Working life really sucks. Now, I understand why working adults always say studying is the better as compared to working. Do cherish your studying life, people!
Okay, anyway back to Harbin...
Let the pictures do the talking. And along the way, I will be adding some captions...
DAY 1: 2/3/09
TianJin Airport.
We took Xiamen Airlines MF856 there. There was this transit at Xiamen. It takes around 4 hours to reach Xiamen from Singapore and another 3 hours to reach TianJin.
As our train is only at 11pm, we went to do some shopping in the nearby shopping street. Along the way, we saw this giant clock and decided to take a picture of it.
The streets of TianJin shot 1..
The streets of Tianjin shot 2..
The streets of Tianjin shot 3..
The streets of Tianjin shot 4..
Us at the shopping street.
Me...
Some metal sculptures..
It took us almost 30 mins to walk there.. -_-'' was rather tiring.. but to the locals, they think it's normal. We, Singaporeans, are just too pampered. don't you think so?
after shopping, we went back to Tianjin train station. Oh ya. of course we didn't brought our luggage along with us when we went shopping. we left it at the station, where you pay to get people to look after your luggage for you.
This is the train station of TianJin. We took a 14 to 15 hours ride from TianJin to Harbin. Along the way, the train stops at many different stations. Boarding the train here was a tough experience. We had to get on board the train within 8 mins TOGETHER WITH ALL OUR LUGGAGES. We walked, we ran, we pushed and luckily all of us got onto the train in time. If not we will have to bid farewell to some of our mates.
We slept on the train!!! that was my very first time taking a railway train and spending my night on it...
DAY 2: 3/3/09
That's how the train looks like... 6 beds within a bunk. and when you sleep, you will hear and feel the wheels moving. Guess it was moving at 100 over km/h.
The artistic picture of me looking out of the window. =)
This is the train we took. A typical railway train.
So when we reached Harbin station, it was almost 1500hrs.
Next, everyone gathers outside of the train, waiting for instructions or rather directions on where to proceed next.
Little did we know that we had to carry our luggages up and down 2 flight of stairs that was as long as the one shown in the picture. imagine carrying luggages that weighs 20kg or more???!!
However, all of us somehow managed to overcome those obstacles (2 long flight of stairs) and went to the hostel. The hostel which we will be living in for the next 7 weeks...
Harbin Normal University Hostel.
which happens to be a korean language school too?? and now, i think all of you would have guessed it correctly on Where do the majority of the people staying in this hostel come from??
Anyway, to continue...
The 'stairs' story has not ended and in fact, it has just started. As you know, we will be living on the 5th storey, and it is of course nothing when there is a lift in the building. But the problem is, most buildings in China do not have lift and that applies to the hostel that we are staying too...
so.....
The 'stairs' story continued and it was followed by another 8 flight of stairs which was this high. 2 flights of stairs in between each storey...
It was rather a good workout for most of us, Singaporeans, who are already very USED to taking the lift even if you stayed in the 2nd storey... By the time all of us reached the 5th storey WITH OUR LUGGAGES, all of us were almost half-dead.
We begin checking the furniture our room. and i stayed in room 520 with qiuling aka the queen. Everything was alright except that the floor was rather dusty and some cleaning and beautifying is needed to make the room a, what i called as, comfortable room.
Next, we went to the VIP (Very Important Person / 贵宾楼) for dinner.
Over there, we met lots of unknown people. =x People whom might be our supervisors and people who will be our caretakers for the next few weeks.
We did some form of Singapore-styled YUM SENG, where you got to raise your cup up and shout YUM SENG as loud as you can..
And of course, we didn't forget to take pictures with 2 of our caretakers. Try spoting them if you can.
And that marks the end of our day 2 in Harbin.
DAY 3: 4/3/09
We woke up early in the morning but didn't go to work. We went to buy some daily necessities from the nearby supermarket, 乐买.
This is how their supermarket looks like. It's almost the same as the NTUC in Singapore except all the labels and signs are in Chinese. China = Chinese words. That makes sense right??
Fresh meat section..
And now, let us invite our shopping auntie aka Wan Ni to show us her shopping pose...
Haha.. Too bad, there is only 2 shots with her in it. =x
This is what Qiu Ling and I bought... Heehee.
After buying the necessities, we went to our respective companies for a brief introduction. Mr Ji was with us but he was not in the picture.
Who is taking the picture??? haha. Mr Ji was photoshop-ed in. =)
Courtesy of our MR BOON aka bonie.
This was the company i was attached to.
The principal gave us some introduction about the company. we were later given a briefing by our supervisor on what is expected to be done during the attachment period and some of the languages that we will be using.
We will be taught a new programming structure, Struts.
Then, we were bought to a exhibition center (红博) near our office. that was just for sight-seeing purpose. Along the way, we saw this ice sculpture. This is the first time I see an ice sculpture that is so tall, with my own eyes.
Ice sculpture..
Some buildings near the exhibition center..
At night, we went ate street-side stalls (direct translation from 路边摊. haha.)
This is our favourite BBQ meat and 烧饼 stall
This is our favourite deep fried mushroom, smelly tou fu stall
Us..
And as you can see, the white white dots on the pictures are snow. It was snowing when we were eating.
End of Day 3...
Some ground rules in the hostel
1) There will only be hot water from:
7am to 8am
7pm to 10pm
2) The main door will be locked from:
11pm to 6am on weekdays
12am to 6am on weekends
3) There are many other rules but they don't affect us much except for the 2 listed above.
DAY 4: 5/3/09
Woke up early in the morning at 5.30am to eat some breakfast at some canteen in the campus. But to our surprise, (see the picture below for yourself)...
We were all shocked to see so many people at the entrance of the canteen, waiting to get into it. We decided to retreat and go to the other place for breakfast. The place where we had our breakfast on day 3.
This is what we had for breakfast the day before and on day 4.
Then we went to work on a chartered mini bus for work. This bus will fetch us from the hostel at 7.30am, where we will always turn up late and board the bus at 7.45am. =D
WORK STARTS AT 8AM (BUT WE USUALLY TURNS UP SOMETIME BETWEEN 815AM TO 830AM)
WORK ENDS AT 5PM OFFICIALLY (BUT WE WERE ALLOWED TO LEAVE AT 4.45PM AS THE BUS UNCLE WILL BE WAITING FOR US AT THAT TIME)
At night, we went for bbq dinner again, but this time, it was in a restaurant. Some pumpkin with sweet syrup on it.
Look at Timothy's face!! It's as if his **** got cut away and he is eating it now. haha.
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I decided to skip the normal working routine because it is the same.
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DAY 6: 7/3/09
The skiing day...
Before skiing, we ate our lunch at the skiing place.
And this is one of the dish.
Guess what is it?? It's silk worm cocoon.
And I ate it. It was rather salty and has a weird taste. however, locals say it has lots of proteins. =P
After that we went out for some skiing activities... It wasn't my first time skiing. I guess it was the 3rd time. Therefore, I did not fall down as much as the others do.
After skiing, we playing snow sliding with the rubber cushion.
See what happened to Yong Ming? After he volunteered himself to roll down the snow.
Then, we had some snow ball fight... hehe.
2 on 1. Guess who won??
Snow ball fight ended and we raced to get onto the top of a mountain.
Everyone managed to get up of the mountain.
Getting down of the mountain.
Two person almost died in the process of getting down the mountain.
Poor and weak guy 1: Xuan Jun aka chicken
Poor and weak guy 2: Hong Boon aka bonie
I fell in the process of getting down but my case is not as serious as the 2 cases above. haha. =x
And that marks the end of our skiing day...
Boots covered with snow. =)
DAY 7: 8/3/09
Early in the afternoon, we went to this shopping mall named 远大. Direct translation to English would be FAR AND BIG. It's a place for shoppers that are rich and like branded stuff. But to all the poor shoppers like us, it is definitely a NO, NO place to buy ANY THING. Simply an overpriced place for us.
远大购物中心 See how big the advertisements are??
Bonie trying to look cool, but being small build, he can't. =(
We ate in their food court and this was our lunch. 3 share 1. Their portion was much bigger than ours and we couldn't finish it.
Roti-prata!!!! It's made by an INDIAN. He was the 1st INDIAN GUY I saw in Harbin.
A scarry building behind.
See the clothings we are wearing, but crazy people like us still prefer to eat ice cream. =)
Angels.
On the taxi.
On the way back to the hostel, we look like poor prisoners... Sobzzz. In China, most taxi have this kind of metal railings in the car to protect the taxi driver.
Made a pair of brand new spectacles... Don't I look nerdy with it?? I made one because it was rather cheap making a pair there. Not really cheap but at least cheaper than making one in Singapore.
After shopping, we met up with our caretakers at around 4.30pm and they took us to Echo Point (回音电）for some karaoke session. It was sort of like Singapore's kbox but it's internal design was much much beautiful than the one in Singapore. And most of all, the PRICE is also of course MUCH CHEAPER. They calculate by the number of rooms and the number of hours, unlike SG whereby the number of heads are calculated.
People busy choosing songs.
Song picker monitor..
Li Li and me at the karaoke room.. Waiting for songs to be played.
Mr Hong Boon, aka the out of tune bone.
Don't worry, there are many more out-of-tune kids in the room. -_-''' Try singing together with them and I can only guarantee one thing. YOU WILL DEFINITELY GO OUT OF TUNE WITH THEM. haha...
Mr Yong Ming, aka the out of tune kid No 2.
Tim, the act cool guy.
See that gay tim, trying to kiss the same sex.
Li li, wan ni and 婷婷妹妹 aka our caretaker
Li Li with 婷婷妹妹
A good karaoke session
We went back to the hostel at 9pm, for fear of not having hot water for our bath. =( But luckily, there is still hot water for a little while...
DAY 8: 9/3/09, Monday
Woke up in the morning for work and see thick layers of snow on the floor. It had snowed the day before.
Oh ya, did I forget to mention anything about our lunch during our 2nd week of work?? Haha. Actually, all of us decided to go on for some sort of luxury dining at every restaurant down the street. This is something which you would definitely not do in Singapore, simply because it's too costly. But because all of us were in China, everything is cheaper. So, we begin our journey to taste and recommend good food. ;) Just for your information, the main road nearby our company has lots of restaurants.
So for the 1st day of luxury dining, we went to this restaurant.
Oh and I forgotten to say something about their utensils in China. They will have all their utensils wrapped up in a plastic. All of them have been sterilised and are safe for usage. You will have to use your chopsticks to poke the plastic and make lots of 'pop, pop' sound to open it. However, (sometimes) if you happen to examine them properly, you might be lucky enough to see some stains and smell some weird smell.
Both Tims, eating with joy. (Although one doesn't seem to look like he is enjoying =x)
Toufu
Yang Chou Fried Rice
Xiao Long Bao. Before I have manage to capture an image of it, it was almost empty already....
Pork
I don't know what dish is that. =)
Delicious steam egg. It's the best dish we have in this restaurant.
When we went back to our office, all of us were sleepy, due to the lunch that filled all our stomachs full. =)
DAY 9: 10/3/09, Tuesday
We went to another restaurant again. And this time, it was 名人小吃.
Notice all our hair.. What a bad hair day...
Roasted Pigeon
I don't know what is that.
And of course we end our meal with a desert. Looks nice right?? But in fact the desert taste weird. I can still remember the taste of it. It's got this salty and 'I don't know how to describe' taste.
Did I mentioned that you can choose to have the bill (as in the receipt for the meal) or get a discount? If you choose to have the discount (that's what typical singaporeans will do, choose the best offers), they wouldn't give you the receipt. Don't you find it weird? I find it weird at first too. But after clarifying my doubts with the caretaker, I understood why were restaurants in China doing this.
Reason being, if they did not issue any receipt to the customers, they can 'escape' from their government's tax, which is of course illegal(I guess). But of course being typical singaporeans, discounts is just what we want. =)
Back to the office after a full meal.
DAY 10: 11/3/09, Wednesday
Hmmm.. Make a guess where this place is. Got the European feel? For once, I thought I was in Germany. (the country I want to visit some day) But in actual fact, I m still in China. =(
Anyway, we went to a German restaurant down the main street. I have forgotten the name for the restaurant. =x It cost us 35RMB for the buffet lunch. And of course we end up eating loads of things. We had a very very full lunch AGAIN.
35RMB is definitely heartbreaking for some. A 3 to 4 dish meal in China can cost as cheap as 7RMB. haha. Depressed...
The long table of feast..
All bbq-ed. There's some chicken heart and also cow's tongue.
Man in Action, sliding off meat from his sticks. (What's that metal sticks for bbq called?)
Delicious?? Yummy..
Daydreaming... What would it be if I m in Europe now....
If i didn't remember wrongly, it was snowing very very heavily that afternoon. see the white spots in the picture. It was the heaviest snow since the day we reach Harbin. We even recorded a video that afternoon on our way back to the office. It took us almost 10 minutes to get back to the office. Video is for personal viewing. haha. So I wouldn't be posting it up here.
Bought some pacifier sweet. haha. =B
Nothing much happened for the next few days because there are no pictures taken. =) Let's skip all the way to the Tiger Park...
DAY 13: 14/3/09, Saturday
This is where we went. We had to cross the Songhua River to get to the other side of Harbin.
The visitor center for the Siberia Tiger Park
Lili, trying to style her hair properly for her very last picture. She is getting ready to get thrown to the tigers. Of course she will be the prey and they will be the predator. Not the other way round. Sad for her....
Let's mourn the 'death' of our beloved Li Li. Who ask her to offend our MA LAO DA, the triad leader. I will show you her picture later. =)
Students from DBIT who went to Harbin. =)
Let's be human statues for once.
HELP!!!
Tigers love this size. haha. =P
Tigers hate this size. too boney. the tiger is trying its very best to spit the bone out. haha. =D
This is one weird person. Trying to bite the sharp teeth of the Tigers.. ?_?
Is it international tiger day?? anyway look at the tiger, he can't be bothered at all.
Weeee....
Don't you think Li Li look exactly like the Kungfu Panda??
The sun... quite a nice shot. courtesy of Li Li. haha.
And last but not least, the main character of the park. The tiger. How can the trip be complete without them???
All tigers were chasing after this vehicle. Guess what? Real life chickens will be flying out of the vehicle acting as their prey.
Ferocious animals eating poor little chicken.
And this is the kind of bus that we took for sightseeing in the tiger park.
There are also lions.
There! This is our MA LAO DA. In the end, she didn't manage to get Li Li down. So Li Li is still ALIVE.... The last picture that is taken earlier can be kept for future use. who knows when she might need it?
Guess what everyone is crowding around??
This signboard?? haha. you can feed livestocks to the tigers at the following rates.
After visiting the tiger park, we went to Zhongyang Dajie, the shopping street.
The night of Central Street. How is this picture?? Taken by me.
This too. Taken by me.
And we went to this Russian restaurant, Tatoc. It's in the basement of zhongyang dajie. It's recommended in the Harbin guidebook. =)
The interior design of this restaurant was great. It's as if we were in a different world.
That's me playing the 100 year old piano.
Studying the menu in order to get great food. =)
US...
And just nice, we met these EEE and DBIT guys in the same restaurant too.
See the pictures below and you will know why the interior design is great!!
Nice drink
That's my dinner. It was delicious and also the most expensive one.
My cocktail.
P.S. Harbin beer is nice. Do try it if you have the chance. haha. One big bottle of beer cost 3 RMB. Less than a dollar!! It's very cheap. Too bad I can't find it in Singapore. =(
And I guess I drank more alcoholic drinks in Harbin than in Singapore. haha. =x shhh. don't tell my parents. haha.
Chicken
Soup
Some artistic poses.
After dinner, we made our way back to the hostel. whilst waiting for the cab, we took lots of pictures. The night was cold...
And the most important picture. It's with the street signs. This makes you remember this place forever...
Back to the hostel and it was.....
LAUNDRY TIME!!!
See those pile of clothes on the washing machines?? Poor us, we have to wash for them. =( But before placing some washing powder and softner into the machines, we didn't forget to spit some of our saliva into it. ;) I bet those guys didn't know about it.
DAY 14: 15/3/09, Sunday
Late morning, we went to the Long Ta (Dragon Tower). Tickets were at 120 RMB, if I didn't remember wrongly. I just know that we were given special discounts after 10 or 15 of us went in. Not all of us went in, due to the exorbitant price.
That is the 'magnificant' dragon tower from outside. You will get what I mean later.
There's this model of the tower inside the dragon tower
We were greeeted by this Ox (year of the Ox) once we got into the tower.
and we pasted some gold stickers onto it, which is said to give us luck. I don't believe in that. but no harm pasting huh?!
Lili, ql and me, with the symbolic dragon.
Oh my god... The dragon tower model almost TOPPLED over after his place his chicken wings onto it. Piew... Lucky, we were in time to save it... ;)
Tourist with the right of mind will take picture like this. Unlike the one above...
And that will be the place we are heading to. Up, up, up and into the skies.
Hmmm.. who is that singer?? she looks familar and definitely has a horrendous voice.
Oh... Don't steal my drum stick...
3, 2, 1, Action!
And we went to this Kong Zi Studying Academy museum, which is also inside the tower. By the way, there were many other exhibitions in it.
Wow. and she almost got kicked out of the school. ;)
Using a brush to write some chinese characters. Now, how nice can that be??
Preying hard so that we can get good grades in school.
All of us graduated...
Luckily, she worked hard enough and had the chance to walk on the scholar's bridge too.
Then, we went onboard a simulator ride. Was waiting to get some pleasant surprise...
But it ends up the other way round. We had a terrible experience on the ride. The show was in English but it totally doesn't have any storyline we could follow. There were no peaks too. Just some shaking here and there and END OF STORY.. -_-''' Never take any of such rides in China again. zzzz.
Next, off we go to the DINOSAUR's museum. Those were my ancestors decades ago...
Boney tried to resist the dinosaur from getting away from the camera view. But of course he failed, simply because he is boney. haha.
Didn't know my ancestors were much much bigger in size than me.
Up till this point. Do you think we were scammed?? Money spent on some stupid exhibitions which totally has no link to the dragon tower??? Anyway that's not the end of the story. There are still more to come...
Following up, we went to the 'underwater world'. I thought it would be as good as the one in Singapore or even the one in Thailand. But to our disappointment, it wasn't!! There were only fake water creatures in that 'world'.
Don't you think his coat blend in nicely with the wallcolour?? haha. he is holding onto a cup of ice cream which is as hard as a rock... did he break his teeth????
To be continued...
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