Today! Was a self-proclaimed slack day, oops. All my pants are being washed at the laundry shop, so for now I only have skirts to wear to work. Oh mine, my back and arms were aching very badly due to yesterday’s rather ‘vigorous’ exercises, after shooting away with arcade machine guns and a few games of basketball.
Out of the blue, HL, Ryan, Vincent and Ella called us to go to the meeting room downstairs, and I think HL said something like, “来吧，下去说话”(Come, let’s go downstairs to talk). *face full of question marks* I had no idea what it was all about, until of course we sat at the meeting table opposite them and they told us to share our concerns, our problems or anything at all regarding our internship at AKQA. Can you imagine? Your mentors taking time off just to talk to you like that. I was truly touched.
School and working life is worlds apart, most of my coursemates must have realized it the moment they entered the company. The bad habits cultivated in school like procrastinating (the most serious one) and giving excuses for school work, thinking that there’ll always be more time to do it tomorrow, or simply starting assignments at the very last minute and working overnight.. all these, must never be present at work. I let them know that for past school projects, I based them on my own themes and ideas, but never for commercial purposes, hence as to which ‘right’ approach to take when designing for corporate identities, I don’t know for sure. But I do know for sure, WORK is something we have to get used to whether we like it or not.
In turn, the mentors contributed too, telling us to keep reading, keep looking at good designs so that one day we would not be satisfied with a piece of work that we are content with right now, and strive to do even better. And we can always go to them for help and advice ;)
It rained heavily in the evening, we knocked off and had dinner at the nearby shop where Sean got the wonton soup the other time. Wantonlicious!! Both fried and boiled. Sean had 炸酱面, which only cost 5rmb!
Has it occured to you how did Sean and I manage to come online when we’re not in the office? We got internet, yeah! But that’s not the point, the thing is – we tap into our very ‘kind’ and unknowing neighbour’s open connection, hence, free access. Thanks for sharing, Mr/Mrs/Ms linksys123!
To upkeep my style of writing and the length of the entries, I might very well take a couple of years to finish documenting these 80+ days in Shanghai. I’m changing approach, cos I’m lazy and tired after work everyday. Let’s start with a bit of statistics.. the distance, according to google map and Sean, from our apartment to our workplace = 1.2km. WALKING DISTANCE =) Make it everyday, to work and back. We leave the house at around 9.05am and on the average reach there at 9.30am. This video below I took documents the path we take from the entrance of Red Town to our company’s doorstep. Welcome, Mr Tan will show you the way.
For lunch, we ordered takeaway food through phone from another stall. It came literally as a container of rice, a ‘饭桶’. A really huge serving you got there, though I can’t say I like this more than 便当. In the days to come, thankfully we stuck to ordering lunchboxes and eating outside.
On our way back in the evening, I spotted a CD/VCD/DVD shop and went in to look for some titles. Japanese dramas and anime took up one corner of the shop and as I scanned through the rows, I picked up Fireboys (60 rmb. Takayuki Yamada, Tsukamoto Takashi, woo), Manhattan Love Story (60 rmb. This one’s hard to find! Tsuka Takashi tee hee) and Letters from Iwo Jima (15 rmb. NINONINO)! At the same time, I asked if they had Death Note anime and Battle Royale movie; both were sold out currently but they said it’s possible to replenish the stock in about 3 days, so we said we’ll check back again. It was probably from a handphone, if not the CD player, the introduction of the song “千娇百美” from Leslie’s last album Gone With The Wind played. Ahh, I’m so certain there’re lots of Leslie fans here in China.
Just when I happily took for granted we’d be clear of all sorts of troubles if we avoided streetside food, crossed the road carefully or stayed away from clubs (lol……), we ran straight into it. None of us saw this coming, like LITERALLY. That evening, we were headed for the Carrefour at Zhong Shan Park station on a cab and there happened to be a jam along the way. Nearby, a delivery man was on his bike and we realise, it’s Macdonalds. Didn’t feel the same as ours, but I can’t remember how different. I took some pictures anyway, tried to, but they turned out bad because it was pretty dark.
The driver drover further along the side of Cloud Nine shopping mall because there were traffic police behind so he wasn’t able to drop us at the entrance. Sean, because he was on the right and the doors of most cabs can only be opened from the right, opened the door wanting to get out, for a moment he sat down again to retrieve the change from the cab driver. Then CRAAASH !! We immediately turned our heads to the right – a man of about 40, and his bicycle, fallen to the ground right in front of us. I don’t know if you can visualise this; a whole lot of bicycles were parked at the spot we alighted at such that the space between the cab and the bicycles was only a very narrow part the road and then the eleviated pavement. It took some time for our heads to process and make sense of this situation and realising it could have very well been our fault, the driver and us hurried out of the cab and to see if the man was injured. The driver helped him up, and in a moment, he very volubly complained about painful sensations in his legs and rambled on and on. Faced with such a situation, Sean and I were at a loss of what to do as even passersby stopped to watch the drama.
I reviewed the situation again with Sean, he said that the door was already open for several seconds before the man crashed into (did he even have contact with the door?!) it and that why would a cyclist riding behind not stop or take another path when a cab has already stopped right in front? It was senseless, knowing that passengers alight only from the right side and doors could be flung open ANY TIME from the point the cab stopped.
Meanwhile, the driver negotiated with him and concluded that he wanted 200 rmb as a compensation, or else off to the police station we go. 200 rmb? You mean EFFIN DAYLIGHT ROBBERY huh. Immediately I was doubtful, and called Sin Yew. An aunty ‘joined in’ and tried persuading us to just hand him the money, let the matter rest because it would be a whole lot of trouble if the police were to intercede.
Sean was telling me, “Just give him the money lah..” but I think otherwise! Go ahead and call the cops, why should we simply use money to settle this without clarifying? But still…. very reluctantly, I prepared to take a 100 rmb note (split with Sean afterward) from my wallet. Then, it was like a 360* change of attitude; once the man saw me opening my wallet, his tone immediately changed and randomly said, “你们是哪里人？Ahh, where are you from?” With which, Sean replied deliberately “香港人。We’re from Hong Kong.” Fuming, I stared at him as he took the 100 rmb note with an almost smiling face.
I have never been so mad for a long time! I turned around and stalked off, thinking how terrible those folks were, to just want to let a LOUSY and UNREASONABLE man get away with it just because they were not the ones handing him money. If this were to happen to them, I BET they would be the first to pick a fight, in three counts. I was very sure the man, on the ground, stared at us for a full 5 seconds and having heard our “Sorry”s and “Are you okay?”, he then clumsily got up, brushed the dust off his pants, felt about his legs and started complaining. You basket! If a person was injured after falling off a bike, he would reflexively feel for the ‘pain’ with his hands – not this.
Ask me, what do I label this sort of people as? — 见钱眼开的烂人。A person whose eyes open up so wide, that the sockets have become so huge with this recurring muscle reflex action that his eyeballs are bound to fall out one day and dangle on his face, at the sight of money.
Shanghai oh Shanghai, she isn’t at all like what you and I imagine it to be. ~
Sorry I digressed. Just jokin’ =D
I had to move on. We went to Macdonalds for dinner and then headed to Carrefour to get the rest of the things we needed. Our house aircon has been working really well since last weekend, Sean had to buy a blanket because his room temperature is so much colder than mine. For me, a cheap bath towel and my denim jacket was sufficient to keep me warm at night. We looked around further for scissors, utensils, pencils (for me to do sketching) and so on.
Just nearby our house, there is a convenience store called the “C-store” which has a red tomato for its logo, and adopts the colour scheme and branding of 7-11. Yes, red and green. Eeek, I think there are more than one imitation of 7-11 around here. In a corner, they sell food like sotong balls, fish balls, sausages and stuff on skewers kept warm constantly. Sean would complain everytime we enter the store that the cooked food stinks the place, but I don’t find it as offending. This was okay, sotong balls in spicy sauce:
In order not to oversleep, I set 5 alarms on my handphone: 7.45, 7.50, 7.55, 8 and 8.05. It’s the day we’re starting our actual internship, which makes life pretty exciting, just for that day. Although we are not expected to wear formal clothing to work everyday, Sean and I decided that we should go to work looking really formal since most of the clothes we brought here are meant for that.
Sin Yew kindly offered to wait near our apartment and showed us the way to AKQA. We began walking at 8.50am and saw more of the neighbourhood through the residential areas, the bustling morning streets, across the roads weaving among dangerous vehicles (lol). It’s a long long walk under the hot weather, and we reached Red Town in about 15 minutes.
Based on my impression of the word “Red Town”, I had thought it to be a high-tech and happening kind of town in a very developed part of Shanghai. On entering the gates, past the security guard, is lovely place that I would also describe as an eye-opener. One noticeable feature and probably the reason for the name is the countless red bricks that made up most of the buildings’ walls.
Red Town, covering a relatively huge area, is dedicated to the Arts and is a new ‘world’ itself. Bars, cafes, design companies, art shops and such are located within the premises, with the most prominent being the Shanghai Sculpture Space.
Along the outdoor paths and a grassy area, we found a variety of sculptures, some in a series while others are a piece of art on their own. Sin Yew also walked us through the indoor sculpture space, where so many more sculptures created by a huge range of artists stand.
We’ve been to the very grand Grand Gateway, in the concentrated CBD, where Sam and Macson will go to work (wearing really formal clothes haha) everyday but so far if I’m not wrong, I haven’t been to anywhere like this. Red Town sends off an entirely different vibe; its quiet, modest and down-to-earth feel is reflected mostly in the architecture. Rather than solid concrete whitewashed walls, we found even more bricked walls as we further walked through the alleys and maze-like paths. I like the buildings because being not so modern, they somehow evoke a certain kind of feel, as though they’re from a different time altogether.
From now on, we’ll have to climb four storeys to reach our company, in addition to all the walking from the point we step out of our apartment.
Three of us were the first to arrive, Sean and I got our company pass from the receptionist, a young lady. Afterwhich, we went upstairs to the office area and got our own workspace. The first thing I noticed was that hey, the company isn’t as big as I had imagined it to be, but more like twice or trice the size of our IMD studio. On this level, they’ve sections for the creative team, the media, projects management, accounts etc and downstairs, the meeting rooms, washrooms, reception area, refridgerator and more office cubicles. Sin Yew gave us our usernames and passwords for the individual accounts to use on our computers. I’m surprised they use PCs not Macs; I was 101% sure (and mentally prepared) that they’ll be using the latter.. but I feel good, being able to still use PC :)
We had a brief introduction with our boss; a lean bespectacled designerish man who looked and sounded like a Taiwanese with a heavy American slang. And he talked way too fast, whether in English or Mandarin, all the time. Soon, other colleagues began coming in, then at a corner of the office they held a short meeting they call the WIP, held every Monday morning, to update everyone on the progress and updates for each project. I tried matching their names to their positions, but failed terribly after the informal meeting when everyone went back to their seats =.= Oh, if you are wondering, they speak Mandarin during the meeting.
We then got our first task – to design a new Olympics-related screensaver for LG. Not to say that we were fully assigned the project, but just so to have another concept to present to the client. I wondered and wondered about how our lunch break was going to be like: an hour of freetime? half an hour? Then the answer finally came! We were handed a sheet of paper, on which was printed the menu of Kuai Ke Lunchboxes (快客便当) with a variety to choose from. I ordered a beef tendon rice lunchbox that only cost 15 rmb while Sean got his fish fillet rice lunchbox. The serving was so huge, but I ate most of it anyway.
For some time, Sean had been observing this colleague Ryan whom he claims looks like Jay Chou, so he’s keen in ‘making friends with him’. (LOL don’t be disappointed, you imd guys) Towards the end of the day, Ryan came over and asked for our msn contacts. I remember in a conversation that night, he asked us in Mandarin, “How come you guys didn’t go on msn at all?” Well, how should we know? It’s the first day of work ;)
Our official working hours are from 9.30-6pm, and were too happy to knock off exactly at 6. Tired and hungry, we cabbed down to Raffles City in search of GOOD FOOD. The basement was similar to Plaza Sing’s, with lots of food stalls and restaurants, especially packed during the peak hour period. We went upstairs to find a food court and settled for teppanyaki. The entire meal tasted so salty, just like how we were forewarned about how the Chinese add alot more salt and seasoning to the food they cook, but tasty nevertheless.
On closer examination of the serviette, it says ‘Food Republic’! Kinda cool.
All that salt was making my mouth dry, and before that I already planned to get dessert after the meal. There was a stall selling crepes downstairs, since I haven’t tried one before I made Sean try too lol. The crepe, on the other hand, tasted like tasteless flattened dough with icecream and whipped cream for its filling. It sure tasted like crap, but for some reason I kept on chewing at it, maybe I found it addictive like gum or something.
Our first day working in a foreign country, kinda rocked =) Though there’s still a long way to go.
Interactive designer at 
