After 3 months of drinks-selling, car-washing, thanking, smiling, money-counting, feeling the blues, packing, rehearsing, jumping about, buying last-minute necessities, dong-dong-hee-ing, stressing, hair-pulling, frowning, sulking etc etc…

WE ARE IN SHANGHAI!!

Yes please do scream at your own comfort now!

The day started off with the very typical kiasu Singaporeans- Jiale, Jiale’s dad and Jiale’s dad’s car, Jiale’s mum, Yu Qi, Serene and yours truly; who reached the airport at like 7am. The flight’s at 10:10 = check-in at 8-9 neeways :P
 

So we were extra early. The school bus was snailing to the airport and no other Woodlander was in sight except for miss chew and miss tan who came in early for some nice spicy local breakfast. At about 8:30 or so, the school bus arrived and the kee-siao-ing started.. say woo-hoo lor! We were shouting Shanghai like nobody’s business when the photo-taking started.. heee! oya, some tehpeng for you? :P

oleh!! so we checked-in about close to 9. heeeeeee! there was great frenzy because we had some 10 sembawang primary school kids whom we very quickly made friends and blended into with. took pictures, laughed at some little jokes too tough to decipher, crapped, laughed and jumped about.. Also, we were reminded to speak the Queen’s english over mandrain as far as possible so that our malay friends will enjoy the trip equally. there’s no need to mention but everybody was in the best of the greatest spirits… Leaving behind the fact that there would still be a week of Shangwen Middle High.. hiak hiak..

The boarding area was when many of us whiled away time, visiting to answer nature’s call, talking, calling… Heh but not a few of us, who diligently whipped out laptops and started to blog about that morning already! so it was another 1/2 hour filling up departure cards, checking others’ seat numbers, soaked in the good atmosphere of excitement and fun.. :)

Lucky me got a pretty window
seat after anticipating for
2398109380912830 years.. It’s always a pleasure to feel clouds underneath you just before your eyes.. I don’t know about the rest but that’s for the me who seldom travels..
 

It was a 5-hour morning flight so we had lunch on board.. A good point was that the turbulence wasn’t very bad at all.. Just so very mild, the meal was enjoyable.. Great music by the ears, the perfect scenery outside of your window, feeling not realistic at all, and of course friends on the same flight.. plus, some fine dining. Oya, very coincidentally (or not!), the whole stretch, including the next 6 over there, of our row chose chicken over potato, unrehearsed! :)

Hmm.. after lunch was a drowsy 20 minutes for me.. that’s what the
ideal holiday sounds like eh? so i slept for a little bit before i woke up, to start playing games all over again :) so i tried to access this mario game, which i thought had a big capacity to have to load for so long that i left for the washroom (which by many came and cut the queue for like about 10mins). after i came back it was still loading so i stared into the outside but after that it told me that loading failed. grumble..

Interlude: The sky makes me think about many things, many incidents and many people that I couldn’t help but feel a little teary.. it doesn’t have to be inside a plane that i feel so, even when i stand on proper ground and look up, i think about all these.. It just comes to me naturally.
 

Nevermind about all those things… we touched down at about 3pm! It feels different already. A something that was very distinctive was the temperature.. It isn’t cold but chilly, and there was very mild but choking smoke-smell that was definitely more than irritating.

nway, that’s our tour guide on the right. He’s Zhang but tells us to address him as Xiao-zhang.. one very nice guy.

After which, we headed over to our first stop-over, Xiao Shi Jie Hotel where we clearly knew we would be lodging for the next 7 days.. all the first impression was that it was just another small, hot and budget hotel in a small alley on some street in the district.. in this picture you may not clearly see but the guys were helping the bus driver to unload the many luggages..

We located our rooms and rested for while before going for dinner at a local Thai restaurant were we had our first local dinner.  

… 2.5/5 stars.

At night, I tried to access wordpress, blogspot, wretch, livejournal and everywhere that blogs were involved but I just couldn’t. It only struck to me then that blogs are not allowed in parts of china, and shanghai being one of them. I forgot where i read it off before that shanghai do not allow blogs but it just slipped off my mind completely.

but anyway, it was a nice good night.

great souls,
malichan

p/s: for more candid/group pictures, please access www.photobucket.com/j-adore and navigate on the left side-bars… :)