Stefanie sun yan zi

Friday, November 23, 2007
my reflection on doing a street survey

this afternoon i was out on the streets with a few of my project group members doing a street survey. The topic on re-employment after the statutory retirement age at 62. Initially we thought it was a simple job as we were assigned to clementi and commonwealth- both of which are hdb heartland areas.

However, i wasn't soon proven wrong as my buddy and i were rejected as soon as we told our potential respondents that we were doing a survey. During the 1 hour that we were there, we only managed to complete 5 survey forms- 3 muslim & 2 chinese respondents. I have to thank my fellow muslim singaporeans for helping me a great deal in this project. All 3 respondents were the only muslims that we approached; no muslims rejected our request to conduct the survey. Thank you so much to them. On the other hand, many chinese rejected us as we tried to explain the purpose of the survey. One of them, an elderly newspaper vendor even had the cheek to ask whether they would be paid for doing the survey!

Having said these, i am embarrass to say that i would probably belong to one of those declining to do the survey. This is probably due to our culture of being too conservative. We tend to be overly suspicious when someone approaches us to do surveys- afraid that our personal information would be leaked out or just purely do not like to be harrassed by people.

___* hummed a yanzi tune + 3:12 AM

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Wednesday, November 21, 2007
summary of my hongkong trip

its been such a long long time since i feed u, my dear blog. haha... ok thats pretty lame. alright during the first week of september, i was with some of my school mates in hongkong for a study tour to further understand the retail industry. it was not exactly an eye opener. but i must admit i did at least learn some stuff over there. like now i know who to approach if i wan to retail in clothes and if i wan to carry out business dealings with businessmen from mainland china.

The trip also brought us to macau and shenzhen. this time in hongkong, based on advice given by The Newpaper, my friends and i managed to buy some nice middle range clothings at affordable prices. its mirama shopping centre,located along park lane, nathan road. On the higher floor(i think it was level 3 or 4) there's this shop that sells clothes almost similar to topman but at a cheaper rate. The range of merchandise available is also greater than what's offered at topman.

In macau, besides visiting the gambling school where they train aspiring croupiers to work in the many casinos there. we also visited The Venetian and Wynn casinos. The venetian left me totally speechless with its design and architecture. The ceiling resembled a cool blue sky, which provides the right ambience for customers to shop without worrying about the time factor.

Lastly, in Shenzhen, we did alot of shopping- both at Luohu shopping mall which specialises in counterfeit goods and also in the local shopping malls and street shpping. It was a thoroughly enjoyable trip!

___* hummed a yanzi tune + 2:50 AM

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