Beijing!

Capital of China, cultural hub. home to Beijing Roast Duck, the '08 Olympic stadium and most importantly, the very place where 15 of us chose to spend our Chinese New Year Holiday!

this time around, rather than blogging everything in a systematic and chronological order, i think i'll simply blog about things that left an impression on me(in no particular order of importance).


Beijing Roast Duck

How can anyone come to Beijing and not eat this world renown dish?! Being the glutton that i am, i happily indulged myself in Peking ducks 2 consecutive days in a row! and to those of you still wondering, its lunch, lunch, dinner!

Prior to coming to Beijing, i still remember Kelvin reminding me to try out Quan(1) Ju(4) De(2) duck restaurant, where every roast duck comes with its own certification! in fact, Kelvin wasn't the only one who mentioned this restaurant to me. a good number of friends recommended it to me as well. and so it was, with abated breadth and excitement that i tried my very first taste of QJD roast duck and boy was it .... disappointing.

it wasn't so much the taste of the duck i guess, but the overall eating experience as a whole. oh well, at least i did get to keep one of the certificates. kinda like a "been there, done that" thingy.

The second restaurant however, was a completely different story! Da(4) Tong(2) might not have as many branch as QJD, but hey, if PM Goh went there and said it was good, it can't be that bad! and true enough, it was really really good!

after we ordered our 3 roast ducks, we were pleasantly surprised when we were invited to visit the back kitchen and choose our own ducks. i was like "HUH?! you mean i can do that?"
upon entering the kitchen, we were greeted by the MASTER CHEF, who assisted us in choosing 3 plump juicy roasted ducks! the fact that we were treated as VIPs really set the entire mood right =)

next up, when the roasted ducks were served, we were taught the 3 ways of eating Beijing roast duck! this is a far cry from QJD, where the waiter merely told us: "just eat it any way you like". and to wrap things up, they threw in free dessert for all of us, a fruit platter and chewing gum right at the end.

no prize for guessing which roast duck restaurant i'll be introducing my friends to go to from now on.


interpersonal comm.

the title very much summarises it i suppose? on my part i know for a fact that i need to watch what i say. being too direct and honest isn't a good thing all the time when it comes to building interpersonal relationship.

slow to speak, slow to judge.


fireworks

it was the very first thing to herald our arrival in Beijing. from the moment our plane taxi-ed onto the runway, we could see fireworks lighting up the night sky. as we travelled along the expressway in our coach, towers of multicolored pyro colored our pathway, welcoming us to the capital of China.

being the singaporeans that we are(ie: nvr play fireworks before), we bought and played fireworks almost every night! the sounds, the sights, and of course, who can forget our little unexpected accident?

memories i will always keep with me =)

getting late for now; think i'll conclude here for today. more to come tomorrow!