Seb's Journal in China

Hi Honey :D I’m giving you the moon! and that , is today’s moon! I only wish there were stars hanging around

Just finished watching Independence Day! Supposed to do my report but well , I woke up so late that I no longer had the motivation to do anything but chill. I think Independence Day is still one of the best shows ever! 

Mix in Aliens, Fighter aircraft, Pride at defending your country, Courage in sacrifice - All the right ingredients to mix my perfect cup of Tea, especially the President’s speech when everybody is gearing up for the counter-attack on the alien spacecraft. With that one speech alone, I would go to war for my country and proudly do so!

There is this innate want to be involved in the Air Force so I’m definitely gonna go try for there. Then again, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work but there is definitely no harm trying. Oh the aircraft are all featured in the movie.

The helicopter-my next favourite war movie, FIRE BIRDS and starring Nicholas Cage nonetheless! Apache’s ftw

Well, CNY over in Shanghai sure has been fun! This is just a few photos to start off the collective spamming of everything else on Tumblr in the next few days! We celebrated CNY eve with a reunion dinner where Sihao and I did the cooking. Picture Steamboat, Sambal Udang and also Curry Chicken! Boy, talking about food sure does get me hungry aplenty. Nearing 12am, you could see fireworks lighting up the sky in every single place. Firecrackers so loud they can make you deaf were lighting up like nobody’s business outside every single apartment block. A man even unrolled one of his collections of fire crackers. Damn thing was like a big fire hosereel!

Next happy thing, we went off to Happy Valley (amusement park)! The day was absolutely perfect. A totally sunny day, passable food, perfect company, extreme FUN. We started off on the mother of all coasters there, the one with a 90 degree drop. (You can see it in the photos, the red and blue one). Fantastic I swear， I think I really love Roller Coasters? There is something about the adrenaline rush and the sheer force of wind that hits you as you go down the rails at such a steep angle.

Also, got a great photo of one side of Happy Valley! There is this thing they call the space shot. Basically,its the one you see that extends high up into the sky. After you sit on it, it propels you all the way up , down, up down, you know the drill. Got esther and Doug to sit the space shot with me and all the way up we went! I sneaked my DSLR on it as well, hiding it behind my jacket after pushing the safety bars down. Thinking back, it was crazy but worth it. How else would a photo like that be possible otherwise? Then again, it was risky trying to hold onto a DSLR while flying up and down like a dude with an extremely bouncy pogo stick.

PS: DEFINITELY LESS THAN A MONTH WHEN I SEE YOU AGAIN :D

Well, this is a really long ago post that I never posted! The sending off of Cindy, our Director of Sales & Marketing. It has been almost like 2 months since she left already. I still remember thinking at the start like ” Oh I am so screwed now that my english speaking boss is gone, gonna get dominated by the Chinese speaking environment now”. I’m glad that the scene never came about.

Although the going became slightly tougher, her leaving actually brought our team together oddly enough. Previously, with her around, the office atmosphere around was one of Oh the boss is here, watch out. Without it though, we are far more jovial in the company. More jokes flying around, laughing and all

Next round of Zhujiajiao photos! I think the ladies in the market are amazing. One second, they have all their wares displayed such as chickens and when somebody shouts ” OI, THE POLICE ARE HERE”, they wrap their things straight up and start to run. It’s instant. 1 second, chicken is laid out on plastic wrap, next second, its folded up in a plastic bag with the head popping out and the old ladies are off running!

Second day - Zhu Jia Jiao, one of the ancient water towns of Shanghai

Early morning, hop into a chartered taxi and we’re off to one of the ancient water towns surrounding Shanghai! Zhu Jia Jiao is really one of the more beautiful water towns that I’ve seen. Although the place is kind of touristy already, it still retains a lot of the old vibe. With streets on both sides and a little canal in the middle that leads to a big river, the place is big enough and filled with enough things to catch your attention for like 5-6 hours. 

There was a lot of food around on sale and one of the more popular ones here seemed to be the Dumping and also the fatty pork. They tend to roll their fatty pork inside a leaf and then stuff them all into a pot to keep them warm. Although it looks extremely cholesterol-worthy, the taste isn’t very cloying like how it usually is when you eat something oily and it is in fact rather tasty although it doesn’t look very appetizing at the first glance. 

Since it’s a water town, there has to be fishes! and fishes there were. There were so many aunties gathered beside this bridge that we had to cross to get to the other side, sorta like a Venice-ey place. They were all selling assorted fishes and turtles in plastic bags.

There is a circle: It’s like you buy them, you release them for good luck, the aunties catch them and the aunties re-sell them again. There’s tortoises, snakeheads, goldfishes, some weird fish i’ve never seen before and a lot more.