Virus Festival

Was at the Virus Festival in school last week. Its basically an Arts festival: live bands, dance, films, and street acts. Had a special guest from Delft.. the virus herself! Hehe! Look at that pretty tights. She's got a grey one for sale. Hehe.



Sitting on the grass, enjoying the sunny weather.. we'll never do this in Singapore/Brunei. WHY?! Oh yeah, coz its bloody humid and you'll get attacked my killer mozzies. Haha.


(you can see Yixian that doesn't really know how to read, hehe)

Street act 1: Lindy-hoppers in the city

Street act 2: Lindy-hoppers at the Virus Festival



The real deal.


Dinner at the eatery.

Ciao Ciao!

This is HOLLAND!

Hello, hello again! Went to Zaanse Schans last weekend with Mun Yee and Kitty. Its THE place for tourists to see real windmills in Holland. Its one of those nice little rural towns that have been preserved but have also become a tourist attraction.

Little Zaanse Schans

Some Holland pancakes in the morning to give us energy. Money sucker! Each plate cost 6.95 Euros! Madness! Poor Asian exchange students had 2 plates to share among 3.

The first Albert Heijn from 1887! (its like the first Cold Storage in Singapore or the first Hua Ho in Brunei). Little grocer has been turned into a (free!) museum.



Look how cheap things were then! Rent for 1.50 Gilders per week! Why can't things be as cheap now?!

One of the Dutch icons: wooden clogs! They were less glamourous then, equivalent to yellow rubber boots in Asia. But they've evolved and come a long way!

Wedding (or proposal) clogs. The groom had to carve these intricate details onto the clogs for his future wife! Now modern men, can you DO that? Consider yourselves lucky to only have to buy a ring.


Pointy tips were in fashion then too! Haha.

And clogs now.




And finally, our reason for going there.


We visited a windmill that produced oil from crushing peanuts. The windmill itself is rather small. Its all business inside with all the gears and mechanisms. Rather dark and smoky too. Downstairs was where most of the work was done while upstairs is just platform probably just for checking the gears and parts and leads to the 'balcony'.
Upstairs (the whole of it is like that):



From the 'balcony' (the windmill was so huge that I couldn't take a full picture of it):



Downstairs:


Raw materials:
On the left- Dried peanut skin (do not touch!)
On the right- Raw peanut nut (do not eat!)

Outside the windmill


Old Mac Donald had a farm, ee-ai-ee-ai-oh!



Cheese farm museum



Duie!

Germany!

Easily the best trip so far. Probably cos we stayed with really hospitably German hosts, Steffi and Ching-Ping, where every meal was a feast! Oh, and we went about Muenster and a bit of Hamburg too.

First dinner at their fab home. Schnitzel with mash potatoes and salad. Mmm.. lekker!


Breakfast table.


On the second day, we went to the Aa (how original) River because we wanted to witness the love story between two impossible lovers.

A black swan, Petre (formerly known as Peter cos she was mistaken as a male earlier) fell in love with a white plastic swan boat! Petre swims around the swan boat 24/7 mooing and cooing, declaring her undying love, and even follows it if there are visitors pedaling it. Petre refuses to leave it even during winter, so a small bird house was built for her, although she apparently doesn't use it. And the caretakers can't just remove the swan boat cos Petre might just die of sorrow. Aaahhh.. tragic love!

Feeding the rubber duckies before visiting Petre. Steffi was the hottest source of food for them.


Pedal boats after.




Went to the Botanical Gardens after that.

My favourite desert plants. Dunno what its called, but look how cool it is, the way the 'leaves' arrange themselves to form the flowers. Awesome!





Funky doors at a church in Munster.


Second night dinner: chicken rice and chinese style cooked cabbages (by hostees (I guess that's what we're called)) and chocolate cake and papadam by the hosts. Lekker, lekker! (preps + finished output)



Muenster City Festival



Third night dinner: German-style BBQ, pasta (I miss it already!), salad, bread + spread and German beer. Lekker, lekker, lekker!



Host and hostess of the year

Yam-seng!

And to work of the stuff we put in our stomach, we went bowling and played a bit of pool. Yay! I was in 2nd place in bowling, not bad for a non-bowler, heh? The place was dark, so no pictures from my lousy camera.

P = Princess = me
P = President = Yixian
M = Monney = Mun Yee
S = Super Ching = Ching Ping
AM = Ang Moh = Steffi
MS = Mou Shou = Kitty

Saturday: Hamburg (people there are called Hamgurgers. Cool, huh! I wanna be a hamburger too!)




Hamburg was one of the heaviest bombed places in Germany during WW2. This whole cathedral, St. Nicholas, was bombed to smittereens, except for this tower which we went up. If you look carefully, you can see the ruined parts on the walls. Poor Hamburg.




Next stop: Miniature Wonderland, where the world is shrunk to thousands and thousands of times over. Imagine the work and attention to detail, how the 'masters' sculpt every individual in this world!! *faint*








We went to the redlight district after that just to take a look and we saw this cool machine.

Just before leaving for home on Sunday, we visited dear Yimin and KK at Essen but unfortunately, I don't have any pictures with them. Need to get them from the rest.

Germany = Excellent! Signing off! Tschüß (pronounced 'choose' = bye)!!

Belgium (...waffles, mmm!) - Brussels

We went to Belgium on Easter week (6-9/4). Good cos the chocolates were out :D, bad cos most shops were closed :(. First stop, Brussels.

On the train to Brussels Central (yeah, I like bad boys)


Getting lost for more than 1 hour looking for the hostel


A wall at the hostel. Cool, huh!

Graffiti at the tip top of a library building. How THE HELL did the person get up there?!

The park outside the library

Sweet belgian waffle dear, I will never forget the taste of you. Ah, heaven! Oh, how I crave for you! (see me drooling before getting my piece)






Bollywood girls

Travel mates

Dead people on the grass outside the cathedral


One of the restaurant streets. Lots of seafood. We went into one and got bloody conned! Had to pay extra 12Euros! Bloody shit!


Centre of Brussels. Shit loada people. Lots of buildings gilded with gold.





More yummy waffles (which I didn't try coz it was REALLY expensive!) *salivate*



Manneke Pis. Read about this little dude here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manneken_Pis


Flea market where the Belgians sell all types of junk from old keys and locks, cutlery and kitchen ware, old postcards, clothes and animal skin even! Well, one man's trash is another man's treasure.



Taken from the top of a carpark building

Tin-tin, the comic character was born in Belgium. Every now and then when we turned a corner, we'd be pleasantly surprised by him...

Cool Stuff from Milan Furniture Fair

Unfortunately, me and Yixian went to Italy a little early and had to come back early, so we only had one day for the fair. And even more unfortunately, we chose to go to the Expo instead of the little exhibits around Milan, so a lot of stuff we saw were rather commercial (like, not the cool, outrageous stuff that we like so much). But good thing we got to see the student's work at Salone Satellite. Always refreshing to see other student's work.

At Rho Fiera (the Expo Halls). Look at the tiny ants of people! Absolutely jam packed!

Collection by Cappellini

I like the patterns of the fabric used in the next few collection and how the designer used it. Unique, isn't it?




A touch of orientalism for these bar stools

IV drips for plants. Good statement, eh?


One of my favourites, the Ying-Yang couch. They put it on the wall so that you can see it from the top.

Shadow lamps

And for the students works...

Doggie seat + newspaper holder.. funny!

A little storage box.

Cool apple slicer thing

Well, that's it. Told you we didn't see too many cool stuff.

Ciao Bella!

Fyi, 'ciao' means both hi and bye in Italian.

Aaahhh... Italian Alps. Gorgeous from the sky, isn't it.

An interesting mask shop in Florence. Kinda scary if you stay too long though. It was closed so we didn't get to go in.


Look, Bata in Italy! Haha! In the first place, contrary to what we all think, Bata isn't even Asian! Forgot where it is from though. In Europe, they sell much higher-class and more expensive shoes.

Duomo in Florence. Its huge (can't fit in my camera viewfinder)!


Almighty castle touches the sky (sorry, forgot what the building is called)!

Italians are big fans of 'manly' statues. In Florence, one called 'David' rules (not shown here).

Who wants a blow in the head? Too bad air security checks are so strict nowadays, else I'd have bought this gun!

Touristy Arno River in Florence

Mmm, original Italian gelato!

And take a look at this! Yummy!!

Pretty Florence from high up (and of course, to prove that I was there, haha!)



Yup, it's telling you you can now sleep walk across the street

The 'pasar malam' in Florence. If only I could somehow record the smell of leather for you guys...



In Milan: No space for a parallel? No problem. Italians are FANTASTIC drivers!

Duomo at Milano was being restoredo (PS. Are you guys getting bored of cathedrals yet?)

Hello Kitty conquers Milan! (So it IS fashionable to wear Hello Kittys then?)

Fantastic window display by Louis Vuitton. Very designer-ish shiny-shiny-bling-bling!



Horny Italian pigeons doing the deed

Hey pretty baby! Oooh yeah.. but don't know what car it is exactly.

Yupsie yupsie! That's all for now folks! Next post will be about some of the cool stuff I saw at the Milan Design Fair. I AM in Industrial Design after all.

Ciao ciao! (Yes, they actually say that!)

London

First day: London zoo. Took a scenic route through Regent's Park to get there. Almost wanted to just stop, plop myself on the grass, work on some Sudoku puzzles (Jenny got me addicted), enjoy the sun and forget about the zoo.



London zoo

Vultures. They are huge!

Penguins. They are so cute! And look for a naughty one with the punk hairstyle (its actually because its a different breed from the rest). London zoo took it in cos it was being too naughty at another zoo. How adorable!


Caterpillars and pupa.

This is a moth caterpillar. Its freaking huge! Like bigger than the size of my finger! Did you know that moths don't feed at all?? They eat and eat at the caterpillar stage and store their energy until they're moths and after that, just die off when they energy reserves run out. Unbelievable. (if I remember that fact correctly)


Creepy crawlies!
Tarantula

Beautiful green jewel bettle (made up that name)

Perfect grasshopper moulting (shed skin) Amazing!

Leaf insect. Can you see the thorax and wings? Its not a leaf its the insect itself!

Star fish

Cute frog

Llamas, I think they are. Remember the cartoon 'The Emperor's New Groove'? They're so wooly and fluffy. I'd like to keep one as a pet in the future!


Camels. Can someone explain why their skin is in such poor condition? It can't be that the zoo's keeping them poorly (coz then they would get in trouble with animal rights activists or something). Is it because of the weather doesn't suit them or they are getting too much water?

Me and my best friend. Well, hello there!


In London, I just took walks and wondered around by myself.

Can you see the height of this unicycle resting against the street signs?! I think its just for show. Way too tall for a real cyclist.

London China Town. Hehe. Nothing like Singapore's.

Sitting on the grass in Convent Garden


For Bruneians reading this, we all miss Capital FM but erm, the building isn't much, is it?

Some British icons: London cabs and red phone booths


Trafalgar Square

At Horse Guard Palace: horses and guards



The London Eye

Legendary Tower Bridge: London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down!


And that's it for London!

PS. Sorry for the lousy low res pictures. Needed to save space to take more pictures.

Joyce is back!

Hello again! Sorry for the delay people! I wasn't DEAD, just really busy with travelling and catching up with school work. Anyway, I owe you guys pictorial reports on Belgium, Italy and London. I'll start with the last one then work my way back slowly ok!

Ok, so my sister Jenny Jen Jen (prounounced Jen-nai-jen-jen) was here for a visit last Thursday till Monday and I followed her back to London for two days. Here are some pictures to prove that.

We went to Rotterdam on Saturday, but only to shop. So no interesting pictures there.

Sunday was spent at Amsterdam. There was a hell lot of people probably coz the next day was Queen's day. So there were a lot of shops selling orange stuff and also a carnival at the city centre.



Jenny and her big feet

We visited the torture museum. Don't pray-pray! (in proper non-Singlish: Don't play!)

Chair of nails. Ouch!

Head chopper

Skull craker

Cool art on buildings in Amsterdam (There was a naked guy playing the saxaphone in the first building. How cheesy! Jenny saw him through one of the window.)





Oh, by the way, I'm doing a design case study on European street art, mostly street graffiti. So if any of you European SEP-ers see any cool stuff on the streets, take pictures and send them to me, yeah! Thanks!

Good ole' home-cooked food by Jenny and Joyce (I was the assistant chef)
P.S. Tell me if you can see that I'm putting on weight. :(

Saturday Picnic

We've been having great weather since last week. Wanted to have a BBQ, but no pit. :( Instead, we had a picnic behind me and Daniel's place. :)

Atendees: me, Szymon, Daniel, Chengwei, Umit and Yixian


Cheers to great weather!

Yam Seng-ing..


Maharaja and Coutesan from Wizard of Oz

Our picnic