So many things have happened over the past few weeks, I don’t really wish to elaborate on those things other than the fact that my parents were pretty indecisive and easily swayed by others’ opinion regarding my education. I mean, it’s my futurer at stake and the only thing that I am very obstinate about all the time: I don’t want anybody to control my future.
I am flying off to Jakarta this afternoon to have ISAT but am coming back home tomorrow afternoon. I guess I am gonna update quite soon.
So, mood of the day says, “I am rambling purposefully.”
Actually It has been long since I gave up on the idea of blogging about the Taiwan trip that I had a couple of weeks ago. To pause and think twice again, it is better if continue with my post since you don’t get to go overseas every now and then, right? Hehe (The draft of this post will probably turn mouldy if I continue ignoring it ).
There are many things that happened even before the trip itself. There two significant events which are worth-mentioning: I quarelled with my Dad and my Granny passed away.
Well, I quarelled with my father “over seemingly trivial issue,” that would be what others think or say. I don’t think so, my Dad was just being too selfish and cared about his image a lot more than he should. I disliked that, still hate it and will always loathe it.
But that doesn’t make me angry. Well if it doesn’t concern me. But this time round he has crossed the line. Somehow, I have become his tool for his image and I forsee a great deal of abominable repercussions that are to come, not towards him but towards myself. I know, up to this point, you wouldn’t know what I am talking about. Just to tell you, you will never understand. Because I decide not to elaborate further on the matter. Period.
A few weeks ago I posted an entry that is dedicated for my Granny. The Taiwan trip itself almost turned into bubbles of hopes and remembrance because the wishy-washy-busybody-like elders (all those irritating-and-think-they-know-it-all aunties and uncles) tried to stop us from going because it is disrespectful towards Granny who had just passed away. They said, “you guys are not supposed to enjoy yourselves…” However, they can’t help but to admit that our presence were actually not necessary since we are just the outer grandchildren (meaning those grandchildren that their daughters gave birth of, daughters are no longer part of the family since they have married and it is their obligations to stick to their husbands’ families). To put it simply, we were just guests that has no importance according to the tradition that they upholds, which to me sounds and is ridiculous.
Anyway, my mum and my auntie (my cousin’s mum), let the three of us (My cousin, my sister and I) go to Taiwan eventually.
I went to ShenZhen, China on the fourth day of Lunar New Year. Well, as I put in the earlier post I was not particularly excited about the trip because I knew what kind of a country China is: Dirty, Dirty and Dirty – At least to me those are the impression that China has made to me before I embarked on the trip.
At least I made the mental preparation on how things are going to turn out like. You know, if there are two kinds of people in this world, the pessimist and the optimist, I would put myself as the former. I am most of the time pessimistic. One of the reason is that I do not want to suffer a greater magnitude of disappointment because I was overtly optimistic about something. Pessimism is some sort of cushion in my life.
Anyway, I have just sidetracked. Let’s get back to the main topic.
After spending five days in ShenZhen, I told myself, “ShenZhen is not THAT bad after all huh.” Here are some of the good things that ShenZhen can offer (Maybe other parts of China also offer similar things, I don’t know, I have never been in China before, so ShenZhen will be the the-first-impression-setting place):
1. During Chinese New Year, you literally feel the Chinese-New-Year mood lingering around you all day, even weeks! Do you know that the people in China have holidays for at least a week for Chinese New Year? At least a week! Compared to 2 days in Singapore and the ONE abysmal day in Indonesia, this is considered awesome!
2. Every morning, every night, you get to play firecrackers and fireworks like nobody’s business. Let me show you a clip. Don’t blink. Okay, just kidding, blink as much as you want, I don’t care.
The clip above shows a display of fireworks of approximately 2 minutes. The cost of it? Less than S$50! How can you find such a deal man? I think only in China. Can you play in Singapore? tet! You can even have the thought of setting it or else you ended up in police station and being accused of social disruption. In Indonesia? It costs a bomb and you can’t find one that is as good.
3. You get to gamble. The Chinese can be spot gambling everywhere. At home (that’s pretty dumb to even mention right?), at relative’s house (LOL, you can murder me anytime for mentioning that), at some gamblers’ den, and on THE STREET. You can even gamble on the street, broad daylight! From what I heard from my distant cousins, during Chinese New Year, the police will simply let them have their ways. However, it is a little bit extreme to gamble on the streets and the police kept two eyes closed on the matter…
One great discovery or maybe I am just a country bumpkin is this automatic Mahjong table, I have never seen it anywhere before. I do think that the Chinese are extremely smart (and lazy) to invent a machine (or table) that helps them shuffle their Mahjong tiles. Here’s a video that I took:
Video
4. The weather is awesome! Daily temperature varies between 16 to 20°C. It’s not too cold and too warm, just a comfortable temperature.
5. Okay, for this one I have to make it clear that I do not advocate the purchase of goods that I am gonna describe. Period. If you go to the downtown of ShenZhen, you can actually buy lots of fake branded goods. My uncle asked my distant aunts to bring him there to source for bags for his precious daughter. You know, my cousin actually passed SIX freaking photos of Chanel, LV, Gucci and blah blah blah bags to my uncle and told him, “Just buy 5 will do.” Even her brother can’t help but mumble under his breath as her dad looked everywhere for the bags.
There are 2 different types of fake branded bags, the good imitaion and the bad imitation, and the price differs by quite a lot. But, of course the good imitation only costs a small fraction of the real stuff.
6. Did I mention that ShenZhen is located just in the opposite of HongKong? I only knew that It was that close when some of my distant cousins waved good-bye to us when we were shopping in the downtown.
Well, there many things that I do not really like about the trip:
1. I was force-fed by my uncles and my dad. The food was not nice to begin with, even the vegetables were soaked with oil. They eat meats for all their meals. I really got sick of eating meats after a while. I had to pretend that I was full almost every other meal because I could not stand the food. The worst thing was that I (also my cousin), got scolded by our dads because we were “shy” to eat large quantity of food. (Oh please)
My cousin and I were exchanging signals on the dining table all the time, because we would get scolded for sure if one of us stood up from the chair alone. So the best move was to leave together.
Another thing was that, they always cook more than 10 dishes per meal, and more than half of them were meat…
2. Dirty. You can see rubbish even on the highway. Worst of all, people stop halfway on the highway, and settle their business there…
3. Language barrier, I could only use Mandarin there and it was also very unnatural of me to speak Mandarin because I rarely use them. I could understand their dialects, Hakka, but can only speak minimally. Luckily, there were other cousins who could speak Teochew. So it was not too bad.
4. There are limited places I can go, most of the time my cousin and I stayed in the house (my distant uncle’s house) to watch TV (their shows are quite boring) and play card games (just the 2 of us most of the time). Worst thing was when my dad and uncle abandoned the two of us at home and went elsewhere…
So after all, China was not that bad at all. I managed to get to know some cousins from Mainland China and Hongkong and played card games with them at night, as well as playing those fireworks.
I have to say I was not quite willing to go along with this trip.
Just a few weeks before the trip, my Dad told me, “Hey, If you don’t go, your cousin Jefferey will not wanna go.” Just to let you know the conversation was carried out using the Chinese dialect Teochew, I have to carefully translate the sentences so that the original meanings are retained.
I actually bought his story.
I must admit that I was not very smart then, because I only realised that I was conned into going to China just two days before the flight. The fligh is scheduled to fly on the 29th January, the 4th day of Chinese New Year. On the 27th January-the 2nd day of Chinese New Year, I visited my uncle’s house for the usual CNY visit. If you have been guessing, you are right this uncle is Jefferey’s dad, my Dad’s younger brother. So, cousins being cousins, we would definetely converse right? So the following explains how dumb I have been. Not to mention, how dumb my cousin was as well:
I was the one who jumped into the China trip topic (That does not help me feel better, in actual fact I felt worse. I would rather not know anything. You know, “Ignorance is bliss”).
Me: “So how? Have you prepared yourself for the trip?”
Jeff: “Yeah kinda, I hope the place would be as nice as Dad described.”
Me: (Shocked!) “Are you kidding me? The place you are going to is not a vacation place… It’s you know, chickens, ducks, cows, farms… village…”
Jeff: “Really? But that was not what Dad said”
Me: (Still in disbelief) “So why do you wanna tag along in this trip?”
Jeff: “Because Dad told me, If I don’t go, you won’t ever want to go”
The rest of the story is pretty obvious right? We are just dumb.
I almost shot myself at that very instant. Fainted. See how similar what our Dads told us? I cannot believe that both of us actually bought the same story.
Well, there is nothing we could possibly do other than trying to enjoy the trip.
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