To update or not to update

Hi everybody,

it's been a while since we updated the blog, but it's been really busy the last weeks. It was busy at work and busy in the evenings. We sure experienced a lot of things: happy, not so happy, strange, crazy,... and we are really eager to share them with you all.
So that's why we will update the blog when we get back home, a lot of text is already written, it's just the uploading and choosing pictures that takes too much time. But don't worry, if you just have some patience you will see them all. So probably in the first week of September big updates will follow and you will find out about several things like:
- why Chinese men do not use perfume
- why the Boeddha in Hong Kong holds his hand up
- what the Noon Day Gun is and the movie we made of it
- why Hong Kong moved a whole building from Central (in the North) to Aberdeen (in the South)
- who An An and Jia Jia are
- what the highest building in Guangzhou is
- and how this picture ended up in Guangzhou City:




See you in September!

Karolien & Andries

Thursday August 17th

Today we went hunting! Not for deer or bears, but for pipes, tanks, heat exchangers, cookers and more. We explored the whole factory, writing down every piping and tank we saw. It was quite fun to search for structure in this maze of pipes. Later we made some sketches of it, to compare with the blueprints. It was a very clarifying day! At noon we had some very good canteen food, with the best egg I ever ate, too bad there was no egg left for Andries and he had to stick with the spicy noodles. ;)

In the evening we wrote the blog reports for the last seven days. We really focused on our work the last days and time really flew, so there was not much time for blogging. But we’ll do our best to keep you all updated. We also did some laundry, because also this weekend we we’ll be off to Hong Kong for three days. We didn’t booked a hotel yet (we forgot with all that work) so we certainly have to do that tomorrow…

Wednesday August 16th

The day at the office started with a little commotion: there was a huge cockroach on the wall underneath the window (in front of Andries’ desk). Helen and Jeanette stayed quite calm, but none of them wanted to (try to) kill the animal. And we weren’t keen on it either. Then we discovered more about the specie of cockroaches: some of them can fly! More commotion in the office and almost panic :) until Alan came by to “gently” squeeze the cockroach with his shoes. It made a nice crunchy sound…

And yes, we worked and worked. :) But after work we went together with Alan and Jan to the outlet shops nearby, where you could buy cheap and not-fake sports clothing. The shop was really big and of course, we were unable to resist the temptation and both bought some clothes. Afterwards we went to a really good restaurant, just next to the outlets. The buffet was amazing, the choices were unlimited. We all had a really good meal there, and Andries even tried the special pizza:

The also had a chocolate fountain, this must be heaven!


The buffet:

From left to right: Jan, Alan, Karolien

Tuesday August 15th

Today Alan gave us the blueprints and lay-outs of the lines, so we spent the whole day studying them. I spent almost the whole afternoon together with Jenny translating the legends. As you can guess, the drawings are in Chinese…It was not easy, but we struggled and translated everything necessary. I also learned some Chinese signs: cold water, hot water, pipe, valve and tank. Yeah :)

At the end of the day we really gained some insight in the blueprints and we already compared them to reality. Again, this was a day of really intensive working, but in the evening we rewarded ourselves and we went to the Manhattan Café for dinner. We had the buffet, where we could choose from all kinds of dishes. They even had French fries and kebab :) (and also more chic food and desserts). With a more then filled stomach we returned to the apartment to watch some television.

Monday August 14th

Today was not a really exciting day, we were both very tired from the weekend. At work our day was filled with downloading and reading documents about steam and learning a lot. It’s more technical then the first project and in that way maybe more interesting.

At 6 o'clock, when we wanted to take the van back to Clifford, one of the three vans had a flat tire. So not everybody could get a place on the bus and would have to wait until one of the remaining two vans returned. Not really in the mood for waiting, we decided to walk back to Clifford. It was a trip of around 20 minutes and we could enjoy the view and the sweating (it was quite hot). In the evening we were lazier then ever: not much sleep + working hard + walking to Clifford = exhausting :) We watched an episode of Lost until we couldn’t keep our eyes open.

Sunday August 13th

Autch, a painful morning. We had to get up at half past 8 because we still had so many things to explore in Macau. We had breakfast in the hotel: a mix of Chinese and Western food and we liked it very much. Afterwards, we packed our luggage, said goodbye to our huge suite and checked out. At the hotel we took a taxi to the Macau Tower. We already visited the lower floor yesterday, but today we’re going to search it much higher: we’re going to do the Skywalk! The skywalk is a thrilling experience, walking around the tower at 300 meters high. You are actually walking on the outside board of the tower about 300 meters above the ground. The path is only 1 meter wide and then you have to do these silly poses for the pictures… I can assure we only smiled on the pictures, the rest of the time we were just kicking. The view was beautiful and so are the pictures:

After we recovered from the Skywalk, we did a tour on the different floors of the Tower. Here you have the glazed floor, a lot of people where really scared to walk on it :)

Another attraction on the tower, the Skyjump: it’s like benji-jumping, but then you slide down from 3 ropes:

After the Macau Tower we took the taxi to the east side of the island where Fisherman’s Warf and Sand’s casino where situated.

Fisherman’s Warf is an open amusement park, where you only have to pay for the attractions and the rest you can visit for free. It was nice walking trough, but the temperatures were rising and shadow was most welcome.

The shadow that we found in the Sands Casino. According to Andries this is a very famous casino in Las Vegas and it’s also one of the biggest. Well, it was sure big. I think the building had like 3 floors full with gambling tables and machines. Inside you had different restaurants and gambling spots. The Wynn casino:

Because we lost the bus and so the bus terminal to get back to Guangzhou, we searched also for a new way of getting back, because on that moment we really hadn’t any option. But the Sand’s casino brought us luck, because inside there was a ticketing service for busses. After some explanation we found out that there were busses to Guangzhou center. Hooray, our ride home was arranged! I mean, our ride to Guangzhou, because from Guangzhou center it is still a 40 minute ride to Clifford. And we didn’t had a clue how we would arrange that. But that were worries for later. Now we could leave our luggage safely in the luggage deposit of the bus company, and we went back into town to visit the famous Ruin’s of St Pauls Church, thé symbol of Macau and the rest of the second part of the World Heritage tour.

The Ruin’s of St Pauls:

We also visited Mount Fortress, a large fort on a hill next to the ruins:

We also did Casa Garden with the Luis de Camoês Grotto:

Then we wanted to get back to the casino for our bus, but we couldn’t get a cab so we started walking back. And on our way back we walked into this beautiful green church and cemetery.

From here we also had a good view at the Guia Fort and Lighthouse, but we didn’t had the time to visit it.

After all the cultural visits we returned to the Sands casino. We walked along the different games, trying to understand them and we did some virtual gambling with invisible money :) Because our gambling budget of 100 RMB wasn’t finished yet (we still had 50 RMB) we played on the slots machines. Well, sometimes we were lucky and won, but most of the time we lost money. The result of the gambling weekend: minus 90 RMB. We kept two coupons with a value of 10 RMB as souvenirs :) At 19h45 we took the bus with direction Guangzhou. Again, we had to cross the border and this time we were more luck with finding the bus, because the bus (more specific: the bus assistants) found us. The sticker system is really efficient, because the personnel of the company recognizes you immediately and shows you the right bus. But the trip wasn’t over yet: this company didn’t had busses to Clifford, so we just took one to Guangzhou center where we arrived at 23h45. We weren’t sure if there were still busses to Clifford, we just waited… But we were lucky, at 12 o’clock we catched the last bus with direction Clifford. So finally, after 5 hours of traveling we arrived at Clifford and our apartment…

Saturday August 12th

Well, this trip to Macau didn’t start very well. We got up too late, had to pack too much… And so we had to run to get our bus at 8h55. Andries took a head start (yes, he is faster than me) to stop the bus, I tried to catch up with him but tripped over a curb. Autch. But the bus waited and 5 minutes later we were heading to Macau. Because the trip was longer then to Hong Kong, the bus stopped at a wayside restaurant. I wanted to go the toilet, but I postponed it until Macau when I saw the toilets. Maybe the people who went to China before can remember the wayside restaurant toilets… it’s really disgusting… Most of them are not flushed, the smell is incredible, and there is dirty paper everywhere. Back on the road we stood in a traffic-jam for a while due to an accident with a small truck. Apparently he had a blowout by which he lost his load. If you zoom in on the picture, you can see a Puratos box (with Bread Improver S500, we are already geeks on that field).

We crossed the boarder in Zhuhai, a nice city along the coast, with a coast line very similar to Spain or the South of France.

At Zhuhai, the bus left us in an underground parking, and we tried to follow our fellow passengers, but we lost them quickly. The control posts at the border were no problem, we were already experienced :) An important advice: never forget to bring your own ball point, otherwise you can start asking around (like us) and that’s not easy with only Chinese speaking people around you. Luckily we were in the “Foreigners Lane” and the chance of catching English speaking people there is much higher. And yes, we got again new stamps on our passports! The one in Macau are blue and not red (as the Chinese and Hong Kong’s). We already collected more then 10 stamps. But the happiness about our new blue stamps quickly turned into worries, when we couldn’t find our bus behind the border. We searched the whole border area: the bus stations under the ground, the own on the left, the one on the right… We went to the Information Desk, but they couldn’t help us out. Then we considered taking a taxi, but the row of waiting people was already 100 meters long. Not an option. So we went back to one of the bus stations, we showed them our tickets and they pointed out a new (smaller) bus for us. Okay… With no clue where we were going, we just stepped on the bus.

At the Macau border:

On the bus I was sitting next to a student (who could speak English) and I asked her if she knew where the bus stopped. Well, it was certainly going in the right direction: the town center. She declared me crazy, not knowing where this bus was going :) At different stops, everybody was getting of the bus, until only a Chinese man and we were left. He was very friendly and asked were we wanted to get off. We just wanted to go to the Senado Square, the center of the old city and he assisted us from the bus stop to there. Really, Chinese people are so friendly, every time we are stunned by them being so helpful.

On the Senado Square, we went to the tourist office to gather some information. Afterwards we had lunch and decided to do the first part of a tour along all the World Heritage of Macau. It was a really beautiful walk along the very European style churches and buildings. You know, Macau has more churches per square kilometer than the Vatican!

Here are some sights of Macau:

Cathedral and the square around it:

St. Dominic’s Church:

Senado Square:

Leal Senado Building:

Holy House of Mercy:

St. Augustine’s Church and Square:

Sir Robert Ho Tung Library:

St. Lawrence church:

Moorish Barracks:

A-Ma temple:

And along the Gate of Understanding and a beautiful view over the surrounding islands, this tour led us to the Macau Tower, one of the highest in the world.

Gate of Understanding on the right, brigde to Taipa on the left:

We didn’t actually visited the tower (because we wanted to do something special there tomorrow), we only visited the exhibition center next to the tower. Inside we had a drink in the Café on 4 where they had a special special:

From there we took a taxi to the hotel, which was actually situated on Taipa island, the island next to Macau. We had to get in line to wait for a taxi, but the view when we were driving over one of the bridges in between Macau and Taipa was priceless. In the hotel, a pleasant surprise awaited us. We booked a standard room (the cheapest, we are only students) but because they were all full, we got: a suite! Andries didn’t believed it at first, but we had a suite. You know, a huge room with three parts: the living room with leather seats a minibar and TV and then the sleeping room with beds and a second TV and another seat and then the bath room with bath and shower. It was almost as big as our apartment! Hallelujah, this was nice! After overcoming the excitement about the room, excuse me, suite, we decided to take a dive in the swimming pool. Apparently nobody shared our idea, so we had a private swimming pool for us. The rich life…

Then we went for food: Pizzahut. The Pizzahut’s in Hong Kong are very different from those in China and Europe, because in Hong Kong they are really luxurious. The food is not more expensive then in China but you just have more choices. After a good meal, we went gambling! A suite, a private swimming pool and good food: like real rich people we entered the casino area! Maybe this could be our lucky day! We started with Hotel Lisboa, the most famous one in Macau. While we were just wondering around in the casino we met two Mexicans: Roberto and Diana. We hanged out with them for the rest of the evening, chatting about China and Europe and Mexico… It was really nice. We also gambled, we had a gambling budget for the weekend of 100 RMB (= 10 euros). Today we already spent half of it on the slots machines (the rest of the games were to difficult to understand in such a short period of time) :) Although we’ve won sometimes, in the end all our money was gone. The highest sum we won was around 30 RMB. But we had a fun night, wandering around bars and casinos. It was late when we arrived back at our suite and we had no trouble with falling asleep.

Friday August 11th

Today we had some discussions about the new project. It was not enough to just follow the progress of the new line, we really had to do something. So we spent almost the whole day searching for good subjects. Jan and Alan helped us. At noon, we went again to the Japanese restaurant together with Jan and Alan and had a very good meal there. (Better than the food in canteen ;) ) In the afternoon, the new subject for the thesis was set down. Because of the installation of the new wet line, maybe the steam generator would not provide enough steam, so we will investigate if so and find solutions. We already started with some research and it is really amazing what you all can do with steam :) An interesting project! We spent the rest of the day on research. At the apartment we started packing and planning for Macau. Also, Aric (from sales) gave us the first Lost season on DVD, so we started with the first episodes. We calculated that we just have enough evenings to watch the whole season here in China. Alright! ;)

Thursday August 10th

Today we had a new Belgian visitor, Jan, who will work on the wet line project (our new project). He will stay here until August 18^th, so we will be working together for some time. In the morning we started with following a meeting about the new line, we studied some drawings and so on. It looks like this project is going to be a lot more technical then the first one, but we can only welcome that. After the meeting we went to a Japanese restaurant at Clifford. Present where: Jan, Alan, Jenny (the business translator who just graduated), Gary (one of the subcontractors for this project, his company will install the new line, he’s Jenny’s boss), and then a mechanical engineer who’s name I forgot and also the PLC programmer who’s name I also forgot. So we had a good meal, Andries made a mess of his shirt (and we just did the laundry…) and we returned happy and satisfied to the office. In the afternoon I spend some time finishing the capacity project, while Andries followed a new meeting. In the late afternoon we went down to production, where some major problems with the installation of the line have to be solved. We’ll see how that works out tomorrow… We also went on the roof of the building, to see the cooling towers and from that roof we had also a great view over the surrounding. We could see Clifford from up there :)

So we had a really busy day actually and it wasn’t over yet. In the evening we invited Rocky and his girlfriend and her sister over to watch the Alzheimer Case DVD we bought. Because we didn’t have any beer in the apartment, Andries rushed back to the supermarket to get some TsingTao bottles. And we already had tea and hot water, so no mistakes this time. We watched the movie with Chinese speaking and French subtitles, so that both nationalities could follow. The evening was nice, the movie was very good and the beer bottles were finished, so it was time to close our eyes…

Wednesday August 9th

Today we spent the whole day –again- finishing the project. We ran trough all the data we collected, as well on paper as digital. We listed up the things we have to do here and which things we can do at home. We still have a lot of work for this project, but to have some change, we really want to do this new wet line project.

The rest of the day was quite normal, maybe then for the chat with Mieke, who was in Singapore and actually in the same time zone as I was ànd (if you look at a world map) I was on the tropic of Cancer while she was right ‘under’ me on the equator. Really crazy :) Hope you have as much luck on your flight to Adelaide as the one to Singapore! Have fun in Australia!

In the evening we did the rest of the laundry, and I must say it is a really satisfying feeling to see all the clean clothing in the wardrobe and not just a pile of dirty clothes. To reward our efforts, we spend the rest of the evening watching “Flightplan”, a really good and thrilling movie. DVD of the month :)

About another DVD then, the Chinese Belgian DVD, this is going to be a brother of and sister of clash :) Because you both answered quickly and correct, we decided to have a sifting question; the one who is closest to the exact price of the DVD gets it :) Of course we want the price in RMB (remember, 1 euro is 10 RMB). The winner will be announced after the weekend. Btw, in Chinese the title means as much as: Bad face, good heart. Strange.

More about the weekend: we’ll spend two days in Macau. This piece of China has the same statutes as Hong Kong, so we’ll have to pass again a border and will get more stamps on our passports. Cool :)

Tuesday August 8th

Our day started with a meeting with Alan and Linda (production planning). The important lines for the increasing capacity project are finished and we only need 1 or 2 days work here, so that we can do the rest at home in Belgium. Alan was satisfied with our work and he said that we could also participate in the new wet line project for the rest of our time here. With Linda is the communication is harder, because her English is not so good, so we spent some time together (after the meeting) to explain some of the parts better. I think it’s a real challenge for us. As an engineer, you normally find the trouble with explaining the technical things to non-technical people, but here we also get the problem of explaining it in another language ànd explaining it to people that don’t know the language that well. But we learned a lot, and so we adapted the rest of our work to more visual parts and more clear explanations. Hooray for our communication classes! ;)

So the rest of the day we spent finishing our work. We also have two other meetings planned this week: one final meeting with Alan and Linda to round off the first project and the second one on Thursday with a lot of other people to start the new wet line project.

After work we went to the DVD shop and you could never guess which movie we found there… It has some famous Belgian actors in it… Like Sinterklaas and family of Bob de Builder and Nick de Flik ;) Well, let’s make a small game of it. The first one who gives us the name of the DVD (in a comment, a mail doesn’t count, because of the timing) gets it when we get home. :)

Arrived at the apartment, the gas cylinder was changed so we had hot water to do the laundry! Hooray! We only did half of the laundry, because we were so sick of it ;) The rest is for tomorrow…

Monday August 7th

Today we are exactly 1 month here, in Guangzhou in South-China. It has been a wonderful time already and we have more big things to come. Next weekends will be filled with Macao, Hong Kong and the last one Guangzhou. Time has passed so quickly, we didn’t realize it that we are already here for so long. But we don’t have much time to stand still by this fact, because Monday means working day! We finished some more work on the capacity project and although it is not finished, we really want to get involved in the project around the new wet line, we’ll see how that works out in the coming days.

Alan, the operations manager, returned from his holiday today, he went to the whole north west of China, close to the Russian border. It’s an area with a lot of small deserts and mountains. According to our books, this area is called Xinjiang, one of the farthest corners of the country.

You are waiting for a typhoon update? Well, on the news Bopho appeared. Bopho is a tropical storm (not yet a typhoon) that is again heading for the South-Chinese coast. Probably he will deliver us some bad weather at the end of the week.

Btw, I told you that last week electricity was down, well this time our gas cylinder was empty (the gas isn’t delivered trough pipes). So we couldn’t cook or shower or do the dishes. But tomorrow we’ll call Cathy and hopefully we it will be fixed when we come back tomorrow so that we can finally do our laundry! (We’ve been postponing it for like 5 days and now I actually ran out of clean clothing…Iew)

Sunday August 6th

The weather was getting back at his normal rate, hot and humid, so today was an excellent day to visit the Safari Park nearby. Because there are no Clifford busses towards it, we had to take a taxi. When we approached the taxi stand, a handful of drivers came to us, but as experienced customers, we stayed calm and took just the one with the best price. It was 40 RMB one trip (8 km) and if you compare it to the bus to Guangzhou (more than 8 km, 14 RMB one trip), it’s expensive to take a taxi here. In Guangzhou center they are much cheaper. But for those 40 RMB we got good service and where dropped just in front of the entrance.

The Safari Park consisted of two areas: Safari on Wheels and Safari on Foot. We started with the Safari on Wheels, where a Tourist Train takes you trough the whole area. You can also do this trip with your own car for only 6 euro. But then it’s more like standing in a traffic-jam with on both sides wild animals. And hysterical kids in the back seat. So we saw all kinds of animals in their “natural” environment.

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Afterwards, we did the Safari on foot, which was actually like walking trough a zoo. A Chinese zoo, not to be mistaking. A lot of people will know that my weak spot are animals, and so it was kind of hard sometimes to see them in certain conditions. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of animals where having a good time here, but some things where just way over the top. And that with endangered species… I’m not going to tell everything that disturbed me, but I’ll just show the pictures. Have in mind that the tiger, the (white) Siberian tiger, the Giant Panda and the Oerang Oetan are highly endangered species and that many things you can see on these pictures are forbidden in Europe. But not in China.

White Siberian Tiger, on a leash for pictures with tourists.
Flamingo’s

Ara's

Ibis birds

Koala’s

Asian Elephants

Baby Siberian and Bengal Tigers in the nursery home.

This pictures cost 20 RMB.

Also in the nursery home, baby Black bears.

White Tiger show.

Dressed monkey show.

Oerang Oetan.

So in the park we saw a lot of animals, very special animals, and also some not so nice things. A lot of visitors were trowing food to the animals, even when it was not allowed and even cookies still in their wrapping. A lot of animals were used to stand on pictures with the (paying) visitor. Btw, the two shows that we have seen are things that are forbidden in Europe, certainly with these two endangered species. But still, in the end, we had a good visit and we saw a lot of animals that we never saw before..

In the evening we went (finally) swimming. The swimming pool in the resort center is a big outside pool, the only disadvantage was that the deepest spot was only 1,40m deep. But the water was cool and refreshing.

At home we catched Tomb Raider the Cradle of Life (movie of the month on Pearl TV, they were making publicity for this movie since we arrived here…) and we had a lot of “been there, done that” moments, because the movie was mostly situated in Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Saturday July 5th

We thought we would be wakened by the cleaning team around 9h30, but apparently they changed their planning and only came around 13h, so with no concrete plans for the weekend, we slept until 10h30 or so. We had a lazy morning, just playing computer games or reading or just doing nothing. But when the cleaning team arrived we had to get out of the house. We ‘planned’ on just going to the supermarket, but in the end we had dinner in the restaurant next to the swimming pool. The price: 114 RMB, that’s 11,40 euro, for a meal that would cost like 50 euro in Belgium. And then we even got a coupon (value 10 RMB) for a discount next time. Afterwards, again no supermarket, but we took the bus to Guangzhou to visit the Pagoda. So a lot of decisions without planning are exiting, but the result was that we’ve forgotten our camera. And we had no maps or whatever to help us. It was guessing all the way.

When we arrived in the city, it was already too late to visit the Pagoda, so we decided to visit the Yue Xiu Park, one of the largest city parks in China?. We didn’t know exactly with metro stop we had to take, but as proved in the past, we are very good at guessing. (Also because the name of the park was in the name of the metro stop…).

<>Before we entered the park we bumped into a Tourist Info (this was our lucky day), where we had several nice experiences. Rule number one, never step into a Tourist Info (as a white person) without knowing what you really want. Because you will be attacked by 2 Chinese people who want to know what you want to know and “we are just looking” doesn’t count. Rule number two: if you have to make up something, avoid something with a too recognizable name. We said we wanted to know something about Ocean’s Park (it’s an amusement park in Hong Kong) and before we realized it, the whole building knew that we wanted to go to Ocean’s Park. So in the end, the Tourist Info wasn’t such a help. So we bought our big city map (it’s huge!) in the 7-Eleven across the street. Finally outside the Tourist Info, we discovered a Lamborghini and a Rolls Royce garage, resp. with one and no car in it. Strange. But the yellow Gallardo looked very nice :) A pity that we forgot our camera…

In the Yue Xiu Park we bought a small camera. Not a digital or a disposable one, just a simple camera with a film and batteries included. For 128 RMB. Nice. So I think we took very nice pictures, but we can only tell after a while. It was quite silly to walk around with this non-digital model where zooming happens by walking closer or further away… Thank god for technology. In the park we saw the statue of the 5 goats, where the city is famous for. I don’t know the exact story behind it, but it something with 5 goats in the major parts :) So around 9h we took the bus back home and finally went to the supermarket.

Friday August 4th

Today we spent almost the whole day at production. They were producing different batches that were very alike to the donut products we study, so it was interesting to follow. And for the rest, it was not such a special day :) After work we went home, we cleared up the apartment (because they will be cleaning in the weekend), watch some TV and went to bed. Gee, we can be so boring sometimes. But the weekend will be more exciting…