HAPPY 24TH BIRTHDAY, HYUNJOONG! & Suzhou-Nanjing-Shanghai CSE Trip 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010 @ 10:58 PM
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HYUNJOONG!
(It's belated, I know. But I really didnt have a choice cus I was stuck in Shanghai & blogger's blocked thanks to the great firewall of china! D:)
06.06.2010
Ohman Leader, thanks for being our precious and irreplaceable Leader! You're so special in every single way & I'm so glad and thankful for your mere existence. This year, you're a year older, but your dedication and love towards Double S has never faded one bit. In all our hearts, you are more than just a leader, but a role model, a brother, an angel. Thank you for always being there for SS501 & your fans and giving your limitless love and care for all around you. You have been and will always be an inspiration to me and everyone else! A really Happy Birthday to you in year 2010 and I truly hope you'll enjoy your future shining career together with Double S. Be strong, stay happy and healthy and keep glowing for the world to see! Hope you've fully recovered from the accident and please go replenish some sleep and rest! :D
LOVE ALWAYS,
Valencia.
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Hello world. I'm back in Singapore, finally. China/Suzhou-Nanjing-Shanghai was an enriching and educational experience, I must say. However, it wasn't exactly the most enjoyable one (which I already expected since the people I was going with weren't exactly those I were thoroughly familiar with and close to) but I guess I learnt quite some bit. Together with a group of J1 CSE and history students as well as a couple of J2 students, we set off to China on the 3rd of June on a journey to learn more about the country. It was a night flight but though everyone was tired, most of us spent our flight watching the movies screened on our personal small televisions on SQ Airlines! I watched Shutter Island, which was freakishly scary though it wasn't horror, but it definitely was horrifying! No wonder it was rated NC-16, which marks the second NC-16 movie I watched, which probably means that perhaps I shouldn't watch such movies in future because I was absolutely terrified watching this one, and the first I watched (Jennifer's Body) was totally a useless and meaningless movie which only consisted of sexual content and unnecessary violence. Shutter Island was good though, the plot was certainly unexpected and crazy and I got so scared at some point on the plane I had to close my eyes while watching it because the screen was right in front of me and I couldn't possibly run away. After that, I listened to SS501's music, which initially was supposed to play songs from URMan, but they basically only played ONE korean song (Junie's 'Hey G') and the rest were from their Jap albums. What a bummer, heh. Upon reaching the airport, we didn't check into the hotel. Instead, with our tired bodies and souls, we started our learning journey with tour guide Yangzhou, Lotus(Her English name) and visited some historical places in Suzhou. For the next few days, we went to numerous places in Shanghai with a deep heritage, culture and history that included temples, museums, memorial sites, massacre sites, which were really memorable. But I gotta say the most interesting and significant one was the experience at the Shanghai Expo 2010 which we visited during the last two days of the trip. China truly lives up to its name, I must say. It is totally humongous it had reserved this area of land to hold the World Expo, which was so large it could probably house half a Singapore! The exhibits there by each country were amazing; I could really see all the time and money invested into each and every pavilion. I'm not really sure if I can remember all the pavilions I managed to visit, but to list them out, it would be: Singapore(of course, we got special treatment too, heh. We got let in without having to queue because we are Singaporeans, HAH, to the dismay of the foreigners in the queue outside), Australia, Thailand, Philippines, Brunei, France, Spain, Africa, Denmark, South Korea! I really wanted to check out China's, Taiwan's, Egypt's and Saudi Arabia's pavilions too but due to the super long queues and lack of time, I didn't get that chance ultimately, which was such a waste.
Here's a peek into the Expo for those who didn't manage to come along! Can't upload much cus blogger or internet is malfunctioning again & the site keeps crashing, so the organization of photos is kinda messy...
^Denmark
^France
^Spain
South Korea
^Thailand
^Singapore
For Singapore's booth, I thought the display and all were only alright and the first level was sadly, quite a disappointment. It was just an airy open space that looked dull and empty, with random areas for us to play games like jumping on trampolines to make some sounds and beats for some reason I forgot, and seeing the attractions of Singapore in small little bubbles. The second level was better though, an air-conditioned room that screened a video that was supposed to introduce Singapore and what it is special for, but instead, 80% of the video featured local artistes who supposedly made it big in the entertainment industry like JJ Lin, Ah Du, Tanya Chua and Stef Sun and they were all singing a song which was probably specially written for this. The remaining 20% showed some of Singapore's scenery and common places like HDB flats and greenery, which I felt was really lacking in the entire video. It also did not include sufficient information and screen time for the culture and traditions in Singapore, and there was excessive screen time for artistes huge faces staring right at you on the large theatre-like screens. The third level was a open-air garden which grew many plants and greenery, a creative concept, but there were ironically many plants which I don't usually see in Singapore's streets or gardens quite so often. All in all, I felt it was too commercialized and did not consist of the Singaporean essence which I really hoped our country could portray and distinguish ourselves on the world stage. Hence, in my opinion, the Singapore exhibit didn't really reflect what Singapore was really all about and the experience was one not worth waiting for more than 15 minutes(that's why I sympathize those Chinese queuing up outside and expecting something extraordinary).
Another not so impressive pavilion was the France's one. According to a friend, she said the France pavilion was very well done and supposedly one of the best, which made me willing to queue up for an hour or so. In the end, I was rather disappointed with what I had seen inside, and its significance can probably be seen by the fact that I can only faintly remember a few exhibits it presented and I had already completely forgotten the look of the entire pavilion from the outside if not for the photos I had taken. The only two things I remember from the pavilion were the chefs displaying their culinary skills behind a glass panel and a Louis Vuitton section that had a small structure built for it. Altogether it was a forgettable experience and I wouldn't fancy queuing up an hour for it if I had known it was going to turn out this way.
For Denmark's pavilion, they had quite a fun idea, which was to let visitors travel along the edges of the place on a bicycle- its aim: to display a green and eco-friendly Denmark city. Initially, I thought it was going to be fun, but that was until I realized I had to wait for close to 40 minutes for a chance on the bicycle after already waiting for 45 minutes to even get into the pavilion. Fortunately, my patience was strong enough to tolerate the long wait and I grabbed the bike and helmet when it was my turn. To my disappointment again, the bike was created in such a way where one cannot push the pedal backwards and the wheels cannot even turn backwards. This was a total disaster for me as it was really hard to control the bike like a normal one and there were many instances I was stuck at a spot because the pedals were stopped at a position which it is hard to push it forward, and you can't bring it backward to arrange it at a comfortable position because the mechanics of the bike didn't allow it to. What's more, the bike can only be rode on the rims of the pavilion, which meant that I couldn't see the exhibits, which were all on the inside and the bike lane was on the outside. The only things I got out of this pavilion were the outside breeze and a not-so-bird's eye view of the other pavilions around it. Sighs, another waste of time.
However, there were good ones, I can't deny.
^Australia
First up is Australia's pavilion. Even though there was a long queue as usual (it's a Western country), the queue moved quite fast and the Australian at the front of queue was really quite entertaining with his fluent Mandarin, praising visitors to be handsome and pretty in Chinese. The inside was beautiful, with many sculptures and most importantly, a show-cum-video thing shown in this wrestling-like arena stage that introduced Australia's idea of a better city. The technology they used was really worth compliments and it was definitely quite interesting.
Another is Thailand's. Though queuing up for it was torturous, having to endure an hour's plus of the China locals eating tomatoes, cucumbers and not so practical chicken wings, boiled eggs and a variety of other foods and fruits, and then having to bear with them spitting and throwing their rubbish on floor right next to us, it was a good experience as the programmes lined up in their pavilion were rather special. There was a 3-D video where we got to wear those glasses and view the video, and the most shocking part was when they sprayed water at the audience during a beach scene or sth like that, which made the effects more realistic. It was fun, and was comical when everyone screamed together when we thought things were flying towards us looking through the glasses.
For me, I thought Spain's pavilion was the best. The exterior of the pavilion was interesting enough, and it was really intricate how many of the wooden fan-like objects were puzzled together to piece up the entire building, which was really large. The queue there was very very chaotic, and it was quite funny how the locals jumped queue by sneaking underneath the strings dividing the queues from one another. This surprised and angered us, but we made the best out of it by following suit, haha! There was this woman eating a strong smelling bread (which was really annoying) standing behind me who tried all means to try to get past me. She annoyed me to such an extent where I was complaining about her right in her face, but in English. She kept pushing and shoving but I obviously didn't let her past me so I pushed her back too, which has become a very common habit for all of us on the trip, I believe, heh. She knew I detested her, cus she also started bitching about me in Shanghainese, and according to a friend, she scolded me names like 'stupid' and 'thinking I'm very pro cus I can speak in English'. -.- Ohkay, whatever, stupid bread woman (oh have I mentioned this was the nickname I gave her throughout my whole complaining period?). Anyway, we finally got into the pavilion, which in my eyes, was AMAZING FABULOUS MAGICAL and really the best! There was a segment were surrounding visitors were many large screens that showed the scenery of Spain and made me feel like I was really in the landscape itself. Then they showed all the popular characteristics of Spain, like their sporting specialties like tennis, basketball and FOOTBALL! (I think I saw Torres' leg! Maybe! Or maybe I was just taking the leg to be his D:) Then there were performances of dancers doing their specialties too, I'm not sure if it was some Latin dance or something. Continuing, the next section was this large area where there are rectangular screens hanging from all over the place showing people and their daily lives, which was really lifelike. A really sensual experience. Then the third part was this GIGANTIC HUMAN BABY sitting on the floor, probably 10 times my height, and it was designed to really behave like a baby! It was moving, its eyes, mouth, head! And it was crying or tearing too! The concept was really cute, especially when they started spraying bubbles around to complement the baby concept. Many visitors all snatched to get an opportunity to take a photo with it. This concluded a very unique and enthralling experience at the one and only SPAIN! ♥
Next up is South Korea! I expected it to be quite a long and painful wait as we queued up for a whopping 4 hours but instead, it was quite an amusing one. Most of the time, I was analyzing all the colourful and pretty Korean words patching up the entire structure, which probably made up of all the possible Korean words there can ever be. At first, we thought we only needed to wait for the queue outside the pavilion, which we did for roughly 2 hours. But we were stunned when when we were let in, there was yet another longer queue to enter the exhibition area. The waiting time on the TV screen stated 90 minutes, which removed all the sense of relief we had when we thought we could finally get in. Inside, we watched some dance performances by this group of girls that really reminded me of the K-pop scene and wave throughout the world now. Then we watched this video promoting Korea with Rain and some other artistes too, which was refreshing. Much time queuing was spent trying to protect our positions in the queue as the typical locals were trying to cut our queues. We decided to make this wall using our bodies which I casually named "The completely unpermeable membrane of Singapore" to block out those bodies desperately trying to squeeze past at every chance just to get a few seconds ahead of us. How typical. This kinda pissed off many of those behind us because we returned their shoving and pushing with the same exact treatment. This really gave us a huge sense of satisfaction! :D In the meantime, I was searching for the Korean characters of Junie's name on the walls of the pavilion and this made my waiting time much less painful. After the 4-hour wait, we rushed in after the 'Annyeonghasaeyo' greetings of the workers there. It was really cool inside, with the sides of the first area installed with long screens that featured videos of every aspect of the Korean society- entertainment, sports, culture etc. I was attracted by the entertainment one, where the video displayed many Korean bands and their dances, but sadly there wasn't a tiniest inclusion of SS501, though there was DBSK and Girls' Generation. Then, proceeding further was this area with a bunch of games on LCD screens for us to play on, which was quite interactive. There most entertaining part was a video shown to us about this short story/song/mv of Korea's vision of a better city that featured DBSK and f(x). It was a cute video, with U-Know being the lead character. Krystal was really pretty inside too! :D The little girl, the main character, was also really adorable. "New world, it's for you~!" is a line of the main tune/chorus of the song that I can only remember cus it's in English, heh. The rest was in Chinese, showing the effort by these ambassadors in the production of the song. I would say the Korean Pavilion was fun and lovely, but not completely worth the 4 hours we had to wait for it.
Basically that's roughly it for the Shanghai Expo regarding what I had gotten out of it. It was definitely an awesome experience, and once in a lifetime, since it's gonna be torn down in October. It kinda sucks that it's gonna be gone so soon cus it's such a waste of money and resources and so environmentally unfriendly. They should actually just leave the structures there and plan for future development of them such as transforming them into shops or malls since they are so large themselves anyway.
However, I'm glad I had the chance to visit it as I had learnt so much more about these countries around the world and it's great to meet people around the globe and understand their cultures and vision better. I missed SS501 and Youtube really badly in China as I didn't bring along my laptop and Youtube my dear bestfriend was banned in China (-.-). I really wanted to catch SS501 Comeback on 4th June, which I managed to accomplish thanks to Anna who lent me her laptop and I went to Youku to watch it despite the horrible lagging and unsynchronized videos(which made me miss Youtube even more! D:). But I'm still glad I'm back home now and can reunite with my bestfriend and start sms-ing like a normal person. I realize I really miss the Tianjin group of people because they are the ones that can truly make my overseas experience much more enjoyable. Thanks to them, Tianjin is awfully missed now. But for this CSE trip, I'm just feeling neutral about it, not that it was bad or anything; it was quite fun!
I wish I could have blogged more about this trip, but there's just too much to cramp in words and I'm just too lazy to do so. Here's just a short summary about the most memorable, the Expo! & before I forget to mention, the 2012 World Expo would be hosted by my beloved South Korea! OHYEAH :D Gonna have to fly there then! :D
Ohkay, it's really late now, and I haven't been blogging much lately, so this one's a treat! :D
& I HAVE to end off with this amazing Comeback:
Love, & bye,
Valencia.