What better way to end a stressful week with a field trip to a highly industrial and technologically advanced industrial park? A mediocre field trip to a highly industrial and technologically advanced industrial park. To be honest, I was really looking forward to this trip, since the Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) sounded very intriguing.

We had to take a one and a half hour bus ride to SIP, which I luckily slept through. When we got there, we sat through a brief presentation about the area, which I found to be the best part of the SIP tour. As for the area itself, it is impressive. The planning is meticulous, as should be expected for a place with Singaporean influence. We were given a bus tour of the park (which is enormous), but it wasn’t very interesting. Even though the place is clean, it’s too sterile for my liking. The streets are pretty much empty (probably because almost EVERYONE who lives there is working). I would hate to work there.

The worst part of the trip, however, was the return. I was able to fall asleep, but I woke up at the absolute worse time: in the middle of a traffic jam. Sitting through traffic jams is excruciating (I can’t imagine how the driver feels) and I happened to wake up just in time for it. Luckily, it cleared up once we were past the toll and got back to ECNU soon after.

For dinner that night, I went with Ed, Winnie, and Pulton to eat at Cloud Nine. We had trouble deciding where to eat, so Pulton recommended a restaurant called MyThai. It was incredible. It was pretty pricey compared to what I usually eat, but it was completely worth it. We had curry with lamb, vermicelli with eggplant, coconut cream veggies, and beef ribs. We quite honestly could have just gotten the curry with a bucket of rice and we’d be full. It was that good. What a good way to end a day!