Tsinghua has bowling!

Rent these awesome looking shoes for only RMB 1.... yes.. you heard me! 1 YUAN + it comes with free condom-looking socks!

This is my classmate LEO (a Filipino who was born in Thailand but a Singaporean citizen) who used to be a fireman for a year in Singapore. Yes. F I R E M A N ladies.....

But these cheap bowling shoes do come with one setback.... THEY ABSOLUTELY SMELL LIKE YOUR MOTHER-IN-LAW'S-DOG-THAT-JUST-SHAT-AND-HAD-ASPARAGUS-FOR-LUNCH.

(Asparagus makes your pee stink)

Meet Julia from Norway. She kicked my ass in bowling with those stinky shoes.

Meet some of the bowlers L-R: Mac (Thailand), Dew (Thailand), Moon (Korea), Min Xi (Korea), Off (Thailand).

In total, it only cost us RMB 25 for an hour of fun!


1 MORE DAY TO MARATHON DAY! and I have a fan club set up to cheer me on and wait for me at the finish line! Will post after the Marathon with pictures (not sure if its a good idea to run with a camera).

Wish me luck!

Karaoke Class

Woooo... Today I attended the elective class for KARAOKE! And boy.... the teacher can rap!

This is the song she rapped - 今天你要嫁给我 (Jin Tian Ni Yao Jie Gei Wo)

which means, 'Today you will be married to me"



Today I managed to run a good distance too! :D

祝你有奇妙天！

Have a wondeful day!

1 in 4 of us are related to Gengkhis Kahn!

YOU could be my great-venti-grande-tall son.........

Inner Mongolia is situated at the north of China. It is still within China and you do not have to get a visa! So, what does 'Nei Menggu' have to offer?

The journey started with this man, our tour guide who is from Hoh-Hot, the capital of Inner Mongolia.

I'm Soh-Hot.

First stop was the 'Hanging Temple' situated in Da Tong. If you look closely, you must have thought "hey, seen this somewhere before!". Ah Hah! many films were made with this backdrop to potray the 'Hans' who lived in mountains. The temple has 3 - Taoism, Buddhism & thrown in some Confucion just to confuse you further.

Take a guess which is the Confucian temple......

After paying our respects (and asking for 4D number), we continued our journey further up which took another 4 hours of bus ride ON TOP of the 7 hour bus ride we endured from Beijing.

Meet Off! He OFFten sleeps..... (no kidding, his name is really 'OFF')

We then proceeded to the 'Cave of many Buddhas'. Apparently, no one knows who carved the stons but it was believed that it was carved xxxx BC! Big Buddha, small Buddha and even baby Buddhas were all carved out along the entire cave....

Yo wassup! I'm Buddha.....

Its a shame that just right outside the area, there were many local chinese people selling fake goods and tourist souveniers that you just know it will break once you bag it.... And the most disturbing sight was this.....

Foong condemns animal cruelty.

After a few more hours of driving, we finally reached the hotel and had a nice hot Mongolian meal! Although everything seems to evolve around onions, chilly, oil and salt! O_O

The monks would have been very dissapointed with us for wasting food......

The next day, we headed off to the grasslands! And there we stayed in a Yurt (a tent with NO heating, NO toilet, NO bed and NO mongolian women) where we experienced Mongolian life. Although the tent may sound as bad as living with your in-laws, it was a sweeeeet experience to enjoy with friends whom you just met 1 week ago. :D

The Grassland! and to be honest, its a fantastic feeling to just pee out in the wide open grassland....

Mongolian wrestling is to resolve who will get the lady to go boom boom.

We tried really hard to be local.....

This is the Yurt of the Village Chief..... dont mess with it....

So the Yurt turned out to be damm cold (it was almost 0 Celcius in the night) and sucks to not be able to shower when you've been riding on horses all day, covered in sand and dried horse shit everytime the wind blows.....

We then set off to the Mongolian dessert!

The Gobi Dessert!

Meet Joe, he has nice set of teeth!


Meet the team: (From left to right)
Standing: Callie (Mas), Haolu (Italy), Sonia (Mas), Lisa (Germany), Jason (HK), Jeff (US), Eric (Canada), Patrick (Phillipines), Olivier (France), KimChi 1(Korea), KimChi 2(Korea), ChupChang (Thailand)
Squating/Kneeling: Paul (US), Nick (HK), Jessie (Australia)
Seated: Asaf (US), KimChi 3 (Korea), Off (Thailand), KimChi 4 (Korea), Christine (France), Dew (Thailand), Veronique (Hainan/Canada), Me, Soh-Hot (our tour guide)

So, we ended the night with some drinks and bon-fire dancing with mongolian beer. It was a good holiday (excluding the amount of horse shit and camel shit we had to smell through out the trip), would recommend to go with an agent as it is nearly impossible to drive there by yourself. Furthermore, the agents can make sure that you that get conned MORE than you should be conned. :)

Woohoo! I made RMB 19,780 (23 x RMB 860)!!! Con your money! yeah!


The Emcee decided to show off his Mongolian-kiss-the-floor-with-legs-in-air...



I end my entry here with a lesson I learnt from the Mongols. Let me know if you can crack what it means!! :)
The same sky, the same love to the same home.

Day 11: Nèi Měnggǔ

Hey all! will be gone for the weekend to Inner Mongolia!

Recent Developments:
1. Classes have begun and I have been placed in level 2 (out of 10 levels!), and its $%#@ difficult!
2. I met a random Beijinger and he has asked me to teach his niece English for RMB 200 (RM100) an hour!
3. My 5-day old bicycle is beginning to rust.....
4. I bought a pair of 'Converse' for RMB 50 (RM25), a pair of 'Lee' jeans for RMB 110 (RM55). They have yet to fail on me.
5. The food (super oily + salty) is starting to take a toll on my health and physique.

China will be celebrating their national day on the 1st of October, and hence, the entire country is on holiday from the 27th September - 5th October!!!!

再见

Day 7: This city is forbidden

Maintaining a blog is hard work. And I've learnt that writing a good post takes quite a bit of effort and tons of creativity to have you scroll down what I have to say.

Enough of reflection.

Moving on to what happened the last few days....

So, I've finally purchased a damm-cheapo-creaking-new-bicycle for RMB 160 (RM 80). But after 2 hours 15 mins and 10 seconds, the damm breaks were loose, back light fell off, my seat broke and my bell stopped ringing (got free basket and bell thrown in). But there was a bicycle doctor on campus to help out and guess Hu! DR. HU! WHO? DR. HU!

left: Sonia, Malaysian, soon to be KPMG Advisory London
right: Jessie, Australian, CPA holder with EY Sydney

Forbidden City (Zijin Cheng 紫禁城) was the chinese imperial palace (like the Kremlin to the Russians) and it served the Chinese for 5 centuries as the ceremonial and political centre. It also where lots of concubines hang out and the eunuchs (male servents who had their genitals removed to serve the imperial palace grounds), served the Emperor to satisfy his sexual need.

Eunuchs: He who serves the Emperor shall have his balls chopped off.

Now, I know you're more interested in the concubines so this is what I learnt according to the legend. In the Dynasty days, it is believed that the more sex the emperor had, the greater his longevity would be (be it his shlong or his life). The emporer had A LOT of concubines and it was hard to keep track of who he had slept with, so a table of jades representing each concubine was created. When the jade tablet is turned faced down, the eunoch would then run off to fetch the concubine, strip her naked, wrap her in yellow silk and piggy back her to the emporer's bedroom.

This service is made possible by the American Express Company

Of course there is more to the forbidden city than just sex! Find out more from wikipedia here.

Adult admission - RMB 60
Student - RMB 20
Audio Guide - RMB 80
Chinese spit - Free

Day 2: registration, damm hot water, NO kitchen!

I finally moved in today into my room after many ching-chong-ers I had to see and pay them money.

The entire morning was spent registering from building to building, distributing money to different officials.

my glorious paperwork achievement

The reward: Keys to my room!

The TV is a great addition to help me brainwash myself to learn mandarin. No English channels available except CCTV123456890



Toilet: Clean and there is HOT water. Seriously, HOT!
(China Fact: Gas heating is provided FREE by the government!)
but the priceless thing about the hot water is that.............
it ONLY RUNS FROM
7am-9am
3pm-5pm
8pm-12am

The Kitchen:
Kettle - Check
Sink - Check
Cooking Hob - ???
Refrigerator - ???
Kitchen - WTF!!!!!!!!!!

The governemnt provides free gas but NO COOKING HOB! WTF! WHAT DO PEOPLE EAT HERE?!!

Beijing International Marathon

The best way to orientate yourself in a city is to join a MARATHON!

http://www.beijing-marathon.com/

Event Date:	Sunday, October 19, 2008
Start Times:	8:00 AM Elite Men Full Marathon Start 8:15 AM Elite Women/Recreational Full Marathon, Half Marathon, 10K and Mini Marathon Start

The last time i ran a marathon was in Zurich (May 07) for KPMG and I finished last!!!

-being escorted out of the marathon for being too slow-

Special thanks to Sophie for dragging me into this. -_-