Journey to my roots: Day 4 (Hangzhou - Yiwu - Hengdian)

Highlight: chinese specialty #1-tea farm! Got to taste AA and emperor grade green tea here and learnt a lot about tea. Awesome guide with and great sense of humour!

Lowlight: hotel. I'm sorry but with my keen sense of smell, this doesn't cut it.

Weirdest experience: went to the Hengdian's Chinese-style Universal Studios and noticed something must be wrong when I saw everyone with a bucket. Watched a show which started like some Chinese opera but then water started flooding the arena. Rave music plays then people started splashing each other with water using their buckets...wow...quite the experience. So that's what young kids do here to entertain themselves.

Journey to my roots: Day 3 (Shanghai - Hangzhou)

Yes. I will start with day 3 because apparently day 1 and 2 consists of travel time and the time difference. Actually, day 2 was notable because we found dinner for less than $2 cad per person! The hotel in shanghai is pretty nice considering they provided us with a ionizing hair dryer! I should really invest in one of these. They're awesome!

Ok day 3.
Highlight: Sung dynasty musical - with real horses, rain on the audience, moving seats, beautiful performers and extravagant sets, it can't get any better than this.

Fun facts:
- Hangzhou is supposedly the city with some of the prettiest girls in China.
- you are not supposed to call girls xiao jie here. It means prostitute. Use gu niang instead.
- there are a lot of trees in Hangzhou; hence, 杭州看樹頭
- they have a bixi bike service here! Get on it vancouver!
- umbrellas symbolizes love here stemming from the white snake tale. If someone offers you an umbrella here and you take it, it means you have accepted their love :)

Decision-making

I decided to do something in the spur of the moment, but now, weeks later, only to find it has led to troubles. I did not foresee this. Many times in life, we have to make instant decisions. Some turn out to be good, others bad, but those experiences build who we are today. I choose to learn from them. And next time, I would think a bit more about the ripples of a pebble thrown into a pond.

~ Kay

Regrets

It's probably impossible to live a life without regret, without detours, without wasted time. We just have to face this reality. We just have to accept that life can't be perfect and shouldn't get bogged down by its little imperfections. At times of accidents, we can always blame ourselves for doing something to prevent it, but hindsight is always 20/20. If we could predict all outcomes of our actions, life would be too easy. By being bogged down on the little blips in life, we are wasting even more of our life. What's important is that we learn from our little mistakes and to move on. These regrets represent sunk costs. We can no longer do anything about them. What we can do is to make the most out of what were the consequences of our decisions - either good or bad.

"Forget regrets, or life is yours to miss" - from Jonathan Larson's "Rent"

Change for the better

I promise to be a nicer person from today forward.

Change?

I can feel that I'm changing. And I don't know if it's a good or bad thing.

Set your goals today

I realize when I set a goal, even though I don't get there right away, I'm bound to get there someday. What helps is when I set smaller goals for that big goal. Accomplishing the smaller goals not only makes me feel I accomplished something, but it also makes me feel even better inside when I know that it will lead me to the ultimate goal. So folks out there, if you're not already doing so, please set goals (and smaller goals) to help you reach your potential. Write them down, as doing this would carve the message into your subconsciousness and you'd just end up finishing the day to find that you had indeed accomplished something meaningful to you, and had not wasted the weekend watching re-runs.

Cheers,

Kay