Hello Sir, Rolex? Omega? DVD? DVD?

ermz.. ok.. i got back from Shanghai yesterday..

or rather.. on Thursday evening.. itz already past midnight now so itz a Saturday..

Arrived at Shanghai in the afternoon, on Wednesday.. and went out to Xiang-yang market with Tun Fatimah, Kelly, Jasmine and Cynthia..

therez a real market there.. at the back, but thatz not where we headed to.. thatz where the locals go to to buy their pork.. or at least.. i think itz pork, from the smell that i got a distance away..

Xiang-Yang market is where u should go to to buy cheap stuffs.. full of foreigners, and i came across a few Malays there too.. and they sound like Singaporean Malays..

it is extremely cold now in these parts of the world.. temperature in the day was at -2 degrees.. so i guess u could imagine how freezing cold it can get..

after arriving in Xiang-Yang, abt 5 minutes later, i made my own way.. coz i didnt want to walk around with the girls as they normally would stop by every shop.. i walked around on my own and bought a belt for myself and a bag and some other stuffs, all within 45 minutes..

spent the rest of the time walking around.. was looking for some stuffs for my mom coz she is going to Jakarta for work.. but couldnt find anything interesting..

The mainland Chinese are very rough in the way they talk and they way they behave.. but they are nice generally..

during my first few times in China, i was taken aback several times coz it seems like they were arguing.. but actually.. itz just a normal conversations that they were having..

You could easily spot the ones who came from places like Mongolia.. u can always differentiate them.. obviously.. and they are normally quieter than the locals.. thatz my opinion anyway..

a lot of the beggars that hang around there are Mongolians as well.. quite a pity.. but their state looks better than those in India, as i had mentioned previously..

u could get a lot of fake stuffs there in Xiang-Yang.. but some of the popular brands had been removed, like Mont Blanc, Louis Vuitton, Prada.. so now itz Kipling, Adidas, Nike..

but dont buy fake shoes.. i dont think itz ever a good idea to do that.. coz fake shoes doesnt ventilate properly, and ur feet will stink at the end of the day.. so i think itz always a good idea to invest in a proper pair of shoes..

some of the vendors will approach the foreigners to buy fake stuffs... Hey Sir, Rolex? Omega? DVD? DVD? sexxxxxxx DVD? nice.. good quality.. HEY SIR.. YOU WANT?

but they dont tout.. they dont disturb u once u say u are not interested..

here's a pic of Xiang-Yang..



no matter how many times you can walk around the market, and how many times u had passed by a certain shop, therez always something that u had missed before that will attract your attention..

but if u are alone, itz hard to stop and look at the stuffs, coz they will pester you to buy..

once the price had been given to you, and normally, the prices are absurd, bargain. heavily.

the belt was quoted to me at 180 Reminbi.. which is abt $35.. and i started bargaining at 25 Reminbi.. which is $5.. finally got it at 40 Reminbi.. which is $8..

see the difference?

and never assume that the price that u get will be the same price that ur friend will get... to us, itz always like a game bargaining.. sometimes u win.. and get it at a really cheap price... sometimes u leave the shop feeling dumb..

i think if i would have stick to a bargain, i might get the belt at 25 Reminbi.. but what is $3 to us anyway..

I walked around Xiang-Yang for abt 2 hours looking for the girls.. but i cant find them at all.. and it was a torture coz the weather was getting colder by the minute..

finally, at abt 6, i gave up and had dinner by myself.. at Yoshinoya, and ordered a bowl of beef rice.. met a set of other cabin crew who did a later flight and just arrived at the market to start their price haggling day..

i walked around for 15 more minutes.. and decided to leave the place as therez nothing else i wanna get.. and it was already dark.. it gets dark at abt 5pm there..
took a cab and showed the driver my hotel room key which comes with the address of the place..

a confusing trip.. the driver tried to talk to me in Mandarin, and i couldnt understand a word he said.. and i talked to him in English.. and we ended up using signs.. and attempting conversations again and giving up.. but he was nice.. seeing that i have a camera with me, he stopped at a nice place for me to take a picture of Christmas decorations on the street.. i should have taken my time to snap, so a lot of the pics ended up being very blurry.. and when i arrived at the hotel, the fare was even cheaper than the one that i took on the way there.. just by a few cents.. so i knew that he didnt detour to let me take pictures for him to get extra money..



here's a picture of Christmas decorations on the street.. i couldnt snap a proper pic.. so just take my word for the fact that itz much nicer than it seems in pictures..

in fact, the taxi fare in China is EXTREMELY cheap.. in comparison to what i said abt Japan.. a 20 minutes ride barely cost $4.. and almost everything else is cheap there too... u can have a good meal which can last u a whole night at abt $8.. and this is the kinda meal that will have u crawling on ur knees to walk back coz itz just too much to eat..

once i arrived in my room, i had a phone call from Tun Fatimah.. they had been looking for me for a while and gave up too.. and they probably had arrived in the hotel less than 5 minutes before i did..

so we went down for a buffet dinner at the hotel.. and i had 4 full plates of sashimi, sushi and oysters.. and ended with fruits as dessert, and thatz it.. and i cant eat anymore..

the sashimi spread was fantastic.. and the oysters too... damn.. i think i had abt 10 oysters.. and itz a good thing that i had my hepatitis jab..

i took a pic of Shanghai sky line just before i left my room.. so u can see that China is not as backward as u might think it is.. in fact, Shanghai is moving SO fast that from one trip to the next, there are new buildings that will appear out of nowhere.. and the country is quite clean too.. though there are a few slums here and there.. itz not that bad...



i arrived in Singapore at abt 7.30 pm, and got home and went out to Coffee Bean at Century Square with Alwi and Isha.. called Wily and he came down at abt 10.. and we headed to a small muslim coffee shop at Tampines St 42, called 7K.. i didnt even know the existence of that place..

slept thru the whole of today, and woke up at 5+, had dinner with my family..

will be working tomorrow morning, doing a turnaround to Hanoi.. which was in replacement for my Perth flight..

I managed to get an off day for the gig on Sunday.. so we will be playing at about 5pm, and therez gonna be quite a few ska bands, punkrock and oi bands..

I'm not really up to it, playing a gig this month.. we had rejected several slots coz we wanted to continue playing only in 2006.. just wanna relax and chill for now.. but since Din had given his word to the organiser, we are gonna do it this Sunday..

so any of u interested to come down and skank for us? itz gonna be at Toa Payoh CC.. dunno which one of the CC.. and i think itz somewhere around 5pm.. if i am not wrong..

i wont be having anymore flights for the next 2 weeks coz i'll be doing my reservist..

MAJULAH SINGAPURA..

i dedicate my reservist to Devan Nair.. heh.. if i could..

but i do like that guy.. really.. dunno why..

Skavoovie..