Xu Jia Hui

86th-87th day in Shanghai(24/11/07-25/11/07)

Saturday was a day to do project!!! OMG!!!

Woke up at 10am to return the sofa bed to CF’s room as her parents came to stay with her.

Oh, Angela’s aunt and uncle came over and they bought pandan cake over!!! YAY =) I cant wait for my parents to bring all the Bengawan Solo’s kueh over!!! Sis, if u don’t know what to buy over, you can just buy everything that is in this page =) Bengawan Solo

Jie Ying came over to do project with us. She got her interim report and we got our multi-media project.

Slacked a bit and finally got all my photos organized.

Started project at about 1.30pm and by 5pm, all of us were super dead. Ordered MacDonald for dinner and slacked the whole night after that. That is so what I want in my life =)

Projects!!!

3 monkeys!!!

Woke up at 10am on Sunday morning with the plan to get out of the house by 1pm to some new places in Shanghai. Jie Ying and Joanne was supposed to go to one of the café nearby to write their reports.

In the end, Joanne, Jie Ying and I got addicted to my HK series show ‘The Dance of Passion’ as it was the last few episodes, which are also the most exciting episodes.

Watched until 4pm and in the end, we got out of house at 4.30pm. Jie Ying and Joanne decided to just stay at home to do their reports.

(Kim slept for a few hours waiting for me.. opps!!)

So, Kim and I took the train down to Xu Jia Hui, one of the shopping areas in Shanghai.

Decided to go to that place as my dad just reminded me that there is such a place in Shanghai after chatting with him online yesterday and he was telling me about the Peking duck we ate the last time we were there.

I remembered that Xu Jia Hui was quite a big place and decided to go there for a walk.

Some how, I think the structures/layout there are a bit weird. They have got all the departmental stores at one side (with a few fast food restaurant) and all the food areas at the other side.

Went to almost all the shopping malls to have a look and the whole feeling is that I am in Orchard. I think I will prefer that place more then Nanjing rd as Nanjing rd is too touristy already.

And we went to this small little shopping mall that is only 2-storey high. The whole feeling of it was that I am back in Far East mall. Just that the structure there is more fashionable then Far East Mall.
Or rather, that place seems to be a more high class Qi-pu road where most of the good are from Qipu Rd. Just that I think we can’t bargain there.

Got quite hungry and we got to search for quite awhile before we can find some proper food to eat. Ended up at this Chinese fast food restaurant eating Fried Rice.

Explored a few more shopping malls after dinner and we went to Metro (Mei Luo Chen). Didn’t know that Metro was a Singapore brand until I saw a breadtalk outlet there and that the basement was a food court selling all the Singapore food. They have got fried prawn noodles, laksa, Toast Box, curry puff, etc… And we saw 3 Singaporeans seating at the Toast Box area drinking coffee chit-chatting.

Took the train home and the moment I got into the train, I heard Familiar voices… We stared at each other ‘Singaporeans!!!!’

There was this big group of NTU student in the same cabin as us!!! They were here for study-attachment trip for 6 months.

At first, Kim was like STARING at them and I was just looking around. Then when I turned to her and asked why was she STARING at them, one of the guys was like ‘NTU??’ That was how the conversation starts. Haha

Then we got off the train and got excited about how coincident and how small Shanghai is and when we turned behind, we heard familiar voices again… ‘Singaporeans….’

In just one day, we met 3 different groups of Singaporeans at different places.

And I think the most unique/amazing thing is that we Singaporeans, from a super tiny whiny city, do actually have our own identity.

Most of the time I will think that most people wil refer us as just from one of the bigger Asia countries like HK, Taiwan, Malaysia. But the moment we open our mouth and talk-Singlish, immediately, we can identify our own people. I think it is quite amazing.

And I am also quite surprised by the number of Singaporeans in Shanghai, let alone in China. Before I came here, some of the lecturers were telling me the amount of Singaporeans here in Shanghai and I was still telling myself ‘are you sure you will get to see other Singaporeans around??’

But true enough; I will meet Singaporeans almost every time I go out for leisure.

Maybe this world is just that small.