Test Department BBQ

My family went to the Test Department BBQ. Many of the test guys attended the BBQ. Weather was nice although it was not so good in the morning.

Keith enjoying his sausage.


Layer of Bean Curb
Tang Ayi, a great organizer for this BBQ
Chunguang enjoying his food
My wife helping in the BBQ

Playground

Gloomy

today's weather is gloomy. it is affecting my mood now... i will be going out to a bbq that is organized by the test group with my family... wonder how will it be...

Nice Weather

Today weather was excellence. A little warm actually. We walked to the lake and capture some pictures. We are in the mood of jumping... haha

长江三峡游 - The Yangtze Three Gorges Cruise

Make use of the China National Day holiday for a 4 nights Yangtze 3 Gorges cruise. 4 families from Delphi went to the cruise that was fun, bore and exciting, I will explain that later.

Day 1 (27th September 08, Saturday)

As we understand that the boat will not sail off till the next morning 8am so we decided that there isn't a need for us to reach the boat early like 6pm. We started off from our place at about 12:30pm, reaching airport by 2:30pm for checking. The airport was actually pretty quite since the National holiday had not really started. Checking went smooth and the flight took off with a slight delay. We reached Wuhan domestic airport by 6:30om. The local guide took us to a dinner place nearby the airport. Food suck and expensive.

After dinner, we are surprised that the journey from Wu Han (武汉) to Yi Chang (宜昌) will take us 5 hours of bus ride instead of the 3 hours that we were told of. So, now we would have reached the boat by 2am in the morning. If we knew about this, we would have took an early flight. So, by morning 1:30am, we reached the boat and tucked in for an early morning the same day. The room was excellence to my surprise. This is a standard twin hotel room with full facilities such as bathtub, TV, mini-fridge and big window for viewing. It is not the cabin with pot hole as in the cruises in Singapore. All rooms come standard with full length glass window.

Day 2 (28th September 08, Sunday)

The wake-up call music sounded off at 6:15am waking my wife and myself. We were tire as we sleep late early this morning. I was dragging my tire body to the bathroom for a shower, only start to feel the energy after warm water sprinkle on my body. Feel so good.

We had a sumptuous buffet breakfast with scramble egg, fried noodles, toasted bread, salad and many other pastries before leaving our boat for a visit to the dam at Xi Ling Gorge (西陵峡).

The dam was built with 3 purposes, first, flood control, second, power generation and lastly, navigational improvement. The annual power generation is 84.7 billion KWh.

After visiting the dam, we got back to the boat for our lunch and proceed to sail upstream through the ship lock. Boats have to pass through a 2 way 5 steps ship lock to get upstream or downstream. We took about 3 hours to get through the lock after lunch. It was exciting to follow through the operation of the lock initially but it was boring to look at it again and again.

The boat proceeded through Xi Ling Gorge and finally docked at Ba Dong (巴东). After a banquet dinner that were excellent. We proceeded to deck 5 for dance performance by the crews. The performance includes dance, act, taichi and saxophone. I was very very impressed with performers. During the day time, they could be a waitress serving food to us and by the night, they were performing right in front of us.









Day 3 (29th September 2008)

Day 3 was the best throughout the whole crew. We visited Shen Nong Xi (神农溪). There live the last generation of boatmen who make a living on premitive small wooden boat look like "Wang Duo Jiao" (碗豆角 - pea). Generally, each boat has 6 members from the same family and it is used as the only transportation along the river. During upstream when reaching shallow stream, the boatmen become tracker where they need to pull the boat from the shoreline. This is the exciting part of the trip.

In the afternoon, we proceeded to pass the Wu Gorge (巫峡) and the Qutang Gorge (瞿塘峡). Too bad that I slept through the afternoon so I miss the Qu Tang Gorge. Night activities are cultural performances by the crew members. The boat sail non-stop upstream through the night.

Day 4 (30th September 2008)

The boat were a little late today. It reached Feng Du by 8:30am instead of the original time of 8am or earlier. We headed to Feng Du ghost city at 9am. Not much fun for today day activities.

During the night, it was time for the passengers performed instead of the crew members. All four Delphi families' member participated the performance. Adithi sang a chinese song that impressed the whole crew members as well as the audience. Issac and Amada kick in synchronisation in with their Taekwando stunts. My wife and I sang a song 请跟我来 (please follow me).



Day 5 (1st October 2008)

In the morning, we checked out from the boat and headed to Chong Qing city (). Visited a couple of places such as People Theatre, ELing Park, Walking street. Since today is the China National day, the walking street was full of people. It is really (人山人海) People Mountain People Sea.

Overall, this was the most relaxing trip that my family had in China. Most of the morning, we will have offshore activities and back to the boat by lunch time. The afternoon were lazing around on the boat chatting, scenery viewing, card playing. All the meals were so good that my weight increase by 2kg after the trip. My wife and son enjoyed it very much as well.

Blue Sky White Cloud - 蓝天白云

Staying in Suzhou is hard to come by nice blue sky with cloud. Most of the days here are hazy. Not too sure if it is due to contamination or just the humid weather that is causing the problem. Anyway, last Saturday, before we headed for the 3 Gorges cruise, Suzhou had a very nice sky. The temperature also drop slightly to about 25C. This indicated that the autumn is here.

Paid vs Free exhibitions - Totally different

I had recently visited two automotive related exhibitions. The China Jinji Lake International Auto Culture Week & Expo 2008 held in Suzhou and the Automotive Testing-Expo 2008 China held in Shanghai. The first with an entrance fee of 20rmb while the latter is free-of-charge.

In the first, there are only a couple of Brands vehicles exhibition and there are mainly current model years. Furthermore, there are not Auto-Babes to take photos of. A very disappointed show. There are couple of things that I want to share here. First, a Chery QQ3 starts from 30,800rmb (about S$6100), this is really inexpensive. Secondly, look at the Mazda 2, like a downsize Mazda 3. Thirdly, Proton is in China as Lotus (sorry, it is SUTOL)

For the exhibition in Shanghai, to my very surprise, the organiser of the exhibition provided free lunch to visitors. All visitors are provided with a lunch coupon and are to use the coupon for a free buffet. The food is rather reasonable and is catered by Motel 168. It has a total of 15 dishes including fruits. A thumb ups to the organiser.

A paid exhibition suck big time while a free exhibition come with goodies.

99% of Chinese do not wear watches！

I have stayed in China for more than a year and I did not notice this culture till yesterday when my wife told me about it. This best part is she claimed that I told her that. Anyway, do you believe that 99% of the Chinese do not wear watches in China? I am not talking about in country side but in city as well. I do not believe it till I personally saw it with my own eyes. This is probably the reason why the illegal watch sellers always come to me when I was at the walking street in Suzhou city. Here is the video taken at Guang Jian Jie.

Situation

I was in a difficult position today. I seldom in such situation before but the situation today provided me a very good learning. I made a decision and go for it. It may not be the right decision but at least after making it and settle for it. I felt relieve.

Good job, Aik Peng.

Riding Blog

I have decided to create another blog to for riding activities. In this case, this blog will be delicated to other activities such as sight seeing, food, etc. Do visit my riding blog.

龙王山-安吉

Went to Long Wang Shan to ride. The ride basically is an uphill 22km from sealevel 100 to 1300m. It rained in the mid way so I am all drenched. Some pictures.

Near the foot of the hill, begining to climb.

Half way climbing, still strong

Drenched by the time I reached the top.

赤壁

I was having my leave so I took my family to watch 赤壁. Very well shot movie and the story line was good. I start to learn a little bit more about the chinese history of those characters in the movie. I was hoping that the movie can finish within one episode. So, when will the next episode be? Summer 2009?

Football matches

Sunday, Aug 10 was raining at Shanghai. We were to watch Olympic football matches at the Shanghai Stadium. We went to Shanghai earlier, had lunch at Super Brand Mall. This mall is huge. 9 levels of shopping, foot and entertainment. After lunch, we windows shop a bit and left the mall at 2:45pm. Our driver alighted us at the Lian Hua station on line 1 subway. Took the subway and head to the stadium. We were drenched when we get to the stadium because there is a 500m walk from the subway exit to the stadium. Fortunately, the stadium has shelter. The security was pretty strict, no bottle water, no long umbrella, bags are X-ray... but fast.

These two matches were good. Argentina won Australia 1:0 while Serbia won Cote D'Ivoire with a score of 4:2. The 2nd match was much more exciting and more aggressive and fast. Within 3mins, Serbia scored first goal comparing to the first match of Argentina vs Australia where there is not much of excitment till the 2nd half.

A shot of the Shanghai stadium.

There are pocket of Argentina fans among the chinese but not too many supporters for Australia.

Overall, the excitment was good.