It's only less than a week since I first arrived in SZ but I'm already exhausted. The weird thing is, I haven't seriously started work as my boss still hasn't pass any task to me at the moment. Instead, he showed my friend and I to the lifestyle of a businessman/executive/etc. in mainland.

Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind is entertaining clients. Apart from the fabulous food that we get to taste from our evening outings, we were also introduced to a few popular hangouts at Shenzhen.

25 April: The most popular night pub in SZ now is SOHO pub. Located at a small distance away from the night clubs and massage spas stretches, SOHO is the place to be if you want to have a good night out drinking with friends and grooving to the tunes of R&B remixes. Funnily, the tunes the pub play are totally different from the ubiquitous American R&B tracks heard in Zouk or MOS in Singapore. Once in a while, a pretty damsel sings live R&B tracks or you can hear Chinese rapping... It is one hot place.

We stayed until around 12 or something like that, before we headed to the KTV nightclub. A friend of my boss who co-owns Sakae Sushi drove us there. He's a whacky Hong Konger whose philosophy - in my opinion - is to be larger than life, and who isn't afraid to be LOUD. So, in his drunken (definitely not just tipsy) state, which is certain to fail the breathalyser test without even puffing into the gadget, he graciously drove everyone with his Chinese super-property-agent wife to the nightclub. We entered the VIP room called 999 to join other Hong Kong and Singaporean businessmen for happy hour. The rest of the night was spent there merry making and pouring money away like a running tap. We slept at 5am.

26 April: Thank goodness today was a much less strenuous day as my friend and I visited the electronics stretch and the book city. The electronics stretch, called Hua Qiang Bei, looks like Singapore's Chinatown before it revamped 10 years ago. You see many buildings like Pearl Centre (in Singapore, obviously) everywhere and rather dilapidated high-rise flats in some corner. Since it was a Saturday, the street looked like Chinese New Year season in Singapore at Chinatown too.

One thing that I have observed and disliked is the smoke in the malls other than those in town or newer malls. Once inside the malls at Hua Qiang Bei, I feel like I'm inside Zouk before the smoking ban was initiated last year. How obnoxious. Imagine it's almost PSI 200 on the streets and you enter the malls filled with cigarette smoke. My lungs, throat and eyes...

One of the things I revered in was the relaxing session at Queen Spa and Dining. Essentially, you live like a queen or king there at rates that will make Partyworld and KBox close down in 1 month's time. Dinner and free-flow tea without moving an inch, a television set with 50 channels stucked in front of you, massging by pleasant Chinese girls (who can talk well) and service that makes you feel like you're the Sultan of Brunei. Yet, the only thing I hate most is the smoke. People smoke inside, too.

It's been an exhausting but eye-opening week. The air quality is pathetic. But things are cheap. I bought 2 brand new books, a 500-page novel and a 1000 over pages book outlining the 5000-year history of China, at RMB73. I will improve my mandarin.

By the way, I think the Chinese government keeps a tight control over the Internet flow in China. You see, I can write blog entries but I can't view them (unless using another troublesome route that my friend has taught me) at all or make comments to the tagboard (impossible) or read the comments anyone has entered (absolutely impossibe). Torrie: There are others who read my blog, okay! I can't even go to Veoh to watch shows. What the hell, right?