day 2 in beijing
had 包子，粥，油条 for breakfast at the same 成都小吃 shop as the first day. surprisingly their 油条 is nice! then off we went to our apartment. china ppl are really efficient! after juz one night, they got the house ready with all the tables and chairs, beds, and even the partition wall for the extra room in the living room was built. so we are all ready to move in after some cleaning up.
the thing abt the way ppl work here is that they are v efficient and nice before u pay them the rent. after tt, they keep dragging things and will only get it done after much reminders.. quite irritating sometimes. to make things worst, our apartment had alot of problems! the toilet bowls cannot be flushed, the tap was leaking, door knobs not working, cockroaches everywhere, light not working, sink leaking, heater unstable.... such a long list right.. so we spent the next 5 days solving all these problems, equipping the house and cleaning up. but till now, the heater problem is still not solved. the water heat is always unstable when bathing.. requires a great deal of skill to manipulate the water temp, if not u will either freeze or get scald to death.. but the agent keep insisting that this is not his problem so he cannot fix it or change a new one for us. sian! i hope we can survive winter.
so we went to visit the 方庄市场 near our place for the first time! so excited for the first time, but we are all so sick of the place now. we will visit the place at least once every 2 days.. till the point tt everybody there knows we are from spore! which is not a good thing bcoz they will quote us higher prices.. and our bargaining skills are so lousy. feel so cheated. sad.. but it sells everything under the world.. everything can be found there so it's still quite convenient for us.
it was clear blue sky that day and we thought that maybe beijing pollution is not so bad afterall.. but we were so wrong! tts maybe the rare few days where u get to see a clear blue sky.. most of the days are hazy and the amt of ppl smoking on the street are terrible. they smoke everywhere! in the restaurants, toilets, and they can even smoke when they are eating! getting so sick of the cigarette smell.
so we bought alot of stuffs from the market, including our bed sheets, shoe rack etc.. they seldom provide plastic bags here, so we had to bring our own shopping bags and carry all the things home. on the way home, we stopped at this pebble road and started taking pics of how "auntie" we looked. and guess what, the pebble road is now paved with tar! tt makes our photo so memorable...
we went to sign up for broadband and a house line too, but realised that the house line is too redundant, so gonna cancel it soon. do ur know whats broadband called in chinese?? it's 宽带! such a direct translation.. i think we can earn big bucks here if we are to correct all their chinese to english translation. tt day we cant stop laughing when we were buying meds at this pharmacy. the direct translation really cmi.
on our way back, we bought drinking water too. tap water in china are not drinkable. so we had to get those water dispenser that u see in offices. we consume about 1 big tub every 2 days, bcoz we use tt to cook too! feel too unsafe to use tap water.
then huangfang, eileen and yizhong went to carrefour to get more stuffs, while junie and i stayed at home to make the beds and clean up a little. the beds they provided were cui bcoz it's 超薄软垫. the 超薄 part is so true but the 软垫 part is totally deceiving. it's very hard but i think it's good for the spine.. i am used to it bcoz last time when we went back taiwan, we will juz sleep on the floor. i think it's still fine. but the rest cannot take it. lol. they bought an extra 床垫 but it's still as hard. and the tables provided by them are even more cui! it's looks like a pri sch study table. so small tt after placing a laptop, nothing much can be put on it. totally cannot be used for studying. the wardrobe is the cloth-covered kind! can only hang a few clothes and the metal structure keeps swaying. we had to assemble them and we became pros at it. lol. but at least the sofa, tv, washing machine and fridge they provided are alright. the sofa can be converted into a bed, but it's abit squeezy for 4 ppl to sit on.
whoots! they came back with 500rmb plus of things from carrefour! tts like more than S$100. we have been spending money like crazy for the first few wks bcoz of the amount of things we had to buy.. had cup noodles for dinner and guess what we did for post-dinner activity. that's right! cockroach killing.. we spent the next few hrs killing them and then gave up bcoz we were all coughing badly from the pesticide.
tt sums up the tiring day we had from all the shopping, cleaning and roaches-killing! more to come for the following few days...
Sunday, September 13, 2009
day 1 in beijing
after 6hrs of flight onboard air china, we safely arrived in beijing.. the airport was so big that the plane glided for almost 15min after it landed! and we had to take a monorail to the luggage claim area. imagine the amount of land they have..
yizhong (our senior) came to fetch us and we took a cab down to our hotel. the first interesting thing i observed here is that the cab drivers dun like to switch on their air-cons! they will juz wind down their windows bcoz the air outside is cold enough to act as air-con. but at the same time, the air is so dry and the exhaust fumes blowing at u during traffic jams makes it irritating. i wonder if they on the air-con during summer..
so we arrived at our "super-8" hotel. it's quite a small hotel but the room is satisfactory. maybe the only downside is that there is no lift and we had to carry our luggage up to our room on the 3rd floor. din get much rest before we went out for breakfast. our first breakfast in beijing was 包子! it was very cheap and edible! lol.. juz a little salty.
then it was apartment-viewing time! we spent pretty long at the first apartment because the tenant locked the door from inside and we couldnt contact him. the door was so sound proof that he cant even hear us knocking damn hard. finally we managed to get in and he was watching tv in his room. no wonder.. the apartment had a nice layout, all the rooms are of similar sizes, but the kitchen was pretty small and the toilets are quite pathetic.. overall it looked too old for our liking thou the owner said he will help us redo the place..
the second apartment is the condo where quite a number of our classmates stay. the house was cleaner but it is a 3-room double-storey flat. the layout is abit weird, with 2 big rooms upstairs and a small room downstairs. so we decided to give that up too.
the 3rd apartment is where we are living now! it's a 6-storey condo with lift. our house is on the 2nd floor, so it's quite good exercise climbing the stairs everyday. although it's oso a 3-room apartment, the living room is so big that an extra room can be easily partitioned out. so we settled for the apartment because it looks relatively new and the location is pretty good. it's juz a 15-min walk to our hospital and 10-min walk to the market where everything u'll ever need can be found there. the rent is still within our budget. 5.4k every month and we distributed it equally according to the size of our rooms. i got the master bedroom with the toilet, coz my mum will come visiting so i have enough room to accommodate her!
so after juz 3 apartments we got our house settled! after which we had our lunch. noodles at a place nearby, as usual, salty and oily.. and the quantity is alot! then we went to the bank to open accounts. bank of china is nicely furnished! their bank goes by queue numbers, so u no need to physically queue up. i think it's quite nice.. tt concluded our day. went back to the hotel to sleep bcoz we were all so tired. slept for almost 12hrs till the next day!
Thursday, September 3, 2009
it's either my internet connection sux or blogger does! i edited this post 4 times already bcoz everytime i failed to upload the photos.. angry! so i decided to give up and juz type all the words out!
mon was the first day of school.. reported at 830am at the main school campus. total mess coz we decided to take a bus there and the bus routes here are so complicated! we looked at the map book and it was stated that the bus goes there but when we asked the driver, he say it doesnt! so in the end we took cab and was still late for 15min. nothing interesting today. juz settled all the admin stuff and listened to all the talks. we collected our textbook and it's 5 thick txtbks for this sem! i can forsee the toughness. and guess wat, our first exam is in 24 days time, when lessons juz started on tue. i find the 耳鼻咽喉科 teacher pretty interesting! he knows how to crack jokes to liven up the studying mood. but 内科 is so boring! i was trying hard to stay awake for the first lesson already.. this is bad bcoz it's the v major and impt module for clinical use next time. 针灸 is fun! act it's one of the modules i've been looking forward to bcoz i believe it really works. but the teacher cmi.. it's a young guy and his style of teaching is quite boring. i hope other teachers are better! we practise our 针法 on a self-made "pillow" today.. it was quite interesting and the pillow is made up of a whole roll of toilet roll! thanz to eileen's sewing skills! =)
the mood for studying is really not there yet. we still went shopping on sun! bought a trench coat and a knitted sweater and a turtle-neck shirt for juz 200RMB.. really v cheap.. and we only managed to conquer one storey of the place. gotta go there again but it's like 1hr bus ride from our house. mon we went to shop for all our remaining kitchen necessities. bought ALOT of stuffs! finally our kitchen is fully equipped. yay! we cooked prawn noodles for dinner on tue night! put too little seasoning so tasted abit blend but it was alright coz we are all v sick of oily and salty food. ystd we went to yinyue, keeka and huiming's house for dinner. they cooked 5 dishes and it was tasty! their apartment is not bad too but abit further.. then we gossiped until 1am! craziness bcoz today we still had lessons at 8am.. but it was lotsa fun.. lotsa juicy news too.. lol. and lotsa memories... today we cooked a successful dinner! delicious i wld say. had broccoli with carrots, vege and meatball soup, and sthing like sweet and sour chicken.. all tasted good. yay! we will continue to sharpen our skills.
so i shld start blogging abt my small trips ard beijing.. start with the departure at the airport first then... i hope i got time to follow up. =pthe day of departurespent the whole day with my family. had lunch with sisters at 新旺台湾茶餐厅. i think it's quite nice. go try if u haven!
us with the 珍珠奶茶！
the must try: 面线和棺材板！dinner was at 鼎泰丰. taiwan food again! i am so missing taiwan. now that there is direct flight between china and taiwan, maybe i can go back taiwan for holiday!
everybody present! i miss ur...then it was time to go to the airport. thanz to all those who came! it was really nice seeing ur and all thanz to the “祝你一路顺风”started by katty, the tears flowed..
all the adults!
zheyi and xiaojun! so long nv met up le 
lovely sisters!
i gave up trying to upload photos after this one.. so all words from now! go view fb if u wanna see the photos. anw life here is not as bad as i imagined it to be.. the streets are clean except for the ocassional spitting. there are sunny days here too! lol. but mostly it's quite hazy. the only fact abt china is the disgusting public toilets. it's really juz a hole and v dirty. thou i nv used one bcoz i really cant stand it, i can still imagine the dirtiness.. act i cant understand why they dunwan to revamp the toilets! everything else is not bad but why leave such a bad impression on toilets.. weird.oh and the number of cockroaches are getting lesser! it's a gd sign but there are still ocassional appearances. but at least now we dare to use the kitchen and we dun scream as loud when we see cockroaches. the process is so funny. from screaming extremely loud, jumping ard getting goosebumps and using pesticide to frantically kill them for the first night.. to juz screaming and stepping on them (bcoz we were still wearing slippers ard the house then) for the next few days, bcoz we realised stepping is so much more efficient, the roaches are too small to be sprayed at.. then to now when we just comment when we see one and use tissue paper to kill them.. totally immuned!ok shall stop here. tml is another long day with a short break.. and huangfang started this daily routine whereby we have to memorise 5 方歌 everyday. 方歌 means those poems tt are supposed to facilitate us in memorising all the tcm formulary. we memorised 5 ystd but today i haven memorise yet! it's so diff to rem all and i think it's a good system so muz really keep to the routine if not we will juz study 1 day slack 3 days.. blogger sux! dunnoe why all the paragraphs stick together one.. zzzzzz