Happy Chinese New Year!

Year 2008 marks the year of the rat. Of all animals, rat. I was wondering to myself why can't the animal zodiacs be represented by some other kind of prettier animal like peacocks, butterflies and yada yada. I mean, it will be much nicer compared to a rat. Oh well.

Talking about the new year, I received multiple text greetings from my fellow friends in the wee hours of the morning. God knows what they were doing staying up so late. Prolly started to gamble already. I was obviously asleep so I replied the text messages in the morning when I was very reluctant to wake up.

I replied 'Gong Xi Fatt Chai to u too! Cheers!'

I know it's either Gong Hei Fatt Choi or Gong Xi Fa Chai but I was so blur I typed a combination of both. So embarrassing. Hope they didn't realize. Hahah.

Every year, without fail, everybody will ask me where is my hometown and when am I going back. Let me tell you once and for all and I hope everyone who reads this won't ask again because I'm local. Both my parents are born and bred here. Heheh.. I guess it's quite an advantage because don't have to go through the traffic jams and what not. Then again, we never got to experience the feeling of 'balik-ing kampung'.

Okay then, that's about it for now. I gotta go to visit the first house of the day. Yay! Ang pows!

Lastly, I will end this post with yet another picture of the oh-so-wonderful, me. Nyahahaha.

Gong Hei Fatt Choi to all readers of mine!

XOXO

I just realized..

It's not easy giving a title to every post.

The Amazing Race Asia is already looking for people to send in their audition tapes for the next season. I so wanna audition too. Too bad I'm underaged :(

Will definitely, definitely try next year when I'm legal. I have to like, start thinking of ways to make my audition tape stand out so that I'll be chosen. Hahah.

Let me share with you a dirty little secret. FionaDeAnnoying and I have already made plans on joining the race together. HAHAHAHA. I know. It'll be disastrous. I mean, having her tag along with me on a race. Who am I kidding? She can't even let a drip of sweat trickle down her face, for goodness sake.

Upon kepohchi-ing and listening to our very ambitious plan, SarahDeRebel said that if we were to ever appear on that show, the whole show will be filled with *toots* here and there because we fight so much. Heheh.

Oh well, I can still dream about it for now. It's not a crime, is it?

But right now, the most important thing is to think of a genius idea to make the audition tape work it to the top. Which is like in a year's time. Which will not be easy.

Whatever.

All I can say is that having me on the show will make the rate of viewers watching it increase like a 100gazilliontrillioninfinity times higher. Totally. *flips hair*

Heheh.Sorry for the bimboness. I can't help it. It's okay to behave like that once in a blue moon,right? *grins*

Working on a Saturday.

This happened in the office just awhile ago.
I was working because someone there suddenly quit her job, so the boss had literally begged asked me to come and work today.

While I was busy pretending that I'm working, I realized that there were 2 police officers at the room next door, which was the boss's office. They seem to be deep in conversation.

Then, I texted my dad since he wasn't working and was the only one awake so early in the morning.

'Papa, there are two police officers in my boss's room questioning her something. I'm scared. Haha.'

Few minutes later came my dad's reply.

'Call me b4 u masuk lokup.' [I don't know how he spelt lock-up man]

Omg. Why is my father so lame?

Bummer.

Tomorrow's Thaipusam.

Everybody's getting a holiday EXCEPT for me. And of course the foreign workers and everyone else who's working where I'm working.

Bugger.

Thus, I decided to join the other lazy bums who gets to enjoy the public holiday by applying a half day leave. =)

The only downside is I won't be getting paid in full since I'm taking half the day off. Sheesh. Fine by me, yeah sure that makes sense. But you know what's bad? I won't be getting paid during Chinese New Year okay. Because they said they count my salary per day and not per month. How sad is that?! *wails like a baby*

I quit! I quit!! *beats chest in anger* [Cannot beat chest, later make it even flatter.]

Then again, if I quit, I'll contribute in making the percentage of the unemployed rate higher. Therefore, I can conclude that I am greatly needed or else the manpower will be reduced by one.
Heheh.

P.S I love typing using my own keyboard instead of the one in the office. The keyboard is possessed. Has a spirit of its own I tell you. For instance, I just lightly pressed Enter and the whole thing will keep on entering by itself non-stop. Same goes for the rest of the keys. A repetitive process I mean. Wasn't easy binding the spirit of the keyboard All I had to do to stop it was to hit a few other keys and a lot of BackSpace.

Stupid keyboard.

Suzhou....the land of, silkworms?

I decided to be a little more adventerous today by changing the title. Instead of the usual China Day One, China Day Two, I took a more challenging leap to changing the title. I know, so adventerous right. Tell me about it.

So anyway, we kicked start the morning with an incredibly chilly weather because it rained. I hate getting up early and rushing through breakfast. So annoying...even though China's breakfast is not that appetizing. Got into our bus to get to our first destination of the day. While in the bus, there's nothing much you can do besides looking out of the window or sleep like a pig. FYI, I slept a lot in the bus even though the tour guide was speaking because I didn't wanna damage my brain by over-working it into translating what she's saying to a more understandable language, English.

What I liked seeing on the roads of China is that wherever you go, you always see all these motorized bicycles [I'm sure they have a proper name to call it, I just don't know what] around. You obviously don't get to see it here, so when I first saw it, I was really, really jakun-fied.

Can't see it clearly here though. It's sort of like a silent motorbike but produces more noise than a bicycle and you get to choose if you wanna pedal or just rest your feet. It's that cool!

After the long journey, [heheh, I remember every journey being long no matter where we went] we reached the Suzhou No.1 Silk Factory. Or something like that.

Oh yeah, before I forget, we switched tour guides at almost every city we went to. In Suzhou, we got a male tour guide.

May I present to you, the hottest tour guide ever...

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Nyahaha. This is him explaining all about silk worms filled with so much passion. Heheh.

Seriously, this part was really educational because we learnt so much about silk worms. The metamorphosis of the silk worm were explained in detail.

Fact of the century: The moths can make love up to 30 hours. Hot love baby. Sadly, the male moth dies after having its' greatest pleasure while the female dies after laying her eggs.

I prefer this tour guide's way of speaking English but he has the tendency to say cocooms and it kind of annoys me in a way.

The 'cocooms'. Note that there are bad and good cocoons. You can see here that the lady in green is selecting the bad ones and throwing it away while the good ones are left at the conveyor belt to proceed to the next process.

The boiling process.
More boiling. Believe it or not, you can in fact eat the worms in the cocoon. Too bad they were not selling it. Hahah.
They're afraid we'll steal their cocoons away, thus the sign. We're not that kiasu to steal it okay.

The machines look rusty.

Silk.

More silk.

Talking about silk, have you all heard about the lame joke?
Try saying silk ten times. Now, what do cows drink?
Answer: Water. [Because many dumb people would say milk]

So lame can die. Ahaha. But I fell for it before also. *shy*

Stretching process.
More stretching process. I tried pulling it as well. It's either the other 3 people were strong or I was weak because I felt one of my legs being lifted off the floor while I pulled.

Finished process. Models not included So comfy!!! We ended up buying two comforters for 900Yuan. That's about RM450.

The tour guide kept saying we were gonna go for a fashion show next and I thought I heard him wrongly at first. True enough, we were brought to a room equipped with a mini stage.
The Chinese models who looked extremely bored modelling their assets silk cheongsam. The slit was super high I tell you.
More bored looking models.

After filling our stomachs, we travelled to another city, Nanjing. We went to the Dr Sun Yat Sen's Mausoleum which was situated at the top of the Purple Hills. For those who don't know who is he, well, he's one of the greatest leaders in China. Lol. I know, sucky description. Wikipedia yourself here. =)

My old folks getting all lovey-dovey climbing up the stairs. Ahahah.

At the top where I was overlooking such a gorgeous view with fresh air!

Unfortunately, we were prohibited from snapping pictures of the tombstone.

Then, night came and it was time to eat again. Went jalan-jalan cari makan after that. I was craving for 'ping tong wu lou' since I landed.

Lo and behold! The 'ping tong wu lou' which didn't taste as nice as how I remembered it in Beijing.
Sarah giving in to her sweet tooth by having cotton candy which costs 3Yuan. That's RM1.50! Cheap.

Did a lot of walking and window shopping. Can't remember if we actually bought anything that night. All I can conclude is that Day Three was one of the most enjoyable out of the entire trip.

And so, the professionals unpacked and dozed off.

Work it baby.

Instead of the usual China post, I'll pass that one for now and talk about something else.

I did something really beneficial today!

I went to Celebrity Fitness. Heheh. Yeah, worked those muscles baby.

Plan was to pick Karine up then go there to 'play' around for a bit. When we were heading towards Subang Parade, we bumped into FuHun, who just finished his work out. So, he decided to join us again instead of going home. Guess he just wanted my transport. Haha. Whatever.

Then, as we entered into Celeb Fitness, we scanned through the schedule to see what classes were available which interest us. Abs & Stretch it was, cos it sounded easy peasy pussy pissy. The flyer said the class was gonna be conducted by Brancy, the 'So You Think You Can Dance' finalist, which got us a wee bit more interested.

Since we reached pretty early, we went meddling with the work out machines for about an hour or so. To cut the story short, we attended her class thinking it will be peanuts.

We were so wrong. Action some more lah, thought we were so strong. Ended up with burning thighs because she made us do so so so many squats and bends and crunches. She was so chillaxed about everything! When I thought my legs were about to come off anytime, she went 'Tired already?This is just the beginning.' Wahlau. Super cocky.

Then, she even recognized us. I dunno how, it's just quite freaky. When the class ended, she said to the three of us, 'You guys are from Charm, right?'. Then we replied with a nod and 'Uh-huh'. She said, 'Good, very flexible but need to work more on your strength.'
... Super super cocky man.

But that's not the point. Okay, imagine this. We went into the ladies after that to get our belongings from the locker. Surprisingly, she kept her stuffs beside our locker so she spoke to us for a bit and then started stripping like nobody's business with her boobies facing towards the locker, of course. I didn't mean to stare but it was just too obvious to not notice. She even had on a G-string as well. Hahah.

Now don't you start accusing me of being dirty minded or whatsoever. I am positive that all of you would have done the same if you were in my shoes.

Proof? You just imagined her semi-naked like how I described her, didn't you? Gotcha.

China Day Two.

Yeah, I know the title's super cool lame right. For the next few posts, it's prolly gonna be China Day Three, Day Four and so on, so deal with it. Heh.

Okay, so we left Shanghai for another city/province, Suzhou.

First place we headed to was the People's Square. The tour guide pronounced it in a really funny way that all of us in the group couldn't understand what it meant at first. We thought it was Pipol's Squire. That was how she pronounced it. Her English and Cantonese was really funny. If I were to judge her intonation, I'd have given a C plus. But who am I to judge man, I can't even speak Chinese. You know how the same Chinese word can have different meanings once pronounced wrongly. Happened to me while I was there. Omg, super embarrassing. I'm still thinking if I should blog about it. Hmm.

The People's Square is where the museum is at. Actually, I didn't pay much attention to the tour guide because that place was quite boring. Reason because we didn't get to enter the building and all we could see are buildings and a square land. Lol. As a matter of fact, I don't know if it was square as well, but since it's named like that, then I assumed it is. Hehe.

Standing in front of the whatever building.


More buildings.


Next up was pretty interesting. We went to a reflexology centre to what else, but to get a foot massage. Haha. One thing I didn't like about this trip is that it was very commercialized. They brought us to a lot of places which requires you to sit down obediently and listen to them speak about their traditional medicinal values/green tea/tea pot/feng shui. All in Mandarin. Omg can die. Then after the talk they would obviously persuade/bug/irritate you to buy their products. Wasted damn a lot of time there! >=(

But I found this foot reflexology visit the most interesting. Haha. View pictures to find out why.
They claimed that this method is the most traditional way to soak your feet in to cleanse and relax or something like that. Apparently, it's been used in China since ages ago, during the dynasty era. The solution was freaking hot, like boiling hot. Worse than the hot spring experience. So as you can see, I didn't dare dip my entire feet into the solution.

Suddenly become more daring already. The braver side of me took control over my feet. Lol. FYI, the colour of the solution IS like that and not because my feet was so dirty it turned into this colour okay.

The best part of this whole thing is right after boiling dipping our feets into that so-called herbal solution [smelled like there were herbs in it], we got a foot massage! =)

The bestestest part is my masseur was a cute one! haha. Before the massage started, I asked my Chinese educated youngest sibling how to say 'geli' in Mandarin just in case I had to use it when I got massaged later.

True enough, when he started massaging me, I started moving uncomfortably and was trying so hard not to giggle until he thought I felt pain. hahahah. My translater was obviously none other than my sister. Each time he asked me a question, I would look helplessly at my sister sending SOS signals. Such an embarassment. Sigh.

I swear if communication wasn't a barrier, I would have gotten his number by now. Muahahahahah.

After leaving the cute one, we had lunch and soon after hopped onto the bus to get to our next destination which was the Lion Forest Garden. Even though it was indeed quite scenic, I got kinda bored after seeing the same thing again and again.

I'm gonna take the easy way out by copying and pasting what Lion Forest Garden is like. Courtesy of Google.com =p

Compactly yet harmoniously spaced,the Lion Forest Garden has a prominent part for series of man-made mountains with various buildings around the lake ,and an artificial waterfall and cliffs at the edge of the lake on the west. Remains of the 14th century man-made mountains, covering 1,152 sq.m.and being the largest of all at Suzhou, can be still seen today. Noted for its labyrinthine mountains with winding pathways and caverns, old pines and cypress trees, awesome peaks and jogged rocks of grotesque shapes resembling dancing lions with striking and unusual poses,it possesses with pride the true delights of mountain and forest scenery in limited space with a flavor of Zen Buddhism. The Hall of Peace and Happiness, one of the principal buildings in the garden, is a master-piece of typical mandarin ducks' hall at Suzhou. Divided in halves, the northern half of the hall differs from the southern half in many particular aspects, such as beam-framing systems, furnishings, pavements, carvings, window designs and so forth. With painted patterns and beam carvings and looking splendid in green and gold, the True Delight Pavilion in the royal style with the "True Delight "tablet inscribed by the Qing Emperor Qianlong is a main viewing place in the garden and differs from the other plain and elegant gardens of Suzhou.Other buildings include the pointing at Cypress Trees Hall, the Asking Prunus Mume Pavilion and the Stone Boat, etc.

The Lion Forest Garden boasts 22 buildings of varied types, 25tablets and plateaux, 71steles inscribed with the famous Calligraphy Collection of the Listening to Rain Tower, 23 brick carvings, 5 carved wooden screens, and 13 valuable old trees such as gingo biloba L. [the ingredient used for the 'pei pa kou' cough mixture]

Interesting, no? ;)

Then, we headed for the temple which I wasn't very keen of because it was so smoky inside and all we did was wait there for everyone else to be done with their prayers.

Outside the temple.

After that, we went makan again. Our dinner would always be around 5-6ish. So early. Sometimes I won't feel that hungry but would still stuff myself nonetheless just in case I get hungry later at night. Sounds like a pig, I know.

Then, we went shopping at some street, which I forgot the name. Who cares about the name anyway? Oh, another thing I hate about this tour group is because the amount of time allocated for us to go around shopping would be insufficient. So everything's always in a hurry and my dad who's always trying to be the punctual one would nag at us to hurry up. In the end, the pattern of my shopping would be 'see if it's nice, check price, buy' without much hesitation. Consequently, I ended up buying 2 pairs of boots which were not my size out of pure desperation because they ran out of stock for my size. [They were a size smaller] If only I had more time to look around! >=(

One of the shops which caught our attention. Instead of 'Impossible is Nothing', look at how creative they can get. Lol.

I remember enjoying the second day better than the first because I finally got to buy something and returning to the hotel without being empty handed. Heheh.

Ahh. Bliss. After a whole day walking, the bed will always be my favourite...until the morning call starts ringing and annoying the crap out of you. Hmph.

China Day One.

Before I start boring you with my 'adventures' during the trip, I wanna wish all readers a very Blessed New Year 2008!!!

Okay, moving on...

As I've mentioned earlier, we had to fly over to Changi Airport first before taking another plane to China. Obviously we were super excited so we arrived at KLIA quite early. Mind you, in my family, arriving early only occurs once in a blue moon. So this must mean that we were really kan cheong about this trip.

Got time to take picture some more.

Yeah, I was wearing my spectacles because we weren't allowed to carry any form of liquid onto the plane. At first, I was wearing my lenses because I was told that we could hand carry the contact lens solution onto the plane only if it is 100ml and below. So, I was super confident that we could wear the lenses then only change back to our specs on the plane because my soaking solution was definitely below 100ml. BUT, the stupid officer at the check-in counter said that we can't hand carry it because it was stated on the bottle that it can contain up to 120ml while the liquid inside was only,what, 30ml? Seriously damn no brains la these people. They think I can fill in the liquid back into the bottle is it? And even if I do, what am I gonna do with it? Squirt the liquid into the pilot's eyes and terrorize the plane? Do I look like a hijacker? Dumbasses. In the end, had to obey them, thus the specs.

Jakun! Can watch TV but without sound. Cos the distance was too near so we weren't provided headsets. Haha.Landed in Singapore and the moment we saw Free Internet Service, we went ahead and took advantage of it. Like they say, act like how the Romans act. So I acted like a Singaporean lor. Kiasu ma.

After the kiasu moment, we boarded the plane and left for Shanghai. Reached there about, erm, okay, not important cos I forgot. It was in the morning obviously. The first thing we did was take the train when the bus was already waiting at the airport for us to put our luggages in. The tour guide wanted us to experience how fast their train could go so we did a lot of walking to the train station. Have to admit it's realllllyyyyy fast. It travelled at 300km/h or more. Seriously.

It was moving too fast that I couldn't even see the view outside so I resorted to applying a bit of make up. Heh.

After that, we got onto our tour bus and headed straight to

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The Oriental Pearl Tower! Looks so cute. It's one of the tallest buildings in the world. Stands at 468m. Gotta take the lift to the highest floor for sight seeing which was at the 263m point, if I'm not mistaken. The lift travels crazily fast, like 7 floors per sec!

I had on this fugly jacket which looks like a raincoat instead and wore it for about 2 days before getting something which looks more like a winter jacket.

Next, we headed to some place which looked like Chinatown (duh, it's in China) to walk around and grabbed a bite or two.

Me in fugly jacket.

The family.
Sax as in saxophones. Duh.


Sounds pretty good to me.


Food food food. My siblings and I thought that that was lunch so we ate quite a lot.
Then, we went for the actual lunch at a proper restaurant with 8 dishes but couldn't eat much. Take note that all the meals we had there always came with 8 dishes.


After that, we checked into Motel168 because the tour guide said we needed our rest after the long journey. Unpacked and had a nap.


Bed was rock hard. Yuck. The siblings complained later that night that they weren't able to sleep well. I, on the other hand, slept right through. No prize will be given for guessing who's the pig.


After the well deserved nap, it was dinner time.

We were extremely fascinated with this. Can see what's that? It's sugar cane for dessert! Never tried eating it this way before. Definitely an experience.

Later, the tour guide brought us to walk around some streets selling items with expensive prices so I don't see the point of going there actually.

We then moved on to Shanghai Bund. It was a pretty sight, with the Oriental Pearl Tower being litted up so bright and colourful. What's not such a pretty sight was the uncountable amount of couples you see hogging the bridge with the most strategic spot overlooking the tower and displaying PDA everywhere. Get a room man.


That was the last stop of the night. Right after we had enough of picture snapping, sight seeing and puking due to seeing too many overly passionate couples, we went back to our rock hard beds to snooze in the freezing weather.