Friday, December 24, 2004

Stairs

For anyone who is thinking what is there to comment about stairs, let me say what I have to say first before you decide who are stairs designed for. Do you believe that stairs are actually pretty cruel invention? It is now 7pm, peak hour when the working class finishes their job and are on their way home. You have just ended school and alighted at you stop. As you leave the gates, past the control station, you realise that the MRT station's escalator breaks down and all of you were forced to climb your way down the stairs. As you walk down, you realise that everyone is walking at such a unbelieveable slow pace and you wonder why. As you look around, you realise that there is this elderly woman gripping so hard at the handrail, slowly inching her way down the stairs. Yet people after people seemed to just by-pass her rushing off somewhere or is just behind her making impatient noises. The old lady feels pressurised to walk faster, because she is the main reason for everyone's slow descending, but nobody helps her. Well, that is the actual way humans react towards the elderly population nowadays. What can I do?

Posted by jieyi at 5:39 PM

Thursday, December 23, 2004

Picture taken in Tai-O (HK) on Lantau Island. A stark contrast between life in Tai-O and the mainland HongKong. LIfe was simple but hard there.

Posted by jieyi at 12:45 AM

A picture of my siblings and my cousin at Beijing street. Although I did mentioned lots of stuff about the small streets, but I did not dare to even take my camera out to take pictures because stealing is rife there.

Posted by jieyi at 12:42 AM

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Yeah!! Back to the real world in Singapore. Was overseas the past few days and well, I jolly well had a bagful of thoughts.

Was in HK and Guangzhou for a couple of days and Guangzhou left a great impact on me. My cousin was there to guide us around because he has been there for a year plus and he is very street wisely. His first 'worldly' advice to us was that in China, 'Nothing is impossible'. The chinese are indeed a very flexible bunch. The vehicles on highways to small streets practically had to weave past the crowd and forget all your manners please. I was in this dessert stall planning to order some sweet stuff, when I was practically screaming(in my loud voice) my orders to the boss before she could hear me. Yet people in the shop was oblivious to my voice. How shocking!

We shopped around wholesales centre that housed shops selling almost everything that you can see in Singapore branded with the MADE IN CHINA tag. There were like Chinese New Year decorations (?), all sorts of Christmas decorations that I saw in HK, bags, accessories dah dah dah.. that were at rock bottom prices. As usual my mum with her 'auntie' spirit went around sweeping goods off their racks. (hmm..) By the way, we had kindly shopped for roughly 12h non-stop, which is an amazing feat for a lousy cum lazy shopper like me.

But what was most unforgettable had to the time when we walked around the small streets that is never recorded in any of China nor Guangzhou's map because of its insignificance. I have to first explain this, that we had been residing in my cousin's condominium style of apartment house in GZ. Yet behind his house are where the small streets are. In the day, when shops are open for business, what you see is a really pathetic scene. The shops are no larger than the size of a living room and is in such a bad shape that the walls are so black and dirty looking. Businesses ranging from automobile to food are located in there. The shop owners though wore surprisingly pleasant looking clothings, at least presentable attire. Yet their scruffy looks can not be concealed under their shirts and their eyes seemed to have lost hope. Hope to what, I do not know, but you can feel their sadness penetrating through you when you stare into their eyes.

There were of course road side stall holders who can simply place a kerosene stove that you can see in the guides or scouts room supposedly used for us to practise our survival skills, cooking food to sell. We naturally will never dare to risk having a diarrhoea in the midst of our trip, hence, we did not even bother to ask for the pricing. Even then, flies were also seen visibly swarming on top of the cooked food warning us of the low hygiene level. What was shocking was that some of the restaurants were selling dog, cat, lamb, deer, snake and chicken meat. My cousin revealed that in China, most people who reared any animal had the main purpose of nothing more than consuming it. It was a revolting idea to me at least.

As we proceeded on through the housing area, it was a totally new experience. I had only a word to describe it - flabbergasted. People lived in houses that were so close to each other that they can practically spy on their opposite neighbours ongoing event without even having to strain their ears. They can even shake their hands with each other if they want. I must say that a personal houses merely comprises of only a room and a toilet, which resembles more of an apartment. The condition of the house is as bad as the shops. There are no street lights in between their houses and in their houses, it is only for the lucky ones to have lamps, the others use candles. Even if you were to rob all the houses in the whole area, I believe the amount that you can collect is barely a thousand ren min bi. And it is also pretty dangerous to walk around these areas for 3 reasons : (1) There is no proper means of disposal there, hence people just throw their rubbish out of the windows for convenience sake. (2) There is no better place to hang our clothings than outside the window, hence be prepare for droplets dripping out of now where. (3) These small lanes simply intertwine amongst each other and if you are not familiar with these areas you will most likely end up being lost in a maze.

There were also numerous underground factories located among the small streets. My reference to underground factories does not literally mean they are underground but it is just that they are not registered with the central government. As a result they can be considered illegal and do not need to pay any amount of tax. My cousin explained that the local government do realise the existance of such factories but they simply closed an eye about it and kept it a hush hush matter. In fact, these underground factories are found all around China and plays a important part in China's growing economy. They create goods that are cheap to sell it is factories and retailers at a much cheaper price, drawing for themselves large customers. Therefore, employing many poorly skilled Chinese worker, thus the central government also did not want to completely shut down these factories. These factories mainly work throughout the night to avoid being nabbed and many workers will squeeze in a small area working. They range from sewing clothes to creating metal spare parts for cars and the working conditions are as bad as you can imagine. To save costs few electrical bulbs are used and the workers wages are as low as 800RMB per month which equals to S$160 having to work from 7pm -7am every single day a week.

Talking about personal hygiene, out of a range of 0-10, I will have to say they rank at the most 2 points. I witnessed this young boy laying out newspapers in front of his father's shop. Then he squatted on the newspaper and shitted there in front of everyone, who seemed to be take this as a ever-day-affair. Then his father came forward, taking a piece of toilet paper and helped him to wipe his butt. Then they wrapped the newspaper and happily disposed it to where, I do not know.

The most ironic thing happens to be that this dirty muddy totally not urbanized area happens to locate behind my cousin's condominium like house. The difference between the rich and the poor in China is simply too great to neglect. The differece between staying in the dirty street house and the condominium like house happens to be having to add 2 zeros behind the price of the dirty street house.

-Note: I am not trying to put down China here, yes, I will agree it is now a prospering nation commanding enormous respect internationally. Yet for it to progress to where America or even Britian is will have to take at least 1-2 more generations. INDIA I think it is time that you should also prosper at a faster rate, since your oldest friend in the world is now progressing at such a speedy rate.

*PS: Sorry to have bored you all out with my SUPER long essay

Posted by jieyi at 11:38 PM

Monday, December 06, 2004

Piracy vs Pirates

Have we not been hearing about artistes going up on TV and magazines to discourage consumers not to download music and movies from the net. We were often told not to go up IRC to download stuff. But have anyone actually thought who is the real pirates? Is it those who rip songs from the CD and load it into the net? Yes, they are. So are companies like Creative and Apple pirates? Yes, they are of course. Don't they frequently introduce new mp3 players like I-pod. So where do all the mp3 songs come from? Of course those mp3 songs from? The internet of course. So whose the real big pirates? These companies of course. Artistes, please blame these companies and not the consumers because they are the real cause of the problem that you face now.

Posted by jieyi at 7:06 PM

Friday, December 03, 2004

Disappointment

Personally, I feel that there are 2 types of disappointment.
No. 1: The unexpected disappointment
It's when you have never anticipated such a thing to happen and things just unfold right in front of your eyes. Your heart wrenches with a 'ouch' feeling. This feeling just sucks to the core. You feel like saying damn it. Worse still, you have put in a 100% effort yet the result is less than 20% of the expected. I must repeat: THIS FEELING SUCKS.

No. 2: The expected disappoinment
It's when you know something will end up in this manner, yet you still try for it. Although you have mentally prepared yourself for the worst, but when the results are placed in front of you, you hated it. This is when self-questioning comes into place. I start to ask myself, what in the world went wrong for me? Damn it, damn it, damn it....

-I hate disappointments but it comes along with life-

Posted by jieyi at 7:27 PM

Thursday, December 02, 2004

I must confess now my love for blogging. I love it because
(i) I can say things that will definitely bore people out if I am going to verbally tell them
(ii) I can relate my opinions in my entries better
(iii) I can improve my English by a considerable amount
(iv) Well, maybe people can understand me better

Yes, so that's all for today and I must say Taufik's performance just now was fantastic. I loved the way he sang the Me and Mrs Jones and the second song. Unlike Sly. His An Jing totally ruined Jay's image and tarnish his songs. I must apologise to all Sly fans for my imprudent actions.

*Haha.. points at SLY fans and laughs*