I woke up in the middle of the night suffering from leg cramps (omg that sounds so much like what a pregnant woman would say).

Although YJ and I could report to work at 2pm, I was still super tired waking up at 11.15am. Super lack of sleep and rest can.

And I was HUNGRY too! Didn't eat anything at all for dinner last night lah (minus the fact that we binged on some chocolates and orange juice at the bar counter).

I can't believe I ate curry flavoured maggie + chili flakes (super spicy) accompanied by diet coke as my beverage first thing when I woke up. I know I'm mad (:

We planned to walk to work today, BUT we dilly dally-ed around and ended up leaving our apartment at 1.40pm. I had to visit the post office too, so there was no way we could walk (and we were tired and a bit lazy too lah) so we CABBED.

We swore not to cab for the next whole week.

Reported to work at 2pm. Did a few GDS with my brain half asleep.

The plan for the night was to have dinner with the Director of Wine- Kelvin Tay at a Singaporean Restaurant.

But, Angela and Joanne ended work at 9.30pm. Such a late dinner. And after discussing and deciding, dinner was canceled and pushed back to this coming Monday night instead.

It was already 8pm after deciding not to go. YJ and I headed to Lotus to grab some stuff before running to catch the 8.30pm shuttle bus home.

I didn't know it was such a chore to think of what to eat for dinner. Every day after work, I'll be bombarded by this qn of what to eat for dinner. I miss home because if I don't know what to eat outside, there'll be food at home for dinner during weekdays.

For now, if I can't think of anything to eat, I'll just eat pears for dinner. Omg.

Pirelli.

There was a launch of Pirelli Calendar 2008 @ China Hall today so Ehui asked YJ and I to support.

We reported to work at 10am and didn't need to go to RSVN office.

When we reached the back area of China Hall, there was already a row call going on and when we saw Goh, he asked the both of us to go down to the laundry to change into the black BQT shirt and black pants.

After finding the right best size for our uniform for the day, we changed and went back up to China Hall. We were given this hot pink hair band to wear and clips for our sleeves but YJ and I refused to wear the hair band because we thought it looked so ugly on us :( We wore it the ah-lian way instead- around our neck.

After a while, and during that whole time YJ and I was looking at the mirror trying our best to work the new uniform, Goh asked us to change back to our old uniform because he said there might not be enough stuff for all the staff working for the event -.-

So we went down again to change and came back up. By this time, the reception at the foyer had already started and we were stationed to help serve coffee and tea because the other staff had to change uniforms as well.

In total, we spent the first 2 hours changing uniforms. And after the reception ended and the guests went into China Hall for a meeting, we were free for lunch.

We were supposed to lunch with Kelvin and Ehui but we couldn't find them so we went to Saizeriya instead. YJ and I shared a pizza and that was our only meal for the whole day.

After we came back from lunch, we had to help them turnaround China Hall for the dinner at night.

I LOVE the whole set-up for this event because of the colours the organizer chose- Pink, Purple, Green and Orange. However, setting up the tables for dinner was more troublesome than usual because of the colours. Different tablecloths for different tables had to be used. The colour of the chairs, napkin, menu and floral arrangement had to match with the tablecloth.

And did I mention that the organizer for this event is a perfectionist? He's this really famous event planner from France (?) but sorry I forgot his name :x

After setting-up the function room, Ehui asked YJ and I to change into the BQT uniform because he wanted us to serve the VIP table.

So we had to go down and change and also slab on green eye shadow.

The organizer requested the pink hair bands and green eye shadow for the girls. The guys also had to wear this green waist thingy. No accessories were allowed- not even earrings and watches!

Overall, everyone looked the same and it was rather standardized so it looked quite okay.

At like 6pm, there was a final row call- by the organizer himself. All service staff was in China Hall. First, he asked all the hostesses and performers to go on stage and he checked their attire ONE BY ONE. If that wasn't enough, he proceeded to ask all service staff (more than 100 of us or maybe 200) to go up and he checked our attire ONE BY ONE too. Perfectionist aye?

7pm soon arrived and the foyer turned into a cocktail reception area while the function room was having last minute changes. A few tables had to be re-set-up because there was an increase in people. The organizer also wanted to make sure that all cutleries were placed in the right position.

7.45pm and it was time to open the doors so guests could come in. Suddenly, the organizer said he needed to add 5 more people in the VIP table. That meant we had to extend the table, find more table cloths, cutlery, menus, flowers, candles and napkins (in the right colour mind you) and set the table while guests were slowly coming in.

A group of us was in-charge of serving the VIP table dinner. It was a 4 course western dinner with appetizer, soup, main course and dessert. Each staff was to serve 2 guests and we were already pre-assigned which one to serve during the earlier briefings. But since there was an increase in people in the VIP room, we had to change our plans as well.

Firstly, we started serving bread, pouring water and white wine. When it was time to serve the first dish, we had to walk all the way to the kitchen, line up, and take the food from the kitchen chefs and walk back to China Hall. Since I was serving the VIP table, we were always the first ones to take the food.

The plates were SO HEAVY omg! And after serving food to them, we had to clear their plates when they were done. The main course was a killer because we had to clear the show plate as well.

We saw lots of hot and cute guys as well as tall and skinny girls. There were a lot of European guests. Nora Sun (Sun Yat Sen's grand daughter) was at the event, and supermodels Gemma Ward, Du Juan and Mo Wandan attended the event too.

A performance by dancers and this famous Chinese trans was lined up after dinner.

Security was super tight because guests could take home the 2008 calendar (which cost like a few hundred EUROS) and they were afraid people would steal them.

Amongst our busy schedule, we still managed to find time to snap photos of our attire and the set-up. I'll kill myself if we didn't manage to take photos!

Dinner ended at 10.30pm, but work hasn't ended yet. There was an after party at the foyer and we were stationed at the bar counters.

The whole foyer sort of turned into a pub/club because of the music and lightings.

Champaign was the hot favouite drink for the night but there were guests that wanted Whisky, Vodka, wine etc.

There were heavy smokers around as well. During the whole time at the bar, I think 4 guests asked us to go down to help them buy cigarettes.

Soon enough, people started dancing and this group of people infront of us entertained YJ and me. The set-up had a bed as a sofa right in front of the bar counter we were at; this particular group of people (1 Italian guy that asked me for 4 glasses of whisky + coke, 1 French lady which took like countless glasses of champagne, 1 Chinese lady and another random guy) were super high.

The girl started dancing and the Italian guy joined her and they were dirty dancing and french kissing right in front of us. They went on the bed, started making out, the guy started dry humping himself and a lot of people were looking and taking photos!

The girl was also making out and dirty dancing with other guys but she's actually a lesbian and has a gf.

The organizer came and asked the Italian guy to leave because he was going overboard.

The whole scene was an eye opener and it was so much fun working for the event although it was long hours and we were super tired.

The clubbing music ended off at 1.45am but guests still didn't leave until 2.15am when they switched on the lights and the organizer "chased" his guests’ home.

YJ and I knocked off at 2.30am and duh, we cabbed home because our feet hurt and we were so damn tired.

OMG 90th DAY IN SHANGHAI ALREADY!

I woke up today feeling even sleepier than usual. And I got up at 7.20am.

The weather was freezing cold so when I came out of the shower I went to turn on the heater.

Oh, and since YJ and I brought back a few small bottles of jam and bought bread at Lotus yesterday, we had that for our breakfast (: A pity we didn't have a toaster otherwise it'll taste so much better.

The weather was too cold to walk because we haven't sent our smelly (smoked) jackets for dry-cleaning. Yeah, we've been procrastinating since the day we went out with Raymond and Denis. SO WE CABBED.

I had like nothing to do for the first half day of work and only went to file the GDS forms that I was supposed to file yesterday.

I was like Friendster surfing (yes, I refuse to learn how to use Facebook) the whole time until lunch!

No pasta today; we went to KFC instead and didn't feel full after our meal so we hopped over to Mac for Pineapple Pie. I hate fast-food hopping :(

And I received my first thin stack of GDS forms at like 2.30pm. Omgzxz.

Oh, I've also went to take my pay slip for Nov today. I am so not happy because it's RMB2980 instead of the usual RMB3000. Becauseeeee I forgot to bring my locker key :(

But since I was bored to tears today, I finally went into Facebook to TRY to explore. I know. I'm fickle minded. That thing is so messy and full of nonsensical stuff omg.

I also, went to Ebay and asked Han Loon to like help me get 3 tops and a Baby Phat tote. I don't know if I'll get those items though, but whatever.

After work, YJ and I made our way slowly to Lotus to pick up some stuff and just strolled around to kill time because we wanted to take the 7pm shuttle bus home (it's like, just TOO cold to walk luh).

We then finished up our multi-media video and then did the big move of the sofa bed from CF's room to our apartment.

I am so sleepy :(

The weather forecast said it'll be freezing cold today (6-13 degs) so I left my house with gloves, scarf and a thicker jacket.

And it was like TEN degrees when we were walking to work! If there wasn't any wind, it'll still be okay. But when the wind blows, it's super duper cold! And the only part you can't cover to keep warm is your face.

So, my face was like numb from the cold winds that blew constantly. I wonder how we're gonna survive walking in the streets for the next 2 months!

I was super stoned at work; my eyes could close any moment. I was given like 30+ GDS to complete in the morning and I took my own sweet time because if I finish it fast, I'll be left with nothing to do.

We decided to head out for lunch at 12pm instead of the usual drag till 1pm because we skipped breakfast and felt hungry.

We so did not want to go back to the pasta place (okay fine, the restaurant is called Saizeriya (I think that’s how you spell it. Omg its a mouthful)) because we've been going there TOO often.

Walking around the fast-food outlets didn't help a bit because it was expensive (as compared to the RMB9 pasta) and in the end we just went up to level 8. Haha.

We had the usual; 2 plates of pasta. And feeling a little more greedy today, we ordered a plate of sausages and wedges :P

Can you believe that we tried almost ALL the different pastas on their menu already? Soon enough, we'll be switching to eating baked rice or gratin and then pizza (:

Lunches there are always satisfying (: We sat at the window seat today where we had the view of the Huangpu River and the Pearl Tower.

And yes, making our way to the mall and back again was a killer. It's like 10 degs out there with strong winds and we're not covered in thick jackets.

When we came back, we immediately went to print our long overdue ACD report. Headed back up to RSVN office and the internet couldn't work! Omg that's like my ONLY source of entertainment in the office.

Left with nothing to do, I slept for awhile (like for only 5mins before I heard that the internet was working again)

And because like 2 weeks ago, Mr. Hubert said there’d be different types of trainings for us, today was such a day.

At 3pm, we gathered at Yi Cafe's private room for wine training by the Director of Wine, Mr. Kelvin Tay (Singaporean!)

It was only a small group- 5 of us because Gabriel and Angela were off.

The first half was about drinking alcohol- more like life skills rather than boring theory on wine. He also went into the more scientific aspects for a while before going on to how they store wine in barrels and how corks and barrels are made.

After saying so much, then came the practical part. Kelvin brought in 3 bottles of wine- 1 white, 2 red for us to taste.

First up was white wine.

Sight- the lighter coloured the wine is, the younger it is.

Smell- to get a stronger aroma of the wine, it is best to swirl it in the wine glass and then put your nose right into the glass. (we could pick out smells such as citrus and even a hint of medicated oil)

Taste- We first tasted the wine without eating anything to get its original taste. Then, he showed us how he tastes wine to check for quality and get the whole taste in your mouth. It was super funny taking in a big gulp, sucking in air in your mouth and then spitting it out in the bucket.

After that, Kelvin made us suck on a piece of lemon and then taste the white wine again. This time round, the wine tasted sweeter because of the acid in our mouths. He then asked us to chew on a piece of apple and taste the wine again and the wine became dryer than before because apples are sweet.

He touched a little on paring the right food with the right wine before proceeding to try the first bottle of red wine.

We smelled it first- it was superbly strong. No one tasted it yet (thankfully) and when Kelvin asked us "what smell do you get?" we were all like "omg super strong!" and he said "because the wine is about to spoil already"

So, no one tasted that wine except for Kelvin. The wine was desecrating because it had already been opened for 2 days and I think the staff at Yi Cafe didn’t keep it properly.

We went on to the last bottle of red wine. We did the same with the red wine as what we did previously to the white wine.

Oh did I mention that the whole training was like 2 and a half hours and Kelvin smoked a total of 5 cigs while speaking to us?

The whole training was interesting and I didn't feel sleepy at all! Maybe it's because the atmosphere was super informal (speaking with SINGAPOREAN ENGLISH). There will be like 2 more wine trainings before we leave. Yay!

It was 5.30pm when we were done so we went back up to office where I was greeted with a thin stack of GDS forms that I completed by 6pm but didn't file them.

We met Joanne at the staff canteen to accompany her for dinner before going over to Super Brand Mall to wait for JY to come over so she could take-away pasta for dinner.

The 3 of us WALKED home in the freezing cold weather omg.

Since Angela was off today, she started putting in the photos for our multi-media video. We came home to continue from where she stopped at until like 12.30am.

Everything's done- except inserting music into the clip. Ugh.

Although we could borrow CF's sofa bed tonight, we didn't bother because we were too tired to move it back and our house is still super messy. So, we shared the queen-sized bed again. This time round, it was Angela, Joanne and I, while YJ took the sofa bed.

Omg today is such a gloomy day.

Somehow, when the sun's not out, you'll just feel so lazy and wish to cuddle up at home tucked inside your comforter and sleep.

But I had to crawl out of bed today at like 7.15am to prepare to go to work.

Since Angela spent her night at her aunt's place, we had sufficient sleeping space for the 3 of us. This time round, Joanne took the sofa bed because she was still doing her report at like 2am while YJ and I slept in our original positions.

The weather forecast said it'll rain today and yeah, it's pretty accurate.

We left our house at like 8.40am (we usually try to leave at 8.25am or latest 8.30am if we are walking) but we still decided to WALK to work and not spend money on cab fares because we'd rather spend money on lunch outside!

So, we walked like super duper fast and reached the hotel at 9.01am (: Not that late; just our normal time arriving :P

And yay! No more doing phone calls for arrival timings already! :D It's back to GDS for me now.

And when I'm doing GDS, I don't have anything to do unless Joanne or whoever gives me the stack of paper to do once they've printed it out.

So from the moment I came into the office, I did nothing but slack around until my first (super thin- I think no more than15 sheets) stack of GDS came at 11am. I finished it in like 15mins and did nothing until 1pm where we headed out for lunch.

It was straight to the Pasta restaurant and we ordered pasta! Yummy (:

The weather was like freezing cold and we practically ran from the hotel to Super Brand Mall and back again.

After lunch, we slacked some more at the office while waiting for YH to come up to lend us his camera. We then started taking photos for our project and also retarded photos because we were so bored.

We took photos with Nancy, and then we went down to Event's Concierge to take photos with Cherry, then to BQT office with Ehui and then up to level 6 with Denis and Raymond.

It was then time to knock off from work! (We totally forgot to do shop call today)

We had to go look for Angela to pass her YJ's thumb drive cuz Joanne wanted some documents for her project. In the end, we left the hotel at like 7pm and instead of walking home, we went to Jia De Li to get some stuff before going to the laundry to collect our coats.

The night was spent editing photos for our video. It wasn't a long night because we started at like 10pm and slept at around 12am?

We had to share the queen-sized bed again. And because Angela is sick, we asked her to sleep on the sofa bed instead of rotating. So, it was like how we slept 2 days ago. YJ was at the side, I was in the middle and Joanne was at the other side.

And during the whole night, the 2 girls were snatching the blanket and pulling it to their sides constantly. Wonderful (:

The day started off in the evening today :P

Oh, yesterday we had our first experience of squeezing 3 girls on the queen sized bed because we sent the sofa bed back to Chang Fang’s apartment.

The 3 that slept on the queen-sized bed were Joanne, YJ and I. Angela took the remaining sofa bed and the next few days we would take turns to sleep on the sofa bed.

We couldn’t sleep the normal way we slept when we had 2 people because it was too narrow so we switched positions where our heads were on the longer side of the bed so 3 of us would have enough space. But, it wasn’t long enough for us to stretch our legs fully!

So all of us woke up with our body’s aching like old women :(

YJ and I went out to Xu Jia Hui at like 5pm while Joanne and JY stayed at home to complete their interim report.

That MRT station has like 14 different exits can you imagine?!

That whole area is somewhat like Singapore’s Orchard Road. There are lots of departmental store buildings around the whole area.

YJ and I walked everywhere! We didn’t buy much though because most of the shops were branded goods.

The funny thing was that there was one side that had all the different departmental stores and when we were combing that area we got hungry. So, we went to a random department store to look for food and we found NONE.

In the end, we walked somewhere else and realized that that whole stretch was selling FOOD!

We saw this Chinese fast-food place and decided to go there to eat because we were so lazy to look for other outlets.

I ordered a bowl of dry noodles while YJ ordered some fried rice thingy. Each cost RMB19.

It turned out tasting not bad! At least it wasn’t super oily and salty! And we wished they had that outlet at Super Brand Mall so we could eat it for lunch occasionally.

Oh, we also found a shopping area in the midst of all the high-end outlets that resembled Far East Plaza.

I bought a jacket from there which cost me like RMB179. But I love the shop, they sell really cool jacket lah! I’d buy more if I had more money.

We also went to this other shop and I bought 2 dresses (RMB250 in total. Not considered cheap compared to Qi Pu Lu prices). Dresses are like so convenient because I’d pair them with tights and boots and out of the house I go. Stuffing your jeans into your boots can be such a chore at times.

YJ and I headed over to this building called Metro and it was so Singaporean! The basement was a FOOD COURT (super rare in shopping malls in Shanghai) and there was a stall selling Singaporean food- Oyster omelet, Hokkien Mee etc.

There was also TOAST BOX selling half boiled eggs and kaya toast! I swear if we didn’t have dinner already we would so be eating there!

We left the place at around 10pm after walking along every lighted corner of Xu Jia Hui.

It was a super funny scene at the MRT when we were at People’s Square Interchange.

YJ and I rushed into the last cabin because the door was closing and there were quite a number of people in the train.

So, we started speaking in our Singaporean English and the guys near us stared at us. I heard them speak, it was Singaporean English too! So I started back at them and YJ was like “eh, Singaporeans.”

Then the guy just said super loudly, “From NTU is it?” I turned and replied “Ngee Ann Poly!”

We then kicked start out conversation and YJ and I realized that surrounding us were all Singaporeans from NTU! Like, 15+ of them?! OMG!!

Turns out that they are here on attachment and studies for 6 moths too! But they’ll be returning to SG by the end of this year.

And when we were going up the escalator at our MRT station, we heard another 2 girls speaking in Singaporean English.

Seriously, I didn’t know our accent was that distinct until I came here. It’s like; super obvious that you’re Singaporean once you open your mouth.

What Denis said was true- you’ll be surprised by the amount of Singaporeans you meet when you’re here. They are everywhere!

I slept at like 4.30am last night after coming home and taking turns to use the toilet to bathe and blow dry my hair.

And I woke up at like 9.40am today because the guy came to deliver our stove.

We also had to move one of the sofa bed’s back to CF’s room because her family was coming to live with her for a few days.

Oh what a morning. And after the move of the sofa bed, we realized how dirty and dusty our room was so I started sweeping the floor while YJ went down to find our security guard to call for the plumber because our toilet bowl is STILL unusable.

The house suddenly felt so spacious after getting rid of that one sofa bed! Soon enough, the plumber came and fixed our toilet bowl problem.

Finally, all our household matters have been solved! Our water heater is back in place, the stove is finally covering our shoes in the cupboard and our toilet can be used again (:

However, we still don’t know how to use our stove because it doesn’t give out fire when we turn it on! Ugh, we’ll figure it out somehow when someone wants to cook Maggie Mee.

And guess what, the first person that wanted to cook Maggie for dinner was none other than yours truly. You think I’d try to figure out how to use the new stove? I chose the easy way out. I went over to Chang Fang’s place to borrow her stove instead! :D

The whole afternoon was spent trying to get our multimedia video done. YJ and I chose the photos and started to caption them.

But, we got quite sian of doing it by 5pm so we just started to slack around instead. At least, we’ve started! And we’ve got until 30 Nov to complete it, unlike other interim reports that are due coming Monday.

Finally it’s Friday and this marks the end of my 2 weeks of calling for call arrivals! :D

2 weeks flew past just like that; it’s freaky how time flies but at the same time I’m glad it’s zooming by so fast because it means I’m gonna go home soon (:

Since we had to let our supervisors grade us for their interim report, we gave both Nancy and Ehui a set to do because they were our supervisors for the time we spent here so far (because we changed departments).

Nancy sat down with us to tell us how she felt blah blah blah and most prolly we’ll be able to get out of RSVN at the end of December because 3 new staff will be coming in! *cross fingers*

We also went down to look for Ehui to ask him to fill up the written part of the report and crapped with him for like an hour and a half before going back upstairs.

Oh, lunch wasn’t at the pasta place today :P We had KFC instead. It’s like our first time eating KFC at Super Brand Mall.

Soon, work finally ended and we were meeting Denis and Raymond (SLIM people and also Singaporeans) for dinner.

Turns out that they live 1 street away from us!

Dinner was at this restaurant which served Hunan cuisine. Those that went were Raymond, Denis, Sunny Pao (VP of Marketing in Shangri-la China), the EAM of F&B at Ascott, Jane (the only Shanghainese), Yu Hong, Angela, YJ and I. Yes, all of us were Singaporeans.

They ordered SO MUCH food because they re-ordered and re-ordered. But 90% of the food was spicy but overall dinner was great despite the fact that they ordered rice wine and forced us to drink. That freaking thing contains like 48% alcohol can.

They also brought along 2 bottles of white wine and made us drink. Omg by the end of the dinner we were already quite gone because of the rice wine.

We then went over to Shangri-la to pick Joanne up cuz she just ended work and then proceeded to The Bund.

Raymond took YJ, Joanne and I to 3 on The Bund to look at the beautiful view but in the end I couldn’t take it and headed straight to the toilet to puke my whole dinner out :/

And then we went on 5 on The Bund- Glamour Bar to look for the rest of the people.

Kelvin Tay joined us later and we stayed for awhile there before deciding to go to 18 on The Bund- Rouge Bar (the most popular bar along The Bund).

It was 11pm by then and by the time we walked there; there was a queue to go up to the lift! We decided to give it a pass and in the end Denis, Raymond, YJ, Joanne and I cabbed down to Baby Face while the rest decided to call it a night.

The music was disappointing though. Denis and Raymond went to buy drinks (again) and we tried to siam by going to the dance floor to dance but the music was like terrible -.-

In the end we left the club at around 2.30am and headed next door for SUPPER! :D

We ordered Congee and Cha Siew Bao. The Char Siew Bao was super yummy lah!

After eating, Denis sent the 3 of us home first while Raymond took a cab back himself. He even took-away 4 Char Siew Bao’s for us for tomorrow’s breakfast! How nice of him (:

And the best part of the night- we didn’t pay a single cent. Omg I wouldn’t wanna know how much money they spent in total for the dinner and drinks.

I think we were really lucky to go out with Denis and Raymond to get exposed to those expensive bars because we will never go there ourselves because we are such poor people. Haha.

Breakfast and dinner today was leftover cake from YJ’s birthday. Hahaha. The both of us wiped out all the cake (:

Work was as routined as usual.

I’m already very very sick of calling for call arrivals and these few days I’ve been calling twice of what I am supposed to call. Ugh.

Since we had stuff to do, time passed quite quickly and soon enough, it was time for lunch (:

I think we went out at around 12.45pm and we headed straight to the same café we went to yesterday!

We ordered a plate of baked rice and a plate of omelet. Total cost = RMB19.

After eating, it was like 1.30pm and we thought that we left the office at 1pm. We thought we ate quicker this time round and decided to go down to Macs for pineapple pie (:

When we reached Macs I was like “omg its 1.45pm are we late?” “what time did we come out huh?”

But whatever, we didn’t bother and still sat down to finish our pie and headed back to the office reaching at 2pm (:

I think no one bothers about us. So long as we get our work done, all is well.


Since we couldn’t get Ehui yesterday because he was off, we went down to BQT office to look for him today because he has an assignment to do!

We passed him the interim report that our RO’s needed to fill up and chatted with him for almost an hour. I miss crapping and talking nonsense with him to kill time!

He said that on 29 Nov, there’s an event going on so we quickly volunteered to support! Yay.

We went back up at 5.30pm and waited for another half an hour before knocking off from work.

We walked back home to chuck our stuff first before heading out again. We took along our fur coats we bought from Qi Pu Lu last time because we wanted to dry-wash it before wearing it.

Headed over to the laundry where I collected my coat (yay! It doesn’t smell of smoke anymore!) and we then sent our 2 coats for washing. The lady there quoted us the wrong price- she told us it was RMB18 for 1 coat but it was supposed to be RMB20 because it was longer.

But she was nice enough to charge us RMB18 and told us next time it would be RMB20 because it was longer.

We then walked all the way to Motel 168 because YJ wanted to make a reservation for 2 rooms in Dec cuz her parents are coming over.

We were actually supposed to move CF’s sofa bed back to her room tonight, but since her parents will only be coming tomorrow, we decided to do it tomorrow so that we’ll have 4 beds for us to sleep comfortably for 1 more night (:

And did I mention that our toilet bowl is stuck (again)? Yup, it’s the second time and I think its because we throw toilet paper inside the toilet bowl.

The practice of people in China is to throw away toilet paper in a separate bin because the flushing system ain’t that great yet. So, maybe because we refuse to follow their norm, that's why our toilet bowl is stuck.

Thank goodness for our neighbours JY and CF otherwise we won’t be able to use the toilet for I-don’t-know-how-many days!

Replies

Nana & Fara: I MISS YOU GUYS!! And I'll be home in 10 weeks! Go plan an outing or whatever okayyyy! :D :D

Although we cabbed to work, we weren’t on time :P

There was so much to do at work today. Firstly, the printer jammed so I couldn't print out my call arrival report therefore I was idling around for the first 1 hour.

I tried doing a few pages of the TA's list though and then started calling.

There was this stupid bitch I called today. She helped 9 clients to book 9 rooms. I asked her for the arrival time of her clients and she told me 5pm. And because she didn't guarantee their rooms, the hotel does not ensure rooms for guest who check in after 4pm. I tried asking her nicely if she would want to help her gust guarantee the rooms by Credit Card but she brushed it off saying "Credit Card number is such a private thing. How would my clients give it to me?"

I then said, "you can provide me with anyone's Credit Card number to help guarantee the rooms" and she said "no one has Credit Cards in the company" OMG LAH.

She kept insisting that her clients would definitely show up and wanted me to ensure that the 9 rooms were kept. I then tried another alternative by asking her to fax over a company guarantee but then she said "My boss is not in town today, no one can chop the company's stamp without his signature" Omg wth, EXCUSES!

She was already so rude on the phone that I decided not to give her face anymore. She even wanted to speak to the Sales Manager or any Manager. Ugh. In the end, I just told her "since you're so confident that all your clients will turn up, why not give me YOUR Credit Card number to help them guarantee their rooms because there'll be no charge to your account if they check into the hotel"

She hesitated for awhile, and then kept asking if any charge was going to be imposed on. I think she gave up in the end because I kept telling her if her clients were to reach after 4pm and the hotel has already sold the 9 rooms, she would be the one at fault because she's responsible for booking their rooms.

She then reluctantly gave me her own Credit Card number (I thought she said no one in the company has a credit card...) and was so worried she had to pay money!

Okay, that was like the worst person I've called so far. Previously, I've met really nice people who were willing to help their clients guarantee their room without further questions asked.

Lunch today was definitely OUTSIDE. We've gave up on canteen food.

Wanted to go eat Congee at the Dim Sum restaurant but there was a long queue! So guess where we went?!

All the way to level 8 for the pasta/pizza cafe! :D

It was almost full house too but thankfully there were still a few seats left.

Each of us ordered pasta that cost RMB9 a plate. That's like freaking cheap! Where in the world can you find pasta that costs less than SGD2 in Singapore! Not even in hawker centers.

And this place is like a cafe/restaurant.

The pasta was super nice!! It made me miss Pastamania!! They also sell pizza, ESCARGOTS, grilled meat, baked rice etc etc.

YJ and I swore that it's so gonna be our new dining place for lunch for the rest of our attachment! It's cheaper than a Mac meal!

Just when we were about to leave, we saw 3 staff from Shangri-la going in to dine there too. Super awkward because they are also working at level 5 and constantly comes into RSVN office.

I had a craving for DQ's smoothie and I bought it at RMB25 (omg so much more expensive than my lunch can) because it was just next to the place we had our lunch. I wouldn't go all the way up to the 8th floor just to get a cup of smoothie. Haha.

Oh, it's our manager, Nancy's birthday today. It's exactly the same day as YJ's! Omg such a coincidence.

They distributed cake and candy from Yi Cafe around and YJ and I were super full and trying our best to quickly digest the food inside our stomachs because we were planning to eat Meat Buffet later for YJ's birthday.

After wishing Nancy happy birthday, we gave her our Interim Report she's supposed to help us fill in to submit to our LO.

And then we went down to print our ACD report (overdue for like 7 days already. Oops.)

Finally work ended. YJ and I headed to Lu Jia Zhui MRT station to meet Joanne in the cabin. It was peak period and the crowd was CRAZY.

Thankfully a Caucasian guy pulled YJ and I us into the train otherwise we'd missed it (:

The meat buffet place was at Raffles City. It's somewhat like the place we ate at Sixth Avenue with Justin Pang. But, this was so much cheaper- RMB78 per person.

However, all of us (JY, YJ, Joanne and I) were disappointed. The buffet spread wasn't fantastic, some of the meat they served was hard and the service staff sucked. Oh, they even had imitation Tabasco sauce!

It wasn't worth the RMB78. I'd rather pay SGD40 to eat that in Singapore lah.

Since it was still early after dinner, we decided to walk around outside. We were near Nanjing Road so we walked around Bu Xing Jie and decided to go to Haagen-Dazs for ice cream (:

We sat outside in the cold weather and just slacked. But we were disturbed by beggars who just came in to beg us for money -.-

For the whole period of time we sat outside, a total of NINE beggars tried their luck on us.

The waiter there was really nice though. He'd come out to help us chase them away. He even stood outside in the cold weather with his thin uniform to help us keep a lookout.

We waited for Angela to come after work to cut the cake. And since JY already bought a cake before she met us, we didn't need to get one from Haagen-Dazs. The waiter was also nice enough to let us cut the cake there and gave us candles, napkins and a lighter.

And when we were eating the cake, the funniest thing happened. A beggar, dressed super weirdly (he was wearing this red traditional hat; those that women wear when they get married and also some other nonsense hanging here and there). He tried begging for money but we ignored. He then started singing HAPPY BIRTHDAY in Chinese! OMG. We couldn't help but laugh. The waiter that helped us chase him away also couldn't take it and burst out laughing.

That wasn't the end of the beggar issue we faced for the night.

We wanted to go to Baby Face for awhile but in the end we didn't because Angela wasn't feeling well, JY's shirt was too tight to dance and the rubber of my heel broke.

It was already 11pm so we decided to call it a night and cab home.

While walking to find a cab, YJ was holding the cake box in the bag because there was leftover. A mother, with a 4 year old (?) child tried begging for money from us.

She asked her son to say "jie jie can u give me some cake? I need to eat. Thank you jie jie". OMGWTH.

And when we ignored, the boy was chasing the cake like how a dog would chase a bone. The mother was also trying her best to get cake or money from us.

I can't stand it when parents ask their child to beg for money. It's just so wrong.

It’s been such a long time since all 4 of us went to work together. Although Angela and Joanne were supposed to report to work at 10am, they left the house the same time as us because they needed to try on their new uniforms.

It was 10 degrees out there in the morning. Freezing cold and I didn’t wear anything thick. I wore like, 2 thin tops (those that I can wear in Singapore and still feel cold when it’s a rainy day), shorts, tights, boots and a jacket. Okay, I wrapped myself up in a thick scarf and also wore gloves but I was still cold when the wind blew!

Oh yes, we walked to work and we were super late. We reached the staff entrance at like 9.10am? Oops.

I had to do like 2 days worth of call arrivals today. Super SIAN. But the good thing is that it’s only like 15 pages a day and a lot of flight details are down already (:

It was soon lunch time and I swear YJ and I tried our best to eat in the canteen. But, yeah we failed.

YJ took a bowl of noodles while I took a bowl of pasta and miso soup. We sat down, stared at the food we took (super oily and full of MSG), ate a couple mouthfuls and gave up.

Not knowing what in the world to eat for lunch, we still headed over to Super Brand Mall.

We were quite sick of fast food and we wanted to eat Congee. But the stupid restaurant had a queue and we didn’t have time to wait to get a seat and wait for our food to be served. So yeah, we settled for Mac in the end :x

I had like 1 pineapple pie and YJ had a cheeseburger. Yes, that’s how appetite-less we were.

I was like stoning the whole day at work because I was so tired. My eyes were closing and when I was doing the data entry for the TA’s, I almost fell asleep!

Since we came a little late for work today, we left at 6.30pm :P

We met Joanne and Angela at the locker and they were supposed to end work at 7pm so we decided t o wait for them and walk home together.

So YJ and I headed to Super Brand Mall because they told us that at level 8 there’s this cheap and good café that sells pasta and pizza!

Indeed, the price range was cheap; RMB9-20 for like a plate of pasta or one pizza. BUT, there was a long queue! :(

Its okay, YJ and I will definitely go there to eat for one of our lunches in the future.

We then went down to Lotus cuz YJ wanted to buy bread. And after choosing for like 15mins, she decided not to buy any -.-

I went to buy yoghurt instead. We also bought more small pieces of cake to eat for breakfast.

It was like already 7.30pm when we were done but the other 2 still hadn’t called us. We couldn’t contact them cuz Joanne’s phone ran out of money and Angela forgot to bring her hp out. They could only use the hotel phone to call us.

We decided not to wait because it was already so cold so we walked home first.

Came home and I had to go over to JY’s to cook my Maggie Mee for dinner because we still don’t have our stove!

And finally, my parent’s called me on my mobile phone! I think it’s the SECOND time they called me after 11 weeks here!

Yet another week flew by. 11 more weeks to go! I’m half way thru this whole experience already (:

Since Joanne and Angela aren't working at Yi Cafe anymore, most prolly their shifts will be similar to us. Today, Angela walked to work with YJ and I because she was told to report at 9am.

We took photos along the way to work- for our multi-media project (which we haven’t really sat down to start yet :x) but we’re trying our best to gather all the photos we need!

I can’t wait for this week to end because it’ll be my last week doing call arrivals but Nancy just threw a bomb at me. Seriously. I was supposed to finish calling until next Monday’s arrival but for this week, she wants me to call until next Wednesday’s! OMG. Thank goodness she asked YJ to help me for half a day. But I ain’t gonna bother so much, as long as its around 35% I’m gonna stop.

Surprisingly during lunchtime Neil and YH came up to our office. Too bad they wanted to eat at the staff canteen while Angela and Joanne wanted to go out. We went to the staff canteen to check out the food and it wasn’t really to our liking so the 4 girls went over to Super Brand Mall for lunch.

No fast food this time round, we had KOREAN FOOD. I know, we’re sort of crazy going to a restaurant to eat during lunchtime. But we just ordered a set meal that cost RMB30.

We took more than an hour for lunch though :P YJ and I went back 15mins later but on one said a thing. We just need to get our stuff done by the end of the day and I don't think anyone will make noise.

Since I’ve already finished the call arrivals for Tuesday, I started doing this super boring data entry thing Nancy gave us last week. It’s the Travel Agent’s profiles thingy where we have to change the currency to CNY. And we have to get it done by this Friday. So many pages can.

Since we were so full from the lunch we had, YJ and l walked home after work.

I couldn’t stand the smell from my brown jacket because I brought that to Muse on Saturday and it reeks of smoke. Yucks. I had no choice but to wear it today so I sprayed a lot of perfume hoping to cover the smell but it didn't quite work.

I needed to wash the coat badly and it can’t be normally washed because of the fur so I needed to send it to the laundry. I decided to try the back ally of our place because I saw quite a number of laundry stalls when I walked past last time.

The shop I chose looked rather decent and had a big signboard up. They had a lot of winter clothes hung up so it seemed quite trustworthy. The price they quoted to dry wash my coat? RMB16. Omg cheap or what?! It’s freaking SGD3+!

But it’ll take them 3 days. It doesn’t matter though, because I’m not in a hurry to use it. So I walked home without my coat. Cold? It was still bearable. And thankfully my apartment was like less than 2mins walk away from that laundry stall.

No dinner tonight because I was still full from lunch. We watched Die Hard 4 together and then had to settle money (yeah, forever settling money) before going to bed!

I woke up at 1pm today (:

Dilly dallied around until Joanne, YJ, JY and I cabbed down to Super Brand Mall to have Dim Sum for tea (?) because it was already 4pm when we reached there.

The weather’s freezing cold! The wind was so strong and blowing in our faces all the time.

All of us ordered Congee to fill our empty stomachs because we drank so much yesterday. We also ordered egg tarts and the normal Dim Sum stuff you’ll order. I’ve never eaten Dim Sum with my friends before! Dim Sum is like meant to be eaten with your parents when in Singapore. Hahaha.

After eating, we used the MRT to this station called Ke Ji Guan (Science & Technology Museum). No, we didn’t go there to gain more knowledge about science and technology.

There was shopping areas right when you come out of the MRT. You don’t even need to go out of the underground station and all the shops are there.

It’s something like Qi Pu Lu, but a higher class place.

We walked around for quite sometime and in the end I bought myself a jacket for only RMB150 (:

Angela joined us shortly and we walked around for a while more before using the train to Shan Xi Nan Lu.

We were supposed to go to this Hong Kong restaurant for dinner because it was Joanne’s birthday but we alighted at the wrong stop and we were meeting YH and Gabriel there. So we changed plans and went to Crossroads for dinner instead. Singapore food! :D

We didn’t order much this time round because the 5 girls were super full. So we had like, Rojak (pre-made = not nice), 2 bowls of Laska (which sucked), Mee Goreng (yummy!), Cha Bee Hoon, Stir-fried broccoli and omelet.

The service there kinda sucked though, the waitresses weren’t attentive at all. Oh, we saw Lian He Zhao Bao and Straits Times there. Apparently they order it daily.

After dinner, we bought Joanne a cake from Bread Talk. We were the last customers to leave and it was already like 10pm.

We did the most random thing after that- we started cam-whoring right outside the restaurant because the place was empty already!

The rest headed down to G+ while Angela and I went home because I was super tired and I’m so not used to going out every single day.

Today was such a lazy day.

Our initial plan was to go to Qi Pu Lu at like 2pm and then eat steamboat for dinner but all this didn’t happen.

Mainly, it was because of the rain and the weather. It was freezing cold today- about 12 degrees.

Our window was frosty and we could write our names on it! Omg.

So we stayed at home the whole day doing nothing but watching DVDs and using the internet.

The only time we went out was at around 7pm to go to the bank and Jia De Li. We were so lazy to change we just wore a jacket over our pullovers and slacks. We looked super unglam but who cares, we’re in China :P

The weather’s so cold that there was mist coming out of our mouths when we spoke! I think winter’s here already…

So we bought our stuff from the supermarket and walked back quickly because it was so cold. It’s super troublesome to even go out for awhile because you have to wear so many clothes.

I had to like, go over to JY’s place to cook Maggie for dinner because we still didn’t have our stove. Our stove area is now empty and we can see all of our boots we kept in the cupboard below!

But at like 10.30pm Joanne called and asked if we wanted to go clubbing. Since it was her birthday the next day, we decided to go.

We met Jason, Maxim, Jennifer and Angeline at the club itself. We went to Muse, a club owned by Liu Jia Ling.

Jason already reserved a table so we had seats when we reached. We then started playing dices and we drank quite a lot :/

However, the dance floor was really tiny. The first floor was where more of the older people were and the second floor was R&B. Both dance floors were equally small and it wasn’t as happening as Baby Face.

By the end of the night, YJ and I became Merlions and puked out everything we had in our stomachs :x

We reached home at like 4am? I so couldn’t be bothered to bathe despite having the smell of smoke in my hair so I just crashed after washing my face.

Last night YJ and I waited for Angela to come home because she went out with her hostesses for dinner and she had stuff to tell us about the "stolen" stove and water heater.

Her shifu- Anglea (yeah same name luh) apparently called up our landlord and spoke to him and he agreed to get the stove and water heater back for us and we didn’t have to pay anything.

It's somewhat super duper weird and all of us think that our landlord or his dad is involved in this whole matter.

The whole story has so many loopholes.

Firstly, the 2 guys that came knew so much about us until the extent that he knew our washing machine was leaking last time.

They looked so familiar I think they were the cable guys that came to fix up the internet connection from JY's place!

And why would our landlord call us like 1 hour after the "robbery" to ask us if a group of people came to our house to maintain something or not if he didn't even know who they were.

Although he claimed that they called his dad, how in the world did the 2 guys get our landlord's number?

Our landlord said that all these information (landlord's name, number, where we come from etc) can be found ONLINE. Like, huh?

It's just too weird to believe.

So today I had to like wake up at 6.30am, go over to JY's place to turn on the heater, come back home to sleep and woke up at 7.15am to bathe at their place. Yup, their water heater is damn troublesome. You'll need to turn it on 1/2 hour or more before you can use hot water.

OH. The 2 guys that came were such assholes too. Before taking away the water heater, they told us to turn our taps and everything to the 'hot' side. And after they took out the water heater, he asked "no more water already right?" And yeah, it was weird that there was no more water.

So last night I was thinking about it and it seemed IMPOSSIBLE to not have ANY water just because our water heater was gone. It's not like he took away our water supply. So, I tried flushing the toilet- it worked.

And when I tured on the sink tap there was water. The more I shifted it towards the "cold" side, the more water came out. Damn those stupid guys that made us believe that we had NO water at all. Assholes.

It's raining today! There was only a slight drizzle when YJ and I went out so we decided to pass taking umbrellas and walking to work so we tried to flag for a cab.

We stood in the drizzle (which was getting heavier by the minute) and the wind was like damn strong. No cabs. Our hands were numb and we were freezing cold. We stood on the road for like 10mins before we finally got a cab to our hotel!

So, we reached the office way before 9am. Oh what an achievement (:

And I finished calling for arrivals for Sat & Sun before lunch time! :D

We didn’t even want to look at the food in the staff canteen today. I was craving for MCD so we went there straight.

But on our way to the exit, we met this lady who needed help because her stuff was at the staff entrance and she had to bring them to Beijing Room for their conference. There was a miscommunication between the people in-charge, the security guards etc.

They were so pissed so we tried to call BQT for help. In the end they had to move their goods from one exit to another. YJ and I were freezing cold because we were outside trying to help resolve their problem.

In the end the BQT security came and brought them to the correct place so they could bring their stuff up and we ran to Super Brand Mall because we were so cold!

When we came back from lunch, we had to do shop calls again and I had to call for arrivals for Monday. Estella gave me 3 thick stacks of travel agent’s data and asked me to change all their bank accounts.

Its like, 3 stacks of 20+ sheets. Thank goodness there are 3 of us- YJ, Patrick and I so we split the work. But, it’s still a lot!

We need to go into Opera, find the information by keying in this 8 digit IATA number, and change the bank account from USD or RMB to CNY.

Damn troublesome can. All the numbers are making me go crazy. We have until next Friday to finish all of it. Omg.

Work ended and we headed to Lotus to buy fruits! Then we walked to SUBWAY to take away for our dinner! :D

We also helped JY and Angela to take away and the 4 of us came home to eat accompanied by chicken wings bought by JY (:

I’ve survived yet another week! And most importantly, I’ve survived one week of doing call arrivals! Just ONE more week of that to go! :D

Although we woke up on time and maybe even 5mins earlier than the time I usually woke up, we took a cab down to work today. Why?

The main reason was because at like 8.15am the doorbell rang and I thought it was JY who wanted to borrow our hair dryer. But I was greeted by 2 guys when I opened the door and they claimed that our landlord sent them here to do maintenance on our water heater and stove.

I was suspicious at first, but he went on saying that he knows we are from Singapore and he even told us the name of our landlord. He even said that he knows our neighbors (CF and JY) are from Singapore too.

So we opened the door and let them in. They took away the stove and heater and left us a written receipt with his hand phone number down. He asked us to call him when we end work so he can send the stuff back to our house.

The whole thing felt quite weird because our landlord didn't tell us (or rather YJ and I) that there were people coming to our place. I thought maybe he gave either Joanne or Angela a call but they didn't have time to tell us because when we reached home yesterday they were already sleeping.

And when we were walking to our office our landlord called us and said he didn't know those 2 guys were coming. He said not to open the doors to such people because they'll take the stuff and extort him by asking him to pay if not they won't return the stuff.

I, on the other hand think it’s damn dumb because he can just go buy a new one which will definitely cost less than the amt the people want. It's really amusing to see how people try to make money in China. Haha.

But, yeah it's super dangerous to open the doors to people that are complete strangers. Gees. Next time, we'll just call our landlord if such things happen again.

Okay, so today was quite a slack day because we only needed to work half day! :D

I practically did no work from 9am-12pm because I already called arrivals for today and tomorrow and they want me to do it again -.-

BUT, when I passed Nancy the paper for arrival timings, she gave me a whole list of people to call for TODAY to ask them to guarantee their bookings.

We left at 1pm and was still contemplating to go home to change or not because we weren’t quite appropriately dressed to go to Expo.

Oh yeah, there’s an event called FHC China at Shanghai New International Expo Centre and Denis & Raymond asked us to go there to explore a bit.

So we chose today afternoon to head down to take a look. Basically, it’s a kinda like a food fare- http://www.fhcchina.com/en/index1_10.html

But we were hungry so we went to eat at Super Brand Mall first.

Had Sushi and stuffed ourselves and it only cost RMB75 in total.

In the end we decided to heck care about our attire and cabbed down to Expo.

The good thing was that we were ushered in quickly and given passes without further questions asked (:

We were just in time for a talk about New Zealand’s wine and Kelvin Tay was there giving a speech. We sat in and displayed in front of us was 9 types of wine for us to taste.

In the end, I kept on eating the cheese they provided because it was so yummy!

The talk ended and we explored around ourselves. There was so much free food to take so YJ and I went around eating ice cream from different places!

In the end we saw a lot of chefs from our hotel because they were there for some event and they offered to go back together. We hopped onto their transportation and they brought us back to the hotel! Yay.

YJ and I walked back home and it was drama drama drama the moment we opened our door.

We quickly called the guy that came in the morning- quarreled with him for like 15mins but failed to make him bring back our heater.

Called our landlord and talked for another 15mins trying to reason out the cost and when he’ll get our heater and stove back.

And we found all our clean clothes ON THE FLOOR. Its super irritating I swear.
We have like NO water at our house now. Thank goodness we have JY and CF as our neighbor so we can go there to wash our face and bathe.

The drama of the “stolen” stove and heater will continue tomorrow…

I saw the most disgusting thing when we were leaving the gate of our apartment today.

A young guy (late 20s?) dressed in a suit was standing against the concrete wall- PEEING in public. Ugh, what an ugly sight.

He saw us staring and acted like he did no wrong. He left before we reached the gate out, so we saw the pee stains on the wall. Yucks. What a way to start my day.

Our eyes were on him when we stepped out of the gate. I think he's a chauffer of some company because he was driving an Audi and he had a name tag on his suit.

I think it's damn disgusting to pee in public, especially in broad daylight. It ain't the fist time I'm seeing this in Shanghai.

I don't know why in the world they think its okay to do that becase I've seen numerous guys pee at different places in the day and in the night as well. Okay, thank goodness I haven't seen any females do it.

And I see parents allowing their kids to do it as well! Ahh, this peeing thing is just damn wrong.

Okay, enough about the freedom to pee anywhere in Shanghai. We reached work a minute earlier today- 8.58am (:

I cleared up all my call arrivals for tomorrow and the day after already so I was left with nothing to do but suft the net filling my life with gossips from the other side of the world.

We didn't head out for lunch today and stayed in the canteen. Surprisingly, the food was not only edible, but more towards the "nice" side. We had lemon chicken and fish nuggets (:

Since we usually take about half an hour to eat, we had spare time so we went down to Yi Cafe to look for Angela and Joanne to kill time. They asked us to come back down at like 3pm becuse that's when the Cafe closes and then we can start eating pastry :P

Headed back up to the office and Angela called up shortly after so we went back down again. We ate brownies, fruit tarts and chocolate pastries. Omgzxz how in the world am I gonna lose weight if I'm forever stealing pastry from Yi Cafe.

Anws, its not like we're MIA-ing from the office for no reason. We finally gotten thru the line to the Engineering room so after stealing food we went downstairs to print the 5 days overdue reports (:

And I spent the rest of my time in the office gossiping with Han Loon on msn!

We left the office at 6.30pm and decided to walk to BBB instead of going home first because we know we'll get lazy and not want to get out of our house later.

Met JY on the way and we walked all the way to Food Inn for dinner. They ate at Papa Jones but I decided to skip dinner because I was still so full from all the pastry. Yes, I decided to give pizza a pass omg!

After eating it was only 8.30pm and all the roadside stalls wern't open yet so we headed to another mall to buy a hair dryer (:

It was almost time and we saw stalls setting up slowly. Our aim was to get our pull-overs but in the end we bought JC slacks because we bargained until it cost RMB30 a pair (original price was RMB78).

The funny thing was after buying the slacks, there was some spot check going on and we saw all the stall owners grabbing their stuff and running!

We found the pull-over stall and followed the guy all the way because we NEEDED to get those pull-overs. Hahaha.

It wasn't any cheaper though; same price as the last time we bought it- RMB45.

Finally, after procrastinating for so long we finally got our pull-overs. And I also bought another belt for RMB20 on the way back (:

I miss shopping!!

Anws, I did the most stupid thing ever. I went to bed at like 11pm, and I woke up feeling hungry so I went to cook Maggie Mee to eat before going to sleep again. I still can't believe I did that.

Somehow, we're forever reporting to work "on time". And what I mean by "on time" is that we tap our cards at the staff entrance at 8.59am (:

It takes us about 10mins to walk to the changing room and change and tie my hair and another 5mins to walk from the changing room up to RSVN's office so we'll reach the office at like 9.15am.

It doesn't make a difference though because I'll usually officially start work at 10am because I'll turn on the computer, visit the bathroom, get water and ask people to help me log on to Opera (:

I finished calling for arrivals for tomorrow before lunch but Nancy asked me to start calling for Thursday as well.

Had a call from YH and he said he bought food from Nan Jing so both of us headed down to BQT office. Oh boy, it's been a long time since we went down there. We ate Dragon Beard Candy and chatted with Tracy and June for like more than half an hour.

There was also chocolate cake from Gourmet so we ate that as well and it was so yummy!

After that we had no choice but to head upstairs because we just left w/o telling them where we went.

I had nothing to do already so I just surfed the net until lunch time (:

YH called to see if we wanted to join Goh and himself for lunch cuz they were going to BK. So, we went there for lunch w/o even looking at what was served in the canteen. After BK, Goh wanted a drink at Starbucks but because the seats outside were already full, we went for Haagen-Dazs instead (: Both meal and ice-cream was treated by Goh :D

We came back to the office at around 2.10pm and at 2.30pm Angela called us down to Yi Cafe's 400 for some meeting.

When we reached there, it wasn't regarding YJ and I because Hubert can't do anything about us :( The other 5 will get to rotate to other outlets coming next week.

So we just sat in the meeting until 3pm where all of us headed down to F&B office to look for Angeline because she was supposed to give us "training" for 1 hour.

Angeline's topic of the day was Marketing in the F&B sector for SLPU.

Come every Tuesday, we'll be having these little get-together sessions with different people of the hotel so that they can share with us what they do and give us more insights of how the whole hotel operates.

We went back to the office at 4pm and I did the callings for 15/11. The thought of not being able to switch departments and get rotated like the other 5 is really quite disheartening. I feel so "left out" just because it was Rice's instructions to send the both of us down to RSVN.

Work ended, Angela called- they were at Super Brand Mall so we met at Lotus for some grocery shopping (:

We bought like 20 small pears and other junk. Each of us also bought another pillow because it was like RMB12. And the 4 of us walked home- each carrying a pillow in our hands (:

We watched "Call for Love", it's something like Click but its the Chinese version (and it isn't as nice as Click).

Our plan of going down to BBB was pushed back again because JY wasn't home by the time we ended our movie and we were so lazy to go out.

Hopefully, we won't be lazy tmr because I so need to get one more sweater to sleep in.

Its the start of a new week again :(

And yes, I'm finally feeling the "Monday Blues".

Work was boring as usual. Today we had to do more shop calls- it's like every Monday and Friday we have to call 6 other hotels to ask for their room rates!

We're so sick and tired of asking the same thing every week and we're always (well, almost) getting the same rates when we call. So yeah, we're slacking off the job a little and you can't blame us :P

I did all the call arrivals today. It's not the first time I'm calling though because in the earlier weeks YJ and I would split the job. But today, the whole list of arrivals on 13/11 had 24 pages! OMG.

But, I didn't have to call every single one because some arrival times were already stated.

I bet my chinese will improve after these 2 weeks because I'm speaking in chinese whenever I call (except when I call overseas). And yeah, I called back to Singapore 3 times to ask for arrival time :D

Staff canteen lunch was yucks so YJ and I headed out to hunt for more food. MCD is selling 2 Peach Pies for RMB6. Way cheap! And you don't get Peach Pies in SG. Haha. 2 McWings cost only RMB6 too.

Our plan after work was to head down to Ba Bai Ban (or BBB for short) but since it was early we went home first. Watched "Dan in Real Life" but the quality sucked so we changed DVDs after 10mins and started watching "The Groomsmaid" and it was quite boring too so we didn't finish the DVD.

In the end we didn't head down to BBB cuz we were all quite sian already. Joanne and Angela came back from shopping at Qi Pu Lu! Omg, looking at the things they bought I'm so tempted to go shopping!

I've already not shopped for quite some time already. I've been working on the "save money" plan but I need more warm clothes for winter! Hahaha.

The day started off late today! I woke up at like 12pm?

Slacked around and we tried to do our multi-media project. Discussed for awhile, but in the end we ended up thinking of our overdue quotes for Mrs. Tan.

Oh, we also watched “Firehouse Dog”.

At around 4pm, JY, CF, YJ, Angela and I went out. Our initial plan was to go to Cheng Huang Miao to eat Xiao Long Bao for dinner.

Somehow, CF said Cheng Huang Miao was near Jing An Shi so we took the train to Jing An Shi MRT station.

We landed at Jing An Shi but the people said that Cheng Huang Miao was like about 1 hour away (walking distance).

So the 5 of us cabbed down to Cheng Huang Miao and when we reached there it was already dark.

We found the famous Xiao Long Bao place and the queue was freaking long! We queued for a total of 1 hour. But some of us walked around and we took turns queuing.

Since we were hungry, we went to buy snacks to eat. We bought Smelly Tou Fu, Takopachi and Sweet Potato!

Finally we had our Xiao Long Bao and ate along the streets. It’s nice to eat hot stuff out in the cold weather (:

We walked around for a bit and took photos! Too bad Angela’s camera had low batt so we had to use JY’s phone.

In the end we walked to the Bund to take the ferry home. Cheng Huang Miao is actually super duper near our place. Its like 1 straight road down from Cheng Huang Miao to the ferry place.

We took the RMB0.50 ferry back! Super duper cheap omg. And we walked home from Dong Chang Du Kou which was also super near our place.

The weather was freezing cold though. My coat and scarf wasn’t enough. My hands were freezing cold I regretted not bringing my gloves out!

Came home, settled money and watched “Shortcut to Happiness”.

I woke up at like 4pm today (:

I couldn’t stand the smoke smell still on me after bathing last night so I bathed again.

And I ate Myojo Tom Yum Maggie!! Flown all the way from Singapore (:

I’m super tired and my legs ache so I slacked the whole day at home.

Oh well, I did go out for awhile in my sleeping clothes (pull over, slacks and flip flops) to join YJ, JY and CF for dinner but I didn’t eat.

Somehow I didn’t have the appetite to eat for the past few days. I don’t know why too. And today after eating my Maggie Mee, I felt like puking and I puked water out.

Okay back to the going out part. So we just walked to KFC where they had dinner and then we walked to Jia De Li for some grocery shopping before walking back home. We were freezing cold because we were all wearing the same attire!

The sky was already pitch dark at 5.30pm lah, so I saw daylight for like an hour and a half?

Replies

KC: I can pass you the DVD when I come back in Feb? :D

Work was superbly boring today. It’s my last day doing GDS and entering the data into Opera.

I don’t know why Estella taught me how to enter the data into excel from the ACD reports we printed because ultimately she wanted Patrick to do the job.

So in the end I had to teach Patrick how to key in the data and that stupid excel file takes like 5 mins to open.

I’m so not looking forward to the next 2 weeks because I’ll be switching jobs with YJ. She’ll be doing the GDS data entry while I’ll be doing the callings for arrival time.

Oh, did I mention 2 days ago when I came home I found all our clothes we hanged on the clothes rack on the floor? Apparently the clothes rack gave way and broke! It must have been the weight of our coats and stuff.

So today after work YJ and I headed to Lotus for some grocery shopping. We bought another clothes rack (hopefully it’ll last us for the rest of our attachment), water and fruits.

And we missed the shuttle bus by 2 mins! Damn. In the end we had to cab home because the stuff we bought was way too heavy to carry and walk home.

We reached home at around 7pm; I napped for awhile until about 10pm before Joanne, YJ, JY and I headed out.

Our initial plan was to go to G+ at Xin Tian Di because we heard it was quite happening there. We took a train down, found the place and realized that we had to pay RMB50 for an admission ticket only.

Not wanting to pay, we decided to go somewhere else. All the other pubs along Xin Tian Di was so not our kind so they wanted to head back to Face Bar but it was already full and there were no more tables.

We heard that Baby Face was not bad a club so we cabbed down there instead. It was like 5 mins away from Xin Tian Di so the cab fare was only RMB14.

We reached at around 11.30pm and the club was packed. There was no admission fee and we could chuck our bags at the baggage area.

At first, it felt so wrong because the whole area was damn messy and we didn’t have a table. So we practically walked round and round. We went to the first dance floor and the music was so wrong but somehow the people there could still dance and get high.

The other dance floor was no better; techno. In the end we stood around and bumped into some Singaporeans and they treated us to drinks.

We left their table after awhile and went to the bar counter to get our own drinks (RMB40 per drink) and after that we headed to the techno dance floor and anyhow danced. Hahaha.

After that we headed back to the first dance floor and the music got better so we spent the whole night there dancing. We met more Singaporeans on the dance floor too.

In the end we left at around 3.30am and cabbed back. The cab fare was only RMB20, damn cheap can.

So in total each of us spent like around RMB50 for the whole night to club, way cheaper than Singapore because the cab fare home can easily cost SGD20.

We had to take turns to bathe so I ended up sleeping at 5.30am?

Omg it’s my 70th day here in Shanghai already!!

Back to work today. It was boring as usual.

There wasn’t much to do so I did my GDS super duper slowly so that I wouldn’t have a lot of free time. But in the end, I could still read gossip blogs, play online games, check emails and all.

The weather was rather warm today, it sort of increased than decrease. But hopefully it’ll slowly decrease because it’s supposed to be winter!

Oh, 2 Singaporean’s working in the hotel wanted to meet all 7 of us at Yi Café’s no. 400.

At first we didn’t know who wanted to meet us but when we saw them, we realized that it was someone we met on the first day.

The 2 guys are of quite high management position at the hotel and they were so nice to us. They gave us a feeling that they sincerely wanted our remaining time in Shanghai to be filled with activities so that we’ll learn the most out of this whole trip.

We had quite a long meeting with them, about an hour and a half and hopefully they will be able to get YJ and I out of reservations and put us somewhere more interesting.

But then again, I don’t know where I wanna go. I’m still quite directionless and aimless of what I want to do in the future.

After work we went over to Citi Tower to help CF and JY buy Subway and amazingly YJ and I didn’t get ourselves any! My first step to saving money and losing weight (:

Came home and we watched “No Reservations”.

Finally, tomorrow is the last day of work before the weekends!

Replies

KC: Don't worry. I'm working on the "saving money" thing like now! Hahaha.

I went on a Shanghai tour today because I followed Jun Wei’s tour! :D

Nancy was kind enough to let me take off because I’ve already accumulated more than 8hours of OT. Haha.

After eating at the hotel’s buffet breakfast, the coach set out for a place called Tong Ren Tang.

There was free foot massage for all but since I was in tights, I decided to give it a pass because taking it out was way too troublesome.

We then had lunch at that place where they served food that had herbs in them and then we went to the tour guide’s friend’s house to look at fake branded goods.

Surprisingly no one bought anything from there, so we left for Qi Pu Lu!

They were only given an hour and a half to shop around so we walked around and in the end they bought watches and a bag. I so didn’t want to buy anything because I’m feeling super duper broke already.

Their next stop was Nan Jing Road. We walked around Bu Xing Jie and in the end; we had early dinner at this western restaurant. The food’s not bad and reasonably priced too!

There wasn’t much walking afterwards so we practically slacked at the meeting area and waited until 8pm where their coach was supposed to come to pick them up to the airport.

I took my stuff (the stuff that I asked my mum to pack for me) and bided them goodbye! Oh how I wish I could take the plane back to Singapore too :(

But anyhoo, I’ve finally gotten the stuff I wanted from Singapore! A pity I didn't get the chance to pass Jun Wei the stuff I wanted to bring back. I guess it’ll be sitting at my apartment until the day I go home...

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KC: RMB3000 is my entire pay! Can't pass you everything because I need to pay for necessities such as rent, groceries, transport etc. Hahaha.

Rachel: Woo! Congrats girl! :D I'm surviving. Will be back in Feb 08!

YJ and I wanted to take photos and videos of what's going on downstairs our house in the morning but, there wern't any live chickens on sale! :(

We so need to wait and wait until they start making the streets look like a wet market again. And so far, our multimedia project is still untouched :/

At around 10am YH called us saying there was leftover food in DaLian Room so YJ and I went downstairs to eat! :D There were muffins, banana cake, American breakfast, pancakes, fruits and watermelon juice (:

I think we were seriously crazy. The moment we heard there was food we rushed downstairs. Hahaha. And our excuse was to collect some notes from Hubert (which was true, but we only knew it when we met YH).

YJ and I left 15mins earlier today because there was seriously nothing to do!

We then went to Lu Jia Zhui MRT station to meet Joanne because we wanted to eat Singaporean food!!

Took the train to some MRT station but in the end it was the wrong stop so we had to cab down to Parkson Mall.

The placed we dined at is called CrossRoads. It’s a place that sells most of Singaporean cuisine.

We ordered Mee Goreng, Nasi Lemak, Tauhu Goreng and Curry Chicken!! Yummy yummy Singaporean food!

Finally my craving for some Singaporean food has been satisfied. Although it isn’t as good as the authentic ones, I guess we’ll just have to make do with this. The price was quite reasonable too. About SGD6 for a bowl of Laksa?

We were so full after stuffing ourselves we decided to take a walk around where we were. I think we somehow walked into the super rich district (somewhat like Singapore’s Sixth Avenue) and the shopping there is so different.

The style of the clothes were way different that what we’ve seen and of course, the price. A normal top can cost like RMB500.

After walking around, we decided to take the train back to Dong Chang MRT station.

When I reached, Jun Wei was already at the interchange so I waited for them at the train station because they wanted to walk the night market at my area.

Yup, the long awaited tour has finally made its stop in Shanghai! I met him, his mum, 2 aunts, uncle, grandma and baby cousin and also another family of 4 that was on the same tour with them.

I accompanied them for awhile along the streets before heading home to get my stuff because I wanted to stay over at their hotel otherwise I’d have to wake up super early tomorrow and travel all the way there.

In the end, we missed the last train to their hotel so we cabbed there and I slept over.

Today's just not my day.

I think it rained last night so our quilt cover was soaked in the rain and I doubt it'll be dry by tonight so most prolly we're gonna sleep without it again.

Although we left our house earlier than usual, we still reached the office at 9.10am. Why?

Because when I was about to go into the staff entrance, I had to tap my card. And guess what?

KIM FORGOT TO BRING HER CARD AND KEYS OUT.

I was cursing and swearing already because I had to like pay RMB20 to borrow an extra set of my locker keys from the HR dept.

But then, I realized that I had EVERYTHING I needed. I sent my uniform for washing on Friday so I can just collect it from the laundry, I was already wearing my stockings and I could borrow the hair net from YJ because her hair is short now. I was so happy that I could just borrow YJ's locker for the day...

BUT; yes the but word. MY SHOES ARE INSIDE MY LOCKER!

Damn it. That's the only thing that I can't borrow! I thought of wearing my boots upstairs but it seemed like a crazy idea. So yeah, I wasted RMB20 just to retrieve my shoes! Wth. I totally felt like banging my head against the wall.

The only thing good that happened at work was the number of GDS forms they gave me in the morning. Less than 20 (: Sweet.

But we did more shop calls first and when I finished my GDS I helped YJ do some callings and I got damn pissed by some woman because she was so unreasonable and rude. I wasn't in the best of moods so I just cut her call (:

Another bad thing happened. A super VIP member of the hotel didn't get picked-up at the airport because the email wasn't read properly and the data wasn't keyed into Opera. It's like damn serious I think because he's a VIP and Rice is handling the situation: /

Although it wasn't entirly our fault, but still. Maybe we should be sent back to BQT so there'll be less screw ups :P

We slacked around (reading blogs, playing online games) for like 2 hours before YH called us and asked if we wanted to go to BK for lunch.

So we went to find him and Cherry & Goh were there too. Lunched for 1hour before heading back and I tried to download msn messenger but instead I could use windows live msn so yay! I can finally be online when I'm at work now (:

After work YJ and I went over to Super Brand Mall to look for Joanne. Walked around for a bit before cabbing home (:

And I’ve bee watching Jeff Dunham on youtube. It’s so amusing!

Replies

KC: Cant! I need money to survive! HAHAHA.

I was woken up at around 10.30am today because we needed to wash our bed sheets.

It’s such a chore to take out all the sheet covers and pillow case covers. Our washing machine wasn’t big enough to contain all the stuff we needed to wash so we went over to JY’s to borrow their washing machine (:

And without a doubt, there wasn’t enough space to hang all the stuff outside to dry. So we used our clothes rack for the huge bed sheet and left the other one aside to be hung out later.

Angela, YJ, JY and I then cabbed down to Super Brand Mall because YJ and JY had a hair cut appointment and Angela and I went SHOPPING!

We spent most of our time at H&M and I bought RMB800 worth of tops, a pair of gloves and a bag.

We then headed to the bank and Watsons before going up to some restaurant for Dim Sum.

Soon enough, the 2 were done with their hair cut and joined us. We ordered pigeons and the usual Dim Sum stuff.

JY then left to meet CF to go collect their custom-made coats while we went to H&M again cuz YJ wanted to shop and we needed to get fa piao’s for JY.

I ended up buying another jacket which cost RMB250. So in total I spent close to RMB1000 in H&M.

I know I need to stop shopping like that. I’m so going broke soon.

The rest of the people headed to eat Sheng Jian Bao but I didn’t go because I was still so full.

Our landlord came over to collect our 1 month overdue rent and also to pass us more hangers for our clothes.

And after that they called me and they were at Dong Chang MRT station. So I headed down to walk along the streets and I shopped AGAIN. OMG!!!

I bought like 2 belts and a sweater to sleep in. It’s considered very little already! I know I know, I need to stop spending money.

Replies

KC: I can't help it. HELP!

Despite it being my off day, I still had to wake up early (well, at least 2 hours later than my normal working days).

I walked all the way down to Super Brand Mall because I had an appointment with Toni & Guy Academy to get a hair cut!

The best part- it’s for FREE.

Although my hair was being cut by a trainee, it wasn’t bad at all. We were inside this room where all the trainees were and there were also professionals there to make sure they didn’t ruin our hair.

The guy that cut my hair was quite cute! He was so random most of the time I didn’t bother to answer his comments. The whole hair cut took like 1 and a half hours.

They drew some stuff on the mirror indicating how to cut the hair and how many degrees the cut should be etc etc. It was quite interesting to see how they learn to be professional hair dressers.

So yeah, my hair’s short now- not that short, but until my neck bone.

After my hair cut, I met YJ and JY for lunch at that Korean restaurant. We then cabbed down to Qi Pu Lu and the stupid cab driver drove us in circles and our total cab fare was RMB25 (when we cabbed back from Qi Pu Lu last time it only cost us RMB15).

We called to complain but somehow it didn’t work.

Shopping was crazy today. Not like we bought a lot of things, but there were so many people there! We couldn’t walk properly and so many people were squeezing inside the mall.

It was so hard to shop but we didn’t come back empty handed (: I bought like 2 pairs of boots, 1 top and 1 coat.

Walking back to the MRT station was such a challenge too because our garbage bags kept on tearing and there were so many times our stuff almost falled out! So, we had to hug the garbage bags and walk to the train station and thankfully we reached home without dropping any thing.

We wanted to wake up 15mins earlier today to head to the bank to deposit money before heading to work but our plan failed. Not because we woke up late, but because we didn't bother rushing to get out of the house earlier :P To make things worse, we we're 10mins late for work. Haha.

I blame it on the weather; we need to wear thicker clothes and wearing it and then taking it all off to change into our uniform takes more time you see.

I thought today I'd be doing GDS only, but when we were doing shop calls, Nancy asked me to do callings for Sat, Sun and Mon while YJ called Wed and Thurs because occupancy is expected to be freaking high.

I hate doing call arrivals. Oh, we took some videos of us at work for our multi-media project (: We're working on it, slowly.

So, I spent the whole morning calling and calling. Finally it was lunch time and YJ and I headed to the staff canteen to eat (we brought money just in case the food wasn't to our liking).

Food was quite okay though, so we ate there. But, after eating we were still not full! We headed over to Super Brand Mall after that to look for more food. We settled for large fries and 2 pineapple pies @ Macs (:

Soon enough, we won't be able to go out of the hotel to eat because of the weather. It's way too cold to be dressed in a suit only and walk across to the mall.

I came back and finished all the call arrivals. I was given a thick stack of GDS bookings in the morning so I finished that up too. Although we're quite occupied with work, I don't like facing the computer for such long hours :( My eyes hurt.

So I was like typing in the GDS bookings and stoning when YJ received a call from Joanne. Guess who she saw at the hotel?

LOUIS KOO.

We so made an excuse to go out of the office to print the reports and off we headed to Shenyang Room to see if we could get a glimpse of him.

The doors were shut, and the BQT staff said we couldn't go in :( He's here for some event today and there's outside catering near the Bund. But, they don't allow female staff to work! How unfair.

We hung around for awhile and the doors opened twice because someone walked out of the room. We saw him sitting down inside. And finally, the whole group of them walked out of the room and he walked past us. He's not as tall as he seems to be. And we couldn't take photos with him.

That was the end of the whole celebrity saga and we headed up again so I could complete yet another stack (thinner this time round) of GDS bookings before ending work.

Our initial plan was to go home first because my leggings were loose and YJ’s feet hurt from her boots. But then we got lazy because the MRT station was just next to our hotel and we didn’t want to walk for like 20mins home to change before going out again.

So we met JY at Nan Jing Dong MRT station and walked around Nan Jing Road. We didn’t do much shopping because things are expensive there.

We got hungry and ate at Da Niang Jiao Zi and walked around some more. Saw Bread Talk and bought bread to eat (:

We walked the whole stretch of Nan Jing Road but didn’t buy a single thing. Raffles Place was just nearby so we decided to go there.

The shopping mall feel’s so much like Singapore! Food court at the basement and top floor and brands such as Mango, Fox, Aldo etc etc.

Again, we didn’t buy anything but we headed right to the top and ordered dessert (: It was something similar to ice kachang but not that similar.

Our plan was to take the RMB2 ferry back to Pudong but I think it was a half an hour walk so we decided to forget it and take the train instead because the train station was just THERE.

Finally, 1 week has gone by and being stuck in Reservations doing GDS is so boring. I’m only looking forward to weekends now.

Lets not talk about work today because it's so routined :(

Anyhoo I tried to call KC and freaked him out at his office in the morning :P I also tried calling Karen when it was like 3am at her side but I couldn't get through.

The food at the canteen sucked today so we decided to eat out. YH, YJ and I walked out in the cold weather all the way to Citi Tower to buy SUBWAY! The bad thing is that it's only take away there so we had to walk all the way back to the hotel immediately. I swear it was freezing cold.

We headed next to the BQT office's meeting room to eat our lunch before going back up to work again.

There was a fire drill in the hotel today but we people in the RSV dept didn't know anything about it! Not fun.

I finished up all the GDS bookings they gave me and had nothing else to do. Helped YJ send some emails, did some call arrivals and I was free.

Thank goodness for the internet because I was reading gossip blogs, garfield comic strips and playing tetris (:

After work we met Joanne and Angela to eat in the staff canteen. We decided to take the 7pm shuttle bus home because the weather was too cold to walk for 20mins.

Saw Maxim outside and killed time by chatting with him until it was time for us to take the shuttle.

YJ and I then went out with JY and CF to Ba Bai Ban to shop because JY wanted to get boots.

We left the house at around 8pm and the first thing we did was to buy ice cream to eat in the cold weather! Walked down and it was super quiet- barely any stores were opened.

We walked to and fro the streets for like 4 times before the stores started opening slowly. Compared to last time, it's considered little. But, I still managed to get myself a bag, wallet, socks and leggings.

Everytime we walk the streets, I'll never fail to buy at least something :P

We headed back and sat downstairs our house to eat shao kao! Damn, I think I'm addicted to it already and I'm always ordering the same thing. It's super cheap too. RMB1 per stick (2o cents SGD; cheaper than satay lah!).

JY then came over to our place to settle money and we gossiped all the way until we fell asleep :P

Replies

KC: Why?! Sometimes, you'll just get so sick of the food you're eating and Maggie Mee feels like the nicest thing on earth.