1 Year and 3 Days // 78 Posts On

1 year and 3 days on, thetuckshopsg still exists.

we've got an almost non-functional twitter account, 74 fans on facebook, 78 posts and 6638 hits till date.

pretty decent numbers we must say for a blog that talks about almost anything and actually nothing.

anyhow, we were all late for our one year celebration because yakki was busy photo-shooting a taiwan friend of ours (pictures coming up) and i was busy in beijing biting the dust.

was gonna talk about beijing. i have been there like 4-5 times and yet i have not spoken much about the great city.

but, before we head to the capital of china, let's wind back to shanghai.

after talking up yakki's manliness in the last post, i recalled the great shanghai incident.

The Bund

photo source: middlekingdomchronicles.com

<< the great shanghai incident >>

it was a chilly night. a chilly chilly night.

as yakki and his girl strolled along the bund, a few stout mediterranean looking men sneaked behind his girl and chanced upon her purse.

yakki's girl realised in 2.7 seconds that she had been mugged, turned around and went chasing after the men.

for once, yakki was surprisingly not in his slumber-land. he was as sharp as an eagle and burst into a sprint.

for another once, he was shockingly brave. not considering that the uighur-looking men could be armed, could possess some xinjiang-ish martial arts, he took up his golden peacock stance and picked his girl's purse back from one's ratty hands.

for a third once, his half-baked wing chun, which he learnt briefly after watching ip-man, came to value-for-money use.

his lessons had not gone to waste. pe lessons. he picked the loot and ran.

he saved his girl's belongings and duly rewarded with a kiss under the mid-autumn moon.

Only Hot, Creamy China Dates For Me

Once in a while you read an article on the newspaper and feel compelled to respond to it.

There was one such article, titled "Sorry boys, it's only ACS(I) dates for me", involving a certain Miss Jiang Lai, a former St. Nicholas and ACJC student China-born Singapore PR. It was covered by The New Paper today, prompting me to look for the actual post she made a few days ago.

Basically, to Miss Jiang Lai, Chinese High boys are all ugly, RI boys less ugly, but very boring. Catholic High boys, from her experience with one, are average, repetitive and boring. St Andrews' are wannabes, imitations of ACS(I). And the rest of the boys school, "unmemorable to warrant mention".

I ought to defend my fellow shorts-wearing schoolmates, but it's really not worth spending too much effort on debunking her theories because they are all generalisations.

It's as good as me retaliating with unfair comments about:

St. Nicholas - where many of my family and friends came from -

or

ACJC - whose hockey girls in my time were hawt -

or

PRC girls - whom many have biased opinions of, but I still maintain my personal stand that a lot of them (from the huge sample size in China) are really nice and endearing (and hot, fair and smooth, as long as they shave).

But one subjective opinion I can make about Ms Jiang Lai is that she doesn't belong to the nice, endearing, hot, fair and smooth category of China girls I would love to know.

Shall not describe her physical features

You can decide for yourself if she's anywhere near hot

So, my point is, if you're someone as pleasant-looking and as logical-sounding as Nicole Rebecca Seah.

Nice

Or as hot and creamy as Fan Bing Bing or Zhao Wei, then you do have a beauty-given right to insult us non-ACS(I) boys.

Very nice

Very nice too

But if you're looking like that (see first two images of post), hello-oh, look in the mirror biatch.

Shanghai - Old is Gold

In our season finale of the series Shanghai, we feature the best of Shanghai. The old.

No no no (we know what you're thinking). We're not making fun of old people. Maybe we are of Shanghai.
Shanghai is a state-of-the-art city. And as with all cities, it's been so quickly developed that it seemed to have lost something. We don't see much of Shanghai in Shanghai.

Think of Shanghai and you'll picture the Bund, the Oriental Pearl tower (you know the one that looks like a phallus-looking space shuttle from Austin Powers?).

Dig deeper and you might think of the Expo and the Peace Hotel.

Further deeper, you'll get the Bund (again). Muse2 maybe. Gong Li. John Cusack.

Shanghai of now lacks depth in character. It doesn't have a strong 风味.

It's too cosmopolitan. Just like our island.

And as Yakki went searching for photo moments, only the old caught his eye.

So here we are, paying tribute to the old of Shanghai. The characters that built Shanghai.

Shanghai - Pyjamas and Arts in a Shikumen

魔娜 狸鲨

On our last day in Shanghai, we paid a visit to a transformed shikumen (石库门; pinyin: shíkùmén).

Shikumens are residential buildings whose architectural styles combine Western and Chinese elements, first appearing in Shanghai in the 1860s.

Exit city, enter enclave

Tianzi Fang of Taikang Road (泰康路/田子坊) was one such area found in the French Concession of Shanghai. As the city developed over the years, this particular shikumen has retained some of its essence despite being redeveloped into a little art enclave littered with shops art, cafes art, everything trying to be art.

Tianzi Fang's kinda overran by tourists. Located in the center of the city, it is subjected to a relentless number of DSLRs at almost any time of the day. Art pieces tend to repeat in every alternate shop.

I have a preference for 798 Artzone in Beijing, where it is less crowded by visitors and more populated with genuine art lovers.

Of course, Tianzi Fang does exude some Shanghai flair with residents displaying their own form of art.

Underwear hung anywhere and everywhere

But the cynical us doubt the authenticity of their pyjamas parade.

Likely a marketing ploy to unique-fy the place.

Still, at least Shanghai has an art zone.

I think Singapore ought to have one of its own or does have one, but we've not been there.

Wondering where where where

Anyone knows of such a place?

Don't say Esplanade ah.

Shanghai - Food Review

I think we're forcing ourselves a little to make our Shanghai review complete by talking about the food.

Stuff going into Hotpot at 豆捞

I'm not a foodie. Yakki's only slightly more into food than me and his palate is only responsive to all things bread-y than Shanghainese.

Thankfully, we had our food-wine guru Xiao Long Bao with us.

Xiao Long Bao shortlisted the eateries and restaurants for us and 滴水洞饭店 was my favourite with its famed pork ribs cooked in some spicy way.

The most exotic thing we had in Shanghai was the snake soup at 保罗酒楼 which was shark's fin soup without shark's fin, but with snake meat. Very 补. Makes your snake roar, you know what I mean.

Not the snakes we ate. Some little edible frogs Yakki saw.

And we all agreed that the most memorable dish we had was the Foie Gras in Chinese Broth at Jade on 36 at Shangri-La.

A pity we didn't take a good photo of it because Yakki's fingers were constantly covered with bread crumbs.

Aside from the amazing breads, lamb and the foie gras, the rest of the food at Jade on 36 was, well, disappointing for its exorbitant prices (we paid approx. 200 sgd each, excluding the wine, which by the way sucked to the tuck). We consoled ourselves by reminding one another that we were paying for the fantastic Bund view (again, no photos as Yakki went into hibernation mode past 10pm).

Overall food experience in Shanghai. So so for me, Yakki had his bread craving satisfied at Jade on 36, while Xiao Long Bao had all the jian baos he'd been wanting.

Shanghai - Happy Valley

Done with the Expo after two days, we were geared up for more queuing at Shanghai's Happy Valley (欢乐谷) theme park.

So hawt!

But blessed by the scorching sun and having half-conquered the Expo, the crowd in Happy Valley appeared small.

Good Wood: The first is always the best

Photo Source: FlyingScot

I reckon we took about 7-8 rides in the 4 hours we were there, so that's a decent achievement.

No screams on this one, just yawns

However, averaging one every half hour also meant that we were turning insensitive to every turn, curve and thrust the ride gave us.

Still, knowing that the rides were made in China added extra thrill to the whole experience. And yet, Xiao Long Bao claimed that the rides were just above average.

So, we told him to forget about going to Universal Studios.

Bye Bye!

Shanghai - Singapore Expo-sed!

Ooh we're tumbling down

We're spiralling
Ooh, tied up to the ground
We're spiralling

Photo Source: AFP

Tune into an Urban Symphony. That is the theme of the Singapore Pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai.

We arrived at the Singapore Pavilion, having seen Angola, Brazil and Canada pavilions. There was a happy feel around the Singapore Pavilion with hawker favourites and local "produce" such as Roti Prata, Laksa, Eu Yan Sang products being sold in the vicinity.

We were really proud and expectant when we flashed our red passports to cut the long queue into the exhibit area.

Until we entered the area, that is.

Before I continue, I have to apologise for the lack of original photos. Yakki refused to take any for the Singapore Pavilion.

The concept of an Urban Symphony evoked artsy-ness. You would expect a vibrant kaleidoscope of music, colours and media on the first floor.

Instead, we were treated to low-quality musical displays and plastic-paneled exhibits depicting the costumes of the four races in Singapore. I don't remember seeing any Singaporean Chinese women wearing KTV hostess-styled dresses as a cultural dress-up, but apparently that was what Singaporean Chinese women wore back in the day.

We had a replica of an F1 car randomly placed in the compound, with little fanfare to do justice to the Singapore GrandPrix, the crown jewel in Bernie Ecclestone's F1 circuit. An accompanying STB or F1 video advert or highlights of the past night races could have generated more buzz.

Reusing a 2008 STB video/photo montage would have sufficed

Photo Source: STB

We quickly browsed through the first floor and made our way to the second, hoping for some redemption.

To our delight, there was a queue to the second floor. What were we queuing for? We had no idea. What's next? No one told us anything.

We suffered in the hot weather as the pavilion, despite one of the few non air-conditioned ones, had few windows to allow humane ventilation.

Finally, we entered the auditorium on the second floor. The 8-min feature film was on how Singapore diversified its water resources by applying technology. Maybe not, it was more of an interview, no, it was a lecture by our Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew on the topic.

I love the old man, but it seemed like someone wanted to milk on MM's reputation and popularity in China to enhance the whole pavilion experience. They could have showed an educational video on how NEWater's made or the desalination plants around Singapore or the Marina Barrage. Or how Marina Bay was developed from nothing into the brilliant skyline we have today. Or put on a YOG video.

Anyway, if we had tried to impress the Chinese, we didn't as comments such as "Wake me up when the show's over," or "等了这么久听他胡说什么" were heard in the crowd.

We gave up on the entire Singapore experience and headed for the exit. Except that the only exit was to head up to the 3rd floor and complete YourSingapore experience before you can leave.

Reaching the top of the pavilion, trees, plants and Chinese people engulfed us as we sought for the way out. The view would have been perfect from the roof of the pavilion, but the architect decided that in Singapore, your view should be blocked by trees. You should not have a great view of other countries' pavilions. You should have an inward perspective of the world.

We felt quite disappointed with the whole visit to our country's pavilion. Of the three we visited earlier, Singapore's underwhelmed us. We visited Japan's later on, and they had a 3D-model of a water treatment process, something that we could have placed in our own.

As we left, I overheard a Singaporean remarking that the exhibitions within the pavilion felt very juvenile, very primary school. We couldn't agree more. We went on a complaining marathon about the pavilion.

So, if there's one thing the pavilion did excel in, it stirred the true blue whiny Singaporeans in us. And for all the bad valid reasons.

Shanghai - Expo ABC

As with all things China in recent times, we shall go loud, direct and extravagant on our first post of Shanghai.

The EXPO!

With millions cluttering around China's pavilion, Yakki decided it could not grace his camera

Monday blues usually temper with people's willingness to do anything strenuous like queuing and jostling to enter a pavilion. So, we chose a Monday, 20 Sep, to explore the grounds.

We knew the Expo was going to be crowded, but a brilliant stroke of coincidence in our decision making meant we avoided visiting the Expo a day after Mid-Autumn Festival (23 Sep: highest attendance of 631,100+ visitors).

Still, there were thousands of eager Chinese competing to have their Expo passports chopped at the more illustrious (i.e. expensive) pavilions such as the U.K., Italy, Saudi Arabia, South Korea.

We were never gonna be crowd followers. Instead, we focused on short queues. And short queues alone.

First up was Brazil.

Brasil

The obvious thing for Brazil to do is to showcase their fanaticism of the beautiful game, displaying their fans, their footballers and many balls in one room.

Beside the apparent, they had four huge screens up in the ceiling, depicting the other things the Brazilians were good at. They had footages of a worker in an industrial plant, some agriculture process, kids playing in the neighbourhood to the beat of samba music.

Overall, a decent setup with its exhibits as well as adverts on PetroBras and Vale reflecting the fast-growing Brazilian economy.

Next we arrived in Canada.

Hypnotised

I don't really know how to describe the Canadian pavilion because from the outside it looked so simple, but the inside awed us with inexplicable exhibits.

Somehow, we just knew the Canadians were conveying sustainability, something-eco, something green. Enjoyable and funky, but we don't really know why. Made us wanna migrate to Canada, no?

A is for Angola.

The African nation's pavilion had a very simple layout. Simple exhibits of its people, produce and diamonds. We spent little time in there because we were looking for something extraordinary, something artsy to confound us.

And so we headed to our homeland, the Singapore Pavilion.

Gone Shanghai Returned

Vacations tend to flash by.

Bustling Shanghai didn't beg to differ.

Pudong International Airport - Arriving / Departing

We were there and back almost as if we weren't really there.

The pace of the city and its events gave us no chance to settle, to slow.

Yakki and I were largely separate on our trip to discover. But piecing his photos and my thoughts together, we hope to tell you more about Shanghai than just the Bund and the Expo.

Let the ride begin..