routine

i’ve finished the fanfic so i shall write in here! before i start another one and can’t put it down. the one i was last reading is called “harry potter and the nightmares of futures past”…pretty good though of course the original is better. the plot has to do with harry finally winning the war at age 30, but feeling that the victory is hollow because everyone is already dead…so he sends his memories back in time to himself at 11 years old so that he can use the foreknowledge to prepare his friends, destroy the horcruxes and win the war while keeping everyone alive. very very sad.

about my uni…it’s called shanghai jiaotong university so it sounds like traffic…but actually means sth more like communications i think. haha. anyway, the best thing about it is seriously the location. it is 2 bus stops away from my apartment. okay lah the bus stops are very far apart, but i can still get there in about 15min…so it’s like staying in hall and going to school. as for the school itself. well, it must have been quite okay when it was built, cos it’s nice with a temple-like main entrance, wide avenues with bald trees, etc. but the buildings are very run down…the one which i have classes, the school of international education, is like an old and cui primary school. and currently under renovation. and they actually open the windows of the toilet so the toilets and corridors are freezing. the classrooms are passable lah. the lessons are okay also…sounds better than what i’ve been hearing from the tsinghua and fudan people. mainly cos we get to watch a lot of movies and even when we don’t, we get to stone cos the teacher doesn’t call on us. i hear that at fudan and tsinghua you’re constantly on your toes….tiring leh, the class damn long, like 9 hours over 2 days. my favourite option is to bring my laptop and spend the lesson reading harry potter. after 2 weeks of lessons, i’m on book 3…after the harry potter is finished i still have chronicles of narnia and twilight on my laptop too, haha.

the downside though…the mode of assessment is 2 chinese essays of 2500 words each!!! omg i have enough problems writing even 500. i’m already planning to write it in english and then use google translate because from all accounts as long as you hand in you can pass and the course is s/u. and you can’t not hand in cos otherwise the school demands it’s subsidy back, which is like a few k.

anyway, it’s a great change from work, to be able to just heck care and do your own thing. there are lots of people sleeping openly in my class. it’s also lots of fun to finally get to talk to more people. and getting to speak some ENGLISH. i have to speak freaking chinese to pretty much everyone here that i’m in constant contact with, cos my housemates are chinese-speaking. last sunday my housemate organised a trip to zhujiajiao, which is this ming/qing-era water town that’s very well preserved. 22 people went on the trip so it was like a class outing. fun though… while we were taking sampans down the canals, we were taking photos of each other’s sampans (each can only fit 6) and striking all kinds of weird poses. gosh, i totally need to upload them….these are like blackmail material hahah. unfortunately the photos are all over the place and no idea how we are going to consolidate. soon i shall be attempting to see if i can put an album on my blog cos i think the blogger photo function is damn hard to use, haha. like the photos end up in funny places and you can’t copy and paste them.

so life has pretty much fallen into routine. and i’ve been working for almost a month! 4 more until i can finally go back home. i wanna go home!! i keep counting down to myself mentally. maybe i’m a homebody who can’t leave after all. maybe it would have been different if ssy had also gotten shanghai, or if i had at least gone to an english speaking country with better traffic and less scheming people. what i shall be learning from this trip, first and foremost, is never to do business here. some people can take it, but i just find it tiring to always be wondering if someone is trying to cheat you even over minor issues like buying a top. the culture here is that cheating people is acceptable, even expected. our landlord brought this air-con guy over who quoted 300 just for checking the air-con in the house when the market rate is 50. it’s ridiculous.

well, we win some, we lose some. in exchange for the unpleasant environment (apart from the weather for now, which is starting to get nice…spring is finally here!!) i get a 3-day weekend and 2 weeks less working, not to mention more action and adventure. after all, working just plain sucks, even if i do it in singapore…and i will be working in singapore for the rest of my life anyway. so i should have regretted not going to fass where i can spend 4 years nua-ing with no attachment and no fyp…but on the other hand a degree which 3250892340 people also have.

it’s also quite sad to realise all of a sudden that i have already finished my last nua 3 months holiday which was at the end of year 2. when i get back i’ll only have a couple of weeks before school starts. and end of year 4 = everyone will be starting their jobs so i will feel bad if i don’t too even though i really rather wait till august and have one last nua-fest. sigh…so even when i get back it’ll be year 4 and the dreaded horrible fyp and after that hardly a break before we’re expected to be raring to begin the rest of our lives working.

oh well…it’s now 10am! 1 hour down, 8 more to go. then one more day and i can start enjoying my weekend. as one of my coursemates said…we spend every weekday counting down to the next weekend!

update

my supervisor and the big boss and other big shots are now all in a meeting, so this seems like a good time to update, haha. apparently i haven’t been that bored after all since it’s been more than a week. actually, the truth is that i realised that i had fanfiction’s web address wrong. so i have been spending a lot of time reading fics. the problem is that i get bored then get onto a fic, then when i do get something to do i don’t feel like doing it anymore. wahaha.

after 2 weeks, i just got a change in supervisor….the old one left because she decided not to stay here after the company gets acquired. initially i was quite sad because my previous supervisor really took care of me and is damn nice, gentle and motherly etc…but it seems like i will be having more interesting and less chinese things to do under my new one. my new supervisor is actually the head of communications for the asia pacific region while my old one took charge of china specifically. the only other person who was in our department is another lady who took charge of marketing communications, who just left last week on maternity leave. AND the head of singapore communications, under my supervisor, is also on maternity leave. i think my new sup is going to be quite overworked, so i shall be doing some of her sai kang for her. for now it’s interesting stuff like writing articles, but eventually i will have to be contacting some shitty chinese people who will just say yes yes without really listening to you and therefore need lots of constant badgering.

anyway, i just found a nice fanfic, so i’ll add mroe about uni life to this post next time:P

bored…

i’m now in the office at 9.30am with absolutely nothing to do again…except read news, then read blogs, talk a bit on ebuddy, then surf around on things to do in shanghai, etc etc. this incredible slackness is occasionally interspersed by articles my supervisor gives me to edit, or when she calls me into her office to show me something. i seriously wonder why i am even employed cos i think i’m wasting her time…even when she gives me articles to type in edits she goes through it with me first and it’s like i’m back in secondary school having a chinese tutoring session with liu yang hahah. she can definitely type it herself faster. oh well. at least it’s comforting to know that my housemates are equally slack and so was the guy who worked here last semester. 2 of my housemates (guys) can actually openly sleep in the company when they’re not chitchatting with the other interns for entertainment. tis good to not be the only one like me!! maybe soon i’ll be like veron, sleeping in the toilet until the autoflush goes off. wahahah. hooray for nice office toilets!

yesterday i started feeling guilty about my plot to quietly continue skipping fridays after school ends in may like the previous ntu students who worked here (3 day weekend!!!). it’s especially sneaky of me cos my school term starts super early this year so in effect i’ll only be attending one friday out of the whole 22 weeks. but i realised that i’ll be working sunday mornings too cos i have to handle this migrant school volunteering thing for my company. therefore, i am not that evil! hahah. sometimes i wish that i wasn’t so well paid (by chinese standards especially) cos i definitely don’t deserve it and it makes me feel bad but yeah money is good so i really shouldn’t complain. but gosh, march – may are going to be horrible. work from mon-thurs at 9am, sch from fri to sat at 8.30am, and volunteer work on sundays at 9.30am. yucks!!!! thank goodness for tomb sweeping day, may day, etc, to break the monotony of constant 7.30am alarms.

but yes doing attachment overseas is really slack. firstly, i get 2 weeks lopped off the standard PI programme length cos GIP is standardised to 22 weeks. secondly, i only work 4 days a week compared to my singapore counterparts who have to do 5 days. altogether, i’m doing like 75% of the PI the singaporean CS students do!! thirdly, there’s less things they can entrust me with here because of my lousy chinese. even if my chinese was better for a singaporean, i still couldn’t phrase things the way they do here. 4thly, i get 6 extra free AUs (which i actually don’t really need but oh well). granted, i do have to go for friday and saturday classes and write the bloody 2000 word essay but the essay can anyhow do and it’s definitely going to be better than working. i THINK. haha.

the sad thing about being here is that i believe that my reasons and motivations for coming are very different from all the ntu students here. after reading the blogs of one of my “upperstudies”, i am truly amazed at the energy the students here possess, to go chionging every weekend to all the surrounding cities and even to go shopping and food-hunting after work. after work it’s all i can manage to go out for dinner with my housemates…and half the time i just dabao back cos we arrive back at diff times and i’m one of the later ones. i can’t take work on less than 7 hours sleep! will die. not to mention that it’s so cold here the only really warm spot in the house is under the blanket. i think i lack the energy and idealism of most of the other people who come here, all ready to immerse in a different culture and see as many things and have as much fun as possible. me? jaded, cynical, lazy, etc. i prefer to relax and nua and get through these 5 months without too much trauma. i would already be counting down to the end of my time here if it was near enough to count down to. also i’m not really interested in getting to know new people unless i have to…sigh, and too shy also…it’s already hard enough for me to initiate a conversation with a stranger without adding in the language barrier. all i wanna do is go back to the comfort of familiar surroundings.

why am i here? i feel that i kind of got caught up in the excitement of the whole idea after it materialised and by the time i got back to earth, it had become irrevocable. and well, there are plenty of good things about it, and not much reason to stay home apart from just the longing to remain in my comfort zone. so i drift my way on and find myself in china, nothing i can do now but stay the course…

well, it’s now 2.40pm and i’ve been writing this entry in fits and starts while finishing the editing of the final articles for the chinese translation of the office newletter, going to eat lunch, and arranging one of the cabinets. indeed, as veron said, blogging does make the time pass a lot faster, haha. but what am i going to blog about every day?! my supervisor has gone off already cos she has a doctor’s appointment and the colleague behind’s not in today…pity the big boss, aka regional president’s office is at my 8 o’clock, separated only by one desk. shall surf for blogskins with my ears pricked towards the office and at 6pm i can scream TGIF!!!! inwardly and go home.

great firewall of china

i can’t update here much now cos i’m in shanghai and yes, the great firewall of china has blocked wordpress and ebloggy, and amazingly not blogspot. i can still access wordpress and ebloggy by changing the proxy settings, but it’s troublesome and i doubt i’ll be blogging much at home cos there’s just so little time between getting back and sleeping to eat, nua, chat on msn/phone…and i don’t really wanna mess with the proxy settings for my office comp haha. (yes, i am damn slack in the office.) so i am temporarily on blogspot now at 3rdaugust.blogspot.com….i am a consistent and uncreative person!:P

working life

here i am with yet another blog. ebloggy and wordpress are blocked in china, which leaves blogspot…actually, there’s a way to go around that, but i realise that the only time i actually have to blog is in the office wahahah. there are so few hours at night that i don’t really have much time to blog then. and it seems a waste to not document anything about my stay in shanghai.

office life…well, so far not much to do except the occasional (chinese) article to edit. how it works is this: my supervisor gets the english version of the company newsletter from the hq in europe, sends it to an external agency for translation, then looks through it again and edits it using pen. she then passes it to me to type out the changes. i find it difficult cos i sometimes can’t read her handwriting, haha, and my chinese vocab is cui to begin with. but i just managed to get through the latest stack without having to ask anyone for help! whee. sometimes need to guess a bit and use some common sense. if i can’t figure it out, my colleague behind is ultra nice and askable…i still prefer to do things on my own though.

apart from that, i’m organising this office volunteering thing, which i foresee is going to be kind of like running ntuso but with a language barrier heh. sian.

the most sian thing about shanghai is that i’m permanently cold. it’s disgusting. the landlord still hasn’t been by to install heaters despite us having moved in for more than a week, and it’s super cold this week! last week the temp was alright and when we visited hangzhou i could even walk around with a t-shirt. but omg, this week it might actually drop to 0. i even find the office cold…unwilling to take off my outermost jacket.

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okay, i just came back to continue updating after i stopped to go do some work my supervisor passed to me. it’s like omg…imagine, i need to type out printed chinese text into MS word using hanyupinyin. the words are in FAN TI. i already have problems reading jian ti! actually, i managed to guess quite a few of it and got some with ssy’s help (how come he can read fan ti?!) on ebuddy and the final few which i couldn’t describe on msn i got from my nice colleague. haha. my eyes hurt from scanning through lots and lots of fan ti words! seriously, too many chinese words sound the same. and fan ti has damn a lot of strokes.

back to life in shanghai. another noteworthy thing is the rush hour. i know everyone’s heard of rush hour in china, where the buses and trains are jammed like sardines. i actually couldn’t get on the first bus today cos there were too many people. for the second one i positioned myself correctly and made it on, haha. actually, the pushing and shoving involved really doesn’t have much to do with the uncouth-ness of the people…it’s just that the public transport system is truly inadequate for the vast swarms of people in the city. we all have to get to work–we have no choice. consideration here is packing yourself in as tightly as possible so that more people can make it to work on time. in that context, we singaporeans are the uncouth ones for not moving to the back of the bus, etc, haha.

on the way back it’s not so bad cos my stop is almost at the end of the line so i can take a seat and relax. besides, when it’s winter we’re so wrapped up in clothing we don’t really have to be in direct contact with others. still, i definitely have to find a less direct and less crowded route to take before summer.

50 minutes to the end of work! i’m always the last out of the house and the last back because i work from 9-6pm. so i wake up when everyone’s already left, haha…but on the flipside i get back around 7 cos i still need to go and buy dinner before getting back. tis sad being the only intern in an office! the guys in my house work together and go for dinner with the others in their company.

anyway i should stop here, it’s quite scary to keep having to listen out for signs that the colleague behind me is going to get up, haha. will write more next time~

one month left

so everything’s settled. i’m going after all. will be flying off on the 30th of jan…one month from today. i went berserk for a few days shopping for winter/office/cny clothes cos there were SALES SALES SALES everywhere!!! i have restrained myself with difficulty after buying 2 sets or so since i can get many more cheaply over there. omg!! the post christmas sales are absolutely incredible. i think most of my chinese new year and overseas shopping is done, hahah.anyway, back to topic…i can’t believe how final going to china feels now, after telling all my family and friends…a lot less painful though after finding (thanks to dear ssy!) nice housemates that go to work very near me…crossing my fingers that everything will work out. i was totally picturing myself adrift desperately seeking for housemates and being the odd one out that just can’t find anyone to stay with. and then ending up alone in shanghai with my social bar completely and permanently red and the social bunny coming to keep me company (been playing too much sims these few days thanks to screwed up internet). now i’m a little worried about being alone at jiaotong university (stupidly missed the deadline for applying fudan), but it seems very minor in comparison.

anyway. one month left. things i MUST accomplish before i leave…

1) pack room. just moved back from hostel yesterday and GOSH my room is in a mess.
2) start packing early cos i’m not sure if my mom can supply me with all the winter things i need. so i have time to go shopping for them.
3) attempt to learn to bake and decorate cny goodies in pretty little boxes! then i can give them out to friends before i leave. my mom wants me to do for her friends too (assuming it’s a success)
4) major mystery project!:P

that’s about all i can think of for now, but it’s going to be keeping me very busy for this last month… which is bound to just rush by at a ridiculous speed. time to treasure the last of the clean, smoke-free, english, friendly, etc environment here…

STOMP: citizen journalism, my foot

i’m quite disgusted by the rubbish that appears nowadays in the name of “citizen journalism”. seriously. exposing couples kissing on the mrt is considered journalism? people not giving up their seats on the bus? smokers at the zoo?

i read on a forum about a STOMP post that featured a couple sleeping on the train “as if it is their own home”, and a picture with their faces was there for everyone to see. the couple only took up two seats and were not like slobbering all over the place or anything. ok, i do love to complain a lot too. and i think some people deserve to be humiliated, like aunties who block train entrances to try to get a seat…and yes i hate smokers too. but it’s not really possible for anybody to decide who deserves to be “STOMPed”, and who doesn’t…for example, i don’t see anything wrong with couples kissing in public, though i draw the line at making out/groping around. but others might think that couples should not show any display of affection at all. therefore, this arbitrary public finger-pointing and humiliation should not even be allowed in the first place…or at least pixellate the faces! what is this man…big brother is watching you? total intrusion of privacy. nowadays, anybody can take a picture of you if they feel like it without you even knowing. and ST is actively encouraging this practice and providing a place for such ridiculousness to proliferate.

how ST handles the whole concept of citizen journalism and trying to make it look like the media is liberalising and adapting to the changing media landscape (ugh, COM401) has always disgusted me. just look at the STOMP website. it’s covered with bright colours and flashy headlines. people use it to talk about all kinds of trivial matters. citizen journalism is thus debased and turned into kpo-mania. in other democratic countries, citizen journalism is actually practiced to fact-find, discuss and examine issues that the mainstream media choose to ignore for various reasons…like how a bunch of conservative political bloggers in the US point out the problems and make noise about obama’s birth certificate, because they genuinely feel that the mainstream media is not doing so (i disagree with the bloggers, btw). another example would be that of people getting live footage of disasters as they unfold, before the journalists get on the scene. citizen journalism thus actively supplements traditional journalism to report news. in singapore, it seems like the other way round…STOMP harnesses the natural kpo and complaining instinct of humans to create a pseudo-news portal that caters to some of the worst elements of society…intolerant people, voyeurs, etc…

and at the same time, what of actual citizen journalism in singapore and the news they could be creating? it’s no secret that the media in singapore is very pro-government. but for those concerned about seeking out an alternative voice…where can they find it? think citizen journalism, and does the drivel on STOMP come to mind? (i can’t help thinking that this is SPH’s sneaky way to stamp out true citizen journalism…)

anyway i find this topic interesting because i did a paper a year ago on how newspaper companies are adapting to the use of new media. maybe i’m reading too much into this, but i thought it was quite significant how ST actually created 2 online portals…one for the so-called citizen journalism aka kpo-heaven, and the other a serious, prosaic news website. in this way, ST can show that it has harnessed the power of web 2.0 and facilitated lots of online discussions and citizen fact-finding, while at the same time distancing its professional journalism from the chaos and sensationalism at STOMP. in the meantime, the real discussions by informed, thoughtful citizens about issues in singapore that was bound to surface sometime with the advent of the internet age are sidelined.

also, like most of you i believe, this issue hits close to my heart too! i really hope to not end up on STOMP someday for some inane reason. (though i probably wouldn’t know about it cos i don’t read it.)

hell month

hell month is almost over! what a horrible month. first week spent agonising over 3 presentations, 2 term papers, and one essay. 2nd and 3rd week spent agonising over exams and gip matters. and being unable to study much. i think i’ve surfed every blog/news website i can think of almost everyday. even went onto viwawa for the first time since like june. come monday, finally a reprieve, where i can finally go do all the things i’ve been planning to do.

1) READ!! right after the exams i’m hitting jp library to collect all my reserved books. then after that’s done, i’m going to attack the twilight series, heard it’s good. actually, i read the first book in the series way way before all the hype, when i could easily find it in the library, but now the waiting list is probably hundreds of people long, so i might just buy it since borders is having 3 for the price of 2 sale. haven’t bought a book for ages.

2) open a facebook account. HAHA. finally jumping on the bandwagon. i steadfastly refused to join over the years despite being deluged with invites. was even asked to participate in a discussion of social networking sites in psychology and media last semester because i was one of the rare people not involved in them. but since i’m probably going to china next feb for half a year, maybe now is the time. can keep in contact with friends! (actually i just paiseh to admit that i wanna play word challenge wahahah)

speaking of word challenge, the way it has insidiously intruded into my life is quite scary. i was first drawn to the rearranging words thing, playing muddled on my brother’s iphone while we were in the hospital waiting for the doc after his dog bite. next thing i’m watching mk play word challenge during our study breaks. then i come back to school and veron’s playing it during class wahaha. and then yihui asks me about it on msn. it’s like fate, or divine intervention, haha.

3)SHOP!!! one of the things that excites me most about going china is the prospect of cold weather for quite a few months, which means i get to wear long sleeved tops everywhere! ok lah plenty of time for this since i’ll only be heading of in feb. if i go. okay, it seems like a foregone conclusion, but weird to just declare it here before everything’s confirmed.

one more day to torture myself with studying! and i MUST mug as hard as i can for my last paper because it’s my only hope. this is the worst exam cycle i’ve ever had. but no matter what it’ll still be over in 37 hours and i’ll be free!

blog stats

while looking through my blog stats i realised a couple of people who searched for my blog found it through typing “unicef is having a celebration….etc etc”. i’ve got an entry somewhere further down about how scammers are bloody stupid and can’t even make their scams look legitimate by spelling properly. i truly hope i have helped someone avoid being scammed *beams at having done a good deed*

another search i’ve been doing every now and then, and getting hits from now and then, is the search for “gip china”. updates from that side is coming slowwwly. though a couple of people, i hear, have gotten replies. i just got an email from the school, though, saying that i’ve gotten the temasek foundation award, which is about 6.4k, so if i do go it will be with money:D actually it’s very hard at this point to not go, but still…hmm…i seriously don’t know. hoping hard for some certainty to head our way soon. china companies, please hurry!!

on another note, my sleep cycle has gone full circle and now i’m awake and blogging at 7am. my sleep cycle is naturally screwed up. i like to sleep 10-12 hours, but i stay awake for about 16-18. that adds up to way more than 24 hours. but the only time i can indulge in this is during the exams, haha…will be back to normal after the 24th.

reality has a well-known liberal bias

i love wasting time man. unfortunately or fortunately, it’s a little harder to waste time than usual during another exam cycle because i haven’t found something to be addicted to (last semester, it was viwawa). so i’ve actually managed to finish studying genes r us 2 days before the paper!! and have time to focus on european lit which is on the same day…which i’ve already s/u-ed and kind of can’t bother to read. too many freaking texts. and i don’t even need the AUs. the question is whether i can bear to really go and U it even enough it doesn’t really matter even if i do so. but it’s just painful haha.

anyway, in the last couple of hours i’ve managed to find something to entertain myself with.

laughing at idiots!! hahah.

enter conservapedia.com. this website was set up as an alternative to wikipedia, which has a “liberal bias”. of course, it’s also very christian. not to say that all conservatives are christians or vice versa, this is just an isolated example of a group of christian conservative nuts. anyway, the funny part was when the founder of the website contacted a scientist who had published a study showing evolution in E.coli (which links to my genes r us content! so it’s not completely useless surfing). anyway, the conservapedia crackpots freaked out at evolution actually being supported scientifically, and sent letters to the scientist, Dr Lenski, demanding to see their data…namely the bacteria, so that they can perform “CSI techniques” (this is a direct quote!) to see if the data was faked. of course, the crackpots are not scientifically trained, only skimmed the journal article, and don’t have the facilities to store the bacteria, much less the expertise to handle it.

Dr Lenski’s brilliant, crushing reply here. they really asked for it. tis a satisfying read! http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/lenski_gives_conservapdia_a_le.php

the edited bit was censored by conservapedia because it linked to radicalwiki, a site which was set up for the purpose of laughing at conservapedia.  

also, conservapedia thinks that obama is a muslim and is convinced that he became president of the harvard law review because of affirmative action. if this is conservative reporting, then reality has a liberal bias. (i love this quote!)

while i’m not denigrating christians or their faith, i seriously feel that it’s better to wonder if i’m going to hell because i’m not a believer than to be convinced that i’m going to heaven despite being racist, ignorant, and obnoxious. the grey area in the middle, of course, will be to know that you’re going to heaven because you are a truly good christian, but i shall not talk about things that will only provoke and divide people. the purpose of this entry is to laugh at crazy people, not christianity. (however, i will suggest to the next person who tries to evangelise me that they should go clear up the problems in their own camp first rather than waste their time on peaceful non-believers like me.)

ignorant people exist everywhere. perhaps religion is only a contributing factor to this ignorance, because it provides such people with a dogma to adhere to, interpret, and throw around as they will. ultimately, it is education, open-mindedness, and tolerance that can save this conflict-ridden world we live in.