1st day in Shanghai!

Yes I have arrived safely at Shanghai!! :) If you didn't know, I'm on an NTU exchange programme previously called GIP (Global Immersion Programme) work & study and currently renamed as GEM (Global Education and Mobility) Discoverer.

In a nutshell, it's been AWESOME SO FAR!! :) Loving the autonomy and friends :D Haha...Going into the nutshell...

The moment I stepped out of the airplane and onto the runway to board the shuttle bus, *WHOOOSH* came the zero degree freezing wind...It slapped my face and made me wince in discomfort.

By the time I reached the shuttle bus, which is just about a minute walk away, my teeth were already clattering...HAHA! I immediately put on my 3rd layer - my dad's coat - on top of my long sleeved shirt and fleece jacket.

The amazing thing is, some ang-mohs that got off the plane with us were simply wearing T-shirts and shorts and they were like...FINE! We were all standing there in wonder and amazement...LOL!

Anyway, here's the picture roll and from it, shall the story unfold :) Haha!

Me blowing out smoke...abit not clear...LOL

Yes, every breath we take will result in a thin white cloud billowing out of our mouths. I was actually trying to do it for Jamie's camera...but what resulted was only my meme -.-" HAHA!

Upon arrival at the airport, we waited for about an hour before Johnie and Mrs Ai Hwa and gang arrived to pick us up.

They directed us to the coaches that will be taking us to Shanghai Jiaotong University (上海交通大学) for our briefing and BREAKFAST :D

So that picture of me above tryna blow smoke out is the time when we were all waiting for the buses :D Haha!

Lemme introduce to you my roomies for the next 6 months :D They are...from left: Jamie, Zhi Sheng, Chor Seng and Soon Hwee :D

And yes, Zhi Sheng and I have almost the same chinese name just that his is Zhi and mine is Zi. And of course, we have different surnames...haha.

花木路 roomies! :D

Take 2 with my ski cap from Joyce taken away by Chor Seng...haha

Anyway, the bus ride from 浦东机场 to 上海交通大学 took around 2 hours!!! All thanks to the HORRENDOUS TRAFFIC CONDITIONS. There was an accident on some super big bridge that caused the jam....haha

Yup, had a short brief at the university and we all gobbled down our KFC burgers provided by the NTU GEM Discoverer team. :)

From there, the coaches brought us to our apartments :D We were all happy and ready to dance around in our new residential quarters until we inserted the room key...

THE KEY COULD NOT OPEN THE DOOR!! All of us took turns to try opening the door while the landlord and our senior were being phoned for help...but to no avail. :/

Chor Seng, Jamie & Zhi Sheng then proceeded to our apartment headquarters to get help and to find a locksmith. Oh, and thanks to my English-Chinese app, we all found out that locksmith in mandarin is 锁匠. LOL!

Thank God there was a locksmith nearby...whew...That old China chap came and opened our door with a massive electric screwdriver as stealthily captured by Jamie's camera below:

Locksmith at work... :D

We are all happy and relieved :) But, that was kinda short-lived...Once he was done, he hurriedly demanded a payment of 200元!!!

He barely spent 3 minutes to open the door and he's charging us TWO HUNDRED YUAN!!! Chor Seng tried to bargain it down but as you know, Chinaman have LOUD, ANGSTY VOICE.

Chor Seng went "我们全都是学生吗，可以扣到150元吗?"

And the angsty locksmith went "不可以啊！200元最少了！快点! 我要走了。我要去另一个地方做事啊!"

We didn't want trouble so we just went ahead and paid him the hefty sum of 200RMB which is around SGD$40!!

We figured that if we offended him, he can come back anytime and break into our place and steal our stuff and we'll all be sucking our thumbs...LOL!

Yup, what a way to start our trip in Shanghai :(

Nevertheless, we didn't let that dim our spirits too much...upon entering our apartment, Jamie immediately whipped out her iPhone and got us to take a group photo :D

Our 1st picture in our apartment! :)

It's really nice and spacious :D Here's a picture of our living room :D Pardon the mess we already made...HAHA!

The living room! Already cluttered with all our barang-barang...haha

After nua-ing a while and unpacking and cleaning up a bit, we all left for lunch :D As usual, photo-taking time...with me graciously offering to be the photographer..HAHA!

My roomies Soon Hwee, Zhi Sheng, Jamie & Chor Seng :D

Yes, it's really chilly there...The temperature is fluctuating about ZERO degree celsius, peaking at 7 degree celsius!! Really a big change in temperature from Singapore...haha!

And our apartment is really condo-like. It is all fenced up by walls and there's only a few entries around. And before you can enter the lift landing, you need to tap your card to open the door to the lift landing. So, it's relatively safe here. :)

Ok, back to our lunch trip...haha..We went to this roadside eatery called "阿牛嫂" which serves fantastic 木桶饭 aka wooden pot rice...LOL!

All of us with our lunch except Jamie's 招牌炒饭 which is still in the rice cooker...HAHA!

Here's a close up view of our 木桶饭dishes :) Mine's at the bottom right hand corner...It's called "老干妈炒鸡蛋木桶饭"

Our orders! :)

I really love my dish! :D HAHA! It's filled with some random vegetable which I think is capsicum or green pepper and fried eggs, fried together with the dao xi beans :D

It was a great bite! It wasn't too salty but it was pretty oily at the bottom of the wooden pot...LOL! That cost me only 10元! SGD$2! Eat till my tummy almost burst...LOL!

Yup, after that, we went to walk walk and get our wifi contract settled so that  I can post this now...LOL!

Well, on the way, we saw quite an interesting scene...大肠 hanging off a wooden stick!! So who else better to pose with a funny face with it? LOL!

My relationship with chinese sausages...haha...

And since Jamie already took out her camera to take photo...she might as well continue taking right? So she was like "Come! Take photo! :)" And I was the only other person cam-whore enough to join in...HAHA!

Me & Jamie :D

Yup, we did our grocery shopping, activated our wifi connection and I bought a pair of warmer shoes...hahaha!

And the next thing we had was a BOTTLE OPENING SESSION to welcome ourselves to Shanghai! LOL LOL!

干杯!

 And the next thing you know...

NOMNOMNOMMMMM....LOL!

The thing about China is, their beer is DIRT CHEAP. You see the 青岛啤酒 bottle 2 pictures up? It's only 3元!! That's like, SGD 60 cents for 1 whole bottle!!! HAHA!

The taste and alcohol content is very minimal la...but I like it that way :D Not too bitter and not too strong :) HAHA!

Yup, that's more or less our first day! Let's end with a nice photo of us in high spirits :D HAHA!

咱们上大陆咯！

My 23rd Birthday!

If you don't know when's my birthday, you're not fit to read my blog. HAHAHAHA! Just kiddin' :D LOL! It's almost 5 months past my birthday and I'm blogging about it now...WOW! LOL!

Yes, God introduced me to this world via my parents on this sacred date - 7th August. HAHAHA! Ok, the sacred part was a joke. LOL!

Yup, I’m really privileged this year :D My birthday was celebrated FOUR TIMES! :D The first birthday surprise was already blogged in the month of September called “Footprints Birthday Surprise” :D

This blog post covers the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th instance of my birthday celebration :D Mainly the 2^nd instance actually since it was planned by me. HAHA!

The 3^rd instance was celebrated with my church friends from Heart of God church in Orchard over a meal and supper J

The 4^th surprise birthday celebration was with our extended Pumpfest family where they surprised me during Pumpfest Homecoming :D

Yup, my “official” birthday celebration was held at my previous house’s function room, at Eastpoint Green Condo :D Haha

Since FOOT’12 was recently over, I decided to ride on the novelty of our newfound friendships and invited my whole DOMA orientation group over to celebrate my 23^rd year of being alive with me :D

The 7 of them depicted below is the “first wave” of people to arrive. LOL! They started the party going by Saboteur-ing. LOL!

The early birds Ryan, Terry, Calvin, Yu Xin, Teo Sian, Wei Chong and Chor Seng :D

Ok, while waiting for the rest, we saboteur-ed lor…HAHA! I still remember how Teo Sian destroyed the whole game by confusing everyone. LOL!

He randomly disabled people from building and played mind games and all...and in the end, he was the spoiler. LOL LOL! HAHA! But that's what makes the game fun right? LOL!

When the rest arrived, we started makan-ing :D And soon enough, they were singing K in the karaoke room and some of us were below playing pool :D Here's a pool shot of Wei Chong and I :D

Wei Chong & me playing pool :D

Yup, it was a really simple get together to play games, talk and sing together on my birthday :D It really is an excuse to get together to catch up actually…Haha!

I shall let the pictures tell the rest of the story…We took A LOT OF PICTURES. The few shortlisted ones are the nicer shots, you can see them all on my Facebook page :D

Let's start the picture roll with the first guy to leave...HAHA! He came super early and left super early also...he had some ATC meeting or something... -_-" Haha!

Me & Teo Sian :D

Anyway, Teo Sian's in Taiwan for exchange now! And it's my turn soon! :D Like in a few days timeeee :D :D

Yup, Teo Sian has been a great help throughout FOOT. Being an ex-GL, he really helped to hype things up and make people feel comfortable with his LOL jokes and his spontaneous dance moves...HAHA!

Chor Seng, Ryan & I :)

The 3 of us again + Xuan Qi :)

Me & Gladys :)

Gladys is another superrrr funnnyyyy and ULTRA randomly spontaneous friend of mine. Haha! She really knows how to rah-rah an otherwise boring crowd of people. Haha. She's also a fantastic friend, one you can really talk to :D

Me & Joanne Chua :D

Me & Yong Qing :D

Next is PrisTheHero :D Haha...I think I took the most photos with her at my party...haha..Come the latest and take the most photos with the awesome birthday boy. HAHAHA!

Me & Pris...Instagram-ed by Pris...haha

Random cake shot with Pris...haha

Me & Pris again :D haha...

Another friend that I've grown much closer with through FOOT :D She's also an ex-GL and thus her hyper-ness was also invaluable in DOMA. Haha. She came up with DOMA's identity cheers actually...haha.

Me & Ryan :D

Wai San & I :)

Xuan Qi & Me :)

Xuan Qi & I again :D

Another fantastic friend I've made through FOOT'12! :D She's my GL and close friend and we are going China together!! Haha. Tons of us are going China actually...LOL!

Ok, here comes the cake-cutting session :D Haha...I wonder who came up with this tradition? LOL. So here's a really cute pic of me making a wish...HAHAHAHAHA!

Me making a wish :D

And of course, this event would not have been possible if not for the 2 best people that God put in my life...Mummy & Daddy :D haha...Cheesy right? ikr...I'm a cheesy guy...LOL LOL!

Mummy, Daddy & Me :D

Birthday Cake! :D

Me with my birthday presents :D 1 mug and 1x AWESOME earphones :D

Yet another tradition at outings is to have a......GROUP PHOTO! :D Haha! Sometimes likened to be the "attendance check". LOL! So here's an awesome "attendance check" photo of all of us! :)

From left: Kai Sen, Nicholas Ng, Terry Chia, Xuan Qi, Wen Fong, Gladys Koh, Calvin Tan, ME! Priscilla Tan, Wai San, Joanne Chua, Yu Xin, Yong Qing, Wei Chong, Jason Yong & Chor Seng...still acting cute with the mike...haha

Group shot 2 :D

If you thought we're done with the group shots. you thought wrong...LOL! We still went out to have another round of group shotssss...HAHAHA!

And oh yes, must credit Kai Sen our photographer for the 1st DOMA shot...HAHA! Thanks for volunteering to be the photographer! :D

He's the only one not from DOMA...and thus, if he didn't volunteer, he would've been volunteered. HAHAHA! LOL LOL!

DOMA pose!! Outside the function room :D

Take 2 + Kai Sen - Gladys..haha :)

Funny shot :D

Yup, that was the second instance of my birthday celebration at my place! :D The 3rd one was celebrated with my Heart of God church mates :D

Forgot where we went to eat at...haha! But it was at some restaurant at Orchard if I remembered correctly...haha. 

The interesting part about this outing is, the next day or the day after, we have our Pumpfest Homecoming 2012 outing and we are supposed to submit a video. So we used this outing to film our video...LOL!

So yup, we met up, ate, took a few photos and called it a day...here's the picture roll with my Heart of God church mates :D

Kai Sen, Me, Jon Yuan & Chor Seng :D

From left: Jan Mak, Sabrina Chai, Grace Chan, Yong An, ME! Andrew, Kai Sen, Nicholas Lim, Chor Seng, Roderick Leong, Jonathan Yuan & Wei Hong :D

Take 2 with Desmond visible...HAHA!

Yup, the 4th and last birthday celebration was at Yi Qian's house! Yup, after Pumpfest Homecoming, we proceeded to Yi Qian's house to Kinect the night away..haha

I NEVER expected them to celebrate my birthday...because it's OVER ALR! But nonetheless, they loved me enough to :D

The best thing about this surprise birthday celebration is their SURPRISE BIRTHDAY CARD!! :D I totally loved it! HAHA!

My birthday card...1st page :D LOL!

Second page...My cartoon-ized face was drawn by Chor Seng...HAHA!

The first page of my birthday card was actually drawn by my poly mates Joan Tan & Guang Yao! Wow, even more touching! :') HAHA! Didn't meet them for so long but they still remember me :') Haha...I'm indeed blessed with good friends :D

Yup, this is the last birthday celebration for me! :D HAHA! I secretly wished I had a 5th surprise birthday celebration actually...HAHAHA! Just kiddin' :D

So to end this pose, here's a picture of all of us at Pumpfest Homecoming 2012! A bit no link la...but they celebrated my birthday after so....It's linked. LOL!

Pumpfest Homecoming 2012!

Yupyup, HAPPY 23rd BIRTHDAY JONAVAN! :) LOL! To think I'm typing this in my 24th year...HAHAHA!

Long live Jonavan! LOL LOL LOL! :)

Emceed for CoE Freshman Orientation :)

Once again, I’m blogging some super expired post…HAHA! This fantastic emcee lobang was graciously offered to me by NTU’s CoE staff on the 22^nd of March 2012. Haha. Oh, for the non-NTU students, CoE stands for College of Engineering :D

Yeash, you didn't read the blog post title wrongly...I emceed for the College of Engineering Freshman Orientation 2012 :D

Yes, they sent out an email to EVERY engineering student asking them to audition for this post in the month of March. Since this invitation to audition was sent to the WHOLE engineering school, I was kinda hesitant to go for the audition initially.

Half of me was thinking “There are at least 200+ engineering students in NTU and at least a third of them would be better than me. If I don’t get it I’d have wasted that few hours of my life…”

The other half of me was telling me “No harm trying! What makes you think you won’t make it? You don’t try, you never know! And the pay is $14/hour!!”

Well, from hindsight, the second half of me won the battle. LOL. It usually almost always wins the battlefield of my mind. Haha!

The explorer, “just-whack” philosophy of mine usually wins. I mean, we’ve got only 1 life to live right? Hesitate and think too much and you’ll lose out. Try will die meh? Haha.

Yup, On the 22^nd of March, I marched down to the CoE conference room and auditioned! :D Upon arriving the front desk, the staff passed me a script to practice reading.

10 minutes later, they called me into the room to show them what I’ve got :D Haha!

When I opened the door…I was kinda shocked. I thought it was gonna be a light-hearted audition with only like 2-3 people. I was utterly wrong.

I felt like I was auditioning in American Idol! There were like 6 people sitting down with tables in front of them and the empty space was mine to take and use to impress them! HAHA!

I got over the initial shock and greeted them all with a wideeee smile and a “Good Afternoon!” J Which wasn’t well reciprocated by them … -.-“ HAHA!

Ok, to fast the story forward, about a week later, I received a call DURING TUTORIAL (my ringtone woke everyone up…LOL). The call was from Tricia, one of the more friendly “judges” during the audition.

“Hi this is Tricia calling from the office of the College of Engineering, and I’m glad to let you know that we've selected you to be our male emcee! J”

“AWWW YEAHHH!” with my fist in the air and feet off the ground was my intended reply. But what came out was “Oh, that’s great! Thanks! J” HAHA!

Yup, next thing I knew, I received a Facebook friend request and an email from “Dhanashree Shelgaonkar”. I thought it was some NTU student spamming some lost and found email to all students or something…But after reading the subject of the email, I realized, SHE IS MY EMCEE PARTNER!!

My first thought was “Whooaaattt? I have an Indian emcee partner??” LOL! I’ve never emceed with an Indian before. In poly, I emceed with a really funny Malay guy…and for friend’s weddings and church events, my emcee partners are always someone I can ethnically relate to. Haha!

Anyway, I must say, Dhana is an AWESOME emcee. She was the president of her JC's toastmaster's club! Haha! Wowww.

When I first met up with her to plan our script I was like “Whoa…this is the Bollywood modern Indian” HAHAHA! Here’s a picture of us :D Haha

Dhana & I :)

She's totally the modern Bollywood Indian right?? Haha. Told ya. LOL! She has an outstanding command of english...not just spoken, but written as seen through our email exchanges. Haha.

If you’re wondering where this picture was taken, it was taken in NTU’s Nanyang Auditorium artiste’s dressing room! :D Haha!

Yup, on that day itself, 8th August (A DAY AFTER MY BIRTHDAY :D HAHA!) before the event started, we had A LOT OF SPARE TIME so we were like exploring the backstage of the auditorium. IT IS HUGEEE!

Here's another picture of the awesomely classy artiste’s room…Haha. Taken like 30minutes before the actual event started.

Me in the Nanyang Auditorium's Artiste's Room :D

Yup, that's my Facebook display picture...HAHA! And YES, they have a PIANO in the artiste's room! I guess it's for singers to do their vocal warm up and all.  But here I am, playing and posing for the camera. Haha!

Oh and here's another photo of us before we entered the auditorium :D

Me & Dhana in Nanyang Auditorium :D

We were the second pair of emcees to take the stage. The CoE freshman orientation was split into 2 parts...the first half is emceed by another pair of emcees and the second half (after lunch) is Dhana & I :D

That's why during the first half one of my freshies Jason Yong, line-messenger-ed me "Eh Jonavan, I thought you are the emcee?" HAHAHA!

Anyway, for the second half, we took the stage by storm and emceed like a breeze. Haha! Both of us didn't have stage fright thanks to our many rehearsals and I guess our mutual support for each other kept us calm throughout :D Haha!

In fact, while on stage, when there was video rolling or a speaker talking, I was busy trying to look for my ODAC FOOT freshies! LOL!

Some of the freshies in my OG - DOMA! :D - that are attending this CoE Freshman Orientation 2012 are Rachel, Vernon, Jason Yong, Ryan Koh and Joshua Koh.

They all knew me during orientation camp...So, to them, I was that "crazy-funny-LOL senior" that got everyone hyper. HAHA!

So I told them I was emceeing for this event they were like "Whoa Jonavan, you sure you can emcee for formal event like this?? Later you go up do backside tear cheer how?" HAHAHAHAHA!

Yes, my favourite line "backside tear!" was so contagious that we all made it into a cheer. LOL LOL LOL! It was a really crude cheer that was impromptu-ly invented by us due to the widespread use of my catch phrase "backside tear!" LOL!

Anyway, here's a picture of Dhana and I at the rostrum :D

Dhana & I at our emcee rostrum :D

And of course, not forgetting our PRECIOUS emcee script that kept our flow of speech fluent in front of about 500+ NTU engineering freshman and their parents.

Our emcee script!! :)

Yup, we had a blast! We clocked about 16 hours of rehearsal and actual emcee-ing time if I remembered correctly :D That means we earned around $224? I can't remember, but the money was TOTALLY worth it.

I got to meet and chat with the Dean of the College of Engineering Professor Janie Fouke and got to know some of the staff governing the administrative works in the CoE :D

Tricia was telling us "we may get you guys to emcee again :D" Once again, my intended reply was "OH YEAH!!" with my fist in the hair and feet off the ground...HAHA! BUT, once again, what came out was "that'll be great! :)" HAHA!

Yup, to end yet another successful and fruitful emcee lobang that I had, here's a self-portrait of MYSELF! :D HAHAHAHA!

ME! :D

Yup, really thank God for His favour and open doors! :) Without which I would've missed out on these fantastic opportunities :D

Bye Pang! :(

I really hope you all don't mind reading expired posts...because Pang Ngee's already in Sweden for exchange for like 5 months already...HAHA!

Nevertheless, this is still a blog-worthy post because of the fantastic effort we put together to send Pang Ngee off :D

Why fantastic? Here's what we planned:

1) Way before his departure, while in Tioman, we already decided to buy us all a common souvenir from Tioman so that we can all wear it together and present it to Pang Ngee on his date of departure :D

2) So that's just the small part of the surprise...The bigger and more impromptu part of it was...Our send-off SONG MEDLEY for him! :D :D

Since we all came back from Tioman and went straight to the airport, I had all my barang-barang with me...which includes my guitar :D

On the bus to the airport, we suddenly thought of putting a medley of songs with edited lyrics and sing it to him :D Haha!

SO RIGHT THERE ON THE SBS BUS, WE WERE SINGING AND EDITING LYRICS OUT LOUD. HAHAHA! Yeah, since we occupied the whole back of the SBS bus, we were just gangsta singing to my guitar playing. Haha!

I can't remember the exact lyrics we came up with but basically we used the tunes of these 3 songs "You Belong With Me" by Taylor Swift, "Count On Me" by Bruno Mars and "I Won't Give Up" by Jason Mraz and added in our own lyrics :D Haha!

Yup, here's the visual aids for the chunk of "lecture notes" I typed above. Haha! I really wish my lecturers would give more visual aids and analogies in their teaching to help us conceptualize whatever theories they're uttering...HAHA! OK...yup, pictures! :D

Me with my guitar and ready to MEDLEY :D :)

You can see Chor Seng's and my Tioman t-shirts :D We bought it for everyone :)

Me & Pang Ngee standing tall with our Tioman t-shirts :D Yeah, he simply wore it over his shirt...haha

Yup, I will really miss Pang Ngee's presence, cheeky-ness, jokes and his oh-so-ticklish high-pitched laughter. HAHAHA!

The first time we met was during our PumpfestXV meeting and we clicked REALLY WELL. Our sense of humour was very much alike. Haha!

From there conversations were easy and filled with laughter as we exchanged jokes and made fun of people in Pumpfest...HAHA!

He's a really light-hearted guy who sincerely cares for his friends. He's the kind that'll come by you and ask "You ok not?" and he'll sometimes drop by and make small talk and gossip and all...Haha! Yup, hope he livens up Sweden too :D

So here's a group shot of us Pumpfest-ers from all generations..HAHA!

Pumpfest-ers! :D

Oh and the last picture is a random shot...haha. While photographer Vanessa was waiting for the different groups to ready themselves to take photo, she promptly flipped the DSLR over and we took a picture :D HAHA! LOL!

You can see Sean in the background trying to pop his head in between us but wasn't fast enough...HAHA! LOL!

Vanessa's "flip-shot" of us :D

I also realized how our eyebags are evenly matched in this picture...HAHAHA! LOL LOL! Smiling with your teeth will raise your cheeks which in turn will raise up your eyebags...So to avoid looking too sleepy with eyebags and all, try smiling without raising your cheeks too much. LOL!

Interesting discovery eh? LOL! Yupyup, even as I blog this, Pang Ngee has already thoroughly enjoyed his 4 months++ in Sweden and Europe.

He has sent us several TOTALLY BEAUTIFUL photos of Sweden's beautiful landscape. I realize how barren and lacking in natural beauty Singapore is when I look at his photos.

I was telling everyone in our PumpfestXV chat group when he shared the photo with us "Whoa, those pictures you took are like taken from the internet one lor...haha" Indeed. They really look like scenes of National Geographic Channel and all.

But not all's well over there for him...He told us that some of the ang-mohs there are racist and look down on   Asians. He was telling us that in his university's OG (orientation group), some of them wouldn't even make eye contact with him and his fellow NTU friends.

They'd clique amongst themselves and act as if they were not there or transparent or non-existent. Not all of them are like that though says Pang Ngee in a thankful tone. Haha!

Yup, when it's time for you to come back, Pang Ngee, it'll be time for me and my whole gang to go CHINA for exchange!! WHOO HOO!! :D :D

Will update more on that when details are more or less finalized! :D For now, we're still missing you badly Pang Ngee!