Transit in shenzhen

finally i got to go to shenzhen with wj! it's such a blessing!

Best of friends

i will accompany you even it's already 5am.

Pack and GO

packing is not an easy job.
Having spent a year in Shenzhen, plus ins-and-outs during the pass 3 years, the thoughts of moving back for good somehow makes me feel shenzhen even more. Recently they have brought in more international labels which makes me feel even closer to home.

when i first began my stint in china, there wasn't even mng!
Now mng is everywhere and even H&M, Zara, Guess etc! They even opened an IKEA there!!!

When i packed my bags in melbourne. Gosh i missed that place. my apt. the many mornings which i saw the day beginning. But i was leaving because my other half was across the world. It made sense. My family was also at another place....

But now, to leave Shenzhen for a project.
The questions seems endless. The assurance is weak.
i miss this place already.

Tupperware party!

here comes the annual tupperware party in shenzhen!
Rules of the game:

• tupperware is a must
• bring your own rice
• bring 2 homemade dishes
• SMILE!

D & D 2007

Beginning everyone was so prim and proper....a few groupie photos to commerate the occasion BUT after more food and alcohol + games...things got wild.

Lots of "Yam Seng"... so funny to bring in the Singaporean way of toasting, many of the local chinese didnt understand but they just yell! JOIN THE FUN!!! haha. And i won myself a pressure cooker!!! while wj won something too - an MP3 player.

Korean fOOd

Above: the guy with our charcoal stove! Next is our fatty beef being bbqed (all sizzling red) and last photo on far right is the lady flipping our meat!

wj had this sudden urge of having teppanyaki! But to have it was pretty far away from the office. Since it was a working nite and to take the MRT would need half an hour or so (PLUS WE ARE STARVING).... So instead, we had this korean BBQ beef platter thingy (it was called Grilled Pig Ribs on the menu) which was pretty good too!!!! and very yummy of cos. And we had a waitress to help us set the table and BBQ up too.

First came all the little side dishes...and there were so many!!! and colourful and... by the time we were half way thru them we were like 50% full! hahaha....i was gorging myself on the delicious red spicy kimchi!!! while wj ate the cold potato salad and egg rolls.

wj ordered bibimbap (traditional korean stone pot rice which is called on the menu) for himself while i had the spicy kimchi soup+rice!!! *slurps* really good and warms me up during the winter night! woohoo...thought it was almost near heaven! These days the winter nights can be soooo cold!

Above: here's the BBQ hotstove with the silver lid on top...and that's our beef being BBQ with hot white ashened charcoal underneath.

Verdict: VERY good food!!! dunno about the MSG though, i think there are traces of it in all the food i suppose. But i totally LOVE the kimchi soup!!! Keeps me warm in the cold weather!!!!

Happy Birthday Gal!

lots of booze, wine, champagne, ktv & snacks

What's to eat in Shenzhen??!!

people say HK has one of the best roasted meat. And there are people who say that there is equally good roasted stuff in shenzhen.

Well, i dunno much but there is this place in shenzhen where the roasted meat is quite popular and doing rather well with the locals and serves relatively fast with comparatively reasonable good prices.

Rose Cafe or known as 玫瑰餐厅 It's at a food street off Hua Qiang Bei.

Both of us have tried the roasted duck, charsiew and chicken. Not bad i would say, BBQed till crispy and abit grilled black on the sides.

And best of all, the milk tea is so thick and cold as the cup is bathed in ice on the outside.

香辣蟹

Our shenzhen staff decided to have a mini 'welcome back' dinner for me and wj! So they suggested to have dinner at a restaurant called 传统香辣蟹, somewhere near 中信 shopping mall. It was a very eye-catching restaurant with many columns of red lanterns hanging vertically downwards on the front. Many people were already waiting outside on red stools when we got there.

We ordered 2 crabs plus 500g of prawns to go with it (weird rite). The way it was cooked was simply fried some dried chilli with spices together with the crabs and prawns. There were many spices judging from the sediments underneath the enormously thick red oil...looks like peppercorns, cloves, peanuts, garlic, ginger and some too charred to be distinguished! hahhaa...And it comes in a silver basin, like back in those days, maybe our great grandmas use them to watch vegetables or something.

On top of them we ordered mudskippers! (even weirder, and they come in finger bite sizes!) kangkong, 菠萝饼，葱油饼，hotplate potato slices (yes quite funny here, back in singapore, it's mostly hotplate tofu) and some other small appetisers which i have forgotten. >_<

Anyway, it was delicious!

Groupie

Blue.Green. White

笑。的一刻

就是那时

蓝蓝的天

绿绿的山

白白的云

笑。已过去

Little Tripping

The office planned a little getaway trip over the weekend. Lodging and food were not provided. So pathetic and many thot it was quite miserly of some corporation, but it didn't dampened our spirits at all and there were a strong turnup of 15 people out of the 25 people in the office!

And we had lotsa fun!!! especially the nite when all the young people were sitting at the timber bench with poker cards stuck to their foreheads playing the guessing 'Who is the smallest loser' game. And the nite were really crazy when we started playing 7up , multiples of 8 and 9 and most of us were so high that we couldn't even count from our fingers!

ritey! will post more photos of nan-ao for you gals to see!

im so surprised to see such beautiful beaches in china!!! Now i dun even need to look forward to phuket or krabi, it's all here and within 2 hours of travel!

小木屋

these are the little wooden huts which we stayed overnite in. very minimal with almost clean white sheets (i found a few strands of long hair! So tells me that...okay before me it was a woman, if not must be some wacky hiao hiao man!!!) on top of 2 very hard supersized single beds, a barred up window with green panels, a squatted towel bowl, okay wouldnt even fit saying it's a bowl. So it's a squatting pan, yah that was the word which i was looking for. Yah so i peed in a pan. EWWWWWWW! and on the side of the wall was an attached shower. So close to the squatting pan that when i move im so afraid that i will stuck my foot in it! So it was a very very very small toilet, kinda like the ones which u see in maids' toilets. Hmm, maybe mine was even worse than theirs. So the most fortunate thing that the hut had was hot water and AIRCON! and oh.... we had a black cockroach visiting us that afternoon too.

hi roachy.. you should have quietly stayed in that corner, why did u have to go flying about the little hut which we had to share together? too bad u are dead now.
i never like insects. hate them.

Weekend Madness - FOOD!

Sunday Dinner

***牛肉蘑菇肠粉 ***猪肝粥***

Sunday Lunch

Oriental Soya chicken pasta for me _-_-_-_ California chicken pasta for him

Saturday dinner

Teppanyaki package for the both of us which includes prawns,oysters, sirloin steak, daily dose of cabbage patch and a bowl of hot steamy soup and short grain rice.

Duplicates

many velles and wjs. Eeeks!

Sour Spicy Fish

Introducing....

Another new dish which we tried in sz!

Worth every penny spent. Lots of huge chunky fish bits with beanspouts and salted veggie.

We ordered the non-spicy one (cos we saw many people ordering the spicy one and it looks like it was covered with chilli oil!!!) and it tasted really savoury even without chilli. Really good to go with plain rice....my verdict: very worth it! But... just abit too oily on the downside.

take a walk with me

wj and i were cooped up in the apt last saturday. Well i didnt feel like popping by the city area so we stayed at home. Ate instant noodles and watch korea drama the whole afternoon. Finally i thot enuff was enuff and pulled both of us out of the apt for dinner. However, on route, we passed by the usual garden which is directly opposite our apt and decided to take a look. It's really funny how wj has stayed here for 2 years and yet he has never been to see this eco-garden before!

And my my!

The landscape was impeccably green, lushed bushes, timber planks with benchs, pebbled paths and stony tracks with water streams trickling down some areas. Bamboos lining jogging paths and manicured hedges along seating areas. There was a glass bridge over a pond of fishes with toads croaking and the park was an acting green buffer sandwiched between the residential area and a school which was filled with students playing basketball at the court.

The landscape was so pretty, neat and green! and i simply loved it. So now im looking forward for my next weekend at the eco garden again.

it's lunchtime!

潮州砂锅粥

Friday nite: and we were all geared for a nite's out! Unfortunately for me, i had quite a late meeting the nite before and so i was down with flu and a runny wet cough. (the kind with yellow orange phelgm, seriously contagious. you wouldnt want to be near me.)

okay, away from me. Yups, our mr goh didnt know of my condition, happily agreed to a friday ktv nite to which he had to refused our colleagues thus putting him in an embarassing spot. And of cos, he put the blame on ME for a second+seconds+seconds, saying how malu he must be infront of all our colleagues. especially when they have booked a BIG room for the nite. Anyway, like i said, we (wj and i) were rather guilty of not being able to attend the KTV outing, so we decided to join them for dinner before retiring back to our apts. And so here are the pictures of that nite's terrific claypot congee!

shrimp and crab filling topped with parsley and simmered with water-chestnuts.