3 Gorges ( Day 18-20)

-DAY 18-

Have been logging on to Npal with hope that results would be out a few hours before 9am. And YES! Finally at my last try at around 5.45am, I saw my results. Disappointing. A warning for me to push even harder for my next semester.

FOCUS.

Gathered at 6.30am. Due to the long bus ride which we would need to be taking, approx 5-6 hours, thus we had to meet real early to make sure that we will reach our destination on time. Many of us took this time to catch some sleep which we sacrificed for doing our blogging and assignment 1 the night before.

After bumping on the bus for quite some time, it was finally LUNCH time! Came to a city named ‘Yi Chang’ at around 12pm and went to a restaurant for lunch. I must say, this lunch is the best I had ever eaten since the first day in Wuhan. It is the only restaurant that sells STEAMED egg, non-oily vegetables and in overall a more healthy range of food.

Lunch Place.

Steamed Vegetables.

After lunch, another hour of bus ride before we reach 3 gorges. Went around the area using their own tour buses. Moving from one location to another and taking a few more pictures before we head out to 截流纪念园. It was just a simple park with not much in it. After which, we were off again to fill our growling tummies!

Admission Ticket.

Picture at the Park.

Group Photo.

And here comes the real thing! After having our dinner, we are all up and ready to head for the jetty where we will be boarding our cruise. We will be sleeping on the cruise for 2 nights!!! The ticketing area was quite crowded with people and of course smoke-filled.
Waited for quite long before we can actually board the cruise.

Cruise.

The rooms on board was ‘wonderful’. With plenty of smoking, gambling, half naked china men just directly opposite our rooms. Due to our ladies safety, some of us swapped rooms with the guys so that we would have an equal number of guys and girls to protect each other! =))
My room-mate for the next 2 nights is ANYU!!! AGAINNN =DDDD

Meddled with the things in the room for awhile, bathed and settled down straight after that to watch our long lost TELEVISION!!! HAHA!

-DAY 19-

MY DOOR WAS NEARLY BANGED DOWN AT 6AM IN THE MORNING. Our first morning on the cruise. Their morning call was so ‘unique’. At 6am, our tourist went to every door and banged on it till someone went to open the door. They literally bang till the whole door was vibrating and it was not once but 5 times until we made our way down for breakfast. Irritating? Yes, but an effective method to wake tourist up. HAHA! Ok, so we went down for breakfast and a huge discovery! Just one night and we have reached Chongqing, a town which is located quite a distance outside Hubei.

After our breakfast, we alighted at 白帝城 for a short sightseeing.

This is an ancient city which holds a long history and due to the many poems which was specially written for this place, it is also named as the ‘city of poem’.

After walking around for sometime, we headed back to our cruise for lunch followed by free and easy!

CK

Standing at the top of the mountain!

Couldn’t stand the beauty of the mountains just right in outside my window, so we decided to sit on the latch of the cruise to fully enjoy the nice wind and scenic view.

My Legs. Haha!

Roy Fishing!

Headed up to the top deck for an even better view and back to our room again to enjoy the peaceful sea view and breeze. This was a nice time for us to catch back on our sleep since the last week we were all crazily ‘chionging’ our assignments.

Jump Shot at the upper deck.

ME!!!

Anyu's Bed.

Scenery outside our window.

Long nice sleep…

In the afternoon we took another small passenger boat to 神农溪. The journey took almost an hour. So our main objective of going there was to experience river rafting by the locals.

Admission Ticket.

Morning farming was their main occupation and after which afternoon they would take up the job of rafting the boat as their part time job. All the rowers were averagely 40 years old and above but their body is definitely made of steel!

As a rower myself, it was already hard having 20 people pulling their own weight but for these uncles, they only had 5 rowers to a boat and there were 21 of us. This was heartaching. On every pull of their paddle, we can see how strenous this was on the aged bodies of the men.

Strenous.

I would rather exchange positions with them and take over their job while they sit in the raft enjoying the scenery. As what our tour guide told us, in a few decades time, we would not be seeing all this boat men anymore as their standard of living would have increased with their children all pursuing studies or jobs overseas.

Pulling 20+ of us.

The experience of the rafting session was marvellous. Boarded back onto our cruise at around 6pm for our dinner. And it was free and easy again. We were told that our cruise would pass through the water elevator at around 11pm.

Excited!

We would be passing through a total of 5 gates. The process of all 5 would be the same, thus if we were to view all 5 gates it would be from 11pm-5am the next morning. We were told to just view one. It was really a once in a life time experience which I hope that everyone out there would be able to go through. After watching the first 2 gates, I went back to sleep. But at 3.30am & 4.30am, I woke up unknowingly and just nice they were going through other processes which I bet not all were able to see it as they were all sound asleep! WHAHAHA!

Passing Through!

Big Gate.

We went down.

This was how close we were to the wall outside our window.

-DAY 20-

6.30am -> went for breakfast -> back to bunk for final packing of bags -> left the cruise at around 8am. It was raining heavily. Boarded our bus and we were told to grab some snacks on the nearby supermarket as there might be jam due to the heavy rain, thus we would not be stopping over for lunch. And we are back in WUST at about 2pm.
End of the once in the life time experience.

Reflections:

After spending 2 nights on the boat, we had a chance to experience the lifestyle of others and see how simple some of their lifes are. Simple yet fulfilling. I think it is because of their lifestyle thus even until the age of 60+ they are still so healthy. The elderly of singapore is really having a much higher standard of living compared to those over here. It is a right decision for the government to extend the retirement age of Singaporeans so that the elderlys would still lead a fulfilling life and to keep themselves active. By doing so, it helps to keep our citizens healthy.

xanier!

Written Test (Day 17 - 17 Sept)

Although it is an open book test, but the content is so much that I don’t even know where to start with. Had written down a list of what is covered in each topic so that it can ease my searching. Hope it helps! So we had our test in the afternoon. Ngee Ann Poly common test booklet!

Test Booklet.

Although the test was open book, answers could not really be found in the notes. That’s the style of Ngee Ann Poly lecturers. Haha! They conduct open book test for us but with answers that are not found in the notes. SMART.

So for this test, it is more on understanding of your work and a bit of common sense. There were quite a number of questions and each question we had tons of words to write. Many of us couldn’t finish writing till the very last minute! Hope we can all do well for this test!

Finally, one heavy weightage test down! Got to reward myself again with a RUN! =DDD Ran with An Yu and Alvin around campus and back on the track after that with the others. After the run, we went out for dinner.

Wanted something simple, but some of them wanted to introduce the restaurant which they went the other time to us so we went. The food was super not nice. Seriously. All the food is either fried or still fried!

And one funny thing happened.

ME: “Er, do you’ll have something steamed?”

Waitress: “Steamed??? Er… no all our food here is either fried or stir fried.”

Which restaurant doesn’t sell steamed dishes in Singapore!

I was stunned for a moment when she told me that.

In my mind I was thinking “WHAT?! NO STEAMED DISHES IN SUCH A BIG RESTAURANT!” but no matter what, we still ordered our food. And it all came out either super oily or have some weird taste which smells like 臭豆腐.

Haha! In the end, all of us left the restaurant with no more than half filled tummy.

Conclusion: NEVER GOING BACK THERE AGAIN!

Restaurant.

Group Photo at the restaurant.

Reflections:

Singaporeans are health conscious. Government’s effort on promoting a healthy lifestyle which incurred a great deal of money spent on health education programmes have indeed paid off. In Singapore, we can see people jogging at any place suitable, be it the parks, along the canals etc. Exercising locations are built specially by the government and can be found everywhere in Singapore but it is almost impossible to find it here in China.

It is either the road is very rocky or it is just not suitable for running. At around 5-6pm which is the time when most people get off from work, this is the time that the park is also gathered with working adults, kids. We can say it is almost any age group. In the early dawn, elderly gather at the park to do Taiji, meditation exercises etc.

From this, we can see that majority of the Singaporeans are exercising as long as time is able to be taken off from their hectic schedule.

Some personal experiences that clearly shows the difference between the level of health consciousness between Singapore and China:

1) It is very difficult to find food labels with nutrition information on their food products here in China. For the first 1 week when I was here, I was trying to find food products with nutritional factors printed on it, but it was so limited that only those foods that can be found in countries like Singapore & Malaysia has it.

2) There is no ‘healthier choice symbol’ on the food package!!! In Singapore, the symbol is what I always depend on for the choice of food which goes into my tummy!

3) In Singapore, eateries that utilizes the least oil but still able to whip up a good dish would attract tons of people. But in china, eateries that use little oil is one in a million!
The government had indeed put in a lot of effort to benefit the health of us citizens. Be grateful that we have such government that helps citizens to think about our health aspects. I think that I have been taking all these measures taken by our government for granted, thus when I am here in Wuhan, I find it really difficult for me to find food products which are healthy. Besides healthy food that can be found off the shelves in supermarkets in singapore, I miss my mum’s home cooked food!!!!!!! Because it was always ‘custom-made’ to my request haha! Steamed vegetables, chicken breast etc. this will never be found in Wuhan.

xanier!

IS + 1st Presentation! ( Day 16 - 16 Sept)

IS Lesson at 9AM.
Lesson was on Chinese traditional wedding customs and Feng Shui. The lecturer was the first since I came here to use the headphones to conduct lessons. Interesting but the headphones were so dusty that I didn’t really want to put it on. The lecturer conducted his lessons by talking through his own headphones and we can also ask him questions by talking through our own headphones too.

Lecturer for the day.

It is a good way to let students focus more on the lesson rather than the surrounding sounds. But the disadvantage is that students will tend to get bored very easily especially if the voice of the lecturer is monotonous. It will feel like listening to a monotonous radio?

Yea so I would still prefer Singapore’s way of teaching which is pure vocal! =) More interactive and engaging.

After IS, an hour short break for us to touch up on our final slides for presentation. Many were still preparing at the very last minute.

Think that we had been enjoying too much for the previous week, resulting us not being able to complete our work on time =X got to manage our time wisely for the next assignment which is coming up already!

Had lecture 5 and test 5 before our presentation of BPE Assignment 1. My group was all quite nervous for the presentation because we will be presenting in front of people that we had never presented to before. Haha! But we still did a good job =))

Presentation Time:

My Group.

Me!

Reflection:

I can see that China is trying to keep up with the advanced technology by implementing ‘special’ learning methods which is to use head phones to conduct lessons. But I really wonder if students of WUST really think that headphones are a better way of learning than traditional teaching method. Maybe the money spent on installing these headphones could be better utilized in another way which would benefit the students even more. Hmmph… maybe surveys could be conducted to understand what the students really need. That is what Ngee Ann Poly does! This method allows students to voice out their needs and let them have a sense of ownership for their school. I think that creating and encouraging a sense of ownership is lacking from China schools. I seldom see activities that are conducted by students or student surveys etc.

Clark Moustakas:

“The individual increasingly comes to know who he is through the stand he takes when he expresses his ideas, values, beliefs, and convictions, and through the declaration and ownership of his feelings.”

(Having a sense of ownership changes the level of responsibility a person feels. Pride and benevolence are huge motivators. So when an individual/group expresses a sense of “we did this” and willing to share, the school benefits. More freedom should be given to students here so that they can enjoy and get involved in their school life in a more personal manner.)

xanier!

Interaction with China Students (Day 15 - 15th Sept)

PLUCK TANGERINES! YEA!!!

A special day off for all of us today! Each division lecturer actually gave us a day off today just to let us attend activities which were specially arranged by the China student leaders.

So the activity for today is…. PLUCK TANGERINES! School buses were specially catered for us and we set off at about 1.30pm. Weather was just nice for such activities =) We were transported to a tangerine farm which was located about 30minutes bus ride from our school.

Greennn Tangerines!

The farm didn’t really look like what I had expected. It was all green in colour instead of the usual orange oranges. Haha! I ate quite a number of it which were all freshly plucked from the tree.

Group Photo.

After having a big feast of tangerines, we headed back to our campus in anticipation of the BBQ at night!

Made our way to the place and we were all quite fascinated by how the pits actually looked so different from BBQ pits found in Singapore’s East Coast Park. It seemed more like those tribal style BBQ with people sitting around the fire and cooking their food.

Special BBQ Pits.

The guys had quite a hard time starting up the fire because there was no fire starters and our only alternative was to gather dry leaves & twigs to start a fire. The china students were quite NPCC, Scouts, Girl Guides etc. etc. started to pop out. Haha! Test of our outdoor survival skills.

Reflections:

For the previous 2 nights, I had been in touch with the China student leaders together with the other 2 divisions in charge to plan this event. They came over to our hostel to discuss with us on the timing, dates and what to bring etc.

This was quite a good exposure for me to try working with other people rather than just my usual group of society members or other Ngee Ann student leaders. It was a good opportunity to understand their organizational skills and how they displayed their leadership. Quite interesting to be able to learn how foreign students deal with things differently from us.

There were some language barriers which made our communication a little difficult. When we tried speaking to them in chinese, they found it hard to understand our type of chinese but when we tried conversing using english, we had to talk at a very slow pace so that they can catch each sentence. So it became that there was a mixture of both english and chinese so that both parties would understand what each other is talking about. Haha! Not bad that both parties are trying hard to accept each others lingo.

In Singapore, we are too used to conversing with each other through the virtual world eg. MSN, Skype etc. and the common sentence we normally say to each other “see you in msn tonight, we shall discuss and settle it there”. Most of our stuffs are discuss through all these internet widget which we cannot conveniently find it here in China.

Lets see for example the china student leaders would rather come straight to our hostel to discuss stuffs with us instead of taking our email and discuss through MSN.

The advantage is that face to face communication would reduce the chances of miscommunication. But the disadvantage about this would be that efficiency of work is not up to standard. I had to sms them one night before the actual event to enquire about the details once more & to reconfirm if the outing was still on because there was no news after our last meeting. And instead of telling me all these through the net or text messages, 2 Student leaders came down specially just to tell me a piece of information. Is it really necessary?

If I was in Singapore, I believe that we would have settled this on the night of the meeting and not drag till one day before the event to reconfirm again. Maybe many might say that Singapore students are very lazy, but I would see this as the convenience which internet has brought to us. And how much is the virtual world influencing our lifestyle.

Unknown:

Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.

(True? YES! If the China student leaders were to be as frequent a user of internet widgets as Singapore students and understand the convenience of internet, I believe that they wouldn’t even bother coming down personally to our hostel just to relate a piece of information to us. Not that we are lazy, it is just the time saved can be better utilised in other areas of your life! Hmmph… think about it! )

xanier!

Day 14 – Happy Birthday BUNK MATE! (Shunnnn Qingggg)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHUN QING!

HAHA! A ‘not very surprising’ surprise for bunk mate Shun Qing at 12AM last night. Tried to lure her out of our room while others rushed in to hide. Ok we were successful in luring her out but were caught in action while everyone was rushing into our room and she was already making her way back. So this means she saw everything. But never mind, we still sang her a birthday song before going off to sleep.

Lecture & quiz 4 today.

Now, having quizzes after every lecture is like a routine for us. It felt weird and stressful initially but it has now become like a daily homework to do after lectures. Good!

Proceeded to canteen 3 for lunch. It was the first time having lunch there. Not bad I would say. Had 鸡蛋面. It was a bowl of soup noodles with fried egg on top of it. Tasty! Had 1 hour break so we went back to our hostel for a quick nap before heading back to class for Flexsim mock test followed by the real test.

Canteen 3.

Test.

Thank god the test was still manageable because I seriously knew nuts about it till last night. After the test, Mr Loh gave us assignment 2. =.= We cannot seem to finish our assignments. Workload is overwhelming!

Finally, 1 test down and so to reward myself, I’m off to the track for a run! Running helps to release stress =))

Proven by: Xanier & My Father! Haha!

Reflection:

Time management is the key to success! For the previous few days, I was so overloaded with work that I know I was too stressed out. Was quite agitated when I couldn’t complete my work or when I didn’t catch enough sleep. Due to the lack of sleep, my mental wasn’t at its best. Just had to tell myself that the week is coming to an end and everything would be over very soon. Give your best and no regrets after that.

Knowing that this is just the first test & presentation since the day we arrived in Wuhan, I have learnt much through this lesson that time management is really very crucial. 2 more assignments & test to go before we can really enjoy ourselves.

Studying overseas on your own is really a matter of self discipline. If you are not able to convince yourself to study, then no one would be able to do so. Self discipline. Self independence.

Peter F. Drucker:

“Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.”

(Everyone is learning about time management. It isn’t about the hard skills but the soft skills of how good you can fully manage your time. STUDY HARD. PLAY HARD. TRAIN HARD.)

xanier!

Han Kou (Day 13 - Sept 13th)

OUTING!

8.30 am we gathered and made out way to 汉口江滩.

汉口江滩

A total resemblance of Marina Barrage, just that Marina Barrage is so much nicer and cleaner compared to this. We were given about 30-45 minutes to tour around.

Group Photo.

Saw many people selling kites there and we discovered this uncle who was releasing a SUPER DUPER LONG KITE. Which you see no end to it! Interesting eh! =)

So LONGGGG!

After this short tour, we were given quite long hours to shop around 江汉路步行商业街.

江汉路步行商业街

Had lunch at 永和豆浆. Ate 鲁肉饭 and drank a cup of 黑豆浆.

鲁肉饭

After which, we went to shop around and released that the prices were not much different from Singapore and there was nothing much for us to stay on.

Thus, I and An Yu decided to head for the wholesale centre which sells a large variety of stuffs. No one expect us walked such a long distance just to catch a view of how their wholesale centre looks like. But it was a good experience because we actually caught a glimpse of their lifestyle and how different the wholesale centre looks like compared to those in Thailand.

Their Houses.

Rather disappointed actually, because there was nothing much that suits us. Most of it was necessities and clothing which were not of very good quality.

Ladies out there: those online shops which states that their clothes are all imported from korea, DO NOT BELIEVE IT. I saw plenty of those clothing here in Wuhan’s wholesale centre.

After a long long walk back to our meeting place, we saw the THICK layer of dust which was covering our feet.

DUST.

Rested our tired legs for a while before heading back to our meeting place where we boarded our bus back and bid our sweet tour guide, Ms Lei Jing farewell. She was really sweet because before she left, she gave us her number and told us if we needed her help to find our way around Wuhan, we can just give her a call. HOW NICEEE!

And our day ended with most of us visiting poor Jun Ru in the school’s hospital due to her high fever and bad stomach. Most of us actually wanted to visit her but were told to go back to our hostel as the hospital room is too small to accommodate too many people. And all I heard about her condition was that she was put on drip.

Reflection:

Thanks to having a nice company today who is none other than An Yu! I somewhat felt that I had fulfilled a small portion of my backpack travelling dream (although today I was using a sling bag). Both of us separated ourselves from the group and went on to venture for the wholesale centre. Navigating our way around the place which we were totally unfamiliar with, thus resulting in us walking up and down the same road twice after we realize we were walking in the wrong direction.

And on the way, we bought food from road side stalls, looking at how they bargain with each other etc. made us really immense into the life of Wuhan citizens. Oh and we were trying to act as if we were one of the locals there so that people will not con us, but by not knowing how to cross their crazy roads with cars coming straight to you although it was green man had totally disclosed our identity as “TOURIST”. HAHA!

One important point: if you want to act like a local, never run when you cross the road. Stroll across even though you know there are cars coming directly into you because that is what the locals do! O.O and never trust their green man as it is represents nothing to the drivers.

Lastly for JunRu’s incident, a lecturer had told me before to never fall sick in China because whatever illness you have, you will be put on drip. Never really thought that the medical sector in China would be so backdated. They didn’t diagnose on what was the main cause of her illness and no oral medicine was even given before she was placed on drip. So they think that drip is the medicine to all sickness luh?

Was quite pissed off when I kept hearing that Junru was given packets and packets of drip one after the other after her condition became worse. They know that the glucose drip wasn’t helping, so what for you keep poking needles into her body and trying to flood her with glucose. Seriously, china should put 101% of their emphasis in future on their medical sector so as to save their citizens from glucose over dosage.

I just think that, if they do not have the ability to diagnose a patient’s condition, just say it honestly so that we still have time to search for better alternatives and not put a patient’s life at risk. There are still plenty of improvements to be made to the infrastructure and facilities here in China.



Hippocrates, father of western medicine:

“I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.”


(Wonder if doctors in China really took their doctor’s oath seriously or just pledge against it for the sake of becoming a doctor. They should take their work more seriously, treating each and every patient with passion and the right attitude. Much more needs to be done before the medical sector of China would thrive.)

xanier!

Day 12 – East Lake/Hubei Museum/ Yellow Crane Tower.

BREAKKKK!!! =D

Finally a weekend break for us to have a little tour around and to take a breather off the hectic workload.

Gathered at the admin block at 7.15am and set off after that. Our new tour guide is called Lei Jing.

After approx 1 hour bus ride, we arrived at the Hubei Provincial Museum but only to get the news that it only opens at 9am daily and so we were way to early.

Our tour guide decided to change the itinery a little by bringing us to a nearby park called East Lake (东湖). Walked around the park for around 2 hours or so. Didn’t think that it was much of a tourist attraction as it felt like our Bedok Reservoir to me, with the only difference that there is PLENTY of humongous lotus leafs floating on the lake.

Entrance.

Nice Lake.

Oh anyway we saw this elderly man playing one player tennis! At first when we didn’t notice that the tennis ball was attached to a string, we all thought he had some super power to bring the ball back to himself. He was counted as very strong and fit for an elderly of his age.

Keep up the good work uncle! =D

After leaving the park, we headed for the Museum. Huge. Due to some really priceless 国宝 in the museum, the security was very tight. We even had to go through a security check and scan before we can get into the place.

Museum.

Big Bells.

Finally after waiting for so long…. LUNCH TIME!!! I was starving ok! We went to 首义园小吃街 for lunch. It is known as a snack street thus there was PLENTY of food there =) But the troublesome thing is that we need to use a lunch card for our purchases. Had beef meat wrap, pancake, 汤包 and Mango Ice blended. DELICIOUS! Finally felt that I really tasted the food here, rather than those oily ones outside our hostel.

首义园

Yellow Crane Tower.

In the Tower!

After lunch we went to the Yellow Crane Tower (黄鹤楼). Actually I didn’t even think that in my whole life time I would be able to step into this place which I had only read about it in Secondary School Chinese textbook. Was quite excited about walking up this tower! Climbed this tower which has 9 floors with An Yu! =) On every level, there was a small section that gives us a little more understanding of what the tower was about.

After the tower, we went to grab some nice souvenirs for our family and friends! The gifts which I bought were reasonably priced and very nice too! =D

Reflections:

After the trip to the museum, I was actually quite disappointed as there was no attractive factor in it compared to Singapore’s Museum. The artifacts were quite attractive at first but as we went round the museum, we realized that the pictures which we were taking were almost similar and there was no further description of the item besides the name of it. We were thinking that they were just trying to fill up the empty space and trying to make their museum look huge. But they should take into consideration that after the first stretch of looking, viewers get bored out and lose interest in what they are looking.

In a positive manner I would say that they were trying to show us all the artifacts which they have discovered. They want the world to know how great these artifacts are, but they didn’t know that we learn through our eyes when visiting a museum. Thus, showing us everything which has similar appearance and description would only let us leave the museum with tons of questions. I would say it did not bring out the culture of the olden days and I still do not understand the history.

Singapore museum would try their very best to make us understand whatever they want to bring out to us. And of course more consideration and effort will be placed in selection of the artifacts for display etc.


Bernard Grasset:
“To love is to stop comparing.”

(Indeed I should stop comparing China with Singapore. I should try to accept China with a positive mindset and to accept what they offer. Continuous comparing brings me nowhere. But isn’t this what humans always do? To compare and contrast.)

xanier!