my soup noodles...Looks super oily

xiao long bao but no soup inside

peeling egg with a chopsticks

Sebastian VS Mr. Ma

Satish VS Sebastian

Mr. Ma VS Satish

Sasi VS Satish

Mr. Chua

Sebastian Tan


Today, I woke up at 7.30am to prepare myself for the Lab test at 9am. I quickly wash up and took out my APPG notes to study. As we have a Lab Test, we decided to make our way to the classroom earlier. The weather today was sunny; no wonder the people in Wuhan say that the weather here is freaky weird. One moment it will be rainy and at the next moment, it is sunny again. When we reached the classroom, we were very early. We waited outside the classroom for a while before Mr. Chua and Mr. Ma arrived. When we walked into the classroom, we automatically sat down at different tables and setting up our lap top for the Lab test.
We were given a set of instruction before we start. All our papers are different; I got set 13 for my lab test. The number 13 again!! When I was designing my user interface, Mr. Chua came to draw the group box on my paper. Ha-ha, I got to redo my user interface for the group box =D
When I am doing my user interface, many of the other classmates have already finished theirs and are raising their hands for the teachers to check. Hence, I decided to double up my speed. The Lab Test is rather similar to the Trial Test we had yesterday. I could finish it on time with no error when I ran it but as for the coding, I am not too sure about it.
We went for lunch after the test at canteen 3, I tried their noodles and it taste like Maggie noodles. However, it was quite delicious and it was only two Yuan. I bought more of the herbal tea as I am feeling the heat in me this few days. After lunch, I went downstairs to look for some DVDs to buy. I manage to find two of them which cause 18 Yuan in total. We met Tom when he was buying water from the shop there. As there is a project that we must submit on week five, we decided to go back to our service apartment to do it before lesson at 2pm. We did more research on our topic and plan out what we want to do tonight. We decided to do the worksheet we got today and also start writing out our report for the journal. Tom actually invited us to view the cherry blossom as the flowers are going to bloom for this month and next month. I have been talking to him on MSN and yesterday he suddenly decided to talk in mandarin. He said that he have been speaking English so much that he does not feel like a Chinese anymore. Looks like the people in China do have a very strong sense of belonging. Oh ya, I forgotten to mention. I found out that the place that we walk past everyday to get to our hostel is actually a driving school. There is only one teacher teaching and it cost 2000 Yuan to learn. The students here find it too expensive thus they went outside to learn it. As compared to Singapore, the government had increase the rate to learn car driving to control the amount of cars on the road but in China, the government did not control the amount of cars on the road. In addition, my group had learnt a lesson on plastic bags in Wuhan. You would have to pay an addition of twenty cents for a plastic bag; this should be an effort to help conserve the environment. We did not know about this till one day when we were paying, before the cashier asked if we want a bag, the shop keeper said give it to us and add the addition cost to the bill.
Lesson at the 2pm, we walked to lesson and as usual the smelly toilet was in front of us. This reminded me of the toilets back in Singapore. In China, those sitting kind of toilets were only for the disabled. In Singapore, you seldom get to see the squatting kind of toilets. From one of the lecturers, we know that there is Bread Talk in Wuhan but the business is not very good due to two reasons. Firstly, the bread sold there are too expensive for the normal families. Secondly, the people in Wuhan are not used to the cheese being use to make the cakes and bread.
Mr. Chua went through the OIP objective briefing with us again as he find that many of us are drifting away from the objective of the OIP. I found out that I have actually missed out one of the evaluation form. Many of our classmates are wearing slippers to lessons and Mr. Chua actually pointed it out. In NGEE ANN, wearing of slippers to class is a common sight but in China, wearing of slippers and walking around outside is very rude thus we seldom get to see the China people walking around in slippers.
After lesson, we walked down to the first floor where we see Mr. Chua and Mr. Ma having a game of table tennis. They bought table tennis racket and was playing at the table at the first floor. Sebastian joined in the fun and slowly Satish, Sasi and I joined in too. Most of the time, I am sitting at the side observing the rest of them playing. Mr. Ma VS Sebastian; slow match that requires lots and lots of patience. Mr. Ma will spend the first few balls trying to test out his opponent than think of ways to tackle. For Mr. Chua; he hit the ball at a super high speed that requires lots of attention to be able to hit the ball. It was fun to be able to look at the teachers playing. Mr. Ma for example will do a little “dance” after he smacks the ball.
Three weeks have past and I guess it is time to do some reflection. The people here are mostly very friendly. Sometimes when we walked around the school, they would say “hi” to us. Splitting in China is very common and it is a “must know”. I had actually seen young kids splitting on the road. Even places like the Wudang Mountain were not spared.
I feel that something we must learn from the people in China is to have a great sense of belonging. We must never forget our roots no matter how far or how high we are. I have learnt that instead of complaining how bad my environment, I should adapt that environment. Complaining would not make me learn; only through adapting will I be able to learn more other things.