Will stop posting any updates

Will not be updating this blog until I find an inspiration to do so.

Hasta La Vista.

Korea after 10 years

First of all, my apologies to those who kept coming back and found no new postings for quite a while. I never thought I would be saying this, but I was busy!!! Really really busy - attending meetings, delivering trainings, customer visits, etc..

In addition, I have this individual(s) who takes on different names placing seemingly innocent comments with links to pornographic sites. To that person(s) - FUCK YOU!!. I will continue to reject your comments.

The last time I was in Korea, I landed at Kimpo airport and that was about than 10 years ago. This time, i landed at Incheon airport and it was so FAR from Seoul. My trip did not get off to a good start. My flight from KL was delayed a couple of hours, resulting in me missing my connection at HK (I flew Cathay Pacific). At HK, CP offered to route all those Korean bound passengers to either Bangkok or Manila and hence to Incheon. Of course I rejected that!! You think I have not have enough travel on an airplane??Anyway, after a couple of hours, they managed to get me a seat on another CP flight to Incheon, landing after 10pm.

That's when it got worse for me- I had this throbbing pain at the base of my left big toe. I thought that I may have hit something in the plane. Next day it got worse, putting paid to my plans to visit DMZ. Damn!!! By Monday, I was hobbling to work. I had to politely decline the distributor's offer of a sumptuous seafood dinner and opted to see a doctor. It's GOUT, the doc declared. He gave me a 6 days supply of pain killers and something supposedly for gout. I went on a starvation diet, missing 5 dinners and 3 lunches during the first 7 days. By the end of the first week (7 days later), the swelling had subsided enough to enable me to walk almost normally (no more limping).

The second week, I relocated my work location to Suwon, our office. My counterpart made me offers which I found difficult to refuse - authentic Korean fare. To hell with my gout. I am going to enjoy the food in Korea while I can and get the gout fixed when I am back in KL. Can't say that I regret doing that. Food was great. You need to see that on my facebook.

For some strange reasons, my mind started to play tricks on me language wise.

Maybe it was because I had managed a team of Japanese for some time in the past,. I have this habit of saying - chotto matte  - just a moment please. At least that's what it means in Japanese. NEVER, I repeat - NEVER say that in Korea. In Korean, it means - fuck you!! Jeez!! No wonder I get strange looks from the engineers of the first week.

In my room, I always had the TV on even as I was online, surfng the net. And every so often, I heard an ad for HAND COOKED Tyres. This caught my attention and I looked at the TV.. It was for Hankook tyres.

At least I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Despite the gout flare up.

Kamza Hamnida Sung Han

Marina Bay Sands - over rated work in progress

(Deleted the original post and reposting this coz some ass holes left some porno links in comments which I accidentally published.)


This year, the countries of SAPK (South Asia Pacific Korea) held the new product introduction and product update seminars in the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore. Before arriving, most of us thought that we would be in for a treat. The hype on the integrated resort (IR) was such that our expectations were high.After having stayed here since Sunday, I can only say thatThe hotel may be rated 5 starsBut it really is only 4 starswith 3 star amenities2 star service andONE (1) star staff.The hotel is really NOT READY for operations!! Many of us had "unforgettable" experiences right from the check-in reception. For me I was already not too impressed with the coach pickup from the airport. They must be expecting visitors to come with light baggage and short stays. I came to such a conclusion because the coach from MBS that picked us up had no space for baggage. The big bags were placed across 2 seats. So a few seats in front of the coach was 'seated' by big bags!Upon arrival at the coach bay at the basement, I saw organized chaos! They have the casino entrance/exit placed near the escalators leading to the check in reception at tower 1. So you end up with a large crowd waiting for coaches, waiting to get in or out of the casino and waiting to check in/out. I met a colleague who told me she was checking out and then in.Later on I found out that she had just about the worst experience anyone can have with any hotel rooms- When she checked in a few days earlier (on her own account), the hotel gave her a room which had not been cleaned yet! Towels were strewn all over and the bed was a mess. So she demanded for another room.- the next room? Nothing works in that room! Not the lights or the taps. The hotel apologized by giving her a fruit basket, a voucher for S$100.oo and of course another room....but not before misplacing her luggage!- Then she checked out (her personal account) and checked in again (company's account) and the room assigned to her turned out to be occupied by a couple (I did not ask my colleague what else she saw!). How can a hotel in Singapore assigned an occupied room to a new guest?? I have had that experience in India and that is not an experience that I wish on anyone. Of course she went ballistic!! The hotel then upgraded her to suite at the corporate price for a normal room.You would have thought that a suite would be better maintained. Sorry... the motor to drive the curtains open and close came off and fell down!. And the hot water in the taps wasn't flowing.And hot water supply was a gripe that hit most of us. Many of us waited 10 minutes (on the average) for hot water to come out. Many ended up with a cold shower. You need a manual to operate the dual knobs to get hot water for our shower. It should not be so complicated. Most of us are hotel veterans, having stayed in hotels all over the world, but this was the first time that so many of us could not get the hot water mix!Another colleague says she woke up in the middle of the night because she could hear water overflowing in her bathroom. Turned out to be the room upstairs having a shower and as the water rushed through the pipes, it sounded like her taps had over flowed.That wasn't the only soundproofing issue. Colleagues on 8th and 11th floor complain that traffic noise kept them awake all night! Jeez!!!Oh.. the hotel has 3 towers. Check in is located at tower 1 and most of us were placed in tower 3. Most of us ended up dragging our bags from tower 1 to tower 3 with no offer of assistance from the many hotel employees who seems to be milling around and gawking at the crowd.And in the morning, we have to walk the length of the hotel from tower 3 to tower 1 for our breakfast. One of my colleagues says the walk feels like it is 4km long! Whoever designed the layout and work flow does not seem to think like a guest. For the length of the hotel, I expect that common facilities like check in or breakfast hotel is located more centrally.And for a so called 5 star hotel, there is NOT bath tub. Just a fixed shower head. I get better amenities from hotels of lower rankings. AND... we don't have to pay so much.Many also complained that they could not get the air conditioning to wrok properly. The air cond fans were noisy and could not cool the room or got the room so wintry cold. For heaven's sake, it's a supposedly new hotel and the fans are noisy?? C'mon!Another colleague closed the chain latch on her door and the next morning, found that she could not open it!! She ended up bashing the lock with the pone in the bathroom to get it opened. " The phone looked solid enough" she said! LOL.Last but not least, in all hotels that I stay in, newspapers are delivered in the morning and drinking water is placed in the room for the convenience and utilization of the guests. BUT... nobody got any newspapers delivered nor was there any drinking water. Some of the more creative colleagues resorted to visiting the casino, bagging a few bottles of water and then went back to their room.The only saving point for MBS was the skypark. The swimming pool was impressive. But everything else around the hotel is still being constructed. The bloody place is work in progress!!This is not one hotel that I look forward to visiting again. I will stick to my regular hotel next to Raffles Shopping Complex.

A strange thing...memories

Memories. This is a strange thing that our brain possess.

For some reason or another, you can remember things 30 40 years ago and not something last week. Age?? Maybe. My mum had asked me quite a few times over the years if I could find an old school buddy of mine. I had gotten into an accident and got hospitalized with compression fracture of the lumbar and this schoolmate of mine had to go to the house I was staying in to inform my mum that I had been admitted to hospital. Over the years, I had heard that YNC had gone to Singapore and then later became a lawyer. I had made half hearted attempts to locate him but to no avail.

Then last week, my in laws in China (my wife's half brothers and their family) started sending many emails over. They had discovered the internet!!! As I setup an email for my wife as well as a facebook account for her, I thought I would try to google for some of my school mates or 35 years ago when I was in Secondary 5. First name that popped into mind was YNC. And the search returned success!!

Called him and found he actually had 2 practices - one in Singapore and one in KL. As he said, lawyers needs a lot of practice because they can't get it right! And from this, I now find a whole bunch of old school buddies on FB today. Many I remember their names and some their faces.

This is turning out to be an interesting interaction. One of them is even a grandfather and he's my age! The power of social networks!

Get away from it all on Tioman Island

For about half a century of my life, the only island in Malaysia that i have visited was Langkawi and Penang. I did have a yearning to go to Pangkor Island (which we did last year) and some of the other islands, but somehow, never made it.

This year, my cousin sister, Madeline, wanted to go to Redang Island during the school holidays but we could not secure any reservations. So we ended up making reservations at Minang Cove Resort on Tioman Island. That was one of the best decisions made.

The resort is located at the southern most part of Tioman and due to it's remote location, there was no TV reception, so no TV in the rooms. No mobile phone and no internet. There was a little corner on the jetty where some mobile phone signal can be received and we noticed the resort staff tend to spend some time there when they are free.

The sea around the resort is clear and abundant with marine life. You can see at least 10m into the sea and look at live coral and colorful fishes swimming amongst them. Too bad my camera cannot go underwater, or I would have taken a lot of photos of the fishes from inside the sea.

There are other resorts dotting the western part of the island. In many of them, TV, mobile phones or internet is not an issue. The most popular place to go for internet connections is Tekek or Salang. We also noticed that many scuba divers tends to congregate in Salang - making it sort of the scuba diving capital for Tioman.

The Marine Park is another nice site to go to to swim with the fishes and fee them. Unfortunately, there seems to be too many people such that the waters within 20m of the beach is dirty and even at the feeding platforms, the water is not as clear as what we saw at Minang Cove. I had not swam for long durations for quite a long time. The next 2 days, I woke up with sore muscles on my abdominal sides!

Tekek has a duty free outlet which sells liquor at prices similar to Singapore instead of KLIA, making it much cheaper.When they say the shops in KLIA are duty free, they conveniently don't mention that they are not profit free (probably very fat margins if I were to compare their prices with Singapore Changi).

If anyone is looking for a holiday and do not want to be contacted, go to Minang Cove Resort. You won't regret it.

My Denai Alam house has been let out

After being empty for a month, a new family has moved into my house as of 29th May. Fauziah Kamarosezaman and her family will be staying for at least one year.

I hope they will take good care of the house as did the previous tenant.

Mandarin Oranges

Last year, I did something similar - but only for about 3 months. This year, I am going to try this experiment till all 9 Mandarin oranges becomes rotten or dehydrated.

Since 3rd Feb, I had collected about 12 Mandarin oranges- straight from the carton, and left them on my cubicle divider. 3 has gone rotten within 2 monthsToday- 9 of the oranges are ALL looking as good as new. Some do feel lighter, but I have no way of confirming that as I did not weigh them before my 'experiment' started.

But if you consider that more than 3 months later, the Mandarins still looks as good as new, you have to question what do the farmers put on them. These oranges are not in leak tight packaging. They are in the office environment 24 x 7. And the office air-conditioning is only switched on from 8am to 6pm from Mondays to Fridays. It is a sauna during the weekends and on certain nights.

What in the world are in these oranges??

Bonsai - free advertisement for someone I don't know

I normally do not advertise for anyone here. But I will make an exception this time because the people who were selling bonsai in Mid Valley Megamall in KL has such nice creations. Mdm Kuah saw me snapping away at her creations (which were not for sale) and asked if I can blog about it.

Bonsai is the art of turning plants into miniaturized versions of huge trees. What these people did was to express their creativity by sculpting the miniatures into animal shapes which are instantly recognizable.

Without promptings, you can see a dog, a bird, an elephant and a monkey. Even the dragon is obvious once you get the angle right.

It seems to me that an online equivalent for the hobby of bonsai is online games like Farmville or Farmtown or any other similar games on facebook. Takes time and effort to get where you want to go.

Bonsai anyone??

Denai Alam Link House available for rent

If anyone is looking to rent a double storey terrace in Denai Alam, just drop me a note in the comments section. My previous tenant has terminated his lease and it is immediately available now.

The house has
- Bedrooms - 3 upstairs and 1 downstairs.
- Bathrooms - 2 upstairs and 1 downstairs
- Upstairs has a fairly comfortable living room area
- wide porch can accomodate 2 cars
- Grills has been installed for enhanced security.
- An area upstairs for the washing machine and drying of clothes - useful if you are away at work without worrying about the rain getting at your clothes.

Just drop me a comment with your contact details and I will get back to you ASAP.

Thank you

My garden is turning into an aviary!!

The poor birdie from Easter day did not survive. It passed away the next day. The heat and hunger may have been a critical factor in it's demise.

However, another bird decided to setup nest right smack in the middle of my garden.

The household have been told to pretend that they do not notice the nest and not to walk within 5 feet of the nest.

Easter weekend 2010

"For God so love the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but shall have everlasting life" John 3:16

And on this Easter weekend, as Christiandom celebrates the resurrection of Christ, I spend some time in reflection. Reflection of some of the people that I have interacted with, came into contact with and lost some of them along the way.

It started with a blast from the past when one of the engineers who used to work with me during the HP days found me in one of those business groupings online. It must have been at least 20 years ago since he left us and we lost contact - and I am amazed that he still remembered me enough to be able to add me to his list. And I am always surprised myself that I can remember some of these people after so many years. I recognized and knew who was SL Lai the moment I saw his email.

And then in the evening of Good Friday, I get a call from my aunt who is based in Singapore. One of my cousins had passed away from meningitis. The poor bloke was only 48 years old. I attended his funeral today, Saturday, and managed to meet up with many of my other cousins with whom I come into contact with once every few years. Who is that young girl? Whose husband/wife is that? Whose children are these? What are you doing now? Funerals can be great socializing events. Just wish that we don't meet under such conditions so often.

And when I got home, mum showed me a little bird she found in the garden. Poor thing cannot fly and must have dropped out of a nest. My garden has many plants with bird nests hidden inside. i thought maybe this was it's nest and placed it back there. 30 mins later, it was gone!! We thought maybe some predator took it. There are also a lot of crows prowling around the area.

But a couple of hours later, I found this poor thing chirping in another part of the garden. We are now nesting it in a shoe box. Hope it is able to develop to the point where it can fly on it's own.

Really Shanghaied this time

A short trip to Shanghai to deliver yet another training to our engineers. Nothing much out of the ordinary. Got a chance to meet up with a whole bunch of people whom I have not seen for many years (mostly from USA). Like Chas and Steve Beer. Sad to hear that John Stanfield had just passed away.

Training was smooth and completed on time.

As usual - have meals with a few close colleagues. The restaurant we went to was next to Xintiandi (new heaven and earth). Food was okay. This is a tourist trap and prices can be exhorbitant!! The prices above are in renminbi.

Coming back to KL was a bummer for the day!!

First - the taxi had a puncture about 7km from the airport. The driver wanted to limp his taxi to the airport (very near only he says) until we could smell smoke from the tyre as it just burnt from running without air.I am pretty sure his rim is a goner. His spare was not maintained and could not be used. So he called his friend from the airport to come around to send me to the airport.

Then when we arrived in KLIA, I waited for 45 minutes and then confirmed with the luggage attendant that no more bags were coming out. Yup!! My bag had gone missing!! Damn it!! Went to the lost and found to make a report. A few calls on the walkie talkie and they tell me my bag was found - happily going round and round in an adjoining carousel.

Haiz!

Getting busier now

Wow! It's been 3 weeks since I made any posting!!

Was making preparations to deliver an engineer training in Shanghai for the week of 15th March. Then out of the blue, the Singapore training center was desperate for help for the week of 8th March to deliver 2 customer operational trainings. Apparently, the trainer from India was not able to make it due to passport and visa problems. C'mon, it's a Friday and you want me to deliver a training on Monday? Blimey!! Well, I relented and ended up in Singapore in the week where they had a furniture fair and an IT fair in the same week

What that did was to send hotel room rates soaring. But even at higher prices, all my favourite hotels were fully booked. So I had to make do with the one in Chinatown which normally charged us S$160, but was charging S$260 for the duration of my stay. Luckily this is all on company expense and not my own.

The long and short of it was that I delivered 3 days of chemstation training to 6 Singapore customers. 3 more who were supposed to turn up did not - 2 from Pakistan and one more local who had conjunctivitis.

And then there was 2 more days of LC maintenance and troubleshooting class. This time with 9 customers - 6 from India and 3 locals.

This trip, made the acquaintance of 2 new colleagues in the call center. Sad to say, I lost one in the region. He said that his love affair with the company ended that Friday afternoon. I hope he gets around to differentiating between work and personal relationship. Don't blame him though, I had gone through the same turmoil more than 15 years ago.

I went back home on Friday evening and then was Shanghaied on Sunday.

Sigh!

Regular visitors are BACK!!

For the past few years, bees have been making hives all over my garden.

This Chinese New Year, they are back with a hive in the front part of the garden - hanging their hive on a bougainvillea branch. And some of them make regular visits to the pail of water in front for a sip. The hot weather must be dehydrating them.

Interesting.

HUKM - Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

My mum was asked to show up in HUKM on 20th Feb 2010 to assess her health condition in preparation for a knee cap replacement. 20th Feb was a Saturday, which was a surprising date as HUKM is a teaching hospital and doctors do not show up normally unless they were on call.

Sure enough, after having been registered and assigned a bed, we just sat and waited as the staff nurse tried to hunt down a doctor to look at my mum. After about 90 minutes, were were told that we would be re-scheduled for 22nd Feb, the following Monday. Sigh!!

First lesson learnt - there are no registrations for patients in the normal lobby on weekends- in fact the doors to the lobby were locked. After walking around a fair bit, the security guard told us that we should register at Accident and Emergency lobby (A&E). Due to the condition of my mum's knees, I got a taxi to transport us from one end of the hospital complex to the A&E lobby.

On 22nd, I drove her to the hospital again and registered her at A&E because we arrived before 7am. She was to go to the Orthopedic ward for cardio vascular and health assessment. They kept her overnight for observations. On 23rd lunch time when I visited her, I was told that she would be discharged later in the day. I told the nurse that I would pick my mum up after work and settle any bills arising.

Discharging a patient at HUKM is an experience - an unpleasant one. I managed to get my quota of exercise for the week in that 90 minutes of getting my mum discharged and back home.

First of all, due to the condition of her knees and the location of the ward (by my estimate it was about 100m from the ward to the front lobby - one way), I went around looking for a wheelchair. After some directions from nurses and security personnel, i managed to locate the counter which loan out wheelchairs. Only problem was that it was 4.59pm when I located that counter and the guy manning it tells me that they are closed! WHAT??!!!! Yes- wheelchair loans are closed at 5pm. Dammit!!

Okay - i take the lift to the 4th floor - traversed the 100m of floor from lift to ward and asked the staff nurse if my mum could be discharged. Sure.... after you settle the invoice for ward stay, medication, lab tests, etc.. Fair enough. However the payment counter is on the GROUND floor!. So I told my mum to get dressed and wait for me on the 4th floor while i go get the invoice settled.

At the payment counter, the woman behind the counter asked if my mum is a citizen. I needed to prove that by showing her identity card. Er... lady, the I/C is with my mum on the 4th floor ward. So she bills me in full instead of 50% less for citizens. Never mind she says, just show her I/C and bill later and she will refund the difference once her citizenship is confirmed.

So i go back up the 4th floor, borrowed a wheelchair from the ward (left my I/C as security) and wheeled my mum down to the payment counter. Got a queue number for refunds and waited to be called. " Sorry sir, refunds are only made till 5pm. Can you come another day?" I swear, if my heart wasn't in a good condition, i may have had a heart attack or stroke at that moment!

Okay, I'll come back another day for the refund. First things first - I need to return the wheelchair. So another 100m to ward 4H and then 100m back to the lobby. The pharmacy was nearby and my mum was prescribed a whole bunch of medication. Sign outside the pharmacy proudly declares that they are opened from 8am to 6.30pm and it was only 5.45pm. Don't you believe it!! Sorry - we are closed. Please go to the pharmacy at A&E. I can feel my blood pressure go up a notch!!

In summary, do NOT try to get a discharge after 4pm. You may end up being hospitalized for stroke, heart attacks or misdiagnosed Rabies or even temporary insanity.

My mum has a new appt one month from now to refill her medication and another in may for further tests. She cannot have her knee operation now due to her asmathic condition. Not suitable for general anaesthetic.

Sigh!

Chinese New Year 2010

Every year, it is the same. I will visit you and you will visit me.

So this year, we did something a little different. We still visited - but we went a lot further than normal. We went to visit the Soup family at Sungei Siput - Woh Foong in Cantonese (or Snails River if you translate that literally). And I call them the Soup family because the name Thong in Cantonese means soup!.

Woke up no earlier than usual and set off North towards Ipoh. Took us 2 1/2 hours to get to Woh Foong. Oi Chan was in. Oi Yin, the younger soup sister was in Cameron Highlands doing a bit of bird watching in the jungles. She called back and said she could make it back for lunch. So we waited.

Lunch was another 45 minutes drive to a place called Sauk (turn off from the highway to Kuala Kangsar, in the direction of Lenggong). The place is supposedly famous for seafood (mainly freshwater fish and prawns). As you turn off into Sauk new village, you will see a restaurant located at the corner named the NEW Lau Kai. That is NOT the original. Turn left and go another 20m and you will come to the original - Lau Kai Restaurant.

We started off with a fish paste prepared in 2 styles. Then the soup sisters ordered a prawn in claypot that came with a spicy tasty soup. The soup is NOT made of coconut extract (santan). Instead, fresh milk was used, which made it light and tasty. We also had fish belly in spicy sauce. We noticed the other tables had steamed fish (the whole fish), but there was only 5 of us and Oi Chan reckons we cannot finish a whole fish and eat other dishes at the same time.

She then ordered a claypot farm chicken - actually that's what the Cantonese name translates as (teen kai). It is really FROG (not toad).Must be because it taste like chicken.

And there was also free range fried chicken, a green veg dish to make sure we get enough fibre and a cuttle fish dish in satay sauce. That was the only dish I did not photographed.

And after all that, what else can we say except BUUUUURRRRRRPPPPPP!!!

Next year, maybe we will plan for a trip to the South - Malacca?? Batu Pahat?? Muar?? Kluang?? Any offers?

Shanghai for more than 2 weeks!!

This January trip to Shanghai had essentailly 2 objectives

- get trained as a trainer for one of our support products (RA) and

- to deliver a training on another product because the original trainer could not be re-scheduled.

Because of the train the trainer sessions, I arrived on a Thursday to help the trainer get the class and labs setup. In the end, since most of the setup was network related, there was not much I could help with as only 1 of 2 trainers from Colorado turned up. The other one had to abort at the last minute due to burst water pipes in his house (extreme cold winters does that). Rick had only one hardisk with all the necessary labs installed, so I couldn't help him.

In any case, the training went well, despite many gremlins showing up in the lab. DHCP addresses were supposed to be leased for 7 days, but somehow in the lab, the moment you disconnect, you get a new IP address. Perplexing and challenging!!

There was a GC class running in the next room and both Rick and I were invited to their graduation dinner. Most of those students in the GC class were going to be my students during my last week in Shanghai!

During the first weekend, Mao (aka referred to as Chairman Mao for those who know him) took me to the highest bottle opener in the world - the Shanghai World Financial center (SWFC). You had to pay RMB150 per person to go all the way to the 100th floor to view Pudong and it's surroundings. Unfortunately for us, the day was foggy and you really don't get a good view. In fact, Shanghai seems to be shrouded in perpetual fog during the days I was there. I was the 1,984,201 visitor up to the 100th floor. For sure, SWFC is really high. Even the JinMao building and the Oriental Pearl Tower nearby is looked down on - literally. The picture above is what you can expect if the day was clear! One thing I noticed was that due to the expected high number of foreign tourists who goes up the SWFC, most of the girls manning the lifts and customer areas were young and pleasant on the eyes.

The training i delivered was also challenging as many of the instruments are badly maintained. Damn!!! But I managed to deliver what was required and had the class graduation dinner nearby.

As usual, I get to renew my friendship with many people in the factory. There was Lily, who is the GC trainer, Helen, our training admin in Shanghai and of course my Niang.

I am coming again in March!!

Shanghaied in Jan 2010

It's winter.... and not really a good time to be travelling in the Northern hemisphere! Just had about 2 weeks in London and Paris with relatively mild weather (except for 2 days of snow). So when I was monitoring the weather in Shanghai before my travels, i was getting a little bit concerned as the average temperatures was a few degrees below what we had experienced in Europe. On the morning that I landed n Pudong, it was -5 deg C!! Bloody negative 5 degrees C!! Oh oh... Looks like I am in for a cold stay.

(I was staying at the Holiday Inn Express, JinQiao - pretty economical)

But it sure looks like wherever I travel, I bring the sun with me. When I was in Shanghai a few months ago, the whole week I was here, the weather was warmer than expected. When I left, it turned cold again. Same thing in London and Paris. Heh heh heh. So today, Saturday, I was going around Shanghai with just a short sleeved tee, a sweater over that and a jacket just in case.

I promised EC to check out Longchamps prices to see if it is worthwhile to buy from Shanghai.

(The station at Jufeng Road)

So I took the metro (Shanghai rail transit) from Jufeng Road station (line no.6) to East Nanjing Road station (line no.2). Surfing the net, it shows that there is an outlet for Longchamps at West Nanjing Road. I forgot to check the address - it was at 1618, West Nanjing Road!!

So in my leisurely walk from East Nanjing Road to 1618, West Nanjing Road, I almost cramped up my legs!

(a new shop opening on Nanjing Zhong Lu)

Which idiot in Shanghai go and restart the numbers when you cross from East Nanjing Road to Central Nanjing Road to West Nanjing Road?

(A L'Oreal promotion booth outside one of the bigger shopping complexes)

I did not realize this until I crossed the street from Central Nanjing road to West Nanjing Road and saw that the addresses restarted from 2!! Shit!! That walk was longer than our walk from Crowne Plaza in Republique place to Notre Dame in Paris. And that was a pretty long walk too.

The walk was educational to some extent as I normally associated only Central Nanjing Road (Nanjing Zhong Lu) as the shopping area.

(There is a Madame Tussaud's near the beginning of West Nanjing Road!)

That's sort of like Orchard Road on a smaller length.

(Many trees are fully wrapped in gold foil!!?? Why??)

I did not realize that Nanjing Road stretched so far. I have travelled and visited places on West Nanjing Road many times without realizing where I was previously.

The whole stretch of Nanjing Road from East to West is much longer than Oxford Street in London and

(This Marks & Spencer outlet is bigger than any M&S in Malaysia)

have almost all the branded names setup along the way. If you want an idea how affluent the Chinese have become in general and Shanghainese in particular, you can more or less tell from the kind of showrooms that you can see. For example, I saw this Ferrari/ Maserati showroom across from the Porche and Mercedes showroom. This is on the ground floor of the J W Marriot hotel.

You have LV and Prada in one of the up market malls.

(and you do get garish decoration - for Xmas??)

And when I reached my destination - Shanghai Jiuguang Dept Store - it was like deja vu!! The layout was very similar to that of Galleries LaFayette in Paris where we bought a bunch of LongChamps. EC even remembers that there was a Tiffany & Co at the entrance. Trust that girl to know where all the expen$ive places are. Despite a 30% discount, the prices are still higher than in Paris. As the sales lady told me - imported mah..

Just outside, stalls have been setup to sell Chinese New Year delicacies.

(Seems like the shopping mall has a similarly idea as mine. First dress up the Xmas tree for Christmas, then redecorate it for Chinese New Year)!!

I am still wondering if this is a waxed pig or a waxed dog?? Looks about the same size.

Luckily next to the LongChamps store was the JingAn Temple Station (line no.2) so I did not have to retrace my steps to the next Metro station.

On the way back to the hotel, I saw this peddler selling a local vegetable/meat burger. I wasn't hungry, so I did not try this. But his customers look like they like it quite a bit.

Oh!! Anyone hasn't seen the limited edition LongChamp Le Pileage?? It has the Eiffel Tower on the side!!