Chapter 3.2: First day of School!

Hi guys! Just had the first day of School at Shanghai Jiaotong Technical University (SJTU). The day started off in heavy rain and we were drenched when we got to the classroom. It was a half day lesson and we started with our 'modern chinese culture appreciation through film' module. The teacher chat on for 1hr 30mins skimming through 鲁迅 novels and what the rough outline of the course will be. Its basically a module which teaches some of the dilemma of modernisation in China from more than 2000 years of 封建制度 through movie screenings.

Thereafter, we went out with new met friends from NTU to shop shop, chit chat, trade shopping places. Though it is the coldest day I've encountered in Shanghai so far (5~9 degrees celsius). The waether could not stop the kindling friendship forged today. I look forward to yet another day of study! Until then, let me collect more pictures before updating the posts. Bye bye!

Chapter 3.1: 1st weekend after IA

Hi guys, remember to check out the other post prior to this as well! The company provided lunch daily and frankly speaking it isn't that fantastic but its edible. This resulted in my gang and I living and eating like Kings last weekend! Check out the food pictures!


Top: My first roadside store exploit! Its their local 手抓饼 (2.5RMB). Quite tasty. Bottom: This is the local foodstore near 龙阳路 MRT station. Alot of fellow GIP mates frequent it. The picture shows 豆干拌面which is resemblance to Ba Chor Mee in Singapore with some vinegar. Its only 7.5RMB!

Top: This is their 生煎包 where the 包 is cooked the way 锅贴 is done. Its juicy, very tasty especially the bottom chao ta part thats crispy. Bottom: Our friday dinner at Saizeriya (some italian restaurant). After about 15min of queue. Each of us had about 30RMB worth of food. Consist of chicken chop with cheese on top, escargot, spicy sausage and free flow of drinks. Its quite cheap given the amount of food we ordered. The dishes are nice too.

This is our pizza dinner at Babela on Sunday Night. It is not as great as Saizeriya but each pizza goes for 19 RMB. So its good food at cheap price. No complains except, do not order their chicken salad..



Special mentions: This is the Portugese egg tart from Lilian Cake Shop. I have never eaten an egg tart of the same taste and texture. Feels like 水蛋 and as smooth as 豆腐. At 3.5RMB each or 12RMB for 4, it is a steal for such a heavenly delicacy! We will buy it everytime we walk past a Lilian Cake Shop outlet. That is how good it is!

Alright, gotta sleep. Please wipe off the drool from the corners of your mouth before you sleep too.

Chapter 3: First week of IA and more!

Woohoo, I'm into the 2nd week of my internship! Basically, I'm still learning about the ERP software the company uses and how each of the modules increase the efficiency of the company. It is quite interesting to know softwares like these form the backbone of decent sized companies and the way it works. Thats all for IA stuff. The study component is starting soon, I look forward to meeting more people. As for now, let me share with you the exploits of my 1st week of IA as well as 1st weekend after work.

This is gate no 1 of the 外高桥 free trade zone which my company is located in. Unfortunately, we alighted at the wrong end of the place on the 1st day of IA and have to take cab to the company. This free trade zone is huge, the cab travelled about 10km before we reach the company.

So, we arrive at Univac Shanghai! The place where we will be spending next 6 months working as interns. Its located in the free trade zone which is something like Tuas in Singapore. The place is filled with lots of warehouses.


This is my work desk! Looks cosy right? (It will be more cosy if the room temperature is higher) Behind the window holds the main server of the company. Originally I didnt think I would have this desk. But the previous IT personnel left the company, so I was lucky to take over his table.

Chapter 2.5: Food for thought

Hi guys! I'm still clearing some photo backlogs as I'm too lazy to extract and resize photos from my camera.. haha. This is the food series post of the food I had last Saturday. Who says China food is not really great for your stomach? I must say, the variety of food we had for the past 2 weeks ranges from extremely poor to great! Perhaps Shanghai is more globalized so you can find all kinds of food... =p

Top: 永和豆浆油条 for breakfast! Great! its only 7.50 RMB for this.

Bottom: Curry duck rice for lunch at some food court! It was nice until......

Top: I found out they spammed tons and tons of oil. For 18 RMB food, this one ranks at the lower end due to the amount of oil! (although my stomach tyre says 'welcome'...)

Bottom: Since I had some oily lunch, might as well try out their local Ramly burger. Its juicy, its munchy, it has less oil than the picture before... its only 4 RMB. Worth the long queue!

Top: Here comes the great tasting dinner at Cafe de Coral of the 正大广场 near 陆家嘴. At 28 RMB, it is abit on the high side. But then, its really good!

Bottom: Crave for snacks? Can try out the different flavours of Pocky here.. This strawberry flavour has a thicker strawberry wrap, around the stick. And its only 3 RMB. As for the tea.. its quite the average for 3.5 RMB.

Alright, let me go scout more places to explore before I post more. For now if you are hungry, you can ogle at the food. Hoho

Chapter 2.4: Sight-Seeing

Hi guys! This is the backlog of the photos I have taken last thursday. We met up with another household of 3 guys and went 城隍庙 to check out its beautiful traditional chinese architecture. We tried out the famous 汤包 of this place, of course.

After, we spent sometime searching for the shopping complex where all the tailors congregate and got my housemate's office wear tailor. I must say, its very very cheap here factoring in the exchange rates.

After dinner, the 2 houses decides to visit a place, babyface, to 'drink' as recommended by the locals. We initially thought it was a pub but then its a club.. Haha. Then again, we did not want to waste the cab fare spent so we had 1 bottle of 'wodka' in the club before returning home to sleep peacefully through the night.

Temple street, wonderful crowd and scenic decorations.
城隍庙, is a taoist-buddhist temple built in ancient times used by Emperors to worship the numerous Gods. I would not miss out a chance to drop a penny into the donation box of the 财神殿!
汤包 is the renowned delicacy of 城隍庙. This 包 here is around 4 dollars. Its filled with crab york and crab soup. Also, there are other types of dim sum here which tastes great as well. The downside is just to watch out for the hot soup in the 包. It will scald your tongue as well as your wallet. (Our meal was around 12 SGD)

The outside of babyface, the 'MoS' of Shanghai. Its very packed inside as we have arrived late but still the music isnt too bad to groove along. Just be prepared to become a 2nd hand smoker as the club isnt a smoke free zone. Here it is, the bottle of vodka thats called wodka. Rumors of fake liquor aside, its not bad when mixed with orange juice. The downside is.. this bottle costs 6 of us 18SGD each and a very light head from me. Haha

Chapter 2.3: Celebrating the 50th hour of shopping

Hi guys! Happy valentine's day and friendship day! I'm sure u all had a wonderful day going out with your friends, GF, BF or doing other activities. I'm currently celebrating the 50th hour of shopping since Tuesday. The past week was a flurry of shopping, eating, embarking on crazy taxi rides and more shopping. This accounted for not blogging much.. =p

As the days go on, lesser and lesser photos will be taken unless its truely unique. Not because I'm tired but Shanghai is a metropolitan city so anywhere you go is really city which is not very far from what you see in Orchard Road except the shopping areas are magnified by a lot more times. Now for some photo journals!

Jim, this is for you!

Melamine plastic wares!

Woohoo! Its 14 degrees!

The classic Shanghai city area night view! Breath-taking not to mention, darn cold!

This is me! Took out most of the brilliant lights from the night view.. I shall put more effort in my camera skills.

Look at the time I eat dinner! Shouldn't have shopped too much... Oh ya, in that cup is 豆浆, this meal is from 永和大王. Totally decent and affordable!

What to do if you are single yet its Valentine's Day? Just change it to Friendship Day and do an 8 hour shopping therapy! Even if its window shopping, it certainly helps... Thats all for tonight! Cya!!

Chapter 2.2: The start of settlement in Shanghai!

Hi guys! Here are some of the pictures for those who are lazy to read the wall of text =D
There was no in-flight entertainment but we had laptops, so its entertainment anytime anywhere!

First meal of the day and in China! Wow, dumpling! The dumplings were nice but look at the company name! (think of the cheese and the pie)..
Omg, taken over the house! Now for the clean up....

Sorry for not updating the blog with all the latest fun stuff! I'm still travelling around Shanghai everyday for long hours in the so called 'tourism' mode. Internship will be starting on monday, so its like exploring the city and where to find things like basic necessities and shopping havens. I'll try to clean up the backlog like how my housemates and I cleaned up the house initially.

So signing off, Happy Valentine's Day for couples and Happy Friendship Day for friends I've met and yet to meet =D

Chapter 2.1: Setting foot on Shanghai

Hi guys! Finally reached Shanghai 2 days ago. The reason I'm only able to blog now is that the past 2 days was quite hectic. I will upload the photos later after I've done resizing them so do be abit more patient. Let me briefly talk abt the highlights of the past few days:

Day 1: When we reached our apartment, it was great except its on the 6th Floor and theres no lift... All of us had to carry our uber heavy luggage up the 6 stories which left me breathless. Next up, we took over the house from the agent but it was quite dirty, partially due to the construction works beside and some of the junks left by the previous GIP students. So we decided to go Carrefour to get our basic necessities bought and start cleaning the house.

We took a short walk to the nearby Metro which sells alot of stuff as well but then since Carrefour is further, we decide to go Carrefour first to see if things are cheaper there. So we started walking and asked the security beside a junction about the location of Carrefour. He said "Just follow the road, its about 1km." So we believed him and walk to Carrefour instead of taking a cab.

So we followed the road and walk... and walk... still walk... after like 1 hour of walking, we finally reached Carrefour. We thought it was way longer than 2 km but we really explored quite a lot. Thus, next time when you are in other countries, please double check the distance before walking...

Our first meal in Shanghai was rather 'safe', it was Ajisen ramen. The ramen itself costed only around ~S$5 which was cheap and not to mention good. After shopping at Carrefour we took cab back to our house which only costed ~RMB10 which is about S$2 shared by 4 people. Darn, should have taken cab there in the first place and save 1 hour.

After that is a massive spring cleaning of house for 2 hours before finally eating dinner at around 830pm and settle for the day at around 11 or so. What a day!

Chapter 1: Maiden Post

Hihi! I finally decided to spend sometime making this blog. I hope to put in memories of events that happened over at Shanghai. This is to update any friends who are too lazy to msn me about any happenings.

Well, tonight I'm flying off at around 1am. With the mind set and luggage pack, I have no regrets choosing to depart on a 6 months Shanghai internship. With tons of uncertainties and wonderful people and places waiting to be discovered, the only way to go is forward!