beijing!!

OOh so I'm back!! BEIJING ROCKS LA. Had the best time of my life there hahaha. Despite the lack of time to visit the tourist attractions, and a few mishaps that happened here and there, the company made all the difference haha. And it's the first time I'm overseas that I didn't miss home at all! Ok here's a recap:

1. This is the first time I took SIA lo, sad right haha. Didn't sleep at all on the plane cuz I was too busy playing games and watching movies haha. But really, if not for the wide variety of in-flight entertainment available, there's nothing that great about SIA. Hmm so we reached Beijing at like 11pm. It was funny at the immigration counter cuz the guy saw my passport photo and he was like, "你长大了." hahaha! And the immigration officer at the counter when we were departing Beijing said the same thing! So weird.

2. We stayed at the 东方客栈. It's this backpacker's hostel in 南锣鼓巷, one of the hutongs in Beijing. A hutong is like the Chinese version of an alley, with rows of old shophouses built close to each other. I think it's great that we were staying in a hutong. It's so full of history man, especially the one we were staying at. I think an empress or something stayed there before. And it's a place where locals actually live, so we weren't detached from them and could experience the life there. Furthermore the street we were staying at is like a mix of east meets west. Cuz in addition to the old houses and shops there, they had many small but hip bars and pubs there. Where you could drink and chill out. So it was quite cool.

3. I shared a room with Pauline, Juli, Peizhi, Kaishi and Xiaoping. It was ok la, quite small, with 3 double decker beds. I slept on the top which is cool cuz I can see you but you can't see me wahah!! And 6 of us shared 1 toilet so it was a mad rush every morning haha. But 3 of us bathed in the morning and the other 3 bathed at night so it wasn't too bad. They didn't have toilet paper also so we had to buy every night. I think I bought more toilet paper than other things hahaha. And the thing about the toilets in Beijing is that you can't flush your toilet paper down the toilet; you had to throw it in a wastepaper basket in the cubicle.

4. I only realised how bad my Chinese was when I was in China. CUz on the second day we had company visits. Basically, we're supposed to work together with students from Tsing Hua University in groups to do a presentation on a company, like the market trends, opportunities and risks etc. Our first stop was CSDN.net which was the company my group was doing. Walao eh, the CEO spoke in Chinese man and we had such a hard time understanding what he was saying cuz he spoke so fast! So in the end we just took pictures of the slides haha.

5. But my standard of chinese cannot be compared to Boss' (Pauline). She totally mutilated the 床前明月光 poem Kaishi was teaching her hahaha. It became 床上明月光 in Boss' hands.

6. Speaking of boss, she likes boys!! Cuz she refused to sit with us during the HSBC talk even though we asked her to come over. She prefers to sit with her Spiceboys. ("If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends!")

7. And boss sleeps alot. She sleeps on the bus, on the paddle boat, at 10pm, and anywhere and anytime really. But we still love you hahaha!!

8. I don't think I learned much from the company visits. I was too busy trying to stay awake 70% of the time haha.

9. Beijing University and Tshing Hua are freaking big!! Beijing Uni even has a LAKE in their campus. A lake leh!! It's like something straight out of a wuxia pian. Really beautiful. I think NUS is only like 1/10th the size of Beijing Uni, and Tshing Hua.

10. I ate more spicy food in Beijing than I ever ate in my whole life. I think we ate like 麻辣 3 times man. Level 5 spiciness and hotness can! My lips were like throbbing hahaha. Woots. But damn nice :D

11. At 王俯井's food street, we saw all kinds of creepy-crawlies being sold as delicacies. The guys ate centipedes, starfish, sea horses, scorpions (both big and small) and juicy beetles. Eew, sick to the max. I only tried a corner of the starfish and it was real bad cuz there was a gross aftertaste.

12. Beijing has no night life. Shops usually close at 9pm. Sian lo. Somemore we usually have company visits in the day so we could only chiong the shopping for a few hourse in the evenings. But on the 2nd night we went to 后海 which is like a bigger version of Clarke Quay with long stretches of bars and clubs. There was also this mass waltz dancing thing there. We explored the place by paddle boat which was vv fun haha!!

13. Boran conquered 长城! But I almost died there cuz I kena-ed cramps :(( WHY do these things always have to happen to me!! But thanks to Kaishi for taking care of me even though we looked like a bunch of refugees haha. But the rest of them took like lots of videos on the Great Wall. (Eg. re-enactment of Huan zhu gege, with Hua Mulan thrown in. Filming of the 鸵鸟 music video. And the dramatization of "风云".) We really throw face throw all the way to China hahaha.

14. We saw Mao Zedong's photo being blackened at Tiananmen Square! Some crazy guy threw this burning thing under Mao's picture and the smoke blackened like the bottom quarter of his portrait. And the police managed to clean up the mess like within 10mins! It's like they're literally waiting for such incidents to happen haha. But anyway the guy was caught.

15. We also saw the flag-lowering ceremony at Tiananmen. Cool man. The ceremony happens once the sun sets, same as the flag-raising which takes place once the sun rises.

16. Bargaining rocks la. If negotiation fails, just walk away. 99% of the time, the shopkeeper will give you the price you asked for. But if you undercut too much, be prepared to get an earful from the shopkeeper.

17. Never trust your professors too much. Not all teachers are kind. It's important to be able to discern and resist others' motives. Regardless of how much respect you have for the other party, respect for yourself should still come first.

18. Juli is an ah lian.

19. She teaches Ah Lian 1001 (AL1001). I'm Ah Huay, and I'm her assistant professor. Kaishi's the Teaching Assistant. And Boss is Mamasan, the dean.

20. The last day was really bad. Let me recount our ordeal. We went to check in at the airport at 730am for the 845am flight we were supposed to be on to fly back to Singapore. But the counter staff said that me, Juli, Peizhi and Grace's flights were at 4pm! Cuz the agent screwed up real badly and no one knew that she booked us the wrong tickets. So the 4 of us basically went hysterical cuz we couldn't change our tickets on such a last-minute basis. So we had to rot in Beijing International Airport for 8 hours! And I couldn't make it back in time for the VJ Choir Concert damn. Wah sucks la. And there's nothing to do, especially since the airport is totally devoid of anything to do. So we watched dvds on my laptop at some cafe with a plug and plenty of bad service. But looking back, I feel very proud of myself cuz we managed to get by 8 hours all on our own hahah! And at least we have each other, instead of being abandoned alone. Plus the air stewardess on our flight gave us preferential treatment cuz she was from NUS also haha.

21. Divide everything by 5

Ok I'm so tired now. Did FIC today (NEVER AGAIN!). Shall upload more photos and give more details about our trip when I have more tim