Recently, went on youtube to watch on Singapore Idol and came across a contestant who sang a song "The Voice Within" by Christina Aguilera...was attracted to the song so went to search for the song and it took not much effort for me to find it=D

About this song, it is a very old song(released in year 2002 in Christina's album - Stripped)but i think is a very meaningful song. It's asking us not to give up easily and to face strongly to whatever obstacles we may faced in life.I like how the lyrics are written in this song..especially these 2 sentences, "When there's no one else, look inside yourself. Like your oldest friend just trust the voice within..." Yeah, look inside yourself - oldest friend - the voice within...In life, although there are your loved ones who will be there to support you and understand you, it is still yourself who know yourself the best and whom you can always trust=)

The lyrics to the song,

Christina Aguilera - The Voice Within

Young girl dont cry
Ill be right here when your world starts to fall
Young girl its alright
Your tears will dry, youll soon be free to fly

When youre safe inside your room you tend to dream
Of a place where nothings harder than it seems
No one ever wants or bothers to explain
Of the heartache life can bring and what it means

Chorus:
When theres no one else, look inside yourself
Like your oldest friend just trust the voice within
Then youll find the strength that will guide your way
Youll learn to begin to trust the voice within

Young girl dont hide
Youll never change if you just run away
Young girl just hold tight
Soon youre gonna see your brighter day

Now in a world where innocence is quickly claimed
Its so hard to stand your ground when youre so afraid
No one reaches out a hand for you to hold
When you're lost outside look inside to your soul

Chorus

Life is a journey
It can take you anywhere you choose to go
As long as youre learning
Youll find all youll ever need to know
(be strong)
Youll break it
(hold on)
Youll make it
Just dont forsake it because
No one can tell you what you cant do
No one can stop you, you know that Im talking to you

Chorus

Young girl dont cry Ill be right here when your world starts
to fall

Day 2
Back to blogging about my Day 2=D..

We were told that breakfast will be at 6.45am and that we will be setting off to our destination at 7.15am...so we set our alarm on the previous night to wake us at 6am....well, well, well...when I opened my eyes, I was shocked to see that the sky was completely bright as though it was 8am...I turned to my right-BS was still sleeping...I turned to my left-SY was still sleeping too...LOL!First thing that came to my mind was,"We overslept?" I quickly grabbed my phone and see the time...and the time stated on the phone..............................5.45am!WHAT?5.45am ONLY!? Well, my reaction was expected with a reason...i mean like having lived in Singapore from the day i was born, 5.45am to me in the morning is always so dark as though it's still at night that you need to swtich on the lights...To double confirm, I looked at my watch...Yes!It was only 5.45am!haha...ok....hmm...so the phenomenon of the morning in Shanghai has got me eh...luckily I didn't kick up a big fuss by waking up BS and SY...haha...well after the big 乌龙...i decided to get back to sleep some more and wait for the alarm bell to ring.....

When I really woke up, the sky was even more brighter...decided to take a picture of it while waiting for my turn to use the toilet...

This is about 6.15am in the morning...looks like 8plus in Singapore right?XD


Went down to the cafeteria for breakfast...the food was laid out like what we normally see in buffet...sounds grand eh...but one glimpse at the food = :/....it is still edible but it is not appealing enough to let you "want to eat" that kind of feeling...but well BREAKFAST is the most important and what's more is we paid for our breakfast(included in the $800++...i think)..HAHA...so we just eat...we had porridge with side dishes like you tiao,kiam cai,some other stuffs that i think most elderly would prefer...lolss..we also took some meat buns..the bun was hard and the fillings inside was cold...maybe I wasn't used to eating such cold meat buns, it felt quite disgusting...then we had orange juice as our drink....first sip of the orange juice(before eating the food) was like *bleh*...it tasted so bland with some bitterness...but after eating the food and then drink the orange juice...the taste was like better though it still tasted weird...lol..After breakfast, we board the bus ready to set off to our first company visit, DHL - Sinotrans.

The tour guide told us that the journey to the company need at least 1.5h..now I really understand why people always say China is so big. Getting from one place to another place can be up to hours even if it is in just a city alone...haha...As the driver drove past the roads, I realised that in China riding a bicycle is just so common...everywhere you go for sure you will see a bicycle.. What's more interesting is that roads in China are divided into 2 lanes....one of the lane is specially for motorists and cyclists while the other lane is for those normal vehicles...quite cool eh?XD...another thing that I realised was that on the roads, it is very common to hear the honing of the cars...like every few minutes you will hear people "beep" you like nobody business..it gets rather irritating though...haha...

As the driver drove...all of us seems restless maybe due to our late night sleep the previous night...and all of us went into a short lala land...

the greenish-like gate is the divider...on the right is for cyclists and motorists while the other lane is for normal vehicles


When we reached it was about 9+ in the morning...before entering into the company, we were given temperature check and then a DHL lanyard...then we were ushered into a small room for a presentation..the person who gave us the presentation was a singaporean..he gave us a brief introduction of himself and proceed to telling us about the operation of the company...it was like a mini lecture...perhaps the stuffs that he was talking about was not related to my course(it was more related to those in the supply chain management) or that I wasn't in the mood of listening,it got rather boring..lol..but my mood was liven up a bit when they took us to tour around their warehouse...We have to wear a rubbery so called "shoe" before entering the warehouse so as to protect our toes...

The rubbery-like shoe




Outside the office


The whole warehouse looked like a big carpark...The warehouse supervisor took us around from the raw materials department to the packaging department to the storage department and the exporting department...there were not much machines except for the vehicles to load the goods onto the 12 metres tall shelves...other than that everything are labour work really labour work! From what the supervisor told us, the workers really worked damn long hours...it felt so no life for them...and what's more they looked pretty young...in their early twenties...some even looked like students like our age...but we really got to admire their ability to endure that kind of working environment=).

After all the tour..it's time for lunch! The tour guide took us to a restaurant to eat(another 30min ride)....we were seated and the waitress started to serve us with all the dishes...there were many plates and their servings were really big...i would say it's even bigger than the servings served during somebody's wedding or rather it's like we are having a 满汉全席 (Royal Feast of Complete Manchu-Han Courses)...haha..there were the basic things like vegetables,fish,meat,soup...many many more...but the food was so-so...but i think among all dishes the steam tofu was the most favourite because the plate was the cleanest...honestly, the tofu was really delicious...the tofu is not the normal type of squarish tofu that we usually eat...it's over shaped and gives a QQ feeling when you bite...actually also cannot bite because it would just melt inside your mouth...lolXD...inside the restaurants, we were also shocked to see that people are allowed to smoke=.=!No one waitress went up to them to ask them to stop smoking...Worse, the table was not even very near us but the whole restaurant was reeking of their smoke...stupid smokers=S!!At that moment, how I wished it was in Singapore so that they would be FINED heavily!!LOL...After lunch we were given a 1/2h free time to shop around the nearby shops...the shop nearby doesn't seem to have much business..the street was quite empty...but perhaps it might be because it was a weekday, somemore it's just a Monday which explains it? Well, didn't really see what I want so went back to the restaurant empty handed..haha...on the way back we have to cross the road so we used the zebra crossing...in our context, zebra crossing means the cars have to stop and we the pedestrains have the priority to cross first....but here in Shanghai, there's NO such rules..while i was happily crossing the initially empty road a stupid car out of nowhere just dashed past me without giving any signals at all-.-...luckily Valerie grabbed hold of me and stopped me from crossing further...if not I really do not know what would have happen to me....From that onwards, I realised that the roads here are not trustable at all...the cars always have the priority over the pedestrains=________= even if the traffic says "Passengers GO" or if it's a zebra crossing...

Back at the restaurants, it's time for us to get ready to set off to the next company visit, Inforcomm..another 1h journey...haha

On the way, found a bridge's structure very interesting,it's structure in a way of N-S-E-W, but could only manage to take a pic showing only part of it..



The office that we were going to was situated at a S'pore owned building-Capital Land. Beside it, is a Raffles City Mall..sounds familiar?HAHA..well..at the office it was the same thing...presentations...so i shall not explain much and let the pics do the talking insteadXD



At the office


The building


Below the building




After the visit, it's our free time, we past by this interesting automobile public toilet while on the way to our shopping destination=D



So...it's time for SHOPPING again!haha..we went to 人民广场(People's Square) for our shopping...it was recommended by the director of Inforcomm..just a few mins walk from the Raffles Mall...the place gave me a feeling like Bugis street just that the place was air conditioned..lol...the things sold there are really meant for youngsters...Soon after we started our shopping spree, we indeed got some 收获..lol..we went into a boutique shop and there were some discounts on their clothes...managed to buy a clothing for just SGD6...it's cheap considering it was a new arrival piece and the material wise i think is not bad..Next we went to a place where the whole row sell accessories...talking about it just reminds me of the bad experience that we had...we were at this particular stall thinking of buying some accessories...the lady owner A came up to us and told us that she will give us discounts if we buy a lot....Believing what she told us...we happily started choosing the accessories...In total, we chose 10 pieces...the total cost she said she will give us is 267RMB=57SGD...seems cheap eh...but of course we didn't take the offer we bargain further till 260RMB...and the owner relented...SY paid for us first and after that we just left the stall for another stall....It was then that we realised that owner A didn't give the change back!!We went back to the stall and explain to the owner that she didn't give the change back to us...at first the owner act blur and her friends even ganged up with her and said they saw her giving the change back to us=.= but we can confirm she didn't!But after some time, i think she didn't want to argue further so she took out the change and gave SY back.Bad Experience 1!

At the other stall SY saw some similar necklace that she bought from the first stall and the price was much lower like 50% cheaper(if I didn't rmb wrongly) so based on her character she felt very 不服气 but since we paid the first stall already, there's no way to demand back the money so she decided to recoup back the loss by telling the owner B that if she was willing to charge her 10RMB for another necklace she liked, she would definitely buy from her...of course owner B didn't agree but she, like owner A said if she buy more, she will definitely give her a better rate...but because there aren't anything she liked so she asked again politely to the owner B whether she could let her have the necklace for 10RMB and this time the owner just flare at us...like literally shouting at us...she flared up even more when I misunderstand that she will give me a pair of earrings for free and walked away without paying...Well, I should have known better that nothing is free on earth....to appease her I just quickly paid her the $ and we just walked away....she was actually following us at the back scolding us..but thankfully she stopped after a while...Bad Experience 2!

While shopping at other shops, we decided to stop and check the accessories we bought...and we realised that owner A didn't gave us one more accessory.....we pondered whether to go back to the shop to demand back the accesory since what dramatic experience we have went through just now....and after much thoughts SY went back to talk to the owner A...as expected, the owner act blur again but it seems she also felt guilty over it so in the end she returned the accessory back to her...while waiting for SY near a boutique shop, BS also took out to check her accessories that she bought.....then a boutique lady came over to ask what are we looking at then BS asked her if the accessories are worth the price we have bought......after hearing the price, she laughed and said some of the accessories been overcharged!!!The lady was kind enough to tell us that accessories that are sold above 20RMB-30RMB are considered expensive and we should have just walked away if we cannot bargain lower than that...she advised us that we should not always based on converting it to SGD but rather based on the market rate in China if we want to get a really good deal!

Haiz...Needless to say, the conclusion that we have was we are cheated-.-....but well, to console ourselves, we treat it that we cannot buy till so cheap if it's in Singapore as the same accessories sold would have been much more expensive...lol...on the other hand...we just treat it that we have attended a valuable lesson..

After all these, we continued to shop around till the shops are closed and went back to the hotel....and that kind of ended my Day 2 in Shanghai....

some photos taken at the shopping centre








Back at the hotel

It's been a week since i returned from Shanghai and after some dilly-dally i finally got myself to upload those photos to my computer today!XD

Well,I would say the trip is an eye opener for me afterall this is my FIRST ever time to overseas, my FIRST ever time boarding an aeroplane!! Come to think of it, i can still remember how excited i was before boarding the plane..haha

I have heard people complaining that they will feel nauseous or giddiness when they are on an aeroplane but my first experience on the plane was quite a smooth one although I have to admit that I can feel like my heart dropping n a bit of giddiness when the flight was starting to take off from the ground. But after a while, these symptoms seem to disappear by itself. I was really hoping that I could be seated beside the window so that I could view what would be like when the plane flies in the air & indeed I get to sit there!!HAHA...LUCKY ME!! However, i was disappointed when it started pouring because the rain made the view look so dull n unattractive but but but a few moments later rays of light came shining through the windows...i guess the plane was not in singapore anymore perhaps somewhere in malaysia or indonesia which explains the change in the weather??haha..but anyway the view was so so much better...i looked through the window..there was nothing blocking not even a bird flying...just clear blue skies n fluffy clouds...one moment it looked as if we are in space looking at the outer surface of the earth just that the outer surface here is brighter than if we were in space, i think..ha!on the other moment it looked as if we are in north pole surrounded with those icebergs..haha..i think i was literally enjoying myself on the plane taking shots of those views.

In the plane


Rain Rain Go Away, Come again another day!I wanna take pics!lol


Top view of Singapore


Still dark clouds=(


Looks like being surrounded by icebergXD





Day 1
When we landed in Shanghai Pudong Airport, we check out from the airport and waited for our tour guide to come and fetch us to our hotel. The journey to the hotel was long, took about 1hour to reach. It's like from Redhill MRT to Changi Airport if is in Singapore.Haha.. On the bus, we pass by some many tall buildings like the Pearl Tower n some other building which i forgotten the names-.-..haha...the tour guide explained to us what some of these buildings are for as we passed by...we were also taught a basic Shanghai language- "Nong ho ma?" which means "你好吗？=How are you?"
By the time we reached the hotel, it was already 6+ in the evening, we carried our luggages into our respective rooms. As i was sharing the room wid BS and SY so by right there should be 3 beds but to our horror only 2 beds in the room-______-...but we couldn't care-less as we are in a hurry to assemble at the main lobby of the hotel..

Our tour guide took us to a famous street in Shanghai called Nanjing Road. We went to satisfy our hunger before we went for our shopping spree. We spotted a food shop which sells prawn dumplings. From the outlook of the shop, it seems nice and famous so we decided to give it a try. Well the price of the food i would say is cheap. For example the price of a plate of 9 prawn dumplings is equivalent to the price of a plate of 3 prawn dumplings in singapore. Other than prawn dumplings we also ordered 窝贴 and cold noodles. Perhaps I wasn't really used to the food there, everything i taste doesn't seem to appeal to me except for the prawn dumplings.Haha...then it's time for SHOPPING!It seems that Nanjing Road is famous for selling cheaper stuffs however after shopping there, it doesn't seem like the case. Shopping here is as good as shopping in Orchard Road. Things sold there aren't cheap, probably because almost everything sold there are branded goods.Tops alone could cost you over SGD$50 or even more than that. Perhaps the cheapest things you could find are only available in Watson..LOL..Price aside, the service is also not up to standard.Like what SY said, here in our homeland the service aren't consider very good but in Shanghai, the service standard it seems is much more lower.For example, when we enter into a particular shop, you can see one shop assistant clipping her nails while the other shop assistant is busy talking on the phone. Then they can both walk out of the shop leaving the customers alone in the shop-.-...

At about 9.40pm, we went back to the assemble place to go back to the hotel...

some photos taken in Nanjing Road...






Back at the hotel, we were informed that we be changing to another room which have 3 beds and that our luggage have been moved to the other room=D...but that wasn't the case-.-..our luggage were in fact still in the first room...we told the hotel people about it and guess what? They told us to move by our ownselves!WTH eh!Is that how they always treat their customers?!Humph!what's worse is they expect us to move our luggage in the dark=.=(electricity is not available)...so irresponsible!So we moved the luggage by our ownselves and after we settled everything, we took turns to shower..while waiting for my turn i switch on the tv to see if there is any intersting shows and as i was browsing through the channels i realised that China has like abt 7 or 8 times more channels than S'pore-64 channels in total!!I really wonder how they could manage those channels, coming up with different programs for different channels that would captivate the people's interest. I mean like in Singapore, it would have been difficult coming up with a variety of shows...most shows as we can see now are repeated shows..lol..

After bathing and stuffs it's our bedtime and that basically ended my Day 1 in Shanghai=)

Shall blog about Day 2 and 3 when i have the time againXD

Camwhoring in the hotelXD

After struggling for a few days in Singapore, Tong Wen finally could go back to Shanghai=D.

Decided to send her off in the airport so i woke up early in the morning, prepare myself n went to the airport. Initially, she told me tt she will contact me abt her flight details this morning so i waited for her call. Waited until 7.30am there was still no call from her so i called her a few times but her phone was off . It got quite worrisome especially after the "dramatic" experience tt she has went through...I smsed Sy n she tried to contact her s well but still could nt reach her...Bs oso said it might be due to b'cos her hp no batt..I predicted tt her departure hall will be at terminal 3 since my flight to Shanghai was at tt terminal the last time, so decided to try my luck thr...n yea thr was the China Eastern airline check pt thr but no sign of her! I decided to jus walk around to c if i can c any familiar face n...HA! i finally saw her wid the agent pushing the trolley into the hall n yea it was wat BS has said - her HP was flat so was uncontactable...hahaXD

Helped her wid her check in but realised tt her lugguage is overweight by abt 5kg...took out some things but it was still overweight=.=...lukily got one kind auntie offer to lobang some of her things to her employee hu is going to Shanghai s well..so sparing her to pay $150...haha... didn't manage to catch up more wid her n didn't mangage to take photos as everything was very rush...hmm...but nvm shall do tt when she comes back in another few mths times!

Come back soon Tong Wen!We will miss you!=))


I really don like the way u show ur concern for me...
i noe it meant well but i really feel tt is too over...
I m ardy a grown up nearing 20 n i noe wat i m doing
so pls don ever treat me like a kindergarthan kid for goodness sake!