Day 3: Lessons start, at the arcade

Today we started class for Project Management, which starts at 9am. However, almost everyone woke up around 8.30am (not me though, I woke at 6.30am for no apparent reason) and had to rush to class to avoid being late (and fined) without breakfast. This is because all of us forgot to buy bread or something for breakfast the night before, but thankfully we were given a break not too long into the first lesson.
After the first Project Management (PM) lesson was lunch, which we had in the school canteen. However, when we reached there, there were hardly anyone and most of the stalls to the side seemed to be closed or sold out already. It turns out that in WUST, their lunch hours start from 11am to 12.30pm, so when we came for lunch at 1pm it was already their closing time. Luckily, the stalls at the end of the canteen were still cooking, so we all ordered noodles from them since they said all rice dishes were sold out.
By the looks of it, the most popular dish of the day was the 炸酱面, or Fried Bean Sauce Noodles, which I also had. However, to order and pay for our meal was quite frustrating and confusing because the signboard was so huge and it did not exactly demarcate where to order what dishes, and though it looks like a huge kitchen of the same stall, there were different points to order from. I also noticed that they were very particular about their timing because we all had to top-up our cards (similar to our EZ-Link cards) to pay for our food at the stalls, but before all of us could top-up, the lady said that she was closed because her operation hours for lunchtime were up.
Anyway, this is the 炸酱面!

Its basically boiled noodles with lots of seasonings added on, much like our meepok. However, it was also very oily, and as I ate the noodles, my lips became coated in oil. FREE LIP BALM! But overall it was still nice.
Then we had our next lesson, which was also PM, but since we had more than half an hour before class starts, I asked the girls if they wanted to go and see the street food and shops just outside of our hostel since they didn't go yesterday, and so we all went.
The second lesson was more enoyable as Ms Hock told us more about herself and gave us some more tips on how to survive Wuhan and China in general.

Guide to Surviving China 101:

• Older, torn, tattered and crumpled notes are preferred over crisp new notes as the older notes look like they have been in circulation for ages, so it can be easily concluded that they are not counterfeit
• Be thick-skinned. Ask for discounts; don't keep saying thank you as they might think you owe them a favor or vice versa; and finally to avoid calling female service staff "小姐" which is slang for hostess, we can just do it the Singaporean way with as "OI!" or to be more polite, call the by their job titles, such as 服务员(service staff) and 师父(taxi/bus drivers, though it also means master) > Even when lost, don't look lost, and walk as though you know where you are going, instead of randomly approaching strangers to explain your plight and ask for help
• Try online shopping in China through websites such as taobao and dangdang as they provide variety and full service including reverse logistics if you don't like it! (I am so going to try it next week)

After the second PM lesson, Ms Hock finally brought us to buy a SIM Card. However, the plans were so so confusing and in the end I accepted Ms Hock's rationale to use Skype to call home because the process to activate International Calls is very complicated and tedious, and expensive.
Anyway, after buying SIM cards we went shopping!

销品茂

The shopping mall was very big, possibly because China has no lack of space. However the things inside were quite expensive, so we didn't really buy anything except for the girls who went shopping at Walmart Supercenter.
But, while the girls were shopping, us guys were at the arcade playing games. The first thing we played was Daytona USA where we thought we could link the machines and race each other, but somehow they didn't have the capability to do so. But it was still fun anyway.

After that Houng Sheng and I played another shooting game, then we decided to use the rest of our tokens on the basketball game to try and earn some coupons. It sure was fun, but very tiring and we were all drenched and hungry, so after gathering up everyone we went to the foodcourt to eat.
Half of our group bought fried rice, and they were all really, really oily. We all tried our best to finish it, but inadvertently left some rice because we didn't want to scrape up the rice (which would also scrape up the oil in the process).

Looks nice doesn't it? NOT

After dinner, we met the girls and their shopping then took the bus back. Without the student leaders guiding the way, we would all have been really really lost because the area around WUST, Jianshe Yi Lu was so very different at night, and there were many areas of darkness because of the few lights and lampposts.
Reflections:
Overall today has been a great day, but pity about the weather, if only it was just a few degrees cooler. At the arcade, at first glance, I notice that most of the people in there are middle-aged, and there were only a handful of youths. Although most of the middle-aged people were accompanying very young children attracted by the sights and sounds, there were still many of them chain smoking away at these machines which seem to be spewing out game tokens endlessly as they were working in pairs, 1 person inserting the tokens and the other scooping out all the tokens they won. In my mind, I think these are because firstly, arcade games do not attract teenagers anymore as it is not as convenient or as interactive as computer games, and secondly, there are no casinos in this part of China, so the masses use such games as the nearest substitute to while their time away. I also note that the arcades in China are not very child-friendly because music is blasted very loudly and the secondhand smoke is definitely not good for anyone.