Candies candies everywhere

Take a look at this!  It was on display in the lobby of the hotel in Singapore we stayed at, Regent…..

yummy breakfast

Yes, another tradition in MFM.  There are lots of cheap and yummy set breakfast.  I had a bowl of macaroni, egg and ham sandwiches and a cup of coffee.  All for MOP32 or CAD 4.10.  YES, CAD 4.10.  Better than Smitty's 5.99 b'fast.  Ha!!! 

snack

Typical afternoon snack at a MFM local coffee shop.  What I had was a cup of "half-and-half" (aka half coffee and half Hong Kong milk tea).  Then a plate of rice noodles with bean sprouts.  Nice….. 

puppet show

This was at the square a stone throw from my MFM apartment.  There were still lots of Xmas celebration.  This was a giant puppet show in the evening.  

18 hours in Hangzhou

We were in Hangzhou for 18 hours to attend a friend's wedding.  Bullet train was great.  Getting the tickets were a bit confusing.  But we managed.  

Here are some pics by the West Lake and the wedding there.  The day was relatively warm, 11C or so.  We had a few hours walking around before the 5:30pm banquet.  The official start time was 18:18.  A symbolic lucky numeric value. Now you get a chance to peek into a Chinese wedding.  It was fun and smoke filled ;-)  Not the filtered type so very strong… our eyes were watery as everyone around us started lighting up.  To give an impression, I took some shots for effect.  Actually, there is an official no smoking inside public building as of Jan 1 this year.  Hee hee…. Old habit dies hard.  Or not ever.  LOL.  

Closer to the end of the wedding banquet, the groom's brother had a friend walked up on stage and recited a love poem.  It was very moving.  We were all surprised.  it was about the eternal love of a newly wed couple.  A story from ancient Chinese time.  Then, an oldest relative walked on stage to give a blessing.   

Morning coffee

After a night of wedding banquet in Hangzhou, we took the 7am billet train back to Shanghai. What a beautiful morning!! I needed coffee. The only thing I got was the instant coffee offered by the train steward. Yikes! 15RMB for a small cup of instant coffee. Haha!! 22RMB can net u a cup of SB regular.

Hangzhou wedding banquet

Friend's bro getting married tonite so we headed to Hangzhou this morning. The train ticket purchase at our town was sooooo easy - NOT!! Last year, for a better efficient customer focus service, we could just walked up to an auto ticket booth, selected our destination and class of service. Stuffed our $ into the machine. Done. Total time last year to purchase was 5 min. Today due to security concern ensuring we live in a H@rm0niOu$ society, we needed to be purchase in person w/ ID card. So we lined up. And true to Fr7369nking C0mmie style, no directions. Only in local language announcements in crapy speakers. The train station was branch new though. So we lined up at the wrong place until I heard something saying "today's ticket is on 2nd flr". Right. Half of the people lined up left quickly heading there including us. Another 15 min later, we were in the platform. Nice speedy trains huh?

55 minutes later, we were at Hangzhou. Nice and sunny. Hyatt was in front of West Lake. Too commercialized. We still like the side of the lake where Shangri-la located.

Then the banquet Chinese style. You can see for yourself. Good food and still cigarettes everywhere. Haha. These were not the ones like Canada. The cigarettes were so strong not sure what other stuff were put in there. Even though there was a national ban for indoor smoking, right. No cigarette, no revenue for your biz . ;-) we had fishes, hairy crabs, pork, shrimps, and turtles. You know, the usual stuff.

As the room started to fill up in thick blue smoke changing the color theme for the wedding from creamy white, we left the building.

The newly wed couple, they were so respectful of the parents they kneeled and bowed to all if them. Seldom to see at these 80's after young people.

Yummy and cheap

Had a quick meal last night across the street. Typical local Shanghainese. Steam dumplings called Xiao Long Bao and spicy noodle. I threw in a bottle of beer for good measure. The bottle turned out to be 580ml!! A bit much. Certainly not for Brent though. Ha!

The total cost came to rmb76 or CAD13. Not bad. I couldn't finished everything. It's a two-pax meal.

full

Guess what that is?  A courier service office in Guangdong province stuffed to the bone!  November 11 National shopping day.  It was the equivalent to the Black Friday shopping in the US except…. 3.8Billion USD that day Chinese people collectively spent shopping online.  

gotcha

Saw an article in the motherland twitter service this morning.  

These pics were taken by a by-stander reporter somewhere in the city of Gu@nG zh0u.  A guy was being kidnapped by a gang of four.  The reporter just kept shooting and shooting… Finally, the gang got spooked and left the victim behind.  Pretty courageous reporter.  Not sure what this guy did.  

end product

It was such as beautiful day here. Cool temperature. Blue sky (contributed probably by the lack of economic movement ;-) )) We took a walk from home to a market about 35 minutes away - by #11 bus aka walking.

The shop was full of fresh produces and fruits… Take a look. When we went home, we prepared this excellent lunch - tomato salad, humus and fig crustini. Soo yummy. O yeah, a bottle of French red Melot.

Life was good for a few hours along w/ a much needed nap.

more food

It's mushroom time here in Seoul.  Autumn mushroom harvest.  One of the special offering at the JW Marriott's Olivo restaurant.  Man, it was good.  Pallenta and mushroom.  I had a glass of a Chianti red. Man…….  

Apparently, the district this hotel locates is one of the wealthiest in Seoul.  No wonder, the expansive watch shop in the mall next to this hotel was crowded w/ people looking at Omega, IWC, etc… more people than the individual shops in Macau - like zero! 

surrounded

While waiting for my flight to ICN from HKG, I heard sirens.  Looked over next to my gate and there it was.  Firetrucks and all surrounding a 747.  An engine was popped open.  Then an hour later, the flight crew came back out.  Wonder what happened to the passengers.  

tower

This might be the only best view for my birth city.  

food… yummy...

It's pretty much a week-long food love affair.  

I am finding eating the local food is a bit too heavy for my taste now.  So I tend to eat a bit more "simple".  Right…..   Took mom to a high-end Japanese restaurant at One Central next to Mandarin Oriental in MFM.  The result was a mouth watering Tuna sashimi rice and oysters.  Got mom to sample some raw tuna.  Now, that's coming out from her shell.  Ha!  This meal costed a lot!  I meant a lot… like 4 digits lot.  OK we had a bottle of sake between us and a mouth watering seared cod fish on rice.  Sorry, forgot to take a pic. Notice the portion - Asian size.

took off

Ha! Just read a blog last night about a Ch!n@ E@$tern flight - MU8Ox6. Due to the weather delay, passengers demanded $ compensation from the airline. Yeah, weather delay. The airline offered 100RMB person. Some said not enough and refused to board. Reason: it would be mid-night when arriving at destination, not enough for taxi ride. Back and forth for a while. Finally the captain said "I am leaving now". 24 passengers got aboard and 91 refused. "Fine"! The captain took off without those 91 passengers.

With so many incidents related to passengers taking over runaway demanding compensations here lately, the empire is striking back….

spoiled or pathetic?

What an experience! Was I being arrogant? Or our airline industry / airport operation just getting dumber?

I stood in line after line for what? Aggravation, stressed, people's ugliness from their heightened anxiety level, crappy self check-in kiosks created by geeks that never travel and want to piss on you just for kicks, then the corporate "process" guys lack of loyalty to customers but just looking at the financial sheets in front of their computers in windowless rooms somewhere called a "Command Centre". By the way, I was talking about my 4:30am to 6:00am experience here at YVR going thru to the U$.

From my own very "opinionated" conclusion, the lines after lines were meant to slow people down so that when you are at the U$ !mmigr@tion, you get the impression of calm and collected. The wait time there this morning was less than 3 minutes. From 4:30am, I lined up in the "Express" Q for Premier Plus line. I blanked. Wow… If I were in Asia and face that, the airline will fold. Customer service? One person working fending off customer inquiries, panic attack passengers, systems not printing boarding passes, and to call out passengers who had successfully passed the geek god test of the Kiosk user interface. I left that Q with my board pass and luggage tags by 5:10am. (I photographed all my luggage tags and my bags using my iPhone for identification purpose. And I checked my luggage tags just to be sure I had the correct ones. Experience count on this one, trust me.) The way I am writing right now, I feel I am prepare for war with a battle plan. Sad….

5:10am walked toward another line. The bag drop offs. OK, I could understand this new security scanning system. 5:20am, dropped off my bags. Then yet another line… to scan my boarding pass to match my not 3 minutes ago bag drop off information. So, was this an audit system installed by l @wyers or bE@n CounTers that never travels? Information does not change that quickly specially one did not have the bag(s) anymore. That took another 10 minutes.

O security line for carry-on now. Yuppy! My favorite of the lots. Crap. How many machines were operating here? "Sir you can just go to the front of the line." Pilots and crews.. That threw another wrench into the already taxed line up. I waited until 5:50am.

Finally after I went thru U$ front gate. I felt I had been beaten up. Hey, I was the one who now from Asia living in the most populated center of the universe on Nanjing Road. I walked down my streets many times, and didn't have the same "totally drained" type feeling.

This morning's line up after line up was totally a waste of energy. Learn from the commie$!!! From check-in to immigration to security… totally a breeze… I felt like I just used Delhi's International airport. Now, that was a very "Lo" comparison but true.

People are herb animals when it comes to lines specially those that don't travel that much. Have just that one employee properly located will ease the line tremendously. There were 3 locations this morning if simply strategically place a person directing traffic, time will be saved and passengers will be less stressed.

Do I want to fly through any gateway in North America? In short, NO. It's becoming such a hassle I am not ready to deal with. If I have to, I will allot a lot of time. My iron wife will argue differently. Always try to squeeze out that last minute.

O yeah, I was thinking of getting a SB coffee. I looked toward the shop.. another freaking LINE! Really… get some output! It's a caffeine laden shop here! I give.

change

How weather system can really affect the day! We woke up yesterday morning at Marriott Skycity. Had a beautiful view just before 6am! Calm, "relatively cool" and fresh air. Then by 3pm, we were heading to the ferry terminal. The sky was grayish and the wind blowing was as hot as in LV during Summer time. What we saw in the afternoon was from the pollution!

Eistein

Didn't realize. Einstein stayed at the Astor House in 1922. This room is quite popular during the Gao Kao "higher eduction exam". Parents try to book this room to inspire their children to perform well for the exams.