Day 14

Today, I went to shop in the local market with Alice and it was pretty interesting to see the wet market of Dalian. Unlike those in Singapore, they do not have a proper building for it and people merely just set up temporary stalls. The variety of Vegetables and types of goods sold here are relatively lesser that what we have in Singapore. Along the same street you’ll get to see similar stalls selling the exact same things. Sometimes I really wonder how those people survive and how tough is life for them.

After buying groceries, I also had the famous 手抓饼which is really similar to Roti prata. It means hand catch/knead but the person making it used a flattening tool to flatten the dough onto the pan instead. So… is it still considered handmade? Hahs… anyways, it tasted really nice and had the feeling of home. There are even different flavors of the prata, such as floss, vegetables etc etc. pretty much like Singapore.

Day 15

Today we had CADP lesson yet again where we learnt about adjusting lighting.. FINALLY a proper lesson on that. =D yay… after which the rest of the day was spent doing work and project discussion but yet at night, my friends and I had a really fun time with a new game we came up with as inspired from one of their projects. We tried to play XXX and eventually we got interested in how many ways do people interpret a single word or object.

For example, vegetables; what vegetable would you think of? And how would you draw it? We went through a whole list of items and adjectives and compared our results. It was really amusing. How designers can have fun with anything at anytime… all you need is a creative and curious mind =D

Day 16

Intech lecture in the morning, learnt about steel and metal work. Saw real cool videos about discovery channel-mega structures, how steel helped mankind to evolve and how the use and properties of metal has changed over the years. Steel is also termed as the material of the modern times. It has completely revolutionized the way we live, from taps to utensils to new ways of construction. Building designs that used to be dreamt only can now be realized.

By the way, 3 days ago I was woken up early in the morning by a rude shock, the shower in my room was banned from being used because it caused a nice water feature in the lobby itself. The water proofing was not done properly and this resulted in the water from my bathroom seeping out and down to the first level! Oh my… this serves as a good reminder to have proper construction practice! Furthermore, they could not get it fixed because it was Labour day (week) for the Chinese and to them it is an important holiday of 4 days. Nice isn’t it? But the Singaporeans still need to work..


And during lunch time today, we saw some of the students having set up booths which was crowded with people, upon closer inspection, it was a postcard mailing booth for mother’s day. The university’s posting club came up with this idea of helping students send postcards home for mother’s day. Oh my.. kinda touching but I guess it feels funny if you ask a Singaporean this question, but it’s really appropriate for big countries such as China as the students are mostly staying in dorms with hometowns really far away.

fantastic sunsets..

Day 17

Today we had CADP lessons as usual and yay! We learnt new tricks and today’s one was realy valuable to create cheating effects =PPP oh my… 3D rocks =D lalala….
Anyways, after lunch we were really drowsy for it being a full day and the sun was getting pretty warm… sigh… where is the cool wind??!!! Nevertheless, we still had fun with each other…our lecturer decided to show us a really cool video and it was about recycling old scrap materials and objects to create a huge house.

The project was broken up to several teams and along the way there were many disputes and the project almost came to a standstill even when the dateline was just a week away or so… it was pretty nail biting to see those people work around the clock to finish the project.

It gave me a glimpse of the working life of practicing architects and designers. Whoa…

Day 18

Once again, on Thursdays we have our weekly interim review. Where we present to the class our ideas and progress for the projects. Jamie and I were pretty stuck at a stage but after the review and the comments, we had a better understanding of the problem.


Moving on, after lunch there was a design talk by a renowned Chinese graphics designer who shared with us his experiences and views about design. Pretty cool I’d say for he has a strong vision and a solid point of view and when he spoke, he did with passion. Pretty inspiring indeed.



Then we were invited to view an exhibition conducted by the school of arts and design’s sculpture courses.














By the end of it, we were all pretty tired and Jamie and I decided to cook dinner and we went to the market place to get our shopping done…

Day 19

Exploration day once again! This time, we ventured up the hills of the campus (玉山), were we had to scout around for trails which would lead us to the top…it was a rather exciting and rather arduous venture and we managed to get to the top of the hills and oh my… were the views fantastic! Gosh…





But yet, bees were swarming around the hill and it was rather frightening for me. From the top one is able to see the huge quarry located near the school and the entire airport runway… the few of us decided to wait and watch planes take off the runway. I never knew that planes could not reverse and they had to be towed backwards. From the hill, the planes look like small vehicles and it seems rather effortless for the pilot to maneuver the huge thing around.

Under the scorching sun, we stood upon a hill watching at airplanes take off… hahs…





After which, we walked down another path to exit the hill and we found ourselves to be at the other end of the school! How exciting… at the convenience shop, we found some really old school stuff and well… couldn’t resist them and we bought them! HAHAs…

Day 20

Rain rain go away… come again another day…


Once again the rain drenches any plans that we had for the day… We initially wanted to go to 2 famous squares of Dalian-星海公园 劳动公园 but oh well… I guess we’ll have to leave it for tomorrow and I hope the rain stops… Anglia! More Teru teru bozu’s… please…




To help with the few existing ones, Chew yin made a huge one!
LOL… the eyes and mouth are made out of pins! Hahs…