Clearly I’ve never known of the hassle that comes attached with the beautiful picture depicted by “WINTER” until I started shopping for appropriate clothes, and then deciding what exactly to wear is altogether a different issue. Due to my non-existent fashion sense, I painstakingly mixed and matched them, noting down so I would be at least a mile away from becoming a walking fashion disaster on the streets of ZOMG Japan.

First of the many firsts of this year (oh, did I mention we are ALL freaking celebrating our twenty firsts?): a holiday trip with the family to Nagoya and Osaka during winter from Jan 15-22. Is this too awesome or what??

I know it’s been long overdue – one year, spell y.e.a.r – the concert report for the finale of AAA 08 in Shanghai, but heck! Without finishing it, I’ll owe myself another one *with a kazillion and satozillion moments worth spazzing about*, that is Arashi’s 5×10 Anniversary concert in Nagoya Dome~~~~~~!!! Finale show :D This is so thrilling – the mental image of meeting them upfront again in Jappoland – that I might just pass out from an Arashi overdose at the concert XD

So far things are looking good; I’ve recovered from my bout of illnesses and more than ready to embrace the chilly winds (and snow? pretty please??); my packing is almost done and I’m only missing several items like a new wallet and a light coloured scarf; I got new brown coloured contacts today when I went to have my eyes checked, etc. Yet the itinerary is still undone. Omg.

Hello!Japan in about 24 hours :)

The whole bunch of us from IMD have been going out very often lately; birthday celebrations, airport-ing, catching movies, having meals together, and of course TRIPPING. 2009 might just be the year we hang out the most often outside of school :) Never had I expected that, after our Bintan trip last month we would be going on yet ANOTHER trip to the beach so soon with all 9 of the Bintan people including myself. The destination this time round will be Tioman, mainly because the guys are going scuba diving (they’ll be going for the advanced open water course after which they will be awarded a certificate), while the girls will snorkel. Booked today, thanks to Justin!

I also wanted to learn diving, but it’s not as though I would state that without any fears. Diving is even more dangerous than being in a plane, or so my dad claimed, and I must agree that any emergency situations that might happen deep under water are indisputably harder to handle alone. In the case of accidental choking on water, whether you surface quickly gasping for air or risk drowning for the fear of the nitrogen in your blood, either way you would have to face consequences. The more I imagine, the more it makes my head spin.. So right now I’m convinced by my dad’s decision of not allowing me to scuba dive. Anyway, I can’t swim for nuts so I won’t want to be the only idiot causing trouble during the trip.

Snorkeling with the rest of the girls sounds like a very good idea after all. I’m thinking of underwater photography :D Here’s a recap of the wonderful Bintan trip from 23rd to 25th June at Angsoka Villa Resort with the most awesome group… ^_^

This, feels more like blogging. :)
Tioman, 17-19 August! Beyond that, maybe even Hong Kong or Taiwan hehe.

You must be wondering why I am taking forever to write this concert report.. but all I can explain to you is, AAA was overwhelming and even words alone can’t describe how fabulous the concert was =) oh yes besides that I was busy to death in school.. Everytime I recall about the concert, there’s always something fresh that sticks out from my memory and I guess this is what you call unforgettable ;)

15 November – Concert Day 1

As I was saying, the Satoshi智 and Masa雅(ki)… uchiwas took hours to make from the uchiwa ribs I got from daiso. Having not owned one in my life, they ended up in the wrong size as compared to the official ones which are larger, I realised only afterwards. Despite the silly mistake, I think the Ohno one is still cute hehe, and I had fun lining the silver ribbon for the border and wrapping it around the handle and taping the end with black tape. It was like… a magic wand! XD

We arrived at the concert venue, Shanghai Grand Stage (also known as the 上海大舞台) at 230pm after the effing cab driver took us on a huge incredible detour on a highway thinking we were stupid tourists. What could have been a 30rmb fare amounted to a whopping 65rmb, thank you very much idiot! Still, we had to walk a long way and cross the road in order to enter the premises.

The first thing anyone would notice would be the gruff-looking middle aged China men (and probably some women) lingering around, watching, TICKETS and 100rmb notes in both hands, asking passerbys if they had tickets to sell or if they needed any. I so rolled my eyes at the sight of them. If there were rows and rows of empty seats during the concerts (there WERE, in fact, which was very sad), it would definitely be because of these despicable scalpers (and definitely superdome).

There were also temporary and pretty much illegal stalls laid out along the stretch of path, selling Arashi merchandise like A3 posters mounted on boards, keychains, mini uchiwas, mousepads, badges etc. which I didn’t really bother about. Afterall, I was going for the official goods wasn’t I?

Further down, I spotted the AAA sign from afar, wondering if it was a truck selling the concert goods lol. As I went nearer, my heart sank a mile – the QUEUE! There was absolutely NO END to it even though it was still 5 hours before the concert. Bracing myself, I immediately wasted no time by joining the queue and began on a long internal conflict on what to buy and what not to buy, since my budget was 1000rmb, and it’s not even enough for one piece of every item available.

Directly in front and behind me in the queue were China fans, I could tell immediately when they spoke. Not surprisingly, nearly half the people I saw were Japanese, the other half probably Chinese and Korean, besides a couple of Malay fans near the queue. There were probably more, as well as many fans from the Philippines (I talked to two of them online recently and they came for the concert in SH too!) and so on. During the entire two days, I didn’t spot or overhear a single Singaporean =/ owww.

While I stood in the queue, I asked my mum to walk around the vicinity and shoot some pictures. This is what I never got to see: the ticketing booth at the other side of the stadium. If you look closely, the dark purple posters with the golden A logo printed on them look so pretty! I would rather they make it gold too for the merchandise, instead of bright yellow.

Queueing.. I was prepared to queue even up till the time the concert starts, but of course I was hoping and hoping I wouldn’t miss ANY part of the concert at all because of the goods. The atmosphere was incredible; suddenly you SEE and realise the whole world of females is in love with Arashi just like you. And I would see fangirls walking past holding uchiwas of the member they support, you wouldn’t miss it because the uchiwa size is rather large and their photos appeared to be live sized.

At a point of time I noticed some people in the queue were taking photos, holding their cameras above their heads. Curious, I glanced around and saw random people holding up and displaying their own uchiwas for others to take picture of. It’s really fun! Especially when you had an uchiwa that said where you are from, or what you wanted a particular member to do. In this case, they had the ohmiya uchiwas asking Nino to do a trick and Ohno to pretend to fish or something.

Parallel to the queue, many can be seen sitting down waiting, or resting to take turns with a friend to queue.

Ticket scalpers came around very often and were extremely annoying! I heard that some of the fans bought tickets and they turned out to be fake, either that or they received a bunch of fake 100yuan notes for the unwanted tickets they sold to scalpers. =( That’s just too sad. Besides tickets, some scalpers also went around with a big sling bag selling binoculars. I guess you know why binos are important for a concert if you are not seated close to the stage.

My mum happened to be near the queue when one of them walked by. So we casually asked about the price of the one he’s holding, which looked kind of small like a toy. He said 50yuan ($10) for this and a much higher price for another pair of bigger binoculars. The first thing that came to my mind was that we could probably get the other pair for 50yuan or less. Being thick skinned, and from what I learned about bargaining while shopping at “七普路” (a cheap shopping district), I acted like I didn’t care and commented “哈？？太贵了，不要。那个大的50元才差不多..” He said OK and I went like *damn I should have quoted a lower price la!* I kind of hesitated, pretended to test the binos and kept doubting if it really worked. Of course he was trying hard to convince me. I even said something like “这哪里可以拉近?? 怎么那颜色怪怪的!…” I hated bargaining while shopping because it was a -total- waste of time but then again, hah, we had loads of time to spare anyway. In the end I stupidly purchased it at 50yuan, AND THEN that bastard immediately took out an even bigger and *seemingly better* pair of binoculars and announced its price and went round parading again. WTH WAS THAT!

That aside. The sky began to dim at around 5pm because of the weather change. When we were there in October the sky was totally dark by 6pm. And hence it made it seem like those of us who were still queueing were damn late, as though the concert was gonna start right away. You have no idea how many million times my heartbeat accelerated that day at the thought of being able to see Arashi in person.

I thought I was really near the end of the queue when there were just two lanes to clear. But it took like one hour to get there. It was 6.30pm by the time I got to the stalls, 4 hours since I began queueing. My back and shoulders ached like never before, fwahhhh!

Concert goods include phamplet, individual member posters, group poster, member uchiwas, member/group clear A4 files, eco bag, concert T-shirts (in 2 colours), stickers, member/group photosets, towel, penlight and poncho (yes because the concerts held in Japan had a lot of water effects).

Prior to this, we were handed pink order slips to specify the number of items and calculate the total price before handing it to the cashier. Beyond the counter was a total mess, the goods came in boxes and were labelled according to member names, and there were people constantly replenishing the stuff. I was very tempted to buy posters! The colourful tubes looked so yummy hahaha. But I only bought two concert pamplets ($30), all 5 uchiwas ($10 each), a purple T-shirt ($35) and a penlight ($20+, last on my list because I was thinking of striking it out in case I ran out of cash, BUT LUCKILY I BOUGHT IT OMG you’ll see why later).

As though queueing for goods wasn’t enough.. we had to queue to get into the stadium too. Near the concert goods stalls was the main entrance for the arena. Since my ticket was for the balcony area I got my mum to queue at another entrance and I rushed there after buying the stuff. She was halfway up the flight of stairs and then we began taking some photos with our uchiwas. It was about 7pm, they tore our ticket stubs and scanned the barcode (wow I never knew that) before letting us in.

Nervous!! We found our way to the correct entrance, covered by maroon curtains, and then we got past that. ENTER!! OMG OMG! We were inside the stadium! A group of fans who went in ahead of me also started squealing in excitement lol. The lights were really bright but there was a misty effect which made the atmosphere REALLY REALLY SURREAL. And the stage the stage! It was beeaaaautiful omg! きれいだった！

I honestly expected the interior to be much bigger and our seats to be really far away from the stage. But damn I was so wrong; our view was marvellous! I couldn’t believe how close we were, when I imagined the size of stadiums and domes in Japan. COSY! From here (area 5, row 10), we had a good view of the whole arena and the areas above. The fans had a yellow banner put up, saying in both Japanese and Mandarin “It is great to meet Arashi!”. The distance from the stage was so much smaller than the seats in area 8 and 11, directly opposite the stage. Of course they had the centre view but I just felt that it’s so far away haha.

どきどき！As I bade for 7.30pm to come, the heart attacks came even stronger than ever! I can’t even describe, like the feeling of having butterflies in your stomach, having your face flush as though it’s on fire, feeling light-headed… SUPER HIGH TENSION NE~ Which to me, in other words, also refers to = toilet. The queue (yet again) was incredibly long for both male and female, however only females were in the queue LOL. Seated on my left were two Korean fans I believe, the one directly beside was an MJ fan, and on my mum’s right was a.. Jappo fan? The row behind us consisted of mostly Japanese fans! And they had guards stationed at every corner to make sure we behaved hehe, hence no fancam =X

I guess I must be a ultra noob fangirl, or something, because so far the only concerts I’ve watched were Suppin’ Arashi (2001) and How’s It Going (2003), not even the recent ones! I should really smack myself on the head for not having a single idea of WHAT TO EXPECT in an Arashi con. What I knew was, 1) they start exactly on time; 2) I was going to lose my voice; and 3) it WILL be spectacular (but I hoped they weren’t gonna have cheesy costumes LOL like the one for La Tormenta 2006 in Taiwan) 10 minutes to 7.30pm… then suddenly this loud warning sounded, we were like WHAT WHAT THEY STARTING ALREADY? It turned out to be a false alarm T___T it was for the warning of not to video or photograph the concert haha =P. It happened TRICE. もう..勘弁してよ！ *heartattack X 3* (just bear in mind that I’m such a noob and new to this hahaha then you won’t think everything I’m writing here sounds overly exagerrated…本当の気持ちだよ！)

AND THEN. AT 1930, THE LIGHTS WENT OFF, EVERYBODY STOOD UP IMMEDIATELY HOLDING THEIR PENLIGHTS AND UCHIWAS, AND THERE WAS THIS SERIES OF SOUND THAT SOUNDED LIKE HEARTBEATS. EVERYONE WAS SCREAMING.

The projection on the stage showed the title of the AAA tour, the map of Tokyo (september) and several shots of the concert venue and show, followed by Taiwan (october), Seoul (early november) and then when the map changed to Shanghai, there was even live footage of some of the audience at the front! HIGH TENSION & CALLING FOR ARASHI!! THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN MUSIC FOR “LOVE SO SWEET” PLAYED, AND ARASHI APPEARED. I didn’t know where or how but they just did. They wore the stripey black and white and neon yellow costumes which looked really nice!

So there for the first time, Ohno Satoshi, Sakurai Sho, Aiba Masaki, Matsumoto Jun and Ninomiya Kazunari were singing and dancing right there in front ZOMG it’s 3D and LIVE, not in the youtube video clips I watch! Waving madly, and screaming, we all were cause we couldn’t hold back the excitement anymore! My mum totally went on and on commenting about how awesome it was hahahaha, guess she was just about as high as I was. And they were in great shape, 元気だった, all of Arashi! I guess from here I’m gonna end all my sentences with an exclamation mark! Ah!

After a couple of songs, they came forward and greeted the audience and introduced themselves in mandarin on the T stage! Or rather, funny sounding mandarin if you get what I mean. And they also spoke a bit of Shanghai dialect each! Forget the time I lived there, it was difficult to figure out at once, plus from the way they spoke it lol. Well, the only phrase I understood was “wo ae nong 我爱侬” (I love you). MJMJMJ :D

All of their costumes are <3 rabu! They were all well designed and the colours and accessories were matching to the songs they sang! The stage design and other effects were also jaw-dropping and very dynamic! During different songs they would either be on the elevated main stage, the main stage, spread out to the sides, on the T stage or on the elevated T stage! They seemed to spread out and walk to the sides alot, so the fans at both ends of the arena as well as the lower balcony got to see the members UP CLOSE OMG. VERY EXCITING! Of course my binos came in very handy and I would use it when they're singing the slower songs and simple stare into their faces haha. It’s a very queer feeling, different from watching them directly like this. The binos acted like a zoom and focus lens, so I could see their movements and faces on the T stage clearly while the back (the audience) would be blurred.

I couldn’t make up my mind (yes because it was in a total state of overwhelming awe) what to do.. like whether to remember the set list of songs, take note of the details of the stage design, stare at my ichiban *COUGHOHCHANCOUGH* for the whole concert or I don’t know.. So for the whole concert my eyes kind of subconsciously followed Ohno around a lot (he looked EXTREMELY EXTREMELY CUTE WITH THAT ROUND BABY FACE OF HIS AFTER GAINING BACK WEIGHT AFTER MAOU ENDED AND HE’S JUST TOO ADORABLE AND SMALL LIKE NINO HAHA) but I was too busy to remember where the backdancers were, what they wore, the effects in detail, how many times each member came by this side of the stage to wave and provide fanservice haha (but I vividly remember the moments! sweet!) and eventually lost track of the order of the songs BECAUSE I was too engrossed in singing along, busy with holding up my uchiwa and changing it to the penlight and vice-versa, busy rapping together with Sho, busy waving at them, busy spotting Ohmiya moments, busy listening to my mum’s comments (throughout the concert lol)…etc! In any case, it was a super overload of Arashi love <3!

Throughout the concert the Korean fan on my left was very high! Dancing, jumping, waving and screaming all the while, so much so I got influenced too! She even supported the backdancers (ABC and Kis-my-ft2) enthusiastically whom I never really knew of. There were several occasions when the fan behind me (from China if I’m not wrong) borrowed my binos just so she could see Nino clearly hehe! Remember I talked about the guards? They stood there from beginning till end, facing US, the seemingly insane pool of fangirls and wouldn’t it be weird to have one beside you?? In our area there was a guard diagonally right of me but the view was blocked by the fans so it didn’t bother me. But I really thought it was funny to have them there. Lol not like they wanna watch pretty boys fanservicing for us right XD

Arashi’s singing voices = VERY NATURAL AND NICE! I must say they definitely don’t do lip syncs! Ohno’s voice was HEAVENLY, even when singing and dancing vigourously at the same time. The same goes to the rest, well except Nino who had a tendency (I didn’t expect that LOL) to go a little flat on the melody, especially slow songs, but his singing voice was just as special =) Gosh I really love Sho when he raps live, SO KAKKOI! I saw a comment online about Sho’s series of hand actions in almost every song he sings; like he would clench his fists or cup his hands in front of his face, bring it back and forth, both hands point upwards to emphasize something and it goes on! So interesting and expressive, for he really did that when I observed! Matsujun makes a very pretty boy <3 and he's good with the audience too ~ and I finally saw him in that Miman city chibi Jun hair hahah! His wide smile made him very different from the Domyoji he portrayed, now that I recall. It was more like a MOMO smile, but more DoS haha. Aiba was lovely to look at, and very smiley! Not at all baka until he began to speak T_T Haha! I thought his hair was so-so when I saw it in the recent mag, but he looked so nice in it, the dyed permed hairstyle! He IS tall and lean in real life, and Jun looked about the same. On the other hand, I think Ohno and Sho had the best complexions lol! Yummeh! Arashi’s perspiration drenched faces and smiles and fanservices to audience = MUCH LOVE!

Gosh I think this will never end. At the halfway mark, they conducted the MC session and asked everyone to sit down. Then I suddenly remembered the back and shoulder aches, oh blah. I was like, cool! I didn’t know we could sit down during the MC. Guess what was the first thing they exclaimed? 熱いね！SO HOT! Hehe who wouldn’t be after jumping around like this for the past who knows how long? :D They invited a lady translator onto the T stage, but I remember she didn’t translate more than half of what they all said.

So, they were amazed that they made it to the headlines of a Shanghai newspaper when it has never happened to them in Japan before. Apparently majority of the fans got a copy of it (but I didn’t. I saw some Japanese fans flipping through it while queueing for the washrooms though) and waved it in the air. Matsujun claimed that he’s simply Matsu Jun, not the Michael Jackson of Japan. Aiba talked about them going for a massage on the previous night! He made Nino the meanie lie flat on his stomach and demonstrated it on his back, to which Nino reacted with “Ite-te-te-te-te~!” (PAINFUL!) Aiba was also describing something, which I didn’t really catch, and he did the action of carrying something heavy and walking clumsily.

But the highlight of the MC was of course my ICHIBAN RIIDA <3 Ohchan hadn't spoken a word until now la! So typical of him isn't it! Sho started with something along the lines of, "Yesterday, Ohno ordered food in English for the first time..." Then they had Ohchan say it: oo-wan noo-do-ru pu-reee-s (ONE FRIGGING NOODLE PLEASE HAHAHA) I can’t believe at 28 years old he’s never ordered food in english before zomg! After reading other fan and magazine concert reports, I learned that the situation was that, they called for room service and Ohno bravely ordered this. What was delivered up to his room was, instead, a plate. He ordered trice, and he got three plates in all. oTZ!!! Then he decided to try another approach, and this time he said: wan-taan noo-do-ru soo-puu wan pu-reee-s (WANTAN NOODLE SOUP ONE PLEASE ZOMG *GOES INTO A FIT OF LAUGHTER AND DIES*) The camera was closed up on his face and it was one of those priceless funny Ohchan expressions! No, actually he didn’t make a funny face.. it was more like a blank expression, but it’s just too funny for words. LOVE! During the MC I saw much of Nino and Aiba because they were facing my direction =) Wheeee~

There were also many other effects which included bursts of confetti, the water screen for One Love (I saw them pointing and subtly lauging at fans who got a bit wet cause of it LOL), suspended ropes that the backdancers slung onto and jumped and danced around with, the gondola high up that the five of them stood onto that moved them from the front arena to the back arena and back again. Lucky fans! I vaguely remember Aiba doing a backflip somewhere haha. Ohmiya moments, Juntoshi moments, Ohchan’s air guitar moments were so much love :D Once, ohchan wiped perspiration off Nino’s face (or shoulders??), which caused the audience to screaaaam. Soon after, MJ followed suit and tada, Juntoshi moment!

This was the encore moment when the stage lights suddenly came on again and everybody screamed!

The songs I have never heard in this concert was Ichioku no Hoshi but it was sang soooo beautifully, on top of the starry backdrop. Beautiful Days was the new single they released, I saw the PV but didn’t properly listen to it. I so regretted! Arashi encored with 4 songs and Beautiful Days was the last. Sho and someone else apparently seemed a little sad at this, but they continued till the end the concert.

Like I said before, I was thankful I bought the penlight even though it was expensive. When you really really are captivated and lost in the music, whether the upbeat tunes or melodious ballads, (and when you have an uchiwa too small for them to notice anyway..) THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT TO HOLD AND WAVE AROUND. XD

A little while after the concert began the stadium got kind of warm.. and I took out my scarf. After the concert ended I felt like I was about to faint anytime LOL from both the heartattacks and heat. すごく楽しかったよ!!! AN ABSOLUTELY MIND-BLOWING EXPERIENCE! Kyaaaaa~~~ And I was dead happy. *Ps: I love the picture taken for Ohno’s uchiwa!*

The concert ended after about 2.5 hours… but I was looking forward to the next day’s Arashi Around Asia tour finale already!

On our way out of the stadium. Ahhh, the crowd!

Lugging the concert goods and other bags of stuff we had, we hopped onto a cab and went straight home. OMG it was the longest I’ve stood in a while; 4 hours for the goods and a good 2+ hours of damn-tiring-activities aka jumping around like a monkey and yelling on top of my lungs. My poor legs! I got a huge patch blue-black (like the blood vessels went haywire) on my right thigh, on top of the body aches. My mum and I went to a nearby convenient store to get cup noodles, but I didn’t even have the strength to finish it. Oh and did I mention, I slimmed down just for that night. LOL omg lol.

Unbelievably I completed this entry, wooo! Sorry if my thoughts on the concert became disconcerted (pun fully intended :D) and my sentences became repetitive and weird. THIS IS THE FANGIRLING SYNDROME, MWAHA. I will describe the concert and set list in a little more detail in my next entry. Keep visiting! XD

13 November

My mum and I took the 730am flight to Shanghai Pudong airport instead of the 1030am one because in this way we would have so much more time after we arrived at noon to settle down and explore. As usual we were doing intensive last minute packing on the previous night, and I didn’t catch a wink of sleep because I was making uchiwas till it was 430am (had to be at the airport by 6).

Anyway these are the photos you all wanted to see haha. We sat first class, our second time; first was when we flew to Taipei last April. I chose the chicken fillet set for breakfast, while my mum chose to have something more local, prawn noodles. Leg space was so abundant, needn’t worry about having leg cramps from sitting with my legs tucked in for too long.

I love the view outside the window! Especially the picture with the sun and the one with bits of clouds hovering over the sea and casting reflections/shadows over the surface. What a wonderful sight to begin the trip with :)

As the time to touch down grew closer, I had interesting views of the land; Shanghai’s, if not neighbouring states, industrial and agriculture areas. Then finally, Pudong airport at around 1230nn. Thank God for the sunny yet breezy weather!

The cab ride from the airport to our hotel ‘A-Live’, which I reserved a promotional room for 299rmb a night, took about 50 minutes. Though the prices are not the cheapest around, I definitely raised my eyebrows when I realised the hotel reception was only located at level 3 which means that anyone could simply walk in and out of that building or even go upstairs. It was worse when were were allocated a corner room, with literally a corner short and that made walking almost impossible after we placed our baggages in there. There seemed to be free internet access from the wire provided, but the socket was damaged so I called the reception and they offered us the room next door. If I hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t have gotten a bigger room with proper internet access. But one thing that irked my mum was that, in the haste of moving (we had already unpacked before I called them) our things to the new room, her bottle of perfume disappeared. She double checked when we came back to Singapore; must have been the cleaning auntie, who very kindly explained to us she “would return it immediately if she found any lost items, don’t worry, we’re always looking out for things like that”, who cleaned the room immediately after we moved our stuff. Oh well.

Nearby our hotel at Nanjing West Road 南京西路, was the street with lots of local eateries, desserts and barbecue stalls, which led to yet another street further down, that looks more like a proper shopping and food district. It was the place Sam Sean Macson and I had Subway at.

Went down a basement of a random mall, my mum wanted to try teppanyaki and so we did. How many times must I tell myself not to trust Japanese food in Shanghai unless it’s of an authentic shop? This was rather.. cheap and tasted like Chinese food. I promised myself to eat at the Sakae teppanyaki again!

In search of Nanjing Pedestrian Street 南京路步行街, we had spent hours walking aimlessly (ah, this is the reason I don’t think I can learn driving). In other words, we were quite lost, I had to smack myself for not being able to recognise the way there at all. My plans for the day was to visit Huang Pi South Road 黄陂南路/Shan Xi Road 陕西路, Nanjing Pedestrian Street and Xu Jia Hui 徐家汇 the city area, but because so much time was wasted as we walked round and round People’s Square 人民广场, we only had time for Nanjing Ped Str and The Bund. By the way, the weather was even cooler in the night, around 14 degrees?

This clock tower, which I remember was an art museum, was along the street where the guys and I hung out for a nighttime photoshoot the other time. And then another tower which has lights that change colours constantly. I really like this aspect of Shanghai; their buildings in the city area are so interesting!

AT LONG LAST, we arrived at Nanjing Pedestrian Street on a thursday night, relatively crowded for a weekday. I practically didn’t shop for anything, but just accompanied my mum and brought her around.

The entire street led to The Bund 外滩 overlooking Pudong and all the famous buildings of Shanghai and of course the Oriental Pearl Tower which I’ve never visited lol. It was kinda similar to Hong Kong’s Ave of Stars, but I think the distance of The Bund is greater. Walking from the middle to one end took ages since there were so many things to see and laugh about (YA the typical quarelling of a stall owner and an unsatisfied customer, a big hooha they created with their yells, but it’s not that big anyway if you get what I mean LOL).

Bunny ears for 5rmb ($1) each, very cute and very common, within a distance of 100m there are probably 5 other sellers with these and other hairbands featuring mickey/minnie ears and lighted up devil horns (MAOU!! the red one!).

Movable stalls on carts could also be found everywhere. This particular stall sold boiled hotdogs and such on skewers, just when we were about to buy one to try, someone’s hand knocked into the lamp and it fell into the soup. As though nothing had happened, the man removed and placed the lamp upright again, and.. we turned and walked away.

Of course, The Bund being a tourist attraction, people come up with all sorts of funny (sometimes useless) items to entice baka tourists. This one wasn’t bad, a very interesting type of kite which looked pretty against the nightsky.

14 November

The morning of friday! In our hotel room, and wheeeee, looking at the dusty floor and tables, it doesn’t seem as though they even cleaned it before we moved in. Whatever, we wore our shoes and the hotel slippers all the time anyway.

Shanghai food for brunch and a banana+strawberry smoothie and milk tea afterwards.

We roamed around People’s Square and shopped at an underground mall conveniently, not D-Mall though it was a place I really wanted to bring her to. And I got for myself a new pair of jeans, that’s about it; my mum didn’t spend much too.

This evening we were to visit Huanglin and his housemate’s apartment for steamboat! We first made our way to Red Town, after being stuck in a terrible jam during the peak hour, and it was already dark by 5pm. We met Lily who was on her way home and I exchanged a few words with her before quickly going up to the AKQA office (it was about 630pm) to find Fionnie who happened to open the glass door, welcoming us. Upon entering the office, the familiar smell and feel gushed over me; Tony was smiley as usual at his desk; Sin En and Jolene’s look of surprise; Sin Yew, Vincent, Ella and Joe at the other side of the office as well as a new guy who had taken over Sean’s seat. 久しぶりですね! Later on I heard from Sin Yew that Nick had taken over my seat, lol, having moved over from the accounts side. It was so great seeing all of them again ^.^

I passed the pineapple tart and sugi goodies from Bengawan Solo to Sin Yew, to be passed to everyone on monday, that Sean and I bought for them. While waiting for Vincent and Ryan to settle some project stuff, they told me the Guerlain website (designed almost entirely by Ryan) and desktop widget, which I worked mainly on for several weeks during my attachment there, for their 180-years campaign has gone live! I’m so glad they trusted me enough to actually use my widget design and animation especially (when they could outsource for freelancers) for the “Plant Orchids” section. XD Well, I also spent some time catching up with dear Jolene and Sin En (the NUS interns I told you about) and passed them some snacks from SG haha. I’m so gonna miss them again man.

Sin Yew led the way to Huanglin’s house via the main gate, and on our way there the guys Vincent and Ryan stopped by several convenience stores to buy seasoning for the food. My mentor Huanglin’s temporary house was near Xing Fu Lu 幸福路, and we passed by the Chinese restaurant that served pretty decent spicy food where Sean Sin Yew and I had dinner at on the evening it rained dogs and cats. He had decided to take a break from working and move back to his own town on the 20th (yeah so he left already) which was why staying with his friend/ex-colleague was only temporary. I brought 4 designs of coke cans (he’s a collector) from Singapore and the light-weight clay from daiso for him. This gathering at his house and plans to whip up dishes (oh yes guys in SH CAN cook) was initiated by all three of them Ryan Vincent and HL, a way of welcoming me back to SH =) really sweet of them!

We had a wonderful time talking and crapping and eating too much. After a month of leaving SH, I still miss the lunchtimes spent with the colleagues and gatherings we all had. Not to mention, Shanghai food! My mouth waters just thinking about 鱼香茄子 (a brinjal dish) uwaaaaaa~~ HL’s housemate is a funny guy who shared a lot with all of us. Halfway through the meal HL brought out a HUGE and heavy clay figure of a monster character that he handcrafted, which sadly had bent over and was distorted because he had placed it directly under the aircon which generated heat (I don’t know why haha). Jaw-dropping! the details and textures. I really must show you sometime, like link to his blog or something.

Besides steamboat, they also cooked the famous da zha xie 大闸蟹 (what do you call it.. hairy crabs or something?) which Sean and I were suppose to try before we left SH but didn’t get to because of the lack of time. They’re pretty tiny and cute! But I didn’t quite know how we were suppose to eat them.. Vincent was also talking about the mythical character in 白蛇传 who hid himself in a crab LOL. He demonstrated by cleaning the meat off the crab’s face (wth hahaha) and then revealing a ‘face’ inside. It was amazing! Really!

At the end of the meal I secretly took a shot of the table lol. Quite a small house I must say, the table was sandwiched between a bed and a sofa bed, had a bit of space for TV and a cabinet on the right, then further behind would be the tiny kitchen, washroom and then the door.

And there, friday night ended with this fruitful gathering. It was only one day to the concert, OMG!!
…to be continued.