Sunday, January 13, 2008
JC1 orientation
JUMPSTART! OG13!! 08S71!!! APOLLO!!!! HWACHONG!!!!!
loving you always
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Who wants to be a millionaire?"Arrrgh... I dont want!!!"
Tag replies[xyy] lol... our sch bball courts all outdoors mah...
[mincong] i cant blog but i can see my blog... -.-
[sijie] haha... everywhere we go, we can see "yiding" =D
[jonneo] yes! at least more fun than last yr's programmes in wenzhou & shanghai! haha =)
loving you always
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Merry Christmas!hohoho... i m blogging at my relative's hse. haha! MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! =)
loving you always
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
BSP Immersion Programme 200718 Nov to 14 Dec... 25 days, 600+ hours, 36000+ minutes! it seems so long but yet all happened so fast and now... it's over!
first day of immersion programme, we had a school tour. The school we are attached to is 北京师范大学第二附属中学, in short 北大二附中. honestly speaking, they are not very warm-hearted in welcoming us although they have a nice school compound (what's the use of having a nice school environment but dao-ing teachers and students?) tt makes our stay in beijing boring and unplesant... =(

From left: Mr Mario (person in charge of exchange programmes in 北大二附中); Mr Sim (Hwa Chong teacher) & Mr Cheng (vice-principal of 北大二附中)
*btw, we havent got a chance to meet their school principal in person throughout the stay in beijing... except his ASSISTANCE!

Indoor basketball court

Indoor swimming pool
Later of the day, we visited 北京师范大学, which is just opposite 北大二附中.

北京师范大学

school motto of 北京师范大学
At night, we went shopping at 新华百货! a pretty cool place to shop... =)

新华百货
The next day, we visited several places...

宋庆龄同志故居

三轮车: the kind of transport we took to travel from 宋庆龄同志故居 to 郭沫若故居

郭沫若故居

listening attentively to the tour guide =)

郭沫若 and me

琼岛

九龙壁

垂柳的用途: 观赏 -.-"

weiming and me

this explains where we were

白塔
After that, it's shopping time! hooray... haha! it's not the quality of products that is satisfactory, but i find the process of 杀价 enjoyable! lol... i can tell u that shopping in china is far more enjoyable than any where else... =) look at this!

ADIDSA?!
when u find this type of products, one thing should go into your mind: How do you spell China? haha... this is the secret qn that we remind one another to be careful of being scammed! nevertheless, shopping is fun! i still remember viividly how i "quarrel" the price of a jacket that has a price tag of RMB $640 at a wholesale market...
Me: how much is this jacket?
Shopkeeper: RMB $640.
Me: (walk away)
Shopkeeper: Wait... how much do you want?
Me: (without hestitation)$90.
Shopkeeper: (shocked) Brother! you must be joking!
Me: No, I am not joking!
Shopkeeper: (a bit pissed i think) How much do you want SERIOUSLY?
Me: $90.00
Shopkeeper: This is a 羽绒 jacket leh... see the tag here
(show me the stupid tag attached to the jacket)
Me: so what?! I can buy this at another stall for juz $70!
Shopkeeper: $300? acceptable?
Me: NO! $90. (ready to walk away)
Shopkeeper: Ok! $250. Lowest already! or else i will lose money...
Me: (it's time to scam her)i tell u... i only bring $100 today - $90 for my jacket and $10 for my dinner... but i am willing to pay u $100 to buy this jacket and not have my dinner! ok?
Shopkeeper: okok! SOLD!
HAHAHA... XD dunno if she noticed the stack of notes in my wallet when i took out a hundred dollar note to pay her! she must be REGRETTING! =P
after that we had our dinner at a food court and went back to school hostel...

our room! =)

still our room! =)
nothing special to post about until our trip to xi' an... so i shall juz share some random photos. haha =)

Beijing 2008 countdown

前门 (taken at around 5pm)

前门 (taken at around 8pm)

天安门

a crowded train station in beijing

going to xi'an by train

our bunk on the train
after 12-hr of tiring-yet-fun-filled train ride, we finally arrived at xi'an on 24 Nov 2007! since we didnt eat much for dinner on train, we had buffet for breakfast at a hotel! and believe it or not, we had breakfast there every morning! woohooo!!! =P

the restaurant where we had our breakfast every morning =)

beautiful flower outside the hotel

MORE beautiful flower outside the hotel
on top of the "high-class" breakfasts at this hotel, the warmest welcome arranged by their school also gets the shock of everyone's life!! they stationed police officers along the two side of the road... vehicles and pedestrians stop under the command of traffic police juz to let us walk into the sch AS A GROUP?! then there were their students performing, dancing and shouting "欢迎欢迎!热烈欢迎!" OMG...

local students welcoming us =D

and this is the school we are attached to in xi'an

西安交通大学附属中学: best of the best in xi'an
of course, we visited their affliated university, 西安交通大学...

sch motto of 西安交通大学

me, "一鼎" and weiming at 西安交通大学... XD
25 Nov 2007 (Sun)... we had our homestay activities!

A photo of my homestay family taken at 汉阳陵
when we were about to leave 汉阳陵, we were informed by the security guard that the president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, was oso arriving at noon... haha =) but due to our tight schedule, we couldnt wait till noon to see him in person, which is quite SAD! nevertheless, i was honoured to have stepped on the red carpet before president Nicolas Sarkozy... haha =D

the red carpet specially placed for president of france
this was wad happened... bcos my host's father (Associate Professor of Xi'an JiaoTong University... i know theres no link, but i juz wanted to let u know... haha) thought that it was very troublesome to make one big detour in order to avoid stepping on the red carpet... so in the course of saving time, we stepped on the carpet to get across... haha... in the end we got a mini-scolding from a policeman stationed there. XD
well... from 汉阳陵 we headed to the city to have lunch - 裤带面! this is a special kind of noodle that you will nvr find in s'pore bcos there is only ONE piece of noodle in a big bowl... why? i oso dunno... haha.

裤带面 aka biang biang mian
notice the width of the noodles? it's REALLY the width of a normal belt that you may find! and for your info, this photo bears no optical illusions nor camera tricks! =)
basically that's the most interesting part of my xi'an trip... 28 Nov 2007, we left xi'an and reached beijing the next day!
to release our frustration towards the cold treatment from the teachers and students in beijing, we bought tonnes and tonnes of tibits from their school canteen for PLEASURE?! haha. thats bcos each of us had a RMB$240 food card to spend on breakfast and dinner (normally we had lunch outside sch), and their breakfast and dinner cost us not more than $4 a day, so we SPAMMED tibits!!! LOL! XD as quoted from our ex-dean-of-studies Ms Yeo, "I have never seen teenagers eat so much tibits before in my life!" cant imagine how much tibits we had? see for yourself then... XD

a table fully occupied with tibits

another table fully occupied with tibits

tibits, tibits, and more tibits!
from 29 Nov onwards, we visited numerous places of interest, namely...

大堂芙蓉

万里长城

颐和园

老舍茶馆

北京动物园
here comes the end of my longest post. and for those who have not been to beijing or planning to go beijing in the near future, i would say...
北京欢迎你 Beijing Welcomes You =)
loving you always
Tuesday, December 18, 2007