Localizing

Today I undertook a very challenging task - buying a local SIM card so that I can make calls or sms locally. Oh my gosh... it was so much harder than I thought (their powerful mandarin was another obstacle).*Plegh*

My driver brought me to a local China Mobile shop, something like an M1, Starhub or Singtel shop in Spore.

First, when I entered the shop, there's no one to greet or help you. That's alright, so I went to one of the guys who was selling handphones at one side to ask. He pointed vaguely and spoke superfast in his powerful chinese to go to a kiosk at a corner to pick a number and then proceed to the counter to make the purchase.

Ok, that sounded simple enough, so I went to the kiosk he pointed out,


only to find a couple in front of me choosing a number, I presume. So I waited... and waited .... and waited.. until abt 20 mins later when they finally chose their number and proceeded to the counter. I was thinking to myself why the heck did they take so long... only to find out myself. And it doesn't help that everything was in Chinese!!!!

I took abt 25 minutes just to decide which one to get!! And even then, I wasn't sure if that's what I was looking for.
I was just so fed up with the process that I just got a number for one of the many kinds of SIM card/service they have and proceed to the counter to ask more thoroughly.
And even at this stage I still wasn't sure what it was they were talking about. I was so frustrated that I just took whatever sounds ok. *Sigh*

Well, that was a very challenging 1st task for the day. The next experience was so much more enjoyable, something that I love to do in Spore - visiting IKEA!!! It was huge, I would think it's something like the one at Tampines. Well, that made my day.. *Grin*

Next was a meeting with our agent to try to resolve the issues in our apartment. Here are some pictures that I took today when I went back to the apartment.

The main lobby of our block...

The living room

The dining area (with the off-coloured shelves and cabinet)

The kitchen... (sooo much bigger than the one back in spore AND it has an oven!!! Ariston and on and on and ...)

The study room

The bigger wardrobe in the guestroom (duh....)

The smaller wardrobe in the master bedroom...

And.... our satellite TV!! (with international channels like HBO, CINEMAX, Star Tv, AXN, etc... the one thing that will keep me sane for the next 3 years) (^^,)... It's actually not legal to install this but since everybody does that, so ....

Of course, these are just the pre-move in pictures. It will look better after we moved our stuff in. *Fingers crossed*

Alrite...enough action for the day. Shall try to post more stuff soon. Tata!!

Arrival in Chengdu

Finally, we arrived in Chengdu yesterday (29th June) after 3 weeks of 'holiday' in Shanghai to settle our paperwork for the relocation.

Went to see our apartment yesterday but didn't take any photos. Will post some when we move our stuff in.. Although the published size of the apartment is bigger than our HDB in Spore, somehow it seems smaller.. (Those who has been to our HDB flat can be the judge when the photos are up.)

Now we have to settle some issues before we move in - there are cracks on one of the kitchen wall and the door to the washing machine area developed some problems which wasn't there before (they attributed those to the earthquake - how scary is that!)

Anyway, another grumbling I have concerns the wardrobes. There's a wardrobe in each of the 3 bedrooms BUT the master bedroom got the smallest!!! I mean, hello... the master bedroom should get the biggest right? After all, it's the only room that's going to be occupied (at least, most of the time). 

And some of the furniture in the living/dining room looks to be of inferior quality and the color combination will clash with our own furniture from Spore. 

Anyways, will try to upload some pics soon.