Monday, December 25, 2006

Gardens, a new career, hotpot with couple's sentiments and strange ticket booking







Dec 15 Fri

No work from this day onwards, hurray.

I decided to go to Suzhou today to see the famous gardens. It was my first train ride ever. When I got down from the railway station in Suzhou, I was surprised to see a lot of people with small brochures in the street, they were approaching me to book a day tour from them. I wasn’t so sure if they are trustworthy so I headed for a taxi instead. I went to Humble Administrator’s Garden, it was a huge garden with different small houses inside it. I felt like being in the settings for Chinese movies, just need some costumes to match with, pwede na hehe. The gardens were actually nice, they will look even better had I come on a summer or springtime when flowers will be in full bloom. For lunch, I had Sen-chien, they are like siao-long-pao but fried in oil instead. The traditional Shanghai food is oily, this one is not an exception. The supposedly ‘soup’ inside the small dumpling looks more like ‘oil’ to me. Sesebo ang bibig mo after eating hehe.

On my train ride back to Shanghai, it got stucked for like 20minutes because of some railway fixes near Shanghai station. (malas). Since I will be leaving the next day, I bought a big furcoat with cute furs in the hood. Sayang talaga, I couldn’t wear them back in Manila, so one-time expense.

Another funny thing happened, I was walking in Nanjing road on my way back to the hotel, suddenly a woman in her late 30’s approached me with a calling card, she looks decent. She asked me in Mandarin whether I am interested to take part in photo shoots for magazines and billboard. She told me they were ‘healthy pictorials’ for modeling, and not the profane types. I smiled and shook my head. Tpos she asked me again havent I tried any of those before, sabi ko nope havent. She handed me her calling card and asked me to call her if I changed my mind. HAHA ibang level ah, biro mo pumasa ako sa standards ng Shanghai? Hehe here’s the website in her calling card. (http://www.modmtv.com/) Kala ko nun una joke lng pero mukhng existing nga. Mag-iba kaya ako ng career hehehe.

That evening I had my farewell dinner with the couple and their cousins in Super Brand Mall, a Chinese resto called Chamate. On my way to the mall, I got lost in subway, (Lujiazui and Xujiahui sounded the same to me). Malas, kung kelan last day na, tska pa nawala hehe. Anyway, the food in this resto is good, I had hot pot, tried goose meat and goat meat too. I was with a group of married people and I was somehow amused with their sentiments on child bearing. One of them said she has some charts to project the expenses of raising a child, and has calculated her most optimum time of having a baby. (galing noh). Later on we also tried riding in this underriver tunnel with light show in the Bund area. That concludes my Shanghai trip.

I booked my flight via the ‘peddler’, those calling cards you will see scattered along the streets and in the subway. It was actually ‘instant’, I just called them in the morning. It was a funny call because the person I spoke to asked for my name to be written in the plane ticket. I said L-E-S-L-I-E.. and he asked me how to write L.. is L written with a vertical line and a horizontal line. Hehe nagulat ako dun, I said yes. They’re used to people booking flights with Chinese names, English names might be rare. He confirmed every letter to me (including the strokes on how to write each letter) Anyway, they delivered the tickets to my hotel hours later, and fortunately, spelling was correct. Booking that way was convenient and also cheaper by a few RMBs, it’s not refundable and amendable though. (not really an issue for me since I don’t intend to back off or change scheds with my limited time anyway)

No comments: