No I’m not talking about a handsome fish. Weird phrase huh. I wonder where it came from.
Anyway we moved into our new aptmt on fri night! Felt sooo good to be in our own place!
Went to look for the shanghai Frisbee players on sat afternoon… managed to find the field! It’s over at pudong and full of expats! It felt like I was in New York. But unfortunately the rugby people seemed to be having a family day thing at the field so I don’t think the Frisbee people were playing. Hung around awhile to wait but nope didn’t see any Frisbees and it was beginning to drizzle so I decided to go back. Chilled out at home watching one of the 60+ channels they have here :P and then went to explore our neighbourhood!
It’s pretty interesting… we’re very centrally located, like I said before, it’s like living near Clarke Quay. And yet our part of the neighbourhood is still old and ‘local’. So when you step out of our house, on the right is the atas neighbourhood, on the left is... I dunno… what’s the opposite of atas? I guess it’s a bit slummish, but not thaaaat bad. Ok let’s just call them The Streets.
the atas right side - see all the tall office buildings and condos
the run-down left side
close up of the streets
So since I wasn’t interested in the atas side, I decided to poke around and explore the street side. I really just randomly walked so after awhile I kinda lost my sense of orientation… probably wouldn’t be able to walk back to any particular shop again. But I didn’t get lost lah.
Some of the old buildings around look quite nice! There are two-storey wooden tea houses, and buildings with old stone fronts and engravings on them. But most of it is just old run down shops selling tea leaves (prob much cheaper than all the touristy areas), household stuff, street food, electrical shops, etc. Heh now NG’s neighbourhood reeeeally seems atas in comparison. The most telling point? The people in his area keep dogs. The people in our area keep cats! Around his place we kept seeing people walking little dogs, a lot of pommies. Around this area a lot of the shops had cats with string leashes. Played with one cute long-haired kitty :) Haha yah that’s my weird animal atas-level barometer.
NG’s neighbourhood had a sort of heartland mall at the mrt station with Carrefour, so convenient. Sam was afraid we’d have to walk really far to the atas side to shop… but me being me I insisted there’d be stuff on the street side so on Friday night after we moved in, we’d walked around and true enough, just around the corner there was a supermarket! Of course not a Carrefour-type hypermart, but more like an NTUC or a mini-mart. But good enough wat. And to top it off? There’s milk tea in the row of shops next to our house AND round the corner and a lot of other places too!! Woohoo! Our aptmt’s really perfect :) And there’s also a dvd shop next door… so that made Sam happy!
In the evening, we waited for Ronald to come. Then after he arrived we went out to eat dinner, found a nice small eatery near our house. Then we loaded up on household equipment and went home. Heh our broom and pan, mop, pail and toilet scrub cost us about… S$9 altogether! And we still tried to bargain… such cheapos! :P I also bought some weird fruit.. I think they were bosenberries? Not sure, anyway they sure taste interesting.
After that we met up with some other smu friends and went out to walk the streets (on the atas side :P) and unlike Singapore, it was still bright and crowded at 930! Although that’s when most of the shops were supposed to close. One of our smu friends is actually Shanghainese, and he’d taken Clara n Zhi to make name cards in the afternoon, very cheap! And they’ll help you design them nicely too! So if anyone wants namecards let me know... haha.
The rest wanted to go clubbing after that but they decided to load up on drinks at a convenience store first to save money. And then for some weird reason they decided to try bai jiu cos it was super cheap [even tho I’d warned them it was potent! Or maybe because of that…]. Then we tried to find some club that’d been recommended to them but we cldn’t find it and Ron was so eager to drink so we just sat down outside an mrt exit and played stupid drinking games! It was hardly a game in the end lah and it wasn’t very fair cos our drinks were all of different intensity. Clara n Zhi’s was so light! Urgh, mine and Ron’s was so strong! I think that’s the only reason why I ended up going clubbing with them in the end. Anyway after that we walked into some random place which had no cover charge but the music was very weird lah but anyway we stayed there till about 2+ and NG and his friend came to join us and took us for supper after that. Then we walked home together with NG and his friend to show them our aptmt, good thing too or we might have gotten lost. It was pretty near but we aren’t very familiar with our neighbourhood yet.
After they left, we stayed up to clean the house! We hadn’t cleaned it yet and aiyah I dunno I just wanted to, so it was my fault lah I picked up the broom and then the rest just started mopping and wiping too and we cleaned up the whole house. Another reason to be thankful that our apartment is small! Easier to clean. Our last housemate, Pam, who isn’t here yet, really has us to thank! She can come in to a nice clean apartment! Hahaha and then while trying to hang out the mop to dry on our balcony, it over-balanced and dropped down to the apartment below!! theirs is the ground floor apartment so instead of a balcony they have a whole courtyard… heh oh well can just get it back form them I guess.
It was quite crazy to stay up all night cleaning the house but it made me discover something. Now I know why we keep waking up so early! After I bathed and walked back into the room, it was already bright! I turned to Sam and I was like “oh my goodness what time is it?!” we couldn’t possibly have cleaned from 3-7am right… but nah it was only 5am! No wonder I kept waking up at 6 or 7… it probably already felt like 8 or 9 cos we never drew the curtains!
Heh and then the other two tried to be garung and said they didn’t plan to sleep, they’d just watch dvds then go and grab breakfast. I wisely said I’d go to sleep cos I didn’t want to be half-dead at church and for the rest of the day. Haha and then in the end they both fell asleep within 15 mins of watching! Tsk… hahaha! I meant to sleep in until just before church but then we all ended up waking at about 11+. For us it was because sam’s uncle called. I keep waking up when her phone rings and she answers… this must be retribution for all those times I’ve laughed at sebby for sleeping with his phone on and getting woken up too early. Sigh and it’s not my fault at all… I still sleep with my phone off but I can’t help it that my roommate doesn’t! argh…
Good thing we slept though… cos we ended up walking a lot today! Hahaha I quite like walking so I’d wanted to walk but we ended up walking really long! First we were early for church so we walked there… about the distance of 2 mrt stops. Then after church Ron and NG and I walked from church towards the bund area for dinner… that was… I dunno… about 4 squares worth on my map! Haha. Ok maybe abt… 7km? But I quite liked it leh… at least now I have better orientation around town. Good thing I wasn’t wearing heels. Walking in heels to work today (fr our house to the stn, then to change mrt line at the interchange which is longer than the nsl to nel path, and from the mrt stn to our office…) is quite killer! My shoes are quite ok to walk in so my feet don’t hurt but the ground is very uneven so sometimes it’s still hard to balance and the sole of my heel is a goner for sure.
Seems like we keep doing the touristy stuff now… nights out at all the popular spots. Finally more in the mood to… heh. And it’s so strange… NG actually commented that I know my drinks pretty well. Which is not true lah… I only know my few favourites and stick to them. Everything else was probably just experimental… tried once just to see what it was like. N prob mainly due to the swiss house party culture… and Frisbee and B and my bro’s influence!
So, it’s Monday morning now and this is a long post because I’m bored at work again and most of our colleagues are in a meeting so we really don’t have much to do so I’m just extending this entry so I kill time. We still don’t have internet… neither at home nor in the office. We’re supposed to get our laptops at work today but I think everybody’s been too busy to pay attention to us so far so thank goodness I brought my own laptop again. No internet but at least I can type this and play minesweeper and listen to my music!
The crowds here are crazy… esp at the mrt interchange: ren min guang chang (the equivalent of city hall). It’s really a whole HORDE of people… I’m going to take photo one of these mornings. And everyone really squeezes their way into trains and packs it full. Sometimes we just give up and wait for the next train. China people push hard. I think in a way we might be a bit too soft and nice to get things done here. Have to be a lot meaner and more firm! From resisting beggars to getting our housing agent or landlord to do things… all takes skill and a certain amount of fierceness and scolding.
And it’s so amazing how small the world is. At church yesterday I met another smu guy… I don’t really know him but I think he’s quite involved in school stuff so I’d seen him around and we both recognized each other so we just started talking. Haha I don’t even know his name actually! But apparently he’s here with his gf to visit another fren who’s here on exchange from nus. And then NG’s fren reminded me of JZ and I suddenly remembered I was supposed to email him once I was in shanghai cos he might be coming here too and JZ is another person who I just know for no particular reason… haha. And and and it turns out ron is pk’s classmate! Ahhh why couldn’t it be pk who was coming instead!! That would be so cool lah. But anyway I guess if ron is my “best friend”’s friend, he can’t be too bad lah huh. *cross fingers* anyway since ron and pk are friends, Na and him can probably bunk in with us if they come to visit. =)
Ok it’s almost lunch time I guess I better stop cos sam is getting bored (silly girl refused to bring her laptop again) and it almost feels like I’ve been talking to myself the entire morning. If I keep doing this I’ll probably go crazy :P
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