Live it, luv it, Shang Hai

Cowabanga, IM BACK!!

Gosh, it has been ages since i last posted any updates here, have i really been that busy? Indeed i have....and it's gonna take days to relate everything that's happened...

First and foremost...Shang Hai...

If i ever had sounded prejudice toward the nation of China, my sarcastic remarks for the people and my ignorant knowledge of the land, i pray to God that it will be forgiven, coz Shang Hai is truly one awesome place, KL has a long way to go if comparison were to be made...

Albeit im pretty sure one good reason im liking SH is the weather factor, but there's more than meet the eyes, or rather, the sensation on our bodies...

Without a doubt, SH is definitely a vibrant and colourful city, there is so much to see and experience, I wouldn’t mention about the food though, for some reason or other, my view toward Chinese food still remains pretty much the same, not appealing, appetizing at all. Anyhow, talking about food, we have tasted some nice and also awful food while we were there. On the first night, our Chinese guide cum friend cum lil’ brother, by the name of Sean, he has brought us to this ‘hot pot’ or ‘hua guo’ restaurant near our motel. The hot pot resembles our version of steamboat and we have ordered the ‘ma lat’ soup which literally means ‘Hot till it numbs’. What we had that night was basically and solely mutton, thinly sliced and rolled up, arranged in a pyramid shape. The meat was so good, so fragrant and so tender that we ordered a second and a third round. Oh yeah, another highlight is the cheap beer that we had, it only cost RMB 1, or equivalently 50 cents our money, can you believe it? If memory serves me correctly, we had like 15 bottles altogether to be shared only among the guys, that would be seven of us. Sean appeared invincible when he effortlessly whacked down the first few bottles, but later on appeared tipsy like the others….I was the champ…J.. It was hilarious seeing FZ(fei zai) and KT ballooning red, they avoided the beer ever since…haha…

The trip was a real blessing, and it has been FUN throughout. Anyone who commented that China is for old folks must be out of his mind, well, not SH anyway. We have been blessed with two young local and national guides, by a mere age of 22. Irene was our national guide, her obligation was to ‘shepherd’ us from KL to Singapore to ShangHai, and then Sean, on the other hand, would be our guide in China. Both our guides have been awesome, I must say I enjoy their company very much and I can confirm that the trip wont be much as fun without them, they are a real sport! The friendship that all of us built up from the first day were apparent, almost inseparable, and due to that, haha, I say we were more privileged then the other members in the group, since we have extra outings at night, not scheduled in the itinerary and also more information of the country.

The tour group consisted of 34 of us, which can be separated into three major team, the first majority team is the Christian team ( in which I later happily found out that we came from the same church), the second team is the Mok’s family, and last but not least, the nine of us would make up the students team AKA the Noisy lots…Hmm hold on, there were another married couple, Brian and Kelly, which happen to be Denise’s neighbours…and Irene’s parents as well…along with another dude, who would follow us incessantly wherever we go, and we were kinda okay with it, since he had got no friends…I speculated that he had a crush with Daryl, since that dude was always tagging along behind him, somehow or rather, even to the loo! LOL….Daryl was not happy with the speculation, chillout pal, jz another lame joke of mine…But I could be right, u know…:p

In some way, I am adamant that God has put this whole team together, gosh, how excited I was when I found out that the Christian group actually attend GT church…at the same time, I was a little taken back, thinking that there shouldn’t be anymore nonsense from me, since I am bound to meet them again in church…so I have to constantly reminding my members to keep it down and scale down the craps that we are so accustomed to have…without any qualms we were definitely the most noisy group in the entire team…I am not sure if we did manage to cheer up the spirit with our constant laughter, chit chats and Hanging-halfway-in-the-air songs during the bus ride, but I just knew that we never stopped producing noise throughout…All of us had occupied the back seat in the coach, forming a gap with the rest of the group, so as not to disturb them as much, but that effort is futile of course…

For me, it meant especially a lot with this specific arrangement simply due to the fact that my non-Christian friends were being exposed to the gospel through the other members. They were being told of testimony and life changing experience and of Christ, in which I have almost given up hope in telling after all these years of inviting them to CF, or to special events in Church, or just merely my testimony. They are not anti-Christ, but at the same time they would not accept Him as their personal savior…

The fact that I traveled to China with my close friends also made the trip very memorable, maybe it’s not so much about the place, albeit I cant deny that SH is really a breathtaking and fantastic place, but ultimately, it is more to the company, we all appreciated the moment we spent together and valued it, and have made an oath during the toast we had in every single meal that we will always stay in touch after the trip…

It will be neverending to describe the entire trip here, but I will try to note down the essential particulars, or maybe upload some pictures in the future, so that I can always keep this memory alive through this blog, to be reminisced and rejoice when im enjoying solitude in a sleepless night….I really love these ppl, they have been there since freshman year, going on to sophomore year, and then we were closest during junior and senior years…SH is our first trip abroad together, and we promised each other that it will not be the last…

Our Journey began on a blissful morning couple of days after the last paper (for some of us), and everyone was in cloud nine…We, as usual, were quick to assign nicknames to other folks….and of coz, to ourselves too…haha…over the years, I dunno under whose influence, there are these accumulation of abbreviation, most often a sarcastic kinda nickname rather than a kidding one…For instance, we have XZB (xia zhong ben), SGB ( sai gai pui), TDZHT (we named it to a guy after his endless effort in approaching denise with the lamest excuse or starting a lame small talk with her), MP (mang peng), TBY( tong poh yook), to name just a few…of coz, our gals have named themselves something more glamourous, like Zena, Omega, ABT…Apart from that, our guides have their Chinese nick name, courtesy of me…I thought it was pretty appropriate considering we were traveling in China…Ke li si ding na (Christina) served as our host in Wu Xi, Zuo Zhi (George) in Hang Zhou, Hai Lun (Helen) in Su Zhou, Jie Ke (Jack) in Nan Jing, last but not least, Siao Yu (little fish) in Shang Hai…

It was while we were gathering to check in that we decided that the rest of the members in the tour group should be categorized as LB(lou beng), despite there are younger members as well, like 24(er shi si sui)…haha…then as days went by, we have Tik Tik, Karatai Lee, Serious ( pronounced Sir-Rai-Yus), among others…We took on a great flight by SIA with excellent food, I had like five baileys on our trip from Singapore to SH, and was kinda pissed when I cant consume any during the journey back as Auntie Florence was seating beside me…We arrived in SH feeling on top of the world coz the weather was heavenly…I had often complained to my gang back in cyber that we were living in Hell, and I guess they finally agree with me upon breathing the cool, breezy SH air…We had the opportunity to ride on the fastest train on earth, the Maglite…it is basically a german technology Magnet train that made use of the electromagnetic theory, I shall spare you the operating details, though I am very familiar with it after seeing it on Discovery Chanel…J …the magnificent train achieved a maximum speed of 431 km/h and we could really feel the speed, it was AWESOME….!!

Our trip brought us from SH to Wu Xi to Su Zhou to Hang Zhou to Nan Jing and back to SH…personally, I enjoyed SH and HZ the best, and I must say the weather factor contributes to my judgment…I am sure I would enjoy Malaysia as much if the temperature is below 20 with chilling wind blowing constantly, instead of the still, mushy, contaminated air we have here…The traffic in SH is as bad as in KL, but then who cares? The buildings are magnificent, the multi-tiered highways are impressive, the people there have pink, rosy cheek…but I still dun like their loud-voice, spitting, and ill-hygiene attitude…I s’pose the nation’s development is way ahead of their mentality…

Sean, on the contrary, had not demonstrated the typical chinaman attitude, he can converse English relatively well, and quite sporting too, though we weren’t happy with his constant FFKing us…but then again, he was merely a guide of ours, he has no obligation over the promises he made anyway…Irene, a very sporting gal, has brought us to the discotechque while we were in HangZhou, and we got to experience the nightclubs there, with a vibrator in the middle of the dance floor…I couldn’t believe it when all our gals joined her on the dancing table, shaking their hips frantically with the dance bit, and portraying seducing movement…ALL HELL GONE LOOSE that night….well, we really have to thank our Choreographer, FZ, for coming out with all that creative dance movement, something the mixture of tik tik, check it out, and stupid snake gesture copied from their favourite film, Kung Fu Hustle…we drank moderately, merely two dozens of beer, and then headed to the hotel, to return the next day to the same location, but this time we voted for the lake instead…We had supper in this elegant Italian restaurant in which the folks pestered me into singing alongside the singers there…and guess what, the song was Titanic…how really embarrassing….after that, we laid down by the serene lake, whereby someone had drowned only the day b4…the atmosphere was eerie, with chilly wind and dim street light…but we enjoyed it very much….yeah, we are freaks…

So what is memorable of this China trip? I would say the Shopping! Though I didn’t do any hardcore shopping there, but the stuffs are really cheap! Well, that is if you’ve got hold of the art of bargaining…the gals did very well, calling a first offer for a 70% decrement from the initial starting price, and they managed to pull it through all the time…another one among us who did equally well is, surprisingly, a male who was never enthusiast with shopping, Fei Zai…Gosh, that dude has been spending like an open tap since the first day…let me see, he bought a stamp, few drawings, lotsa books, VCDs, over-priced tea cup…and goodness know what…for myself, I bought some cheap souvenirs, some imitation products (out of my norm) which includes Rip Curl T-shirt and CK briefs, a potentially fake Fei Chui (Jade), so-called ‘real’ pearls, and some not-so-tasty sweets…It was inevitable that the trip consisted of far too much factory visiting for comfort…we were brought to the Zi Sha Pot factory, silk factory, Long Jing Tea plantation, chrysanthemum tea, pearl, Jade, etc…

Among all, I miss the spring weather the most, the temperature was just nice, luke warm, if you will…chilly with some warmth from the sun, absolutely gorgeous…I wouldn’t love the place as much if it were Summer, for our information, it should be warmer that what we are having here, less humid, possibly…The weather in Shang Hai reminded me of Sydney, but they are two different cities altogether, although I would like to say my preference would skew toward Sydney, predictably typical of my nature, but to be honest, I wouldn’t mind staying in SH at all, I think…if only the shanghainese lass would be a little bit gentler and adorable…we have seen too many dun-mess-with-me girls in SH, trust me, they would lay a hand on you if things dun go too well to their liking…Hun Dan (bastard) would be fired against you, and dun even think of fighting back, we all know too well how Chinese opera got its name from…ultra high frequency shrieking-alike voice…you will never come close to their pitch…best solution, get a step back and SHADDAP…

I would like to go on forever about this awesome city, the many river cruises, the pearl tower, the temples (im still a Christian), the buildings, the scenery…but I will not get enough of it, ever…one thing for sure, this wont be my last trip to China…Shang Hai, you haven’t seen the last of me, we’ll bound to meet again, I s’pose 2008’s Olympic in Bei Jing wont be too far to look forward to….