though it got a little draggy at times, i think Beautiful Life's one of the most romantic dramas of its kind. not many shows can actually make you feel like the couple's really in love. but then again i prob haven't watched enough dramas to make any sound conclusion... but i thought i could really feel the chemistry between Shuji and Kyoko... sad show, but really liked most of the characters in it.
then again, 'love' is so subjective. but no matter what kind of love, i believe it's something that comes really naturally/subconsciously... like caring about someone "involuntarily". not easily controllable. will miss. mmm..purely wanting someone to be happy? not intentionally seeking reciprocation. aiyah but of course, who doesn't like reciprocation. humans are feeling creatures after all... nmind... just rambling =P

To the lighthouse

it was such a beautiful day today... and it so happened that sumei and i decided to go check out the Marin Headlands near Sausalito this afternoon... i seriously LOVE the weather here. hmm anyway this lighthouse's at Point Bonita (haha name tickles me cos it brings back some silly but fond memories) the view wasn't GREAT, but nice nonetheless. and the drive up there was just so soothing, esp when it was still a little cloudy in the distance and i felt like i was driving into a sea of clouds! Feel like i want to check out a new place every weekend... what have i been doing the past 3 years??? either stoning in front of my computer or hanging out in libraries?? definitely aim to visit more places around the Bay area this year... and improve driving skills...=) Sch's starting in a day's time. am actually pretty excited about some of my classes. but feel like i'm morphing into such a chapalang major, cos i'm really looking forward to my Chinese 159 and History 116d classes! of course, look forward to taking Econ 181 too... =)

Point Bonita, Marin Headlands

mmm... intriguing idea... champagne-in-watermelon on she who eats...

i aim to be healthy this semester... free stupid Cali fitness in sg (compliments of Jeannice, who signed up for membership) says that i need to do weight training and cut down on fats! hmmph. weight training... as if i'm not heavy enough. cut down on fats... hmmm i guess erm that's partly accurate.. haha (deceive deceive myself) ... which also means like maybe one year ago i was REALLY fat.. hmm. oh well, ya lah still need to exercise more =P good lah, exercise more, eat less, then save money also... let's see how long i can sustain this... i hav feeling maybe two weeks into plan i will give up and succumb to like yummy cheap Haagen-Dazs...

i finally hav internet! haha. just one night without internet and i was feeling hun2 sheng1 bu4 shu1 fu2... i even dreamt about discovering the wireless password... quite scary how dependent on internet i have subconsciously become... but finally got wireless password this morning =) sigh i got jet lag so even though i didn't sleep all day yesterday i still couldn't make it. woke up at 330am and tried very hard to get back to sleep but just couldn't. good thing i had my jap dramas to pei2 wo3, so watched my Beautiful Life starting from like 4am... the quality's really good and i really regret not getting more Jap dramas to keep up with listening to Jap. plus relistening to the nice piano piece in the song was really heartwarming too. oh well. =(
received a piece of bad news yest... that they uncovered my dishonest reporting for car insurance and so premium will be raised to like $2900!!! crazy. have to look for car insurance again today. wondering if i should drive without collision insurance.... sigh and there are funny bumps on my tires i guess i would have to send it in for inspection. it's actually really rather cold here, for a normal summer morning... but i like... haha and i hav little Kai crying in the morning not wanting to go to sch again... haha a bit noisy, but somehow unlike some ppl, i just dun think i can ever hate kids... =P

i'm flying back to the US for the last time... i know i will really treasure this last year so much... yet knowing that i prob wun be back till next June makes me feel a little bu she de my family... not that i haven't been away for a year before, but this time it's like planning to be away till i graduate...and after bout two months of being showered with love from parents i feel just a teeny bit hesitant about leaving=P hmmm but anyway, plan to keep myself very busy this year and aim to study harder... so there prob wun be much time for me to miss home and before i know it, i'll be yearning i had another year in the US... k... back to last min packing =P

and so i finally 'met' my sister's bf, but in a rather bu4 guang1 cai3 way, since mum made me open door for sis in my jian4 bu4 de2 ren2 night gown.... sick. always come home when i'm like in ready-to-sleep wear... then got no time to change cos like by that time the bf wouldn't be at door anymore...(my hesitation the past few times have resulted in a few missed opportunities) sigh. what an embarrassing first meeting. and i feel so funny, why cannot guang ming zheng da meet him, must like purposely open door then like tou1 kan4... but chap looks like decent guy lah.. least i got to see him once before i leave on tues =P
after touring the Asian cities i did this summer, i have decided that Singapore's perhaps one of the few Asian cities (out of all the Asian cities i've toured so far, which is not that many lah) i would actually want to stay in...I actually quite like Tokyo, but living expenses are too high. maybe when i'm rich and retired... anyway, would def return to tour other Japanese cities soon! i hope. this sounds dumb, but i really do feel quite at home here... when i first came back from China, somehow i really appreciated how u hav ppl speaking singlish again, how u have all kinds of familiar-tasting local food again... and i mean no matter fluent i get in Mandarin over in China, it's still not natural somehow...

it's sometimes good to be sick huh... u get extra attention and parents fuss over you... haha... my usually lazy dad peeled and sliced an apple for me yesterday! have been sleeping so much over past few days that i feel very tou hun nao zhang. glad i'm feeling a lot better today and am ready to do some last min shopping/ meet up with frens tmr before i leave on Tuesday =) sometimes, i really think parental love is the most wei3 da4. they can be a lil bit fan2 sometimes, but their actions are always well-intentioned lah.

Pictures!

Jingshan Park, Beijing.

Buildings at The Bund, Shanghai.

Xi1 Hu2 (West Lake) in the evening, Hangzhou.

hmmm too many pics to post on my blog... for more pics, click here! i find myself getting more and more interested in photography... i want to take nice pics. There's a visual studies Intro to Photography class at Berkeley this Fall, but unfortunately it clashes with my other classes... =(

yay. back in Beijing... and quite ready to go home tonight. i'm almost over my cheap-food euphoria, had enough of horrible weather (yest was so scorching; it's now pouring in Beijing...no wonder i'm getting sore-throaty and falling sick) and of course, quite sick of hunting for cheap DVDs... but happy i found my jc-era Beautiful Life Jap drama for acceptable price. also a little sad though that i'm leaving just when my conversational Chinese is actually getting pretty decent =P

hmm. i forgot to add that with such uncomfortably hot/humid weather, you get interesting sights on the street though. every now and then i will see adult men with shirts rolled up to their chests walking around. hmm actually i just changed my mind. it's not interesting at all. rather gross, actually =P

of Suzhou, Hangzhou and nightmarish train stations
am now slacking in Hangzhou before my evening 13 hr overnight train that will take me all the way back to Beijing... i am starting to get burnt out; aching muscles and sore feet, plus uncomfortably hot and humid weather makes travelling really somewhat unpleasant. and i've decided that i've had ENOUGH of train stations in China... it is really a pain to have to wade through swarms of people to get to your destination each time...well. but this is China; what did i expect? =P i've also started wondering if Chinese really enjoy peddling their wares... was pretty amused/amazed to see railway staff peddling gadgets on some trains! from 'special' socks to toys and weird gimmicky gadgets, complete with detailed live demonstrations (for toys and gadgets)... i mean food/ magazine carts were ok, but "officially"selling random toys on trains was just weird.
Suzhou's gardens were really picturesque; but there's really little else to do beside touring the gardens. the whole place is pretty small and somewhat touristy too. but some gardens can be really beautiful. at some point i just sat at stone benches/on bridges to admire all that was around me. would have been very peaceful without the tonnes of ppl touring the gardens at the same time. the effort owners spent into designing their gardens was amazing. gardens were really meticulously planned. eg. to view a certain scenery, u can only stand at this particular spot; anywhere else you wun see the complete picture... who on earth has the time to do such things these days...
came to Hangzhou mainly for the famed Xi1 Hu2 (West Lake) and it's also very pretty... esp if you go at the right times. it's not immediately breathtaking, but it's nice to just stroll by the lake and take in the view at different points of the walk. Ting and I decided to catch the sunrise and escape the heat; so woke up at an unearthly hour this morning. by 515am we were by the lake and i was surprised that there were already many old folks strolling around, doing their morning exercises, hanging around etc....also partially felt like i was reliving my pri/sec sch Chinese textbooks, what with attractions like Yue Fei's temple/tomb, Wu Song's tomb (all fake and reconstructed one though, and apparently Sima Guang's house or something but that i didnt see) and the famed Lei2 Feng1 Ta3 from Bai2 She2 Zhuan4...
hmm anyway hav to stop now. glad i'm going home on Tuesday.. think i've had enough of China in sucky weather for now =P

Shanghai is somewhat disappointing. it's actually rather like my pre-conceived notion of what Beijing might be like, 10 yrs from my last visit to China... but it turned out that i found myself liking Beijing a whole lot more. Well, yes, i was mesmerized by the night view at the Shanghai tan1 (The Bund) last night... but other than that, it just feels like it can be potentially any other international city. it's very modern, you see quite a few ppl driving luxury cars... but dunno, it just feels like it doesn't really have much character. i tried to hunt down bits of old Shanghai, but the so-called 'old town/old city' seems rather fake. everything seems catered to tourists... perhaps my most enjoyable experience was looking at antiques at the antique market area.... where tog with those wares you really get to see some old residential buildilngs; the less glamorous bits of the city. but they seem to be disappearing... quite a lot of rubble near these older areas, i guess to make way for the new buildings. quite sad, really. and meeting Warner for dinner and hearing about his interesting encounters in the process of searching for old Shanghai posters for his research was of course another highlight. other than that, ppl really pushing you hard to get in/out of the subway trains, some really bad service at stores and the homogeneity of many areas just made me thankful in a way that i didn't plan to stay for a longer time. hmm dunno. perhaps 1.5 days here wasn't enough for me to really get an accurate picture of what Shanghai's like?

i thought i would be bored slacking 6 days in Beijing... but i was wrong... the past 2 days have been esp memorable =) i dunno why the typhoon doesn't spare any place i visit... when i was in Hong Kong weather was horrible apparently due to typhoon in Taiwan and yest there was supposed to be a thunderstorm in Beijing cos typhoon has apparently moved up here... but luckily it wasn't that bad... but we had to scale the great wall under less than optimal conditions... but still awed by it nonetheless. wind and rain made navigating treacherously steep slopes esp difficult, but also more memorable... u really really wonder how many ppl sacrificed their lives building this amazing wall...
today was one of the more interesting days. it really struck me how perhaps 99% of the tourists i've seen these past 6 days at major tourist attractions are Chinese. i guess from other provinces... the snaking line to enter Mao's mausoleum made me wonder if the Chinese really really still respect and admire him even decades after his death? also, to some extent, i still observed traces of communism all over. eg. people still call one another 'tong2 zhi4'... i could not believe that there was some loudspeaker voice in the square near the mausoleum advising ppl lining up to be quiet, to be respectful when filing past Mao's (apparently formaldehyde-filled) corpse...blah blah. and ppl holding loudspeakers to keep the crowds orderly... sigh there's so much i want to blog about but can't =P shall reserve till when i return from my trip. then in the evening, i took an interesting hutong tour on trishaw with Ting... our guide (i felt bad like we're ripping him off like that cos we paid quite little for like a 1.5 hr ride and he was this puny guy who had to zai4 us round sights and kept sweating profusely) I think these hutongs (dwelling units most Beijing folks used to live in) are SO interesting. many of them have been converted into shops/bars/touristy places already, but many remain real dwelling units for many ppl. they seem really cramped from the outside (can peek in a bit but like quite rude to go in to take pics cos after all they're ppl's homes) dunno. even though i can never imagine myself living in one, nor do i want to live in one, i really liked them...
what else? hmm food again i guess =P so far none of the eating places in Beijing has disappointed me... from Chinese fast-food, streetfare to more ex restaurants... everything tastes pretty good =) and i never fail to eat ice-cream everyday (cos it's so hot!!)... and they have yummy Walls and Nestle ice-cream flavors we dun find in Sg/US.... i esp like this orange-vanilla ice-cream that looks like our lime Split but tastes like sunrise....
mmmm ok talk too much already. setting off for Shanghai tmr... wonder what surprises await me? =)

PS: btw i can't access my blog in China, so i'm sorry i can't really reply to comments. but i receive them cos they get sent to my gmail...

Bargaining
initially i was rather enthusiastic about bargaining.... cos like u can actually feel a bit accomplished if u successfully sha1 jia4 and got something for good price... but there comes a point where something is actually very cheap already, yet you wonder if person is cheating you when he/she says he/she is not making a profit. and if u really think about it, u are already getting it for a good price, but yet u just want to make sure that u are not being cheated. then u start wondering if u are being too jian4 and not even letting person who's selling you earn a bit of money. like seriously i dun think reducing price by 5 yuan makes me lose out a lot but then perhaps 5 yuan makes a lot of difference to the seller... u wonder if you should be kind and let person earn some money or be totally selfish and minimize his profit. and you get tired of bargaining and u start wondering why you are bargaining to save that few yuan... and so i've decided not to really buy anything anymore unless i really need it or really like it. sigh dunno. hmm but some Chinese can really be quite li4 hai4 but rather jian4. like they want something, bargain bargain... then vendor dun want to sell but like dun care, ying4 ying4 only give seller the price they want to buy merchandise for, then walk away, leaving vendor to curse at his/her own bad luck...

Bargaining
initially i was rather enthusiastic about bargaining.... cos like u can actually feel a bit accomplished if u successfully sha1 jia4 and got something for good price... but there comes a point where something is actually very cheap already, yet you wonder if person is cheating you when he/she says he/she is not making a profit. and if u really think about it, u are already getting it for a good price, but yet u just want to make sure that u are not being cheated. then u start wondering if u are being too jian4 and not even letting person who's selling you earn a bit of money. like seriously i dun think reducing price by 5 yuan makes me lose out a lot but then perhaps 5 yuan makes a lot of difference to the seller... u wonder if you should be kind and let person earn some money or be totally selfish and minimize his profit. and you get tired of bargaining and u start wondering why you are bargaining to save that few yuan... and so i've decided not to really buy anything anymore unless i really need it or really like it. sigh dunno. hmm but some Chinese can really be quite li4 hai4 but rather jian4. like they want something, bargain bargain... then vendor dun want to sell but like dun care, ying4 ying4 only give seller the price they want to buy merchandise for, then walk away, leaving vendor to curse at his/her own bad luck...

visited Beida and Qinghua today. somehow after hearing how they are two of the most famous unis in China, i had rather high expectations of the campuses so actually i was pretty 'shocked' by what they turned out to be like, esp. Beida. i mean for example i didn't really expect to find a dimly lit bookstore with makeshift plastic fans in the middle of campus... there are some really nice bits, but also some really run down bits. somehow after a few 'surprises' the past few days... i didn't really know what to expect of each new place. some things are better than expected, while others astound me. for one, i didn't expect toilets to be still as 'open' as 10 yrs ago... yes, i'm still very mei yong, but i really felt uncomfortable when i stepped into the toilet in a bargain fashion building and saw ppl doing whatever they needed to do in cubicles with no doors.... of course, nobody cares to look at you, or rather, wants to, but it's still so uncomfortable... i mean in the end i had to use that toilet cos when u need to use toilet what else can you do... but it just made me realize how idealistic i was perhaps 4 months back when i thought i could tolerate less than satisfactory sanitary conditions to do com service in rural areas (which i expect would be much worse)
also had a rather amusing pseudo cab driver (cos technically he's unlicenced driver out to zhuan4 wai4 kuai4) who talked about everythign from the '89 Tiananmen incident to reasoning why it's ok and why Beijing ppl should spit on the streets (including live demonstration, twice spitting out of car window onto roads).... dunno. feel so much more drawn to way ppl here live, rather than the tourist attractions i'm "supposed" to and did visit.

yay jing is back so i have internet at home... =P i guess i still can't really get over how cheap food can be. on way to subway today walked past residential area and sat down in one of street stalls to have lunch... and whole meal only cost shu and i like 13 RMB or like around 3 Sing... and food was ok. pretty sumptuous restaurant meal yest evening also wasn't that ex....maybe 7 Sing each? but then even though we think things are generally cheap and ppl here can buy a lot of stuff... i guess it's actually not the case. was curious and asked waitress what her monthly pay roughly was? and apparently it's around 500RMB.... which is a mere $100 Sing... so like even though things are cheap, it's prob only cheap to us (cos we're used to paying more for food) and to other well-off local ppl but perhaps not to many locals....
also find it quite ashamed that i kept stumbling trying to converse in Chinese! like i have no clue what certain terms are in Chinese. then at restaurant some things look totally foreign. like though we're all Chinese (somewhat...) cultures are still very different. haha when i asked what this drink on the menu, xiao3 xue3 bi4 (Sprite), was, waiter gave me weird stare and had to bring me the can of Sprite...
also felt sorry for the poorer ppl cos like met quite a few kids/old persons collecting empty cans/ plastic bottles from passers-by... and saw some beggars in underpass who really look very ke lian. like ppl begging with kids with deformities... but sometimes really dunno if should give them money or not.

first impressions
day one in Beijing and observed some interesting things. first, jing has such a luxurious apartment all by herself! nice condo with security guards in lobby and with van gogh and other imitation paintings hung up in apartment. then i step out and like few streets down some ppl live in dwellings so tiny and cramped i cannot help but really feel the stark contrast.... and i thought it was interesting how you had to go up to counter and buy paper tics to take the subway. and u hav 'subway conductor' sitting at entrance to tear your ticket.... which made me wonder, what if it's rush hour.. how they manage? i guess i'll see in the days to come. cos when i went out today it wasn't even rush hour and there were already quite a lot of ppl.... what other random things did i do? ate a o.60 RMB (about 12 sg cents) dou4 sha1 bing4 and felt very happy. ate very cheap jiao3 zi at dumpling fast food restaurant. visited one of the biggest bookstores in Beijing and was really impressed. cos there really were a lot of adults seriously pouring over non-fiction books.... ppl sitting on the floors really studying books... dunno if it's cos everyone is so thirsty for knowledge, or driven by pressure to upgrade themselves in competitive environment, but their shang4 jin4 xin1 is quite impressive. and baffled by how they have so many translated foreign texts... saw like translated Stiglitz econ textbooks among others.... yet they have no foreign mag. perhaps only National Geographic. no TIME, no NEWSWEEK/ Economist whatsoever... why. i mean if they allow foreign texts, which technically are considered foreign publications, why not magazines... hmm unless maybe this bookstore doesn't stock? dunno yet. haven seen enough =) anyway quite difficult to find internet cafe here... so prob wun be able to blog till some days later. =)

ruthless competition or outdated technology?
when i tried to put Itune files into my Creative MP3 player, they could not even be found, which led me to rashly conclude and wonder if fierce competition between Apple and Creative MP3 players has led to Creative players not supporting song formats created by Apple products? but then upon looking up aac files, (Itune songs are saved as aac files; all the technicalities confuse me; only know it's supposedly better and newer than mp3 file formats or something =P) realized that it's a relatively new thing and my old mp3 player model prob didn't support such a file format... i'm guessing lah. if anyone else is better informed, can enlighten me =)

and so i leave for Beijing tonight... wonder if i will be able to access blogger? since according to guidebook there is a "Great Firewall of China".... would try email blogging, good if it works; if not, i guess i'll disappear for 12 days. let's hope i dun meet shady cab driver tmr and really disappear... i'm hoping so hard i'll be fine (which i think i will be) else i'll never be allowed to travel alone/with a fren even say a teeny part of my trip, ever...