Sat 7 Oct

I was watching the entire series of Gilmore girls again before coming on this trip. When seeing those cheesy town events of Stars Hollow, with the parade and reenactment of how the town was liberated, I had the impression that it was just part of the silly plot to make the serial more interesting. And guess what, today, everything jumped out from the TV and appeared right in front of my eyes. Starting from yesterday evening, there was band parading the town in rain! And today, there was carnival setup through the city, there was Ferris wheel, army and speed boat activities in the canal and people in costumes on floats and carriages parading around.

We are so used to the Chingay idea of floats going down the 5 or 6 lanes Orchard road but this was big tractors pulling the floats through the tiny townstreet through the city. Initially I was not interested to see the cheesy sights but we ran into Sander's mum and grandpa. Seeing how enthusiastic was a 78 yr old man walking around to get a good position to catch a glimpse of the fun, I cannot resist but felt the urge to join in and so we did! Haha... funny and cheesy but I am starting to feel more for this town of 100,000 people. There are a lot of simple joy especially with the older folks and I am truly enjoying the slow and slightly lazy spirit all around.

Tomorrow, we will return to Shanghai and with the time difference we will be arriving on Monday morning. I will have to plunge into work immediately with a client visit and dinner and presentation on Tuesday already!! Oh man, dunno how I can survive that ....