Once Upon a Time in Nanjing Road, Shanghai

A day tour was allocated after our training. Since our exit is in Shanghai we made arrangement that instead of having the tour in Nanjing, we’ll have it in Shanghai, and fortunately our sponsor agreed.

Together with the tour guide that our sponsor hired, off we went to Shanghai after our breakfast on Friday April 4, 2014. 

After a 4-hour drive, we arrived at Shanghai just in time for lunch. Mr. Chen, our tour guide took us to a restaurant that serves Chinese dishes;

Have I asked our tour guide to read the characters written? I think so, but I completely forgot what he said. 

We had about 14 dishes served in front of us + rice, house tea, Minute Maid orange juice and a bottle of Tsingtao Beer.

Some Hybrid Adeniums at Sarangani Highlands

Adenium, Impala Lily, Dessert Rose or locally known as Bangkok Kalachuchi from the family Apocynaceae is one common houseplant that produces beautiful blooms. It can live for years and is a favorite plant subject of bonsai enthusiasts. My mom actually made a few in the past, and are now residing in my big brothers home.  

I have only seen the white and the more common pink dessert roses in my 36 years of existence until last week that I've seen 3 more of its variants personally. These variants are what we called the hybrids, cultivated to produce more distinct colors.   

Blooming brilliantly in Sarangani Highlands, General Santos City are the following;

Golden to pale yellow from inner throat to outward petals with uneven specks of pink. 

4 Things I Did in General Santos City

One of the perks of being a corporate employee is getting to go places for free. Though the main purpose is work related, like attending meetings, seminars, or field work, etc. at the end of the day, even an hour or two there will always be free time to explore places. Like last week, together with my boss and some colleagues, we attended a meeting at the General Santos City.

Skipping the work related activities because the issues and concerns discussed there were highly confidential, here are the other things that I did in General Santos City;

The Dinner + Few Shopping Finds in Nanjing

We’re done with breakfast and lunch, now let’s hurry back to the hotel for the dinner…

Because we were so curious with the kind of food that the hotel will serve for dinner, we stayed until it’s over on the first day before heading out to explore the malls and stores nearby. These are the dishes served, still no exotic foods in sight;

Like before I did not bother asking the name of the dishes, nor read the menu because I’m quite sure there were no English translation.

Some smelled different, some tasted different, and some were also delicious… Overall the food experience was quite extraordinary,

The Cherry Blossoms in Nanjing, China

Later did I realized that these flowers blooming inside the institute’s compound were actually some variety of the beautiful cherry blossoms.

I took some photos, using only my point and shoot camera, from the pathway.  As much as I want to get nearer and reach out for these almost fuchsia flowers, but can't because the cherry trees were taller than what my maximum reach.  

Kanzan

The same with this multi-petal Sakura also known as Kanzan, was also taken from a distance using the 18x capability of my smart camera.

Food Trip in Nanjing, China: The Lunch in the Employee Cafeteria

Those are the breakfast meals we had, next stop is the lunch meals at the company’s cafeteria.

Like the rest of the employees of the engineering technology center in Jiangning District, we had our lunch at one of the level of their three-storey cafeteria between 12NN to 1PM. Yep! You read it right, the company has a 3-storey self-service restaurant that caters their thousands of employees.

Food Trip in Nanjing: The Breakfast at the Hotel

Like I’ve said in one of my previous post, I was really hoping to try any exotic Chinese cuisines, like, the turtles, snakes, frogs, etc. Sadly, our one week stay never allowed us to have any unless, if paid using our own pocket money, we could have tried, but thinking it will be expensive made us backed off. Nevertheless, trying their local foods that are a little different in terms of taste, appearance and the method of cooking compare to Filipino cuisine, was a one worth of experience.

I already shared the first meal we had in Nanjing. In this post were the food served at Phoenix Hotel.

Day 1

The breakfast at the hotel is served starting 7AM, but since we have to leave the hotel at 7AM to catch the company bus going to Jiangning District, Nanjing, we asked the hotel to open the breakfast area for use by 6AM and have whatever is available.