iHOLLA! dear amigos,

picked up bits of Turkish and span(gl)ish along the way on my Barcelona trip from my pseudo Spanish Turkish housemate.

Note: All in improper spelling.

Turkish
Thank you = Deh shu k cute (sounds like tissue cute)

Spanish
How much is this? = Kuan to Questa
Thank you = Gra si ahs
Hungry= Hungarito (?)
Female friends = Amigas


pseudo spanish doing last min revision before flight.



Barcelona was lovely; the warm ppl and sun and many ppl on the streets even past 10pm and the sun and the nicely groomed old grannies with their coiffed hair and fur coats complete w their doggies.

the spanish sure noe how to enjoy life! its a place of passion, life and vibrancy! jus pity the touristy bit of barcelona (its made for tourism) food is expensive; we had fastfood (mac n burgerking) for our first day. mac stil maintained its quality but sad to say the bk at las ramblas suck big time. stale fries anyone?

i took so many (403) photos over the span of 22-26feb i dunno what to put now.. ahha

okay lemme put some for the moment...
22 Feb: Las Ramblas, Waterfront, Night Market

One of the many mime(?)/busking artists alng the touristy las ramblas. Edward Scissorhands is my favourite. He almost really looks like Johnny Depp (:


Thanks to Christopher Columbus, we were able to find our way ard using him as the Landmark. Poor Chris is always referred to "That (funny) guy" by us or we just point like him. I think we only found out his identity like the 2nd or 3rd day but we continued our affectionate term for him hehs.




A rather intriguing picture i saw along the las ramblas. reminds me of escher.


Strawberries for 0.99euros per KG! Go to this St Joseph(i think) night market when its closing abt 8ish-9, u get lower prices! Strange but they sell the usual wet market fresh meat and fruits even at night.


Eggs are cuter in Spain.

23Feb: The Cathedral, Museu Picasso, Park, getting lost in little alleys, Chocolate Museum

Beautiful beautiful Cathedral (at Barri Gothic)..from the rooftop. A must-see!


Cakes in neighbourhood Spanish pastry shop are as wenxin.


Only in Barcelona can you get rape for 11.50 euros.


Ronaldinho! All chocolate! (At the Museu De Chocolato)


Chocolate packaged like sardines! Almost succumb to my suckerforpackagin thing but luckily i didnt. 11.50 euros and may taste like sardines too. LOL


Lay on the grass in the park near the zoo where we bought Spanish spinach puffs and French egg veggie pie for 1.80euros each fr a french girl hawking her food. yumms. and the sun was lovely too. Btw she has 2 huge dogs that was hovering us all the time. boo. haha


For a few minutes, barcelona beach sky was sliced apart by a remote plane.


Barcelona sunset. At the waterfront.


What a postcardish picturesque view right? Top of The Cathedral

26 Feb
As if for punishment for eating chips and nothing very healthy for self made dinners, I had to eat radish(the leftovers from lo hei on CNY eve reunion dinner) for 5 consecutive days (Meiwen, you must be happy to read this lol) Ate it in lo heis, with fusilica pasta, boiled with potato and carrot, in fried rice. And I still couldn't finish that bag of radish. Wah rau.

Finally. Today I found the bag of radish turning a funny shade of brown and I finally threw it away without any guilt of wasting food. Yays.

4 hours of my life wasted

Can I jus mention that Borat and Snakes on the plane(incidentally the only two movies I have on my compt, the latter Joyce adamantly insisted that its a recent box office hit--that I never heard of) wasted 4 hours of my life?

lol.

the latter esp, is a B-grade movie that repackaged itself as a box office 'hit' with (poor misused)samuel jackson fronting the show. the other actors are all unknown. and wth. what's with the silly movie title and even sillier plot?! WHAT SNAKES on a plane?! and literally the whole show is about that. if not for the lack of internet and entertainment in my little humble Room B, I would never watch tt.

(But I confess, I did follow through the whole show. to see how bad it can get) ahaha

17 Feb Carnaval
Carnaval's a blast! Everyone's dressed in crazy clothes walking as per normal in the streets, including old grannies and uncles and even cashiers in supermarket! Its like halloween party 24hours day and night! oh my gawd! The angmohs sure know how to party! Lotsa beer and silly but infectious techno kindergarten rhyme remixes (Think "It's a small world after all".) LOL. It's really amazing. We should have Carnaval in Singapore too. Time to loosen up man!






The smurfs!

19Feb

Me and Umit have been stationed by our new housemate Chengwei’s room window since 3pm. Now’s 8pm. Ever since we found out we could tap on someone’s wireless net lol. Well we din mean to. But its hard when you are deprived of net for so loooong. We are contemplating swopping his bedroom with the living room. Thanks SMC and default, whoever they are. ;P

17 Feb
CNY Reunion dinner
A total of 8 nationalities (from only 2 continents actually ha) squeezed into my tiny humble living room:
Singapore – Huiqian, Venetia, Kitty, Daniel, me
Malaysia-Munyee
Brunei- Joyce
Indonesia- this NUS engine girl we met, Fanni
Netherlands - Domenique
Turkey-my housemate, Umit
Spain-Joyce’s housemate, Bernat
Poland-Daniel’s housemate, Simon

The eight course dinner was fantastico!

(Top left clockwise: Yummy corn spare ribs soup by munyee which we used cups to drink cuz we had no ladles nor bowls, scrambled eggs with 'cong' and chicken sausages by vchew(oso left the hardest-to-wash pan),eggs&ham surprise dish by joyce, joyce's precious stash of bak kwa,(really salty but still nice heh)stirfried cucumber & heibee by munyee, all kinds of healthy veggie with cashew nuts by kitty, my stirfried chicken &potato insweet sour sauce trying to disguise itself as gu lor yoh, veggie+mushrooms by daniel AND of coz, traditional staple --RICE by joyce.)

Complete with a crate of Heineken, of course, courtesy of Umit




my angmoh friends using chopsticks lol

18Feb
a junkie’s life (again)
dinner tonight(my private private stash)bengawan solo pineapple tarts
treated myself to kindersurprise AND one packet of wasabi nuts and sesame muahchee(thanks purinbi! )

just suddenly struck me I could be having my annual scumptuous CNY steamboat at home.

17th feb
first time in my whole 21+ years of existence have I been dressed all black on the Chinese new year eve. Yoohoo!

*more photos later. (need to get from my friends)

16feb--------
Four days ago…
My project mate Marc: So what did you do at your school back in China?
i: *Grr..*
i: I am not from China, I am from Singapore.
Marc: Yeah, somewhere near China right?
i: ...

Today Marc gave me another nationality.
Marc: So you did this before in Japan?
i: Ha, you forgot I am from Singapore?
Marc: Oh yeah yeah I forgot! Of course you are from Singapore!
Marc: So is it in Japan or China?

He later confessed he dunno where the hell Singapore is. I appreciate the honesty. Lol.(Btw yian ling, do you want me to bring this cute boy to Milan? He has lovely cute curls like yours (: )

-------------------a junkie’s life
dinner tonight
coco krunch-like cornflakes with half volle melk
bolognaise potato chips
frisse(fizz) apple peach juice

feeling shitty now. Spent whole day dling bloody borat with u-torrent. Finally its completed and about to watch it with my chips in hand. Then. CANNOT! Only hear the audio. Bloody hell. Haha.
-----------------
okay, I just spent like 13 euros on grocery(in preparation for tml’s CNY reunion dinner) went a little crazy in the chinese store with rows n rows of sauces. Spent another silly 6.30 euros on my Carnaval accessories. I shall be Zorro tomorrow. *winkZ*

15 feb
Okay the guy downstairs replied. But the answer is no good. Boo.

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been trying out “The Toilet Seat Cover Experiment” to see if my housemate is a thoughtful person. :D

Btw can any of my dear friends tell me how you guys manage to tag me? I cant tag at all! hmmm.

sianzation.

at school now. Great! First, before the project even started at all, two (ex-)groupmates quitted the project so its now 4 of us left now. I din even know anyone can quit a project(=studio).

Today is the group's second meeting. Guess what? Two down. Again. Only one guy and me turned up. One reported sick and one MIA. At this rate, tomorrow technically nobody will be around for the coach's meeting.

Project: Social Movement (something to do with bio sensor movement, kinda interesting if u r good with robots & programming. haha. But its for children. I suppose it can be meaningful if our product can stimulate social interaction among autistic kids or kids who will find this beneficial)

Assignments:
#1 Userprofiling & Personas
#2 How to draw acup of tea
#3 Anti Dogmatic design
#4 Product Semantics
#5 Digital Video

Let's see if I can drop 1 or 2 more assignments. heh.

Dang. Think the guy downstairs is trying to avoid us. He’s our best bet to get the internet. The past few days have been waiting up for our neighbours to return home so we can ask them about the bloody internet.

Wth is Nico@Home? Dun ignore us! We need your wireless!

12 Feb Springcleaning!

Here's my housemate Umit cleaning the really gross fridge with the wet wipes he brought while I clean the slightly less gross trays from the fridge. No thanks to the previous housemates who left all their food in the fridge and weird tomato drippings everywhere in the fridge.


Tonight also happened to be the night I cooked Fusili for the 2nd time in my whole life. It was too bland so Umit suggested adding tuna to it. And we tried opening the bloody can of tuna for like 20min. (The stupid can opener we found in the drawer was spoilt, we had to punch holes manually along the whole circumference to make like a dotted line before Umit brutally use a fruit knife to force it open)



Umit: Did we jus kill the tuna?
i: I think the tuna died a second time. LOL.


The really tortured can of tuna. (Pardon my shaky hands but think you can still see the damage done.)

Note to self: Get canned food that comes with a tab.

Wise advice left behind by previous tenants.

Too bad they din warn us about the lack of plates and bowls for that matter.

(What?! Only one plate in the entire house?!)

$#%^#&#*

11 Feb

tonight I found out that there’s really nothing much to do in my hostel when there’s no internet. Just scraped past the last hour adding my favourite songs in a new folder, browsed the Start up menu, looked at old pictures, played solitaire(over and over again).Dang. There’s really nothing much I can do without The Internet.

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I feel primitive without The Internet.(Resorted to blogging on Microsoft Word. Walked 10min to joyce's place to use her internet)

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My feet are turning jaundiced!(Isit too much potatoes?)

Things you can only do in NL(or any cold places I guess) and not in SG

+Leave your half eaten ice cream in the room to do something else, return to find that it hasn’t melted

+Get a chilled drink whenever and wherever you want, just leave your window ajar.
+Dump your groceries in your balcony when you have a spoilt fridge (yeah, me)
+Sit in the driver’s seat though you are not the driver(Driver’s seat is on the left instead of right: I accidentally went to sit at the driver’s seat when I took a cab, much to the shock of the cab driver “Hmm what does this girl wana do?”)

10 Feb

Today we ate at shoong hong & fulin’s place with another nus guy - wing. Their greek housemate made some really lovely potato and pork stew and even Greek dessert (Looks like Kueh Lapis cum walnut cum banana cake)! Oh my. No wonder most famous chefs are male. Me and Joyce served our daily favourites (Egg and potatoes (for the 4th night running(?!)) Our potatoes found a strong competitor in the greek guy’s potato stew. We tried to put up a good fight but we lost. 0:1.Btw, no more potatoes for me. Sick of it already.

9Feb
today met up with Roy and Dom at our fave hangout place –Kennisporte for lunch. Both of them spent 3 yrs in tu/e and always tot it was expensive but hey we spent 3 days in tu/e and discovered this cheap cafeteria lol. Soup cost abt 40 cents euros and bread 20 cents. Much much cheaper than the ID cafeteria.


What can you do with white eggs?


Today is also the final day of the Activities Week(a more academic id-ish orientation week)Supposed to design a poster and a product for Raymond Loewy to be displayed during Exposition. The artistic id vibe is really much much stronger here. I feel sorry for our pathetic nus studio. My group was a relaxed lot, so instead of designing a new product in loewy’s style; we did an installation as a “tribute” to loewy. (What a way to smoke through. But it works. This coach was commenting that its ‘original’. hehs) Eggs - He once said- possessed the perfect shape, the black thing the streamline depiction.

Glad Munyee was able to find out from her friend the administrator password so now my laptop is ok! I tink I almost shriveled to death in my self-pity.Since me and my housemate had no internet, we watched The Mexican on his laptop in our common living room, complete with beer(he drank, not me) and chips and popcorn. My stomach was growling throughout the movie. My nice housemate said my stomach is trying to tell me something and then he made me a cheese sandwich. Haha

(Okay a really badly exposed photo. lol)

8Feb This is what I call snow.

YAY! First sight of snow! It tasted like rainwater. Lol.Me, kitty and munyee discovered the goodness of vending machines which offer free hot drink(hot chocolate etc) and even hot tomato soup! At the doctor’s clinic. Yums! Esp when its free. HahaJoyce was nice enough to stay over with me for the night. And yays! I discovered I have ONE housemate – a Turkish guy called U-mit(hmm dunno the spelling) Okay good. Now I know there’s another human in the house. (:

7 Feb While I was sleeping…

Apparently, it snowed a little during the night. Here’s some remnants of the possibly freezing night. Joyce went ballistic over the little white leftovers.

P.s/ Tried to buy green beans to make green bean soup dessert. The guy gave me green peas. :D

Was supposed to move into my hostel today but it was so old, empty and ulu. I abandoned my luggage and stayed over at joyce’s for the night. Absolutely creepy.

6Feb Dinner at Daniel’s (with Joyce, Simon, Fulin, Shoonghong -Kumar)

Simon(Dan’s Polish housemate) cooked his traditional Polish dish with lotsa cabbage, salted veggie, lotsa tomatoes, some unknown sausage(he said “dun ask what, I dunno” lol) and we ate it with bread, not together, to be eaten separately. Simon is very adorable, I heard he started preparing to cook since 3pm(dinner was 6ish) so that everything will be nicely soft. This dish is those Mummy’s dish whereby they dump leftovers to cook together and can be served over a few dinners. Its amazing how Mummys of the world have such recipes to make good use of everything. Think fried rice in Asian societies

How do you know if your food is cooked?

When the food starts getting on the brown side, take a piece and try.
Food is almost always guaranteed cooked when they are black.

-4 Feb

Beware!
Contrary to my belief, karnemelk (buttermilk) is not sweet nor taste like butterscotch as its name sounds. More like 3day old milk left in the open. in singapore.

Good thing is that I got me and kitty skinny straws(actually im not even sure if they r straws) and the drink made us full for the rest of the day.


Fried stuff with cheese inside is always welcome (:

Yes... I have arrived!

first meal in eindhoven: chuqianyiding mala instant noodles saved my life.
our first dinner w joyce's chinese housemate

nasi padang paste at 0.27euros(serves 4) WOW! just pity the overly damp rice. but still nice(:

holler holland!

holler holland!

in eindhoven finally. been great so far..the neighbourhood's really cosy. (: just went to a flea market this morning and did my first shopping! (funky pointy walking shoes for 5euros heheh) wah the boots there lelonging for 5 euros!

been
+amusing myself with blowing misty smoke rings in the air
+eating okish with kitty & munyee mostly cooking(but since they left, me n joyce survived on instant noodles)
+actually found raw cabbage nice! (its sweet here) well, theres hope for salad!
+looking out for dog poo on the ground(kitty kena on first day) lol
+ogling at beautiful angmohs. exoticexchange students haha
+amazed at the affordability of the grocery here. liveable i tink.
+eating fattening dutch snacks like stroopwaffle(this lovely waffle biscuit w caramel in between), frites(potatos w mayo) and absolutely mutatedly-huge chicken drumsticks at 1 euro each

okay thats all for now. a little tired. till then!