Monday, September 18, 2006

Pics Are Up

I realised that I seldom post photos on my blog. It kinda makes it a boring blog with only endless rows n rows of words abt my love life. (It's quite troublesome to post pics ya know? And after that gotta caption it properly and ensure all the settings are aligned) Well, lemme just edit and insert in some photos along the way. U might catch some new photos if u bother to scroll thru some of the previous entries new pics. =)

Hmm.. I seem to have totally detached from Salsa already, after my last Shanghai trip, especially after Union last nite. Well, this trip caused me to miss 2 of 4 Rueda3 lessons, effectively forcing me to drop out of class. So now I gotta wait for the upcoming batch of Rueda1 class to reach Rueda3 before I can join. And in the meantime, I'm neither here nor there. My Rueda class pple are already joining the expert Rueda grp, which I dun think I can join in yet. Plus I'm not really familiar with the now Rueda1 class pple. Shucks...

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Shanghai Grand-EST

I'm back from my longest Shanghai trip to date, 9 days including the weekends. It was truly a good experience this time round, and it finally got me around to loving Shanghai. I was there with Honghui and Kelvin to set up the warehouse for our new program there. On the 1st nite there after we finish work, we had our dinner at Hooters Shanghai. I'm not even going to try to compare it with Hooters Singapore (which actually feels more like Hooters Malaysia to me) because this is way higher up there. This was actually the 2nd time I been to the place, but the difference lies in going there alone n going with a crowd. When ya alone, they hardly even stop by to talk with u.

We had our dinner there, and hung ard for a drink after that, while the waitresses on and off stop by to chat with us. We survey them for any nice places to hang out and managed to compile a long list which we put to good use on the forecoming weekend. There were a total of 6 active waitresses doing the serving and we have to end up with the least impressive gal of the lot. So much for luck. Well, let the photos do the talking...



Our first photo was with this tanned-looking babe, Mandy who looks rather un-chinese but sure as hell is voluptuous. Shucks, I closed my eyes. So gotta take another shot...


Erm... and I closed my eyes again. = Alright, I'm gonna start counting. (Blinking rate : 2/2 now)

Alright, this is arguably the best of the lot, Ava. (Note the 2 grossly overweight spanish looking dudes in the backgrd? They were pretty impressive, finishing 2 bottles of Absolut Vodka by themselves.)

Ava again, with Kelvin n myself. A nicely taken pic. =)


This is Shirley, the waitress designated to our table. I blinked again. = (Blink rate : 3/5)


This is Kelvin after getting con into buying a shirt there with all the gals' signatures. From left: Mandy, Ariel (the little mermaid?) Ava, Bella, Kelvin, Shirley and Vera.

All in all, Hooters is a place for cheap thrills. Not much variety of food, but plenty of entertainment abound. The 2nd nite there, we were ready to let out hair down and party. I mean come on, it's fri nite after all. We worked our asses off in the day, party time at nite. We decided to check out 1 of the recommendations by the Hooters gals, at Fu Xing Garden, called Guan Di. Pretty weird to have a chinese name for a club, but apart from that it doesn't affect me much.

We had quite a grp. Besides Honghui, Kelvin and myself, we asked along Jasmine the Airbus rep from our new program, Stella our storekeeper in Shanghai and Xiao Tong from our import/export company in Shanghai. We were there pretty early, but still all the tables are reserved. We are only allocated the bar counter seats, with a goondu bar tender who eyes us suspiciously. The music they r playing r more along the line of R&B and hip hop. So there r the occasional poseurs with really flashy dress sense. But as the nite goes on, my eyes widen with disbelief. I would say the average rating of the gals there is at least a 7/10. Seriously, this is the 1st time I seen so many chio chinese gals clubbing at 1 premise. Well, to be precise, they are of all sorts of nationality actually. I went on a qie-ing spree, and the majority which caught my attention are actually from Korea and Taiwan. Well, despite the abundance of cais, 1 general rule still stands: Chio cais are dao. It's either they r dao, or they have equally chio frens who r dao, or they r all dao.

I got pretty tipsy towards the end of the nite n snoozed till late afternoon the following day. Honghui decided to take us for a tour of Shanghai's main tourist attraction, Cheng Huang Miao, the next day. I was still in pretty much of a daze, walking thru the place in a zombie-like manner. After that, we rested up in the hotel, and when nite comes, readied ourselves for another nites out. We decided to check out this place called Babyface which has 2 premise in Shanghai. Our first attempt leads us down a dark n secluded alley, with ladies outside empty looking bars egging us to check out their bars. Looks like real cosy places on a rather chilly nite, but I can't help but to feel the sleaze in the air.

Well, abundance of pubs along the stretch of road, but just could not locate the one which we r looking for. Ok, move to alternate baseplate location. Babyface 2. Alright, Babyface 2 is situated at a more city area but we were pretty much disappointed by what happened within. Again, even though we reached at 8plus. they do not have a table available for us. And to even sit at the bar counter would require us to open a bottle. And worse still, even the bar counter seats are all taken. Bah! So we have 3 choices: 1) stand ard and look like idiots while waiting for a table to be available 2) go to the nearest 7-11 n gulp down some booze and come back just in time for the music 3) Switch to alternate baseplate location again. Finally we chose option 3, and we returned to.... where else but Guan Di. =

It din seem all that bad, cos we remembered from yest there were posters advertising that tonite would be a school ger party nite. So we can be expecting ladies coming in sch uniforms. (Does it start to sound like some sort of Jap fetish already?) So... ya gonna ask: Were there sch gals??? Hmm.. indeed there are, but the majority r actually the promoters there. It's a combined event with iPod, so thru-out the nite there r some gals in sch uniform pretending to listen to their iPod and grooving to the music. The 2nd nite din turn out to be half as fun as the 1st nite. Mostly cos I was pretty dormant, prob not high enough like the previous nite. Eventually we left with a bland taste in our mouth.

Well, the highlights are during the weekends. Weekdays are just work except for a farewell party we had on the eve of Kelvin's departure. Heh heh. Overall, my expenses r thru the roof, and I fell in love with xiao long bao. =) Another trip which will see me spend the weekend there coming up the week after. Oh man...