dirty snow is just disgusting.

"normal" copenhagen winter arrived 2 nights ago and brought with it alot of snow. and cold. very very cold. not by kiruna standards of course, but for the few winter months ive been here, this is the first time ive witnessed copenhagen snowed under.

but the prettiness doesnt last for long. the winter wonderland that was last night simply became disgusting slosh. its just gross. even thinking about it makes me shiver. yuck! and the fact that its bitterly cold and windy makes walking around outside very miserable.

on a happier note, its england, scotland and ireland in the coming weekend with rosh! we've been planning it for a quite a long time, so im really glad that the plan's realising. we're going to hug rocks in stonehenge, down guinness in dublin, play intelligent in oxford, act tai tai in harrods, be culture vultures in stratford-upon-avon... while trying to keep our money together for the next 10days.

anyone on exchange would know that trip planning is a terribly tedious task. first, money's a constraint (the biggest), so the more economical the better. then you've got to consider whether travel is more important or school. this semester, ive given more weight to school just because the work load is just plain massive. but when you can leave for where is dictated by flight times and flight costs. hands up those of you who feel abused by impossible flight times, even more impossible flight prices and then to top it off, kerna cheated by taxes. thats the most irritating.

but hands on effort never hurt anybody. its good to rough it out esp when you've got buddies roughing it out with you and then getting lost/taking the wrong train/missing the flight at the same time.

its only week 3!

gawd.

its only week3 and i feel like i need to studystudystudystudy. i even forgot that i'll be off to the big uk this weekend! 10days london, edinburg and dublin! and it also means 10days of need-to-play-catch-up.

anyway, it was a rather uneventful chinese new year, although it was definitely nice to get to know more singaporeans here on exchange, and commiserate with each other that we can't teleport home to family and steaming hotpots and hoards of chinese new year cookies. still, new year greetings from friends and family back home make the pain a little more bearable. the pineapple tarts and prawnrolls that i brought up to cph are slowly but surely disappearing from my kitchen table. mental note to self to eat cny goodies with a vengence next year to make up for lost time.

on a random note, anyone who hasnt watch princess mononoke by hayao miyazaki, please do so. i've just got my hands on the album and listening to it reminds me so much of the beautiful beautiful anime i watched a long time back.

*scowl*

its just waaay to bad that for this semester, ive submitted myself to the hellish likes of comparative commercial law, international labour law and world trade organisation. i mean seriously, needing to study TWO international organisations that i dont have prior knowledge about is nuts. and all because i wanted to squeeze in a tuesday to thursday week. between the 2, WTO is the crazier one. so many agreements, conferences here and there! and cases which are thicker than hamburgers. and i want to complain about the very complex navigational system on the WTO website too!

i am clearly pissed off now.

comparative commercial is pretty interesting, no doubt, but the fact that your study process gets tracked online gives me the creeps. what happened to own time, own target?!

this is not going to be one smooth sailing semester. phooey.

thank you tudou.com!

i can watch all my tvb shows in high quality now! and they've got the unbeatables seasons 1 through 3!

YAAAAAY is meeeee!

kiruna: wading in the deep freeze

i can't blog properly, not with bob singing in the background. if you dont know what i'm talking about, you should just click on this right now. (i'm sorry bob, you're too much of a celeb now!)



anyway, kiruna is indescribable. other than the fact that its extremely cold, -20degs and below, its extremely amazing because all you can see for miles and miles is just plain white powdery snow. every living and non-living thing this north of the planet is covered with snow.

your hair goes white from ice crystallizing on it if you stand outside for too long. kiruna city itself it kinda like any other city, just that its snowed under. and it has the world famous icehotel to boot. but between you and me? it isnt much to hoot about. its obviously novel and amazing, but i really wouldn't to pay 1170SEK (something like 270SGD) to freeze in the icerooms. even the reindeer hair that they let you sleep on kind of stinks. and the absolut icebar is well, just a bar made of ice. and they give you nifty little glasses made of? ice! u never guessed it.

then again, if you've got so much snow to lose, you might as well do something pretty with it, right?

we took a tour that brought us 10km north of the city to catch the northern lights, which was nothing less than magnificent. the damn tour practically isolated us in the middle of nowhere with NO ELECTRICITY. it was firewood firewood firewood all the way. but, it was definitely great going with a big group, comprising shuz, jo, sam, alf, bob and jo's friend janice. we dogsledded, sat in a snow mobile, ate reindeer penne twice, had a bbq inside a bbq hut (makes sense because u really dont want to bbq in the open), trudged in kneelength snow just to get to the log cabins and got treated to alot of singing. by bob, of course. and we hung out with very weird kiruna hillbillies. too much of snow really addles your brains, i'd say. and there was also this american dude who tried to charm us girls with his rendition of ah-niu's 'dui mian de nu hai' and some chinese rap. here, in kiruna!

i cant explain how beautiful the northern lights were, unless you see it for yourself and really, im not sure if you want to do what we did and head north. even the pictures, which are in alf's hands, because only his camera didnt fail, doesnt do it much justice. you really have to see it to experience the entire majesty of the lights. but it was indeed magical, and we were blessed to be able to watch it anyway.

of course, the other highlight of the trip, thanks to bob, was watching the unbeatables 2! imagine us going all the way to kiruna, and we succumb to sbc channel8. well done us. :) we watched it everwhere we could. in the hostel, on board the train... lapping up the retro music, the not-so-nifty-anymore card tricks, the likes of gambling king and queen, zoe tay and li nanxing. can i add that its how wasted they never got together in real life? sorry, i digress.

i didnt take much photos this time, mainly because i wanted to keep my hands in my pocket and because my camera sort of froze if it were out in the open for too long. enjoy anyway.


a night time picture of the icehotel


watching unbeatables in the hostel!


my queenly throne. hurhur.


the huskies, mei!!!


the expanse of sky and snow


too much snow makes alf a lonely person.


more snow.


sunrise on snow.

big pictures like these take excruciatingly long to post. here's the collage.



me standing at kiruna c station// the tracks covered in snow// pictures of a typical kiruna pasar malam// reindeer parts// heading to the icehotel// walking in a real winter wonderland// sam trying to sled// inside the icehotel// shuz, bob and me in the icebar// looking through the ice// one of the suites in the icehotel// trying to plaster my face to the ice// sam and me freezing our butts// check out the depth of the snow!// excited shuz// kiruna environs// sitting on the snowmobile (but you cant see that)// inside the cabin// a very blur picture of the reindeer (evidence of a frosting camera and condensation on the lens)// sunrise!// my shadow// small sam and smaller shuz

that is the end of my kiruna trip.

we are poster children for instant cooking

i hope your eyes aren't popping out. welcome to our cupboard.

i could name every single sachet of instant cooking paste that we have at home, but its just going to be long and tedious on my part. trust me, i know how many we have, because i actually sat down to make a list.

at a glance, though, we have:
13 x prima taste packets
12 x asian home gourmet packets
15 x lee kum kee packets
10 x brahim packets

(this is over and above the maggi mee, instant ramen, instant porridge, instant cream of chicken/mushroom packets we have stashed in our cupboard.)

this semester, unless we continue to invite unsuspecting people to our place for meals and secretly dump this MSG monstrosity on them, we are very dead. otherwise, we can just start a 'ta pai tong' in stroget (the shopping street) and get rid of our packets in this fashion. alternatively, homesick singaporeans abroad can always email us if you're thinking of some rendang, or sambal, or asam pedas to tide you over this cold winter.

excuse me, are you singaporean?

extremely coincidentally, and as we say in our lingua franca, damn tai kou, sam and i chanced upon 2 NTU econs students at macs in town. we were there to look for a friend, when sam spied 2 asian faces. i believe there was some sort of catch-their-eye-acknowledgement between sam and one of the girls because asians in european countries are always looking at each other trying to put our fingers to whether or not the other person catching your eye is PRC, korean, japanese, hongkonger, thai, viet, singaporean, at least for the oriental-looking ones. so apparently, i said something to sam in 'singaporean' and the said girl swivelled around and looked at us 2 more clearly.

(as you might see by now, i was totally oblivious to the going-ons because i was trying to find our friend)

then sam blurted out 'are you singaporean?'

and then came a round of introductions and friendliness all around. the world just got brighter, the grass is greener, the sky is bluer (even though it rained sleet TWICE today tmd) and i feel more satisfied that sam and i dont have to spend our chinese new year looking at each other and thinking about how in the world we're going to expend our one hundred prima taste, asian home gourmet and brahim sachets between the two of us.

it was amazing that within 10mins, we not only exchanged contacts, we've also promised to open our appartment to other lost and lonely singaporean students here on exchange for the first time, during our 'potential' cny dinner. how interesting the solidarity that springs up between total strangers.

sam: "they pronounced norrebro as noh-ray-bro. haha, haven't been here long enough."

we very lau jiao already.

here comes the sun (doo1 doo3 doo2 doo1)

by the beatles. and try not to repeat the doo-doos in hanyu pinyin fashion.

anyway the sun seems to be returning back to copenhagen! with longer daylight hours, it means more vitamin d inputs and happier faces all around. no more will the sun set at a depressing 3pm and rise at 10am. but the temperatures are still dropping to subzero, and it even rained sleet today. crazy freak weather we're facing here.

being in europe, ive come to appreciate the sun alot more. so it makes sense that more people actually sing songs about summer, than they do winter. up until now, i can only remember one song about autumn- the mamas and the papas hit 'california dreaming'.

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear
Here comes the sun,
Here comes the sun, and I say
it's all right

more about the song here i call myself a beatles fan, and i didnt even know that one of my fave beatles song (this) is also a george harrison number. go george! i suck.

another obituary

goodbye faithful faithful friend, all 20gigs and scratches of you.

my ipod has finally kicked the bucket, the sad ipod sign flashed on my screen while i was in marrakech. thinking it was a battery problem, i thought i would charge it back in copenhagen, but it's refused to be charged, or go into disk mode for disk rescue. i cant even calm the funny clicking noises. bah.

so what am i supposed to do on budget flights, train and bus rides now?

marrakech in black and white

2 brothers i guess, having a conversation in the middle of nowhere


lone ranger


as the shepherd watches his sheep


another berber man checking out his ceramic plates

i love b+w. pleasantville, starring a very young reese witherspoon is cool because its in b+w too. and comparing a b+w picture and a coloured one side by side, you tend to appreciate colour even more when you see the change in shade from pure black to pure white. lovely.

i can be so random at times.

berber man in berber market

i took this photo while at the berber market on our way to ourika valley while i was in marrakech. i've got an obsession with black and white photos, i guess when the world's in b+w, it seems a lot more peaceful and poignant. anyway, i consider this snapshot a pretty cool one, even though i do find it rather disrepectful sometimes to take pictures of old men hard at work.

because i have a macbook

my collages will henceforth look like this.

i cannot use picasa anymore. :p sigh. hence, you, discerning blog reader will no more be treated to plentiful 3 x 3 collages, but contact sheets of my pictures. but this beats posting my pictures slowly and painfully one 2mb picture by one 2mb picture.

so, pictures from barcelona (from left to right):
me at the peak of park guell// sitting at one of antonio gaudi's mosaic benches at said park// sam looking at i dont know what// spanish kids playing catch at their school compound right in the middle of las ramblas// mixed seafood grill (awwwmygaawd)// me at barceloneta// PAELLAAAA!!!// the sagrada familla, termed by lonely planet as spain's most 'brazenly weird church' which ' you have to go before you die'// within the walls of the church// the glory entrance of the church// me at the entrance of montjuc// sam is taller, so he jump higher// spanish desserts! cream catalan and churros!// casa batllo (another one of gaudi's masterpieces

and below, pictures from lisboa:


the three of us at restaurant estrella, where we had a meal almost everyday there coz the food was excellent, cheap, people were nice and friendly and it was located at the foot of our hostel (i say foot, because our hostel was literally on a hill. lisboa is NOT FLAT.)// evidence of being wellfed in lisboa// jo and i climbing up to the hostel// random fonts i took off a shop// me somewhere// climbing up a stairway at the sao jorge (it was freaking high and narrow)// the glorious sunset// twilight at alfama// thick portugese toast for breakfast anyone?// grilled seabass for lunch// st jeromes monastery at belem// tower of belem// actually we went for belem just for the portugese egg tarts haha// breakfast at this certified since the 1800s bakery// proof we were at cruz alta, 529m above ground level// all of us perched atop sintra// jo and i// lisboa town square

and pictures from africa! ok, marrakech:

check out the la koutoubia at the right background (btw marrakech has an obsession with the colour ochre. EVERY darn buildng is ochre.)// a leap at the la koutoubia// three of us at the place jemaa el fna// loop the coke game// assorted stuff on sale at the souqs of the jemaa el fna// me munching on my bed at the riad// our long shadows// place de 16 novembre (i dont know why they dedicated a fountain to my birthdate)// a very bad picture of my couscous// sam and jo// the overwhelming evening foodstalls at the place jemaa el fna// lounging at our riad// a view from chez gheroni (a very good place for tajine)// my first tajine (poulet aux citron)// another night photo of the markets// sam and his boiled snail// pictures of scenery on our way to the ourika valley and altas mountains//a picture of cactus we just had to take because there were too many of them to not take// sam and i at another random photographic spot which wasnt very photographic because you cant see the scenery behind us anyway// the cascads and me looking very smiley even though i was cursing and swearing inside because i just made it to the top of cascads barely alive.

and now im finally done with posting my pictures. next thursday, KIRUNA where we will freeze and die in -30deg weather.

ps: morroco is spelt M-O-R-O-C-C-O. and not the way i spelt it. pardon the spelling error.

pps: AND, congrats to those year2s out there, who i suspect is reading my blog according to my sources, on getting the okay to kobenhavns universitet! hello one big year of the laidback scandinavian lifestyle!

back from the african continent

firstly, a big shout and hug to valerie wan! hello babe!!! -waves- i know you miss life here, i miss having all the singaporeans in copenhagen too! it just isnt the same with you guys at KK, HDV and astrupvej.

anyway, its a huge relief to be back from africa, although morroco isnt really africa africa. i mean, africa usually evokes images of the blazing setting sun in the savannah with shadows and silhouettes of prancing gazelles, giraffes, standing meerkats, prowling lions a la the lion king, but the only wild animals i see in marrakech are VERY FAT stray cats, who look better fed than the people on the streets. plus the rare mangy dog running around in the streets. it was sunny hot, and also very cold in marakech, especially yesterday when we took an excursion out of the city into the ourika valley to see the atlas mountains and climb the cascads, waterfalls near the valley. navigating killer rapids and slippery slopes and craggy rocks with one's sneakers is foolhardy, but no one warned the three of us! but thank God really that we made it safe and sound up and down the waterfalls. i think i paid the guide 25 dirhams not to guide me up the waterfalls, but to save my butt actually.

marrakech is in a perpetual state of anarchy, chaos, mess etc etc. donkey carriages, motorbicycles, les petites taxis, les grandes taxis, buses all share the same roads, motorists never follow traffic directions, touters in the form of snake charmers and noisy percussionists who play a neverending stream of unmelodic and rhythm-less beats, are everywhere and shouts of 'konichiwah', 'kombanwa', 'sayonara' even 'yakuza' and 'nakata' (hurhur) because the morrocans think we're japanese and anything that sounds remotely japanese, they'll throw at us and hope we respond. we stayed at the place jemaa el fna, which is within the medina walls and the focal point of marrakech. its also the place where the souqs (markets) are, so its bustling all the time and at night, the foodstalls move in to cover the entire open square. and the crowd is massive! it seriously brings new meaning to street/hawker food. singapore probably looked like that in what, pre-1960s. we tried boiled snails at one of the stalls. it was pretty nice, like eating see-ham (cockles) and my family knows how much i lurve see-ham.

food in marrakech was excellent as well, esp this claypot dish called the tajine. its usually meat and veg cooked in a earthern pot with a conical clay cover and whatevers inside always tastes super excellent. i tried the couscous and kefta (ground meat kebabs) also, but tajine still rocks. we lived pretty well in marrakech, coz we had an entire riad to ourselves, and though you needed to walk through a labyrinth of alleyways (it was damn creepy at night) just to get to the place, it was the perfect respite from the maddening crowd. oh, the kids love to torment tourists with their incessant beating of drums. and the riad was really beautifully done up in traditional morrocan fashion. just think harem, minus belly dancing women.

there you go leeshuwen, now you have an idea of what you're getting into when you go to marrakech!