A somewhat odd day. That’s the only way to describe it. I mean, counting customers at a McDonald’s and Burger King in China? Yeah, strange-sounding. Anyways, Irene and I were assigned McDonald’s while Jane and Christian went to Burger King and it was chaos. We got there around ten minutes early to give ourselves enough time to order food and find a seat. The line was not only enormous, there were also no seats. We almost didn’t get a seat by noon, our designated start time.
Coincidentally, when we started counting, the foot traffic started getting more intense. We could barely keep up with the people walking in and since we weren’t just counting, but also taking down demographic information, we were writing like mad men. For 45 minutes, we were writing and writing and I’m glad the last 15 minutes were relatively calm. We ended up with about 340 people in an hour. I-N-S-A-N-E. Treated myself to a funky tasting ice cream cone topped with honeydew melon syrup afterward.
Got home and compiled the data and actually did some work. For dinner, Joe and I ordered from Hello Pizza, which sells personal pan pizzas. I got a classic pepperoni pizza with extra cheese and for only 22 RMB, it was good and filling.
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.
Read more…
I initially started the day thinking I was screwed. I needed to do my Wild Swans report, but three midterms and a presentation left me with no time to write it. The solution? Well, I guess it wasn’t a solution, but more like a gift. Marketing class was canceled because we were going to Suzhou at the end of the week for Marketing! That meant about 3-4 hours of extra time to write my Wild Swans report!
I was pretty happy during City & Environment because of the cancellation, even though I had a presentation and a midterm. The presentation went well and the midterm wasn’t difficult (just really long). My hand isn’t fit for writing that much…
I spent the rest of the day pretty much writing my Wild Swans report. The 500 word limit was really hard to stay under, but I managed to get it to 550 words. The sentences didn’t flow very well though, since I had to cut out descriptive words and adjectives to cut down on the number of words. It also felt strange writing what was essentially a plot summary, but since those were the requirements, I’m won’t complain.
Ever visit five Burger Kings in less than a day? I did for my group’s marketing project. It’s not that fun, but it’s certainly an interesting experience. Unfortunately, there aren’t many BKs in Shanghai, so the ones that are here are pretty scattered. Basically, our day looked like this:
Zhongshan Park -> taxi to Xujiahui -> taxi to Jing’An Temple -> metro line 2 to People’s Square -> metro line 2 to Lujiazui -> taxi to Shanghai Stadium -> metro line 3 back to Zhongshan Park
Read more…
Yes, they came back. Being deathly afraid that they were bed bugs, I once again didn’t sleep on my bed, opting to stay awake for most of the night. Unfortunately for me, I had Tuesday classes the next day. Ouch.
Justine and Guo Xiaojie helped me again, calling the maids to switch my sheets as well as my mattress this time.
Read more…