Day 2 in Shanghai

Shanghai Day 2:

but before that.....

can i say that Oosh at dempsey road is uber-great. and they have Schnapps! i had only read abt schnapps online the other day and was pleasantly surprised to see it on the menu at Oosh. the snacks looked very interesting as well. too bad we had arrived alittle late last night and the kitchen had already closed. i am definitely gonna make another trip down there. probably for a late dinner or something.

and........i have decided on which job to go for. i jus hope that this would put me in the right direction. have my fingers crossed.

and on to Shanghai........

so day 2 was mainly spent at Cheng Huang Miao, Yu Yuan, Huai Hai Lu, shopping for knock-offs at the Science and Tech Park train station, dinner with my sis again and then a foot massage to end things off for the night.

Cheng Huang Miao translated is actually "City God Temple". we didnt really set foot into the temple itself, choosing to walk ard the area instead and also sample the famous xiao long bao they had. it turned out to be disappointing tho. the area is very touristy and the xiao long baos sub-standard. they have more than one type tho. perhaps the other types were better.

picture time.

the xiao long bao at cheng huang miao,


picture's alittel small but one line reads: "dumpling stuffed with the ovary and digestive glands of crab"


one of the highlights of the day had to be the visit to Yu Yuan. some background info here
Travel China Guide's article on Yu Yuan

the place is fantastic. it is quite hard to believe that in the midst of the bustling concrete jungle of shanghai, there is this little bit of green paradise of tranquility. walking along the corridors in the various areas of yu yuan, i could actually picture myself in some old kung fu flick chasing bad guys.





the trip to yu yuan was followed by a walk down huai hai lu. a shopping street with all the shopping malls. prices there are pretty much the same as in sg. so nothing much there. the science and tech park train station however was a different story. i picked up a few dri-fit nike and adidas knock-offs there while J started to break open her piggy bank.

im still amazed at her ability to spend. tho i was also to learn her ability to bargain.

dinner was spent with my sis. and we had lobster~! baby lobsters to be exact. tons of them~! the place is called Fu Mao. it's actually a chain of stores selling nothing but baby lobsters cooked in a multitude of ways and they are cheap as hell.



i believe this would be my pot of gold at the end of a rainbow


to tell the truth, one little lobster yields very little meat. so a large amount is required to actually fill a stomach.

dinner was followed by foot reflexology at Tai Pan which was great after all the walking. the ambience was great too. a 90mins package gets you a neck, back and shoulder massage, foot and leg massage, the tv or dvd movie of your choice and free flow snacks and drinks. and the price, S$28.

day 3 is next

Ye Shanghai (Longest Night in Shanghai)

and so im back from Shanghai. yes, i used a capital "S" which means i enjoyed the holiday. at the same time i am once again amazed by the consumer potential of my girlfriend.

jus an idea of how great the shopping is, this is wat we departed for Shanghai with.


and this is wat we came back with.


that might not be alot of stuff to carry for 2 pple actually. but......this:

meant that there was only one person lugging the bags from my sis' apartment to the airport.

anywayz, on to the trip proper. im gonna split it into separate posts.

NOTE: please keep in mind that everything i am about to post on is cheap relative to my standards. i believe there are more and better bargains to be found in Shanghai tho.

Day 1:
the first day was relatively uneventful.

at 3pm-ish we arrived at PuDong airport greeted by 38deg C weather and polluted air. so intially it kinda put me off alittle. i was expecting hot weather but wasnt expecting a smelly one. perhaps im too used to the clean singapore air. J and I headed on to the MagLev train station which took us to LongYang Lu station at a mad 430km/h. then it was another train ride to Jing An Shi station where we hailed a cab to my sis' place.

dinner was with my sis at this great place called "Die Yuan". that's Butterfly Garden in english. jus a quick shot of their "zhao pai cai" (specialty dish).


that's pork with eggs in some kinda sweet sauce. we don't know the name for it. it was point and order.

drinks followed at an ice-cream place in Xin Tian Di to seek repreive from the sweltering heat. Xin Tian Di is a chill out area where many expats hang out mostly. check out this sundae. there was supposed to be vodka in it, but i couldnt detect any.


prior to serving us the drink, the waitress, i believe with all good intent, kindly informed us of the 600RMB price tag of the glass. such great service. jus makes you appreciate your meal so much "more" duncha think?

the next post shortly........

Shanghai

off to shanghai for the rest of the wk~!!!! xiao long bao heaven here i come~!!!

Musings and Smackings

the wkend had passed pretty good. tho it has left me wondering where did all the time go. when i looked back at the past wk, i realised how short a wk can be.

yesterday was spent at the zoo with J. yep. the zoo. im not sure if this is a norm for guys in sg, but it seems that one of the things that a guy has to do for his gf is to bring her to the zoo. so far, ive pretty much heard the same request being fulfilled by all my guy frens for their ladies. so here's the big question, wat do u girls like abt the zoo?

is it the animals? or jus the whole idea of going to the zoo?

i did ask J this question once. she only jus said she wanted to go to the zoo. i then went on to describe my bad experience at the zoo during my early years in primary sch to her. abt how i was filled with the anticipation of seeing a great big lion with a great golden mane and loud roar but only to be finally greeted by a balding, lembeh lembeh (lethargic), scrawny, dirty and squeaking cat. i would like to state that that perhaps, was the day i grew up.

however, we still ended up going to visit the animals. and well, i guess things have improved much over the years. the animals are still lembeh lembeh tho. much to the dismay of J. at one point i couldnt resist an "i told you so". only to be answered with a slap on the arm. my bad.

the zoo's pretty ok i guess. not all the animals were lembeh lembeh. like for example the ones in an enclosure i believe was J's favourite, called "kids playland". it's for little creatures of many ages to run around amok amongst the water fountains screaming their heads off in various states of undress. these same creatures were also free ranging and ran around the whole zoo interacting with the visitors. of course these free ranging ones were fully clothed tho still wild.

i had to hold J back or else she would have decided to grab one and run home with it.

on the topic of kids, there was one particular incident that happened on saturday that i was pretty amused by. it happened while i was having lunch at olio cafe in the alliance francaise.

a boy, quite young, abt 3-5 maybe? was suddenly bawling his head off in the middle of the cafe. his mum was present as well. and judging by the way he was bawling, it seemed pretty obvious he was faking it to get his way with his mum. the kid was able to form his words and sentences pretty well despite all the crying and furthermore his bawling was like an on-off switch. no sniffling before and after. jus alot of pretended crying, no tears, no blubbering.

if i had a son like that, i would probably have smacked the living daylights out of him. and ill keep smacking him till he has either lost his grammar or vocab and gotten them back.

thanks ma, it seems ive learnt a thing or two from you.

by now it should be pretty common knowledge for most pple, this is pretty much how some of us asians were disciplined. if u did something like that, u got smacked till u really cried. then if u cried, u got smacked further till u stopped.

i would be such a great father next time.

Cucumber

here's something to munch on if any1 is bored. read it in another blog. too funny to pass up.

here's the link to the other blog.
An Englishman in Osaka

Cucumber trivia!
Did you know that.......

• if cucumbers were made into robots, they might try to take over the world and control us.

• on live TV in 1978, British television personality Esther Rantzen manhandled a penis-shaped cucumber for a full three minutes. The BBC received no complaints.

• if you lined up all the cucumbers in the world, it would make a very long line.

• if you boil the juice of five cucumbers and add a litre of whisky to the mix before drinking all of it, it will make you extremely drunk and liable to vomit.

• in a recent telephone survey of 1,000 Japanese housewives who handle Japanese cucumbers on a regular basis and also have experience with Western ones, 78% said that while Japanese ones may be smaller, they are also firmer to the touch.

• until the 17th century, cucumbers were used exclusively as jewellery.
  

• before The Beatles were called The Beatles, they called themselves The Silver Cucumbers.

• the Royal Society for the Protection of Cucumbers (RSPC) has over 3,000 members.

• the delightful and charming British chef Delia Smith once held up a bag of cucumbers on her popular cookery show and said, "Look! It's like a load of cocks!"

Pipl

on the topic of social networking/networks......

but before that, i don't know whether to love or hate the spell checker in FireFox. for one, as in my prev post, i have peeve for language misuse so this spell-checker shld be one of my best frens. but on the other hand, i would like to use the occasional short-form to ease my typing without my whole post looking like one of my result slips that my teachers used to hand to me in school - full of red marks.

the thing doesn't even have the word FireFox in its dictionary. but spelling Mozilla instead of mozilla is correct. duh.

anywayz, back to the topic of social networking/networks. reason for my posting on this only now is perhaps due to the fact that i have a near zero social life. another reason could be due to a recent revelation. my sis has a friendster account~! i find that unbelievable actually. tho i dun think that it would be an impossible feat on her part. my sis doesnt warm up to these social networking things easily. also cos when friendster came about, she was pretty much too busy with work to explore it. but evidently now she's taken the time to do so.

which leads me to think that maybe i should do the same. my friendster account was created eons ago but ive never bothered to log on to it until now. in fact, J is not even in my list of friends. maybe cos she's not jus a friend.

i would believe someone to be smiling to herself right about.......now.

not all my closest frens are on the list either. which means my list is very small. in fact, jus to give an idea of how small, i have only jus breached the 2 digit mark. compared to the 2 girls in a recent newspaper article who have thousands of "frens" between them in friendster-like sites, i must be a bloody hermit. forget them, compared to some of those on my list, im the one sperm in an elephant's used condom which is their list of frens.

well........all that said and done, i do believe that at the end of it, networking sites aside, there are only that many pple one can hang out with often enough.

perhaps i will build up my list jus for the sake of some soul-searching. if i have the time to do that too.

so here comes the big question, shld i or shld i not add the FireFox spell-checker to my list of frens?

P.S. here's a people search engine for those who might wanna search for others.
www.pipl.com

Feeling Donkey-ish

things are feeling alittle surreal at the moment.

here's the situation. i have a job offer at hand. it's a great job opportunity. something that i had been studying towards during my education. now it is finally abt to become a reality. my original dream job is abt to be handed to me. all i have to do is say yes.

and here comes the but.....

but on the other hand, i have found that to pursue my ultimate career goal, it would be wise for me to switch to a different profession as early as possible. and frankly, im not sure that my original dream job is that great after all to make me stay in my current line of work.

to make matters alittle less clean cut, fate has gone ahead and dangled 2 other job possibilities in front of me.
Job 1: not the ideal direction to head to my target profession of choice but not too bad a start point. i have gone for the second round interview. there's a 50-50 chance of getting it.
Job 2: good start point to the other profession. it's not an interview yet, i have submitted my reply to a questionnaire they emailed me and they have agreed to give me the first interview slot tomorrow if they do find my answers to the questionnaire suitable.

and here's the reason why those 2 jobs are dangling: Time.

the timing of the occurrences of these events are putting me in a fix. i have to give the job offer an answer soon. i think i can only delay the decision for max a wk. but job 1 cant give me an answer until 2 wks and job 2 is the bloody worst. i applied for it mths ago and only now they get back to me. i feel like im being toyed with the proverbial carrot on a stick.

in a sense, the decision is pretty clear cut. i shld be taking the job offer. cos it's the only concrete one right now. the experience will give me good skills and exposure to aid me in any new endeavour i choose later. a bird in hand is worth more than two in the bush.

but.......

i could throw the fish back and hope for a bigger one..........or i could end up without anything in my hand.

All Knutty

presenting my new nephew~!!!! Knut the Westie~!