about ME and a bean

Sigh...

How shall I start?

Once upon a time.... no scrap that.. I'm definitely that old.

Once, I met a tiny bean in a tiny school.Tiny bean was loud and noisy and ME was cool and sophisicated.

(Well, its my blog so I can jolly well write whatever I like. smirk)

Like most beginnings, we met, chat and became to know each other more.

My first memories are of her dragging me away from the library when I was heart sent on studying and becoming a top scholar. Soon,influenced by that little bean, I became negligent and spent a lot of my time talking with her at the (now non existant in Singapore) A&W near school.

We will talk aout all kinds of subject, nothing is too boring or too taboo. Sure we almost always have differing views, but I guess this is one of the major factors why the conversations went on till now. Instead of cutting each other down, we will analyze and think upon each other views, acknowledge those that are good and debate more about still differing views.

Thinking back, we are definitely not unlike those uncles you see sitting in the coffeeshops at the void deck jabbering to each other the whole afternoon while sipping on their kopi-o , teh or their preferred choice of poison.

We had our common traits.. selfish.. self loving.. wanting people to adore and pamper us. That is why we could not pander to each other. We were too alike in our selfish little ways!

We had tiffs and one BIG fight.

But. We made up.

........plus, the little bean bought a "I'm sorry" book. *smirk* so I being the cool, sophisicated, gracious, all forgiving perfect being that I am accepted the gift graciously.

(but seriously, its not really all her fault.)

You know how beans work right? First they are this little innocent bean lying there, then, they start to get hungry,sprouting begins and they start to take root.

This little bean has taken root in me taken space slowly and surely. Pulling her out will be quite impossible now.

Sigh.......

But this is one heartless little bean.

Bought her SPECIAL gifts (as she had requested) and up till now, she had not kept up to her bargain of doing that SPECIAL thing for me as well.

That little BB. ( *Beep* Bean )

Since that little bean has lost all our photos, I will be again be gracious and kind and all forgiving as aways again:

bean: Here are some photos we took together. I do appreciate having you as one of my best friends (yea I've admitted it no matter how much bad influence she was) and well, although there are the disputes, no matter what we always came through for each other eventually. This does spells something I guess.

That little vainpot



Likewise.. another vainpot



Thailand



I think we took a surprising whole lot of photos that day.













Take care my love. Be happy always. :)

On a lighter note..because I'm highly tempted to delete the last post. It does hurt.

Right.

On a lighter note.

You know how you can differentiate a good chef by the way they always love their own cooking as well as they (usually) ... ok am definitely not on the bony side?

Well, I'm a fantastic cook as it turns out. I stew soup in this huge slow cooker yesterday. By today, I had slurp it all.

Had three bowls of my fantastic soup just now.

I'm a really fantastic cook.

Lovely.

Goodbye my dear..

You ask me before, why in all our 2 years together, I never wrote about you, never published a photo, never even mentioned you here.

Well, its because, I had kept my every weekend for you, every holiday, every night on the phone, for you.

I never mentioned you because blogs are commentable and I do not want our relationship to be commented.

I write this very unwillingly too because I feel I hate exposing us on this blog.

In the past two years that we have been together, I really felt loved and was in love as well.

Although we are only friends now but still, I still treasure you very much in my life no matter what you may think.

Goodbye my dear...

I loved you.

Oh crap.. I don't know how should I title this.

Shanghai is a girls's paradise, the endless rows of shopping malls, 小店 xiao3 dian4（little boutiques) better yet for a food lover, connoisesur for all fine delicious food.

So therefore, it is very fortunate indeed that I am a great lover of both.

When I first came here the first two places I become acquainted is Huai Hai Lu (Road) and Xin Tian Di (New Sky Earth??!!) The former is like a paradise for shopping and the latter is big compound for wining, dining, relaxing as well for hunks watching (another lovely habit of mine).

Was around that area a few days back with a colleague on a work related issue and we had dinner at this "quaint" place selling 麻辣烫 suan1 la4 tan1（sour spicy soup) *do note its very different from Tom Yam.

Its basically like Singapore's Yong Tao Fu where you go to this area to pick the ingredients you want, pay, pass it to the person to cook the stuff and wait for it to be served to you.

Here's the end result. Not very exciting but to make up for it, let me tell you I pick so much ingredients that nights that they have to serve it to me in two bowls.



Oh and those two pancake things are 煎饼 jian1 bing3. Bought one with this veg call 酒菜 jiu3 cai4 (beer veg.. :P) and another egg one. Those are very goooooooooooood.

Best one is this:



One of the most popular stuff roadside stalls like to sell is grilling stuff on skewers. In the photo closest to you is chicken heart skewer and next to it is chicken skewer. My all time favourites are the lamb and octopus skewers... they are simply to di.. not die.. but just simply oh so gooooooooood.

So good that I had a feast on those on friday and end up with a bad sore throat.

We went to the second floor to eat. Here, its a classy place, so classy they treat every patron like royalty, that is why they have a permanant red carpet on the steps. But... climbing up and looking back, I really have a sense of gratefulness of how far I have gone and suddenly treasure life more.



Climbing on its little and winding steps really does make me appreciate the fact that I have not misstep and end my life with a broken neck. Here, another classic example of how morals and true life meaning are taught. I salute the owner by his good intentions. I'm sure many like me have been enlightened.

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One thing that struck me about the shops here is that some shops really know how to decorate.



From retro tiles to flowers, some shops are a "display of art themselves" There is is shop which only sell black or white clothes on the first floor and coloured clothes on the second.

I love some of the buildings. Check out the cinema on Huai Hai Lu - Cathay





So vintage ehh?



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Xin Tian Di, or New Heaven and Earth (green tea anyone?) is a place where it will be busy every night with 70% expatriates patronage. As I've said, I get my eye candy here.















The lovely trinkets



Mirrors.. pretty!







Oh and let me show you something wonderful.

There was this promotion of the arts thing sponsered by Chivas..



This man was drawing a huge canvas on the floor using crayons.. like around 8 by 8 m. its beautiful and best part is, when you look through this thing which I can only say its like a standing magnifier but filled with water .. the whole thing becomes 3D.

I tried to take a photo through it for you guys to see.. hopefully you can make it out. If not.. well I tried. :p



Description of the piece





The owner of the large shoes



To end off, please visit this site. http://www.thepantswhisperer.com/ . Highly interestly and free clothes for the boys to download and wear.

Do it now.

We had sexytime at Hai Ning

Well, I'm sure you have seen the pictures at Helaine's blog.



Now I'm sure you would not want another duplicate of what happened at Haining... so...

Now, being the totally incorrigible person that I am, I am going to reveal...behind the scene.. what actually happen that night Helaine and I slept together alone for the very first time.

Aside to Helaine: My sweet, Forget those Brachael and that silly panda and soya bean.. or whatever those boring little pair of yucky lovebirds are writing. They can say all they want, but all they do is all those silly mushy words.. so what they have LOVE but WE, we will truimph them all, because we have TRUE PASSION~~~ *please hold up your fingers and say "pa-shawn" "

Guess what Helaine bought for me to wear that night.

Ta daa~~~



I could see her eyes glitter.

We go into a "pa-shawn-note" frenzy over the shoes we bought in one 4 hours. I bought 6 pairs, and darling Helaine bought 10!

"Shoes! Shoes! Darling Shoes!"



Let me sidetrack a bit, its 50rmb for a pair... ahhhhhh *happy dance*

... It was an endless hour of fun with taking photos of our models.. arranging and rearranging them endlessly.. taking and retaking counts photos of the little darlings and of each other.

Of decent moments.





And of more "pa-shawn-note" moments..





What happen after that.. we will share that precious memory only to ourselves.

In three simple words," It was unforgettable".

Take that smelly pandas.. beans.. regardless they are jolly or not.. and stuff that cause diabetes.

*evil grin*

....Oh and I bought gifts people, they are with my sweet. Hope you like them :)

I'm going to Haining to see Helaine tmr!

Yea! I'm finally going to be with my people representative tmr!!! Going to Haining to meet up with Healine and her family coz she could not come down to Shanghai to meet me.

So happy! :)

Gonna take loads pictures! *do the happy dance*

I need love

In pretty low spirits this two days....

Give me some encouragement dears...

A 35 mins walk home today

There's this straight road from the office to home..a slow walk takes around 30 mins. Sure I've walked it before, (most of the time I'm driven home or took a cab), but I have never walked alone back before. Today was the first time.



Anyway, there's this small stretch,where they have really small convenience stores, houses and stalls. In the area where my office, it is considered very developed with a high number of expatriates living there so to pass by this small stretch when Millenium Hotel and Carrefour is just 5 mins away makes it quite surreal.

From this..







To this:

Millenium Hotel


Gubei Store - Carrefour


From stores as mini as a "mama store" in Singapore to the bright lights of Carrefour, Bang and Ofusen.. it was a contrast indeed.

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On my solitary walk, I saw two people rummaging through some trash bags that was placed jst by the main path. The old man was around 50 and the lady, mid 30s, to my horror, right in front of me while I was passing them, the old man lift a paper cup he dg up from one of the trash bag to his lips and drank off the remainder of whatever drink that it was containing...

I really wanted to just stop, scream, tear the cup off his lips and stuff some cash in his hands.

But over here, really, unlike Singapore where the worst you can actually see still wears decent clothes and are mostly well mannered buskers or beggers, here, you see old ladies carrying toddlers in the middle of the street, tapping car windows when they stop at a traffic light and beg you for money while shoving that kid in your face.

I think I gave to quite a few while I first came. But after, my colleague stopped me.

"There's too many of them Sam. Also, these people are actually quite rich you know. Do you know that a lot of them actually "rented" the little kids and toddlers so that people will be more apt to give money."

My collesgue start shooing them away.

So I stop giving, but my heart still wince everytime I walk past an old granny.. any one of them, stretching their arms out and looking at me with doleful eyes.

I will still try to give once in a while though, I'm not being generous, I don't do charities, I never go help in homes, its not about feeling beneficial.

I hope you understand how I feel though.

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After thought: This was actually written yesterday but I could not get on photoshop so post it today instead.

Read a blog entry where it says how the contrast always enable people to really tell differences and be more acutely aware the meaning each side brings to oneself.

When I start to think about what I see here, and I look around at how much I have, and what my kind of life is, yea, I've stop grouching (not entirely of course) but at least more than enough to let myself know, yes, I do like and am thankful of my life, of who I am and blessed to have what I have.

The death of Hello from Britain in Shanghai

Was surfing the net for a listing of the radio stations available in Shanghai, hoping to find something good here.

Well, I came upon this english station, "Hello from Britian" that I find very interesting.

It was started by a Scottish guy called Brian Anderson in 1989 but its discontinued by the Shanghai Broadcasting Bureau for unknown reasons according to Brian.

Here's the link to the website. Have a read, especially its histroy.

http://www.hello.uk.com/

Have a lovely weekend.

A bit here and there lah

Right on the 1st of May, my colleague lost her whole bag containing her handphone, wallet.. a a lot more stuff to a bold thief who just grab and walk off with her bag while we were trying on sports shoes at a mall.

It was a painful experience for her, brave girl that she is, she held her tears back.

Today, I suffer the consequences by wearing a pair of high heels not suitable for walking, accompanying her for 3 hours looking for a brand new phone.

Here's the B E A U T I F U L Culprit.



Another beautiful angle..



Oh.. how I heart my shoes....

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I got to be honest, I've pick up a bad habit here.



I've gotten the habit of using the tothpick at the table right after a meal.

Just sometimes....

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Introducing, a Curry Fastfood in Shanghai!

"Good Smell, Good Curry"


Here's how it looks like.. after a few bites..its suppose to be pork cutlet curry rice though







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I was talking on msn with Jolyn today and I was telling her how absurdly expensive accessories in Shanghai was and that variety wise was not that much to be found. I do think that with that high influx of "accessories-makers" we have in Singapore nowadays, this would be a good opportunity for some of them to come over and set up a business here . :)

Oh and Jolyn.. Cheryl's accessories are really all very beautiful...does Cheryl wants o expand her horizons overseas?

Perhaps I should have learn how to make them myself also and make them myself to sell a sideline too.. hehe...

Anyone wants to send me a LOVE package full of lovely accessories?

Ahem.. my office address is relatively easy to find online... hehe...