Today I woke up at 6.45am to continue doing on my homework and assessments. However, it wasn’t pretty much for me to go anywhere in Wuhan. And the temperature was seemed to be increased and getting hotter and hotter every day. At about 8.30am, I went down to Canteen 2 and had a light breakfast before I set off from the campus. After that, I walked out of the campus and crossed over to the opposite to take a bus, bus no 901 to Guang Bu Tun. Although I was decided to go to Hanyang once again but I remembered what Mr Chua told me that I had to be back at 3pm sharp for group photo taking. So ended up, I decided to go to Guang Bu Tun and looked for wireless optical mouse. After I had boarded into the bus, I saw some of the local passengers including the children were vomiting in the bus. One of them was vomited right in front of me while I was standing and holding the hand grip. Fortunately, the passenger who vomited was not facing me but still my shoes had the smell of it. When the moment I reached Guang Bu Tun, I quickly dropped off from the bus and went to the nearest toilet to clean my shoes. Next, I walked out along the street, and I saw most of the shops were not opened yet. So I went to one of the computer malls there and fortunately most of the shops had opened as their operating hours was from 9am to 5pm. By the time I got in, it was 9.20am. Then, I went around the mall and searched for wireless optical mouse at the lowest price. Later, I was passed by a shop at level 3 and went inside to ask for the price of Logitech wireless optical mouse. And one of the shop assistants who recommended me on both items but different brand with same product. One of them was cost at $200 RMB while the other was cost at $660 RMB. After what the shop assistant told me about the recommendation on those both items, so I was deciding to buy the one at $200 RMB. However, I had a difficulty during the payment as I told the shop owner that I needed to have foreign currency exchange from SGD to RMB. Then, the shop assistant asked her boss whether could bring me to go the bank for exchanging the currency. After she got approved the permission from her boss, she bought me to the nearest Bank of China. By the time when we reached the bank, the bank assistant told us that the bank couldn’t allow doing the transaction so ended up recommending us to try another bank for it. After we went so many banks, we managed to find one of the branches in Zhou Dao Quan, where was just kilometers away from Guang Bu Tun. By the time when we got inside the bank, the misfortunate that we met was the identification of ours. As we didn’t bring it along with us, we couldn’t proceed doing the transaction by the bank. So ended up, we were wasting our trip for it. After that, I went to have lunch at the shopping mall nearby in Guang Bu Tun. At about 1.30pm plus, I decided to take a bus, bus no 901 back to the campus as there was nothing much places to go in Guang Bu Tun area. When I reached the campus outside, I saw no one reached outside the main gate. As I was waiting for them outside the gate, the first person I saw was Mr Ma and followed by Mr Chua. At 3pm, we three of us were still waiting for the rest to have a group photo taking. About 5-10 minutes later, the first group that we saw was Sebastian’s group as they were back by taking the cab from Lu Xiang. Later, we saw more and more of my classmates had reached and all of us taken group photo before we went to School of Foreign Language for closing ceremony. After had taken group photo, I went back to the hostel together with my roommate, Shaoming and Mr Ma for bringing the fireworks items to the School of Foreign Language building outside. Later, I decided to help up for the closing ceremony and left first from the hostel. When I reached the school, I saw Mr Chua was playing table tennis with Professor An, the Dean of School of Foreign Language. They were playing as most of my classmates were helping to set up the ceremony. After that, we were waiting for the local students to be released from their lesson at 5.30pm before we could have the closing ceremony together with them. At about 6pm plus, most of them had reached and the ceremony was started. As Sebastian and Hwee Ping were chosen as the English and Chinese hosts, they were started to rehearse together while Ben was taking as the host lead for the whole ceremony. During the ceremony, we had played some games with the local students and enjoyed our last interaction with them as well. At about 7.30pm, there was fireworks display outside the school and it was the last part before the ceremony completely ended. From there, I could see most of local students had enjoyed themselves playing the fireworks sticks. Although, we didn’t play much with it, but I could see they were enjoying themselves happily than us. Before we were going to light up the large fireworks set, one of the school security guards came to us and stopped us from lighting it. He told us that he didn’t been informed and we didn’t seek the permission for it. Then, to our curious and concern, Mr Chua went to approach him that we had been approved the permission by the staffs of School of Foreign Language before we bought the fireworks from the shop outside. So ended up we waited for 20 minutes discussion before we lighted up on it. After displaying the fireworks, we exchanged our contacts and had some photo taking before all of us left to have our dinner. After the local students had made their move, my roommate, Shaoming and I went to have our dinner at the usual place outside and we saw Siew bo and some of our classmates were eating at there. As for today, I observed that the local students were enjoying themselves happily especially when they played with fireworks sticks. Although in Singapore, fireworks couldn’t be sold according to the rules given and the safety priority, we couldn’t have a chance on playing them. However in China, even with safety concern, people used to enjoy and play them whenever there was an event or ceremony held.
Banana pie in Macdonalds..
Street basketball
A signboard that shows no hitting on machine
Mr Chua and Mr Ma are waiting for the rest of the class to have photoshot
Still no one comes.
Last shot of library
Last shot of basketball match
Last shot of the school building that we attended for class
Welcome banner
Mr Ma looks happy.
Mr Ryan is singing a song.
Talent time.
Distributing firework sticks
Day 42 April 14
Today, I woke up at 6.15am to do wash up and started packing up on my luggage. And it was the last day in Wuhan before leaving to Singapore at 10.30 am sharp. At about 8.20am plus, my roommate, Shaoming and I went down to Canteen 2 to have our breakfast. When we reached the canteen, we saw Mr Ma, Mr Chua and Mr Ryan (one of the WUST coordinators) had their breakfast together. As we were walking to the stall, we saw there was a weighting machine which brought by Mr Ryan for weighting our luggage. After we had taken our breakfast, we went to the hostel and had the luggage weight with Mr Ryan and Mr Ma. Then according to Mr Ryan’s suggestion, we began to weight from level 5 to level 1 in every of our hostel rooms. As the weighting process took place, most of our luggage had not been exceeded 30 kg each. Otherwise there would have some certain amount to be charged if exceeding the weight limit. At about 9.45am, Siew bo, Shaoming and I decided to carry our luggage down first before the rest started to carry down at the same time. While we three of us were waiting for the rest at the ground level, Siew bo and I went to buy some screen protectors at the province shop in Canteen 2 and left Shaoming for helping us to take care of our luggage there. When we were buying screen protectors, some of them cost us $5 RMB each and others cost about $3RMB each as well. After buying them, we saw our group member, Jeremy together with one of the local students at the province shop buying ice-cream. Then, we left them behind and headed back to the meeting point. Along our way back, we saw there were some staffs and students doing their workout at outside of the Administration building. It was just begun and we managed to have a look on their workout exercises. After that, we headed back to the meeting point and waited for the bus to be arrived. As we were waiting, Mr Chua needed help on carrying his luggage there so Shaoming and I together went to his hostel room for helping up. Later, when we were our way back to the meeting point, Mr Ma came to us and asked where we had been. So we told him that we were given our help to carry Mr Chua’s luggage. Next, Mr Ma was seemed to be worried about the bus arrival, so Mr Ma and I went to check whether the bus has reached somewhere the area. As we saw the bus had reached outside the School of Information Engineering building, the bus driver told us that he couldn’t drive into the parking area as there was having some road site. So ended up as the final conclude, we had to carry our luggage up ourselves for the sake of the time. Before we boarded the bus, I saw some of the local students like Tom and Alex who sent us from there. When it was about the time, we boarded into the bus and set off to Wuhan Airport from the campus. During that time, I saw Alex, the local student who stood aside and started to cry. When most of us saw him cried, I found that I had the same feeling as what he had. After 45-50 minutes of the bus travelling, we had reached the Wuhan Airport finally. Later, while we got in the airport, and I saw Mr Ma was talking to one of the local people. So I thought that the local people was also a friend of Mr Ma but lately I found she was not and her name was Zhang Xi, also one of us in the same batch from ECE. After we exchanged our contacts, I left the others first and went to have lunch with Shaoming and Siew bo. As we were looking the place for our lunch, we found that the food in Airport was quite expansive than outside. So ended up, we waited until 1.40pm with our empty stomach. In the middle of waiting, we saw Yongxin coming towards us and told that Mr Chua was giving us a lunch treat. After hearing the unexpected news, we quickly went there and took a sit in the restaurant. Then, we began to eat after Mr Chua bought us a plate of fried rice each. At about 1.30pm plus, we went to the meeting point and waited for our luggage to check in. At about 1.45pm, we walked towards the check-in section and queued as a group. Then, I saw there were some students from Ngee Ann Polytechnic and I found that were some familiar faces which I had seen before, lately I knew that they were from Building & Environment division. After checking in, we went to B11 gate and waited for our flight to be registered. About 20-25 minutes later, I saw there was a bus travelling along the running track outside the airport. But unexpectedly, the transport that we were boarding was the bus, so we thought that we were sort of being cheated by taking the bus instead of airplane. Later, I found that this bus was bringing us to where the airplane located. And I saw the size of the airplane was not really in normal as others, it was much smaller to carry up to 70-80 passengers. After 2 hours of flight, we had reached Guangzhou Airport at 5.45pm and from there, we had to transfer another airplane before we could reach Singapore. So we quickly rushed down to collect our luggage at the ground level. After that, we were being rushed to check in our luggage for our next flight. And Mr Chua told us to walk fast so that we could check-in as fast as possible before we were going to board on the next flight. After had done our check-in, we quickly rushed to register for our flight at the A16 gate. As we were on our way, Shaoming decided to buy a soft toy of panda as a gift to his friend. At the same time, I decided to spend all my RMB currency for buying some local snacks home. After we had done buying, we went to register our flight at the gate of A16 and boarded into the airplane. While we were inside the airplane, we were been informed according to the estimated timing to reach Singapore for 4 hours. At about 10.30pm, the airplane had finally landed the destination and we were given our claps loudly as our praise to the pilot. After that, we dropped off from the airplane and went to take an informal group photo as our memorable for the OIP trip. Later, we went to duty-free shop and bought some hard liquor and wine for my family. From there, I immediately went to collect my luggage and met my mother and my sister at the Terminal 1 in Changi Airport. As for today, it was the end of OIP trip. Although I found that this program could be recommended to any students. Money wasn’t the main issue as it was something that I could learn and gain at the same time. Through this trip, not only I made a lot of new friends in China but I also had learnt to be more independently without supporting by my parents. During the OIP in China, I also had the opportunity to experience on the living between in China and in Singapore. Until the very end, I found that being as a Singaporean, I was much fortunate than those people who live in China. I hope there would have this kind of OIP offered next time.
Time for checkout.
This room where Mr Chua and his wife are staying
The day we left for Singapore
Wuhan Airport
