No golfing here

Was checking out to join this group called Shanghai Golfers Club today. This group plays every weekend no matter the weather is and for some even every Wednesday. So I went to check out the website. First off the bet, it was really suck. Red background with Black text. All red, hard to read. Event schedule needed to have a password. The news section was all dealing with party hard drinking, drinking, and more drinking. Basically my impression after seeing the site is one that promotes drinking and partying. Though nice touch having a section on "Ready golf". In the picture gallery section, expected pictures of past events; then the last one was from somewhere that had a golf tournament with strippers hanging on golf carts. Hmmm... if only if the commies found out about this picture.

Nonetheless, I emailed in for an inquiry. Well, there is a waiting list; no expected time at all like one month, two month, or 1/2 year. Also, I need to pay RMB$1,000.00 annually then have to pay the full green fee on each round of golf I play. No discount. That is if I were a member. Hmm.... what are the benefits of joining then? I do not know. I might as well just save my money, save my brain cells, save my liver....

On the move again

Well, quite a sudden trip. Actually an opportunity more like it. Friend's of Audrey has just informed us that the person who organized the Mongolia sunrise to sunset marathon is doing a get together in Hangzhou. It's about 2 hours or so by car away. And with that get together, we get to stay at the Shangri-la hotel for about 1/2 of the listed rate. RMB$800 + taxes. Still, normally each room is about CAD$220 per night.

I have not been back to Hangzhou since 1980's. Will be a shock to the system for me. (From the Shangri-La hotel website, click on the "Exploring Hangzhou" on the left to see more details about the city.) The lake, West Lake, is suppose to be world famous. We shall see if it has suffered the algae problem as other big lakes in China.

It will be an overnight trip; leaving Saturday morning and back Sunday afternoon; but expect to do lots of hikes and running. We'll be taking the train there! Way cool.

Incheon airport

Well, this airport is about 70Km away from where we were staying; so took close to an hour getting there; but the taxi driver was fast; we were doing about 130K/hour down the super duper highway, still passed by this white Merz 2-seater coupe, and couple other Hyuandi 4-door sedans. Yes, the Koreans like to drive fast when possible.

The airport itself is nice. Big with restaurants. If you were hungry, make sure either you eat first before getting thru security or have lounge access. Most airports, for departing passengers are Immigration first then Security. At Incheon, it's the reverse; departing passengers go thru security first then Immigration. Very painless as we do not require to have the computers taking out of the bags; just no liquid. After Immigration, the airport is like a giant U-shape shopping mall. All major branch names. But finding food is kinda hit and miss; mostly sandwiches shops; very discreet hidden away from view. But the shops are different; very large signs and you just cannot miss them.

After an hour and 40 minutes, we arrived back in Shanghai; and another 60 minutes, we were home. Can go to Seoul for the weekend. Thursday to Sunday. No problem there.

More than 10Km hike

We had a lazy morning last day in Seoul; planned lots to do but our bodies just didn't respond. More like refused. Finally we just had to forced ourselves to get off from in front of the computers. Since we didn't do go for run or to the gym, I had decided to visit this ancient tomb about 10Km away. We walked. No taxi. No subway.

Walking is the best way to see a city; from the hotel to the destination, we saw changes from one block to another. High end hotels, to car dealerships to wedding chapels, to gov't housing. Seen them all within the 10Km walk. At the end though, we couldn't find the tomb according to the map; we found everything else. A very nice three-tier bike paths on both sides of the Han River. To boot, the paths are all made of the soft material so that the knees don't get hurt; got the cushioning effect. I had no idea where the tomb was. After a 2 hours plus walk under a very hot sun and hot temperature, 30C, we gave up. Took the metro back. A very funny system and kinda chaotic. We managed.

During our walk, two separate groups of people came up to me asking for direction. Did I look like a local? Maybe.

Here are some pictures from our walk.

Safely back from the DMZ visit

Alright, we are back. See here. The result is a jointed effort with my iron-wife.

Day 2 - Seoul

It was dark and rainy. Haha, sounded like the beginning of a bad novel; nah; it was true today that it was dark and rainy - after we had our run outside at 5:35am. It was cold until we warmed up. Nothing better than running around a new neighbourhood to get familiar with it. We stumbled across a park not far from our hotel. The sidewalk surrounding the park is paved with cushioned material so our knees wouldn't be damaged. The park was big; even though we didn't go in but the fresh flower and plant aroma just permeated toward the sidewalk. Nice smell.

The COEX mall connected to this hotel is just like another big place; nothing exciting; a mall is a mall. Though, I noticed people are more technologically advanced. While waiting for my latte, this girl was studying using a portable video player; but not a DVD player or PSP, just a small 6" video player; she was watching a lecture. Cool. BTW, South Korea has the most broadband penetration in the whole world.

Tonight, my iron-wife found a nice vegetarian buffet restaurant for supper. It was nice; had a mixed of local ingredients like fungi, imitation meal cake, sesame balls, brown rice, pumpkin congee, steamed vegetable, to name a few. It had cost us W$24,000; that was about US$24.00. Not bad.

As we walked to the restaurant, I noticed the followings with the locals:
- office workers done around 7pm; they all come out of the office in mass. Men wore suits; very very seldom seeing a man in casual clothing. And they all wore black suits; seemed to be the "in" colour.

- taxi stopped in front of the office towers waiting for people; sometimes, the taxi parked in the middle of the Intersection waiting for customers; but they were considered enough to have leave lots of space for people to enter or exit the intersections.

- street hawkers selling snacks everywhere; most selling their goodies at the back of the truck with a make shift tent and the food in individual heated containers. Or, hawkers that have tents which you can sit down. I saw all arteries clogging agents being sold; deep fried dogs (hot dogs that is), tempera, katchup sausages and corns.

- the main streets do not have the nice food restaurants; they are all behind the main streets in the side streets; you have to look; but people seem to know where the food and restaurants are.

Seoul, here I am...

Finally, a new country to visit!!! After an hour and 40 minutes flight from Shanghai, we are in Seoul. Pretty close huh? Even closer than flying to Beijing! Or to Sichuan! The airport is big and nice. One doesn't fly into Seoul; the International airport is at Inchon, about 55.7Km away from our hotel. The immigration was the most pleasant I have met. Friendly and fast. Exiting the airport is a bit funny; despite all the big signs posted, still had a hard time locating things. Three things I have noticed after collecting my luggage. (1) The US$ is Sh!T to use for exchange local currency. I tried exchanging US$400.00; the teller only accepted three 100 notes; the last one, "dirty, no change". I thought paper money fade after a while. Recall, there was a range of serial numbers on the US notes not accepted as well, (2) People solicitate you as soon as you are out the Custom Hall. Since I have been around before, get to the Taxi queue, (3) taxi drivers trying to flag you down for a fare as soon as I was approaching the queue. And (4) not much English. I actually printed out the Korean version of our hotel and map so any taxi driver could have driven us to the hotel. O yeah, hotel is in COEX mall complex. I can go explore today or tomorrow.

The room we got was an upgrade; actually it is a service apartment unit. We have a one-bedroom unit. Very nice and fancy. About 700 sq ft. Actually I think it is bigger than the Vancouver Wall Center condo units. :-P Got everything in it just like in Hawaii at the Palms on Wailea.

The air was fresh outside. We were quite amaze. Maybe we were so used to the polluted brown stuff back in Asia, the South East side.

What is this at the bottom of my blog writer? "초안이 오후 2:59에 자동 저장되었습니다." O right, it is the Korean Google blogger site. Hee hee... As if I know what that means.

A little info about Korea, street signs are virtually non existence; maybe the North is only about 2 hours drive from Seoul. And the address is not the traditional Western type structure. Address starts with the building number, the sub-district (dong) name and then the District (gu) name. As to the building number, it is not on a sequential sense as we know it. The number is based on the order a building is being built. So, building number 8 could be next to building number 3. I have seen that labeled as such when driving into town. Weird. People use landmarks to navigate or tell you how to get to a place.

Taxi fare, it is based on time in intervals of seconds with a base amount. The currency is Won. The exchange rate right now is: US$1 = 1,004.3Won. And I had just spent 97,800 for taxi fare from the airport to the hotel. Good thing I am not paying for this. If I were to come for a tour, I would have take the airport shuttle limo; the cost is 14,000 one way with the airport bus terminal just next to the hotel at the COEX Mall.

That's about it for now. Reporting live from Seoul. Have to check out the DMZ tour.

Fast service

We had been having Internet access problem since last Wednesday. Some sites, we couldn't get to. Last night, checking with friends going to the same sites they had no problem. Suspected either the DSL modem or something to the bank of routers/servers at China Telecom. Called this morning, my iron-wife did. The operator was a bit puzzled because someone was speaking fluent Mandarin to report a problem but yet the name on the account is an English name. Haha. Anyway, the service dispatcher came within 45 minutes after the call! How fast was that! Swap out the DSL modem, everything works. Scary consider the modem was replaced about 6 months ago; it was an Alcatel. Now, I have a Motorola. Let see how long this lasts.

But I was amazed at the service response. Pay to be living downtown. I wouldn't be surprise is the service is somewhere just down the road from us.

BTW, when the service tech entering our apartment, he put on pair of covers for this shoes so that he would not stick up the place or make our floor dirty.

Home now....

for the next 48 hours, then we are heading to Seoul, South Korea.

The flight from Macau back to Shanghai was quite non eventful. The airport lounge was quite nice; clean, well layout, food and drink were plentiful. As to food, mostly the fusion type pastry the Chinese accustomed to: curry pie, BBQ pork rolls, steam buns, fried noodles and rice. Liquor was free flowing, not like the restriction of most airport lounges. I was amazed seeing lots of highend shops in the waiting area post the security check point. It had Cartier, Ferragamo, Bally, etc.

Our seats on the 757 back to Shanghai was funny. It was just next to the door!!! The door which in any Western airline, would not put a row of seat there - you know for evacuation! The flight attendant had trouble closing the door because we were sitting there! Someone from the airline management was trying to squeeze two more seats rather than safety. Silly. Before taking off, we moved to safer seats.

Very funny though, I saw the same group of people that I flew down with from Shanghai on Wednesday; they were all shopped out and had big bags of gifts.

It was so convenient having an airport at Macau; no need traveling to HK in order to catch a 2-hour flight. If I were to fly from HK back to Shanghai, need to be 1/2 hours before the ferry to the Macau Ferry Terminal, with luggage. Then thru immigration, fight with people to get on the ferry to HK; then an hour ferry ride, upon arriving to HK, the water at Victoria Harbour is so rough, you get dizzy as your stomach being bounce up and down. Then fight with people to get up 3 long flights of elevators to HK Immigration. Wait to get thru, if there were Chinese tourists, even longer time, then you wait for the luggage to be brought up from the ferry. After all this, I would have been half way home. Now, walk from the HK Ferry Terminal to the Hong Kong Airport station, 15 minutes. Then you have to pay HK$100 for the Express Train to the airport before you can check-in. Line up again for seats at the airport counter. Catch the train to the airport; by then, the flight from Macau to Shanghai would have been landed. So, not really worth our while to use the HK airport. The Macau airport is only a stone throw away from the Macau Ferry Terminal. From my parents' apartment to the airport - 20 minutes. If we got there an hour before hand, that's plenty of time.

Happened to anyone

Figure we fly so much this would not have happened to us; well, very funny. On the way to the airport I commented on how smooth we did it; walked up to Hotel Royal, and as we got to the entrance, a taxi pull up. We fetched our bags and let. Got to the airport in 20 minutes with no traffic congestion on the way. Walked into the terminal. Couldn't find out flight displayed. After a while, inquired at the Information Desk. Haha, I mis-calculated the 24-hour clock. We were in fact at the airport way too early!!!! Thought the flight was to leave at 5:30pm, but in fact 7:30pm. Hee hee.... Left our bags there and took the taxi home. The left bags, cost only MOP$20.00 per 24-hours! Have not seen such a cheap price in any airport I have used. MOP$20 is less than CAD$3.00.

It's done.

After spending 2 hours and 5 minutes flying from Shanghai to Macau, a 2 hours plus in a Buddhist temple kneeing, bowing, standing and inhaling joss incense, the official end of the 21-day morning period for my grandmother was over. It was quite an interesting event; the Buddhist monks that were at the funeral were once again back for the ceremony. I was surprise. And then I realized why the cost of this "closing out" ceremony was so expensive; someone within the Lo siblings had hired them back. A whopping HK$50,000 for this little event! Dad was in tears. I was mad as hell! That was such a wasteful of money and displayed of nothing. There are people dying from the Sichuan earthquake and in Myanmar cyclones survivors that need help; and someone had just decided spent that much money for one dead person whom they didn't really care much for while she was still alive? Maddening! That was only the ceremony cost; then you had to put $20.00 in red pockets and then double that for immediate family members, their siblings, their siblings' siblings, all the way down to the nth degree; then the close relatives who attending this ceremony. In all, I believe the cost was over $100,000.00+ including the funeral and all. Give your head a shake.

The ceremony was interesting; the monks started at 2:30pm, praying and praying until 9:00pm non stop. During that time, lots of joss sticks were burned. We might created the most carbon dioxide pocket in Macau for the day. Need to buy some carbon credit. During one of the ceremonial sessions, one of the monk wore a head gear, prayed and drew symbols on the tables with rice and did different figures with his hands.

When the ceremony was over, the exit was fast and fury. The monks just disappeared very quickly.

Earthquake

Wow, I did not feel a thing; apparently, the earthquake was so strong it was felt in Taiwan, Vietnam, and Thailand. The tallest building in Shanghai was evacuated. Funny, I didn't feel anything; The tallest building is about 30 minutes walk from my apartment across the HuangPu River. I was in my Chinese lesson at home. The epicenter was about 56K from Chengdu; this city was the entry point to Tibet as well as to the national park north of the province where Chengdu is the capital city. Good thing we were not in Chengdu today. We are scheduled to be there sometime in June though. Hope there won't be any more strong quake.

Maybe I should take the stairs today rather than using the elevator.

Update: See this article. Funny, all these buildings are within 5 minutes walking from my apartment; they felt the shake; but me and my teacher never felt anything. Must be the height of the building that transfer the shake from the ground. A wave length thingy (pretty scientific explanation huh? )

Officially registered

with that local police that is. Since I am not an official Chinese citizen and so is Audrey, by law we have to report to police letting them know where you live. If we were living in hotel, the hotel does it for us. Normally, we ignore this little law as no one really enforced it before; now with the Olympics, things are getting tight. We should do it so that we are not going to infringe the great national policy. The official reason for foreigner to be registered is to "protect foreigner's personal and property safety. And together to build a better visitation of this country.... blah blah blah..." right. And soon there will be a crack down of mandatory carrying ID for snap inspection. Right. In the capital city, b3!j!nG, there are reports of foreigners being harassed. It's coming. Some friends of ours had bought tickets for the "event" but sold them two weeks ago; not worth the hassle. Inside the venue, one cannot carry any backpack or have any drinks that are not from the official sponsors. Also, there will be a smoking ban inside the venue. Right. About 300,000 volunteers are being trained to carry out as the "anti-smoke" police. Let see how that goes.

In Shanghai here, don't see any harassment; probably we are downtown with all the major hotels with all the foreigners walking around. In the suburbs, not sure.

An interesting trend

It's funny to see how China has become from the have not. Middle class is expanding in terms of wealth; hence, luxury,"softness" and self indulgence surface. At lunch today, I was quite taken aback at the interaction of two groups of dinners. At one table, an old man and what seemed to be his grand-daughter. At the other table, a family of three with a 10 years old daughter. There were much interaction within the group of the dinners. The first table, the daughter was playing PSP the entire time; totally self absolved; no conversation with at all. At numerous occasions, she even had the PSP in front of her face so the grandfather was visually blocked. We were there for about an hour, there was not even one word uttered out between the two. The old man shifted from one side of his butts to another taking up the entire aisle. He needed to cross his legs while eating; and so his posture was crouching. At the table with the family of three, I saw the PSP but assumed the parents bought it for the daughter; it was not the case. It was the dad that was self absorbing to the tiny screen. Go figure. He totally ignored the wife and the daughter. And when the food arrived, the daughter called out couple times to her father because the food was in front of them. The wife was trying to serve lunch.

SIM cards, SIM cards everywhere

Seems I am collecting a stack of SIM cards as I hop from one Asian country to the next. In my possession, I have 4 SIM cards so far. These cards allow my to use the local mobile network to make calls and SMS messages both locally and internationally. This approach is very economical. And the process is so painless and cheap.

In Macau, I picked up a Macau SIM card which included MOP$20.00 calling credit for less than CAD$10.00; I plugged into my 'unlocked' Nokia phone; 1 minute later, my Macau mobile number was activated and lived. To send International SMS messages, my cost was MOP$1.00. Rather than the CAD$1.00 or so from Rogers. In Hong Kong, I bought one for HK$100.00 but this included more credit. And I bought it from a 7-11. Same process, short and painless. In China, well that was a bit more paper process. I could buy a SIM card on the street but I would not know whether it was a stolen number or not. So, visited a China Mobile office. They took a copy of my ID card and RMB$100.00 later; done. Singapore, same easy process except you need to show your ID and your Mobile number is linked to your ID card electronically somewhere in that vast database of the Singaporean gov't. The best among all the local Mobile numbers is the Singaporean one, I get to make FREE international LD call to China, HOng Kong, Macau, US, Canada amongst others until end of December this year. There are some quirks with each local SIM card. China one, you need to apply in order to make LD calls even inside China. Macau, same thing. I can use any one of those SIM card to "roam" other countries and use; but very expensive. The HK one is automatically roaming; but very expensive. And it does not work if trying to dial in Macau; but SMS messages work, sending and receiving. I can even answer calls but not calling. Go figure.

Yes, all Mobile phones being sold here in Asia is unlocked. No need to be restricted like in the US or Canada.

By using local SIM card, I am saving a pile; specially when I am in Singapore, I can just call whenever I wish. Next will get a mobile phone that has wireless access so I can do Skype. Maybe. Perhaps an unlocked iPhone though. Stay tune.

Best dessert tonight or ever

Tonight we met up with some friends for supper in this Vietnamese restaurant in China Square, not far from our hotel in the China town area. The Pho was small and not filling. Needless to say, after supper we were still "hungry" for more. As my iron-wife wanted to have some durian, even though not in season at the moment in Singapore, friend drove us to this area called Geylang.

Geyland is famous for: food, red light district and durian. After driving up one side of Geyland, we stopped in front of a durian shop. It was just a little dive with two sides of the shop lined with durians. S$5 for one and S$10 for 3. Durian was thrown away if it was not good enough. We ordered two for the 4 of us; as well, we bought some mangosteen and Rambutan. Well, durian is a "hot" fruit so to counteract its effect causing to the internal body system, one needs to eat Mangosteen, a "cool" fruit. So, we munched on both sitting on a table just a bit off the road. We managed to have one and a half durians and most of the Mangosteen.

When we left, we drove thru the same street with more durian stalls. Apparently all the best durians right now in Singapore are from Malaysia; the price is cheap here; but in Malaysia, price is doubled. Yikes.

What a lunch!

Today, I have decided trying out lunch at this popular and famous food court in the middle of the business centre at Robinson Street. Well... Nothing really caught my eyes. The food court was big and circular; you got all types of Southeast Asian food: Chinese, Indian, Malaysian, Indonesian. Chinese desserts, freshly squeezed juice, etc.... Basically the place was a gathering of multi-ethnic hawkers. I finally settled with a set lunch for S$5.00. From the picture, I was suppose to get this big plate of nice veggie, a plate of boiled Hainan chicken and a plate of rice cooked with the juice from the chicken. For S$5.00, wow. Why not. Hee hee... Not what it advertised. I got one place with veggie and chicken meat, each occupied half a plate. The chicken was a very thinly sliced breast meat and then chopped in strips. The veggie was of some interesting mashed up. And then, a plate of rice. Maybe I was hungry after my workout, I polished it in record time. The portion was small. It could have been Brent's appetizer dishes. I was not satisfied after this S$5.00 lunch. O well... So, on my way home I supplemented the lunch with some rolls. Cake that was. I felt full after that. A total of S$8.50. I could have done what I had been doing for the last two days; head down next block and had a sandwich - a nice juicy beef burger on toasted sour dough. But that was just too much food, I wouldn't need to have supper after that. The sandwich even though not big but loaded. And that would have costed me close to S$20.00.

O yeah, I use the toilet before my lunch today at that hawker gather place. Had to pay a toll; S$0.20. Go figure.

On the way back to the hotel, I keep wondering how scary it is that I know this place more and more. Not needing a map in some areas now. Yikes. And on the way flying down here to Singapore, while I was on the plane in Shanghai, I forgot what country I was in. :-P

Now in Singapore

After 4 hours and 50 minutes, we arrived in Singapore from Shanghai. The plane was totally empty. It was a huge 777-300 but there were a hand full of passengers. I think Singapore Airline lost money on that flight. The veggie meal was ok; on par with the Chinese veggie meal; same menu as Dragon Air leaving from Shanghai; I wonder if all airlines get the Chinese veggie meal from the same place. The in-flight entertainment was a big disappointment. Old movies, and the tapes for the movies were jerky most of the time. Guess, have to start cutting back services with the high fuel cost.

Back in Shanghai now - for the weekend that is.

Yes, only for the weekend. Will head down to the Singapore on Monday bright and early. Audrey has to teach a course and I'll take the opportunity getting myself focus back to my own work and finishing up my Total Immersion intro swim sessions.

I missed the HK and Macau Olympic Torch relays. Event likes this, too many people and too many things could go wrong. Best to skip. Apparently, the route for Macau runs passed the street just a skip from my apartment.

I left Macau early for HK on Friday morning so I could get all my banking done in HSBC. Well, good thing. Doing things normally would have taken me 1/2 hours, it took me over 3 hours! 3 hours! To activate a credit card, a new one, took over 45 minutes. Good that I made the HSBC staff to do that for me. I wasn't going to waste my LD charges from Shanghai trying to call the HSBC credit card calling centre. Even the employee was frustrated. She kept getting cut off or routed to different department because the other end "refused" to answer the call. Then trying to reactivate my business account's Internet access, I had to go to a different and waited. And to get it working, I have to get back to the bank to the basement to obtain half of the info; the other half, the bank mails to you. Talk about security to the nth degree. But that's not security, that's dumb.

Had too much bad food in Macau. Rushing around for the funeral and all. First night back to Shanghai, we went to a new Chinese vegetarian restaurant; nice; felt good; maybe that was the reason we slept until 1030am.

It has been a lovely day here in Shanghai -> 27C or so. Summer is definitely here. We walked all over doing our errands. Got lots done. As "visitors" to Shanghai, one needs to register with the police; so off we went. Well, it turns out we need to register each time we arrive back to Shanghai. I am not dedicated. Since I am in and out every 3 days or so, I'll do it after all my trips. Most likely in June.

The first 7 days

Since our family wanted to follow the traditional Chinese mourning period and do the traditional Chinese "altar" at home, after the 7 days, that little "altar" was moved to a Buddhist temple yesterday. It was just across the street from us. I used to go there when I was kid during Chinese New Year.

Anyway, so the entirely family at the designated time carried one piece of the 'altar' over to the temple. Picture that was hung at the funeral hall, flowers, candles, the traditional "dai" and "hao" the immediate family members wore during the funeral. These last things are to be burn at the end of the 21-day mourning. The period of 3-7. The 21 days.

At the temple, we burn more stuff to grandma. Prayer by a Buddhist monk we knew for over 40 some years. At the end of the ceremony, we all received a little red pocket. It has to be in RED colour. White for dead, RED for good luck and the red pocket should not be given away until you opened it and out of the temple area. Too many rituals. Too much paper wasted.