Value of 2RMB

2 RMB is :

the cost of 1 air-con bus ride,

pay for your bank admin charge,

the cost of 1 bottle of mineral water,

the cost of 500g of vegetables,

the cost of 1 meat bun,

the cost of 1 bowl of dumpling,

the cost of 2 apples,

the cost of 1 stick of bbq lamb,

the cost of 1 ice-cream,

the cost of 1 nail cutter,

the cost of 1 nail polish,

the cost of 1 yellow light bulb,

the cost of 2 packet of tissue,

the cost of toilet entry,

the cost of 4 sticks of roses,

the cost of 1 roadside haircut,

the cost of 1 hair band,

anybody got more to add ?? let me know....

1 year Anniversary coming up...

WOW...time flies.. before you know it, it is approaching the 1st anniversary of our wedding ....I was transferring photos from yahoo photos when i came across our ROM photos. Looking at the photos it just feels like yesterday...The sequence of events just ran through my brains and the feelings are still warm and sweet. I am glad we are together and a check with reality.. Sep is coming, probably a gentle reminder from up there..haha... i had almost forgot about it till yahoo photo is shutting down and the need to transfer the photo to a another site.

Next few days in DXB can make use of the time in the room to think how to celebrate ;)

In the meanwhile, I had created the link to the photos on the left panel if you wanna view what happen a year earlier.

Happy Viewing ;)

East meets West

When we were in Hangzhou, along one of their walking streets, we came across this building that looks particularly interesting. Along the walking street the facade is of a western design while the adjoining building along the main road is an old chinese design. I wonder if the rooms on the western side is for real...

My first love.... planes..

Due to recent flight disruptions and delays... some of the flights had from night become day flights.

Can you identify the aircraft type ?





Can you see the aircraft ??






Asiana B747-400 in ICN ...






This had given me the opportunity to take pictures of the aircraft in the busy airspace that we used. We always used to see their lights and hear their R/Ts, now you can not only see their aircraft clearly ... and also our own shadows....

Many other photos are posted in my photobucket website. Click the links on the left to access the categories...

东湖 East Lake

Guess most of us would had been to 西湖 west lake...East Lake is located at 绍兴 , if you read chinese, more info can be found here : http://www.sxdh.com/

In brief, it is located near the city of shaoxing. Present day Shaoxing sits on the site of the ancient capital city of Kingdom of Yue from Spring and Autumn Period.










Many famous characters from the chinese history had set foot upon this place. You can choose to take a boat ride from to and fro throughout the lake or you can opt to drop off at the far end and walk back.

Basically the boat ride brings you close to the cliffs and have a closer look. some cliffs looks like a bell while another looks like a trumpet. Did not show those photos here as the photos could not bring out the effects.

Do u know why the original 雷峰塔 collapsed ?

In Hangzhou there is this famous tourist place call 雷峰塔 , Thunder peak pagoda (translated literally) . Behind this place there is this famous folk lore which i think most of us would had heard or seen the movie. The story is 白蛇传。 In the story, lady white snake 白娘娘 was once trapped in the thunder peak pagoda.

Silk production is a major industry in Hangzhou and Suzhou, so a lot of farmers in the region grow mulberry trees and harvest silkworm for their silk. Stories goes that one of the farmer tired of the snakes eating up their precious silkworm, went to the temple, took a piece of stone from the wall and placed it in his plantation. The next year he had a bountiful harvest while others are suffering from the snakes. Other stories include bricks from the tower could repel illness or prevent miscarriage, many people stole bricks from the tower to grind into powder.

The story gets passed around and farmers started to grab stones/bricks/tiles from the pagoda. The pagoda finally collapse in the 1924 sep 25...

In October 1999, the city of Hangzhou decided to rebuild the pagoda anew to enhance the scenery of the lake. On 25th October 2002, the rebuilt pagoda opened, built above the ruins of the old one and with documents and exhibits on show for visitors.

Chasity Lock

Well... heard of chastity belt.. now there is this chastity lock. Heard of it seen it ?? well ... thats the look of it !!




It was on display in the Lock Museum at Lock Island in Thousand Island Lake. Well... don't ask me how that lock work cause i really cannot figure that out. If u do, let me know ;)

Hor say liao...

Wa say ... after much trouble finally we are home happily ;) What happened was the doctor said she was fine to discharge but there was one more bottle of drip, so have to finish before allowed to come back. tried to refund/cancel but cannot, so lan lan must stay there for another 12 hours to wait for the drip to finish ...

My friends organised dinner at indian restaurant.. supposed to join them but alas.. got to spend the time watching the drip drip....

Guess other than the experience from most of the nurses and doctors, the stay though quite chaotic it was quite pleasant, making friends with other roommates and hearing their experience. Intially when she was warded, they had no room and she was placed on a bed along the corrider , it was only the next day i heard before transferring to a ward. guess the place was designed for 6 beds, but 2 more were squeezed in the middle of the room, so it was a little cramp. We managed to get a window bed but not much view except seeing sombody's undies airing on the balcony....haha...so much for view...

On our right we had one couple who just gave birth to a boy and a gal (龙风胎）, though borned early both are healthy and now under intensive care as they are very under weight. The rest in the room are mom to be, approaching their due and waiting for the baby to be ready to come to the real world.

Hopefully all goes on well from here and the next time we stay in the hospital is to welcome our new member to the real world...

Jiak sala simi ???

Juan juan in hospital for the past 2 days while i was away for work. She had diarrhea and when she went to hospital for treatment, they admitted her as they suspect the diarrhea might had caused some involuntary contractions. She is on drip the past 2 days. I went to see her after i came back, she was still on drip but feeling ok... just that sometimes the stomach very stiff. Any mothers there can offer some advice?

Went for a scan and baby supposed to be ok. She wanted to be discharge tomorrow, but doctor say see how.... so tomorrow morning i will be heading down again. Hopefully she can be certified safe to come home. God bless..

Update Address

Wa say ..thats another thing you need to do when you finally settle down. You are supposed to update the information with the police station. And to do that you need to get a tempry resident permit from the condo you staying then you need to produce the permit together with passport, lease, and photocopy of owners' id at a designated police station or risk a fine...

si bay lay che.... i will try to get it done when i go back this time....

千岛湖 (Thousand Islands Lake)

千岛湖 is a gigantic man make lake created when they buid the hydro power station 新安江水电站 in 1959. The river was damed up and the lake has an area of 574sqkm.. almost the size of singapore. As the water level rises, the peaks of the hills became many of the islands on the lake, thus its name 千岛湖 (Thousand Islands Lake). Since then, it had been developed as a tourist area and its natural habitat had been destinated as a natural reserve.

3 main produce from the area. 1. mineral water, as this is a major brand there.. there are actually fakes selling in the city and elsewhere. The packaging looks exactly the same but the taste is totally different. So beware....



2. Pearls. Fresh water oyster farming is very active in this region. This is how an oyster farm looks like. Picture was taken from another part of china.


The oysters are string up and laid into the water and each location is indicated by a float. OK .. i know is not very clear but this was taken on train during sunset ...


Impurities are introduced to the oysters so that pearls can be harvest.

3. Fish farming is also a very active industry.




From Hangzhou, it takes about 2 hours by bus to reach there. A few islands are developed into tourist attractions. They are 锁岛 (Lock Island), 鸟岛 (Bird Island), and a few others which i forgot liao. haha.. Other than the scenery ... not much fun in the islands la...



This is on the lock island... u can purchase the metal locks and carve your wish and lock it there. i wish for........

Back in Action !!

Wow... times flies when you are enjoying... before you know it it is time to work again... of course getting called up to work earlier does not help ha ha. We had just spent 4 days in Hangzhou before we headed back to Shanghai. We had plans to visit Suzhou but well... that had to be postponed to a later date...

In Hangzhou we did a few sightseeing, joining the day tour. We visited 千岛湖 (Thousand Islands Lake), 绍兴 (Shaoxing) and of course the famous 西湖 (West Lake), 雷峰塔 (Thunder Peak Pagoda??).

From our experience....the advantage of joining a tour group is that the tour guide(if u meet a good one) can provide you with a lot of information about the place you gonna visit. Information like its history, major events that took place, the developments of the place, major produce, myths and facts and etc.

We had actually enjoyed the commentary along the way . The disadvantage will be... kena taken to souvenirs shops and force to spend some time there and also the limited time given at the place of interest.

So some places we visited on our own while others we hop on the tour. Slowly i will put some information which i still remembered up as and when times permits ;)

Don't miss me.....

Thanks for all the feedback guys. It had been really helpful. So the information had been rearranged to provide ease of reference and the videos had been shifted to the bottom of the page, so that they are sized according to the original coding. I had resize the clips to fit to the side coloumn. Somehow it worked in firefox but not with IE. But i think now all works fine. So if u see something let me know.

Next 3 weeks i will be in China and that means I will not be able to update my blog for a while. Is there any other way to update it ? I think i should be able to access and publish the comments thru e-mail, i not very. I dunno what to do yet in the long off coming... will keep you posted once I am back to AMS.

Lucky thing is photos can be updated from PVG ... yeah yeah ...