南翔饅頭店 Nan Xiang Restaurant

market is sooo quiet over the holy week, although it’s painful that the financial market has been hit so hard by the subprime woes in the US, but it’s been good for junior analyst like us… finally we get some time to breathe… (hopefully this won’t be too long of a “break” if not, literally, we can go on “a very long break”).

Ha anyway, saw the tight window of opportunity and took advantage of it. During the quiet and long Easter weekend, we went to Shanghai for a nice and short holiday. Overall, it’s a nice and easy trip.

Beside the usual Bund, I strongly suggest that everyone should go to the Shanghai Old Street (上海老街) near Yu Garden (豫园). These places are nice, and when you walk down the road, it’s like back in the old Shanghai days and you thought you’ve gone back in times to the war time in early 20th Century… Anyhow, there’s a very interesting place call Nan Xiang Restaurant (南翔饅頭店)

interesting, because their xiao long bun is soooo good and juicy, it’s “cheap”, (I mean, it's cheap, but there’s a twist to it), super duperly famous and has been around for about 100years… So as a tourist, we went to the restaurant on a rainy Saturday and suddenly we found that there’s a super long queue.. probably there’s about 50 people queuing up for…take away.

Nice.

We’re not taking away, and I think eating in house during a rainy day is much nicer anyway… so we went up one floor.

Stunned.

Super long queue. So... we gave up. There’s no way we can beat the locals in fighting for table.

That night itself, one of our shanghainese friend told us the secret of eating in Nan Xiang.

“The higher you go up (floors in the restaurant), the price will go up by 20%. Don’t give up after you see the queue in first floor…” source: A shanghai-based Malaysian dude.

Interesting. The next day, we decided to splash our cash to eat a bun (not that we're that rich...所谓"出来玩早就料到会花钱" - spending is predicted while travelling), and went to Nan Xiang again.

Nice, the queue is 2 times longer, well, it’s a sunny Sunday, it’s kinda predictable. So we went up to 1st floor, haha, long queue, no worries! 2nd floor. Darn, long queue too! I grabbed a waiter and asked “how many floors do you have?”

“Two.”

Only two? That’s weird… He looked at me, and asked “ we have Ya Zhuo (雅座) if you want…”

“???!!!” Ya Zhuo? What’s that? (literally it means nice seat)

The waiter said “well, you can get a seat straight away, but, you must spent at least RMB150 each.”

Stunned.

I grabbed the menu and found that 6 buns cost about RMB 33 – 50… meaning that we have to eat at least 18 buns per person?

I asked him, “do you think we can eat RMB150 per person?”

Without a doubt, he said “sure, I guarantee”

Crazy and desperate enough, we took the seat.

We walked up a small flight of stairs, and another one after about a 20-steps walk, and realized that we have reached a floor which is about 20cms higher than the 1st floor. (ha! another floor!)

The decorations are different, I mean, much nicer and the it’s so much quieter. Well, I was telling Lindy, hey, think we’re over paying for this… but then we realized that there are a few “floors” to go… In the end, we took the package which cost us RMB150 each (to meet the quota) but, it’s totally worth it! Nice, juicy, and we went to Heaven and back. Haha. (for pictures, you would need to go to my facebook. Haha)
okok. this is the picture of the place. and trust me, the bun is worth your money, time and patience ;)

Check out the craziness here. watch this video

after that, we flew back to Hong Kong, and realised that.... there's a branch in Hong Kong too...oh well, nothing beats eathing shanghai xiao long bun at shanghai authentic old restaurant on a nice shanghai chilly sunny day... perfecto.

On the weekend, my name is "宅男"

blame it on the weather.

blame it on the hassle of changing from my comfy 'pjyamas' to jeans and sport shoes...

blame it on the heavy weekdays that i have...

blame it on...nah, don't blame laziness, he has got nothing to do with this.

During the weekend, my name is "宅男"

well, popularised by taiwanese and japanese, the term 宅男 literally means a dude who likes to stay at home, doing nothing but indulging himself in the cyberworld, comics, manga, toys and.... those sort of stuff.

for the last two days, the first thing after i woke up was to switch on the TV, channel crawling on my limited-options pay-tv (because i don't want and i can't afford to pay for so many channels...although some dude did recommend me to add fashion tv. wonder why...) and then, slowly crawl out from my couch and turn on the laptop. hook on to internet, and wah lah.

gmail. login.
hotmail. checked.
facebook. no one bought me these days and yeah, i still kick arse in dopewars.
addictinggames. played those games before.
mousebreaker. played too.
msn. no one bother to chat... oh well. login off...

then will then hook up my wii.... but after one tennis game and a bowling game, my short attention span will then divert to the Simpsons Season 1-18 DVD pack...

and that was how my weekend ended.

note: i have taken out the fact that i HAVE to work on weekends, which is the only excuse to make me step out from my house during weekends... ;)

1st blog of 2008

finally decided to shift fully from xanga to this blogspot of mine.

it has been 9 days since chinese new years, 4 days since i am back in hk, revert back to ab-normality of working life. HK hasn't changed much beside the fact that the weather has gone crazily cold here. thanks to la nina effect, apparently.

thought i will be flooded with work, despite having a serious "post-holiday-lag" syndrome.. but blessing in disguise, market has been crapping out, so these days been going home quite early (comparing to my 2007 standard)

met up with old buddies during CNY, which is always the most wonderful thing to do. it's a tradition that every year we will be having our hardcore annual "CNY marathon", i.e. party everyday till late and just sleep for 4-5 hrs before the hardcore events resume.. but guess we're getting old, alot of them chicken out these year, some with very very poor attendance record (including the organiser ah long himself). oh well, like what they all said, we have grown up, and guess in a year or two, the 'marathon' will become a short 10m sprint... haha

it's quite a remarkable CNY this year as i got to meet up with mr. Jay Chou and mr. Kenny Sia

Special thanks to mr. Pierre pang.

and on my flight back to hk, guess who's sharing the same flight as me?

Ipoh-born international first-chinese bond girl Dato' Michelle Yeoh!

two (some said three) celebrities in a CNY?! wow. you must be kidding me... but this is how my year of rat begins ;)

Gong xi Fa cai!

SK's Art Gallery

SK is a very young talented artist in town. He has great passion for art and from his art works, you can actually feel the story that he wants to you.

Here are some of his art works and if you wish to purchase his artwork, or even require his services, just drop me an email @ kahseong@gmail.com and everything will be sorted out. ;)

"wave #1"
"wave #2"
"sunny day #1"
"fisherman"
"sunny day#2"

" forgotten"
"dream series #1"
"dream series #2 - caring mum"
"dream series #3 - sisters"
"My mum and her teeth"

REIRA starring Yuna Ito - Truth

soitees

check this out! http://www.cafepress.com/kahseong

G-Day

I am not trying to be a prophet here, or maybe i am just stating the obvious.

For some, it's something rather common in today's context, for some, it might still takes some time to feel the real effect of G-Day. oh yeah, what's G-Day? well, it's just a name for the day when the world is fully globalised and fully integrated!

when you realise that the computer you're using was made in the country of oriental dragon, your mp3 player was made in the country of rising suns, the starbucks' latte you're sipping was neither from uncle sam's country nor eiffel's land, but from the local shop down the road with coffee beans from sumatra javaland, it shows that the G-effect has already filtered through our daily lifes.

i know, it's nothing special worth mentioning, that's normal isn't it? the global market is so open this days where you can drive a Beerland Car with a Rising Suns CD player plus a DownUnder wife, that's just so normal. however, this is not the G-day yet!

when the real G-day arrives, the only difference it makes will not be the "flushed with choices problems" you will be facing when shopping in the local supermarket, yet, what you will experience is the natural law of life.

Survival of the Fittest.

A total G-day will be a day where there's no more protectionism in each and every single countries. That will be a day where UncleSam's car selling like a local car in RisingSunsLand, vice versa. There will be a time where the nationalities of the goods will no longer be the determining factor in consumers' buying decision. The purchasing decision will then, solely relying on the Quality of the goods itself.

This is a day where economists such as keynes or adam smith been long for. Free Economy that is.

Let it be protectionism, let it be embargo, let it be tariffs, let it be social policy; by using the government as the protective shield will not achieve the mission of protecting the infants, but, creating an infant who refuse to grow!

Let say you papa or mama will always be taking the apple away from your brother whenever you cry. By doing so day in day out, what you would learn is to cry to get an apple. What you don't learn is that you would need to be strong, so that you could reach for the apple yourself, but, human natures, why bother trying when there's an easy way out?

As a result, you will continue to be the weakling, while your brother will continue to be the independent, unprotected one. For your bro to 'survive', he must learn to be stronger and to be smarter.

Once protectionism were taken away, only the fittest will survive. Negative for the protected infant, Positive for the unprotected, and huge positive for the world as a whole! The natural forces of market will then eliminate the inferior goods and retain the good one.

In layman term, we don't have to put up with the sh*tty goods or people anymore!

When the G-day is here, who will you be?