So Begins My China (dENiZEN) Story...

And it's finally here, my musings on this dENiZEN campaign in China!!! It's been an awesome awesome month, and I know it's not just for me, but for a lot of people as well. Work is going well for BFF Denzel, things are going well for Mint, life is good to me, and quite a few people got proposed to yes? (I truly feel happy for her that she is getting married btw ^^)

 So the energies this month has been good vibes so far. Which is great~ 

Let's start backtracking...

 

 Ah~ Pu Dong is the name for Shanghai's International Airport. 

I only only really started to feel the excitement and the adrenalin AFTER I touched down in Shanghai. Maybe cos I was travelling alone so there wasn't anyone to help excite me (I'm hardly very excitable...too calm and collected lol. Mint was just saying there isn't much that can phase me). And it suddenly hit me after I landed. WHOA I'm in SHANGHAI BAYBEE~~~~~~~

The first person I met was this petite little girl with long black hair that's half her height - Xining. She spoke to me in perfect English, and after a while I started talking to her in Mandarin, because I feel like I'm cheating her if I speak to her in English when I can speak Mandarin perfectly well. Lol. Dunno why.

Then when she realized I could speak Putonghua (普通话/中文/华语）she stopped speaking to me in English. Mother tongues are always more comfortable I suppose. =D

 

 She handed me this, which would allow me to keep myself connected with the world, except for Facebook, Twitter, Blogger & Youtube which were banned in China. -.-" 天啊~ that literally means almost ALL my social media platforms!!!!

Luckily for me, they were gonna get me VPNs. VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, and it kinda links your device to an external server (so if you're on China Unicom or Starhub/M1/Singtel, you will be rerouted to some external, probably US/French/Hongkong server) and your data transfer happens there. This means that whatever you do will bypass your own country's server. THUS! I would still be able to connect and post updates on my SMNs!

Btw, if you're using Path, you don't have to worry abt VPNs, as Path can somehow post ur updates onto Twitter and Facebok by bypassing China's server. Don't ask me how. I'm no tech whiz. Just know it works. Downside is you can't log onto Twitter/FB to reply, that's all.

Heading to my room to settle myself down before dinner! I love hotel rooms~!!! They're always so clean and nice and made up and I never have to make my own beds! Hee~~ More hotel stays for me please!!! (Pssst...I miss Oasia already...>,<)

You know on the Immigration Form, you have to fill up where you will be staying at during your stay in China? I didn't know which hotel I was going so I just wrote Shanghai hotel, like some hotel in Shanghai la. Turned out the hotel I was going to was really called "Shanghai Hotel". Lol~ Trivia.

Sidetrack! My loot from Changi Airport before I hopped onto my plane! 

My DKNY Be Delicious was running out, and I needed new fragrances! Been eyeing the Fresh Blossoms for the longest time, so I bought it! BUT! The saleswoman intro-ed this to me and I was immediately smitten....

Love this THE MOMENT I SNIFFED IT! Few perfumes have that effect on me. This was when I KNOW I will have to get it. Early birthday present to self. Not available anywhere outside of airport. =)

_________________________

For dinner I was brought to this place called 辛香汇, and my first meal in China was amayzeeeng~ Though it consisted of strange-shaped glutinous rice and dried chilli soup.

 More glutinous rice. In a bamboo container this time, and tasted different from the former.

 看了都流汗~

 Not for the faint-hearted, but if you can take spice, this was actually kinda good!

By the way, the English name for this restaurant is called Spicy Joint. 辛(xin), other than meaning tough, like 辛苦(xinku), which means life's hard, 辛 also means spicy. 香(xiang) means fragrant. 汇(hui) means coming together. Makes sense now?

 Almost all the restaurants I went to in China gave free packets of tissues. (Why here no have?)

This one had their chopstick wrapped, and gave packs of free wet & dry tissue to each patron. Good~~~

I didn't get to meet Anish until after dinner, as his flight in was supposed to be late at night. The next morning, we began our first task together - go to the JWT Shanghai office for a meeting.

JWT Shanghai is the advertising company in charge of this dENiZEN project. And I absolutely loved their office. This is how a creative environment should look like:

 Seriously, I wouldn't mind working here.

 Their chillax corner. Looks like a cafe. And those cow chairs argh!!!!! I want!!!

These are fake dessert and food items at their "cafe counter", which is really, the reception area. I really thought they were real food!!!! 

 Waiting while everyone's getting ready for lunch & the shoot which would happen later in the day!

And for those not following my tweets or Facebook page (WHY????!!!!!), you probably haven't met Anish. Say hi!

 Anish is a famous cool DJ from Goa, India, and he gets invited across the world to play at cool clubs!

Which reminds me of Nicole Chen. Remember her? I went for the Visa Hong Kong Super Shopper with her and her sister Celeste last September? She's also a DJ and she too gets invited to play internationally. PAid to travel. And they earn much more than cabin crew.... Travel AND party fannatics, you know which line to go into...

Throw on a jacket n I'm good to go~

 Anish doing his kungfu stunts in his photoshoot.

 This is just one of JWT Shanghai's awards... Don't believe?

 A whole shelf of them. Whoa~~~ Don't mess with them. Lol~

As we head for lunch, I saw a huge line of people as I got out of the lift:

!!!!!!!

I've never seen people QUEUING for the lifts before! I mean, come on, have you ever gone to Cineleisure on a weekend night and tried to get into a lift? Usually if we just arrived and there's like a herd of people waiting for (their 3rd unsucessful full) lifts we'd usually just try to wriggle and sneak into the nearest open lift right? *guilty* Here they actually QUEUE! This is not the usual China as I know it! *impressed*

Edamame!!! Anish has never eaten this before in his life, and put the whole thing into his mouth and chewed on it!!!! Haha!!! You're supposed to push the bean out from the pod! Yummm! 

Da Long Bao. Lol. Or did they call it Da Man Tou? It's supposed to have soup inside like the Xiao Long Baos, but they forgot to add the soup? According to the crew the ones they usually had were much soupier!!! Failed batch? 

Well, gives me a reason to come back I guess? For the soupy ones. =D

我吃你我吃你我吃你！！！

 

Bo zup. (No juice)

Sam Zam Ba!!! Prepare to die fat. But I'm eating you anyway. (Oh so sinful help~)

Meet Sandra!!! She's one of those I got closer to as the trip goes by. She's kinda like my elder sister in this trip, chatting with me about anything and everything. And she's probably the only person other than Mint who was given permission to go through the ENTIRE CONTENTS on my phone, including my, eh hem, scandalous pictures. Lol. 

Eh what?! I have scandalous pictures too okay! 不要小看我！Hahaha~

And we head to a newly opened dENiZEN store to pick out clothes we'll need for our upcoming shoots!

Do I look happy or what? ^=^

Trust me, if you were given as many dENiZEN items as I was, you would be grinning like me. 

And this is kinda spontaneous, but I'm kinda thinking of doing a giveaway for all you loyal readers who are still here despite me being quite missing-in-action for the past month. 

Keep a lookout for it okay! I'll arrange my luggage (yes I've not unpacked...hur hur) and let you guys know what I will be giving away soon! Love me? I know I love you guys! ^.^

Afterwards we head to this place in Shanghai I NEVER KNEW EXISTED. I mean, despite having been an air stewardess for 3 years and been to Shanghai countless times, this was a famous place that when I got there, I went "WTH What on Earth have I been doing in those years I was supposedly "seeing the world"???? I saw more hotel rooms than anything else I think....

The Bund. 

It's a famous popular waterfront touristy area (kinda like Singapore's Boat Quay minus the pubs and bars) which runs along Huangpu River in the eastern part of the Huangpu district. More precisely, it's at East-1 ZhongShan Road (东一中山路？）

That's our able camera op/editor Dalton, shooting me taking a picture of him shooting me. 

And he's holding a camera I've been eyeing. Okay I've been eyeing the 5D. Hmm which one's better for DSLR Noobs? =P I want to invest in one so I might be able to take better pictures for your enjoyment. And of course my keepsake. 

You know, I never really complain much about shoots and how tiring/hard/tough/hot it is (maybe just whine a bit, but I'll never do a Diva), because the hardest job lies with the guys holding the cameras. We suffer, they suffer too, and many times a lot more than we do, just to get a good footage. Which brings me to my next maybe-irrelevant point, but I still want to say this: 

I hate having to edit videos and stick to time limits and THEN HAVING TO THROW AWAY GOOD FOOTAGE WHICH TOOK SO MUCH EFFORT TO FILM!!!!!! 

Annoying, but it happens. RAH!!!~~!!!

Okay it's off my chest. Next. 

A hair-raising moment. Nah it's just the wind. You do know that right?

Next pictures are interesting. No prizes for guessing correctly my (tried-to-be-inconspicuous) focal points.

我pose! 再pose! 

Okok give you guys a proper one. 

Temperature here was at  comfortable 18-20°C. Compare that to home when evenings these days can go up to 30ºC. Then wonder why I was smiling like that in the picture.

太。爽。了。

Dalton's just taking videos of me taking pictures of Anish, but I wonder if Dalton knows he's in these pictures too... =D

Anish told me about this cool app called PhotoSynth which could take panorama pictures. 

Yup, and I made them my subject of interest in that one! ^.^

Many historical financial institutional buildings from places like the UK, US, France, Russia, Italy etc. line the stretch. (The Bund lies within the Shanghai International Settlement). For the whole list of buildings here and their history, check wikipedia. Or Google. I'm not going to bore you with historical facts. >.<

Just know this place is stunning. Especially in the evenings...

Me trying to catch a nice shot with the wind in my hair. Fail.

Not quite it....

 FAILFAILFAILFAILFAIL!!! Give up. I'm gonna end off with Kit's (our official photographer) amayzeeng pictures....

Madly in love with this shot. Except that Anish looks like he's walking REALLY strangely. 

Still, I love this shot. ;)