Mar 22, 2010

Welcome Slide

Deputy Principal of NP, Mr Foo See Meng


Deputy Principal giving his speech

Deputy Principal taking pictures with the ECE students

Today our lessons starts at 1pm so I slept till around 11.30pm and head to 堕落街 to have breakfast with Cynthia as the others had their breakfast at Macdonald earlier on. As Cynthia and I wanted to have more time to sleep, we decided not to follow the group. We had porridge and dumplings for breakfast and we strolled to our classrooms as we have sufficient time. We arrived quite early and settled down. We noticed that many of our classmates are busy wiping their tables with tissues so out of curiosity, we asked them about it and we were told that the tables were very dusty. It dirtied many of our laptop casings so we also followed them and wiped our tables. Our tissues were black with dust and we were grossed out. We wiped several times and still dare not place our laptops directly on the tables. Today’s lessons are about setting up business in china. We were told about Joint Venture, Government, Special Economic Zones, the advantages and disadvantages of doing business in china. The advantage is the cheap labor and the upcoming market. The disadvantage is the language barrier as the language for business is mainly in English. Also, the conversation topics business partners have. China people normally will not say No to their business partners directly. Even if there are problems in the project, they will not say there are problems but they will say that they can solve it. We are also told about the things not to do to china people such as not touching your Chinese colleagues or pat them on the shoulder as it is very rude and we should not look straight into the eyes of our colleagues or elders as it is considered inpolite. After that, our deputy principal, Mr Foo See Meng, from Ngee Ann Polytechnic came to visit us in Wuhan and he talked to us for 15mins. He was very friendly and funny, not the kind of type we expect from normal principals who are normally very stern. We also took photos with him and talked to him about our stay here. After he left, we continued lessons till 4plus and head back to our dorms to rest a while before heading out to have dinner. We discussed about what to eat on our way to 建设二路 and we decided to have steamboat as it is freezing outside due to the rain and strong winds. We activated our winter jackets and it's still cold outside. We head to the steamboat restaurant and the service there is excellent. The utensils are wrapped in plastic and our coats are covered with a bag to prevent it from getting dirty. I think it's due to the price we pay that's why we are getting such services. The food there is considered expensive to the locals but to us, after the conversation rate, it's considered affordable. The 6 of us spent RMB$308 on a dinner which i feel is quite expensive for the locals. After our expensive and luxurious dinner, we went to buy breakfast at the bakery nearby and head back to hostel to rest.

Me with our Deputy Principal

Personal Reflection:

I feel that we over reacted about the table issue and we should not keep wiping the tables in front of the china teacher as this may put us in a bad light that Singapore students are over hygienic and are too pampered that we cannot make do with just dust and dirty tables. I think we are not used to such things as in Singapore, everything in our schools are in good conditions and cleaned regularly. Thus, it leads to us being overly cleaned from young and we cannot accept having dusty tables as we find it hard to concentrate and it distracts us. I am also impressed with the china students for being able to study in such conditions and they still do not get distracted unlike us.

Me & Ron at the steamboat place

Me posing with the cups at the steamboat restaurant

Steamboat!!! =D