Name: Jocelyn Yee
D.O.B.: 9th January 1988
School: Loyang Pri <1995-2000>; Siglap Sec <2001-2004>; FTC <2005-2006>; SIM <2007-Present>
Course Pursuing: Bachelor of Business (Accountancy)
Loves: My doggy - Milo; movies; my ipod; church

Just got back from Korea on Monday night and just settled back at home. It's my first winter experience and it's cool. One thing for sure is i love travelling to see the world for what it is instead of staying glued in Singapore staying tuned to my own pathetic life. At least travelling and seeing different things will make me retreat to reflect on my life.

I've taken pictures but am too lazy to post them now, maybe I will in my next entry.

Had my first taste of skiing and it was tough. If there's more time to ski I'll probably try out skiing down the slopes. Snow on the mountain is man-made but was lucky that it rain when we were on the road and we were able to see how snowing was like, but it was only for a short period. After we got out the bus at our destination it had already stop snowing, but there were fresh snow on the ground and everybody took up some snow on threw it at everybody else. It was fun!

After a day or two there kind of got real use to the cold weather and enjoyed it lots, now it feels like melting back here in Singapore.

Went to watch the B-Boyz show. It was a break dance show about a battle between 2 teams. They only started production just last year. One of the actor-dancer was a very famous top pro break dancer. But because of a battle competition he got injured and had to withdraw and was crippled and landed up as a street musician. So he got together with a bunch of break dancers to produce the B-Boyz show. It's about 100min long and i had great fun watching it.

One of the hotels we stayed in was more of an apartment. There was a small room, toilet, living room and kitchen and we had to sleep on the floor with really uncomfortable mattresses and bean-filled pillows provided. We slept in the living room instead of the bedroom because the living room was bigger and it had the tv in there..lol! That was probably the worse place i stayed in out of the four hotels. That apartment was arranged as they wanted us to have a taste of how Koreans live at home. Kind of similar to that of Japs. Luckily it was only for a night and Korean life is definitely not for me..haha!

The food in Korea is really really expensive. The meat Koreans eat the most is pork and it's either steamboat or bbq. So the meals there we had if it's not steamboat, it'll be bbq and vice versa. For almost every meal we'll be given pork because it's the cheapest meat there. The other kind of meat that Koreans eat most is beef, but we're unable to try it because it's too expensive. If compare beef steaks, those better ones in Singapore cost around $20 tops a serving but in Korea it's like approx $50 (40,000 won) a serving! That's why the tour couldn't arrange for a beef meal for us.

Couldn't get a lot of clothes there 'cause it's winter now and they're selling mostly winter clothes. Can't really get much there because it ain't cheap. Prices there are around the same as those in Singapore, if not more expensive. Spent mostly on having fun there and chocolates and drinks. The tour guide introduced this chocolate to us which had 56% cocoa in it. Everybody liked it so much that almost every store we stopped at was instantly out of stock after we visited them..lol! 1 bottle is like $4.80 and more dad bought 3 boxes of it. It's kind of different from normal chocolates because normal chocolates only contain 10% cocoa and the 56% one kind of leave a chocolaty cocoa taste in your mouth and it isn't too sweet. There's a 72% 1 and it's a little bitter and it's the kind that you'll drink with wine. There's a meiji chocolate that contained 99% cocoa and we were joking that you had to eat it with poison.

For every tour group there'll be a camera girl/boy tagging along with the group apart from the tour guide. For us we had Julia. She's 21 and gonna start her final year in uni. Her main job is a camera girl, but she does extra as the tour group's bell girl and and personnal waitress who add food for us when we're eating. Those are extra things she does hopping to earn more money through tips at the end. The tips we were informed to pay by the tour agency at the end is only for the Korean and Singapore guide and and the driver, that's why she has to work super hard to earn her own tips and sale of the pictures that she took of us. She took pictures of everybody throughout the whole trip and develop them for us to choose which ones we want. 1 pic is around $8 - $8.50. She took like 49 pictures of my family and it was close to $400 and my parents bought all of them and gave her $400 with the extra as tips as she's like the most hardworking person out of the team that brought us around and definitely deserved the tips much more than the tour guide did..lol.

Korean tertiary students are so different from students here. It's so in a way that they have to work to pay their own school fees, unlike people like us who live off our parents and depend on the 'Father and Mother' scholarship to get us through school. Basically for Koreans, not losing face is very important to them. Students there can't ask their parents to help them pay their school fees. They have gotta work and pay their own fees in order not to be looked down upon by their peers. If they earn a certain amount not enough to pay their fees fully then they can ask their parents to pay the rest in a way that they've tried their best in paying part of their fees. That's why Julia work so hard to take our pictures throughout the trip hoping that we will purchase them so she can pay her fees. On top of that she help us carry our countless huge heavy bags up and down the coach. There are like 38 of us and easily 40-50 super heavy bags up and down the coach, it's not just once. We stayed in 4 different hotels so can imagine how many times she gotta carry them and the increasing bags we carry throughout the trip. During meal times she's busy serving us and no time to eat, so she gotta packet up the bus to eat. All those extra work is hopping she'll earn more money at the end of the trip. That is why my parents bought all the pictures from her. The thing is she only get to keep 1/3 of the money she gets from the pictures. 1/3 goes to the extra food that we eat in the restaurants, 1/3 goes to the maintenance of the camera and she keeps the remaining to pay off her uni fees. I doubt she has enough for her own allowance.

Julia is no doubt the most hardworking student I've ever met. After meeting her, I feel so bad for kids like us who take things for granted. We have the ability to go out to work but many of us choose to stay at home and sleep our life away and live off our parents hard earned money. There's only 2 words i have to describe majority of Singapore kids - LAZY and SPOILT. Looks like when i start sem 3 i've gotta pick my butt off the couch to go and work and end this pathetic way of living.

So the Korean trip was fine, loved the whether and snowing is cool for first timers. Themepark was fun too. Also summed up why i love travelling. Look at how other ppl live and compare it to my own. No use comparing myself to Singaporeans 'cause we're all too similar. There's something the tour guide said i find that's just too logical - Money is for spending and gone when spent, but the world is always there for you to explore.