random shot at the wedding studio

i'm posting this picture because i think look tall here!

experimenting and learning

Congratualations!

玉在椟中求善价，钗于奁内待时飞。

乱哄哄你方唱罢我登场

Quality TV that I have finished watching recently - the 1987 version of 红楼梦. Superb casting!

No Longer a Student...

A bit late but still.... Happy CNY!

The World's Coolest Incense Holder

I was looking through my photos and i found this one which i remembered thinking when i was taking this photo, that i will post this on my blog, so here it is.

Location: Living place of Nima and his family and friends, right beside Kokonor Lake, Qinghai Province or 青海湖 in chinese.

When was this: 13/07/09

What is it: Like what the title says, it's the world's coolest incense holder. i mean if you have Jackie Chan as an incense holder, it can't be any cooler right.

So what happened was i was visiting 青海湖 and i stayed at Nima's place because Nima and his "brother" approached me when i alighted from the bus from Xining (西宁), asking me to stay at their place. They kind of conned me cause the conditions was not as what they had described. There wasn't even a toilet, so the stay there gave me the opportunity to answer nature's call in nature literally, an experience that i had missed out cause i didn't go thru bmt.

Nima and gang are tibetans and they make a living by letting tourists like me stay at their place. They are nice and friendly people and i joined them in their activities during the night i was there, if not i think i would have been bored to death cause there was nothing to be done over there at night. So i watched this tibetan movie with them and after that i joined them in their chit chat session, although most of the conversation was in tibetan which i couldn't understand of course, when we had tea and tibetan pastries and lots of nicotine.

Anyway, they said they were going to make a film and they said they would send it to me, which of course would not happen since i didn't give them my address nor did they ask for it. But good luck to them anyway. Maybe i would catch it in the cinema some day.

Lost makes me lost...

here i am, slacking. actually i'm watching lost. trying to catch up. so i'm now at s03e01. and there's still desperate housewives for me to catch up. i should be more constructive though...

Happy Birthday, Wenwen!

It was Boon Boon's birthday yesterday and it was also China's Youth Day. Anyway, she treated a few of us to dinner at the restaurant just outside school. The food was not bad but i didn't take any pictures. The pic below is of the birthday cake and i must say it's the nicest cake i've eaten in China and the flavour of the cake is also the weirdest i've eaten - chestnut!

That's a small but nice detail - having the date printed on the box for the birthday cake. 
Eating cake with chopsticks. Pika insisted on taking this pic.
Me with the birthday girl. She was celebrating her 21st birthday but that's not a big deal in China cause they turn adults at 18.
Group photo.

A Visit to the Hairdresser

The 3 of us visited the hairdresser but me and Pika were only there to support Junyuan cause he's rebonding his hair! Me and Pika were minor sponsors for Junyuan's makeover since we were the ones who suggested it. It was a long process but we were there through the whole thing. All we have to do now is to wait for 3 days before he can start to style his hair.

Day 14 - 25 Apr, Saturday: 桂林>杭州

The whole of Saturday was spent on the train cause the whole train journey was more than 24 hours. I reached Hangzhou finally at around 3.45am. I thought i would be pretty bored on the train and even bought a book to read when i was in 桂林 but i didn't read it in the end cause i was pretty occupied throughout the whole trip, trying to update my travel journal. I even had the luxury of an afternoon nap. That's the advantage of buying a sleeper ticket.

The whole trip became more exciting in the evening. There was this little girl (yep, the sweet little girl in the pic) who came up the train with her mother at one of the stops in the evening and she was offering me melon seeds. And soon after, she was even removing the shells for me and feeding me. Even my dear Baoling dun do that to me. I felt really fortunate to have such a pretty little girl feeding me. Haha.

While trying to take a photo of me and her together, i attracted the attention of the train conductor. Anyway, it was hard to take a decent pic cause the lighting was pretty poor and i didn't want to use flash, so the pic above has its levels adjusted. The train conductor was looking at the photos in my camera soon after and asking me questions about the camera and the places i've visited over the past 2 weeks. So one thing led to another and soon he knew i was from Singapore. He said that he was very interested in Singapore and wanted me to tell him more about it.

He had quite a lot of questions about Singapore too and it seems that Singapore is often mentioned in the press, and our MM is very respected by the Chinese. Soon, he was even talking about China politics, and he wasn't even keeping tone down and i had this thought that i might not be able to get off the train. But of course, nothing of that sort happened in the end and we ended our rather long conversation when the lights on the train went off.

And then i had a conversation with a student from 福州大学 who was going for an interview at 舟山. He was the first Chinese from 福建 that i've talked to actually. He had some links with Singapore too cause his mother went to 打黑工 in Singapore before and he had a cousin studying in a boys' school in Singapore too. I felt guilty about asking him what is 打黑工 but i really didn't know at the time but he was ok with it lar. 

These two conversations did made me feel privileged to be a citizen of a safe and prosperous country like Singapore although i'm not completely contented with living there.

Day 13 - 24 Apr, Friday: 程阳>三江>桂林

I've taken quite a lot of pictures of spiderwebs on this trip, but this was the nicest and largest spiderweb i've ever seen. It rained that morning, so the water droplets made the web very visible. This was taken when i was at the balcony of my room looking at the surrounding areas.

The place where i stayed was another wooden room. These rooms are creaky and are completely non-soundproof. And like the room at Panorama Hotel, there are signs that say “禁止烟火” but ironically, you can find an ashtray on the table.
View from the balcony.
鼓楼, a meeting point for the people, another iconic architecture of the Dong people.
I headed back to 桂林 later on in the day cause i planned to take a train back to 杭州 from there. I bought a ticket for the 2.37am train so i had lots of time on my hand to explore the city. It's pretty amazing that you have mountains right in the city itself unlike Singapore.
I caught my first movie in China at 桂林. The movie was Slumdog Millionaire even though i've downloaded it but have yet to watch. I figured that since it won Best Picture at the Oscars, it should garner a viewing at a cinema but unexpectedly, the movie was actually dubbed in Mandarin. Luckily, there were quite a bit of Hindi dialogue in the movie and those were left intact.

Day 12 - 23 Apr, Thursday: 大寨>龙胜>三江>程阳

It was raining that morning, so there was no sunrise to catch. And there was fog after the rain.

The fog came...
... and went with the wind.
I checked out of the hotel and started to make my way down the hill when the weather became better. This time, i carried my own luggage.
At the bottom of the hill, i took a bus back to 龙胜 and then from there, another bus to 三江. On the way, i met this group of 3 Malaysians who were going to the 三江 train station and i borrowed Lonely Planet from one of them to take a look. The chinese travel guide which i bought was much better than LP, at least for the Guangxi chapter.

And this is 三江.
From 三江, i took another bus to 程阳. 程阳 is actually a collective of a few Dong (侗) minority villages, turned into a tourist attraction.
Most of the fields were filled with water already.
I was walking among the villages, which made me feel that i was intruding the privacy of the villagers.
A sign that nobody cared about.
Green.
The whole place was actually rather beautiful and there were quite a bit of art students staying at the same place as me.
Those looked like giant cabbages. 
Water wheel.
The main attraction of the place - 程阳风雨桥, the main attraction of the whole place. This bridge was constructed without any use of nails and rivets. Impressive...

Day 11 - 22 Apr, Wednesday: 大寨

I woke up early that morning cause i wanted to catch the sunrise. Sunrise was supposedly 6.10am. This was the scene before the sun was up.

And in this pic, the sun has just risen from behind the mountain far away. It was a cloudy day, so the group of us there waited for quite a while to see the sun for that few minutes before it disappeared behind the clouds. And then i went back to sleep.
It was only 7+ when i was woken up by noise outside. The sun was shining brightly, casting strong shadows,
through the window... It felt like a good start to the day to see the sun shining brightly.
People were gathering outside, ready to go down hill or go on some tour, which explained the noise. And the Yao women were there doing their handiwork while waiting for the tourists to finish their breakfast, so that they can carry their bags down the hill.
The same scene when the sun was up.
There were three viewing spots in total. Since my hotel was at Spot #1, i planned to visit the other 2 spots that day. This's a close up shot of the terraces filled with water.
The water is being channeled from up the hills to the terraces through bamboo pipes like this.
Resting hut for the farmers. I was talking to one of them in that hut previously.
On the way to Spot #3.
And this's the view from Spot #3.
Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. I met this group of uni students from Guilin and we hung out for a while.
The view further down. Anyway, the terraces have been around for nearly 700 years!
There were 5 of them in total. One of them was not in the power rangers shot cause he was taking the picture. And they said i looked not more than 20. Ha...
I was taking pictures non-stop...
Horses were being used instead of buffaloes to farm the land cause they are supposed to be stronger according to the uncle who carried my bag the day before. And they are smaller than buffaloes, so they can work better on the terraces, some of which are really small plots of land. I came across this horse when i was walking down a trail. It was in my way and it didn't look like it was going to give way initially. I have this fear about walking behind horses cause i feel that they might use their powerful hind legs to kick me suddenly.
This old Yao man wanted me to take a picture of him, which i obliged;
and i even took another pic with him. And while talking to him after that, he requested for 2yuan to contribute to his tobacco fund, which i also obliged.
Spot #2.
Some other place.
Resting dragonfly. Do you notice the missing leg?
This reminds me of a golf course somehow.
I saw this when i returned to my hotel. I think the chambermaid crushed the moth's wing when she closed the window which i left open. I felt guilty about it...
My sad dinner.
Charlotte's Web.
"Please dun eat me..." The pig pleaded.