I didn’t JUST realize I haven’t updated this blog for a while, it’s just that, the lack of time keeps on preventing me from posting. Or should I just simply say, I suck at time management.

I just came back from my Shanghai trip and spent a week of Christmas break over there with friends. It was certainly nice seeing them, but now that I lived in Hong Kong for such a long time, I realize how boring Shanghai is. I was there for a week, but I could basically think of only two places to hang out at. And in those places, there were basically only one thing to do, besides shopping at really lame stores and eating, Karaoke. (Oh my voice…)

But it is true that I was very busy these days though. After the Finals and the school stuff, I immediately began working on my 8 website projects. Yes, 8. Let me count it for you:

• Tribal Facebook App – my Dean asked me to write a Facebook App that would basically act as a online community for students – for them to post pics, comments, blog posts, etc.
• ICS Buy – an eBay system thing that lets ICS students to trade materials and equipments
• CubePoints – a WordPress plugin that lets users to earn points by commenting/posting
• EEC - a website for my church
• LO.SG – a domain shortener
• AxieBlast - I need to find some way to revive my dead community. Hmph!
• (Not confirmed) A Wedding site for a teacher
• (Not confirmed) A site for an Environmental Club in SMIC

But that’s not it. Since my complete fail at SAT (with a pity 1890 – Reading 520, Writing 650, Math 720), my mom has been urging me to study SAT. I know I need to study, but I just never had the motivation. I get out my SAT book, put it on my desk, and just as I flip the book open, something on the computer would happen: either a new email comes in or somebody would start chatting with me. Sucks .

And besides working, so many good movies are out recently, too! Besides Avatar, there’s Alvin and Chipmunks 2, Sherlock Holmes, and heck, I didn’t even watch Christmas Carol yet!

BUSY BUSY BUSY.

But I’m not giving any of these up. Just wait. I am working on the 2nd day of my ThinkQuest journey, and I already have 2000 words. Heh, wish I can write that much for English class. I doubt anybody is going to read it, but still, I think such a nice experience deserves somebody to document it thoroughly. Just MAYBE, sometime somebody will notice it and asks me more about ThinkQuest… and I’ll be famous? *daydreaming*

So… just a quick review of what happened in the last post. We were stuck in a service area because of our flat tire, and we needed to wait for the next morning when we can get visit the local town for new tires.

The technician called for like at least 100 million people and then regretfully told us that there aren’t any tires available for our kind of car. When we are all depressed and stuff, suddenly the technician discovered something: there was a rubber ring blocking the tire to be inserted! He removed the ring and tried to insert our spare tire that failed last night, and it worked perfectly. Wow!

Our family was so happy that my dad ran to the “supermarket” (more like a tiny store) and bought a watermelon for them (which apparently was like heaven’s food for them (remember, we are in central China)) and ate together. Man, my dad even ask me to take a picture of him and the technician! (Sorry for the bad exposure)

After they finished all the final touchups and stuff, we started heading for the road.

And this was the repairing company name – “Shang Rao Service Area Repairing Department”

I must say, China has really impressed me with their highway network. On our trip, we switched to about like 5 highways but never got lost. They have neat signage and a clear code system. Not bad, not bad!

We have around 1000km to go today. The car’s license is expiring at midnight, so we have to arrive at Shenzhen by today. Since we have quite a long journey, we did not stop over at one of the largest city in central China, Nanchang, but to head for Shenzhen directly. We then therefore had to eat in service areas (again). And mind you, although the highway system is neat, the service areas are definitely not. There are flies around and the cafeteria looks just as bad as our school’s. But, what can I complain?

I don’t think I need to tell you again about the scenery and stuff. Feel free to visit my Picasa Album again, though. Oh wait, except for this:

Apparently, there is a town in Guangdong called “He Ping” (pronounced H-ugh Ping), which means literally “Peace”. (Don’t believe me? Check the characters on About.com and compare it with the one in the signage. They are the same characters.) So, in a sense, we are only 26km from peace. (yay!)

So we just drove, drove, and drove, and finally arrived at Shenzhen at 11:30 pm. We were dead tired when we arrived, and decided to find a motel to sleep instead of searching for blankets from our luggage and sleep on them at our new house. It wasn’t bad at all, only like 200RMB (25USD) for a double bed room.

And… that concludes the road trip. Next post: “The Move In” Thanks for reading!

Visit the complete gallery of pictures!

A lot of misfortunate things happened during the trip, such as an (to us, at least) uninformed close of an important highway so we had to find and go another way, flat tires, my dad being really tired (the only driver), etc. But nevertheless, it was still fun. I was at my new house in Shenzhen at the third day, which isn’t equipped with internet yet. I didn’t come back to Hong Kong until yesterday when I stayed in my uncle’s house with a broken router.

But erm well, that’s life. I had a chance to organize my photos, and here they are!

Before introducing anything though, let’s have a look at our car – a Mazda MPV ‘00. There aren’t new features like Cruise, buttons (media controls, etc.) on the steering wheel, or a CD’s managing system (you know how like some cars can have 6 CD’s at the same time), but I like it =).

Let’s begin now, shall we?

We planned to start our trip at 7 a.m., and so I woke up at like 6:30. Ethan showed up at my house at 6:45 to say a final good bye (thanks). However, as usual, my parents “had a lot of things to do” and so we didn’t actually start until 10 a.m. In addition to the late departure, we couldn’t find the right highway to go on (A8, Hu Hang Expressway), and so we made a huge detour in order to leave Shanghai. (Note that “A8” is blacked out on the left sign)

Unfortunately, the weather was REALLY bad when we left (I heard it is even worse after that). Visibility was really low.

Because of the bad weather, we had to stop at Jiaxing for a stop… mainly because my dad decided that it was too dangerous to continue driving in such a bad weather, and that we were hungry for some famous zongzi’s.

Weather was getting a little better, so after a short rest for about 30 minutes, we started the trip again. Skies start to clear up, and we are now starting to see a beautiful scenery.

Road trips are indeed boring – you see the same thing over and over again for the whole day. Other than music from the Jason Mraz CD’s, there were still some Chinglish jokes that cracked me up. For example, a sign saying “Overspeeding Prohibition” (when it truly meant “over speeding prohibited”), or a sign saying “exprots” (when it meant “exit”… I guess that’s because the word “export” and “exit” use the same word in Chinese… and then when they typed it they messed it up.)

At around 7 o’clock, we arrived at Quzhou, a small city located at very west of Zhejiang. It is a fairly small town. We went to a small, suburban, yet very friendly restaurant and had some REALLY nice fish there. Almost comparable to those in Hong Kong.

After dinner, we booked a hotel at Nanchang, capital city of the Jiangxi province. However, on our way there, our tire suddenly broke and we had to call in for a towing truck. It happened at around 9 pm. We tried to use the tools available for us (which was insufficient) to get it fixed, but we couldn’t. They took us to a service area nearby (and my dad didn’t allow to take a picture of the towing truck for some reason). By the time we got there, it was already 11.

Here is when the bad news start. Apparently, the family who owned this car before we did put some heavy custom work on the car in Hong Kong, which made us extremely hard to screw the tire down – the place left for screwdrivers to “get in” and unscrew is extremely tight. We started trying everything we can, including flamethrowers (yes, you read that correct).

But… apparently the wheel was made out of some sort of gold alloy that is basically immune to burning… the flamethrower left a white mark on the wheel, but dealt no damage to it at all.

One of the more skilled technicians was then woke up by the technician that was working for us. He woke up and started making his own thin screw driver that could go in the hole. After about half an hour, he did it. He successfully got rid of the broken tire, and it seems that if we can get the new tire up, we can continue with our trip.

But no, they couldn’t get the new tire up – the car was too over modified that the spare tire didn’t work with the current wheel. Frustrated, my dad decided to sleep in the car and wait for wheel dealers to wake up tomorrow to get a new set of ‘em.

And so we did. By the time we actually slept, it was around 1:30am already. All of us were tired and didn’t care how we could sleep. Just within 30 seconds after saying “goodnight” to everyone, I could hear snores from my sister already.

End of Day 1. Continue with our journey with the next post!

We started disassembling everything in my room yesterday. My desk, my computers, everything. (But then I realized I needed my computer, so I had to assemble it again)

As if I am not busy enough, I think there are still like 5 things on my to-do list: MVC stuff, SAT stuff, some coding for the next release of CubePoints, etc. etc.

BUSY BUSY BUSY!

Just as I thought that sometimes weird people just show up, I then see another person doing the same thing.

Then, the same scene even happened on the day when I come back from Hong Kong in the HK International Airport.

Seriously, dude? This is a waiting lounge of the airport, not some random curbside that you can just sleep! If you don’t respect yourself, at least respect the ones around you, or the airport!

Shanghai has indeed done a good job building the airport, but scenes like these absolutely ruined the whole environment. On one side of the government, they tell the whole world how ready they are for the Expo 2010, but on the other side, they let things like these happen. Sure, they have banners all around Shanghai telling people to “be civilized”, which certainly HELP A LOT, but there are still some people who just don’t get it.

I am not pointing to Shanghai people in a whole, but people like these just bring down the whole image of Shanghai. Now, I have been living in Shanghai for about 5 years, so in a sense, I am used to these manners already. However, how will the visiting foreigners for Expo 2010 react? It will be more than a disgrace – it will be an offence and a sign of disrespect. Visitors may not remember how nice things look like in Shanghai, but they will definitely remember such disturbing scenes.

It is time to grow up. There might be an arms race in terms of modern technology, architecture and what not; but to me, and surely many others, what matters most is the ability to please others. And as clearly shown, the manners above show exactly the opposite. That is the reason why Shanghai can’t catch up with the world yet, because it has yet to discover the real problem that hinders them.  Jia you (good luck), Shanghai.