Average Day

The highlight of the day was dinner with the NTU people. I was rather hoping to try something new, what with having eaten at Yoshinoya during lunch but ended up eating at an establishment run by a Singaporean named Lau Pa Sat that sold Singaporean food. Zero points for creativity and $7 for Bak Chor Mee. Not impressed. I mean, seriously, I did not travel almost the entire latitude of the northern hemisphere just to eat Singaporean food. Sheesh. Having Sze Chuan Ma La stuff may not have been very nice, but it was something new. Leave this " I miss home so much" stuff till later in the trip, when we have actually forgotten what it tastes like.

Anyway, it seems that none of us miss Singapore yet, especially Waisan, who just arrived yesterday. So lets just talk about my average day.

Attached are photos of my breakfast, workplace, and things I see on my way to work. The underground rooms for rent are an interesting cultural artifact. Apparently, when the students here graduate, they migrate to Beijing and other cities to look for jobs. Since they have almost no income, they are forced to rent beds in these underground rooms for 200 RMB per month until they are employed. Pretty tough lives, and hard to imagine from where we come from.

Parking here is also solved in very creative ways. Like the rest of the transport system here, there are no rules present to the casual observer. At first sight, you may see a car parked on a curb, but upon closer inspection, what you will see is that these are designated parking areas. The buildings were built long before anyone thought that there would be many cars in Beijing and no car parks were built, now, creative solutions have been found. Not very good for the cars but definitely a brilliant solution, given the overall costs.

Anyway, I also included pictures of my workspace and my breakfast, just to give you a better picture of my life here. A picture of us buying fruit is also included, the girl on the left is my roommate and both of them are really good at picking fruits. The rest of us usually tag along to carry the fruits back.

Guess that's all I can write about today, tomorrow we set Waisan up for Beijing, lets see if anything interesting comes up

Underground rooms for rent

Company Fruit Raiders

Breakfast

Creative Parking Solutions
My Workspace

Piling Things Up

Night out at Lush and other things

So I finally went for dinner with the Mexicans at Lush yesterday. It turned out to be a pub which is a gathering place for expats and there were a heck lot of them. They were having Quiz night which really let me feel just how varied the backgrounds of the people were. There really wasn't that many questions, and these were Trivia questions, that no one knew answers to and you had people helping the host with French pronunciation and the Spanish name of a Mexican guerrilla group. It was the first time I was in such a community and it made me think of team dynamics. Ok I guess I have been a little too obsessed with my work but it really let me see just why companies would want staff from many different countries. Speaking English again was a relief, I have been pretty worried that the standard of my English would deteriorate during my stay here but things are looking better as I am starting to gain a toehold in the expat community and I am able to travel far enough to meet the other NTU people.

I had a pretty interesting conversation with Tang Nan yesterday about the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, which sadly, would be an improbable destination during my stay here. Turns out that the japs gave the Chinese inferior steel for its construction, which would have led to disasterous results and blamed Chinese scientists for using poor methods to test the steel and refused to give refunds. She also spoke about the fact that every Chinese empire that got strong over the last 5k years engaged in expansionary policies and with all that the world has been doing to China, payback time would be long and busy.

Somehow, such talk awakened nationalistic feelings within me that I never felt for Singapore. To be totally honest, my stay here has pretty much erased Singapore from my map and I feel more Chinese than Singaporean. It really makes me feel that Singapore is so insignificant, no one would miss it if it were gone. And it's true, think about what MNCs would do during the next few years, no point staying in Singapore anymore, HK and Shanghai are much much better choices. Time to make plans to move if you want any future at all. Staying in Singapore will no longer give you better jobs and you already are second class citizens in Singapore. China makes a greater effort to treat its people better and will definitely treat its people better as it gets richer. Even physical security cannot be guaranteed as well in Singapore. I now understand why Singapore feels insecure and drafts its people but lets put it this way, it's futile. The way Singapore talks about our neughbours make them seem like threats but China basically think of them as tiny annoying bugs waiting to be squashed.

There seems to be only one reasonable option. To run.

Mexican Ordeal

Now that I am awake and done stoning, let me tell you guys what happened last night that got me this tired. I went to get my temporary residential permit done in the police station yesterday, where I met two Mexican girls, one of whom had lost her ticket. Since they were right in front of me in the queue and trying to speak Spanish to the policeman, I asked if they spoke in English and managed to help them translate their case so that they could be understood.

What happened next started the little treasure hunt that brought us across the whole of Chaoyang( A district in Beijing I suspect is larger than sg). You see, police stations only care about their own precinct and we were in the wrong precinct. Luckily for the them, I had just found out about it the hard way when I went to the wrong precinct, less than a kilometer away, to get my permit done so I directed them to it and asked them to call me to let me explain it to the police officer there.

That is when I found out about another annoying law, that is that losing something and having it stolen are completely different. I was previously unaware of it and gave an account that made it sound like it was lost, resulting in a very pissed off policeman who made the girls wait until I went down to the station after work, where I had to explain things to them again. It took some time before he finally lost patience and directed us to yet another station, presumably the area HQ, to get their statements taken.

The people in this station were much much more cooperative, probably because they had enough of us hanging around after office hours. We managed to get their statements taken and got really really happy that it was about to be over. The ordeal started at 3 for them and it was nearly 7 by then, and they were really excited. Of course, things are never that simple. We had to go to yet another station, this time near SOHO, a 45 yuan taxi ride away.

We were lucky to have had dinner ( A very enjoyable one with my roommate, but that's another story for another day) before we left for SOHO as by the time we were done it was 10. 7 Hours and 4 police stations just to get a note to say that the tickets were stolen. Now you know why I'm tired?

Anyway, it wasn't all bad. It had been some time since I had seen nice towering office buildings and SOHO was beautiful. I took some pictures with the Mexicans and I'll try post them up once I get them. It was really nice to finally meet people from South America too, especially in a place like Beijing, speaking in English was a refreshing change as well.

Anyway, sorry for the rather rambling post, its what happens when you spend too much time just hanging around.

Yilun in Beijing (8th July 2007)

House Drawn Carriage

Kickass building

Road Junction

Apartment Lobby

Bangkok Airport

Company Fruit Supplier

Cool sign

Anyway, as you guys can see, I got the bluetooth thingy today. You can now see the kind of condition I have been living in for the past week. I also went to get a book today. Prices here are about the same as those in singapore and the selection is puny. Nevertheless, I got a book that I think covers the bases of buying stocks pretty well that will allow a more systematic approach to such activities.

A highlight today was getting to meet Tang Nan's ( My flatmate) friends from this scholarship program she's in. Basically, I got to meet Phd Candidates from Tsinghua and a bunch of eople doing their postgrad studies. It was really nice to meet these people and I was really lucky to do so as there is little chance other than this to meet people like them as our worlds are totally different.

Anyway, a week here has been enough for me to understand the importance of cutting pollution. Beijing would be a great place if not for the pollution. The air is so dirty it feels bad just tobe here. Never before have I felt the effects of pollution in such a great scale. If we continue to neglect our environment, we would really have very little to live for. Only today did I feel the full impact of what Jeffery Sachs said during the BBC Reith lecture, if we don't take care of the environment, we have very little to live for. The pollution has made this otherwise very nice city inhabitable. We must do all we can to clean this up and keep other parts of the world clean. The rains swept the dirt in the air away when I came back, I never appreciated breathing fresh air more in my life.

Yilun in Beijing (7th July 2007)

Busy day today. Went to get my ATM card done and went to quanjude to get ripped off having beijing duck. Most eventful thing has to have been getting around all by myself all the way to tiananmen square today. Honestly, the place looks pretty grand from the outside although I had no time to take a look in it or the forbidden city. Hopefully, I'll be able to go in there soon.

Anyway, people in Siemens are at least as warm as those in EY. I took the company bus to hepingmen for the duck and was, as expected, pretty lost. I had little choice but to have to ask my colleagues on the bus, none of whom i had met before. Of the three people I asked, two gave me more detailed instructions than what I asked for or dared expect and one even gave me her namecard. It feels good to know that there are such helpful people when you are travelling alone in places you have never even seen before.

Quanjude sucked. Their Peking ducks were force fed and oilier than Exxon Mobil. turns out their core competence was force feeding instead of duck, they served all 12 dishes in an hour and expected us to pay 4700 rmb for thirteen people. SO not going there again.

Going there did let me travel half of Beijing alone on public transport. My familiarity of the place is growing by the day. Taking the train really lets you cut through Beijing really quickly. Travelling here certainly doesn't make you feel like the place is 20 times the size of Singapore. Makes me wonder why Singapore has been unable to control its traffic situation when a city with as many cars as Beijing can.

Talking about Singapore, I think that Singaporeans are way too arrogant and controlled by the pap. They are NOT doing a good job. Taking the train today, I saw a woman who collected plastic bottles. Guess what, she could afford to take the train home. Not possible in Singapore. In fact, there are much fewer people collecting cans and bottles here than in Singapore. At least the Communist Party ensures that its citizens do not starve. It also manages to keep prices low for the people. And did I mention that even at 0.40 rmb I don't have to wait more than 10 minutes for a bus? I am usually lucky if I wait only 10 minutes for a bus in Singapore.

The only bad thing is the pollution. Its impossible to live a healthy life here. Haven't even been able to find a gym either. Definitely not a place I would want to settle down in but still a heck of a place to be. Just wish Sandy was here.

Sent Yi Lun off to Beijing

Sent Yi Lun off to Beijing. Going there for Global Immersion Programme (GIP). There goes our MENSA member, now our average IQ as a group has dropped tremendously.. hee..


The earliest couple to reach Changi


The other couple...


The 3rd couple..


The 4th :)


Eat! Go Beijing cannot eat liao!


Oi! why steal my food! nvm la.. your last chance maybe.. to eat carrot cake.. :)


The sexy Lydia hee hee


Group Photo!!


Wanna see the whole album? It's here