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My camera went kaput again, showing me that annoying memory card error message when I switched on my camera. I almost reached for the screwdriver like last time but before that, I shook the camera a bit and gave the bottom a few taps. And… it’s working again.
Now that the photos have been transferred to my computer, I can write about my Christmas.

All the students in my faculty (the students are all international students) got 3 days off for Christmas (24th ,25th and 26th Dec). As for the other faculties (Chinese students and a few international students), the students had to go to class. No hols for them.
Unlike the past few years, we didn’t have a Christmas show in International Students Building 1. Usually, Mrs Pei who organizes activities for the international students would be going from class to class, trying to get students to sign up for the Christmas show. The students would be the ones performing during the show. With exams coming up 2-3 weeks after Christmas, I’ve always thought that the timing wasn’t right. This year, there was surprisingly nothing to be heard about a Christmas show.
Instead, all the people from our faculty got a free lunch at the restaurant on the 2nd floor in International Students Building 1 as a late Christmas treat. Most of us never go there on normal days because the food is much more expensive than at the canteen which is right below the restaurant.
What was on every table when we entered the restaurant at noon:

The dish with the cherry on top was kinda weird. The bottom layer was tasteless, the middle layer was a bit salty and the top layer was sweet.

They brought around 8 more dishes after that, including dessert. Half the people at my table had already left when they brought the last 3 dishes. We didn’t know that there was going to be that many dishes. We were all full already. Pic taken halfway through the meal:

This sweet and sour fish was brought to the table when many people had left the restaurant already. Fortunately, my friends and I were still in the restaurant. This was good. Yummy. My camera was out of battery by then so no pics of desserts.

The Head and Vice-head of our faculty went from table to table during the meal, wishing everyone a Happy New Year in advance. When they came to our table, the Vice-head called me by my name. I didn’t know that the vice-head knew who I was. I wonder what goes on in those faculty meetings. He said : “You already have HSK 8,right?”. I said yes. The Head of the faculty then said to the rest of the people at my table that HSK 8 is part of the requirements to be able to graduate and encouraged them.

Note: Entry has been edited on the 29th to add the 3 above pics. There are 13 more pics in this entry.
Warning :Long entry.

This Christmas eve, I didn’t feel like doing anything special. I thought that just a normal dinner at home would do. Desmond suggested that we go out have a simple dinner at one of the restaurants at Wanda plaza in Wu jiao chang. Keisuke and Aki went with us. We took a taxi at about 19:00 and reached there a few minutes later. Chinese people usually eat at around 18:00 so we thought that 19:00 would be perfect. It turns out that we were wrong. There were so many people at Wanda on that day. It was my first time going out on Christmas eve in Shanghai. I spent my previous Christmas eves at friends’ places. Desmond, Keisuke and Aki were also surprised to see so many people outside as well as inside the mall.

Many people in this pic:

One word… Sales

The Italian restaurant we wanted to go to was full of people and there were a dozen more people queueing up outside. I forgot that I had my camera with me and didn’t take any pics of that particular scene but here are some of the pics I took of other places:

People queueing up outside Pizza Hut. We saw another Pizza Hut in the building opposite Wanda Plaza and it was the same there.

It was the first time I see people queueing up in Yoshinoya. Usually there are only a few people in there. I guess that they were too hungry and didn’t want to queue up outside the other restaurants. The pics I took of other restaurants showed similar scenes. The only places where there were no people queueing up outside was KFC, McDonald and a HK restaurant which was on the expensive side.

There was a lot of people in Dairy Queen too.

We walked around for almost one hour, trying to find a place where we could have dinner. We even went to Bailian which is opposite Wanda but it was the same there. All the restaurants were crowded and there were people waiting outside. In the end, we decided to walk back to Wanda plaza. We were so hungry and tired of walking around. There weren’t so many people waiting outside some of the restaurants by then. We decided to eat at Steak King. We waited outside for about 15 mins until there was a free table for 4 persons.

My meal:

What the others had:

After dinner, we walked around for a while.
Here are some pics of the Christmas trees in the mall. There was a Christmas tree in almost every store as well as outside the stores.

I almost choked when I saw this outside when we left the plaza.

There’s only a few more days to go and then we can say goodbye to year 2007. I should probably make a list of my resolutions for 2008 but as usual, I’ll probably forget all about them a few months later. I wonder how some people manage to stick to their New Year resolutions.