In the morning, Jonathan spotted this on his table lamp in the dorm. Eye protecting or eye protection lamp?
The weather was really warm today that he ended up with only one layer of clothing instead of the usual three to five with jacket. He headed out with his group of friends and two buddies, Wu Yan and Su Nan out for shopping. He took a bus which was rather crowded, but not as crowded as his first experience. The thought of the crowd reminded him of the swine flu that made him worried.
During the journey, he spotted some people taking the chance to hop on the bus from the back when it was crowded to avoid paying, which reminded him of his time in Italy when he did the same. The ride was rather eye opening as the bus driver opened and closed the doors even before the vehicle stopped completely.The buddies brought them to a so-called underground train station shopping center, Victory Shopping Plaza. He termed it “so-called” because the train station seemed to be really far from the shopping center.
In any case, the place was rather crowded, with pushing ladies forcing their way through. Bargaining was another common thing there, and most of his friends who bought things managed to get their stuff bargained down to almost half the initial price. He wanted to look around for possibly small items for his family back in Singapore, but the stuff were just too “Made in China”. He decided not to get anything; he apologizes, but knows they people back in Singapore would understand.
Having travelled around for the past two weeks, Jonathan has been noticing that the signboard for Lu Shan is written as Lv Shan. Apparently, the letter V is the present U, at least in Italian. And Dalian being a city that is supposedly influenced by Russia, he supposes this is evidence for it.
While his friends tried on clothes and stuff, he found this rather amusing, and semi-related to the design project he is working on at school. The shop was used both as a selling area and a changing area just by pulling a cloth up at the shop front. Is this a transformative space? Other kinds of changing rooms were more open, like having the shop owner hold up a cloth while you hide behind, or just being totally open about it. Very interesting indeed.
Lunch was done at about 2PM because the girls were over engrossed with their shopping. He also found his surname on the vinegar bottle.
After lunch, la femme continued with their shopping craze, while he hunted around for snacks and came across the Kiss Mango dessert store. Apparently the “rule” for the store was that each person had to spend at least 10 Yuan. The dessert was not fantastic, fruits just piled on top of a mountain of ice with our syrup or anything sweet. The fruit salad was odd too, it had alright rock melon, bitter tasting grapes, water
Dinner was than settled at KFC! Yet another relief to the tongue he thought, but it had to be crushed sooner or later. A two-piece chicken came up to 8 Yuan, which happened to be the tiniest chicken he had seen in his whole life. He had a total of only three pieces which was obviously not enough. He decided to have a Zinger to top it up. The total cost was about 40 Yuan. Mad. Something new about KFC in China is that they have special desserts, egg tarts and blueberry tart. Unfortunately that was not part of his meal, but he is looking out for egg tarts since day one!
Images of products found during the shopping event.Converse, All Star
Or was it Convorse?
Love, Flower? and Peace. Jonathan is still thinking why flowers were mentioned in it, and say yes to world peaces! He suspects it was power anyway.
Global Warming, Save the World
And come play the Mubik's Cube
Other brands that Jonathan also spotted but lacked the opportunity to snap pictures were Leri's (Levi's).The day finally ended with the girls visiting the Buddy's dorm, unfortunately males were not allowed in, so he had to wait outside in the cold.
