I went to the above place with my family yesterday. They have shifted to a nearby centre while the original location is being renovated. However, it seems like the service standards have slipped terribly.

First we ordered Hokkien Mee from some famous stall whose name already slips my mind. Don't bother remembering it, except to avoid it. I think it's Nam Heng or something like that. Anyway, it's a corner stall, there's usually a long queue and the store front has a few reviews from websites and newspapers which I presume write about them in glowing terms. That might have been true in the past, but it certainly wasn't true yesterday.

One thing different about them as compared to most other stalls is that they ask for payment in advance. Why?? Your guess is as good as mine. Most hawker stalls or food courts only ask you to pay when you have received your food, unless you're waiting in line for it to be prepared, and even then you're not expected to wait for long. When we ordered, this stall had 30 plates in front of us, yet they still asked for payment first.

After a long wait, the food finally came. We were unlucky to get plates near the bottom of the wok, so one of the plates had burnt noodles which were actually crispy. My dad attempted to ask them for a change, but they refused, saying that it is not under their control. After all, noodles from the bottom of the wok were probably going to be burnt and there is nothing they can do about it. A few attempted bites later, he gave up totally and returned the whole plate to them, telling them it was too burnt and thus inedible. Instead of being apologetic, they said in mandarin: "不要吃就丢掉。" As we were walking away, I heard him mutter that it was probably not fitting to our taste.

Now this kind of service attitude is atrocious. First of all, it had nothing to do with taste. The noodles were burnt. There were black marks on some of them and according to my dad some of them were crunchy. This is unacceptable quality, no matter who they give it to. Next, when told about this, the correct response would be to replace the plate with one from the top of the next batch they were cooking. What they did was to say oops it can't be helped, too bad. I don't know what they were thinking, but it seems like they have a very myopic view.

Returning a plate to them, instead of just leaving it on the table, is a very clear sign of dissatisfaction. They still didn't get it. Or maybe they do, which is why they choose to collect payment in advance.

The reason they can get away with this is probably because their business is so good. After all, with a long queue and many customers, who would care about a couple of unhappy ones? Anyway, if they only burn a plate or two each time, it still represents a small minority of customers.

The other thing which happened has to do with a stall further down the same row. There was a large sign advertising duck porridge for $2. Here's a warning. When you see that sign, don't believe it. It's actually $2.50, and you won't find out till they have delivered the food to you. My mom happened to be in a good mood as this was before the hokkien mee incident, so we didn't pursue the matter. Anyway, if he really does it consistently, it is false advertising and by common sense, he should get a hefty fine, although I don't know about the legal position.

As you can see from the above examples, it's really not worth eating at the above two stalls. The rest might still be ok, but it seems that they are all a little pricey. So do me a favour, if you go there to eat, don't patronise the hokkien mee stall with a long queue, and don't believe the $2 duck porridge sign.

Actually, I don't have much to blog about. Week 3 has started and with it comes the start of tutorials. I'm really behind this semester, barely keeping up and it's only the first week of tutorials. Just finished "copying with understanding" maths tutorial 1. Not such a good idea actually. sigh...

Still have another 2 tutorials which I haven't even looked at.

On the non academic side, I just watched the Singapore vs Malaysia soccer match which ended 1-1. Should have just watched the second half, which was much more exciting. Hope Singapore can win in the return leg on Saturday.

My microsoft keyboard is spoilt again. Two keys suddenly decided to pack up and stop working. The "Z" and spacebar keys. I've just emailed them and they say they'll get back to me. Changing keyboards every half a year is getting to be quite a chore. Maybe I should just invest in a Logitech one.

Haven't blogged for some time, partly because the 2nd semester has started and I've been quite busy doing video editing for a short clip about our inter hall games. Spent 2 full nights on it, for a short 3 minute clip. After that it was shown during dinner on Monday, posted on the website, and will probably be forgotten by all posterity.

This sem will be really busy. I have 27 lesson hours per week, excluding labs. Last sem I only had 17. What a large increase. Some of the rest have started doing their tutorials already, and meanwhile I've been reading other stuff and watching sports matches at night.

Ok, time to go, first lesson today at 10am.

Time to finish the final part of the trip.

In the morning, we visited some jeweller's shop. The local guide told us that there was no pressure to buy. In the end, it turned out that their boss was there. He was born in Singapore but spent most of his life in Thailand. He told us that the items were way overpriced, and gave our group huge discounts. For example, a 4000 RMB necklace became 500 RMB. In the end, everyone bought something.


After that stop was more shopping in a quaint looking street lined with shophouses. There was quite a lot of interesting stuff, including a parachute toy which can be flung quite high, but it was relatively expensive.

We returned to Shanghai after lunch and the tour guide brought us to a shopping complex which sold clothes. All of them are fake but really cheap.

The next day, we were brought to a place for a foot massage. After soaking out feet in hot water infused with herbs, those above 21 were given a foot massage. It didn't really have any effect on me though. The masseurs are said to be so good that they can diagnose ailments by pressing on acupoints in the sole of the foot. Maybe that's true, but after a while, it degenerated into a sales pitch. They would say you have so and so problem, and their herb here can help with it. Following that, they'll quote some price and say that you can only find this mixture of herbs at their place.

We returned to the hotel after that and bade goodbye to our tour group. There were 2 families staying for a few more days, and the other elderly couple was taking the much later flight on another airline. After lunch, we were taken to the airport and came back to orderly Singapore.

I've been very busy over the past week with hall activities, but I shall finish the holiday posts before going on to them.

At Nanjing, we met our next tour guide and went to the tomb of some emperor. On closer inspection of the bricks used to build the tomb, it can be seen that they have words on them. These are the names and addresses of the brick manufacturers. The emperor was a stickler for quality every brick was tested by driving a spear at it. If the brick is chipped or damaged in any way, the family who made the brick got executed. If the brick is fine but the spear is damaged, the family who made the spear got executed. If both are undamaged, the soldier who drove the spear into the brick gets executed for not putting in enough effort. Good thing this doesn't happen nowadays.

After that, we stopped for a quick photo session at a lake side, then went on to the bridge over the 长江(chang2 jiang1). This bridge was built with great sacrifice by the Chinese themselves. At first, they wanted to bring in foreign help, but everyone said it couldn't be done. They said the flow of the river was too fast. However, the Chinese persevered and built it in the end, although some died during its construction.


At the same location, there was a Chinese master who specialises in painting the inside of crystal balls. It looks like an incredibly delicate task. There's a small hole bored in the ball which leads to a small area to paint in. He has to paint mirror images through a little hole. Imagine sticking a paintbrush into a water bottle and painting nice pictures on it from the inside. That's the idea behind it, except that the properties of the glass magnify the images, so the actual painting area is very small.

The night was spent shopping again, except that this time there was a Confucian temple at the shopping street which we didn't go into.

In the morning, we went to a jade museum. The local guide explained how to spot real jade and what the characteristics of good jade are. After seeing some museum pieces, we were brought to the shop area and saw many more jade pieces for sale. Most of the stops we made to learn more about their culture were actually places to buy things.

Due to poor planning, and the fact that no one wanted to buy any jade, we had nothing to do and had to hang around at that jade museum until we had lunch at 1030 in the morning. After that, we left for Taichee Lake.

The good thing about leaving so early was that it was still light enough to see some scenery when we were driving there. Usually this long 7 hour bus ride will only end after the sun has set.


Near the place where we had dinner, there was a musical fountain. Here's a picture of it.

We were told that the hotel we stayed in was right beside the lake. This lake is called 千岛湖 (qian1 dao3 hu2) and came about as a result of a dam built downstream. Thus there are actually villages and settlements under the surface. The waters are so pristine they are directly bottled and sold as mineral water. The hotel at this location was also the best one we stayed in for the entire trip.


The next morning, we took a boat ride on the lake. The boat was open air and there was a nice breeze, although it did get chilly at times. Due to our limited perspective, we could only see a small part of the lake, so we couldn't see the many islands that dot the lake's surface.

After the ride, we went on to Hangzhou and saw their famous 西湖(xi1 hu2). This lake is quite shallow, but the deep mud is what makes it dangerous.

Our next attraction was a village which produces their national drink, 龙井茶(long2 jing3 cha2). It's grown without the use of pesticides. They gave us a very long talk about the wonderful health benefits of their tea, including a demonstration which is remarkably like the one used by the MLM company selling a water dispenser. They dripped iodine onto the tea leaves then showed that adding water to make tea made the blue black colour disappear. The tea is really expensive, S$60 for a 250g can.

The activity for the night was to watch a medley of performances. The focus was more on acrobatics than anything else, and it was quite exciting. There was an act where an acrobat flipped metal bowls onto her head with her foot while balancing on the shoulders of a guy on a unicycle. Unfortunately, there were many sideshows going on at the same time, making it easy to miss something exciting happening.