be staying for the next few days in tsim sha tsui.

took this before we left the campus.

and as usual, to save costs, we took the public buses. we were kinda unfortunate to meet an unfriendly bus driver during our transfer, who told us to get off at the wrong stop. sighs. thankfully, he was the minority. hongkong is quite tourist-friendly, i'd say. we managed to meet a nice lady we told us the way to our hotel. we walked all the way to our hotel, towing our luggages. the walk was about half an hour. i was so worried the wheels on the luggage will give up on me. my arms went numb by the time we reached the hotel. sheer exhaustion, i tell ya.

*****

5th July 2004, Day 4

we began the day touring around tsim sha tsui itself, trying to familiarise ourselves with the area. there were countless rows of shops in that area. however, the stuff were either too expensive or were available in singapore. we decided to take the mtr to fa yuen street (market), at prince edward station. yeah! shopping at long last! :) bargain-able areas are the best to shop around. got my first purchase!

nice hor? :)

after dinner, we went for a before adjorning to our next shopping destination, temple street! :) got these from temple street.. :)

these pouches have clocks on them! the hello kitty one is for my tuition kid. :)

*****

6th July 2004, Day 5

slept in late and set off for causeway bay, times square and lane crawford. their transport is super expensive, much much more than in singapore. its only the 3rd time we're travelling on the mtr and we've gotta top op our cards. i reckon i spent about 400hkd on transport alone.

the first shopping mall we go to, times square! :)

they had kenzo perfumes' promotion and they were really quite cheap! a pair of l'eau par kenzo, one for males and the other for females costs only about 70SGD! :) all the girls got something from the roadshow. :) irresistable. :D

they also had perfume samples as freebies! :)

we had lunch at scat's fave fastfood restaurant (he's been talking about it and finding for it even before we left singapore!), cafe de coral, aka dai ka lok大家乐！:D their iced red-bean float was really good.. mmmm...

yummilicious!!:p~

then we took a cab to meet nick's uncle, who's a architecture professor in the hongkong university. :)

hmm, look abit like the entrance of a temple. hee

here we are, waiting for nick's uncle, prof. lee. artistic picture right? :D

omg! he's gonna treat us to seafood for dinner at shuen wan, zu yuan 竹园restaurant!! :D they served great desserts and prof lee even got us 2 kinds of dessert! *burp*

sesame ice-cream.. heavenly!:D

and...

second dessert for the night.. durian pudding! oooh yeah..

then he brought us to hk's version of mohd sultan, lan kwai fong 拦桂坊. he said youngsters like us must go there when we go hongkong. happening place! :)

a sneak of lan kwai fong. check out the steep slopes! now i know why hongkongers are so slim..

as we didn't want prof lee to spend anymore money on us with the chionging, we decided to go for coffee instead. :) had this slim drink that contained ginger, apple and other stuffs. eeps.

where we chilled out at lan kwai fong

this is fringe gallery, where they exhibit outta focus photos. mmm. artistic! :)

we then head to ladies' market. :D more shopping! or so i thought.. when we reached there, it was almost closing time for the stalls. oh well.
oh, there was a place that sells all the sports equipment and stuff. think guys will love the area. scat got me a pair of nike hidden socks! :D

orange! my fave color! :D

*****

7th July 2004, Day 6

woke up earlier this morn to meet prof lee again. he's bringing us for yum cha at 幸福酒楼(xing4 fu2 jiu3 lou2). :D feel kinda bad for making him spend so much money on us. gotta get him something when we get home. :)

roast goose! :p~

uncle lee and meat!! :D

here comes dessert!

beancurd! oooh..

headed down to ocean park after a really full brunch of dim sum. *burp* the rides were quite okay. the first roller coaster, mine train, was pretty ok lah. wasn't life-threatening in anyway. heh. :p

here's me after mine train ride. the mine train route is on the left. :)

the next ride, space wheel. it went around, turn upside down and made me wanna puke. eeps. felt like callin' it a day, but i didn't wanna miss the fun. so i bit my lip and went for the next ride, dragon.

scat and i took the front seats.

the dragon trail

the ride wasn't scary. but it was super bumpy and the seats weren't well designed. the bumps made the safety bar over our heads hit our ears so hard. i was concentrating so much on protecting my poor ears that i didn't enjoy the ride at all. :( next ride was the viking. it was moderate. :p next, came the scariest ride of all, the abyss. :D

thats us on board abyss. i'm in the middle. shin and i were screaming our lungs out.

abyss: the aftermath

then, we took a tamer ride, the ferris wheel to calm our nerves. the view up there was marvellous. u guys can view the photos at mypicgallery.com . the link to the photos is at the end of this post. :)

i never knew taking ride after ride can be so exhausting. i think i almost couldn't take it. my tummy got kinda upset with the churning and turning. felt kinda sick, but nevertheless, trudeged along with the rest to the aquarium. i think the only good thing about it was the aircon. haha. still took some pix of the marine life there. hee. here's an aquatic nick. :p

its called the nick fish! :P

the nauseousness was really getting into me as i dragged myself. was so glad to be back on the bus back to the mtr station.

i was all well again after dinner at maxim's and brightened up totally when we came across their giodano's sale. :D got 2 tops! :D

*****

8th July 2004, Day 7

shin's going back to singapore today. all of us sent her off to the airport. we took the airport express mtr. the trip costs us about 100hkd. when on board the airport express, i realised why the train tix was so expensive. the airport express makes u feel like you're on some kinda mino plane, complete with tv screens in front of every seat. the coolest thing? you can check in your luggages at the mtr station as well. saves u the trouble of towing your bags all the way to the airport. excellent service. :)

our last hk photo with shin, at dai ka lok.:)

we went back to causeway bay via bus cos klutzz want to get her angel's pendant from mac look. by the way, scat got me a pair of earrings from mac look the first day we came here!:)

so beautiful! the danggling parts can be taken off and they will become a pair of studs. cool rite? but they ripped out about 1/3 of scat's money. eeps. thanks babe! :)

then, we went to kowloon, trying to find the fencing shops with the addresses scat got from the net. we made an empty trip to 2 buildings cos they weren't there anymore! sighs. scat was really disappointed. it turned out that the shop fronts had closed down and they don't do direct sales anymore. sighs. think they shoulda mention in the website. made all of us walked so much for nothing.

we walked back to telford plaza and guess what? i finally found a pair of black formal pants that i wanted so much from g2000! :D and you know what? there was a 50% discount! woohoo! :D

got this from another g2000 boutique a few days ago. nice and colorful! :D

after dinner at wondercafe, we went back to ladies' market. :) wanted to get some key chains, a tote bag for myself and another for shin. unfortunately, i decided that the tote bag wasn't that nice after all. only managed the key chains.

one for daddy and one for me!:D

*****

9th July 2004, Day 8

decided to slack the day away in the hotel. too tired from the shopping for the last few days. went out to get brunch though. we went back to fa yuen street market the get some egg tarts. they were good. :D got the muji mechanical pencil i've always wanted. :D but stupid old me later realised i've bought the pen instead. gotta come back again. :( anyway, after that, we got ice cream and went back to hotel and pig out. feeling really sinful and guilty from the binging on tarts, ice-cream, wife's biscuits and strawberry chocolates, we headed to the gym and sauna. hee hee.

*****

10th July 2004, Day 9

final day! time for some last minute shopping! :D
went back to fa yuen street market to get my emily strange bag! :D

yay! another new bag for the coming new sem! :D

and some emily strange pouches too! for myself and some friends..

then we got some more wife's biscuits! oooh yeah! they are fantastic:D everyone else got roast geese too, except me. just didn't want the hassle. hee.
finally, with all shopping done, we headed down to the airport. while waiting for the shuttle bus to kowloon station, this taxi uncle approached and offered to send us to the airport for 70hkd each. we agreed to it as we thought it was a pretty good bargain as we don't need to transfer buses or trains and its much cheaper. we all got a big shock we went to his car. we thot its gonna be some mini van or bus waiting for us as there were 5 of us and about 10 huge bags. what greeted us was this old merz. sighs. he squeezed three large luggages, including the weapon bag into the boot and the rest were piled on our laps. eeps. haha. well, at least we got to the airport in one piece.

at the airport, we got refund from the remaining value in our octopus cards and bought some dragon beard candy. they were the best i've ever eaten so far. but they were darn expensive! one box of six packs, each containing 3 little pieces costs 198hkd. that's about 40plus sgd. ah well. quality stuff tend to cost more. hee.

yummilicious wife's biscuits and dragon beard candy!:D

then we pooled our last few dollars on mac donald's fries, fish mc dippers and a large coke. hee:)

us sharing macs' and muffins while waiting to board the plane :)

boarded CX715 at 1920.

home sweet home, arms loaded. :)

here are the links to the rest of the photos! :)
hongkong trip photos (part 1)
hongkong trip photos (part 2)

p.s. think got quite a number of grammatical, spelling and whatever errors. sorry. but too tedious to edit. this post's damn long. hee.