edmund wee

Daily water supply – 蓝剑(brand of the water company)

In Chengdu, bottled potable water is delivered to your home if you choose to pay for it. There is usually a water supply shop in your neighbourhood and you could pay them for their service. They collect a fee every month and you get bottled water delivered to your house once every few days. There’s a hotline to call if you run out of water supply.

The other option is to boil tap water every now and then.

So we had this machine installed in our apartment. No more boiling of water.

We were put up in this apartment  located along  紫荆西路(zi jing xi lu). It’s actually an old seven-storey condominium named “紫荆名苑”. (zi jing ming yuan)

A photo of our apartment from the outside.

There’s no lift and we had to carry our 20+kg luggages up. And we were living in the 7th storey.

Entrance to our apartment(Left-door), Right-door links to the roof.

Picture of the living room.

The corridor linking to the 4 bedrooms

Staircase to 2nd floor

2nd floor

View outside our balcony (This is the block opposite us, but is exactly the same design as our apartment)

View from my window( The left side are the newer condominiums, the right side are the older ones)

The streets outside 紫荆名苑

Streets around the district

My room-mates and me with green blanket.

Will be living here for 4 months.

After a 4hours flight plus a bumpy landing, 6 of us landed onto this new territory. We had finally arrived at Chengdu airport ( 成都双流国际机场 ) at around 3.30pm on a silkair.

Only silkair departs from Singapore to Chengdu. This flight only operates twice daily. Meaning, the plane that left in the morning, returns back at night.

I couldn’t wait to step onto the ground. What lies ahead of us is our curiosity,  but 6 of us patiently sat inside our seats, waiting for the other passengers to exit.

For a moment I felt a bit absurd at first because everything happened so quickly.

We exited from the plane door with our hand-held luggage and followed the other passengers and joined the long queue at the customs for clearance.While waiting, we started calling back home.

Everything seemed new at that point of time, ranging from airport signage in Chinese characters, to green uniform of Chinese airport officials. Being in a foreign place, it’s best to follow suit. Look, listen and follow. It can’t go wrong.

We finally passed the customs, collected our luggage and proceed to the arrival hall.

In the arrival hall, we spotted this mid-forties woman holding a piece of A4 size paper printed with our company’s name. We approached her and introduced ourselves. I remembered her as “wang jie.” She is a mid-forties caretaker and she is here together with her husband. We followed her out of the airport and loaded our luggage into her husband’s mini-van also known as “面包车” in China. It’s left-hand drive by the way.

The air outside the airport is still cold because it is spring, but also very dusty. The sky is gray and hazy. We looked around and took some pictures of the airport, then got ourselves into the van and drove off. We were heading towards our apartment at 紫荆西路. I remembered it’s quite a distance from the airport, I think about an hour’s drive.

During the car journey, I remembered siting in front. I remembered the roads are incredibly wide and the local traffic conditions includes dangerous driving and unorthodox changing of lanes and traffic disorder. I think I shall dedicate one post solely on the traffic next time. It’s scary to sit in-front. No air-bag at all.

After one hour of fast and furious driving, we finally reached 紫荆西路…

紫荆名苑 will be our home for the next 4 months.

I would be flying off to Chengdu (成都) in China as part of my school’s overseas attachment programme. I will be going there to work as a junior designer for 4 months in a singaporean company.

I will be accompanied by 5 friends- Hwa Swee, Henry, Yi Long, Fongyee and Jiahui. After which, we will be joined by another 7 -Teck Hui, Mike, Huzuen, Madeline, Liying, Vernon and Yanqin. They will be flying off one month later.

I heard it’s spring now, so unfortunately I won’t be experiencing winter during my stay there.

Class 0505- who came to send me off

My school lecturers + 6 of us who going

Departed at 10am. The flight is estimated 4 hr+. Estimated arrival in Chengdu is about 3.30pm. Singapore and China are in similar timezone.