Qihan came over for a one day visit in Shenzhen and we brought him to LuoHu Commercial shopping centre for some cheap shopping. Honestly, it was quite an experience for him to haggle over prices. I’m already pretty much used to it. I remembered the first time when I went there to shop; I find it really strange to stand there for 10 minutes to haggle back and forth over prices. I find it a waste of time actually. But now, I think it’s a good way to stretch our dollar, or in this case, Yuan. We do most of the bargaining for him. After we paid for our purchases, the shop owners actually commented we can bargain really well for a foreigner; as good as a local. We actually did our homework before bargaining. We asked our colleagues about the standard prices of most items such as clothes, bags and shoes. From the price they gave us, we quote to the shop owners way lower prices so that we can work our way up to the target price we have in mind. 8 out 10 times, we get the prices we wanted. Our Yuan is stretched that way. I can buy up to 5 items with 40 Sing Dollars. A junk food tee which can be passed off as a real junk food tee costs me only 8 Sing dollars. It’s also a good place to shop for affordable and good quality cufflinks. You can get a simple and expensive looking cufflink for less than 10 sing dollars. Did I mention China shopping rocks? Totally. Ha, not in terms of the best quality but in terms of getting the best price of not bad quality. Friends, please leave a comment behind if you want me to buy anything for you or your boyfriends. =)
Anyway, it was a good afternoon of shopping. Most of us got what we wanted. I got my junk food tees and Coppertone t-shirt and Qihan got his cufflinks. He practically bought every nice cufflink in that place. Everything is cheap, cheap and cheap according to him.
Hahaha.
Ok, enough of shopping already.
After shopping, we were famished so decided to bring Qihan to this Hunan restaurant which we chanced upon when we wanted to just get lost and roam around the city area. Yups, we just took a random bus and stopped at whatever busstop that looks interesting enough. And it proved to be a good idea because we randomly found a nice restaurant which serves tasty food. Qihan didn’t get to try the restaurant’s signature rice wine (which we are all huge fans of) since the rice wine was sold out by the time we reached the place. =\
Rice wine is fermented rice drink which tastes very sweet and fragrant. No alcoholic content so you can drink as many cups as you want and not get drunk. The rice wine dessert is my personal favorite. As I’m typing now, I'm craving for a bowl of cold rice wine sticky paste with tangyuan.
Since it’s Saturday and weekends should never be wasted by going home early to rest no matter how tired we were, I suggested going to a live band bar, TrueColor Bar which my manager recommended to me. The SMU bunch went to the bar and the NYP friends went back home. Anyhow, the company was good. The place boasts a really warm ambience, good for chilling out and unwind after a long work week. We were given really good seats in front of the stage. One bottle of Hoegaarden costs us 30 Yuan each (pricey actually, but we really do not mind paying for the music and the ambience). In all, I think I drank 3 types of beer. Hoegaarden is the best, Paulaner tastes pukish after drinking Hoegaarden and Budweiser surprisingly tasted good for an American beer. Ok, the live music part is awesome! The place is seriously a Chinese version of Wala Wala actually albeit True Colour plays more mainstream sounds. The bands mostly performed Chinese music, some English oldies like Hotel California and Richard Marx songs. Their voices are unbelievably good and they can play a range of musical instruments like keyboard, drums, electrical guitar and harmonica. We just sat there from 9pm to 1 am, right from the first performance to the last. Talking about the last performance; the female singer and her keyboardist was the best act for the night. For one thing, she’s very beautiful in an oriental beauty manner. Long curls, pixie like face and very well groomed. According to Adrian, who was completely mesmerized by her, she has a voice of an angel. –Rolls Eyes- That night at the bar, I really cannot stand Adrian. He really annoyed me. He was sitting beside me the whole time, telling me how beautiful the singer was, countless times; when I was trying hard to be in my own world listening to the performance. The last thing I want was to be interrupted. I mean, seriously, I’m there to enjoy the music, you can tell me about how pretty the girls look all you want AFTER the performance, I’ll gladly listen to you gush all you want. He was such a pain in the ass, really. I told him to shut up halfway through. Haha, Qiu Xin and Alaska were annoyed as well cause we were all trying to enjoy the songs and he was yakking away. Anyway, the night ended in a bad way, but I think if I were to type it all down, it’ll be lunchtime soon for me. We ended up going home at 3.30 in the morning. So I’m not elaborating much on that. Anyhow, some guys can be too infatuated with beauty to an extent where that mere infatuation can severely cloud their logic and judgment. Those type of guys, is best for me to avoid. I’m still in a vindictive mood. I have no idea what gotten into me. Well, at least Adrian apologized after we gave him the ‘silent treatment’.
At the hunan restuarant:
The pictures we took at the bar:
The stage
The first performance.
The 2nd performance; the worst of the best. The singers try too hard to be cool and rock-like. Was jumping all over the place. Weird.
The loud bass and the drums nearly made us deaf. Half the time, I have to stick my fingers into my ears. =X
The 3rd performance. The lead is talented, he can sing well, play the electric guitar and the harmonica. Not once did he go out of tune. And his diction for the english songs is excellent.
The girl in the light pink shirt is the singer with the superb voice and the singer Adrian is mesmerized with.
From left to right; Qihan, Wen Wen (the singer), Adrian, Me, Alaska and Qiu Xin.
Jules, Qihan and I miss your company!! =(... We mentioned you a couple of times during the night cause you would have loved the place.
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