It’s my off day again! I don’t know why I’m forever getting off days so often. Haha.

Just as I mentioned yesterday, I had a date with the Singaporean ladies I met at Jade yesterday night. Angela and YJ were supposed to go with me but they were lazy and tired so in the end I went alone.

The initial plan was to meet them at Nan Jing MRT station at 12pm. I didn’t know Angela didn’t take down their numbers yesterday when they were asking for our numbers because I was busy speaking to other guests.

So yeah, they could contact me but I couldn’t contact them. I waited for like half an hour and still no sight of them. Shortly after that I received an sms from Sally saying that they’ll reach only at like 1.30pm.

I went to lunch at Macs and walked around. Sat myself in the middle of Bu Xing Jie and just people watched. I know its weird to say this, but I sort of like sitting alone in the busy streets watching people go by. Especially in the cold weather because you wouldn’t get frustrated by the heat. I think it’d be much better if I wasn’t in China but in some European or American country.

In the end I met them at some shopping mall and it was already 3pm. They were like damn late and I waited for 3 hours.

Since there were like 300 odd of Singaporeans from Prudential at Bu Xing Jie, I bumped into so many of them and I also met the CEO (with his wife and son) of Prudential!

There were more familiar faces I met because they went up to Jade yesterday.

In the end I brought Sally, Dorine, Esther and Catherine down to Qi Pu Lu to shop. It was a little weird at first trying to help them get used to that kind of shopping experience but after awhile all was fine.

They decided to follow the people that kept pestering us and it turned out that they were pretty nice. They looked out for us because we were in different shops and they helped them to bargain for the things they wanted. I don’t know if it’s the lowest prices they got their stuff for but they seemed happy with their purchases.

They were done shopping by like 6.30pm and had to go back to Shangri-la because they had a banquet dinner. And because we had 5 of us, we couldn’t take 1 cab so we took the illegal van instead!

I followed them back to the hotel and wanted to bid farewell but they said they wanted to treat me to drinks after their dinner so I thought I’d go home first and then meet them. But they needed to go up to their room to chuck their stuff and change so they invited me up for a rest as well.

I took the opportunity to have a look at their room and they were so sweet they made Milo for me. I haven’t drunk Milo since the day I came here lah! Haha.

I called Joanne cuz I knew she was working and she came up to their room to have a look too.

Then we followed them down to Chang An Hall (where their dinner was at) and Esther wanted me to join them for dinner! She asked me to wait outside first and then I saw Goh at the bar counter alone so I offered to help him open drinks to give to the Banquet staff.

After doing that for awhile, Esther came out again and dragged me into the room and she said I could join them for dinner!

I felt super out of place at first because this dinner was for all Prudential staff that met their quota and I was neither a Prudential staff nor someone that sells insurance to hit their target.


Dinner was an 11 course Chinese set. I was praying so hard that none of the banquet staff could recognize me or seeing Goh around when I was sitting down eating.

But overall I enjoyed the dinner because the people I sat with are really nice. Imagine sitting inside a hall filled with Singaporeans! Suddenly it felt like I was back in Singapore.

There were also performances during the dinner and what I enjoyed most was the informality of the whole event. After the dinner, people just stood around chatting with one another and I bumped into these 2 guys I met at Jade last night.

So I started chatting with them too and after the whole night I got quite a number of name cards from them so I think if I wanna buy insurance in the future I’ll have a lot of people to look for. Haha.

I was also introduced to the second biggest guy of the company and we chatted up a bit. It somehow felt like networking but I don’t think so. I was just telling them about my experience here, what I do, what I study back in Singapore etc etc.

We went up to the hotel room again because they wanted to change and then we cabbed down to Xin Tian Di. And yes, a lot of Singaporeans were there too.

In the end we sat at Luna and ordered drinks and Nachos and just chatted. We left the place at around 12.30am. Esther and Catherine went back to the hotel so I bid farewell to them because they were going to go to Hang Zhou and Su Zhou the next day.

Dorine and Sally wanted foot massage so 3 of us cabbed to my place and we did our foot massage (: And again, we bumped into more Singaporeans at the massage parlor!

Dorine was real sweet she treated me to my massage and also bought a jacket for me at Qi Pu Lu. She bought herself the exact same jacket in a different colour.

I really enjoyed their company and it’s so weird because I usually don’t open up to people that easily.

The 300+ of them will be leaving back for Singapore tomorrow and I heard that another 300+ are coming in again.

Meeting them really made me miss home a bit because they are all so similar to my aunties. But its okay, I have less than a month before it’s my turn to take the plane back home (: