CHIP Day 1: 11th May 2010

Mood: Lethargic l Music: Immediate Music - Catch the falling sky

It's been awhile since I've blogged, ever since Professional Communication stopped I've stopped blogging to focus my attention towards my final semester. Now that the semester ended, I went to China for my graduation trip.

China Immersion Program 2010, initially, I was not anxious or excited about going to china, just feeling very mellow about it. Perhaps China was not my top choice of traveling destination. But when the day finally arrived to depart Singapore, I felt rather anxious as the plane started to take off.

It's been awhile since I last took an airplane..the last time I took a flight was for my poly graduation trip to Macau and I was tense like a taut bow. This airplane to Shanghai? Was worse, I could feel very tremble and rumble of the engines, the change in altitude and direction, etc. What could be worse than a constant tremor in the plane? There were too much tremor for me to handle, at least there was only 1 tremor warning from the Macau flight. The Shanghai flight was constantly on tremor that I felt like fainting so I grasped tightly onto Youyou's hand for support.

One super embarrassing in the flight was when I started talking to the passenger next to me thinking that he's one of our tour members. I didn't realized until youyou told me that he wasn't one of us. Damn..(=///=)

The services of the China Eastern Airline wasn't good, their attitudes towards passengers were rather rude as compared to Singapore Airline. For a 5 hours flight, their services were bearable.

When we finally arrived at Pu Dong Airport, our tour guide led us to 苏州. The temperature in Shanghai was cooling, a nice get away from a hot country like Singapore. We arrived 苏州定园宾馆 in the evening just shy of dinner time. Once we settled down into our beautiful, antique-ambient hotel we went to fill our stomach. The food was average, more of vegetables than meats. The fish was fresh even though the bones were terrifying lots.

After dinner, we headed out to the streets for a late stroll and shopping. Unfortunately, my buddy Youyou (aka 妩媚娘 in the latter days of the trip) couldn't go with us. The whole 33 of us went out together and somehow got separated from each other. I moved in a smaller group with Magdaline, Jovin, Xinjie and Simin through the night market. Took some pictures and bought a pair of len-less spectacle for 7yuan!! After that we went back to the hotel and almost got hit by a motorcycle!!! The people there are so ruthless, aren't afraid of knocking people or cars at all!!! It's really dangerous crossing the road in China if you don't have a Chinese friend leading you across.

After a bad scare from the road, we wandered our way back to the hotel and Youyou's cousins gave me a surprise. Well, not really a surprise..except that there were too many unknown people in my room and was calmed by a delicious cheese cake from 85 Degree~!

After eating cheese cake, we went to rest for the night until in the middle of night, a bunch of noisy Chinese people gathered in the corridors waking everyone up.

And, CHIP officially began.