My friends

And somehow, my German flatmate, Fabian, cooked his first meal for me... tortillas!!! ok i know it's mexican but still he cooked... here's photo evidence:


Mr Fabian and his wok of minced meat, paprika(capsicum or bell pepper), beans, corn, onion, garlic and tomatoes

It was really good and he did not believe that 200g of minced meat was enough so we had to invite our nice neighbours over for dinner (sounds bad, haha)

Oddly I suddenly started to think of how people usually start to regret after passing bad judgements on people (unless they are real jerks which is really uncommon) -
I was really not feeling all that comfortable with my course buddy, daida, ever since we started to have some disagreements with our work recently. Until today when he suddenly approached me to ask if I would like to join him for his Holland-Belgium-Luxembourg trip which i agreed. It suddenly struck me that it might be a sign that our friendship is progressing... after all how can you call someone your buddy without having some disagreements along the way right?

And so i came up with my own theory - tolerance brings acceptance and then understanding.

Sorry i'm feeling philosophical today... maybe it was because of the refreshing long jog i had today.

And i guess the most important thing is to face the music no matter how awkward it is.. running away is never a solution; it just makes it worse.

So ppl cherish your friends and don't expect good times 365 days a year. Go thru together the bad times and you will appreciate them more.

Sports Academy

Today, I decided that I should go along to catch the match between Milan and Barcelona. So we went to this pub called sports academy. As usual there was beer and cigarette smoke. (What's new) Well so we settled for a standing corner since all the spots were full.

So the match commenced. I was expecting more shouting and screaming but I did not get my fair share. Well, my italian friend, Andrea was really excited when the camera showed the stadium and he kept telling me about the atmosphere there and how he has the season pass for all the games.... I guess i really have to go there one day and watch a match and feel the ground tremble.
And it was not long before I start to miss the phrases: "Referee kayu!!"... "kelong ah!!"
Well, here it was all spanish and italian...

I don't know but I think beer and cigarettes don't go along with sports. I prefer to be on the pitch after all. It is just surprising how a game can be so captivating.

It was a nice experience but I guess that will be my last one as well.

Nice Easter

Just before all of us leave for our Easter trip, the girls in leppavaara were really nice to invite me to their egg-painting dinner. So today I had my first go at egg painting (celebrating easter the authentic way). All thanks to the 3 kind ladies who organised, cook, baked, and prepared everything.

And here they are, from the foreground: Lily, Laia and Fredie

We literally had a feast... salads, omelettes (we needed the egg shells for painting), cakes, chocolates, sweets... burpppp
There was no space for the ice-cream i brought in the end.

The salads

Potato, cucumber, mushroom, tomato, bacon omelette, you name it we have it... and all of them really tasted so good. Confused about how we retain the shape of the egg but get the contents out?? Well it is called egg-blowing.

As demonstrated by Alesh. Basically you make a hole with something sharp for blowing... and a smaller hole at the other end for the contents to come out. Interesting.

The cakes!!! superbly yummy..... They were not bought but baked by the 3 wonderful ladies.

Dinner is served!!!

Professor Lily lecturing on the techniques of egg painting =p

Egg-painting tools; those are dyes, the base is vinegar i think...

What we created

My first authentic easter egg

Thank you girls again! I really enjoyed this Easter dinner and egg-painting. For now I shall catch some sleep before I wake up at 6am to catch the ferry to Tallinn.

Eastern Europe... here I come!!!

Russia - St Petersburg

I finally found the energy to start this once again overdue (what's new) blog. The bad thing about bloggin so long after an event is that i usually don't feel the excitement anymore.
But i shall try my best here.

I was in Russia on the 9th march till 12th. I was with a tour agency for students since russia seems to be dangerous. And they have weird alphabets too.

At the checkpoint, i was queueing up behind this guy from china and so the immigrations officer (she was my first encounter of how beautiful russian girls can be) thought we were both from china after she saw the guy's passport and she signalled for me to hand over mind... But i guess it totally confused her. So she got all her superiors out... i was thinking what's wrong with being from China? After all the both of them were once communist states before... Why are they so wary of chinese visitors? spies? Me not sure.

st petersburg: Old city, highly-polluted, traffic congestion, many museums, historical. Sounds bad isn't it BUT the russian girls are all so gorgeous! I think that makes up for all those, right guys? For girls, just when you are wondering if the guys were suppose to be the same.... I'm sorry they are not. It is weird though.... the guys are not so good-looking but i say they are the luckiest chaps around cos their gfs will be beautiful. hahahahaha.

They have clubs also but the difference is that... it is a norm to have striptease shows in clubs... i bet the guys must be thinking... wow shiok! sorry there are male strippers also... yucks! I still remember we were staying quite close to the male stripper when a russian girl came to ask if we were gay... hilarious... haha.

But seriously with the amount of babes there... the strippers don't look that special also. It's basically eye-candy feast in the clubs. But to enter the clubs is like entering some secret facility... got body search one! I wonder what happened before that made them come up with such procedures. Then there was this other club which hire asian females as security guards... confused? well they were all former judo team members... they make clubs sound like so dangerous. But i still haven't figured out why asians???
And one more thing about the metro club... some of the girls who go there are dressed like machiam only lingerie. ReALLY skimpy outfit... culture shock man... unfortunately we cannot take pictures in that club so i cannot show you all... i'm not bragging really! Beautiful, good physique, skimpy outfit... I bet even a monk will can't help but steal a glance at them. hahahahaha.

CDs are cheap there but i only bought a russian pop band CD recommended by the shop assistant. I also bought many souvenirs here. Apart from the commercial side, i think the whole place gives you a feeling that the ppl there are trying to make ends meet but i dun understand why this is the case because the prices are generally similar to singapore. Well, maybe they are unproductive because they drink too much of their cheap vodkas. hahahhah.
When i say cheap... i really mean it... 1 litre for 16 sing or less.... 16 sing is good quality one. hahaha. Oh and vodka is cheaper than beer in clubs... weird. That's russia.

I would say the city is really nice for ppl interested in history. In fact, I enjoyed the tour a lot. All the experiences with going to their supposedly very dangerous subway stations and roaming the streets with my czech friend martin (who knows a bit of russian)
We even had a go at buying groceries from a typical russian groceries shop. I think the life should be comparable to how singaporeans will feel about living in malaysia.

So for now... once again i let the pictures do the talking :D



Russian street - bad congestion



Bad congestion again - notice how dirty the cars are, that's common there



Hotel moscow (even thought this was st petersburg)



Me, St Isaac's cathedral behind



Don't be deceived by what i wear, it was cold but i was lazy to wear my jacket since it was just a 5 minutes photo stop. hehe



And this is martin from Czech republic.



anais and guys



me at palace square



this was how tall the monument is.. just in case you are wondering



me at i forgot what's the name... haha



my tour group



from top of st isaac's



from top of st isaac's again



and again :)



me with mr Lenin



an expensive ball room



Wedding - the Russian way



Another wedding.
Basically during weddings the couple goes around the city taking pictures and fortunately I was there on friday which is supposedly the best day for weddings since they can have 2 days to recover from vodka poisoning.. haha. If you want to see how exactly it is like... go watch "Russian doll" the movie.



palace sqaure at night



ice palace at palace square



daniel and me



"Nevskiy prospekt" not sure if i spelt the main street's name correctly



view across neva river.. not sure about the spelling again :P



Kazan cathedral



across the same river again



battle field tour - winter war; finns vs soviet union



damaged command post of the finns



across neva river in the day



again


In fact that is not all the photos I have, i uploaded them but i can't seem to find them on photobucket and i'm lazy to do it again. So bear with what I have here.. will show you upon request.
Pictures include - russian dinner, opera and many more.


So what was memorable for me... hmmmmm... the babes. =D

Occupation: student

Right, i'm studying rather hard nowadays because I really don't wish to re-take these modules in singapore. Well but that does not explain why my Russia blog is not up yet. Photobucket has started to give me problems during uploading. Maybe I will try picasa soon.

As for now, I will work hard so that I can enjoy my trip to Eastern Europe in a week's time. I guess I will try to put the Russia and Eastern Europe blogs up after that.

Exchange is fun.