Tehran Shopping Spree

You might think that there is nothing to shop in Tehran but I can tell you that you are wrong! There are still stuff to shop in Tehran just that they are a bit expensive so I didn't buy anything in the end. The things sold there can be found in SG, no point spending the money there.

However, there are lots of goodies to buy. I bought candy floss and they were snapped up in a jiffy when I brought them to the office. Lock loved it. They all said it was yummy. I liked it too and regretted that I only bought 3 boxes. These candy flosses were cheap.

Then there are lots of other goodies like various nuts and dried fruits which we cannot get in SG. Weird fruits but nice. Then came the mega product that we all love. HONEY. We bought tons of honey and even took honey from the hotel buffet. Oops. Paiseh. Not me, some other people took the honey but I did not take a single bottle. I bought one instead.

Our favorite nuts and fruits shop. It has a wide variety of different kinds of candies, chocolates, nuts, dried fruits etc. We went there 3 time throughout the whole trip. The dried fruits are really nice but they are not very cheap. The mixed nuts I bought was about $7 per kg I think. Forgot le.
Inside the nuts shop. All the goodies! Awww.. this photo made me feel like going back to Iran to buy all the nice foodstuff.

All of us squeezed into the shop. I can't decide what to buy. In the end, I bought a big bottle of honey, 3 boxes of candy floss, a packet of mixed nuts and a packet of wu hua guo. There are people who bought much more than me if you think that I am buying alot.

Another roadside stall selling nuts and fruits. The lady on the right is our Miss Translator. We got 2 translators, Mr and Miss. They took turns to bring us around Tehran. I think that Miss Translator is pretty. Fair skinned, big eyes.. She is charming.

This is the shopping street in Iran. There were lots of clothes selling here and some of them are quite pretty. Especially those dresses. Unfortunately, I think they are quite expensive so I didn't buy any. I mean, I can get those designs in SG with a similiar price. Moreover, my luggages were full.

Nonetheless, it was still a fun experience shopping here.

Another view of the shopping street.

We spotted a shop selling pretty hair pieces. Nai ba was stuck there for a VERY and I mean VERY long time looking at the hair pieces. I think he bought at least 100 pieces from this shop. I must admit though that the prices here are cheaper than in SG. Naiba took such a long time browsing that eventually he went behind the counter himself! He is acting like the store owner here.
Naiba posing as the store owner.
Nai ba and the REAL store owner.

Look at the photo above, the ladies are all wearing black. Nothing but black. That's because colours are arousing and females in Iran are not allowed to wear coloured clothing. However, we are not Iranians so we can wear colours but we still got to wrap our heads. Even though the Iranian ladies were wearing black, we can still see that they like to doll up. They put on make up on their already beautiful eyes. I really envy the girls in Iran lor. I can say that ALL the ladies there got big beautiful eyes.

We also went to this shopping center selling nothing else but shoes. Don't think the shoes are cheap here. The Adidas and Nike are selling at the normal prices around $100+ here.

Tadah... the streets of Tehran. I can't say Tehran is a clean country but at least it's cleaner than China and at least i still think that some parts of the streets are in fact quite pretty. Surprised that Tehran is not as run-down and war-torn as you imagine it to be right? I thought that this place will be very dirty and run-down before I see it for myself.

An example is the view outside my hotel room. I took this at my hotel window. I think this part of the street is quite nice. Looks like some European country.

Another view from my hotel window. Nice right.

Somewhere not very far from our hotel is this Iran Bank. It is a big European style building and very grand looking. I liked it. It looks like a castle. hahaha~

Chickens! What are the chickens doing on the streets of Tehran? Running around like nobody's business.

Aiyoh.. why everybody give a sad face in the photo? Tsk tsk.. so sad meh? And that Bala was not being very co-operative. Everybody give sad face, he still can smile...

Everyone give sad face I also want to give sad face... :(

Kebab and BBQ chicken! The smell of these meats was so nice that we cannot control ourselves and bought 1 whole chicken. It was quite cheap I remember and the chicken comes with a box of salad. The food in Iran was actually not as bad as Bala said it to be. He was telling everyone that the food sucks but I actually found them quite nice. They got some unique flavours. For example, the chicken in the above picture tasted superb. The restaurant in our hotel also serve some unique dishes like chicken wrapped in egg, kebab in their own style etc. Yummy! And also, their rice was super duper nice! I dunno how they cook their rice but it was not too soft, not too hard and has a slight buttery flavour. It was not sticky, every grain was by itself. Unlike the rice we eat in SG, they always come in lumps. My mouth starts to water already.. thinking of the rice and the BBQ chicken.

Oh, I forgot to mention that there isn't any Mcdonald's, KFC, Mos Burger or Burger King in Iran. No international fast food restaurants there at all but it's ok. They got their own fast food! On the last day in Iran, we decided not to eat in the hotel (all meals were provided in hotel). We decided to eat outside at this Top Burger. Hmmm... Looks good.

Look at the menu. We were having a hard time choosing what to eat. Finally, we ordered some burgers, fries and garlic bread.

Fries. I don't know why, the fries over there seems to taste much better. They are something like the fat fries of Mos Burger but they are less oily and crispier. Very nice. The potato in it smelt very nice...

The burger and the garlic bread. Though the burger wasn't exactly pretty, it tasted pretty good.

QY simply love the naan served in the hotel during breakfast. Every morning, she will order the freshly made naan...
There was once we ordered ice-cream in the hotel cafeteria. Winter + ice cream = cool!

We charged the ice-cream to our hotel room and in the end the organizer paid for it.. woot~

Nai ba~ What are you doing with those umbrellas on ur head! Aiyoh... think it will rain in the cafe meh?
Iranian money. Unless you want to go Iran, I don't think you got many chances to see these Iranian notes ba... They are called Iran Rials.

Guns! They are selling guns openly in Iran and I heard that the bullets are real too. My god.. Dangerous lor. Beside guns, they also sell bows and arrows. These arms comes with a pricey tag though.

Lastly, I would like to show you guys this sign. Anyone can tell me what this sign means? Kanglong and me were saw it and we stood there for some time thinking what it means. I guessed it means 'no moving of boxes' or 'no briefcase allowed'. Hahaha, sound kinda lame. What do you think?

Steamboat Session

Steamboat is one of May's favourite food and she told me before that she can eat steamboat everyday! So we organised a steamboat session at May's house. Unfortuantely, May told me that she has thrown all the sauces away so we can't eat at her place. Haiz.. So in the end we went to Kanglong's place to eat steamboat because he said that he got the pot.



Ok, so we went to meet May at about 4pm to eat something first and do some last minute shopping. We bought lots of good food like clams and prawns and of course the 'da bai cai' which I like to eat. Actually I like to eat many types of veg lor, not only da bai cai.


We started preparing the food once we arrived at Kanglong's place. Hahaha, as most of you know, I am a qian jin xiao jie so I don't really know much about preparing food. I stood around most of the times taking photos. Hmm.. at least I did wash the veg and prepare the paper plates and some misc stuff lor.


May was not used to preparing food in a messed up kitchen. Kanglong's kitchecn was pretty messed up because nobody really cooks there and his mum wasn't around most of the time. There were also multiple stuff in his kitchen. For example, he told me he has got 5 slow cookers! What the hell? And they don't even cook often. Never mind, next time my slow cooker spoil, I can still borrow his.


We also found other multiple items like 2 opened packet of salt, 2 packet of sugar... etc. One of the salt packet was such a big pack that May commented it's the first time in her life that she is preparing food with such BIG pack of salt.




The soup was in process of cooking. Photo was taken before we add the soya beans. May commented that soya beans prices has went up.

Hmm... what are they looking for? Think the kitchen is too messy to find anything.

Our steamboat in the end becomes a claypot! KL in the end said that he only found the base of the steamboat but not the pot. We tried to use the slow cooker pot on the base but the soup doesn't boil. May is very particular about boiling soup and she once had a bad experience at Bala's place. Sadly to say, history repeated itself!

So we changed the slow cooker pot into this claypot and we prayed hard for it to boil. May was rather optimistic that this pot will work and soup will boil but alas! The soup did not boil too. Finally, we bring in the authentic steamboat pot which we normally see in steamboat shops. However, this steamboat pot needs a gas tank to work but we tried it anyway on the hotplate.

Transfering the soup and food into the steamboat pot. I purposely took this photo with half of May's face cropped off. I don't wanna blog her face because she will kp to me later that I blog her ugly photos.

Notice May's left hand in the photo? What the HELL is that?! Some kind of weird handsign? Or she thought that she was dancing while holding some veg on her right hand?

May told me that I must blog this cup of 2 in 1 coffee (yes de, she has gone back to those days telling us what we should blog). When I say 2 in 1 coffee, I don't mean the coffee mix. I mean there are actually 2 packet of coffee put together into one cup making it a mega big cup of coffee.... -_-"

KL went to coffeeshop to buy coffee and drinks. May said that she wanted to drink kopi-o so KL bought 3 packets! I asked him why he bought so many. He said that he was afraid 1 pack is not enough.. diaoz.

May said that it was the first time in her life that she was drinking such a damn big cup of coffee.

Let's compare May's coffee with my normal cup of coke. Big lor. Think she will not be able to sleep after that.

Finally, our steamboat started boiling and we happily cooked our food. May surrendered soon and refused to eat anymore. I think she is on diet but she doesn't admit it.

After finishing all the food, I was so damn full and felt sinful. So we made Kanglong teach us some workouts. Hahaha. Poor guy got to demo to us though he was very full himself. He also gave me 2 weights for me to workout with. Ok, I think I will start doing something and hopefully, I can lose my fats too!

Blu Ray

Recently I was interested on Blu Ray products. I know that I can't possibly afford to enjoy Blu Ray yet but I am interested to know how it works.

For your info, to maximise the quality of Blu-ray quality, you MUST own a HDTV. So meaning, you need to get a Blu-ray player and a HDTV. That will chao chao cost you like $7k or 8k depending on your TV size.

Blu-ray also known as BD is the next generation optical disc format developed by Blue-ray Disc Association. It offers a capacity of 5 times of normal DVDs. Meaning to say, a single layer Blu-ray disc can store 25GB while double layer can store 50GB.

The reason why Blu-ray can hold more information is because if the laser light it's using. Yes de, that is blue laser. The blue laser light has a wavelength of 405nm while the normal red laser light's wavelength is 650nm.

I hope you know what is light wavelength.

405nm means that it has a shorter wavelength and that means it can hit a more precise spot on the disc. Since blue laser can hit a more precise spot in the disc, we can now squeeze in more information on the same disc size.

As you know, or maybe you don't, information on discs are recorded in 'bumps'. Something like bumps=1 and dents=0. So information are recorded in 101010100101 format.

Now that the blue laser is more precise, we can make the bumps and dents smaller on the discs and thus store more information. I read that they are developing multi-layers on blu-ray too. Meaning to say if the developer wants a bigger storage space, they can increase layers to Quad-layers storing 200GB of information on a single disc.

Amazing right...

For your information, NM = Nanometer. How big is 1 nanmeter? It is 1 millionth of a MM. That is how small an NM is.

My god.. When the prices of such gadgets drop, I gonna buy it. DVDs will be out soon. The market will soon be dominated by blu-ray and HDTVs.

HDTVs are sharper than SDTV. Why? Cuz it got double the resolution of SDTV. However, it doesn't mean that it can play low quality videos input into a sharp, high res output. Many people thought that you can 'sharpen' the images of their DVD or VCD when they use a HDTV but that is totally wrong. You will need a good source for a good result on the TVs. No point getting HDTV if you don't have HD-DVD player. Got it?

My body fats

Yesterday, we had a steamboat session at Kanglong's place. He told us that he got the steamboat pot so we bought the ingredients there but in the end, he can't find the pot! So we did stupid things.. anyway I will blog about this steamboat session later on because I don't have the photos with me now.

PS: Pai seh lah May, you told me to blog this steamboat session by 9.30am today but I can't lor. The photos are not with me now.

Before the steamboat session, I was as usual kping that I am fat and ugly etc to KL.

Me: Shit man, look at my arms lor.. made up of FATS! So flabby! sianz like hell.

KL: You are not fat lor, I think you got water retention.

Me: No lor, I am fat. It's FATS all over my body.

Kanglong pulled the flab at my arm and after pinching my flab for awhile.....

KL: That is not fats lor. That is your muscle. Your fat is only this thin little bit.. (thugging at my skin) See? This thin bit is your fats.

Me: Diaoz.. please lor.. how can that be.. this whole flab is a mass of fats. I am fat leh.

KL: I got skin fold calipers, I measure your body fats for you la.

Me: Dun want la... Stressed leh, I cannot face the actual figures of my fats. I think I am made of 100% fats.

KL did not want to force me so he said nothing. Minutes later, I decided that I want to measure my body fats and face the truth.

Me: Ok ok.. You measure my fats.

Stressed. Very stressed.

He didn't use weighing machines to find out. Instead, he used a pair of calipers.

He started off pinching my back and used the calipers to measure the thickness. Then the abs and lastly my arm.

KL: Aiyoh.. your arms really got very little fats lor. I never see so little fats in arms before. Think it's not even 5mm.

I think that is very 'hao siao'. How can that be!

So after calculations and taking a look at the body fats table, he concluded that my body is made up of 22% fats.

KL: 22% fats is low, so conclusion is you are not fat. You just have undeveloped muscles.

Me: You trying to tell me that this flab thing on my arm is actually muscles?

KL: Yes, just sagging muscles la. I have seen another girl who is smaller sized than you but her body is made up of 60% fats lor! She is pratically made up of fats.

Weird lor, so the conclusion is, big sized doesn't mean you got lots of fats in you. Small sized doesn't mean you got less fats.

In the end, Kanglong zhi ye bing again, showed me what exercises to do to build up the muscles on my arms. He gave me 2 weights so that I can train at home. I think I will start doing these exercises to build up my muscles.

Later on, I pester May to measure her body fats too but she was very very stressed. She did not want to measure at all but I asked KL to pinch her arms too.

KL told May that she also got little fats on her arms but the fats are still more than mine.

That is a shocking news because May's arms look much more thinner than mine. Haiz.. that means if she lose the fats, she will have even thinner arms lor. That's good. I won't be having thinner arms because even I do exercises, my muscles will become more firm only but not smaller. According to Kanglong there is no way I can make my muscles smaller.

So our steamboat session ended with a workout lesson. KL taught us a few workouts we can do to tone up muscles. May very heck leh, she was the one that wanted so much to know about how to slim down then she became very pekcek when she realised that the workouts are very tedious and hard to do. So she told KL that she heck already lah, life is short so she want to be happy.. etc etc.. EXCUSES LAH! She is just plain lazy lor.

So sad for me, I can never have small and thin arms!! :(

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh yah, another stupid thing happened. I was sitting there talking to Kanglong after the steamboat. May had disappeared to toilet or kitchen or somewhere I don't know.

Again, we were talking about being fat and I was still kping that I am fat blah blah.. etc.

Kanglong looked up and down at me and scrutinised every inch of my body parts.

KL: If you want to say you are fat, at most it's only your lower abs and thighs that have more fats. You stomach don't have much fats also.

Shit lor! Please don't scruitnise my body can? Very stress leh!

My advice to you guys. If you are meeting a fitness trainer, please wear loose clothes because they will scrutinise your body! KL said he can't know whether YH got more fats or muscles because YH was always wearing loose clothes.

Haiz, so today I learnt something new about fats and muscles. I hope people who read my blog learnt something too.

A park in Tehran

On the 13 Feb, I think it's 13 Feb, we were going to start having fun in Iran! Performance over, it's time to party!

Oh yes~

We were going to visit the museums in Iran. Before setting off, we wrapped our heads and Falzi came to borrow my ear muffs. He was telling me that his ears were cold and painful. Poor Falzi was sick that day. So I lent him my ear muffs.

He was telling me,"Oh, PINK ear muffs~! So cute!" Then he posed like in the above photo. So super funny sia and what is Bala doing behind??? -_-"

Taken in the coach. Crazy Falzi fooling around with my ear muffs! Oink Oink! These guys has been watching me rehearse the princess role many times so they always imitate me with the actions and speech. Look at Falzi's hand in the photo... diaoz..

They also like to imitate me saying,"Ya ho..." Which in chinese it is ,"ye hao.." I hope you know what I am talking about. So these guys, including naiba, keep on saying 'ya ho' to me in a high pitched voice.

All of us taking photo in the coach only Ang is uninterested in taking photos. I think she is in a super bad mood because we were being very disobedient. She wanted us to put on the green scarf but she did not tell us before hand that she wants us to do so. And from our understanding, we know that we don't need to put on uniforms for unofficial events. Today we are going visiting and partying so it's unofficial and so we heck care lah. If she wants anything to be done, please send notices in advance lor, for god's sake.

I think Ang was really very cold.....

A sequence of photos of we crazy people jumping around. I think I really got no 'xing xiang' there.. :P

Aiyoh.. Nai ba!!! what are you doing??? What a funny pose lor!

Bala looked like he was from Shanghai in the 1930s. Hahaha.. A steel horse outside the museum. We can 'sin kia ti beh....'

Hmm.. which piece should I buy? Which one is nicer ah?? A shop in the museum..

Antoher horse! This time it's a wooden one~

In the museum corridor, again, YH and Falzi action action.

Another piece of artwork. I am just trying to show you guys the arts of Iran. :D

Give me back the camera if you dunno how to take photos!

At the park behind the museum~ It was fun! There were lots of these workout equipments and we were having fun trying them out.

Kanglong and our very cool translator. I think our translator was pretty stylo. Wasn't he? He is only 23 years old!

A water drinking station at the park. According to our translator, the sign says 'Water of drinking'.
Naiba and translator~ Translator was still acting cool.

Aiyoh.. Kanglong! What are you doing with QY? You are tipping her over already! Hahaha..

Hahaha.. action action Falzi in action again.

Oh yes, we are all very cool people.

Again, we are cool people! Cool ok?!

Aiyoh.. what kind of photo is this? Everyone doing their own poses acting like they don't know each other...

What is this on the floor? Whitish... slime? cotton wool? No...

It's ice~!

QY decided to shovel the ice off the drains for the Iranian people. Awww.. QY is being very noble. All the way to Iran to shovel ice from the drains. Think the Iranian worker must be thinking that we are a bunch of siao tourists.

Looking at the photos, I realised that Iran does, to a certain extent, looks like Europe. The trees.. buildings.. etc... Naiba told me that these photos looked as if they were taken from some Australian or UK university.. Hahaha.. true lor.

Fun visit to the park and museum~ Next time I will blog about the streets and the local shopping of Iran~

Filming at NTU

On 02.03.08, we went for a filming at NTU. The students there were making a movie and a few of us were 'chosen' to be in this film. Haiz.. actually it is quite unlucky to be chosen because we must reach COI at 7.30am on a beautiful sunday to do filming at NTU.


The chosen ones were Bao hua, Zhu ying, Kanglong and me. Naiba was the chosen one at first but he LAST MINUTE and I mean really last minute, informed me that he can't make it. He asked me to help him look for someone else. He panicked so I am very nice lor, I asked some people but apparently, most of them didn't want to do it because it is tooooo early. Everyone wants to sleep on a sunday. In the end, Naiba got his good brother, Kanglong, to do it.


That day, Kanglong drove me to NTU and we reached there at about 8am. I was going to die of tiredness and so is Kanglong.

I had to do make up first because I was the first one to be filmed. Haiz.. so I did make up first which I think was quite ugly. The make up made my face looked very round.

My round face.



Zhu Ying and Bao Hua.

BTW, we were acting as soldiers for 'Mu Gui Ying'. CBX was acting as Mu gui ying.

Li was doing make up for Kanglong. Suddenly I heard Li speaking very loudly with his very 'dua bak' voice.

Li: Kanglong don't fall asleep!

hahaha... he fell asleep while doing make up... After awhile, I heard again.

Li: I am doing the black parts. Don't fall asleep! Yuying! Pull him at the shoulders!

Everyone is so dead to wake up so early lor. Haiz.. so finally, I did my parts first. I needed to wave this flag around and doing some movements. The flag is the small type and Li taught me 2 days prior to the filming of some movements.

Haha.. I was buttoning my blouse.. the button kept coming off.

I was waiting for them to adjust the camera and arrange the lightings etc. Hahaha.. this photo is very natural and very me lor.

I don't know how many times I re-do the movements for filming. At first I made some mistakes then they wanted to film me using different camera angles. I think I did the movements at least 10 times and they are making me very dizzy. The headgear also gave me headaches. I hate wearing those things.They are worse than wearing wigs.

I was having a bad headache and Kanglong was giving me a message. Fortunately, we were allowed to take off this thing while they were filming other parts. Which means, half of the time we took off that thing and was chatting at the side. Zhu Ying said that it is actually quite fun to do the filming cuz we were very relaxed.

In fact, we were so free that Zhuying started asking Kanglong how to get rid of flabby arms and so Kanglong 'zhi ye bing' again. He started telling them about diets, losing weights and doing what sort of exercises etc.

Kanglong demoing to them how to straighten legs. He commented that my knees were also slightly bending inwards so I have to do this too to straighten my legs. So cute right.. see the 3 of them got nothing else better to do lor.

I think Kanglong also quite busy. Ever since my troupe memebers know that he is a fitness instructor, they started asking him alot of funny questions. May also keep bugging me to ask him how to get rid of tummy etc.

Kanglong teaching ZhuYing how to do lunges. This is effective for losing weight but of course you must do it with the right positions.

Poor Li and CBX were not as free as us lor. They got lots of filming to do. Unlike us, we sit at the side talk kok and do workout. hahaha...

Group photo of us all.. hee hee.. it was a very long process but it turned out to be quite a fun thing to do. I can't wait to see the results of all these filmings.