China Trip No. 7 – 13 September 2009 (Day 3) – Shanghai Museum, Shanghai Xin Tian Di (上海新天地), Shopping at Huai Hai Road (淮海路)

It was third day in China and I scheduled to meet up with a friend I know on msn at the end of second day. We scheduled meeting up at Shanghai Xin Tian Di around 2 p.m. Before that, I planed to visit the Shanghai Museum because it is famous, free entrance and has one of the best Bronze exhibitions.

As usual, I took subway line 2 from Jing An Station to People square (人民广场) station. People square station is “HUGE” subway line interchange station. It is just huge. I needed to walk about 20 minutes to reach the museum. Reach there around 830a.m. There was a long queue. Because the tickets giving out are limited, everyone reach there early in the morning. Also because that was Saturday, I was not ready to see a long queue and huge crowd. I waited for almost 30 to 45 minutes to get in. We can only go in batch by batch.

If you stand facing the façade of the museum, you will notice that the building was designed in a “Ding (鼎)” shaped. “Ding” is an ancient round cooking vessel made of bronze.

The museum highlights includes the Ancient Chinese Bronze Gallery, Ancient Chinese Ceramic Gallery, Chinese painting gallery, Chinese calligraphy gallery, ancient Chinese jade gallery, Chinese minorities nationalities gallery, etc. There are so many to see and I took so many pictures even though I am forbidden to take at certain area. I enjoyed the ancient Chinese bronze gallery the most because one of the tour groups are university students which they managed to get the museum in house researcher to explain to them the details, beauty and history of Bronze. I followed them everywhere and enjoyed so much in listening those interesting stories and was really amazed by the bronze making techniques that our ancestors invented. You can see one of the pictures below are a combination of big and small bell-shaped bronze made “Bian Zhong” (编钟). Bian Zhong are bell, which can produce sound and tone as accurate as your piano can made. And same accurate sound can be produce if you hit both side of the bell. Amazing!!!

Since I have an appointment to rush, I was not prepared to stay long inside. There are other tourist attractions around the People Square district, such as Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai Grand Theatre, Shanghai Urban Planning Centre, Yifu Theatre and Shanghai Concert Hall. Of course, the Shanghai City Hall is located in People Square.

I guessed one of the reason why my Shanghainese friend chooses Shanghai Xin Tian Di as a meeting spot is because this represents one of the premier entertainment and shopping areas in Shanghai. Shanghai Xin Tian Di is located within the French Concession district. In old shanghai, it was said, the British in the International Settlement will teach you how to do business, but in French Concession, you would be taught how to live. That remain true, because Shanghai Xin Tian Di are all refurbished “long tang” (lane) buildings that houses many popular boutiques, restaurants, pubs and entertainment complexes. Within the same area, there are some very nice coffee shops, surprisingly I saw “Coffee Bean” too. We met up in Star Buck.

My friend also brought me to certain local shopping area along Huai Hai Road -淮海路 (as compared to the already popular and high end expensive shopping area such as NanJing Road). There was some drizzling that day and I bought an umbrella for RMB10, I am still using this umbrella till now.

It was quite congested that day because there was a parade going on for the Shanghai International Exhibition in 2010. People are standing sideway along the road making it difficult to move. He brought me to some of the local shops only visited by local young people, which is of course unknown to a foreigner like me. The design is quite unique but a bit pricey so I buy none of them.

After our dinner, we went to a local pub opened by my friend’s acquaintance. It was a wonderful night because the atmosphere in that pub was quite “funky” and the hosts are friendly and funny. Because it is small, it appears to be quite intimate.

We chatted till midnight and took a taxi home.

p/s: please visit http://oneyearplan.net/Andrew if you are interested to join the world elite marketer.

China Trip No. 6 - 12 September 2009 (Day 2) - Shanghai Science & Technology Museum (上海科技馆), Oriental Art Centre (上海东方艺术中心), Century Boulevard (世纪大道)

It took me less than 2 hours to finish the whole Xing Chang Ancient Town (新场古镇); I still remembered it was around 11:45 a.m. I decided to take my lunch here before my departure. I went into a Fu Jian Snack Shop (福建小吃馆) and ordered myself a bowl of roast duck noodle. The weather is a bit steamy hot; I waited for 45 minutes at the bus station. Since this is a rural area, the bus is not so frequent.

When I reached Long Yang Road station (龙阳路站) I decided to visit Shanghai Science and Technology Museum and Shanghai Oriental Art Centre. These two are located at Pudong area and it is 3 stations away from Long Yang Road station. The other reason is that I would like to attend a concert at the Shanghai Oriental Art Centre since that day is Saturday.

So the first thing when I reached Century Boulevard station was running all I can to the Oriental Art Centre with the hope of getting a chance to watch a concert. Yes, there was a concert that day and it was scheduled to be performed by an Italian Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of a popular Chinese conductor. The ticket I bought is the cheapest but costed me RMB200. But worth it.

The Shanghai Technology and Science Museum located right beside the Century Boulevard. One can reach there at Century Boulevard Station. This museum takes up to 68,000 sq metres of space and costs around US$183 millions to build up this museum with various theme covering man, nature, science and technology. It is a very huge museum and felt tired walking around because I don’t normally see such colossal building in Malaysia. There is an IMAX centre inside too. An entrance fee to the museum is around RMB60. One of the interesting items I saw in front of the Museum is the Celestial Globe (浑天仪) . I came out from the museum around 4:30p.m. Then I took the subway train heading back to my hostel in order to groom myself for tonight concert.

The Shanghai Oriental Art Centre is one of the many performing art centres in Shanghai. It is located right opposite the Century Boulevard and was designed in a stunning butterfly shaped. It is also home to the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. The art centre comprises 3 performance theatre (music, opera and theatre) and an exhibition hall. The design of the building is fantastic. It was a wonderful night.

The concert ended at around 10pm, I decided to take a stroll along the Century Boulevard. The night scene is beautiful and is very quite.

p/s: entrepreneurs wanted, please visit http://oneyearplan.net/Andrew

Oh Bach...........

Bach's works is relatively abstract and purely mathematical. Comparing his music with the music written in classical age, there are essentially different. Classical music mostly represents emotional expression, so it is easy to impress people.

Bach's music represents the highest throughout the grounds, almost detached from the reality.

His music comprises various complex counterpoint, careful composition techniques, which is so complicated that it may deter many people to really understand what it does really means. The music is beautiful and graceful, full of godly light and yet not easily reprehensible.

His music was basically forgotten after his death and comes back as a true renaissance in the nineteenth century.

Listen to Bach's works, hoping surging emotions, is unrealistic. Bach's works represents exquisite delicate process and the pinnacle of Baroque composition skills. Bach left us with a development of a never-ending treasure. Noble, Meaningful, elegant, noble, witty, but it can also be secular.

His music is not written in plain, but once take the hint, but it would be worth hearing a thousand times. This is the wonder of Bach’s works.

This music is played by the internationally renown cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the piece he played is the "Preclude" from the first suit of the unaccompanied cello solo work.

p/s: visit http://oneyearplan.net/Andrew we need serious entrepreneurs.

International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

I first come across this term in twitter, people are talking about it. It is set on 19 September because it is one of the two inventors’ ex-wife birthday, so it is easier for him to remember.

The day was created by John Chumbucket Baur and Mark Summers while they are hurling each other piratical words at one of the sport game. This is how the idea come about. Funny isn’t it? Later the “this talk like a pirate day” was nationally promoted by the humour columnist Dave Barry in 2002 and soon gained popularity thereafter.

But you may ask, what do you need to do? What is the reason to have such a holiday? Do we need it? How to celebrate? Blah, blah, blah… … seems like no point to have such a holiday right? But that is exactly the point and the fun of it. Today, it is well celebrated throughout the world and spawned various events, parties, creative ways to celebrate it, etc. It is a rough idea and also a romanticized idea.

For more information, you may want to visit the official website of International Talk Like a Pirate Day.


p/s: visit also http://oneyearplan.net/Andrew

Chinese Ghost Festival <<中元节>>

The Chinese ghost festival is in the 7th month of the Chinese lunar calendar. Chinese tends to restrict / delay / cancel their activities within this month, and warn their friends and relatives to go home earlier in order not to come across some wondering spirits. For many, ghost festivals reminiscent of various scary experiences or memory that we have since young. However, I remember vividly that I do enjoy this festivals as a kid because it has lots of funs.

The origin of Chinese ghost festivals originated from Buddhism. Buddha taught one of his disciples to hold a grand ceremony to provide offerings to various monks in order to save his late mother who is suffering in the hell as a hungry ghost. As Buddhism is widely accepted in China and the festivals advocates the spread of filial piety and dissemination of kindness, which can be well assimilated with the Confucian teaching. It soon becomes one of the many festivals Chinese celebrates yearly. Malaysian, Singaporean and Taiwanese have preserved this culture intact.

Do you know we spent more than RM100, 000,000 just to celebrate the Chinese ghost festival in Malaysia? Yes, we spent that much of money. Who said our economy is down?

Now, talk about the fun things when we were kids.

1) Every 15th day of the 7th month of the lunar calendar, my farther will bring home a huge banana stem. He will then chop into several pieces. After lighting the candles, we will stick the candles into the banana stem so that the candles can stand. What is fun for me is to surround my house and my farther’s shop with all these candles, it looks nice for me. Till now, still not really sure what is the rationale behind that.

2) There will be more than one worshipping, within my house, within the area where our family does business, in the temples that we visited and some other Chinese association that my parents join. Lots of foods and necessity needs to be prepared to be offered during these worshipping for those spirits. As a kid, I only know my parents will bring home lots of foods for me to eat after every single worshipping. I still remember we have altogether 4 worships.

3) Getai (歌台) performance and movie – Not so popular nowadays because it is quite costly to stage a performance. We all know that these kinds of performance are for those spirits, but who cares. We are just too excited to watch it with our cousin and siblings after our dinner. Whenever there is a getai performance, I always want to sneak into the back stage to see what those actors / actress are doing back there.

4) The festivals is often quite lively, most of the time we need to have a road block in order to have such celebration. You will see heaps of necessity (sugar, rice, flour, canned foods/drinks, etc) and other foods offerings piling up everywhere on the table, the huge 5 colour dragon incense, 5 colour flags sticking on the foods offering, various type of paper money and paper gold, papers car, paper ship, paper aeroplane. You name it, they have it. As kids, we are thrilled to see all these; we always steal those 5 colour flags to fight among each others. At the end of the festivals, we also need to help burning those papers made items. You may say I am crazy, but what I remembered is I quite like doing that with other kids.

But time has changed; we have all grown up and are so busy with our own career. Would our next generation have such fun as well?


p/s: we need entrepreneurs, please visit http://oneyearplan.net/Andrew

Funny Commercials!

p/s: Entrepreneurs wanted, please visit http://oneyearplan.net/Andrew

Quotes from Mother Teresa

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.

God doesn't require us to succeed; he only requires that you try.

Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.

I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.

It is a kingly act to assist the fallen.

Jesus said love one another. He didn't say love the whole world.

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home.

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

Say nothing, but “I am excellent”

Whenever my friends and/or colleagues bump into me and ask me how I am, I usually reply that “I AM EXCELLENT”. What I get in return is the skeptical gaze from them. In courtesy, I ask them how they are and the reply is usually “I am fine”, “I am ok”, “not good”, “not so bad”, etc. To sum it up, the reply is normally less than “I am great”.

I asked one of my colleagues, why not say something great. She explained that we must not say something that is not true. Yup, it is true, but only a partially true statement. People will only reply they are “great” or “excellent” when something great happened on them. But most of the time, our daily life is bland, routine and monotonous. Our mind seems focusing more on the past. Even now, this second, can be past when another second comes. Dwelling on the past makes us giving a mediocre answer.

But we also know that future is depending on what we do now. Why don’t we make a good decision and do something great now? So that by doing something great now, great things will happen later. Therefore, I like to go out there and tell people that “I am excellent”. I have this friend of mine who don’t even dare to ask me how I am because my answer makes him feel so bad, because he always replies “NO GOOD”. Gosh. It costs you nothing to say you are great, for god sake, I hope he changed that.

I believe now is important and critical, so I decide to say “I am excellent” whenever people ask me how I am. Friends, please do so. Believe me; great things will come to you. Put your heart into it and say “I am excellent”, “I am awesome”!!! It does not hurt. So please say it.


p/s: if you want to write your owe paycheck, please go to http://oneyearplan.net/Andrew

Only in japan!!

When I first see all these pictures, I tell my friends "Waahhhh, like that also can ar?" By the way, I hope you do enjoy these pictures.

p/s: we need entrepreneurs in here.