Day 10 - NO LESSON DAY! :D

HELLO PEOPLE!!
I am super happy today! :D Because THERE’S NO LESSON TODAY! WOHOOOO!!! :D so it means that we can sleep in! HAH! And yes, indeed I slept in and it’s very late! I remember I woke up at 11 o’clock in the morning, I did not wake up on my own, I was awakened by my girlfriend. SO SWEET RIGHT?! :X

We had our lunch together, we ordered delivery food! Simple 3 sides and with rice. :D
After our lunch, we were dispersed into our teams to discuss about our project again because we have homework to do. We have to show the statement of work, and the WBS to Mr. Chia for approval. Do not think that these tasks are east to accomplish because it is not. We have to crack our brains to think of our best Statement of Work and WBS to show Mr. Chia.

Okay, it’s verdict time! It is not easy to have a perfect task done, and yes, we did have a lot of minor corrections that we need to do. We are still learning! (: Not to worry, I believe my team will work together no matter how difficult the obstacles are!
Day turn to night, and it’s time for DINNER time! :D
Before I post this passage about our dinner, i just want to apologize for like not posting any photos of the food that I have eaten. So I think I should start doing that already! Alright, some of us went to HAPPY KITCHEN RESTAURANT (快乐厨房) to eat today. It is two shops beside my all time favourite restaurant, LEMON RESTAURANT. We were waiting for the food to be served and we used the time to create some joy in the air. We were playing a fool out of ourselves (I think it’s only myself. :X), joking around with each other and stuffs. After joking, food is ready to be served! :D
First: Metal Plate Tofu (铁板豆腐)
Second：Stir-Fried Bai Cai with Mushroom（轻炒香姑白菜）
Third: Metal Plate Beef (铁板牛肉)
Forth: Fried Egg (煎蛋)
Lastly: Rice (:
The dishes that were served that is considered quite healthy because it do not contain as much oil as other restaurants. And before I leave the restaurant, I told the lady boss that I will go back again! LOL! :X But seriously, I think I will go to the restaurant again. :D
After eating, some of my friends wanted to go to the supermarket to buy snacks for the 3 days 2 nights 3 gorges (长江山峡) tour. I slept very late because I was doing my blog posts and planning of our project.
Reflection: Anticipation seems to overcome me now because I never been on a cruise before and tomorrow is the day where I can get to see more new things and experience a lot more new stuffs! HURAY! These few days, my group and I have been stressing us so much regarding the project, I really hope that this trip really can loosen ourselves up but at the same time learn something more about the history of China! (:

Day 9 – WEATHER YOU CAN NEVER, I REALLY MEAN NEVER, EXPERIENCE IN SINGAPORE!!

HELLO PEOPLE!!!
~~MAJOR NEWS~~
As the title said so, the weather in Wuhan, China is super COLD now!! If you have been reading my blog posts, I have been telling you people that it’s super hot and humid these few days in Wuhan. And all of us are complaining about the weather. (I believe that it’s Heaven who hears us! LOL! :X) According to the local student here, they say that it will be very cold from now onwards. And they even say that wearing a jumper is not enough. At first, I did not believe what they say because personally, I feel that it’s so impossible for such a hot weather which is near to 36 degrees Celsius to turn to such a cold weather like today! ): The current temperature now that we are experiencing now is roughly about 15 – 18 degrees Celsius because it’s raining today. I believe that the temperature will be much cooler when the rain is gone. Let hope and pray for best man! :D (I know that some of you are getting jealous because you all do not have the chance to experience the temperature here! :X )

Lesson is as usual today, but the only thing that is unusual today was EVERYONE is wearing a coat today!! Be it sweater, jumper, windbreaker, hoody or any other types of protective gear that is used to protect themselves from the cold, they are wearing it now.

LUNCH TIME!! :D
What do you want to have when you are freezing cold?
I believe that everyone would want a warm of tea/hot chocolate to warm yourself up! :D Yes, right indeed, we had soup and rice for our lunch! Mr Chia took us to his all time favourite soup shop. THE SHOP REALLY OFFERS GOOD SOUP!! You should try the soup. I order Red Dates Black Chicken soup! (P.S. Having soup in a freezing weather is superb!)
After lessons, we head back to our hostel and have our own respective teams meetings because we need to settle some project stuffs. At the same time, my group (Yu Chuan, Yi xian, Sheila) needs to discuss about the activities that we will be doing later for our Mid Autumn Festival celebration.

We went to have lunch at Lemon Restaurant (Ling Mong Le)
We are gathered at the second storey of our student hostel for our Mid-Autumn Festival Celebration. Not only we were celebrating ourselves, some of the local student helpers were there to celebrate this festive season with us. Hot green tea and different types of moon cakes are served during the celebration. We played games too. (:
I just remember that I was very tired and I went to sleep very early! :D

Reflection: Mid Autumn Festival might seem to be a very simple day in Singapore, where my family will just spend the day without doing anything special. Sometimes, my family might think that it is just an ordinary day. But in China, when it comes to Mid Autumn Festival, the local student will go back to their hometown to unite with their family members and celebrate this special day with them. Unfortunately, there is some of the local student that could not go back because of certain reasons. Through this, we can clearly see that the difference of importance level of this festival. The Chinese looks to this festival as a time where they can gather with their family where as the Singaporean doesn’t really care about this day. We must really learn to appreciate the time we have with our family members just like how the Chinese students.

Day 8 - OIE Lecture + PM Lecture

HELLO PEOPLE!! :D

BOREDOM is the only word that i can find to describe today. I do not know whether it is me or what, but the one thing i know that i have stay positive and let my imagination guide me back on track and make my stay in WUST worthwhile. I briefly know why my day is kind of boring because it's the lack of sleep that i have been having. And make it worse, i was late for my class, and i was fined 20RMB! ):

The first lesson we attended was the OIE lesson, to be honest, i did not pay full attention to the teacher because i was feeling rather pleasantly fatigued. She taught us about the geography of China. All the provinces and stuffs. (Sorry, i told you that i did not listen to the teacher, Sorry teacher!)

After our break time, we attended PM lecture and Ms Alicia Hock taught us another lecture that really stresses my brain to my breaking point. Thankfully, my friends were there to help me to open up my thinking hat but i still think that i still need to practice on that!! ): And to make it even more sad, there will be a test next week! )': The class released early today, and we left after completing our assignments.

Dinner was Tomato Egg with Rice! It's super nice with i am having it with my Special One! :D And it marks my day for today. I was a little disappointed about today. But nevertheless, I should keep myself positive and look forward to tomorrow.

-Beauty without expression is boredom-

Day 7 - WUST Visit

HELLO PEOPLE!! :D

I just wanna apologise for not posting my blog posts on time because my internet port is down which means that i cannot get to any internet access for the passed few days. So miserable right? ):
This is Day 7 of our OIP and today we are heading to the NEW Wuhan University of Science and Technology which is located much further away from the current WUST that we are staying in. In order to get there, we need to take a one hour bus trip! (Seriously, it's super far)

Once we reached WUST, we were welcomed by the students over there. They are very friendly and they seems very anticipated to see us. They even stood by the bus once we arrived at the university. The university is very big! (Seriously, it's very big. No joke!!) Mr Chia said that it four to five times bigger than Ngee Ann Poly!First stop to The Central Laboratory of Basic Medical Sciences Wuhan University of Science and Technology. We were guided by two student there to show us around the exhibition where all the anatomy of human body part. All the body parts are stored in clear container which contain some fluid that helps to preserve the body parts. Due to viewer discretion, i will post some of the pictures (they are art of anatomy! NO JOKE!)Next stop, we went to one of the teaching blocks in Wust. As we are approching the classroom, we are welcome by a warm round of applause by the student! Seriously, i was shocked because i think this only happens to those rock stars or anyone who is very popular. They applaused till the last one of our students entered the room. After that, the WUST students did a short presentation about WUST. I'm super impressed that they took the effort to present it in English because from what i know, their second language is English. They did a good job because i really understand what are they talking about and there was not much of any pronounciation problems. After that, we also presented for them regarding Singapore, NP, and OIP. We did the presentation in Mandarin. In my opinion, i think that we did not present it very well because our chinese standard is not high. So there's a little bit of stumbling over here and there. But to my amaze, they were very impressed by our presentation because they thought that they do not understand chinese very well. After that, they performed some items for us and we sang one chinese song for them too. IT'S REALLY FUN!!

After that, we went to the Library of the WUST. The library is the BIGGEST library in Hubei Province!! We went to one of the exhibition over there, and it's all about WUST. The founder, every shareholder..

These are the photos that i took over there. (:

After that, we went to the canteen over at WUST for a short refreshment!

The return journey from WUST to our hostel is terrible, i forgot to go to the toilet when i know i need to pee. So we board the bus and after one and a half hour later, then we alight. The first thing that i did was i ran all the way to the Main building of the university to relief myself.

This is what i did today, and i think today is quite a memorable day for me because i'm able to visit their New University and the anatomy exhibition!! (because i think the body parts are very cool!) I hope to see more stuffs tomorrow! :D So people, watch out for My Wuhan Blog! CHEERS! :D

Day 6 – City Tour

I opened my eyes and I saw my friend. And I realized that it was him that he woke me up. It was 0630 hours and we are supposed to meet at 0715 hours! At that point of time, I was thinking how are we going to make it this time. We were late last time, and I do not want that to happen again. So I woke my roommates as soon as possible so that we can get ourselves prepared. Last day, we spent the whole night outside, so it’s no surprise that we cannot wake ourselves up. So I told my group mates that I will not bathe because if I bathe, it will take me 20 minutes! And some more I do not want to be late, so I made this decision. (How great right!?)
We assembled outside our hostel and we begin our CITY TOUR!! WOHOOO!! :D

FIRST STOP: East Lake 东湖

Our first stop is East Lake. East Lake is the biggest scenery tourist attraction in Wuhan and also the largest lake within a city in China, is located on the south bank of the Yangtze River. It covers an area of 87 square kilometers (33 square kilometers of water area). When we entered, we were welcomed by the gentle wind blowing thru our hair. It feels very good and relaxing. It’s mainly because it’s early in the morning, so everything is cooler in the morning. In addition, what make the East Lake Scenic Area more incredible are its recreational facilities: the exciting slide way, the ropeway, the yachts, tandem bikes, the skating rink and the pleasure ground for children. We took photo graphs on the yachts and spent 45 minutes around East Lake. As the sun got higher, the temperature got higher too! ):

SECOND STOP: Hubei Province Museum

Our second stop is Hubei Province Museum. The museum does not allow us to use flash when we are taking photographs mainly because the flash might spoil the artifacts in the display cabinets. The technology use in the technology in the museum is same as in Singapore. We are given one listening device each and we are lead by one museum personnel. The museum personnel talk through a microphone and we hear through the listening device. It’s very helpful because this method enables everyone who is using the listening device to get the necessary information about the artifact. After the short tour in the museum, we are given some free time to walk around the Museum to have a look. The Museum really gives me a good impression!! If you have the chance to go there, please do not hesitate to go to the Hubei Province Museum!! :D

THIRD STOP: Yellow Crane Tower (黄鹤楼)

Our third stop is Yellow Crane Tower. The Yellow Crane Tower really leave a significant mark in my memory because the yellow crane tower is the one the most recognizable tower in China. And for such a long time, I have not been to anywhere historical. The Yellow Crane Tower is simply majestic. From the old traditional designs of the towers to looking at the city view at the top of the tower, I left with one word, and that is SUPERB!! I have learnt a lot of new things and experiences that I cannot learn from textbooks and other media from the visit to the Yellow Crane Tower.

FOURTH STOP: Walking Street (步行街)

Our very last stop is Walking Street located at Han Kou Area (汉口). Since we have been to Bu Xing Jie before, we are no strangers to that Street already. We did nothing much on that street also.
Reflection: One week has passed and we are slowing getting adapted to the environment over here. We do not have any major problems with the campus itself because we are assisted by the friendly student helpers over here. And I have made some friends over here, so I believe that sooner or later, we will be very familiar with the place already! And I hope that everything stays fine for the next coming week. And I also hope that the weather will get better!

Day 5 – Free and Easy Day! Shopping + 步行街

Woke up at 930am. We are told to meet at the hostel lobby at 10am. Thankfully, I’m the first one to wake up so that I can use the toilet first. We (Me, Yu Chuan, Nicholas) were late, and we felt very bad because we are late, and all of our friends are waiting for us.

Took bus at 建设一路 bus stop to 江汉路 (the place where we do our shopping). The bus journey is around 30 minutes. We have the chance to have a view of the Yangtze River. Unfortunately, I was unaware of the surrounding because the bus is packed with people!
After 45 minutes, we arrived at Shopping Mall. When we heading to the shopping mall, we saw this kid, he is a street performer. He was doing hand stand in the middle of bustling street. We stopped and took photographs of him because in Singapore, there are no kid street performers.
After we arrived at the shopping mall, we were split into small groups so that we can do our shopping faster. We are also instructed by our trip leader that to meet at the MacDonald’s at 5pm after our shopping.

Initially, I was with my group of friends. We are thinking whether to have lunch first or shop first. Later on, after deciding, my group of friends went to eat, while I stayed with another group of friends who want to shop first. We are scattered around the shopping mall and I was with my girlfriend in the end.

We went to eat first because after surveying the shopping mall, we got hungry. We head to this 汤包 restaurant to have 汤包. We ordered 虾仁汤包. The filling is minced pork and prawn. It’s SUPER nice!! I and my girlfriend love it very much. Later on, we went to ‘Coco’ drink stall to have Pudding Milk Tea. The Coco drink stall is somehow like Sweet talk in Singapore. But their Pudding Milk Tea is very nice. Instead of having pearls for the milk tea, they put pudding with the milk tea. The Milk Tea and Pudding goes very well with each other! After that, IT’S SHOPPING TIME!

The basement of the shopping mall is somehow like our Far East Plaza in Singapore. The design and the style of the stall that are located there is somehow very similar to the one at Far East Plaza in Singapore. My girlfriend bought many things there, because it’s cheaper than Singapore. After shopping for like 3 hours, we are a little hungry. We went to look for small bites. We had Mongolia Pork, Smelly Bean Curd, Honey Chicken Wings and many more. (I forgot!) They are nice food where you can try over there.

After shopping for so long, we finally found the other group of friends. And we realized that they have gone to the other shopping centre to shop. No wonder, we cannot locate them. After meeting our friends, we were told by our trip leader that we are heading to 步行街.
步行街is a long street where shops like Adidas, Nike, Puma, Levis, Rolex, etc. are located. My friends went there to get their shades. Crossing roads at Wuhan is super dangerous because the vehicles will not stop for you. I still remember we were crossing the road, there is this bus, the bus was travelling down the road and for not reason, and the bus did not stop when we are at the zebra crossing. It almost knocked down one of my friends. After that, we head down the jetty to take scenery photos with our respective groups. At there we can get to see the Yangtze River and the Hubei city view. It’s super nice! But there’s always imperfection. We are approached by Beggars over there at the jetty. They are truly stubborn, and one of the beggars almost got our student helper to get irritated.

After that, we went to the Wuhan’s Quay to take a ferry to the place where we settled our dinner. The ferry was packed with people and it’s very hot because of the weather. Once the ferry got moving already, it felt much better. After 20 minutes, we reached our destination. The destination is like a street alley where a lot of food stalls are located there. But we went to a restaurant.

We had 汤包 again for dinner. And some of my friends went to the street to get street food. It’s quite late already, like 2200 hours, we were walking to the bus stop and we saw this street stall who is selling sandal wood key chains. I didn’t get to buy them because we are in the rush. We are rushing for the last bus home. :X
Reach hostel at 2230 hours. Tired, Sticky and Smelly but we had a lot of fun! (:
Reflection: After studying for one week, we finally got time to go free and easy! Hooray!! It is a really fun to travel around with my friends because it really bonds us together. And I hope that everything will get much fluent and I hope that we should do this often so that it will brings us closer and closer together. (:

Day 4 - IS lesson + Self Discovery

Today would be our first IS class. Our IS class is conducted by Ms Zhang Hong. Her English was rather clear as there was hardly a word that she cannot pronounced it wrongly and I could mostly understand what she was saying.
Our location was classroom 704. First lesson of OEC: Business and investing. Business to me is a very hard subject and business don't create much interest in me, so i'm very sorry to tell all of you that the first OEC lesson really gives me a very negative impression. But looking at the bright side, i hope the upcoming OEC lesson will be fun and enjoyable.

After lesson, when everyone is resting in their dorm. Apparently, i am suppose to take agnes out to the Shopping Mall. And you know that, i'm not so sure about the roads here in China. We took bus 702 and wanted to head to XunDong Lu. And due to the noise produced by the crowds, i can't really hear the stops being announced over the broadcasting system so we over-shot the stop!
After more than 45 mins on the bus, we arrived at Zhong Nan Lu 中南路.
We went to this restaurant called 楚留香饺子馆. It's located quite far away from our hostel, but it's worth trying it! (:
We ordered some of the signature dish that the restaurant offered.

Day 3 - SHOPPING MALL!

销品茂SHOPPING MALL is where we went! Not forgetting, we have lectures in the morning first! :D

After lessons, we went back to put our bags down before we head to SHOPPING MALL.

We took Bus 702 at 建设一路.

After 30 minutes and some hiking involved, we reached SHOPPING MALL!

The Ice Cream truck is way cooler than what we have in Singapore!

We had a lot of fun! We went to the arcade and there's bumper cars in it!

SHOPPING MALL is actually quite a high end shopping mall because i checked out the price in an adidas shop, i was hoping that the price would be lower than Singapore. But to my surprise, it actually the same price in Singapore. As the girls are separated from the guys, we went to look for them after the fun that we had in the arcade! :D
After that, it was late already, and we didnt want Mr. Chia to get worried! So we bus-ed back to our hostel!
Reflection: The shopping trip is not the key highlight that i want to talk about in my reflections. I want to talk about my local friends! Wudi and Ziwei, they are my new friends that i made here. The reason why Wudi and Ziwei are the closer to me because we shared the same interest and we like to fool around very much. I felt that we have been friends for a long time.. I treat them as my brothers (哥儿们). So i hope that the remaining day, they can take care of me! (:

Day 2 - Orientation + Buying Necessities

Morning Broke and Knockings on the door wakes me up.
We were reluctant to wake up because we did not sleep well last night, mainly because of the 12 hours of travel. Furthermore, I’m still not adapted to waking up early in the morning since I’m still in the ‘HOLIDAY’ mood! As a result, I’m left with dying minutes for me to get prepared and assemble outside our hostel. To make it worse, the temperature is just the same as Singapore! Double H! (Humid and HOT!)

Gathered outside the hostel @ 10am

Our Hostel!! (:

After assembling the MDE and LSCT students, we started our ORIENTATION TOUR around WUST! We went to the place where we will be studying in for this period.. So we seized this opportunity to snap a photo of WUST building.

Majestic View of WUST

This is me ( LOOK AT THE SAD FACE! HAHA!)

After that, we head downstairs ( which is in front of the Main building of WUST) and took photos! (: The funny thing was that we are running out of time and yet we still can take our own sweet time which resulted in the LARGE gap between the LSCT and MDE students. We are still happily taking photographs. HAHAH! :X

After that, we doubled our pace so that we can catch up with the LSCT students. And we arrived at the canteen.

To be honest, their canteen is really an eye opener for me because this is the first time that i saw this type of canteen in my life. Although i know that ther canteen here is not really as nice as compared to Singapore's canteen, the variety of food available here are definitely on par with Singapore's! (:

But i find that the food here is way too 'Oliy and Heavy' (which means by, when the food tastes spicy, it's really spicy. When the food taste salty, it's really salty!) HAHA!

After we are briefed about the canteen, we head back to our hostel to change our summer attire because the weather is too hot (It's almost the same as Singapore!) We had a chat with the local student ( our student helper) there, his name is Xun Tong. I realise that in WUST, there is a lot of full of passionate people who are willing to go the extra mile to help people.

After that, we head down to the nearby supermarket to shop for some of our basic necessities. On our way there, we saw their 'HDB' blocks that we can never see it in Singapore. The blocks are not very high. Unlike Singapore, HDB blocks are much higher.

We also saw fascinating food stalls that are along the streets before we reached the supermarket.

Liqour and Ciagarettes shop
After that we went to a restaurant to have our lunch. At that time, i was not very hungry, so i ordered sandwiches! (: The sandwiches are big and delicious! Definitely worth the money!

Reflection: The students in WUST are very hospitable and helpful. In the beginning, i'm very strange to them and i do not really want to talk to them because i scared that i might say the wrong thing and offend them. But after communicating with them, they are fine with these things, and they are willing to listen to us. I believe that they are very hardworking and they really put in a lot of effort in learning whatever they can, just to increase their general knowledge so that when time comes. they can apply it to any situation. This is a point that we should learn from them.