Shenyang. Jun 2014 In all the neighbourhood night street markets, you can always see a biscuit stall. I didn't try too many Chinese biscuits during my ten years in China mainly because I am not a biscuit guy. But my observation is that they are big on quantity and size compared to the supermarket ones,... Continue Reading →
Oct 2014. Shenyang I once had to get some trophies for a business game I was organising for the office. Normally this was purchased by the office but this time the quantities were low and so we decided to organise it ourselves. I went downtown with my German colleague to the trophy stores. The process... Continue Reading →
Nov 2014. Shenyang There was never a strong necessity for me to cook in my Singaporean life. That changed when I moved to Shanghai in 2009. Then when I moved to Shenyang in 2014, cooking really became a necessity. So I started cooking more. On some weekends, I would invite friends over, cooked the curries... Continue Reading →
Sep 2014. Shenyang When I first came to China in 2009, I lived the expatriate life in Shanghai, visiting restaurants catered for foreigners. When I joined BMW and moved to Shenyang in 2014, I lived like a local. That's when I saw daily life in China in a different light. There were many cold winter... Continue Reading →
Sep 2014. Beijing Bringing people together to find solutions to cope with change is a huge part of my job and workshops are a very effective tool to achieve that. Organising workshops is therefore a regular part of my work. For this workshop, I pulled out a dozen senior managers for half-a-day from their desks... Continue Reading →
Sep 2014. Shenyang No smoking. No inflammable objects. No poisonous materials. No radioactive materials. No vendors. No begging. No commercial goods. No loitering. No pets. A public notice in a Shenyang train station. No different from Singapore, where we have as many of these dos and don'ts. Plus one more. No durians. You might thing... Continue Reading →
Sep 2014. Shenyang One weekend I followed my neighbours to visit their son at a local university called Shenyang Normal University. We walked around the campus and I was surprised to see that it was like a self-contained small town inside the campus. We then had lunch in the canteen and there was this instant... Continue Reading →
Sep 2014. Shenyang No, I didn't become a Chinese just because I lived in China for ten years. I don't think that happens even if I had stayed there for twenty years. But what did happen is that I had developed a good sense of understanding and respect for the Chinese people and their ways... Continue Reading →
Aug 2014. Shenyang One day I was in downtown for my weekly shopping when I came across a crowd looking at a long banner on a public road. A guy was apparently airing his grievances in public which is not something you do or can do commonly in China. I was surprised that the authorities... Continue Reading →
Aug 2014. Shenyang Covering an area of 60,000 square meters, the Shenyang Imperial Palace is one twelfth the size of the Forbidden City in Beijing, consisting of more than 300 rooms and 20 courtyards. It combines the architectural features of the Han, Manchu and Mongol peoples. Besides the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Shenyang Imperial... Continue Reading →