sentosa trip + gathering pics...

just came back from a 3day-2night trip from sentosa...=)

apart from the agony of a sun-burnt face and some cuts and bruises on both legs, i had an extremely enjoyable time... from the process of sunning myself at the poolside at RASA SENTOSA to playing the LUGE for 7 times in a hour to the failed-BBQ attempt at the balcony of the hotel room to playing Wii for the entire night on sat...

lilian and dilys fighting it out on the boxing game... Wii is such a wonderful invention, not to mention it being a good work-out tool...

fish reflexology... cool... and see how fat the little fishes became after nibbling at our feet for 20min... see before and after pics... besides the great weekend, the whole of last week was spent meeting up with friends and of course, lots of food to go along too... and i thought that i will have lots of pics to share, but you know, guys usually don’t take pics when they are together having dinner... so, it's just me and lots of ladies...=p

huixin + peipei + me + huiniang @ tampines DING TAI FENG

WanTing and me....

and i've forgotten to take pics with bee and liting!!!!! shucks!!! and more to follow... got more gatherings coming up for the next couple of days...

brief update of my 6 days in singapore...

erhh... time really flies when one is having fun... been back in singapore for almost a week... of course, i had met up with lots of friends so far, and had plenty of foodies... and things seem like they have never changed at all...

pics of all the gatherings will be posted up soon... =) meanwhile, it's just one gathering after another...and today is first day that i am actually at home before 10pm at night...

and lots of money had been spent on foodies and shopping... let me count... one 500-bucks mouthguard.. (ahahahahah...think i may be too stressed over the last 6 months... bit through my previous mouthguard), and one new camera... =) got myself the new CANON IXUS 75 (thanks to recommendations of lilian and huixin... PS: huixin, where are the pics from our gathering on sunday?), and of course, hundreds more are spent on foodies... ahhhhh... i am soooooooooooo broke now....

holidays back home...

i must stop drinking beer!!!!

oh ya, and i am coming home tomorrow evening = will reach singapore on wednesday evening =)

i am not going to buy so much chocolates again...

this is so embarrassing... the old lady at the ritter sports counter (that's what i called it, the 2 racks of ritter sports chocolates) was staring at me and my 38packs of chocolates... and she exclaimed something in german, and i had a hard time trying to explain to her why on earth am i getting so much chocolates...

and the same thing happened at the cashier too... shucks...

back from the largest cemetery park in europe...

oh something interesting... went on a "tomb-reading" trip earlier... well, in case you thought that i had gone crazy or something, it's just that stefan and me wanted to explore the cemetery park in hamburg... and we didn't realized that the place could be that huge... within the park itself, there are more than 10 chapels + a bus service... imagine that...

of course, i took some pics of the tombstones... but i have decided against putting the pics online... but here is a quote which i read from the tombstone (well, it was translated by stefan)

"don't cry for me at my grave, you are disturbing my peace..."

how cool is that?!

too much beer, too much beer!!!!

weekend of... beer, fireworks, more beer, hookers, and of course lots of studying =)

hahahaha... the word "hookers" in the title caught your attention right?! dont be naughty... =p

fantastic weekend for me...

(i) friday night was spent having dinner with the fellow singaporeans, and though the food was pretty ordinary (sorry Dave) but the company was good good...

(ii)marathon block lectures...
we finished a 4.5ECTS module (which is supposed to be conducted for 3 hours weekly) in 15hours over the weekend!!! and the professor said this:" i am having fun out here, but i see your faces changed dramatically over the last couple of hours..."

oh, the module is on fracture mechanics and fatigue... and the fact that i will be traveling on a plane in less than 72 hours' time + most of the failure examples are based on airplanes = probably makes me less comfortable when i get onto the plane on tuesday... hahaha...

(iii) hafelgeburtstag
happy birthday to the harbor of Hamburg!!!!! lots of fireworks involved (and they really look more spectacular than what we get during NDP), and there is a carnival too!

but admiring the fireworks together with a guy does make it sounds a little gay... ok, shall not talk about that...

but i did go to Reeperbahn @ st pauli after that... how do i describe that scene?? well, think the synergistic effects of Clarke Quay (Singapore) plus the red-light district in Amsterdam (Holland)... awesome... guys dressed as nuns posing for pictures + butt baring (not joking... white white arses) and lots more!!

(iv)and now i am about to go to a cemetery park... OMG!! why on earth am i going to a cemetery....?? apparently, it's this cemetery park that's the largest in the world...Ohlsdorf Cemetery Park... and i will going with my camera and my frisbee... =)

i have got to start studying instead of watching "friends"... 19 episodes in 4 days...!!

my 300th blog entry....

whoa... this is my 300th blog entry!!! probably shows how active i am in my blogging, even though the number of new entries these days had slowed down dramatically...

well, there is nothing much in my life now worthwhile to report... hahaha... since i am feeling pretty broke nowadays to go traveling to unknown territories...=(

however, i shall start doing my traveling much more from june onwards... why? cos i checked the prices of air tickets and realized that i will have to pay a lot more when i get to aalborg... for example, a return air ticket from aalborg (errr.... reminder: i will be spending one year in denmark from sept onwards) to singapore will cost me 3300 singapore dollars (ok, thats the cheapest ticket i can find online...)!!!! thats like buying 2 return tickets from germany to singapore, and with spare cash to pamper myself with lots of beer, and bratwurst...

and from denmark, travelling to the rest of europe (except for sweden, finland and norway) becomes exponentially more expensive too... so thats why i will have to travel more when i am still in germany...

so the places-that-i-want-to-go-to-but-have-never-been-to-yet:
i) Budapest (Hungary)
ii) Bratislava
iii) Warsaw (Poland)

in short, the entire eastern europe will be great... however, there are parts of western europe worthwhile visiting too...

i) Lyon (festival of Light in Dec), Nice, and Rennes (to visit Yanling) in France
ii) Valencia (that festival whereby people pelt tomatoes at one another in August) in Spain
iii) Holland and Belgium
iv) i wanna go back to Scotland again!!!!!!!!!!
v) Dublin in Ireland (all those crazy medical students whom i met in Madrid last March)
vi) the remaining parts of Germany that i have never been to...

so, with so little time (i have until only mid sept and also the exams to worry about) and so little money (cos i just bonked down a sizeable sum of moolah on my return ticket to singapore and not to mention that i dont get my scholarship stipends in the months of august and september), i have to seriously start planning...

so far, going back to aveiro + exploring parts of germany will take up june... july + august will be mainly on focusing on the examinations (of course, i will try to make little trips everywhere) and that leaves me with september...

oh, i forgot to mention that i am going back to singapore!!!! in fact, i will be arriving in the rainy little island on 16th may (thats next wed)... so excited... a classmate of mine once mentioned this:" its funnie, nowadays, to us, holiday means going back to our own countries..." how true...

alright, thats all for now... time to go do some reading and my german homework...

back from berlin(again)....

2nd trip to berlin in 2 weeks... but i guessed i enjoyed myself more this time round... have so many pics, that i dont know where to start from... but since it is almost 3am in the morning now, here are some of the highlights...

sat was spent behaving like a perfect tourist... armed with a camera and accompanied by a knowledgable walsh guide, we went for a 4-hour walk around berlin city, exploring the former eastern berlin... and these are what i discovered...

the controversial halocast memorial...

of course, the remaining bits of the former berlin wall... not as majestic as i would have expected... ahahahha....

oh, the traffic man is different from that of traffic man found in the western part of berlin... interesting...

mascot of the city...

berliner dom (cathedral)...

a church without its top... (said to be destroyed during WWII and perserved to remind the people of the war)... the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church...

night shots at the potsdamer platz, the deutsher bundestag and the brandenburger tor...

next, sunday was spent in the most relaxing manner as possible... morning was spent reading my book, seated in front of a coffee house and sipping my iced coffee... after that, another 2 hours were spent reading my book in the park... thats how a holiday is supposed to be... =) i can get so used to this type of lifestyle.... lots of people-watching...

lastly, visited the Olympiastadion for a game...hertha BSC vs Werder Bremen... nice nice... the attendence of the day: 74,500... whoa, thats like going to old trafford... and we were told that it is only the 2nd time this season that a match at the Olympiastadion is sold out... lucky us...

back to berlin for the weekend...

ok, sorrie for the lack of posts for the last couple of days.... like what a friend said in her blog, i am suffering from blog-stipation...

alright, firstly, i will like to thank my friend for helping me with my german homework and for teaching me how to construct sentences in german... still got a long way to do, but every little effort counts...

and i have decided to take up ultimate frisbee all over again... it's tougher here, cos the players are taller... but i still think that players from the muddy-grass team in singapore are way faster... hahaha...

next, i am going to berlin for this weekend again... well, berlin is pretty big, so it takes more time to explore... besides, this time round, i will be going to catch the match between Hertha vs Bremen... and its a full house and we managed to get the last remaining tickets... my first World Cup Stadium... to start off my "tour-of-all-world-cup-stadiums-in-germany" with the one that hosted the finals is a pretty good start...=)

PS: will post up more pics of berlin and the stadium asap when i get back...

we lost to a better team... congrats to ac milan...

AC MILAN 3 MAN YOO 0

well, disappointed? yes... we turned in some great performances this season, hope that we dont disintegrate after this letdown... there is still the premier league and the FA cup to fight for!!!

interesting quotes

read these somewhere, and i loved it...

"life is drawing without an eraser; whatever happens, happens for a reason"

"stars are always there, even in the daylight; sometimes we just cannot see them"

from a book that underlines the fact that the best things in life are often right in front of you, but one is just too pre-occupied with something else to even notice them...

trivial matters...

nothing much, just something that happened today...

i) "tortured" my liver.... arghhh... my roomies decided to have a drinking party, and of course, i was invited... though it was my first such party, i am the only one still sober, and of course, still awake now... and i had first-hand accounts of how alcohol dulls one's brain, thus resulting in silly acts eg jumping off the window hedge, screaming out of the window in the middle of the night and my neighbours actually came down from their apartment... wahhahah... well, at least they were friendly and we played poker for 2 hours when the drunken roomies retreated to the comfort of their respective rooms...

ii) omigodddd... can you believe this? i counted the number of different flavors of ritter SPORTS chocolates in the supermarket, and guess how many different flavors are there?? guess the correct number, and i promised you that i will bring back all the various flavors to you the next time i get back to singapore...

iii) and i actually forgot about xueli's engagement party on the 30th april... HAPPY ENGAGEMENT!!!!!!!! and congrats!!! my my, its scary how my peers are getting married one by one...