Day 36 in Beijing

The 20th of December, 5 days before Christmas, this my 36th day in China.

I'm just so glad that I'm back in Beijing, resting and sleeping in, finally for the first weekend since I arrived in Beijing. Today my plan was that I would still be in Tianjin and travel around, but now my new plan is to visit Nanluoguxiang (my favourite place in Beijing) and buy some books for Money. He bought some books from Yiduoyiguo for his friend's milktea shop (for customers to leave messages in) and it was really popular there. So now I'm going to buy some more for him and post it to him. Here we go, Nanluoguxiang.

After spending ages on choosing books that are more matching to the milktea shop theme i walked out of the shop with 5 books. Jordan and I walked further down Nanluoguxiang and suddenly I saw the line waiting in front of the Wenyu Yoghurt shop. This is something that I wanted to try so bad, I read about it online all the time and people will leave comments like, if you haven't tried this yoghurt then you pretty much failed in visiting Beijing. Hoho, being a complete yoghurt fan myself, I must try, even if that means lining up for it. Good things take time =)

Jordan and I started lining up and people kept piling up behind us. This yoghurt shop owner inherited the secret formula from his ancestors. His ancestors used to make these yoghurts for the emperor and his families back in the dynasty periods and now this is the only shop that still holds this secret recipe. There are limited amount of yoghurts made everyday and the shop will close after the yoghurts are sold out. We were waiting in the line for at least 20-25 minutes. I was the next one in the line to buy the yoghurt!! YUS!!!!! The man in front of me asked for 4 pots of the yoghur and the lady said, sorry only one left. He was a bit hesitated in getting only 1 pot but then he still decided to take it. NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! My yoghurt!!!!! RAAAAA!! My yoghurt gone!!!! I turned around to Jordan and Jordan started laughing, he was laughing at my expression. He said I looked so sad, like a little girl that didn't get her lollie. Lol. But I WAS dissappointed. My yoghurt >_<

We walked further north after Nanlugoxiang until we reach Beihai. This is the the inner manmade lake built in the dynasty periods for transport use. We didn't actually plan to come here but rather just to find a subway station so we can go to our next destination. BUT OMG! I suddenly saw this really pretty scene and we walked towards it. It was Beihai! The surface of Beihai is all frozen (don't know how deep though) but it looked really cool. It's reflecting the mild winter sun and the lifeless trees around the lake. Wow, what a scene.

We're heading for dinner tonight with Anson and Anson's mum. Anson invited all four of us but Josi is still at her ski trip and Gerard is still at work. Jordan and I went to the Renmin University Station to go to Jin Yuan Times Shopping Centre (金源时代商城). Beijing traffic at peak hours are just insane (I bet it's the same in any other larger cities) but omg, it's so slow and I nearly fell alseep, hehe). Jin Yuan shopping centre is, according to Anson's mum, the biggest shopping centre in Asia. It's a total of 8 or 9 floors (including basements) and it expands along the street. There's a bun shop on the top level (level 6) along all these other restaurants and foodcourt, Anson was already eating the buns while waiting for me and Jordan. When I arrived at level 6, Anson stuffed a bun into my mouth, and OMG!!! It's sooooo nice~! It's so so so so so so nice~! This is also called the Tianjin bun, why is there such a huge difference?

Eventually Anson's mum (also called Nancy, hehe) decided on a Xi'an style restaurant. It's new in this shopping centre so we thought we'll give it a try. The restaurant is very big and have a lot of customers. We waited and changed tables until we eventually got one that will fit the four of us and our food. Food in China are actually very salty and oily, no matter where you go, I think northern Chinese are stronger in the flavours than southern Chinese (where I'm from). eeeeek. We ordered quite a few dishes and they are all very nice. This tofu dish we had was so smooth and tasty, I'm not a tofu fan but I definitely love this dish. The lamb kidneys came after we finished most of our dishes and the sheep scent was really strong, errrrrrr, but Anson seems to be enjoying it =P

Day 35 in Beijing = Day 1 in Tianjin

Hoho, the 19th of December 2009, this is my 35th day in Beijing but guess what? It's my first day spent in Tianjin.

I always know about Tianjin, but I only know that it is very cold in the winter, it's very close to Beijing (around 130kms between train stations), and of course, there's a special type of bun in Tianjin called, 'Tianjin Goubuli Bun', this is one of the four most famous buns in Chinese culture. So that's enough reasons for me to make a trip there and experience another city outside of Beijing.

Did a little bit of research online (baidu.com) about what's fun and what's worth while to visit in Tianjin. I really like doing these researches before making any traveling decisions because travelers will put their comments, experiences and photos online in forums and also Baidu Answer (copy of Google Answer). I like searching like this 'two day travel plan in Tianjin' or something like this. I found plenty of forums and blogs by other travelers who post online their trip for how many days in a particular city. These routes are very clear and detailed, but at the same time very brief and easy to be understood. For example, the travelers will write take the super train from Beijing to Tianjin at this certain time and cost this much, then arrive and cab for $amount to the motel (rate for $night), then bus #route to this place for this particular restaurant average price of $amount. It's really clear and detailed, and it allows me to go around the city by taking the cheaper option and closer to the normal daily life of the Tianjin people.

Gerard is at work this weekend and Josi is going to skiing with her colleagues so only Jordan can make it to this trip with me. Our plan is to follow the advices and trip plans online and stay in Tianjin for 1 night and 2 days. We took the bus and subway then taxi to the Beijing South Train Station. This is the train station that have the super fast trains direct between Beijing and Tianjin. I found out online that the train leaves very often and there's no need to pre-purchase tickets. When we got to the train station, we realised that the train leaves every half an hour and it's 29RMB per ride and therefore it's 58RMB return. This is really cheap huh? The train is really new, it travels 200KM per hour, imported from Japan. The ride is 29 minutes only and it was a real nice day to travel. Bright sunny day, warm inside the train, and guess what? Free bottle of water for every passenger~ That's pretty cool huh?! The train is very new inside, very comfortable and at no point squashed or dirty.

As soon as we got off the bus, we decided to go find our accommodation first, book hotel rooms and drop off our bag. We hopped onto a taxi (start up rate 8RMB and 1.7RMB/KM) and asked to go to the closest Homes Inn. Homes Inn is now the biggest chain inns/motels in China, it has 658 inns all over the country. The rooms in Homes Inn are very standard, clean, cheap (in comparison to hotels), and offers standard room service. The locations are always near central or populated areas so it's very easy for travelers. We arrived at one of the Homes Inn near the trains station and something surprising happened.

We went to the main reception to ask for room rates and availability. When we have decided on renting the rooms the receptionist asked for our ID. Both of us don't have Chinese IDs and neither of us brought our passports. We told them that we're from overseas so we didn't know we need to bring IDs. The receptionist told us that it's the company policy and also law that all motels and hotels must check and register all customers. We talked to her for so long and see if there are any other options available but unfortunately she couldn't helps us either. We were very dissappointed. We walked out from Homes Inn and walked into another motel next door and was also turned down for the same reason. So now what? What are we going to do for the night?

After some discussions, we decided to go for lunch first then find the solution. We decided to go to the Food Street (as advised by travelers online). We sat in the taxi again and started chatting to the taxi driver throughout our ride. He found out about our situation and said that he knows some motels that don't ask for IDs and can drop us there to try. We thought, why not? Jordan got off the taxi and went into the motel where the taxi driver recommended us and 5 minutes later, he came out with the same answer. Apparently, because it's near the end of the year, so the police are very strict on governance and check-ups. Every motel/hotel had received notice about following strict regulations and no one is allowed to check-in without IDs. Then the taxi driver recommended us to go to spa at the night, where we can enjoy spa, entertainment as well as food. He said it's a great way to relax and we'll have a place to stay overnight. We decided to give this a try too because it really does sound relaxing and fun. Nonetheless, let's not let these problems kill our eating mood. Food Street, here we come.

We got dropped out outside the Food Street and we were already really really hungry. Happy to know that we'll be having Tianjin buns soon, hoho. We took some photos on the outside and started walking into the walking street. However, every step we took results in greater dissappointments and confusion. Where's the people? Why are the doors of the shops closed? Where's the food? What?! We are at the place that were recommended by travelers online, and the taxi driver knows where we are going to, we are at the right place I'm sure. This is really dissappointing.

Eventually Jordan and I resulted in a conclusion, based on our personal experience, it's the weather. Tianjin is colder than Beijing by a few degrees, and people are just not coming out onto the streets. There's no business opportunities here. We continued to walk further down the street and found more shops (but closed!!). Although there's no food around in this Food Street, but the sceneries are still quite pretty and very heavily Chinese culture style.

We walked further into the GuLou South Street and this special building caught my eyesight. It's the mansion for one of the emperor's daughters, it's now privately owned but turned into a museum and open to public. We decided to go in for a tour and have a look at this so called 'Princess mansion'. The mansion is made of two SiHeYuan, the old Beijing style courtyard, a very typical late Qing Dynasty architecture. This mansion used to belong to Princess Shuo (硕格格); her father is YuYu (counsulate general in Japan and France) and her mother is French. Princess Shuo followed her dad to different countries since little and on her return to Beijing at 1903 (when she was 17 years old), her sister and her became interpretors for Queen Cixi. Eventually she married to a diplomate from the USA and migrated to America. She passed away after a car accident in Canada at the age of 58. Her mansion was reserved from then until now, and it was purchased by a very successful businesswoman and now open to the public.

Photos are not allowed to be taken inside for privacy issues but the guy let me take a photo at the entrance, with the ancient cart and decorations. It's a relatively small mansion (comparing to the emperor's palace in Beijing, the Forbidden City), but it is still very nice and reveals some parts of the history. I really like visiting these places and I don't think I'll ever get sick of hearing about these stories.

Eventually we found some restaurants randomly on the streets opposite a shopping centre and went into a Chengdu style restaurant for lunch. To be honest, restaurants in China are pretty much all fusion style and you can find most of the common and popular foods on their menu. Anyway, we ordered a few dishes and some fried rice for our lunch and to be honest, it was one of the worst meals we had in China. It was very OILY, SALTY, BURNT. Yeeeek. I just don't know how to explain it better. We couldn't finish what we ordered, and I think the major reason was because of the amount of oil and salt in the dishes. Anyway...... food and acommodation were not the easiest for us today >_<

After lunch (which was already like 4pm?) we started talking about what else we want to do in Tianjin. We took out the travel plans I printed and after a long discussion, we decided we don't want to stay here overnight. One is that it's actually really cold here and we don't have enough clothes to stay warm. Second is that we don't even have a place to rest! Third is that the food wasn't very attractive (so far). Fourth because of the weather, most of the tourist attractions are either closed or barely have anyone visiting. Ahhhh, I miss Beijing.

So to make sure that we at least get something out of this Tianjin journey, we decided to visit the Tianjin Eye as our last stop. Tianjin Eye is a ferris wheel opened in 2008 and it's the only ferris wheel situated on a bridge (on the Haihe Yongle Bridge of Tianjin). Tianjin Eye have 48 clear cabins and each cabin can contain a maximumn of 8 people, and therefore at most 384 people can ride the ferris wheel together. The Tianjin Eye is around 110m wide in diameter and 120m tall. Each trip on the Tianjin eye will take about 30 minutes and each ride is 60RMB. It's actually really expensive in Chinese standard but this is one of the must-do's when anyone visits Tianjin, and especially given the dissappointments we've got so far, I think we deserve to finish the trip with something nice =)

We got onto the ferris wheel and then realised how slow this is going to be, haha, and guess what? We are the ONLY passengers/tourists riding the Tianjin Eye. Maybe it's the weather? Too cold so there are no tourists coming? Or maybe it's not dark enough and tourists like night views? Anyway, we enjoyed the beginning of the ride where we see new scenes and took some photos. But after a while, we started to feel the boredom with the slow movement and the same buildings around us. Before reaching to the top of the ride, both of us fell asleep. Haha, yes, what an insane journey. We traveled all this way for buns and ferris wheel but we fell asleep. I think it's because it's too cold, we just don't feel the energy anymore. LOL. Anyway, I still like the ferris wheel, haha, I would still ride a ferris wheel, but maybe not at Tianjin, not much sceneries around to be seen >_<

After the ride on the Tianjin Eye, we decided to take the taxi to the train station and head back to Beijing. Before that, we went into a shopping centre selling only fabrics because I really need to go to the bathroom. Why am I talking about bathrooms in my blog? LOL, it's the worst bathroom experience ever for me for the 22 years of my life. We went into the shopping centre and without much effort, we found the toilets. Guess what? We found the toilets because we followed the smell, not because of any signs. This alreay is suggesting something nasty. Jordan decided he'll give it a pass to go to the toilet but I still went ahead. Man..... The toilets here are just beyond disgusting. No words can possibly describe how bad the toilets were. I couldn't take it any longer and I just want to leave this shopping centre as fast as I can.

We went back to the train station, got our tickets and saw some pretty buildings around. The buildings were all in European style, I read about this actually. I read online that there's a street here that' built with Italian style buildings. We were going to go and visit but then we didn't think it's worth it. We saw them over the other side of the river, opposite to the train station. Yeah, it looks quite pretty, but it looks to be still under construction.

Our last dissappointment was with Tianjin buns. Sigh. We've been looking for the Tianjin buns ever since we arrived this afternoon. So far we had no luck. Until suddenly we saw some restaurants at the train station and one of them is specialised in making Tianjin buns. We were so excited, thinking, yep, this completes our purpose of visiting Tianjin =) We bought one serving of buns (which there are 8 little buns inside), but..... BUT.... as soon as we took a bite, we looked at each other, then from reading each other's expression, we know that neither of us liked the buns and again it's a big dissappointment. The buns were in different flavours, and none of them were meat based. The flavours we had includes salty tofu and egg, seafood and something weird, and more weird flavours. Yuk. I can't believe this. (after talking to my colleagues later who lived in Tianjin several years of Uni, she told me that nobody in Tianjin eats Tianjin buns, they're really for sale for non-Tianjin people; Tianjin buns are usually very dry and a mixture of ingredients as fillings, not the typical buns that we have in Beijing or Shanghai or the other parts of the country). This is it, now we seriously want to leave Tianjin.

Home, here we are, arrived back at our flats, with the surprise look on Josi's face that we came back just before she left for her ski trip. Yeah, it was a tiring and dissappointing day, but it's worthwhile because I can write about it. Jordan and I made some really light food for our dinner, soup with vegies, dumplings, and tried our best to keep our dinner as light as possible (especially after the super oily lunch and weird buns). Ah, home, I miss home, I miss the warm and cosy environment, snuggle in my bed, watch a movie and slowly fall asleep.

Home,sweet home.

Day 34 in Beijing

18th December 2009, the 34th day of my journey in China. Today we're inviting Jian and Gabe over to our flat for a little farewell dinner for Jian.

Jian is leaving us on the 20th December, which is two days from now. Won't see him again until March next year when I'm back in Auckland. We decided to make a warm dinner, a nice flatwarming dinner at our place and make sure we have a good memory together. Jordan and I started preparing for dinner while waiting for Josi, Jian and Gab to come home.

Jordan told me earlier that Jian loves Japanese curry so this is it, Jap curry as our main. I also made some kumara fries (thanks to our landlord who taught us a quick and easy way to make kumara fries) for pre-dinner snack. Everyone loved the kumara fries, haha, it's so easy to make and it's definitely healthier than having fries out in restaurants. Jordan also played around with his creativity and invented this dish, where he made saucy mince for stuffings and deep fried mushrooms as the pocket for the filling. It was SOOOOOO good! We just coudn't stop eating until we suddenly realised, oops, there's no enough food, LOL. We understimated the eating ability of 3 guys and 2 girls.

After dinner we ordered for some ice cream delivery, haha, love our convenient store!! I also cut up some pineapples and watermelons for everyone to share. What would be better than a movie, in such a cold winter night but we stayed indoor, warm and fussy, with a bowl of ice cream each? What would be better than a movie? We picked this new Hong Kong movie that I bought on the street, called, Murderer. It's the new thriller movie for 2009 by Aaron Kwok.

'Murderer' is a story about a police man (Aaron) who lost his memory after an incident. A police man called Tai fell from a tall building became parallised, he's the fourth victim of the recent massacare where the murderer will drill holes on the victim's body and let them drain to death. The main guy (acted by Aaron) was found lying on the 7th floor of the building out of conscious. Aaron lost his short term memory and couldn't remember what happened to Tai and why he's lying on the 7th floor. Aaron used to have a really good life, a beautiful wife and a cute son, and going to become the chief in the police station really soon, but now he's the prime suspect behind the massacre. Aaron started investigating this case with his close friend, Gui, but more and more evidences are pointing towards Aaron himself as the cold blooded murderer. Tai passed away in the hospital from all the injuries and Aaron started to have fantasies about what actually happened. Eventually even Gui believes that Aaron is the murderer, because apart from Tai, all the other 3 victims are Aaron's neighbours from childhood.

It was a weird movie and quite surprising when eventually we found out that Aaron's little son (aged 7) was the murderer behind all this. The true story is like this: this little boy have a deficiency with his body and he stopped growing since the age of 7. He was also one of the childhood neighbours of Aaron's but was always being bullied by Aaron and his friends. This little boy have so much hate towards these people and was lucky to be eventually adopted by Aaron and his wife. There goes his revenge. This movie was very interesting and to be honest, not my favourite. I really disliked the fact that they used a little boy and a sad deficiency disease as the topic for the movie, but I must say, it's quite a surprise at the end. We all quite enjoyed it, that we can spend the night together, and let's hope Gabe won't turn crazy?? (LOL, refer to photo below).

Will miss you Jian, have a safe trip home and enjoy the New Zealand summer for us!! See you when we get back =)

Day 33 in Beijing

17th of December 2009, seems to be a normal day, my 33rd day in Beijing, China. Today's not a normal day in fact, it's a very very special day for me and two of my friends. Today is our little reunion day.

Remember Francy? We met up few weeks ago in Beijing. There were 6 of us, the 6 girls, we went to college together and became really close friends ever since. The transition from college years to university era resulted in us spreading all over the world. Francy in US, Dianna in Canada, Angie in Australia, and the rest of us (Ming, Cherry and myself) in New Zealand. Now the university life is coming to an end, and all of us are starting to settle down for our careers. Francy in back in China after graduating in US, she's mostly in Beijing. Dianna's also back in China now, after graduating and going to start her career here, she's mostly in Shanghai.

Yesterday I received a surprise call from Dianna, she's in Beijing!!! She's here for some career opporunities and also to meet some friends. How can we possibly not meet up?! Omg Francy and I were really excited that Dianna's here, it was a really nice surprise. We met up at Wangfujin (for the easy transport reasons).

It was easier for me and francy to meet up, but for poor Dianna, a new place for her means the difficulty of finding herself around >_<> Finally we found her in McDonald's inside Wangfujin, and yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa we just couldn't stop hugging and talking at the same time, haha. We're so excited to see each other, and finally we can all meet up =)

After walking around in APN shopping centre for a while, we decided to have Banana Leaf (Thai Restaurant). To be honest, I wasn't paying attention to the meal at all. Not a place that I would recommen, even if I didn't pay too much attention to the details but I can already sense the fake Thai fusion in this restaurant. The food were really just Chinese style food made with some Thai herbs, or some spicy-ness so it's more South East Asian style. Also the restaurant was playing Jay Chou music!! How on earth is this Thai? We all think it's more of a Chinese style restaurant. Anyway, the funniest thing was when Dianna started ordering a Thai style dessert even before she looked at the mains, and resulted in all of us getting our dessert delivered before the mains. Dianna pretty much finished her dessert before the mains and started taking spoons of desserts from mine once she finished her main. Haha, it was really really cute when Francy suddenly realised that Dianna's going to go to her's next, she immediately took her dessert and placed it as far from Dianna as possible. It's so cute =)

After dinner we decided to find Starbucks so we can sit down and have a little catch-up. We all changed quite abit, and have so many updates that we need to share with each other in terms uni, job, career, past experiences and future aspirations. We are now all at the stage of stepping into the real world and going to settle down for our career. We talked the possibilities of us working in China, or even all in the same city and how we can hang out together and support each other.

Dianna took out this really cute looking camera from her bag. It's one of those instant cameras that prints out photos in seconds and you'll have to wait for the photo to be developed. I always wanted one of this because the photos are really unique and shows special meaning. Dianna have 7 remaining photos and we accidentally wasted one. But what a coincidence that we'll have 6 photos to share for the 3 of us? Now we each of 2 photos as part of our memory and collection. We're such a poser, haha, we sat inside the little glass house inside the Starbucks, so it's like we're VIPs and have our own room, hoho. The waitress was really friendly too (obeying our requests and taking photos for us, hehe). Here comes our achievements!!

Day 32 in Beijing

The 16th of December 2009 is the 32nd day of my journey in Beijing.

Let's start with a little story about Jordan and Jordan. Huh? Yeah, that was my first reaction when I heard about Jordan and Jordan. Jordan Wang is the Jordan that I've been talking about in all my blogs. I've known him for nearly 3 years now, met him because of AIESEC, he's my LCP when I was EB, based in Auckland Uni. Then I was told about Jordan Chong by Jordan Wang. Such a weird feeling to see Jordan talking about Jordan (another person). The Jordans went to the same primary and were close friends since then. Then somehow they lost contact when JW went back to China; but then somehow they met again in college (if I remembered the story clearly); then they were 'separated' and lost contacts again when JC went to Otago for university. THEN... the interesting part begins... JW was catching up with JC over the phone and they talked about summer plans, somehow they are BOTH going to Beijing fo summer internships, and guess what?! Both through AIESEC~ Hoho, what a small world~ AIESEC brings people closer together~ But every since I heard about their 'story', I started naming them, the 'soul mates', haha, I bet this annoys them, haha, but it's destiny that you guys meet at so many different occasions constantly throughout different stages of your life, that's amazing isn't it?? It sends this frill through my spine. I never had a friend like this, so I really envy you two.

So tonight we are all going to meet up for dinner. The Jordans, Kayne, Josi and me. We decided to go to one of Jordan's (our Jordan) favourite place, APN food court. Why is this his favourite and always on the top of our list? Firstly because it's in Wangfujin, it's in the central of Beijing, convenient for everyone. Secondly, is because food court allows us to choose what 'I want for dinner myself', and it's relatively cheaper than restaurants. Thirdly, the most important reason, there's a restaurant by the foodcourt in APN level 6, they sell handmade fresh Shanghai style fried dumplings!! Guess what?! The buns are actually very tasty and very much the Shanghai standard, mmmmmm very nice~ Without too much of a surprise, Jordan bought a pack of the Shanghai style fried dumplings, haha, so predictable! He also got JordanC really into these buns too! Haha, the power of food.

My feelings for tonight: how often do you get to meet a friend like this? No matter it's friends for years, or just friend's friends; making friends back at home and hang out with them again in a foreign country? How often do you get to have these kind of experiences? Experience that you will remember forever? Not only because it's fun, but also because how much we've put in to make this experience possible. I don't have fix group of friends, but I have my groups of friends, that will come in and out of my life; but because of this, I treasure them, I make sure we have the best time with each other at all times, whenever we can, and make sure that my friends will never regret being my friends.

Really looking forward to tomorrow. Tomorrow night is going to be a really special night for me and two of my most special friends. Everything started with a surprising phone call =)

Day 31 in Beijing

The 31st day of my journey in China in the 2009 summer holiday (for NZ), the 15th December 2009. Today the biggest goal I must achieve after work is to go to the only supermarket (like the ones in NZ) we found in Beijing so far and get the materials and ingredients for our TN dinner on the coming Monday.

Even before arriving at Beijing, the four of us had decided that we will invite our TN managers to our flat after we settled down to treat them a kiwi-style dinner and thank them for their help. It's been just over 4 weeks since we got here and we finally decided that we will stay at this flat for the rest of the trip. Then we started planning for the TN dinner and hopefully we can deliver it perfectly.

Jian showed me a supermarket when we had dinner last week, it was the supermarket in Raffles City. This supermarket is very much like the ones we have in New Zealand: fresh fruit and vegies, fresh and frozen meat, all sorts of wine, bread, pastry, cooking needs, living needs, confectionary etc. Because we usually eat out most of the nights and also because we haven't yet found a decent supermarket near our home, so this is actually the first supermarket that we know of. So, tonight is my shopping night.

Met up with Jordan after work for dinner at the Raffles City. It was the first time for him to come to Raffles City and he really liked this shopping centre too. It's a very westernised shopping centre, the reason behind this was that it was a shopping centre owned by Singaporian investors and they had different plans to shops and style to local investors. Hence, the more westernised supermarket. We had dinner at the bottom floor food court and then I took Jordan to Honeymoon, my favourite dessert place. Hoho, it was soooooooo nice~ I just can't smiling and was so excited as I was introducing the desserts to Jordan. Jian did an awesome job in referral~ haha. So gonna take Josi and Gerard here for them to try~

Supermarket = fun! You can't believe this. I haven't done any grocery shopping for so long (well, since I got to China) and it was just so fun walking around in the supermarket looking at all these shelves full of products that I haven't seen before, or products that I have seen (like MNC products) but then in a different packaging with a different name. I suddenly decided to buy something as a surprise for Josi and Gerard, for that they missed out in this awesome supermarket trip. Jordan and I picked a bottom of vanilla coke for Gerard, because we know that he loves vanilla coke but it's so rare now even in New Zealand; then we picked a box of biscuits for Josi, firstly because she loves biscuits, but we decided on this particular one for another reason. This box of biscuits used the most popular cartoon now in China as promotional message, it's the Happy Lamb and Big Grey Wolf cartoon, haha. Why did we pick this? Because since we arrived in China, we see the lamb and wolf related things everywhere. They're made in toys, on TV, on advertising materials, as gloves, on beanies, on clothings, on everything!!!!! It's so crazy!!! Josi got quite annoyed seeing these around all the time and so we decided to be evil and give her a box of this so she can keep it in her room, hehe, hopefully she'll like it.

At the end of the supermarket tour, we bought some Italian pasta sauce, pasta, softdrinks, confectionary, daily living needs etc. Looking forward to the TN dinner!!!

Day 30 in Beijing

The 14th of December 2009 = the 30th day of my journey in China.

Today we are going to karaoke~~ Wooohooo~ my favourite entertainment~ hoho.

But today we are celebrating for a sad event though, not so much of a celebration to be honest, more like a farewell.

Jian is leaving Beijing very soon, he's leaving China and going to HK for a few days before going back to New Zealand at last. Back to home~ nice, sweet, warm home~

Jian, Gabe, Gerard, Jordan, Josi and I met at the train station nearby Cashbox Partyworld before 7pm and starting walking towards Cashbox. Unfortunately we were a little late (like 2 minutes after 7pm) and the staff just wouldn't let us get the special package deal! They said because we are late so we must pay for the hourly rate and not get the special offer (buy one hour and get two hours for free). Eventually I got really annoyed because they kept on saying it's the computer that wouldn't allow them to do anything (which is impossible) and Jordan started to negotiate with the manager. Hoho, 'customers are always right' is somewhat true~ After talking to them for a while and promise that we won't be late next time, the manager finally gave us the special package deal and let us in. Here we go, K time!!!

Can't really remember all the songs we sang, but had quite a few very impressive and memorable moments =P Firstly, Jian's voice!!! OMG~ Jian has a very deep and pure voice! I always knew that he's very good with mimicing animal sounds etc, i.e. very talented with controlling his voice, but his voice is so deep and pure, it's so nice when he sings a really romantic song (despite the fact that he will make fun of every song and give up in singing properly very soon).

Then there's Gabe! Gabe's a really awesome singer too! He chose quite a few old but very famous songs, very classic! The one song I remember very clearly is the Christmas song, it's such a weird and old song but Gabe pulled it off really well, it was so hilarious when Gabe and Jian started singing songs in different accents. Then Gabe started dancing to the songs and making all these superstar movements (which I secretly took a video of, but then sneaky Gabe deleted it).

Josi didn't sing at all. Josi never sings in Karaoke =( I've actually heard her sing few times before, she's really cute and pretty good with her tone, but not sure why she nevers sings to a mic, maybe Josi's shy??? But poor Josi, when Gabe chose a farewell song to say goodbye to Jian, Josi started having tears running down her cheeks. I didn't know what to say but I can understand how she's feeling. I feel equally sad that Jian will be leaving very soon, but I'm just going to remind myself that I will see him back in Auckland in March, no biggie. Poor Josi >_<

Jordan is very good with his Jay Chou songs but unfortunately he was sick from Happy Valley so he couldn't stop coughing when he sings. We picked a song for Jordan to sing (Dandelion's Promise by Jay Chou) because Josi really love this song, hope this will make Josi happier =) I wanted to sing Graduation by Vitamin C for Josi as well but we just couldn't find it in the system.

Gerard didn't sing very much either. I guess he's quite tired and wasn't feeling very well. I picked a few songs for him and sang with him, hope he liked it =P Gerard's a really good singer, we found out about this when we went karaoke before back in New Zealand. I remember Gerard was singing 'A Whole New World' in Lucy's house and was near pitch-perfect (shown on Sing Star). It was a pity that Gerard didn't sing much tonight, I would so enjoy listening to Gerard's performance.

The special deal in Cashbox PartyWorld is that if we start before 7pm, then we can buy one hour of room rate (room rate depending on the size of the room dependable on the number of people we have) plus the buffet dinner rate per person. Eventually we rounded to about 40RMB per person including buffet meal (which is pretty good food too).

My most memorable moment of the night was when I was singing the last song, Don't Sail Away by Amei, it was such a nice and beautiful song. But then beccause I told the guys that it was a song written by an Indian composer, Jian just couldn't stop laughing and started mimicing as an Indian singer. So Jian and I were singing together. I'm try my VERY BEST to not laugh at him and sing normally (and trying to make sure I sing ok) and at the same time Jian trying his VERY BEST singing like an Indian. It was just too funny! Everyone was laughing throughout the song and we had so much fun! Haha, I love it~!