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It is almost 5:30 a.m now and I’m still up. I’ll probably go to sleep at around noon. I’ve still got loads to do. Arghhhh
Many thanks to those who left me a comment/email concerning my survey. I’ll be sending you the link pretty soon. (in a couple of hours before I go to bed or after I wake up)
I’ve had many food cravings these past few weeks. I suppose that I’m too stressed about my thesis. Anyone who knows me would think that I’d love eating chocolate right now but strangely, I’ve had few chocolate cravings.
There’s a bar of Snickers on my table. Only a couple of minutes ago, I had torn open the wrapper, only to put the chocolate back on the table, untouched. I don’t want chocolate right now, I want onion rings!
Since I can’t possibly get onion rings at this time, I went through my folders on my computer just to find a photo of onion rings. The lack of sleep must be getting to me….

Pic of onion rings taken at Burger King.
If I remember correctly, I took this pic the first time I went to Burger King in Shanghai.

And here’s a black and white photo of Rosemary with the onion rings. This photo was in the same folder as the photo of onion rings. I can’t help smiling when I look at it. It reminds me of the good times I’ve had when Rosemary was still in Shanghai.

Happy Chinese New Year to everyone!
It’s the year of the rat now and hopefully, it’s going to be a great year for me. (I was born in the year of the rat. )
After almost a week of snow, it has finally stopped snowing a couple of days ago. I’ll upload more snow pics soon.

I had dinner with Desmond and the other Mauritians in Tongji yesterday. Desmond made lamb curry, Jean Noel & Karina made fried rice and potato salad, Ashish made a shrimp dish, Kailash made a chicken dish, Dominique made fruit salad, I brought the naans and the beers, Vricksha brought the soft drinks. The others helped in the kitchen.

Some photos:

Jean Noel, making fried rice.

Karina at the sink.

My plate of food. I took a bit of everything.

Photo of half of the group. None of the sino-Mauritians wore red. I wore red gloves (not in this pic) . Does that count?

After dinner, we continued to watch the Chinese New Year show on CCTV 1, played cards, domino, Pro Evolution Soccer (the guys of course) and then went to the rooftop to watch the fireworks.There were other students up there already.
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This winter , it has snowed several times already but it was too little to be worth mentioning. However, yesterday’s snow was quite heavy for Shanghai. I say that it’s quite heavy snow for Shanghai because it doesn’t snow much here in winter. The only other time I experienced such snow here in Shanghai was on Dec. 30th and 31st 2004. (Old post & pics about it here) Yesterday’s snow was heavier. Perhaps it felt that way because I was outside in the snow longer than in 2004.
I went to meet some of my Mauritian friends at 2 p.m to go to Hong Kong plaza and despite carrying an umbrella, my jeans, boots and bag were all covered with snow because of the wind. Being from a country where winter is around 15 °C and hence never snows, we were all happy that it was snowing. The only problem is that in Shanghai, the snow melts too quickly, which is probably why I’m down with a cold now. My clothes got a bit wet yesterday.
Two pics that I took yesterday:

The snow stopped after a few hours yesterday but it snowed again early this morning. I didn’t go out this morning but Desmond, who went to drop off a French guy at the Hongkou stadium at 5:30 a.m came back and showed me the snowball that he made. He also told me that the road was very slippery. The taxi driver wasn’t happy at all.

Desmond holding the snowball

He could have made a much bigger one but he wanted to go back inside the building asap.

Sushi was fascinated by the snowball. She was a bit scared of it at first but once it started melting a bit (or rather,a lot. The ball became much smaller by the time Sushi was willing to get near it.), she started licking the ball but stopped once the cold got to her.

She pounced on the ball and then ran away from the ball. She did that a few times before we finally threw away the ball.

It has been quite cold today. It doesn’t feel cold when it snows but after the snow, when the snow starts to melt or has finished melting, it feels very cold. I looked out of the window just now. All the snow has melted already and the ground is wet. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr ………… It feels very cold. Now I’m trying to decide whether to brave the cold, go out to have dinner or stay home and cook noodles or something. I’m definitely not a winter person. (unless if it’s the winter in Mauritius!! hehe) According to weather.com, right now ” it is 1°C but it feels like -3°C ” . It doesn’t sound like much to people who are from countries where winter is below 0 °C but for me, it’s COLD.

-edited to add the following-
I didn’t go out so dinner was noodles indeed.
Looks good huh? It tasted great! Prepared by…… Desmond. Yeah, not me. Those who know me personally won’t find it surprising.

BUT…. I fried the fish!
It didn’t look appetizing at first so I used the leftover lamb curry (cooked by Desmond yesterday) to pour on the fried fish. Hence, the fish tasted like lamb but it was still good.
ta daaaa!

I went to the IKEA in Shanghai for the first time today. I’ve always wanted to go there. I asked someone about IKEA in the past. That person told me that it’s very troublesome to go there from Tongji University ,must take taxi, it’s far..bla bla bla….. Recently, one of my classmates told me that she accompanied a friend to IKEA. Out of curiousity, I asked her how she went there. It turns out that it’s quite easy to get there after all!

Kailash, Desmond and I went there today. We bought a few things but what I liked most was the food in the restaurant inside IKEA. This explains why I only took pics of the food.
I love the Swedish meat balls! hehe . We bought a large portion. I think it was like 25.50 yuan for 20 meatballs and some fries. The salmon dish that we had was okay too but I prefer the meat balls! hehe

The yummy Swedish meat balls!!

The Salmon dish. I don’t remember the exact name.

We made the ‘mistake’ of buying two small bottles of mineral water (330ml) there at 3 yuan each, only to find out that there’s also soft drinks and coffee. We just need to tell the cashier that we want a glass of pepsi (or any other soft drinks). She’ll add it to the bill and give you an empty glass. If we want coffee, then we’ll get a coffee cup instead. After paying, we can go to the self-service drinks section and choose what we want. The soft drinks are 5 yuan and the coffee is 6 yuan, unlimited refills.
I don’t know when I’ll go there again. We spent about 4 hours there today and it was tiring.

Ah… and Happy winter hols to me! I’m on hols since the 16th. I was so tired from sleeping 3-4 hours every day during the exam week and the week before that I mainly stayed home to sleep during the past few days. I slept until 7pm the other day. Euh, don’t ask me how I did that.

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*edited this post to add*

How to get to IKEA from Tongji University (main campus) :
Take bus 115 or 515 (The bus stop is on Chifeng Road, near the xinjiang restaurant) and get off on the 2nd stop. Walk a few mins to Chifeng Road Metro Station. Take Line 3 to Caoxi Road. Get out of the station (we chose Exit 3), walk a bit, cross the road and that’s it. IKEA.
Taking a taxi to go there is another option for those people who don’t mind spending some extra money.

IKEA (Shanghai) address: No.126 CaoXi road