Before the hols, it’s been school everyday. I would hang out with this particular classmate of mine, meixiu to go places whether it is to go see or go buy stuff. Well, I posted on the yahoo groups before coming to China to advice them to go for flu vaccine but apparently, a lot of people didn’t and meixiu also didn’t and she gradually didn’t feel so good or probably she was tired from hanging out with me as the places we usually go usually had a lot of traveling to it. There were other classmates who said there are a few distributer’s kinda shopping centres near the zoo soothe whole class went, at their own time own target, many times in the past few weeks. I went there once but kana axed instead. Totally sucks, I tried to bargain but th people there were really very fierce, so I have decided that I won’t want to go there anymore. Anyway a lot of the clothes that I bought was ok to do only, as in not v nice and not v ugly, I think i can live with it by my standards. I only went there once and the next day when I went xidan(orchard and bugis combined kinda place), I knew I like the clothes in the shopping centres, the boutiques especially this brand called “ONLY”.

The week before the hols, 22-28 sept, I went to wang fu jing 3 times myself on 3 consecutive days. The first time I was there was to change a book that I bought the previous week. Apparently i wanted to get a big and small English-Chinese Chinese-English dictionary, I managed to get a the big one right but I think as both myself and meixiu was really tired, I mistakenly took a small French-Chinese dictionary! So the first time that week, I was there to change the book and there wasn’t a small version and had to top up to exchange for a magazine and a Elvis Presley CD. Then I tried to make use of whatever time I had left (it’s 830pm the shopping centres close at 10pm) to find clothes. I went to a shopping centre that looked like it carry the international brands and when I was there, I saw “ONLY”. I didn’t exactly know what I wanted to buy when I stepped into its shop space except that I wanted to get tops and I walked out with about RMB$1200 worth of 4 tops of which 2 came with knitted sleeve-less overalls. Of course I was served by the salesgirls and it was their recommendations that I tried and the few that I like from their selection. I only made my payment at 10.07pm and had to return the next day to make a member-card as the customer service people have already knocked off. I went again on the 3rd day, thinking to do an exchange for the knitted top as there was “thread” sticking out un the underside, not knowing that it was actually normal. I also got thermal wear from the same shopping centre which was going at half price.

In the week of the hols, it was really eventful:

29 sept Monday: was washing clothes from Sunday nite till Monday morning, all my dirty clothes and the newly bought one, only to find out there I don’t have enuf hangers to hang all the clothes even if I were to empty my cupboard of hangers. so I had to go get the hangers. i went to my bf’s place for dinner as his mother invited me over and there was his 2nd aunt & uncle, his brother’s family and we had a lot of food including eating the crab. Goodness gracious! I had 3 of those!!! It was really painstakingly long and troublesome to eat those. I spent the night there too :P

30 sept Tuesday: My bf’s sis was off that day. So we went out shopping, my bf’s mother giving her RMB$1000 to go by some clothes I need to keep warm. We went to xidan and wang fu jing. We went to xidan first as I wanted to look for the ZARA and MANGO but couldn’t find MANGO and the ZARA wasn’t so nice after all. Her bf also joined us for a while there and a late lunch at Mr. Pizza. We went to “ONLY” again and I got another skirt and jacket from there. There was actually a short fitting dres, cupped sleeves, a turtle neck that had some room between the neck and the “turtle”, it was made of 2 layers of leather that had wool in between the layers. I seriously love it and think I certainly look stunning in it, it was one of those dresses that once u wear it, there would be an enormous feel good factor that that surely had it. But it was really pricy, RMB$1999. So in the end I didn’t buy it but I REALLY LOVE IT!!! We went to wang fu jing and bought another top from vero moda as I needed something to wear as I would be staying over again that night. We also bought other little stuff like socks, leggings, whatever you call that.

1st oct Wednesday: I got up early and rushed home as I was meeting Hu gang to go to Huan Le Gu amusement park, as in it’s the place with all the crazy rides but he seriously overslept and we went to Yi He Yuan instead which is the summer palace and boy was there a lot people. Wanted to get a distant view of the buildings etc but it was foggy so the pics didn’t turn out so nice. There as certainly a lot of walking, avoiding people, climbing up and down too. About 3 hours into it and I wanted to wave white flag again not that I don’t have the stamina but walking and climbing long distances in a super crowded place was really tiring.

2nd oct Thursday: realized from Wednesday night that my room was rather dusty. The dust built up 2-3 times faster here in Beijing than in Singapore. So I spent more than half the day sweep, mop, wash the bed sheets etc. had a super late lunch before heading to starbucks to study relaxingly til 11pm. Then I went to mac to get a burger and then headed home.

3rd oct Friday: Went to wang fu Jing to get more of that thermal wear as the offer was only till the 5th and again there were crazily a lot of people. Well, when I was on my way there, I sms my bf’s sis to ask if she was going home for dinner as I would only want to go if she was going home for dinner otherwise it would be funny if I go to his place for dinner or overnight and only his parents are in. Apparently, just slightly before I sms her, his parents wanted to call me to go over for dinner as his brother is treating us to dinner and another few relatives. Dinner was not bad and I didn’t stay overnight this time as I didn’t have all my barang barang with me.

first 3 weeks in beijing

I am restarting this blog of mine after a very very long time. The main reason is that I wilbe in Beijing for the next 2 years of my life or so. Hopefully, this blog can help my friends and family to keep close to the changes n the mundane things of my mundane life that is several thousand km away from home….

The last few weeks in Singapore was doing those nothings…meeting up with pple and making the lst dash to earn some money. it was really chaotic at the airport as there was family, friends and church people and people were calling me to give me their wishes as well as finding out which corner of the airport was I at.

It was my second night flight to Beijing, the first being some 2 years back late December when I
flew on my own(for the first time and after so many years) to look for my bf in Beijing back then. There was great improvement on this flight as my bf flew with me on the same flight as with most of my classmates. My bf was initially seated at a different seat but given that there were about 60 of us on the same flight, there were a few changes of seat before he was seated next to me and many other friends did the same too. It wasn’t comfortable to be sleeping on the plane at all. Part of the reason was that the space was small (flying on China Air Economy class) and I woke up in the middle of the night due to chest pain or heart ache which didn’t improve for a long time even after I undid my bra. Till today, I seriously believe that that it was emotionally caused.

The school was there to pick us up from the airport and all our languages which couldn’t fit into the “boot” of the bus and we just had to load it onto the walkway of the bus. We went to the school campus and waited for those who were staying in the hostel to put their luggage in their rooms before the school served us some really blend porridge which wasn’t nice at all. There was a short briefing after but I slept through most of it…was just too tired. My bf’s father and uncle came to fetch us from the school after we finished and boy was the weather hot like normal Singapore and we were in jeans and long sleeves top.

They brought us to look for lunch near the place we were staying and not knowing that they and my bf have already eaten, I just order quite a few items, and of course there was the peking duck and other stuff, and we(my housemates: Karen, jinju and serene(wan hui haven’t arrived)) were trying to eat as fast as we could as serene’s friend who rented the apartment on our behalf was already at the apartment waiting for our arrival.

To our slight disappointment, the rented apartment was really near the hospital, just across our block but it looked rather old as there were some titles coming off. We did a lot of stuff to the house and for ourselves the next few days like moving the beds and bed frame, buying cleaning tools etc and we hired a part-time cleaner to clean the house.

About 3 days later when wanhui arrived and seeing the photos of the apartments of a few other friends who rented apartments slightly further away(about 15-20min walk) and had the Singapore kind of interior finishing and furniture to it, we played with the thought of looking for a better place. The old house was great because of the location and that everything, including Carrefour was within 5 min walk or less from our place but we felt that maybe we could get something better. Just then, another group of our classmates, Feng yu and her house mates came to our place for a visit with their housing agent who became our agent when he brought us to see a apartment near feng yu’s apartment and we decided on the place the very night after a long discussion which included fence sitting. We lost 2.5 months’ rent of the 1st place due to the deposit and the previous agent fees. So we thought of finding a better place and found one that night and signed the contract the next day and moved in.

The agent, Hu Gang, was really nice as I don’t think it is in his job to get a vehicle to help us move all our stuff over the new place and in the next few days to follow, brought us to bargain and buy second-hand furniture, brought us to the internet centre to amend our internet details, change the locks of the door, set up the internet cable etc in our house and even became our plumber and settled the toilet bowl clogged which threatened to overflow the toilet bowl!! Apparently, in China, their pipes are small then the ones we have in Singapore which would easily clog if we threw paper into it which we did for a few days.

So although we arrived in Beijing a week before school started, we didn’t have time to go sight-seeing or play much together. I only managed to go to silk road with mei xiu and wan jing on the Friday for a while which I bought my first fake Gucci bag among other stuff. We took a train there and it was my first time being on the train and the newer trains were like singapore’s just that it was nicer and the older trains were really bad as sometimes you would wonder if the air-con was even on.

In terms of personal life, my bf was there in Beijing for 2 weeks and I went over to his place for dinner on the second night and his 2nd aunt and uncle came over too. This time I went to my bf’s HDB like apartment and it was furnished really nicely, with a very big LCD or plasma TV in the living room and there were 2 little dogs in his house which were pretty cute. And during his 2 weeks there, and when I am at his place, to my astonishment, there was this show called 狄仁杰 which was still showing. Well, there are 3 parts but it was already showing in Beijing 2 years back and it was still showing repeats of it although the average was about 40-50 episodes in each part. I nearly fainted and my bf still watches attentively!!!

We went to xidan on his first Saturday by mrt(we usually always travel around by cab) to look for and buy simple t-shirts(I didn’t bring any as I thought it would be cold and only brought all my sleeveless which still wasn’t enough). There were really a lot of people and shortly after we reached the shopping centre after travelling on the mrt, I felt like waving the white flag. But we preserved and found 3 shirts! Yeah, you must understand that it was really difficult finding the shirts as all the wear was going towards autumn wear. During the 2 weeks that he was here, I went out with his family for dinner another 2 times, the first to eat 涮羊肉treated by his brother(cousins are usually just called brothers and sisters directly) and another home dinner at his 2nd aunts place. I like eating with his family because there is always so much food that is always beyond anybody’s fill. In terms of food, I have learnt that besides fish that is difficult and troublesome to eat, the crabs here, which are grown in ponds, are also as if not more troublesome to eat. I think the only part easy to eat is the egg as the crabs are half the size if not smaller than the usual ocean crab that we have in Singapore so its really difficult as u will be trying to get pass the shell to only get so little flesh in it. Really a trouble eating it clean and now I understand why my bf is always s fast with crabs, he must have first trained up with these.

Ever since the first day of school, it has been a supersonic train ride with cramped information and sometimes the teacher sound monotonous and actually sighed before a section which makes it all the worse. According to them, ours is a cramped curriculum and they need to cover a textbook in 1/3 the time they usually teach the other china students. Boy, does that sound comforting. To begin with, we got some language issues, not that we don’t understand what the teacher is saying or teaching but that we don’t really know the English-Chinese or the Chinese-English translation of the medical and scientific names which actually sucks because there are times when we only know where the teacher is referring to after a listening to her next few sentences or we will only know we know what the teacher is referring to which may be something that we have already ben taught after she has completed about ¾ of the content of a particular section. Its like this at about 80% of the lessons. And its not that we want to fall asleep but with such a speed and barrier, when u get lost or it starts to sound monotonous to you, you either turn off mentally or sleep or just take notes without understanding.

Some of the hands on classes were pretty fun, learning how to listen to the heart beat and conduct physical examinations, of course we did it to dummies and to our classmates first. There are 60 of us altogether and there are only 4 guys, we are split into 4 equally groups, with only 2 groups have 2 guys each so that it makes it less embarrassing when it comes to physical examination. My group has 2 guys, david and chen chun and they are lways our model for teacher’s demonstration and as our dummies if possible so its really funny and I still do feel a bit shy but putting things aside and be impersonal about it it’s ok la.