Hello! Tah Jia Hao! Wo tze dao ni men yi ding hen siang wo si ma? =)
Ni men know wo ye hen miss ni men de? argh... shall stop shitting around! hehehe!

Alright Ladies and Gentlemen, I shall update my blog... at last. =)


Commencement
It took us 4 hours to fly from Singapore to Guangzhou, China. I am one of the lucky few to be selected for this attachment in china. I feel really excited and honoured that I’m selected to represent my school and my country. But at the same time I won’t know what to expect for a journey full of new people and culture lies ahead.
Through my past experience I’ve never really been away from home for such a long period of time, but this time it’s going to be 4 weeks away from the comfort zone for all of us. The expectation I have for myself in this trip is to be able to gain new hands on skills, learn how to operate new machines, make new friends, cross culture and most importantly try the local delicacies.

During my working days I will try to make the best out of this attachment, ask questions, be a little busy body on the right issues, make good use of my hands on skills and not be afraid to make mistake for I believe in the mistakes we made we gain knowledge. As for my free days I and my friends will try to travel around the cities and experience the different culture in China. I hope to try the food, talk to the locals whatever I can think of to make this 4 weeks attachment as fruitful as possible.

My view:
Lodging
The hostel that the company provide for us was disastrous it has no:
Entertainment
Peach
Cleanliness
But a lot of mosquitoes.

Entertainment: The hostel is located inside the High Tech Park, behind our hostel there is a skate park for the young but way too messy. The nearest shopping mall is 20mins walk away.
However there are recreation facilities provided for us but none of us is interested.

Peace: As I was saying on the weekends the skate park behind our hostel, the D.J would blast loud music till exactly 11pm and then rest for an hour to continue with the movie marathon till midnight. I suppose no one can find any peace in that kind of environment, neither can my friends?

Cleanliness: Not to mention behind our hostel is a river full of the unknown and a land full of rubbish, literally.

Mosquitoes: with a temperature of 33ºc and a river, how can a female mosquito resist the temptation to breed?

On the second day the mosquitos’ problem has gotten worse, we tried burning coils, spraying repellents but nothing works. We still end up a body full of bites. Our teacher Mr Tan is afraid that all of us might fall sick because the nearby clinic isn’t very effective, I heard that just this April someone died from the glucose treatment because one of the nurse actually insert the wrong needle into the wrong vein. So we decided to move in a nearby hotel.

Hotel
The place is a simple 3 stars hotel; it charges 120RMB per night stay. The surrounding is that we have a shopping mall in front of the hotel, few eating place that serves a variety of Cantonese food and right outside the hotel is a crossroad that is always busy, creating problem like noise pollution.

When the night falls the mall would have a stage set up for the local youngster to show-off their talents, something like our "ke-tai" back in Singapore. To be honest I feel that people staying inside the workers quarter come from some other village or town that has either equal or worse condition. So I guess that’s how they pull it through staying under that kind of condition.

Meals
We settle most of out meals in a nearby eating place; we ate there almost every night. The reason why we remain loyal to this particular eating place is that the taste of food suited most of us and so far none of us had diarrhoea yet.
Working days

On our first working day we report to the company at 8am sharp my friends and I were introduce to everyone in the assembly department by our supervisor Peter. My first impression of the department was that everybody looked very shy and hard to communicate; it makes me feel like a total alien. But after a few weeks of working together and getting to know them I realise that actually most of them are just like our Singaporean friends; they are really fun people to work with and we have interesting experience to share with one another.

We are each assigned to one co-worker who was in charge in guiding us through this attachment.
My co-worker was a interesting man, he is very serious when it comes to work and has a very strong hands-on skill. During our free time we would have a chat and exchanging culture with one another, I told him how Singapore was like, the differences in culture and habit. The food of Singapore and the standards of living. He was amazed and surprise, me too had a culture shock but I had a great time talking to him. The hardest part in communicating them is that all of them speak in a fast pace so I had to listen hard to what they say, So on our first few weeks we had problem understanding them; they too had difficulty understanding us.
Many of them came to us and to find out what exactly is this small dot that is in the map, they were shock to learn that Singapore has only 4 million people that’s not even a size of some of their villages.

My supervisor and co-worker
They are people with very strong hands on skill and they are very willing to teach us as much as they can, they allow me to handle a job independently and in the process I have gain a lot of skills and learn things that are not cover in the textbooks. My job are rather exciting although I have made quite a lot of mistake but that really inspire me to go an extra mile in learning and I’m always looking forward to learn from this attachment for opportunity like these don’t come easily. Our supervisor hopes that by the end if the day we will be able to bring back new knowledge and a new experience, his motto is that "when it’s time to work, work hard and when it’s time to play, play hard. Give you best in whatever you do and never let yourselves and others down."

I have made many friends here but the one I’m closest is my supervisor, Peter. Maybe because our age gap isn’t very big and we work hard and play harder. He is someone whom you will have much to learn from as he has been through a lot of things during his working days. During his free time he like to exercise e.g. basketball, badminton and mountain climbing, surf the net searching on current affairs and have dinner with his close friends. His home town is in Guangdong Huizhou, Bo Lou although we are friends, as my supervisor; I have great respect for him.

Through this trip I have got a chance to know a lot about local culture and see places that I have never seen before.
The people in China take gathering very seriously; most people I have talk to have dinner with their friends almost everyday. I think it’s because with their family both in another province or town it is important to gather and gain supports from one another.

The people here are very active because early in the morning you can see youngster going for basketball game with their friends and most of them stay up till very late before they are willing to go to bed. Well with a dawn that breaks at 6am sharp I believe nobody can sleep later than that. Another thing is that the people here are very hard working; when you enter a shop you will always be greeted with a welcome no matter what and the food they prepare are very special because extra effort was put into preparing them?

To be honest I am not very good in my mother tongue and only speak simple mandarin but I feel that Chinese language is important and useful in China but most Singaporean neglect the importance in Chinese language. Most of the things in China are printed in Chinese character so things get easier if you speak and understand their language be it doing business or on holiday it makes your stay less tedious.

About the province
Guangdong one of the many province in China is located in the east part of China, it is famous for its rich natural mineral e.g. steel and quarts, and the famous Pearl River that flow endlessly throughout the eastern part of China. Our destination Dong guan is one of the 21 cities inside the Guangdong province; this city is located in the centre of Guangdong, with Guangzhou at the north, Fou Shan at the south, Shenzhen at the east and Huizhou at the west. This make Dong guan a very centralise place inside Guangdong.

The major transportation in Guangdong are the train, long distant bus and taxi. The underground train that links to anywhere in China each ticket cost from 10 up to 100RMB depends on the passenger destination, The long distant bus is much slower but each ticket cost from 2 up to 40RMB, the taxi is much faster and easier means of transport in this province. The system is that you name the destination and the driver name the price, so if you have a couple of friends sharing the cost it might be cheaper and faster.

Facts
The factory is located inside a High Tech Park in Chang’ an town, Shangsha Community. The High Tech Park consist of 10 factories (2 of them are Singapore funded) and a total of 20,000 workers’ the park, a workers quarter, recreation facilities, bank, post office, shops, a canteen and a security post. Majority of the company’s businesses involves Mechanical Engineering and Electronics Engineering.

The workers’ quarter is a hostel cater for the workers in the High Tech Park, the building 4 storeys tall. The ground floors are for the males’ workers and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th floor for the females.

The bank that is located inside the park allows workers to deposit their monthly pay or send money back to their home.

The postal office also helps workers to deliver letters to their love ones.

There are a few shops inside this park and they mostly provide services like laundry, letter writing and convenience store that sell the daily necessities.

The canteen is located beside the workers quarter; the huge canteen caters for majority of the workers in the High Tech Park. Food pricing is range between 2RMB to 5RMB. Workers can purchase the food coupon from an office inside the canteen so they don’t have to use cash.
There are recreation facilities provided for the people inside the park. They are basketball, table tennis, badminton and a huge projected screen that show the recent movies and show for everyone to watch.

The security post deploys guards all around the High Tech Park to keep things in the park in control.

Factories surrounding
The surrounding of the High Tech Park is very dull as the nearest shopping mall is 20mins walk away and the traffic outside is very messy; car honk their way out of anything creating noisy pollution. Developing buildings like hotels, apartment and restaurants can be seen all around the park. Eating house located outside the park serves a variety of snacks, dumpling, cold noodles, soup and etc. The security in the area is not very good, advised by the locals not to bring lots of cash around and not to answer your cell phone in the street at night and to be aware of those that look suspicious.

Vacation
There are a few holidays in China but the most important of all is their National Day which is called the Golden Week. It is usually celebrated through a span of 7 days. During my 5 days vacation all of us went to visit the nearby cities, one of the cities we went to was Shenzhen. From our town to Shenzhen is a 2hrs 30mins journey, we will take a cab or bus down to the Chang’an bus interchange then take a long distant coach to Shenzhen.
The metropolitan city is one of the fastest developing cities in China, the place is a lot more develop and the standards of living are much higher compared to the other parts of China. According to our China friends Shenzhen isn’t exactly very safe. Robbery cases are still very common among that area. In this short trip I have learnt how to look out for myself and others, I’m sure I am confident to visit this city by myself in the future. But still have to keep a look out for you belonging.

Well, all this may sound really proper because it is taken from my writen report... well what i didn't add is the girls i got to know in china? dont worry friends that's all, and did i mention really miss my friends and family? food? and some people(Yup!)

and i quarrel with ma friend and lots and lots of stuff? but i must say all my school friends are real cool people, i had fun and stuff... Well most importantly i came back in ONE pieceS?

HOME SWEET HOME.