Hiking Zhang Jia Jie

Right, it's all about HIKING in Zhang Jia Jie! Nothing is better than breathing deeply in nature, away from city pollution and just integrate ourselves as part of the nature.

The plane took off in Shanghai on Thursday night and landed 2 hours later, at Zhang Jia Jie International Airport, there goes the most ripped off airport ever: I'd rather believe it's a temporary bus station with plastic kind roof as if a typhoon can easily blow it off; the luggage convey line is around 10-15m, next to the stinky toilet, preventing me from going even though my tolerance to toilets are usually very high. The airport hall is no bigger than a football pitch, the check out process, therefore, took us for no more than 20min. The funny thing about the airports of Hunan province is that they are all named after flowers, so beside Zhang Jia Jie Lotus Airport, there are also Chang Sha Yellow Flower Airport (in the province capital) and Chang De Peach Blossom Airpot, even though ZJJ airport is apparently not in the same level as the one in Changsha in terms of facilities.

My boyfriend's colleague recommended us to this Base Youth Hostel, very close to the airport and Tianmen mountain, where we were about to go the next day. It proved to be very nice and quiet, economical and friendly. Arrived at around midnight, the cab was the only option, we managed to negotiated the price from 250 RMB to 30 RMB, "very warm" welcome from the local drivers.

• Impression on the airport: ★★☆☆☆

Day 1 - Tianmen Mountain

It was very easy from our hostel to Tianmen Mountain ticket office, cab for 5 RMB, almost 1/3 of the price of Shanghai. There are two ways for the mountain trip:
A - climb by cables and down by bus
B - up by bus and down by cables

B was definitely our wise choice, where the bus led us to a great view all the way up. The slope was quite sharp that we couldn't stay stable for a moment, knowing that our altitude rocket-rose from 200m to 1300m within 15min, with constant 180 degree turns in direction. At some point, we could even hear other people screaming in the shuttle, and one of those guys looked out and shout out in a very girly way: "这么高啊！(so high)" and that sentence became the new byword of my bf through out the trip. When we reached the 1300m of altitude, there was a huge amount of sharp stairs to climb up, yeah we needed climbing than just walking - the slope was sharper than 45 degrees.

Another reason the B line was a better choice was that we were climbing up to reach the huge gate but not stepping down, which was way much more scary!

After 20min's climbing, sweating work, we finally got our rewarded gate hole, which is more than 100m high itself, with the heavy mist, the gate became more mysterious. As it's the most popular site of the mountain, we had to quickly move on and went up by 12 escalator carriages that were newly built this year.

We got up quite late, by the time we arrived at the escalators, it was already 11 am, our way up was extremely empty, on the contrary to the opposite direction. We arrived at the top of the mountain, it was a huge garden with even more fog. We could bearly see people 10 meters away, it became quite freezing with out T-shirt and shorts, we had to speed up our walk to warm ourselves, but the path was quite narrow and there were always people coming from the opposite direction, making the way difficult to move on.

It suddenly began to rain, the hard heavy drops flashed through big trees and froze on the skin, it was chill to hell, we had to stop by a canteen, which prevented us from getting a cold. We tried to get out of the canteen several times, but eventually ran back to canteen to be covered in warmth. By the time we were determined enough to throw ourselves outside, the only thing we wanted to do was to get out of this freezing mist asap, urgent mission. So all the temples, stones and statues became ignorable, we couldn't really appreciate them properly with the heavy mist after all. We didn't feel a hint of fear either on the glass path, all what we saw was just cloud.

We quickly went back to the hotel and the first day was not yet really hiking, oh well, eye hiking.

• Impression on Tianmen Mountain: ★★★☆☆ (would have given 4-4.5 if we had better weather)
• Tianmen Mountain ticket: around 260 RMB/person for 1 day availability

I have to break down the travel journal into 2 parts as it's been quite long...hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to finish the other part.

Full Marathon Registered

What a great day! We are all successfully registered for Marathon. Here begins the training!

Stressful Visit in Fengjing

Yeah, finally a meet with my parents. What a stressful day and how embarrassing it was when my dad asked me to urge my own relationship. Good that everything passed fairely well and we went to run again for 10k, just before the rain of cats and dogs.

Laser Tag & New Friends

Thanks to Philipo Izaggi, we've got some new friends! Yesterday was Cristian's birthday and he turned to 28, although it was the first time to meet him. Haha! Laser Tag was so fun and we surprisingly got 3 games all in the win team, after changing all the time. Lucky rabbits.

No OT

I don't know the consequences of no OT, but never really did a lot during the past year. Sometimes I just felt that OT didn't bring out a lot of work. Or maybe with the pressure of no OT, efficiency will be improved. Yup, so no OT for August! Let's see how it evolves.

Eat Honey Like this!

Yes, it's home of bees! Well, part of them, I guess they are building more hexagones while this home is taken away for selling.  Actually it doesn't taste that bad, the only different feeling from tasting normal honey is I act more like a greedy bear, swallowing the whole thing, including the beewax. After all, wax is not that a pleasant texture on the palate, it made me doubt if it was eatable at some point. But Google nodded!

Verhuizen naar People’s Square

Ik heb uiteindelijk verhuisd! Mijn nieuwe appartment is alleen maar 1 minuut wandelen weg de metro en het is bij People’s Square, het benoemed centraal van het stad. Ik ben heel blij! Het appartment is in een oud gebouw maar heel schoon. Maar heel veel werken voor het verhuizen. Ik moest een matras kopen, ik heb ook de gordijn verhanderd en ik moest nog veel schoon werk daan!

Climbing!

Nothing can be more fun than sports. Sports always bring me the greatest joy, no matter it was skiing with Linzhi, or climbing with our group today.

We found this place quite occidentally, as we were supposed to go to the place at people square, but they didnt have any places left unluckily, so we had to move to Hongkou Stadium, which is quite far from where I live. But they are much more spacious and with more coaches who can actually help us during the climbing. Although the climbing with rope place is outside and a bit too chilly with only around 10 degrees, Maud and Jan were the pioneers to begin with climbing on the 5 meters wall and then we all begin to give it a try, we soon got exhausted with 2 or 3 tries, but the feeling of roping down is really exciting and cool!

捆

这里并不是一让我泄怒的虚拟角落，而是一张少有的任我倾诉的白纸，并不平滑，波折的情绪将它皱褶，人称混乱的思想只会在这里散落一派胡言，尽管我并不苟同，但只是我的语言从来没有掌握到思维敏捷的节奏，在人看来笨拙到有些可笑，所以只能用最慢的文字去揣摩自己的表达。有时会想，只有一瞬间说出的话才是自己所想，经过思考的语句只是虚伪的化装，但是可惜我天生禀缺口才的天赋，一出口也都只是吝啬的只言片语，好不容易出了声，也好似冗长的又平淡的cliche，耐心的听我两句，不耐烦的便不屑与我交流。而我又似懦弱的软心肠，从不与人抗争，但其实心里并不服，只是懒得为自己战斗。

给自己的借口是习惯性的“用知识武装自己”，但26年的经验看来似乎并没有为自己赢得任何战利品，大概能清醒认识到自己的能力也只有自己。反省中，似乎看到一直回避战斗的态度只会将自己捆绑，缩小自己的空间。而且，甚至自己竟毫不羞耻地自称为“懦夫”，挡箭牌只是自己是个女孩，连“夫”都称不上；但同时，却耻笑许多拜金主义中“活得像个英雄不如金钱更实际”的态度。不知道这两者是否有可比性，至少足以警醒自己根本不比拜金主义崇高，而且中国人的谦虚往往可怕到谦卑的程度……可怕，可怕！

捆绑着的，都是思想封上的枷锁。钥匙，在我自己手上，勇敢解开它，至少可以让生命更有意义一些吧，虽然我知道自己只是一个不能再平凡的女孩，但是在平安年代，也是需要战士的勇气，去战斗，变成更好的自己。

Troublesome Mobile

My mobile phone is broken AGAIN!

Now I'm guessing if I should stop using any smart phone.With my first smart phone falling down to the "bon vieux" subway rails of Paris, second stolen earlier this year in Shanghai, and now the third is broken itself.

Last night, before I went to bed and turned if off it was ALL right! Besides the screen of my PC was shining in a strange way and the hard rain outside, nothing was particular. I went to sleep at like 2.30 and when I woke up this morning,  I felt it strange that my phone was not ringing, this waking up is a bit too much easier than expected, all right, sleep again. The second time I woke up, the alarm of the phone was still quite...I began to feel not at ease and got up and found out that the phone doesnt work at all! Quickly started the pc and then realized that it was 9.11...looked like a unlucky number, and it was - already too late for work...

The rest of the day I tried to charge my phone or start it with all kinds of tricky ways, but no way
could I make it on. All right, troublesome mobile, I go back to my loyal hilarious Nokia 1110...

Stop treating me like a baby mum!

So tonight my dad is not home. He went to Suzhou to have his annual physical examination. I come back to my parents' apartment to spend the weekend. After watching TV together while chatting with my mum, she suddenly asked me to sleep over with her... I felt embrassed and jumped off the bed.

"Nah, I gonna back to my own bedroom."

"You haven't slept with me since a long time."

"..."

"You are my baby, right?"

 Come on mum, I'm still a baby in your eyes, except for the fact of 25 years older!

Company's BBQ Annual Party

It's definitely not a commercial party, otherwise our department would be as busy as bees. A good occasion to reinforce team spirit and get to know people you always meet everyday but never know what they do exactly. Finally, there are still so many people that I dont know about their names and I'm also surprised to see some new faces, whether they are truely new or not...

The weather is not the best for the barbecure apparently, everyone was sweating hard. Staying at a place of over 30 degrees without AC for more than 10 minutes is like a penalty: you wanna a burger? Stay in front of the BBQ oven and get grilled first; you wanna an ice cream? Ah no, it's already melt.

Finally it was the occasion to award those "old" employees who has stayed in the company for over 2 years. They got some free trips and some extra holidays, making others envy. I guess that's exactly what bosses want :D, just kidding, but it's true that it's always good to encourage people with those attractive awards. Two persons who has worked here for over 5 years got free trips for 2 to where ever they want, plus extra 5 days' holidays. Hot sweet potatos!

The last but not the least, the dress for the party is the World Cup Jersey :p

Weekend in Suzhou

Actually the weekend was about 2 months ago, but was too lazy to get it posted, while it's a good memory! So best to save it here before it fades away :)

It worths to be saved because it's special and the very first trip of 2, yeah I had never traveled alone with any ex for a real trip, although I'm already 26 -_-, covering as well a special day only two of us know why, the answer of which is to be found in the lyrics of a song of Bryan Adams :p. I become really naughty in this aspect because no one else would finally feel it interesting.

It was a cool weekend with some slight rains, perfect imagery for this city, in which quite a few famous Chinese traditional poems are left to describe the muggy spring-summer season.

Delicacy is the best term to brief all the sceneries, except for the size of the city itself. We got lost once and had to walked for like an hour along a "small" street. Luckily we still caught up the train back to Shanghai.

At the end of the trip, I must save this up as it would never appear again :) A sweet surprise.

I tried to keep it short as it's getting too late and I always waste too much time wandering here and there while writing. Should put more content about some highlights next time! Yeah, next time.

Allez, bed time now. Sweet dreams~

Pûr plaisir dans le Rosé!

J'ai envie d'écrire ce soir en français, tout simplement parce que c'est concernant le vin, et que le vin. Soudainement, je trouve ce sentiment super léger car rien n'est plus compliqué qu'une pure dégustation. Pas de laisions sentimentales, pas beaucoup de gens, pas de pressions, ni que ce soit...Et ce sentiment bouleverse ce que je croyais - on peut ressentir autant de plaîsir dans une action si basique, si simple.

Je pensais toujours que les humaines peuvent être se ressentissent plus heureux que les autres créatures grâce à la meilleure intelligence en sentiment. Quand on déguste un vin, on se souvient d'une bonne histoire, on établit une meilleure relations entre amis, on devient plus créatifs, on déguste un produit de complexité et de l'intelligence. Tout cela semble nous pousse vers une vie "supérieure". Mais aujourd'hui, je voulais tout embarrasser et decidais de me plonger dans le vin simple, pas de mélange sentimental, pas d'envie d'approcher vers les autres personnes, surtout pas!

Ce rosé fait l'écho. Rarement un rosé si pûre attrape mon nez et mon palais, le premier mot survient dans ma tête : l'élégance. Surtout il y a un rosé précédent se sacrifie pour comparer. Présent après un bouquet de fruits, des fleurs et de la frâicheur, ce cru classé en 1955 a plein de confiance: discret mais pas timid, frais mais pas froid, concentré mais pas lourd, gracieux mais pas superficiel!

Ma soirée était un peu trop sèche à cause de l'ambiance rigide, mais le rencontre avec ce rosé m'a apporté le plaîsir. La santé!

毒

　　新工作换了有一个礼拜了，本来想整理的心情却一直没有整理起来。外面的天气还是很明媚的，只是空气质量又预告污染连外出的心情也没有。不知道为什么心情会差到这种程度，我想了几天是不是要去看心理医生了，还是能够自己调节好心态么？今天一转眼居然压抑到极端无聊的感觉，想必是心里太空虚了。

　　给闺蜜打了电话，与表妹约好了明天的一场电影，为什么还是感觉这么压抑……看钟点一滴一点过，好像在慢性自杀，不停地刷着各种SNS，好像只是为了测试自己还活着，我这是怎么了，难道我一直都是一个这样悲观的人么……

　　开始讨厌上海并不是一天两天的事了，好想逃离这节奏、这氛围、这文化，就好像污浊的空气，侵入我的五脏，将毒气扩张到每根血脉。

　　我在等待消息，等待陪伴，可是为什么这么难，其实并不是一件很难的事啊～却这么难得到。难道，这一切并不是我的命，我是误入歧途了？
　
　　无端的眼泪，好像它们也是带着毒的，肆意地大滴大滴结成两条脸颊上的溪……

Tournant de Vie

Beaucoup de choses se sont passées ces derniers temps, pas forcément intenses, mais vraiment importants. Alors que je n'arrive pas à les décrire l'une après l'autre, car soit je n'étais pas assez motivée, soit j'étais absorbée par autres choses. Je me demande si les émotions doivent être filtrées et amassées pour peser assez lourdes afin d'être exprimées sur le papier, au moins pour moi...

Nouveau Boulot

C'est vrai, je ne travaillerai plus dans le vin, mais dans l'e-marketing! Ce dernier terme que je ne venais de connaître réellement que l'année dernière, qui va conduire mon trajet de la carrière. Ce n'est pas réellement parce que le domain du vin n'a pas du potentiel, au contraire, le marché se développe solidement et s'épend rapidement, particulièrement à Shanghai. Mais je crois toujours que le vin ne pourrait rester un loisir, mais pas une carrière, sinon cela donnerait une image stupide, particulièrement au titre du sommelier, ou un travail dépendant du nez et du palais, au lieu du cerveau. C'est un peu comme l'agriculture comparée avec la haute techonologie, trop dépendant de la nature. Rien contre la pureté ou la dignité du travail du sommelier, c'est juste que je n'appartiens pas à ce genre et la fineness dans la culture du vin que j'appeçois ne peut pas me donner une joie spirtuelle. Donc, je suis partie pour un carrément nouveau domaine, bien qu'il est encore assez étrange de ce sentiment de tourner la direction du travail si rapidement...A vrai dire, je ne sais pas si j'aurais bien maîtriser ce qui m'attend, mais je suis bien curieuse. C'est mon charactère en tout cas, d'être une oseuse.

Pff, je devrais raconter beaucoup plus comme j'ai voulu parler aussi de mon logement et de mon dernier voyage à Suzhou, mais la fatigue se percipite...j'espère pouvoir développer plus demain ou après demain, et reprendre un peu mon français au moins...

Rancoeurs

Je sais que je ne devrais pas, mais quand j'ai vu que ses pensées étaient comme une scie poussée aller et retour, en disant ceci et faisant le contraire le lendemain , mon cœur est aussi scié, blessé avec plein de rancœurs...

Le plus détail peut gâcher ma journée. Hier, en me disant qu'il veut reprendre la décision et m'en vouloir, aujourd'hui, il change la configuration sur le FB comme s'il craint que le monde se trompe avec qui il sort.

Peut-être c'est  juste pour confirmer qu'il est quelqu'un qui valait jamais mes sentiments, si sincères, si profonds...

Mais mes larmes ne sont jamais timides...quelles rancœurs...

Waiting in lost

I bought two books - "The Hedonism Hanbook" and a journey "In Tuscany". A friend asked, "These books look relaxing, it means you need to release a lot of pressures?" Isn't it true...I'm trying to bury the misery in deep of the heart, which might be a better way to move on more easily. Although I always feel reluctant to move on alone, it looks the best choice for the moment. But in the deepest thinking, I am always waiting for him to join my life journey...

The coming last week of work will be mixed with a lot of feelings for sure. I'm waiting in lost.