Hello!!

 

It’s been a while yo people!

 

And it’s weird…when I came to China, I thought I would blog more often, with the lack of facebook / twitter / blogspot. But somehow I lost the mojo to blog. It’s as though the whole blogging thing came packaged with FB, Twitter and other blogs too. Where the lack of either one would take away the whole meaning of blogging. Weird huh.

 

In the early days, the Chinese built the Great Wall of China to keep non-citizens from coming in.

 

Today, we have the Great Fire-Wall of China, to keep net-izens from going out    -__-

 

It’s all thanks to those idiotic protest buggers! Suckers who set up a Facebook group called ‘Global Protests. Support Uygurs to seek independence’, who started the riots in Xinjiang that left 140+ people dead. And also Facebook, for allowing such a group to exist. Really, quite, dumb. Now they’ve gotten themselves, with most other social networking sites banned

 

Still, as I mentioned in my previous post, I found a hack to access these banned sites. The ‘hack’ is basically a redirect site that is hosted in an outside country, which loads the banned sites in its window for sneaky people like me and EGo to access. The trouble is, it loads it without scripts. And no scripts pretty much makes Facebook useless la. I can’t even update my status yo. Damn.

 

So that means I’m practically back to square one lol.

 

And that also means I’ve got no reason to stay up late…my sleep time has been promoted from 1.30am to 12am. And my eye-bags have been promoted from 1cm thick to 0.5cm thick. Yeah babeh.

 

It’s not often that you can have your house, your office and your lunch place in the same picture. But where I am, I’m actually able to pull off this amazing feat.

 

 

 

My dorm is actually 40 seconds walk from office, and 10 seconds walk from the cafeteria. It doesn’t get any closer than that wei!

 

This is Vice President Chuntang’s office, where he has strategically placed the router by the window for us to go online at night, at home, to access stuff that is not-safe-for-work ahem.

 

 

This is our kitchen, where most of the mess happens.

 

It’s where we make our breakfasts…

 

Btw, sausages seem to be a very popular form of breakfast here, and they mass produce it and sell it in little packs like this.

And that’s the whole lot of stuff that Charles (the ‘burglar’ ‘in my window in my previous post), got for our supplies.

 

The kitchen’s also the place where we wash our clothes using this never-seen-before-in-my-life old school washing machine.

 

 

This deserves a different story altogether ahaahaha.

 

And this is what we normally do, right after dinner. Shower and……

Laze in bed then sleep. How not to get fat in China???   LOL.

 

And as you can see, we’re pretty organized when it comes to keeping the place tidy  xD …

 

 

It’s not much, but it’s where I call home for this two months. And being able to live away from the family like this gives me a preview of how life can and probably should be like. My own uninterrupted private time and space. Good stuff yo. And by living out like this, I can cause less trouble at home

 

 

This is David Li, our partner in crime, golfing kaki, slacker club member…

 

…Who likes to go for a smoke while me and EGo are deep in discussion even while walking…

 

 

Really, there are so many random pics in my camera I don’t know which to post! xD

 

OK, one more.

 

This is not one of those dark rimmed specs that Ah Bengs wear to clubs…it’s what the workers here use as ……Safety Goggles! Wah beh tahan.

 

Oh, and one more thing I noticed when I was was getting stuff from the grocery.

These guys are STILL selling these banned tainted-milk stuff! Some people will never learn lol  =.=

 

Cheers!
-EVo-

 

 

This is not a scheduled post.

 

I’m blogging live from China! AHahahha, but since the past 2-3 posts have been all about China, I don’t wana bore ya with more Cheena details.

 

I know many of you wana know if I’m suffering here or not, so I’m purposely EVADING that topic for now. Read about it in future posts lah

 

So this post is gona be about a post that I’ve also been EVADING for a long, long time, 4 months to be exact.

 

Guess what picture this is?

 

As hard as you look, it is not a picture of Paris Hilton doing something funny in the dark.

 

And neither is it a picture of Tan Sri Chua Soi Lek doing something funny in the dark.

 

I’ll give you a hint : It’s about a Mountain.

 

And the light spots you see are….

 

 

Yeah babeh, this is the view while climbing up Mount KK at 3am in the morning!

 

Imagine this. You wake up at 2am in the morning, stumble groggily out of your bunk bed. Outside your room, other climbers are already gearing up and preparing for what’s ahead. There are no lights on, only light from headlamps can be seen. You sense the excitement in the air ; everyone is talking in whispers and some are already outside…there’s no time for breakfast, and everyone moves out and starts….The Summit Climb.

 

It’s an incredibly surreal moment.

 

 

With hardly any time to take a proper photo, all I have are faint memories that start off with a steep staircase and a medium rocky path climb in the pitch black. And unlike the day before, no one could move fast due to the low visibility. Everyone moved together slowly and were literally ‘crawling in the dark’!

 

There was a section that the locals call the ‘Danger Zone’, where angles go as steep as 60 degrees, and only way to go up was with a rope. I really had to HAUL my big ass and bigger-ass backpack up using the rope..No rope = no climb. That’s how steep it is.

 

And some sections scared the shit outta me, where I have to walk on a jagged ledge, and a bad move means falling down the mountainside to a certain death. All hands on the rope man…even a camho will resist the chik-chak moment I tell you LOL. Cos it probably will sound like ‘chik-chak – Ooops – aaaahhhhhHHHH – BISH’

 

It was only past the Danger Zone when I was ahead of the others where I stopped and grabbed a few shots that I could…

 

 

 

 

Then I KO for awhile cos didn’t have breakfast LOL.

 

Not easy lor I tell you. You need balls of steel to do this with an SLR + Flash and a bloody heavy Crumpler bag.

 

I was lucky that I wasn’t affected by altitude sickness and was able to keep a steady pace. It’s important to keep moving all the way even if you’re tired and need to take small steps. Cos if you stop, your body will slow down and it takes awhile to start up again. And that’s not cool.

 

 

Shooting got a little easier at about 5am thanks to the slowly rising sun…but that meant that we had to speed up to reach summit before sunrise!

 

The peak that you see above is not the summit. There are a few of these peaks before the final Peak, pretty frustrating…Just when you thought you reached the end, there is another for you to climb ahead!

 

So we climb…

 

 

 

And climb…

 

 

 

Photography in the mountain is good, because if you’re slow, you can blame it on stopping to take the shots and sound like a very dedicated photographer, instead of saying that your knees hurt, and your half dying. Which was exactly how I felt…Half Dead.

 

I think what helped to elevate my spirit was the rising sun coming up on the east….

 

Nice leh…my never-seen-before footage…i should apply for a job in National Geographic. Can explore the world with Sponsored Lenses, yummy.

 

 

As a rule, and as a photographer, you should always look out for patches of water for that reflection and ‘enhanced ‘cold’ effect.

 

 

 

If you did notice, this also means that we missed the view of the sunrise from the peak   T_T

 

 

 

This is where I stopped to rest my dying feet take shots of climbers coming up from behind me.

 

Can’t see them? Look closer!

 

 

At that point, it was hard to believe….Did I really climb that high? wtf!

 

 

We were above freaking clouds level!

 

With that in mind, it makes 0% sense to give in to my failing legs and go home. All I needed was just rest and pretend to take more shots LOL.

 

 

It wasn’t really that cold. I just wanted to see how I look like with the burglar ninja hood. Hehe.

 

 

That’s Arhnue hiding behind a rock. I think she just completed a successful piss or poop, hence the victorious look on her face. I THINK.

 

Desmond Lim the Chocolate factory boss and Rachel also look pretty happy here..Desmond did, and I confirm this, take a poop on the way up the mountain somewhere in the dark at 4-5am. No worries, no pollution, it’s all organic.

 

 

 

 

 

With my legs partially recharged, It’s time to push it for the final climb!

 

 

 

And finally…so close more…

 

Mountain also got traffic jam one. What is this.

 

So while waiting for traffic to clear….what does a blogger do?

 

And…after 36 hours of stretching my body past its human limits…we finally got what we came for..

 

  

 

Arhnue potong stim cos she was too tired to climb another 10 steps to reach the peak ahahaha.

 

 

And the view was …… Fantastic.omg.

 

 

 

 

I tell you…if you think that people who bring big ass DSLRs up the mountain with big ass bags are semangat…check out this guy who even brought a tripod along. Whoooooaaa. I only use a rock to prop up my camera man…LOL

 

I wonder what the guy on the right side brought up. Sniper rifle ke?

 

 

 

In my world, there is one main rule when you climb mountains. Don’t ever, ever think that the peak is the final destination. Because that was what I had in mind. Reach peak, end of story.

 

But what I forgot was that…whatever distance I climbed up, I had to climb down it as well. Wah damn shit wei already wana die at that time.

 

Find out what happened to Kit Loong in the next Mount KK post

 

Click these for my other KK Stories:

1. Mount KK : [Part I] The Reunion

2. Mount KK : [Part II a] Up we go!

3. Mount KK : [Part III] Laban Rata Go Go Go!!

 

Cheers!
-EVo-

 

 

Remember in my previous post, I said that I’ll be able to FB and blog when I’m in China?

 

I’ll have to correct that statement now.

 

 

 

Now tell me, when you reach a hotel room for the first night, what do you do? Is it:

 

A.  Rush to the toilet bowl to let out hours of contained pee / poop.

B.  Rush to the bath area to check if there’s hot water.

C.  Rush to check if your boss sent you email.

D.  Rush to the bed with your partner and go for that wild doggy-style you were fantasizing for the past 10 hours.

 

(I’m very interested to know your answers, so IF you’d like, leave them in the comments below)

 

Sooo…. since Option D wasn’t available to me, my choice was none of the above.

 

Instead, the first thing I did was to throw down all my luggage in the doorway, hunt for the network point, plug it in, turn on my web browser. Then type in ‘www.facebook.com’ and keep my fingers crossed.

 

And as I had expected for but not hoped for, it was that dreaded 404 Error that bombed me back in my face.

 

Arghhhh!! I was CONNED!! David!!

 

I tell you if www.euveng.com also didn’t load, I will drop dead on the spot. From a heart attack that’s strong enough to kill an elephant. Guarantee.

 

So I guess I’ll have to make do with what I’ve got lor Blog ajer,

 

This is how our first day in Hangzhou turned out to be.

 

Poor boy so tired dunno what he was doing last night or WHO he was on the phone with

 

Btw click to check out EGo’s blog for what happened at LCCT airport and who came to see us off hehe. All I’ve got is a pic taken of Psychkin and me at Theobroma Choco Lounge. I likes this one very much!

 

 

Hangzhou looks very much like any other Chinese city.

Step outside and you’ll be surrounded by tall buildings with huge names at the top. Most of which, I can’t read ahaha. Banana ma.

 

 

But that has improved a lot now. Now, I can WRITE my own name. Last time, I only knew how to DRAW it.

 

So, the plan for the day was to take the 2pm train from Hangzhou Station to Wuxi Station. I was surprised to see that the ticketing hall at this station was bigger and newer than the one at Shanghai.

 

 

 

Even the view when you’re queueing is not bad too *ahem black dress*

(Btw, all pics taken by me were using EGo’s S80. Tell me that they look alright)

 

 

We had Beef Ramen at ‘Li Xian Sheng’, at the station, which was pretty much like our Esquire Kitchen at home.

Except that the noodles were more springy, cheaper, and it was the first time a Ramen restaurant declared itself as fast-food. Our order was taken via handheld units, and everything came within 5-6 minutes. Impressive.

 

And that the waitresses at Li Xian Sheng were about half as old as the waitresses at Esquire Kitchen. Esquire seriously needs to take drastic measures on that before they lose ALL their customers. Dah lah customers gota face Grumpy Mum / Grandma at home, go Esquire have to see more of those Green Grumpy Grandmas sure lose appetite one.

 

So….in the train, a train attendant goes around selling snacks on the aisle…

 

 

 

And after 4 hours of ass-numbing, here we are at Wuxi. With international buffet dinner with David & SiBird…The adventure starts!

 

 

 

 

Anybody who knows how to go around the system and can tell me how to access Blogspot / Facebook / Twitter from China will get extra China traffic (i.e. from …. ME!) hahahaaaa.

 

Cheers!
-EVo-

 

UPDATE!! I FOUND A HACK TO GET INTO FACEBOOK / TWITTER OMFG!!