Trip to Tianjin ... gone ...
Sigh ... blogging from office at a time only the cleaner Ah Yi is around in the office.
We supposed to go Tianjin for the factory visit this morning. While it was pretty exciting to see it snow in the morning, it was disappointing to hear that the highway to Tianjin was closed because of the snow. So end up, we all are going to have 'OT' in the morning. Btw, I din get to see Tracy around early morning .. perhaps she don't need hang around today. Sigh .. double disappointment.
Temperature today:
-3C to 5C.
Light Snow from the sky, heavy snow in my heart.
Lattes by 0830 today:
2
26 Feb - 颐和园
Yesterday we went to 颐和园, partly because Guomao boy said we should go see the frozen lake before it thaws into water again. Another part is because I would be in the area in the morning, and I wanted to take photos of the 'Summer Palace' in winter instead.
Will upload the photos soon when my scans are out tml. Doing them at the processing shop near my office. If it cocks up again, I will give Beijing one last chance at scanning my pictures, at the PKU photo processing shop.
Alex and me.
The 6 of us who went to the 颐和园. From the left Guomao boy, me, Alex, Pris, Kenny and Ly.
The emperor's summer playground is sinfully big. The 昆明湖 is a man made lake. The whole Summer Palace is so so so big. It is calculated that the funds 'misappropriated' for building the 颐和园 can actually advance China's navy (at that time) by 10 years and then perhaps China wouldn't lose the Sino-Jap war.
The Lion, the 17 arch bridge, me and the frozen lake.
We only explored half of the 颐和园 on Sunday. Because we reached at 3pm, and the grounds would be closed at 5pm. Another reason is because our walk on the frozen 昆明湖 ended up with Ly ankle deep in icy mud =P
Ice Skating ... on 未名湖！
Last Friday, we went to 北大 for our first instalment of the weekly lessons we are scheduled to attend until end of June. 北大 is beautiful! It looks like a beautiful old town instead of a world class university.
My 'matric card' from 北大. It's basically a little red book ... a legacy of the communist past I guess.
After the half-day introductory lessons on Friday, we went to take a look at the campus' lake, 未名湖. It is still frozen! Of coz we didn't give up the chance to go ice skate on the frozen lake. It's quite cheap anyway, 10RMB for a pair of skates until you are satisfied with it. And it is fun!
Alex, me and Cheryl. Alex never ever pose properly in all of his pictures.
Me wearing the skates.
Someone caught me looking like a penguin.
Then on saturday, after lessons, 北大 brought us to 天安门 and 故宫. There was a guide for all of us but it seems that most of us are more concerned about taking pictures instead of listening to him.
Fortunately for me, I finally had a decent shot of myself with Mr Mao at 天安门.
故宫is beautiful and sinfully large. It's a great damn pity the 太和殿 is under renovation. I thought of finding the 钟粹宫 as depicted in the show 金枝玉孽 but didn't want to sound stupid in front of all the NTU people as well as the local tourists there. I also wanted to see the long long corridor with tall red walls on the sides but didn't get to see or walk through them.
Din take much photos inside ... so so so so many people inside. And it's already considered some what off peak period.
It was also much colder than usual these few days despite the weatherman saying otherwise. Chek said that it was because of the wind that blew from Siberia.
23 Feb 06
Yesterday I mentioned about not worrying about not getting up the train. And fate has it that today, I got bumped off the train home, and the guys gotta wait for me at 四惠东 till I got unto the next one that came.
After lunch today, I went to the photo shop near my office, only to discover the neighbourhood developer is not always cheaper ... and that imbecile bugger actually charged me 3 times more than the one in town. Haiz ...
Also happened today, 白姐姐 from GIP office called to say they have arranged bus transport to bring all of us from our place to Peking University. She thought I was the rep for our area. That does not really matter. The thing is, I might have stepped on Mary's toes by not going to her to 'clarify' the transport thingy. Our previous understanding was that, the transport for us tml would be arranged by the office and would be foc. But then midweek, the office emailed us, telling us to make our way there ourselves, or they can suggest a charter that costs about 400plus RMB. I didn't make my enquiry with Mary and instead emailed back to SG to Tim to 'clarify matters'. All of a sudden, the bus arrangements came. I did not hear from Tim anyway. Sigh ... I feeling a bit bad about this whole thing. 毕竟，Mary did a great deal of work for us. If I get to see her tml at PKU, I think I should apologize to her.
Temperature today:
-3C to 6C
Lattes today:
2 shots
and we cooked dinner for 9 tonight. It was lovely. From a sample size of 4, 75% of sg women either don't cook, or prefer not to step inside the kitchen; to cook or to 善后.
Selected pics
Below are selected presentable pictures from my eos300v. As explained in the previous post, so so disappointed with the scan quality of the most of them. If the rescans elsewhere also suck, I gonna send them back to SG and ask Splutter to scan for me =P I refuse to accept that my skills, my cam or the film sucks instead!!!
Woman flying kite at Tiananmen. She's very game in being natural while I was taking shots at her. She even invited me to try a hand at flying her kite (really ... and literally btw), but I turned her down.
Women practising Taiji in the morning at the open space near our block.
The ever busy Beijing Subway.
Stunned and angry roadside vendor.
Pre-dawn 故宫. 30second exposure to get this picture. Lucky no bugger walked past.
Rare moment with no people on the Subway platform. I am still wondering if the woman in the ad is actually Cheer Chen.
Wiltering bushes.
Zig zag
'Train'ing -> 伤心地铁
Don't ever think of sitting on the Beijing Subway, be thankful you can get unto one. But well, if you are on the platform, chances are, you would be shoved up the train anyway.
The good thing is, nobody ever worries about falling or stumbling on the train. And even strangers communicate well on the train. '下车吗？下车吗？'. A nod will grant you the same spot you are standing on, otherwise be prepared to be shoved to another part of the cabin. If you are lucky, you would somebody to lean on. If not, either leg of yours will have to support your weight and another person's weight. Whatever the case, just go with the flow, you wouldn't miss your stop.
I have seen a half blind busker playing the sax in the cabin.
I have seen a blind man and female helper trying to sell tissues, but got shouted at in the next cabin by angry commuters, calling them to get off the train.
I have seen a man carrying a sling bag full of magazines, pedalling them inside the crowded train.
Sigh, today got back my last roll of scanned film. The neighbourhood photo developing shop sucks. The scan quality is so inconsistent and lousy. I will confirm it by sending my roll somewhere near my workplace to confirm that it isn't my shooting nor my film that is lousy. So so disappointed ... I want a DSLR now!
Temperature today:
-3C to 6C
Lattes taken today: 2 shots
21 Feb 06
Today, the Beijingians broke their silence after their initial awe and shock at the 怪兽 (aka Lysander) who is clothed nothing more than cotton short sleeves. Somehow I was always the one whom they usually approached as the spokesperson for the latest attraction and happening in Beijing.
Also on 21 Feb 2006 today, I've added one more 'gabra' to my 'Beijing gabra list'.
1. I placed a call using the girls' home phone to Mary, when we are not supposed to be at home; jeopardising all the Gemplus people's integrity.
2. I placed a long distance call from Beijing to Suzhou, calling Cherlyn, thinking that I called Cheryl instead.
3. I refilled our empty teapot during lunch with chicken broth instead of hot water.
Today's temperature:
-3C to 8C
18 Feb 06
For this 2nd weekend, we went to a few places.
The first was 国贸, where we passed our passport photos and copies of visa to Mary for her to do our Peking Uni registration. Then I poped over to 西单 to shop for the books Yunxin wanted. Din manage to get all of them though ...
Then we went over to 老舍茶馆 for tea and a afternoon matinee performance. Not bad a place really. The performance was quite good, got 相声，单弦，变脸，magic .. but the best was still the 口技。
Cute waitress at 老舍茶馆 =P
Exquisite 点心 at the 茶馆.
After the performance, we walked over to Tiananmen for the flag lowering. Pity we were not able to jostle for a good place to take photos of the ceremony. It's crowded almost everyday loh ...
The 5 guys at 四惠东.
And the 4 girls.
After sunset and the flag lowering ceremony, we walked over to 全聚德 for the famous Beijing Roasted Duck. Me in front of the shop:
A whole duck would have costed RMB198 (abt SGD$40) each and serves about 2-3 persons. But we opted for a RMB70 set (serves 1), as below:
A plate of roasted duck skin, fresh spring onion, sweet sauce, a cup of duck bone soup (not in picture) and popiah skins (not those eggy skins you see in SG, and abt twice thicker than popiah skins). It was the most expensive meal we've had in Beijing. Was it really very nice? Is Beijing Roasted Duck really nicer in Beijing? nah ... It was very 腻 at the end though. No wonder the waitress kept trying to push us to buy juices and beer to cut the oilyness.
Today's temperature:
-2C to 8C
Super Static Me. 16 Feb 06
Almost every morning, I will wake up with 'piak piak pants' .
My fingers will get pricked by the discharge from cubicle wall edges, window grills, door hinges, car body, handshakes ... etc. It doesn't help that I have larger surface area and extra bristles to rub with the cold and dry atmospheric air.
And I really hate this type of surprises loh ...
But I like our company's pantry =P despite the fact that I need to scan and open 3 doors out to the pantry, and then scan and key in my password 3 doors back. All the effort, for a good cuppa of machine brewed latte .. FOC!! and a short getaway from the cubicle. Also, the cookie stash is always seems to be well stocked with 黑白黑 hehe =P
Me and Yanzi poster =P
As promised ... from kevin's digicam (finally)
Tempearture today:
-6C to 1C
Coupled with constant wind blowing, it was a bad idea not to eat at the staff canteen during lunch.
Valentine's Day - 14 Feb 2006
Beijing today is quite warm for a winter day, maybe because of the feeling of love in the city.
Today is the 2nd day of work and thankfully I got decent stuff to do besides trying to stay awake. Managed to move my PC from level 8 to my cubicle on 7th floor and got the internet up. After lunch, Alex and I had to read data sheets and some ISO standards stuff for our work. Apparently they already know that it would take us a long time ... so they planned our training to be on next week =P The rest of the week, we would have to 'digest' the files they gave us to read.
My neighbouring colleague was called '妖姬' because she was the winner of the most-flowers-and-gifts-received girl in the office (she got 2 bouquets and 2 boxes of chocs) . Her cubicle section is their favourite gossipping corner anyway. I just grin at their news and jokes from a short distance. They manage to find out that the special purple roses lined with shiny studs in her bigger and more exquisite bouquet of flowers at 100RMB per stalk today ... together with the surrounding pink roses (going at about 20RMB, they say) and baby breathe etc etc. I estimate the bunch smelly smelly to be about 1000RMB, for the flowers alone. Furthurmore, the flowers didn't come from Beijing, it was from Guangzhou! A colleague said, it was better off single than married.
Temperature today:
-4C to 7C
(signs that the weather man is probably not very accurate ... Kenny remarked that it in fact hit 12C in the noon.)
First Day of work
Finally went to work today, in a totally overdressed mode for the technical department. Although we already know that we need not wear shirt and pants, we wore it just to impress on our first day.
Wore the trenchcoat-like jacket bought at 雅秀 to go with the shirt and pants and sort of regretted. Coz it wasn't adequate against the Beijing weather, and I didn't wear my snow cap or ear muffs becoz they don't match the 'look'. As a result, I got a throbbing headache at the end of the day because of the congestion in my nasal passageways. Thankfully, we caught a cab back home from office and not walk 20 over minutes in the cold to the train station, jostle for standing space in the MRT for another 30 mintues, and walk another 10 minutes withstanding the elements back to our home.
What we did at work today, was simply to keep awake. Most people are just back at work for the first time since the CNY celebrations started. So Alex and I did whatever we could to stay awake .. like reading 2003 Chinese technical publications found inside my drawers, talked about our courses in NTU, photography and theory of TCP/IP .. etc. Still ... we both paid Uncle Chow a visit.
Temperature today:
-1C to 8C
and it was super foggy
Pictures taken on 元宵 at 雍和宫
Show you guys some of the pictures I took yesterday using Kaiting's D50.
Temperature today:
-1C to 8C
元宵in 北京 12 Feb 06
元宵in China is happening!
Ever since they allowed fireworks again in the city of Beijing after 12 years of ban, all the Beijing residents are taking advantage of the 'un-ban' and 拼命放. And they really really 的拼命 loh. From nightfall at about 6pm daily, they have been at it until now that we are pretty xian of seeing fireworks, and they have until 12midnight tonight to finish all their load. The best thing is, our neighbours are so xiao on, that they fired so closed to our block, that the sparks from their fireworks landed on our balcony. Never in SG, will you ever get to see fireworks so close. And the fireworks explode just about one imaginery level above our 7th level 'mansionette'.
No joke, that's how close we were.
It was today when we saw so many fireworks, that we realised what are the 'bom bom' sounds that we have been hearing. They sounded pretty much like rifle shots and grenade explosions of kind.
Anyway, we accidentally chose 元宵 to go 雍和宫，the biggest lama temple outside of Tibet. Super lots of people, that the 民警 barricaded the usual way and we have to make a detour around the whole temple to the entrance proper.
Big temple anyway ... holds some record for the biggest statue carved out of a single sandalwood in the whole world.
We also popped over to HRC Beijing today, for our lunch and to pick up some HRC shot glasses. Quite exp but ... these type of things ... is must buy one loh
I have lotsa of pictures taken using my cam and on Kaiting's D50. But i need to do some editing ... will post them later when I have time to. Gotta work tml morning, and gotta look sharp for the first day of work =P
Temperature today:
0C to 7C
11 Feb 06
We are still holidaying in Beijing ... honeymooning period since we've not started work. Work will only commence on this coming Monday. And possibly ... will get boring. But well, we will look forward to the 'course' at 北大 to bring us around to all the historical sites.
Splurged on 2 more turtle necks today, although considerably cheaper than in SG, still feel a bit pain in the heart. Coz it was the last few pieces of hundred dollar notes in my pocket which I brought out today. Gotta ask my parents to send the money over liaoz.
Saw another of Stephanie Sun's advertisements for clothings in China. The previous one I saw was at
Chengdu. Now 2 more in Beijing =)
10 Feb 06
For the past few days, we walked about to pick up home necessities and also spent money to buy stuff just like any tourist would. Sort of a ritual, to be tokked. Being the poor and tokked before vegetable head, I tarikked and bought nothing personal that is expensive and bargainable. But I would love to buy another pair of gloves, something that would be waterproof and breatheable. I am having sweaty palms inside this one I am using and it is not exactly waterproof, my hands gets terribly cold esp at night.
I sort of like the Beijing pedestrian walkways. Very pleasant to walk on. And I like the barren trees lining every single stretch of it.
Me trying fried scorpion sold by roadside hawkers.
Taste? Oily and salty. Like most stuff in Beijing anyway =P
Weather today:
-6C to 2C
9 Feb 06
I'm sharing a 'mansionette' with another 4 guys, 3 of them would be my colleagues at Gemplus, while the last one is with another company. This is my roommate, Zhaoyan, the chap with another company.
Show you all the pictures of my humble abode =P
We also have a balcony, where we can hold a bbq in the summer.
And our view from our room.
Really like this place, although I have to climb 6 stories up, and another one more up the 'mansionette' coz I and Zhaoyan sleep in the room above. And boy ... our room upstairs is a love nest. Our attached bathroom has a bamboo door that cannot be locked.
I can watch tv while crapping. I mean, if I want to.
