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.

Suddenly I had to pick up the pieces where I left it three months ago, and, when I have yet to finish documenting about the internship experience, it’s hard to continue with anything else. Yes I cut bangs, hello to the end of my very bad hair cycle that lasted for almost a year, and had my braces wires changed (dentist said it’s the last stage and I may be able to remove it by the end of this year) and am wearing two 3/16″ rubber bands which constantly snaps when I eat my food or try to yawn that pull both rows of my teeth inwards forming a nice neat curve.

Got myself new handphone accessories while I was there, in a giftshop in Shanghai. Apparently Jimmy Liao’s works are really well received; they can be found printed on tissue boxes, packs, made into handphone straps, pencil holders, snowglobes, and whatever you can think of. And yes you haven’t seen my new phone, have you? I got it a short while before my Taiwan trip back in April, SE Z770i, a very lovely flip phone that I always wanted to own. Now it has got figurines of the two main characters from one of my favourite stories “A Chance of Sunshine”.

School started, with this being our very last semester. The LAST! Goodness all the semesters and blocks flew by just like this T.T Anyway, there was the comm session with Mos, though we attended the one meant for year 2s due to (heheh) some circumstances. Had no chance to listen to what Mos had to say about the Diploma Show, however. Over the course of three months in SH, there was no chance of eating western food, as in the proper kind lol, so the DES chicken chop was greatly missed by yours truly. Now that we’re back, they’ve added a new dish – spaghetti with chicken sausage – and it’s my new fave XD

Gave out edamame soy beans (the exact replica of the ones found on Strapya.. I guess their products are ALL made in China, but the price difference is…….), shared by all four of us who went to SH, on the first day of school to the whole of IMD. Absolutely the best way to destress, that squishy thing :D just in time for the commencement of THE FINAL YEAR PROJECT. See for yourself~

Visual Presentation Essentials and 1/4 of FYP is over! It totally feels like the holidays, not that there wasn’t any work to be done, but I spent the past 4 weeks being a useless unproductive bum. FYP proposal was crap. Plus, some two random cat themed posters for VPESS. I sorta only liked the last assignment, a book design based on a nursery rhyme, which was rushed out at the last minute and I’m not going to show it cause I used a couple of images off the internet (was allowed, so don’t you complain) to add on the the illustrations.

Outing on Saturday with the usual gang, minus half the number because we went to Marina Sq to catch ~~~~~ .REC, roar!! One of the better zombie + handheld camera technique films around, or so I heard. Language was Spanish that sounded very very much like Italian. Ah! La porta! The 5.30pm show was sold out, so we went for the 7.30pm show and got first row seats (as I was telling them, if only I got first row seats for Arashi concerts XD). Separated; Hajar Jacq and I at the extreme right, and Justin Joshua Daniel and Azmi on the other side. For a long time I haven’t seen horror flicks in the cinema and I didn’t really knew what to expect, thus, in the “worst case senario” I planned to peep through my fingers or just bury my face in Hajar’s shoulder and scream haha! Sure enough there was much tension built up and scenes which induced series of screams from the audience, just nearly not creepy enough to leave you sick in the stomach and sleepless at night. *PHEW* A very cool film to watch with friends.. because while anticipating shock and mutated-virus-infected-bloody-human-turned-zombies (and looking out for the bloody funny insane woman), you get screams accompanied with much laughter, which gets more frequent towards the end for some reason. Do watch it while it’s still screening!

While in SH, we visited a place at Tai Kang road which they claimed is similar to Holland V here. Both had the same feel, but the latter took up a smaller area of course. After .REC we dropped by and chilled at Cold Rock (their version in SH is called Cold Stone. Talk about originality..). I had an expensive banana smoothie lol. Holland V is so far away! By the time I got home it was like after midnight, haha.

The guys said that they’ve a plan to set aside Thursday evenings to jog, you know be healthy and all that, I really want to engage in some form of exercise recently but not this week. I’ll be joining them, mentally, in Shanghai 8D

Dinner with the whole Singaporean gang at Olive’s and we walked there right from office. Remember Olive’s? It’s one of the first Italian restaurants we visited and really liked. As a really bad habit, Colin flirted (well subconsciously or maybe he’s just thick skinned lol) with the shy waiter and went on being picky and stuff. We had great fun and great food, didn’t even have to worry about speaking in Maaaaandarin haha.

[ Expenses ] :
9 rmb (鸡蛋饼 and yoghurt drinks), 18 rmb (pay Sin En cab fare), 45 rmb (Olive’s)

We took a bit of time to roam around Red Town some more and took some photos of the outdoor and indoor sculptures. The red brick car that Jolene stood beside was made of real bricks cemented together and not a form that was painted onto. They’ve a lot more interesting sculptures indoors too, like the cardboard (which wasn’t) box that stood so much taller than us actually.

The design bookstore that we love to visit,

and even more installations and galleries along that stretch.

Sean’s desktop at the moment.

Dinner at 丰裕 after we knocked off, the beef in oyster sauce and rice I ordered was only soso; it made my urge to want to eat at the wanton shop even stronger!

Sin En’s agenda for the evening was to visit a bookstore at Times Square, and we joined her, planning to take a bus down at first but soon we realized that particular bus was only in service after midnight…

Times Square 时代广场 felt exactly like Paragon, with the very high-end stores and brilliant window displays. The bookstore, rather small, was at the basement and sold mainly imported books in English. I took a walk around, and immediately noticed several books on Audrey Hepburn and an irritating couple hanky pankying at the sofa beside the bookshelves. Thus we all stood there, talked in English and made lots of noise on purpose 8D

On M群 today (M群 is a mass convo system on MSN that includes everytime everyone who’s been added in it, i.e. all the colleagues) someone posted a joke he/she found on the net about the Olympics. Especially the one on Japan! Omg, I LOL so hard when I read it: in Japanese terms 3p refers to threesome, as for the rest, go figure hehe. Peace~ XD

菲尔普斯夺得8金以后，各国对游泳比赛蛙泳、仰泳、蝶泳、自由泳×100、200、400、1500导致金牌过多感到非常不满，纷纷要求增加自己优势项目的金牌数目。

巴西提出： 足球应该分为3人、5人、7人、11人×沙滩、室内、草地。
中国提出： 乒乓球应该分为直板、横板、直板双打、直板单打、直板横板混双。
英国提出： 马术应该分成黑马马术、白马马术、红马马术、褐马马术、皇马马术、斑马马术。
肯尼亚提出： 长跑应该分为10000米、11000米、12000米、13000米。。。
日本提出： 所有男女混合项目应该增加3p、4p、5p、6p、7p。。。群p。。。500p。
泰国提出： 除了男子和女子项目外，所有应该加上人妖组

[ Expenses ] :
9 rmb (yoghurt, macha milk, 鸡蛋饼), 7 rmb (beef wanton soup), 12 rmb (beef rice)

We did our own stuff until it was time for lunch, and we decided to visit the ‘western food’ restaurant near the laundry shop near the DVD shop near C-store near our apartment haha. The restaurant doesn’t serve only western food, but that’s what Sean calls it, but other kinds of Thai, Hawaiian etc dishes as well, just western styled. I had fried beef steak (really thin slices) and curry rice (gooood!) which cost only 11 rmb in all.

Linda came at about 3 in the afternoon with a guy who helped to fix the kitchen gas stove, replace with a new showerhead and now we also got a new TV remote! It means we can do a lot more things than before; like cook stuff, watch DVDs with more control over the settings and have a real good shower. Yatta!~

Other than being worn out from age and a little dirty, the stove worked fine. I could finally cook my mash potato bought from Carrefour! A box came with four packs in powdered form, I used up a single pack and after adding water and milk and cooking for some time, I realized it was too big a serving :S The cooked mash potato tasted milky and good but a little bland, so I dug out the Philadelphia from the fridge and mixed a spoonful in.

Nothing beats TV + GOOD FOOD, ne~

I let Sean have some, and guess what he mixed it with?? (T___T)”

I happened to see this drink – it’s milk soda – on the shelf and grabbed it along with green tea icecream (I thought it was vanilla ;_;). The milk soda was great! It tasted like.. 7up and milk. Or something hehe.

[ Expenses ] :
11 rmb (beef steak and rice), 3.5 rmb (ice cream)

Picture from ebay.com.sg

Admist the LG70 project, I’ve been hearing quite a bit about Audrey Hepburn, whose image they used for LG Secret’s Black Label. As part of our research and brainstorming for ideas, of course for the upcoming LG Secret project, we all had lunch at the meeting room and watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s. There was a scene at the beginning with Hepburn’s character, dressed in her iconic black dress, wearing gloves and huge retro shades, munching on something from a paper bag and standing in front of the display window of Tiffany. Insead of jewellery, in LG’s version, she was looking at the LG Secret phone through the window. Though it was really interesting and the character she portrayed was extroverted and fun, I could hardly sit through the entire film.. kind of fell asleep after finishing my food =.= The only thing that really caught my attention was the fat orange cat that looks like Garfield. XD Anyway, I’ll make it a point to read up more on Audrey Hepburn.

I don’t know was it Erfa or Atikah who sent me the link to watch the latest Arashi on Utaban clip (ahh, I think BOTH of them sent me, they’re always sooo updated ne~). It was, the ultimate, the best haha! All of Arashi, apart from the usual member Ohno, took turns to say things to piss Nakai off big time. And at times it was so awkward for Nakai because he had to pretend to be talking (and trying hard not to laugh), but soon he ran out of things to say and started blabbering nonsense. HAHA ULTIMATE I TELL YOU. The watermelon was dammit too funny for words.. Nakai slipped and sat down hard on it =.= In the end, we found out it was his birthday month! Arashi had prepared a cake for him and at the moment just before he blew out the candles, Ohno did the job XD Lovely, then Nakai chased all of them with a watergun lolol.

Hai hai, enough of nonsense フフフ~ Colin, Sin Yew, Sean and I went for dinner at 龙之梦 and this is what we saw: LG conveniently promoting their own products by screening the Olympics live and hence, the crowd was willing to gather and sit in the middle of a shopping mall.

This was shot upwards while on an escalator, pretty interesting effects you have there.

Tom’s World (mwaha, the arcade) and a random restaurant with a long queue, and chairs for the people waiting in the queue :S

At the so-called Japanese restaurant, selling rather non-authentic Japanese food, I ordered baked potatos with mentaiko and cheese (but still, the one at Ajitei is so much better!), smoked salmon salad and barbecued squid (too hard to chew! oww).

Oh yes, remember I mentioned about our problems with the showerhead? Let me show you… wait, where is it? It’s not here..

Neither is it here.

Uhh random, those are mine..

The showerhead! But how do I shower without it??

Like this la, for more than a week already. Please, laugh.

[ Expenses ] :
1.5 rmb (鸡蛋饼), 3.5 rmb (milk), 4 rmb (yoghurt), 10 rmb (lunch), 51 rmb (dinner at zhongshan)

A usual day at work, I felt tired due to the insomnia yesterday and the afternoon rain was making me feel more sleepy than usual. I continued working LG70, making a few more changes to the pages and found time to Youtube, surf ticketing sites and I prebooked my tickets on www.tickets365.com.cn! 2 for 15th Nov and 2 for 16th Nov. So far, the tickets have not began selling officially, nor do I think that by prebooking the tickets are secured, but I’ll keep checking back at the Superdome site for concert updates. Yayyy (o,<)

Another random photo, this time by Sean: (and look the keyboard’s also in Chinese!)

It rained for a long time, such that even till evening it hasn’t stopped. So guess what we did? Went downstairs to play WII and drink baileys haha. When we could finally leave the office, Red Town looked beautiful at night after the rain.

Dinner at the new favourite wanton restaurant with the usual gang without Sin Yew =) This time I had wanton soup and added noodles. Pssss, Colin showed us pictures from his camera.. apparently they had a guys sleepover recently XD

++VIDEO

[ Expenses ] :
5.8 rmb (milk, yoghurt), 1.5 rmb (鸡蛋饼), 11 rmb (lunch), 10 rmb (dinner)

Two 鸡蛋饼s, milk and yoghurt in the morning make Esther a happy girl. But lunch spoilt everything.. From another menu we haven’t tried before.

Before and after lunch, I felt so sleepy even though I had enough sleep on the previous night. But I wasn’t the only one yeah. XD

Today was a HIGH stress day; HL said that time was short and we’ve gotta chiong the LG70 Baidu pages. VERY fortunately, he provided some of his psd files with the basic structures done up, and I could continue to work on that. It was really hard! Arranging so much information and details together in a way that doesn’t kill the design yet emphasize on the visual hierarchy. Bear in mind that Chinese, like Korean and Japanese, is written in blocks, word by word, and so designing a layout in Chinese differs greatly from the stuff we usually do.

Someone suggested to go KTV. The message got around, but there weren’t many responses. We worked till nearly 7pm, and left the office. Those who were going KTV were, coincidentally, all 6 of us Singaporeans lol! Colin called the place to book a room, got into some miscommunication with the receiver and started complaining and bitching like a typical Singaporean XD Like, I WANT TO TALK TO YOUR MANAGER. Haha, and thanks to Colin, we got a room when we couldn’t at first!

The KTV place was called Party World, and I got a big shock because the building looks just like a posh hotel whether on the outside or inside. See for yourself man.

There was a free flow of food and drinks, except some special dishes which require you to pay a certain number of tokens (everyone was given 5 each) to get. Aw, but the food was only so so. I gave up on mine halfway, and concentrated on searching for songs haha. The sound system was much better and clearer than the ones in sg, and other than the remote control, you can pick your songs at the kiosk and also adjust the volume, skip the song etc from the two controls mounted on both sides of the wall, which makes it even more convenient.

KTV-cum-Singaporean-outing was fun; Sin En and Jolene can both sing very well *hides face*, Sean and I both agree that Colin is the manliest only when he sings (LOL)… We got home only at 1am but I didn’t sleep immediately :S the gymnastics for the Olympics was showing on TV, so I stayed up to watch. And got insomnia afterwards XP

[ Expenses ] :
3 rmb (鸡蛋饼), 10 rmb (yoghurt, milk), 13 rmb (lunch), 82 rmb (ktv), 22 rmb (tissue, soap)

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!

[ Expenses ] :
10 rmb (breakfast, drinks), 1.5 rmb (鸡蛋饼), 11 rmb (lunch), 17 rmb (ice cream, biscuits, tofu pudding), 8 rmb (dinner)