Shanghai nights

It's my first business trip overseas in a long while. So, I have lots of insights on various matters. 

Movies 
Rewarded myself with the famous La La Land after doing all my required pre-reading. This movie is  highly recommended if you are into dreams and all that jazz. Watching it reminds me that actually I like watching movies , just that I haven't watched such interesting, stirring ones in a while. Also, when I am watching on a plane, I don't have that nagging feeling that I'm prioritising the two-hour movie over my kids, so that felt good too. 

On my return flight, I squeezed in the classic Wall Street, Mr Church (incidentally with some jazz element too), and one episode of Sex & the City. All very nice too. Recommended too if you are into good plots , without all the special effects and lousy humour. 

Facetime
Tried to callback every night and every morning to FaceTime the boys.. Interestingly Cayson doesn't seem to recognise me, or perhaps the just-got-out-of-bed look was too messy. I recalled that when Cayen was younger, he was asking why I was in the phone. 

Sleep
Anyway, perhaps it was sheer exhaustion of work or the peace of a hotel room, I slept like a baby for night 2 & 3. 

SQ Flight Journey
Haven't travelled Business in SQ for a while, but still it's the same old food in the lounge , and same old satay / beef noodle soup on the flight menu - those's been there for quite a few years .. Despite being an infrequent traveller, I wonder if I'm the only one feeling it's a little stale. I wonder if the regular travellers feel the same. 

Boarding was a nightmare as we had to take a bus to the plane, and were trapped inside for ten minutes or so in a stuffy bus as the plane was not ready. Such poor coordination between the boarding gate staff and flight staff made the experience rather unpleasant. I wonder if it's the airport or the airline issue. Nonetheless, a rather lack lustre experience . 

Next, on boarding, the head air stewardess with her rather loud voice made small talk with a few passengers and tried to make them feel welcomed. However, as it was so obvious she's exceptionally friendly to only a few (I presume regulars), she managed to make me feel a little less welcomed, haha. 

Lithium batteries 
As my handphone battery is not working well, I brought a powerbank in my bag. This is probably not a good idea as there's various restrictions on lithium batteries / powerbanks that one can carry on board or check in. At the Shanghai custom, they actually fished out my powerbank to check for the voltage. Learning : buy those packs without lithium , or those packs with low voltage or don't even bring it overseas. 

Food
Due to time constraint, I mainly had western food in hotel. Managed to get a good Chinese meal on night 1 after a long day. Only problem, they didn't follow my instruction to give me half a serving - so I ate it all up. Had to quickly get a pair of new shoes too, after I realised my post pregnancy feet were too big for my boots. 

Deciduous trees
Saw the trees on my way back and took some pictures to show Cayen. Taxi uncle also shared with me that he had watched many Singaporean sitcoms many years ago and even spoke about Sembawang. Boy was I impressed. 





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