No room at the inn!

I usually have pretty lousy luck with Hotels. For instance as much as I loved my trip to China, We did make a few foolish mistakes when traveling.... Who would of thought a foreigner ought to bring her passport with her when she is traveling around China? I suppose most foreigners who are not traveling around with their local Chinese boyfriend or girlfriend, Anyway I remember my ex boyfriend's family telling my ex boyfriend, don't let her bring her passport with her as it might get stolen... So I duly left it behind and off we went on our travels. No sooner had we got off the train in Shanghai did we realize Oops! We went into the first hotel and they said "sorry we don't accept foreigners" end of story..

Suddenly we thought hmmm this could be tricky... We got in a taxi and he drove us too our next Hotel, By the way we didn't try to get a room in any 5 or even 4 star hotels. In fact I don't even know if the ones we tried had any rating at all. We were on a low cost budget so the Ritz Carlton was out completely.

The second hotel we tried, we had a bit more luck, My boyfriend at the time started filling out the paperwork while I just stood there mute. Then they were just about to give us our room key, when they asked for my passport =.=;;;;; "Sorry we can't accept any foreigners without a passport"

We had a repeat situation at the third hotel. However by the fourth hotel we were both losing patience. So we tried a new tactic my boyfriend went into the hotel and filled out the forms while I waited outside then once he had filled them out and I saw he was on the way up to see the room... I came in and attempted to go up... and be a separate costumer... Total Fail!! We were basically forced to leave. At this stage my then boyfriend was furious! He even called the police!  We were convinced we were going to spend our first night in Shanghai on the streets lol.

The police did absolutely nothing. Then my then boyfriend called his dad, who luckily knew a guy in Shanghai who hopefully would be able to help us. But we had to sit tight and wait. We couldn't enjoy or relax all day because we had to heave around our heavy luggage bag all day until 11 at night. Also we had the stress of worrying about whether or not we were going to be able to get a hotel room. In the end his dad's friend saved the day! Hallelujah!

Anyway since then I haven't had many mishaps with hotels other than perhaps missing the included Breakfast. or Eating what we thought was the included Breakfast which actually turned out not to be included and we had to pay 17 euro for!

Anyway this week I experienced an all new mishap. The question is "How do you tell your boyfriend you may have to share a room with a male classmate at the college ball?" Obviously you don't. My college has it's annual Ball on the 3rd of March. It's supposed to be the highlight of the academic year.. and you only study in UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School:for one year so you must grab this chance when you get it..

Last week the annual Smurfit Ball was the talk of the college. Who's going? How much for a ticket? Who wants to book a hotel room? Naturally going to a College ball requires booking a hotel room because the Ball ends late and there's no way of getting home. I asked my friend Nancy whether she wants to share a room and she was all for it... Then on Monday I contacted the class rep who was organizing the discounted student rooms (60 euro) and she told me all rooms had been fully booked however Jia Qi doesn't have anyone to share with..... My boyfriend saw the message and was like "NO WAY!! are you sharing a hotel room with another guy!! Why can't I go??"

Then I went to college and thought about it... Why can't he go? then I decided of course he should go. I rang him and told him he should go. I felt really happy because me and him have never done anything all dressed up and in suits and fancy dresses. I haven t done anything like that since my (Debs) Debutant Ball at the end of secondary school.  This time it would be special and with a boyfriend.....My Debs was with some random friend I barely knew...

 Me and Daragh (2007) Debutant ball 1

Me and Daragh (2007) Debutant ball 2

But that dream came crashing down.... because of you guessed it.... Money..
Ball tickets : 70 euro per person = 140 euro
Hotel room : 89 euro
Hire a suit: possibly 100 euro
Drinks : 50 euro

As you can see it would cost a hell of a lot for both of us to go. :( I guess sometimes Cinderella can't go to the Ball....

Shopping spree

Whilst growing up, I never had to experience real grocery shopping, the furthest I ever had to lift a shopping bag was from the boot of my mom's car to the kitchen and even that rarely happened because usually my dad or my brother were told to do that because they were too heavy for me and my sister.

So the first time me and my boyfriend went grocery shopping in his new apartment I was totally shocked at the weight of the bags. Whilst we were shopping we just piled anything we thought we needed into the trolley. It didn't even enter my head that we would have to carry all of this stuff back to the apartment....

Good god stepping out of the supermarket holding two bags. I felt like i was carrying a bag of bricks. It was the most uncomfortable thing I had ever experienced. I was dying to get back to the apartment and relieve my poor arms. After that I really felt sorry for my friend Anna who's family had never had a car, so obviously this situation is very normal for her, not to mention my grandma and my aunt who also never had a car.

I really appreciate my mom's car these days. I think my family would die if we had to revert to grocery carrying, I don't think we would ever manage we would have to get a taxi for sure.

Anyway today was a normal grocery shopping day with my boyfriend and in the shop it looked like we had barely bought anything only 10 items... but obviously we were thinking with our eyes and not our hands.

On the way back i contemplated stealing a trolley,

buying a wheelbarrow,

hiring a trailer

Buy a caravan

hiring a maid

Buy a bike

surprisingly a car or a taxi never entered my head.... My boyfriends solution was for him to go to the gym and build more muscles so i wont have to carry anything,,, isn't he sweet? lol

Asian Male Models

Results

I only ever failed one exam in college, a business law exam in the first semester of my first year of College. In fact it wasn't a very important exam, It was a continuous assessment and it was only worth 30% of my overall grade. Anyway at the time it didn't feel very important, The night before the exam I went to the cinema with my friend Danny to see Ratatouille. The next day we both failed the exam together.

But yet we both managed to graduate last October together with honors degrees. 

However now I am in a new college and it's result time, the set up for how the modules were assessed was totally different. Each module was made up of a series of different projects, presentations, Journal article reviews,and learning journals each contributed towards the final grade. 

However this set up made it difficult to know what result to expect as I barely got any results for any of the assignments i handed in. So I was a bit nervous to open the results, but was pleasantly surprised. 

International Business Management : B-

International Business Research: B-

Marketing in Society: B

When I first told my Mom she was like "is that it??" Yes i only studied 3 subjects... so I only got 3 results... "but you did so many assignments... " Well I guess I will never get the results for each individual project :| I'm not really happy about that, but what can I do? Nobody else will get those results either.Also my boyfriend's reaction was "how could you get a B? you never did any study for any exams???" Hello Assessments!! What were they for. In his eyes it's exams that count.

Anyway ultimately I feel totally relieved not only about my exams but also about our application, we have sucessfully got the utilty bill sorted out and have moved onto the next step.... All will be revealed after Monday...

Sharing is caring

Perhaps I am super stingy and was expecting to much, or perhaps i misinterpreted our friendship, but nonetheless I felt a little disappointed and shocked.

I mentioned before I have several Chinese friends in College some are just acquaintances and some are closer than others. But anyway for the most part I usually get along pretty well with them, except for one, (Lets call her Bella) who even from the first day she met me, It seemed like she didn't like me for no apparent reason.

Actually the feeling was mutual, from the first minute i met Bella, I knew she was rather calculative as she always chose the smartest students in the class to talk to and try to get close to...  Obviously I wasn't considered smart enough to be her friend lol!

Midway through last semester Bella asked a friend of mine, Nancy can she join our project group, My gut instinct straight away was i didn't want her in our project group so i said a few polite excuses why i didn't think it would be a good idea to let her join... Such as we already have 4 members... but in the end Bella had to be in our group because there was no other group for her to join. But  perhaps my excuses about not wanting her to join got back to her and reinforced her disliking of me.

If it did she never let on and we got along quite amicably although she didn't do anything in terms of our report and was a real "Social loafer" and just rode along like a passenger and the only task assigned to her was to print out the report and hand it in to the office (in the other campus about a 20 minute bus ride away). She didn't even do that she shifted the task to another student who wasn't even in our group to hand it in. I was really annoyed by this and had to hold my tongue. I had said if nobody wants to hand it in I would do it. But I just let it be and never mentioned it.

However I saw a new side of her this semester, This semester I chose Project Management for my elective and my friend Nancy suggested i could ask Bella for a lend of her Project Management book, I knew it was a bit tactless to ask her but i thought in the end after doing the project together we had ended on good terms. So I asked her last week and she said sure no problem,

However obviously after having a week to think about she had time to think about it, and last night when I text her could she bring in the book today, her reply was "actually you can buy it from me....." Then i told another friend this and they're reply was, "Yea i was kinda shocked when you told me Bella said she would lend you the book, I didn't think she was that kind...."

Don't forget to say Rabbit!!!

 I want to dedicate the year of the rabbit to my Great Grandmother Magdalene Brown, As Rabbit was her thing. My Great Grandmother was an extremely superstitious woman brought up in England, She hated black cats, Friday the 13th, She would never walk on cracks on the pavement and never dream of walking under a ladder. She would go absolutely nuts if someone broke a mirror.

Black cats

Friday the 13th

Romantic but terribly unlucky

Cracks

the bunny that cracked

These are all relatively normal superstitions, but what was strange was her insistence that every person should say "rabbit" first thing in the morning on the first day of every month and presumably you will have good luck for the duration of the month. I have no idea why a rabbit should be so lucky.

So I decided to do some research about the Rabbit and its association with luck..I googled it and found out it is British and there are actually a lot of different variations of this superstition some say you should say "White Rabbit" or “rabbit, rabbit, white rabbit” Apparently a Rabbit is considered lucky because it represents jumping into the future and moving ahead with life and happiness.

 

Let my fingers jump you

Try jumping in these!

 Eat me!! Nom Nom

 

Marry Me!

So with out further ado

Happy Chinese New Year,

in the spirit of the rabbit lets jump into the future and move ahead with life and happiness!

Update
I found this blog this morning and I thought it would be interesting for anyone who likes Rabbits
101 chinese new year rabbits