happy vesak day, everyone! today is vesak day, so i'm taking vegetarian food. tomorrow's a public holiday back at home, but not here in china. the communist government didn't allow religions in society, because society was not supposed to have "segregations". everyone was to be the same. so poor me gotta work. :( i went over to pudong over the weekend, and stayed over at noelle's place. shanghai is "divided" into 2 parts by the huang pu jiang. puxi is where i stay. pudong is an area newly developed by the government about 10 years ago, and from an old swampy area, it has become the financial and business centre of the shanghai. it is where the famous "pearl of the orient" as well as many architecturally impressive buildings, like one of the world's tallest building, jin mao tower, is situated. the buildings of many big corporations are situated in pudong. think "shenton way", but 10 times more impressive. friday night was a good night to view the night sky of pudong, as the sky was very clear. the buildings impressed from every angle i looked, and i took a lot of photographs. i really hope the photographs turned out nicely, otherwise the whole roll of film will be full of not nice pictures of the same scenes and buildings. argh! i went up to the pearl of the orient on saturday night. liwei the "rich" tourist paid 50 yuan to take a lift up 263 metres to view the night sky, but the sky was quite cloudy that night, and i didn't managed to see a clear night sky of the whole of shanghai. quite a pity, actually. but what i saw was enough to totally impress me. no wonder they say china is a rising dragon, and shanghai is the "head" of the dragon. standing up there, as far as i could see was the whole of the shanghai city. and i could feel an irresistible beat to it - the city's alive! bright lights from across the bund, ships cruising along huang pu jiang, cars running through the busy highways, neat green and grey lands of the well-planned city - the whole city really seems to be surging forward - impressive! i felt so small standing up there, like a speck of dust. and liwei the minister-to-be felt rather worried for singapore. if this is the kind of competitor we have to face, then we really have to buck ourselves up. especially if the government is depending on graduates like me... hurhur, let's hope not. i chatted a bit with a girl ES brought home this morning. ES had taken part in an AIESEC gathering in shanghai on saturday, and this gal from beijing, joyce, came up with ES, to get a bit of sleep (yar, i think it's only sleep). joyce must be academically very smart, because she managed to get into one of the best universities in china, bejing university. and she was really impressive from the way she carried and articulated herself. confident and clear. she had her own strong opinions and views on almost everything, from how it feels to be an undergraduate facing expectations from society, to the differences between korean and japanese girls. i felt like a stupid teenager when i talked to her, but she was the one who's 2 years younger. she even managed to get ES to shut up and listen to her... wahaha, must really learn this skill from her. i think she's typical of her generation of young chinese women, confident, articulated, knowledgeable and extremely street-smart. and she is pretty. woah! erm, looking at myself, self-conscious, introverted, and slow to adapt, i again really hope that 1) i am not typical of the young women in my country, and 2) the country is not depending on people like me. more than ever, i feel that there are a lot of things i have to pick up and learn.