Going home soon

Hellooo 😊 welcome back! I’m 1 day late and I blame the internet, and probably the typhoon that was going to hit us.

Time files… in 2 weeks’ time, we will be heading back to Singapore. If you have been following our blog, you might have realised we actually have a lot of work to do. Lucky us, this week we get to take a break for a visit to Alibaba yay! Apparently, Alibaba and ZJU have some collaboration so if you’re here, you would probably get a chance to visit Alibaba (just pester your TAs or Profs a bit heh).

The 14 of us went on an excursion to Alibaba campus on Thursday. The place is bigger than SUTD. First stop was their 无人超市, automated store. There was no sale person, no cashier, just you and cameras and cameras everywhere. If there are no cashiers how do you pay? Well, there’s only 1 entrance and 1 exit. Before you step in, you will have to link your Alipay account with the store and a camera will scan your face. Each of their items has a QR code and a chip embedded to them, so there is no way you’re taking something out without sounding the alarm. When you’re trying to get out, the camera will check if you’re holding an item, if you are then money will be detected from your account. Sounds cool? Maybe in a few years’ time, there will be stalls like this on the streets of Hangzhou already.

Next, we went to the inner campus, where we saw their wall of fame. Alibaba’s employees will have their pictures pasted on the pillars according to the number of years they are here. We saw the gym too, it was 4 times the size of SUTD, they even have billiard tables. 

We didn’t take a group photo at the front gate cause we were all too excited to get in, but we took one at the bridge. Can you recognise us?

We ended our trip around lunch and went to 秦里城, a shopping mall beside the Alibaba campus, built for the Alibaba employees. We went to 盒马 supermarket. They are famous for their seafood, cause you get to choose your seafood, watch them catch it live, and eat if fresh. We few of us tried their seafood, you can probably find their experience on their personal blog.

That’s the end of our trip, then we got back to working mode 😐 By next week, we will be done with our project. If you’re interested, stay tuneee, else ciao~~