Shanghai — a place you love and hate at the same time.
It’s difficult to name the good of this bustling city without having the bad escape from your mouth in the same breath. Or vice versa.
So, having survived 5 days of awesome food, outrageous driving, cigarette smoke and loud characters, here’s my top 10 Yays and Yucks (in no order of importance).
Yays
1. Awesome, though somewhat not as spicy as should be, Hunan cuisine at 滴水洞 (Dishuidong) — especially loved the spiced ribs!
2. Being able to get quality DVDs (a 正版 DVD costs 15RMB, ie. S$3).
3. Strolling through a crowd-free (which is nearly impossible) 豫園 (Yu Garden) and wolfing down 小龍包(steamed dumplings) at 南翔饅頭店 Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant.
4. Rejuvenating massages (about 65RMB for an hour of body massage)
5. Pudong Shangri-la Hotel — enough said.
6. 周庄 (Zhou Zhuang), the oldest water village in China, even though it’s super touristy
7. Tea, especially 阿婆茶
8. Neon lights at night — even apartment-looking buildings are neon-designed.
9. Wannenmei as host!
10. Temperature at this time of the year (low 20s)
Yucks
1. Spitting — it’s not that frequent, but it still is common enough.
2. Smoke inhalation — we realize a lot of people just light up and hardly puff!
3. Incessant in-your-face hawking of almost every product or service
4. Metro is unbelievably crowded during peak hours… you literally can stand there and be pushed along by the crowd. And you thought SG was bad.
5. The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel — you have to see it to know how bad it is.
6. The Dragonfly experience — being stuck in mid-air with a fly on Dragon Air (hence the name!)… it’s not Shanghai i know, but it was bound for there.
7. Several attractions or sites i wanted to visit were closed, eg. 和平飯店 (Peace Hotel) and the Hengshan-Moller Villa.
8. Problems accessing Wikipedia and sometimes Google pages
9. Crazy drivers who flick the high beam at will
10. Haze — only had a day of blue skies while there… guess we were considered lucky already!
All in all, it was a pretty bundtastic time. Not really a bad idea to work there for a couple years =P
And so it was 2 Fridays ago, she finally showed up.
Needless to say, she’s now everyone’s darling.
Somehow, she manages to look cute even when she unleashes an enormous yawn….
A shot of Faith and proud daddy, aka my bro:
I can’t wait for the 1st month celebration! *Beam*
I struggled much to even decide to write this post.
I’ve never been into politics, and Myanmar is not a country i have strong feelings for. Indeed, if atrocities arise in Vietnam or Cambodia, you can be sure there’ll be some related posts in this blog.
Maybe it was the blog GC forwarded, or the international-relations-student-wannabe in me — i don’t know — that compelled me to pen some thoughts.
I agree with fellow blogger Ned Stark, who pointed out that there are 2 ways to resolve the situation — one, the people should continue to struggle for their rights, and two, the rest of the world ought to physically intervene.
In other words, the international community has got to do an Iraq and forcefully remove power from the junta.
That’s not an easy option, to say the least, but one that needs to be taken soon. Privy i am not to the discussions held by the UN official with both the military bigwigs and the forever-imprisoned Aung San Suu Kyi, but it is apparent that nothing too meaningful has taken place. It has just been mostly talk.
And so as the media attention dies down over the next few weeks, and commoners like us shift our cares elsewhere, it becomes all the more imperative that consensus and decisions come swift, should it be clear that peaceful resolution is not viable.
The news this morning was a little unexpected.
An elderly man whom I’d no qualms going out alone with, or even hold his hand in public — who isn’t even related to me — had passed on.
A man i wouldn’t even have known if i hadn’t been rejected from picking up tennis as an ECA (in my days it was not CCA!) in secondary school simply because it had been too popular a sport.
A man who was basketball coach yet one i remember more off-court than on-court. His signature “Yeah, good!” still rings loud after all these years, and one can hardly forget that famous temper/stubborn nature of his.
But it was really the popiah makan outings and chats after training sessions, where he’d regale us with tales of his youthful national player days and the girls whom he attracted, that stuck with me all these years.
Even after leaving school (and competitive basketball), he would enquire about what i was doing whenever we met on the streets. He would look over any boy we were with and give his two cents’ worth, whether or not we wanted his opinion.
I’d planned to invite him to the wedding last year, but then found out later that he had been admitted into a home. If he were able to come, i’m certain he’d have shown up.
At the wake, his wife recounted how happy he was when his girls visited him at the hospital recently. We chuckled when she said he even threw a fit in his last remaining days.
Mr Tan Ah Buay may be gone, but his legacy will live on for a long time.
Today is a day of thanksgiving.
As far back as i can remember, i never enjoyed birthdays. I’ll be mostly grouchy, and never motivated to make fancy plans to pamper myself or party the night away.
I guess the melancholy has to do with the realization that another year has gone by and i haven’t lived up to my own expectations, whether there are any overt ones in the first place.
But rather than put myself in a pity mode this year, i strangely feel the urge to do something different. I blame it on the pull of the inevitable third decade.
So here it is, me giving thanks for the overlooked stuff in life….
I’m thankful for the privilege of knowing Christ, and to be counted as precious in God’s sight.
I’m overwhelmed by the relatives and friends i have, not just in SG but all over the world.
I’m grateful that I have the power to induce my mother to make her soups whenever i go home. And on that note, I’m full of gratitude when the doggie leaps up at me as if he has not seen me in a zillion years.
I’m thankful i’m able to read and write (better than the average person).
I thank God that all my senses are intact, and i still have breath in me.
Most of all, i’m grateful i have a best friend to stick through the good times and bad — who gives me hugs at will, wipes the tears from my eyes when i’m sad, supplies me with encouragement when i’m down and advice when i need it (and even when i don’t want it), and shares secrets, dreams and disdains with me.
Best of all, he’s also my husband.
Thursday felt surreal.
The morning and early afternoon were spent celebrating new lives, but when night fell it was a sombre paying of last respects.
The first stop was to see miracle baby Jade. She’s a miracle baby because her mummyJ had tried for 2 years to conceive but without success due to a condition known as polycystic ovarian syndrome. Ben and i brought her and her husband A to the Miracle Service early this year, and mummyJ not only experienced a rise in her faith, but also discovered shortly after that she was pregnant!
It was a “Thank God” moment just being able to hold baby Jade in my arms and see her little chest bob up and down as she dozed away. It would have been even sweeter if she were to be carried to full-term, for she was to be due on my birthday!
Later, i was over at WJ’s, a couple of stones’ throw away from mummyJ’s place, where i saw little Josh, born just a day before National Day, and his older sister Cheyanne. I haven’t seen Cheyanne for so long — she’s grown so much — but (thankfully) according to her mum i was ‘pretty’ enough for her to be willing to play with me =P
(There are unfortunately no pictures to show here because, as usual, i decided not to lug my digital SLR around and then later regretted the decision.)
We’re at the age when there are more weddings and baby first-month celebrations to attend than funerals, which i’m thankful for. But then again when you get summoned to the wakes of your peers, it gets to you extra.
Last night, the Ong family trooped over to Mt Vernon Funeral Parlour to bid farewell to Serene, who had been a daughter, wife, mother, teacher and Sunday School teacher, friend and more. Only a few years older than Ben and myself, she went home suddenly, to the devastation of many.
As MN put it, you know this is God’s will, but then you find yourself asking ‘Why’?
We wonder because we do not know, but even when we do not know and can not see the future we have an omnipotent Father who has all the answers, a friend in the Lord and a counselor in the Holy Spirit.
Even while we grieve, we take comfort in knowing that she has gone to her mansion up above and that one day we will be reunited in a glorious place.
To be or not to be, that’s the question these days.
After last night’s private ra-ra event to celebrate the opening of theTravelPlanner, it was heartwarming to see the parents wear much pride on their faces as their daughters scuttled around making sure the guests were comfortable.
One in the group — a retiree — remarked that at a school reunion he was struck that the successful (read: wealthy) ones were mostly non-grads with the enterprise guts.
We used to hear a lot about the lack of entrepreneurship in SG. But from my circle of friends i can attest that this surely is not an issue. (The government should instead go worry about whether it is worthwhile encouraging more births when it’s apparent that many parents have no idea how to bring up their children properly.)
Jay opened Swirl early this year, and is purportedly planning for a second outlet. JY is hitting the revamped Bugis Junction basement in December with a specialty take-out counter. Even at soft launch, HJ is contemplating quitting her job to go into business full-time.
I have to admit, Ben and i were so inspired that we were in serious contemplation to set up a business a couple of months back. We were really enthusiastic… for a week. I will not go into specifics, but an important stakeholder wasn’t too keen and that kinda dampened our fervour.
And although our business plans didn’t quite materialise, we’re still happy to be able to contribute to our friends’ labour of love, be it writing, handing out business cards or simply patronising!
Filed under: Rambling
I have a knack of forgetting the bad stuff.
I read in a mag last week that any candidate applying for a senior-level position should be prepared to answer a question such as: Describe a time your team made a mistake and the steps you took to rectify the situation.
As hard as i tried, i really couldn’t come up with anything. Of course, i only led a team for what, several months? And i also had a team of individuals then who didn’t just care about their own projects or job duties, but watched one another’s back.
Being away for a few months also somewhat made me forget how much i dislike Singaporeans. Cars not slowing down to allow pedestrians to cross first at parking areas. Impatient horns at traffic lights with left-turn arrows. A student in uniform sits at Mos Burger with a friend, studying, while a sign right behind him states that customers should not be using the premises for studying. A driver tries to out-merge Ben from behind while filtering out from the expressway.
And the classic i-have-the-right-to-stand-anywhere-i-want-on-the-escalator. Ben and i had been amazed at the orderliness of the Japanese, who dutifully kept to the left side allowing other passengers who were in a hurry the option of not being stuck (and not just on the subway!). We looked around – there were absolutely no signs reminding them to do so. It’s the same in Hong Kong, but i think over there they do have signs.
We’re a fast-paced and modern society, but we exhibit really immature behaviour at times. At the heart of it all is just a basic lack of consideration for the people around us and self-centredness. It’s not because people are in a hurry, because if those in Tokyo and HK can do it, why can’t Singaporeans?
Yesterday, at a job interview, i was asked what are my peeves. Without hesitation, i said the inconsiderate and rude behaviour of Singaporeans.
The interviewer readily agreed with my observations.
P.S. Now that i’m back, i’m trying my best to revert to British English.
This time last year, i was a wreck.
My beloved Brenzel went from being in good shape to weak and sluggish, and to finally drawing his last breath — all in the span of 12 hours.
After a year, i can finally visit the pet columbarium and not shed a single tear. The loss still hurts, and many times during the past year the tears have flowed just thinking about my first canine love, even while in Connecticut.
But all pain gets dull with each passing day, although the memories remain vivid. Now, i don’t usually think about Brenzel dying, but rather him alive. Now, more than ever, the sense of having been blessed with something precious is acute, heightened.
The whole gang (with the exception of mum) visited Brenzel today at Pasir Ris. Not that there was much to do there, really, cos i never put his urn there thinking that his soul is still around. No, surely he’s now in a better place.
I guess we did it to remember a dear, and wonderful, family friend.
Introducing Isaac Henry, the most adorable kid we’ve ever known, and his ice-cream eating exploits on Aug. 19:
Who apparently also has a soft spot for horses, as seen in these pics from May:
The boy may look like a cute and unassuming 2-year-old, but he’s got an independent streak that’s stronger than most kids older than him. He’d rather walk/climb/crawl his way than be carried, and he hardly cries.
He knows what he wants. After finishing a second helping of B&J’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie, he raises his cup and yells: “More!”
He knows exactly what he wants. He points to TV and you’re supposed to play a DVD for him. Which one? “Fire truck fire truck!”
Kids nowadays have it so good =P
