Europe.. watch out for JOYCE!

Virus Festival

2007-06-10T05:34:00.001+08:00

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!

2007-06-03T16:11:00.000+08:00

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!

2007-05-24T17:30:00.000+08:00

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

2007-05-13T22:28:00.000+08:00

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

2007-05-13T22:00:00.000+08:00

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?

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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!

2007-05-08T20:11:00.000+08:00

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

2007-05-05T22:13:00.000+08:00

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!

2007-05-05T16:28:00.000+08:00

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

2007-04-03T16:44:00.000+08:00

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

Mrs & Mr Alaister Hong

2007-03-26T05:48:00.000+08:00

I hate drawing teeth.

Better? Haha!

*hugs*n*kisses*

Amsterdam

2007-03-25T18:41:00.000+08:00

We had a day trip to Amsterdam yesterday. There was an offer for train tickets. It was cheaper to buy first-class pair tickets than second-class singles. Only difference was in leather seats and more space.

We visited the Sex Musuem. A lot of it is R-rated, so I'll post some pictures only.

Me, Szymon (Polish guy) & Yixian

Appetite for sex?

Big Momma's out to getcha'!

Chastity belts

Size matters, huh!

Horse carriages. The horses were mighty humongus! They have eye patches to block their side vision so that they won't get scared by vehicles from the side. So they can only see straight.

The Netherlands is known for being very open about sex and drugs

Hippie land: Magic mushroom store and one of the many 'Coffee Shops'

I AmSterdam

Disrespectin' van Gogh! This guy, just like Picasso, painted WAY too much! Remind me never to visit a paintings museum again.

Pretty flowers! I plucked some to press.

At the flower market: flower roots, seeds, bulbs for sale

Bet a lot of you want this!

Dutch clogs: You don't want me kickin' your ass in these!

The original Red-Light District

Europe has got FANTASTIC street art

I'll be back here with my sister at the end of April. So there'll be more pictures!

Its.. springy springy spring spring!

2007-03-23T03:43:00.000+08:00

Yeah sure. Windy, snowy, haily spring. But on some lucky days, it can be gorgeous. Evidences of spring...

Glorious sun!

Flowers!

Pretty blossoms on a tree

Little birdies (well, I they're just crows, but at least they're out!)

And finally, a pair of bunnies. Can you spot one here (answer at the end)?

How about this one? There are two. This one's easier so no answers.

Answer:

The day after...

2007-03-23T03:08:00.000+08:00

I woke up the next morning and looked outside my window.. lo and behold..

There was snow the night before! So it was an eventful morning walk to school. And I took many pictures, as usual.

Here are some juxtaposing shots.

Sun and snow

Bright flowers in the snow

On the snow side, the branches were dried and brown. The other half, little leaflets were sprouting!

Flower vs snow: Flower 0, Snow 1 (flower died)

Dog poo vs snow: Dog poo 1, Snow 0. (snow melted) Haha!

And all the while, I was so intrigued by the patterns of the ice. Wonderful!

Its like frosted glass.

Surreal! And luckily for you dudes, it hailed again yesterday. This time, i managed to take a video from my room. (Sorry, I forgot that videos can't be rotated, or can it?)

Looks like normal rain, doesn't it? But you can tell from the sounds that ice was falling! It melted in my hands pretty fast.

And its supposed to be spring already... :(

Global Warming is Acting Up!

2007-03-19T00:12:00.000+08:00

OH-MY-GOD! There was like 20 seconds of hail just now! I couldn't believe it. Still can't. I thought it was rain, then thought it was snow, then when I opened the kitchen balcony door, it was hard droplets of ice. They were all so tiny and rounded. Wish it had lasted longer so that I could take more pictures and videos!

Hail in the middle of March?!?!?! Everyone, stop wasting paper and driving cars!

Here's some evidence (cos of my excitement and hurry, the quality isn't good):

Ice droplets (the white zhi-liap zhi-liap (spots)) littered the grass area outside.

And less than 5 minutes later, the sun came out and melted the ice, as if to erase the whole incident.

Talk about weird weather...

Eindhoven

2007-03-18T23:13:00.000+08:00

More pictures of Eindhoven!

Can you believe the size of the cheese here?! Holland is known for its cheese too, among other things like tulips and windmills. Here's one of the stalls selling it at the market. Doesn't smell too good, I tell you.

On the way home from school one day, me and Yixian came across this tree with a strange bark. It looked like it was painted over (like wall paper material). We don't know whether it really was painted or if it that was natural. Weird!

Think the pigeons here are obese?

Actually they just sorta sink in their necks and puff their body up to keep the warmth. (I made that up myself, but makes sense right?)

Talk about overkill! Yes, we know its Media Markt.

My project team went to Schiestraat where our client was. Near the bus stop, there is a little farm area. And look at the horseys!

Aww, how sweet!

They were so friendly and actually approached me near the fence (maybe coz I had a sandwich in my hands then). She (or maybe he) is really pretty!

Looks like they've all got the fashionable fringe/bangs!

This one wanted attention to! Haha.

Further down the road, there is another horse farm. This horse is HUGE! My Dutch groupmates say that its a Belgian-something breed? And it had way-cool dreadlocks!

Princess Emma

2007-03-17T03:06:00.000+08:00

Been having the learn-to-sketch-portraits fever. I think I'm doing pretty good so far. Hehe.

Resemblance rate is more than 50% at least?

BCN Last Day

2007-03-10T04:33:00.000+08:00

On the last day, we decided to visit Park Guell after all. We went in the morning so that we could get to Girona by afternoon. Park Guell was designed by.. can you guess? Yes, Gaudi. AGAIN! Free and fantastic! And huge! Oh, and Gaudi's home was and still is in this park.

I love the 'longest bench in the world' (I think). It has really creative mosaics.

Creative people with their wares.

Looks like a bread/candy house, heh? One of it is a souvenir store, the other, I don't know. And the rest of the view from the benches.

Ring-around-the-roses

Beautiful, isn't it?

The wind was MAD up there.

Umit's idea of Charlie's Angels pose

The guys got to go to a football game while we headed to Girona. I'm so jealous!

The guys' corridor. Told you the Spanish had a good sense of colours for the interior. That's Umit, by the way (he's Turkish).

And that's it! It was a great trip. I loved Barcelona. The best things in (a Barcelonian) life are free. Hope to go back there again, but not before I've seen the rest of Europe.

BCN 3rd Day

2007-03-10T03:47:00.000+08:00

On the 3rd day, we went to Temple de la Sagrada Familia, designed by Gaudi again. I'm telling you, its like this guy designed the whole of Barcelona or something! But before that...

Why can't they have such pretty flowers back home? I stole one and pressed it.

A tree full of hearts on its trunk. Aww, I heart ALWS!

None of our flashes went off after we set it the second time.

Our lousy attempt to spell Spain with our shadows

Look! A petrol station (near the right) in the middle of the street!

And here it is, 'The Temple of the Sacred Family', the world's most visited 'construction site' (coz its not completed yet, even though Gaudi's been dead for year and years). It was so big that I couldn't get even a half shot of it.

The ceiling

Its exterior is really intricate with carvings of everything! Look closely and you can see stories being told.

Honestly, it wasn't worth the Eur5 entrance fee. But since we were already there, we just decided to pay another Eur2 to take the elevator (again, they charge for an elevator ride!) up. Now THAT was worth every cent. It was like some kind of stair maze. I felt like Rapunzel or something! It was really like running around in a castle from tower to tower.

Narrow stairway (definitely not for fat people)

Touching the tip of another tower by Gaudi far, far away

It was 60m down. We had to take the spiral stairs all the way, but it was fun (and a little dizzy-dazzy).

Some silly pose

Hiding beneath the stairs

After that, me and Yixian went to do a bit of shopping (the only time during the whole trip!). It was an unsatisfyling 1.5 hrs but I bought some cheap clothes for only Eur15.

At night, we went to watch the Light and Musical Fountain, which was quite nice but again, no pictures coz it was too dark and our cameras weren't super enough.

And that was it for Day 3.

BCN 2nd Day

2007-03-09T22:01:00.001+08:00

Ok I know its long over due, but here it is.

So on the 2nd day at Barcelona, we went to the Cathedral. It was free! I think Europe has a reputation for having beautiful cathedrals. This is one of 'em. Its designed by Gaudi.

Me, Yixian and Chengwei

Samsung did a spoiler with this board thing (they sponsored the restoration or something)

Pictures of the interior weren't very good because it was rather dark and I didn't wanna use the flash on my camera in such a holy place. But it was quite grand, I tell you!

Geese in the cathedral!

Uncover the secret message if you can

Then we decided to pay Eur2.20 to take the elevator up to the top. It was SO worth it! It had such a great view of Barcelona.

And on the way to our next destination, we saw a demonstration on the streets. Didn't know what it was about though. There was just a bunch of people on the streets making loud noises. They even had police escorting them.

And at this point, the memory was filled up to max capacity.

We went to the Chocolate Museum (yup, chocolate!) but didn't go in coz it was the place was small and it was quite expensive. And besides, I think the museum was only about how chocolates were made and no free testing or anything.

So after that, we visited the Picasso museum. This guy is a great artist and all but I got kinda bored after looking at about a million of his paintings and work. Er, no pictures coz they didn't allow it.

After that, we went to the park and just sat and enjoyed the sun (gawd, I sound like an ang-moh!). It was such a nice relaxing atmosphere and there, I wrote my postcards. And then a French lady came along selling two types of Spanish food; some spinach puff thing and a vegetable pie thing. Both were 70cents each so bought a couple. Tasted alright, but weird.

So on the way back, we took the route along the beach. It was quite cold and windy but there were still people playing around. No swimming though, and we saw two brave girls in bikini tops!

We spent a good 15 minutes just sitting on their concrete beach chairs and enjoying the peace and quiet (kind of).

Along the way, we saw this spider web thing and decided to act like a bunch of kids and climbed it. We met this English kid and I said to him that he was like a monkey coz he climbed up and down it so fast and he said, "Well, my last name IS Gibbons"!! Haha. I laughed so hard!

Us and monkey-boy Gibbons. Haha!

And after that, for dinner, we went to this place and ordered four types of rice (we're in Spain, and we're STILL eating rice!) but they were all flavoured and one of them was black rice! Yikes! But not a bad meal and in the end we split the cost and it was only about Eur5 each.

P.S. (unrelated) I'm SO addicted to Grey's Anatomy! Anyone has the VCD/DVDs of all the seasons to lend me?!

Happy Last Day of Chinese New Year!

2007-03-04T17:10:00.000+08:00

Since I haven't gotten the pictures for the rest of our BCN trip yet, I'll just post an entry with pictures from Chinese New Year, and a couple of the 'Cutest Niece in the World'.

From the 'Reunion Dinner' on the eve of CNY

Yummy, many-course meal!

Top left-right: Venetia (SG), Bernat (Spain), Dominic (Netherlands), Huiqian (SG), Kitty (SG), Yixian (SG), Fanni (Indonesia)
Bottom left-right: Umit (Turkey), Daniel (SG), Mun Yee (Malaysia), Joyce (Brunei), Simmon (Poland)
We've got a total of 8 nationalities!

The 'lou-hei' (I think that's what its called) imported from Singapore

Meanwhile.. back home..

Family Portrait (-2)

Lion Dance

My dad and my sister at ICC in Brunei. Almost looks like Singapore China Town but look closely, its indoors and I think the whole facade is flat cardboard!

And now, pictures of my cute niece, Emma.

Emma and her Mama

Emma and her Ah-Ma (grandmother). Baby's spiky hair is all natural!

Pictures from earlier.

Little girl has Burberry socks!

'What are you lookin' at, hm? I'll box you with my tiny fist!'

Emma the Eskimo (they brought her to a party and were trying to protect her ears from the noise, hehe)

I'm so DUMB + FANTASTIC Barcelona trip Day 1

2007-03-02T00:37:00.000+08:00

Oh gosh, I'm so dumb! I accidentally deleted all the usernames and passwords in my laptop and I couldn't log in to my blog for days because I couldn't remember my username, password and the email address which I used. So dumbo me tried all possible entries I could think of and all permutations but it still didn't work because.. the username IS the email address! Sheesh! Why didn't I think of that earlier? Or even read the Help pages (that I was visiting so many times) carefully?! Oh well, lesson learnt.

Next, about my AMAZING trip to Barcelona, Spain. Well, it wasn't that amazing, but I loved the place anyway. It was sunny and warm and bright, but with killer chilly winds. We did a lot of sightseeing and park visits. I just love the parks, where you could sit on the grass and do anything in the world. I chose to write postcards while the others took naps. Well, anyway, here are some pictures and more stories along with it.

Cushion beds right in the middle of Eindhoven airport for people to rest on

Just landed: Umit, Yixian, me and Chengwei (holding the camera). Actually we weren't allowed to take pictures near the plane but we didn't know and we were fast!

Glorious sun in the Barcelona sky

Street acts along La Ramblas. None are statues. Neat, huh!

Ronaldinho lookey-likey!

Edward Scissorhands!

This man ought to fit right in on the NUS Rag Day

And along the way we started to hear some guys sing what-I-think-is-the-BarcelonaFC-anthem really loudly. When we took a closer look, we realised that it was because they saw another bunch of guys (older, REALLY FAT men) wearing Liverpool jerseys. I guess people here are really supportive of their own football teams and not tolerant of other FC supporters. Then the Liverpool guys started singing THEIR anthems. But the two groups were walking past one another in different directions, so unfortunately we didn't get to see any action or fights breaking out.

Cute, sweet and pretty little florets

Decorative umbrellas on one of the buildings

Wonderful street artist's work

Peep Show and Sex Shop. We took a look and they were selling sex toys and a lot of porn. Didn't go inside the peep show shop though coz you had to pay.

The end of La Ramblas led us to the marina/pier

It was quite scary for me to sit so close to the edge. But for the sake of my loyal blog readers, I did it for you!

The market place, yummy!

Condom vending machine. Cool, yeah?

Food was rather expensive there, so the first day, we had Mc Donald's for lunch and Burger King for dinner. Talk about the evils of fast food! Same price, different currency.

Our room at the Backpacker's Hostel. We were lucky coz they didn't have enough rooms, so we got free upgrades to one of their apartments. I like the interior. It was cozy and colourful (who else but the Spanish would be bold enough to have these colours on their walls?).

One gross thing though, was that I found a huge condom (looked used) in the otherwise empty waste basket. Eww!

Check out the size of these huge-ass strawberries which we got at the market! It was only Eur1.99 for 1kg! We later found out why.. it got quite bad the next day. Wasted.

Will post entries on Days 2 onwards when I get the pictures (I only had a 256MB memory card which filled up on the second day).

Schoko-Bons-ie!

2007-02-19T23:40:00.000+08:00

Many many years ago, I discovered a super delicious, sinful, addictive chocolate called Schoko-Bons (part of the Kinder family). However, my enjoyment of it was shortlived because about a year or so later, for some mysterious reason, it completely disappeared from Brunei supermarket shelves and as far as I knew, everywhere else too.

But surprise, surprise! I was grocery shopping today and I chanced upon my long-lost friend! It was placed right there with the rest of its Kinder cousins. I think it might a limited production only for Easter. And it costs Eur2.99! But its so worth it! It tastes just as good and sinful as I remember. Uh-oh, I feel a re-addiction coming...

Carnaval + Reunion Dinner

2007-02-18T20:26:00.000+08:00

GONG XI FA CAI and Happy New Year, everyone! May this piggy year bring you lots of good health and wealth!

Well, I'm at home. Its so boring! Everyone back home is visiting one another, gambling, eating, having fun. Have no plans for the day or the next few days until Thursday (when I go to Barcelona) so I think I'll just get a head start on school work, ie. tens of pages of reading for 'User Profiling and Personas', and two sketches for 'How to Draw a Cup of Tea', and probably some research for our project.

Yesterday was pretty great. We went to the city where the Carnaval was held and the atmosphere was spectacular. It was colourful, noisy, crowded, everything!

On the way to the Carnaval. These girls were the weirdos and I was the normal-looking one (coz I didn't have any costume)

At the heart of the party

There was loud music and beer all over!

Inside one of those tents. They were selling beer at Eur20 for 10 cups or something. Madness!

Celebration! I was the only normal looking one there, which actually made me look like the weird one.

Amateur gynae? Nice one..

And one of the funniest one was seeing a really beefy dad wearing a puny skin-tight PINK tutu with fairy wings! Too bad, didn't get a picture of him. He was with his daughter too, bet that's where he stole his costume from.

And outta nowhere, these guys attacked me with some pink hair spray

And admist the choas, I spotted an unattended article. He was entertaining himself with the confetti on the ground in oblivion.

Who's gonna clean up the mess now?

Some kids playing near the public urinal. Yup, its a PUBLIC urinal out in the open.

Here's another one. I'm such a perv!

And after that, we went home and got ready for our Reunion Dinner.
Eight course meal, clockwise from top left: sweet corn soup, omelette + hotdog + vege, omelette + ham + shrimp (cooked by yours truly), bak kwa (brought by yours truly again), salty vegetable thing, mixed vege + cashew nuts, sweet and sour fish or chicken (forgot which) + potatoes, vegetable and finally, rice (contributed by me, again!). Also unseen in this picture 'lou he' and mandarin oranges (which I got from the market at Eur2.50 for 30)

More pictures coming soon!

Happy Belated Valentine's Day and Happy Advance Chinese New Year!!

2007-02-16T00:47:00.000+08:00

Well, Valentine's Day was pretty un-Valentinish. I didn't see love-struck couples walking around hand-in-hand lovey-dovily. Nor did I see anyone at all holding roses or any other love-flowers. And my own pretty baby was far, far away. Well, Valentine's Day was just uneventful. Hm, just remembered, maybe it was because I was out only for 10 mins that day!

On a happier, yet sadder note, Chinese New Year is coming! Yippee! We're gonna have a Reunion Dinner on Saturday at Yixian's place and we'll also have special guests like two Delfters, two Dutch-who-were-SEP-ing-in-NUS-last-sem-ers, and a couple more friendly international housemates. And I've offered to bring plain rice (what would we do without our traditional staple) and also mandarin oranges (hope prices won't hike up at the market on Saturday!). Hope that there's gonna be LOTS of DELICIOUS food!

For the sad part, its my first time not spending CNY with family. *sigh* No visiting houses to get ang-pows, no yummy tidbits and free-flow cokes, and no seeing my cute little niece dress up in what-I'd-bet-will-be the cutest red outfit (but there WILL be pictures sent to me). Oh well, at least we're planning to head up to Amsterdam's China Town so hopefully I will feel the ambience still. And its coincidentally the Dutch Carnaval week so we have one week holidays and we girls are gonna go to Barcelona for a couple of days! Double yippee!

Ok, every entry has to have some pictures from now on. So here are a couple of random pictures unrelated to Valentine's Day or Chinese New Year!

From Schipol Airport to Eindhoven by train
Just arrived at Eindhoven by train

Once of our first meals + my housemate from China (I'm indebted to him for having a rice cooker!)

Bowled over!

Cute little car (all cars here are left-hand drives by the way)

Ice from 'The Day After Tomorrow!!' Just kidding, its just the icy remains of the ice sculpture exhibition that we missed. :(

One of my common lunches: Club sandwich with fizzy juice!

Retro!!

My 'hood

The first dinner I cooked all by myself. Edible.. except for a couple of burnt parts in the nuggets and some uneven cooked parts in the potatoes.. the cabbage was ALL edible though! Cos it was RAW, haha!

Did I mention already that I see this everyday when I get up?

And tonight's dinner. It looks better than it tastes. Fried rice was kinda bland, even with the pre-mix! And mushroon soup was kinda dilute, also pre-mixed. Cheater, haha!

And lastly, project groupmates at Work domain

Ciao!

Schoolie Schoolie School School

2007-02-11T19:10:00.000+08:00

School has started for a week now but the first week was 'Activity Week' for us ID students. It was kinda like orientation where we did a small group project on a famous designer and had to present a panel and model in the exposition (exhibition) on Friday.

The serious stuff starts tomorroow, Monday. NOOOOO!!! I don't feel like starting school coz I have a feeling its going to be as busy as NUS. I wanna still be on holiday! I hope it'll go ok. Sometimes it can get a bit difficult as the other students start talking in Dutch. They do try to converse in English for my sake, but sometimes they unwittingly go back to Dutch and I get lost. And same goes for the tutors as well!

Well, here are some pictorial descriptions for my loyal readers...

First day at the cafeteria with the rest and Dom

We have a salon! (they even offer beard trimming for about Eur 5 I think)

Main lobby area

Revolving doors

My 'Activity Week' groupmates in our studio

Having lunch at Kennispoort cafeteria

Before: Our clay model, a remote control that Ettore Sottsass would've designed during the peak of his design life. (it might be the death of him if he saw what we did!)

After:

Workshop at Matrix. Its HUMONGOUS! And they have separate smaller rooms like a sanding room, clay room, etc.

And they have free supplies of paint, wooden sticks, colour paper, cardboards, etc. Plus, we have free Eur25 worth of printing. Stingy NUS only reimburses us up to S$25 for supplies and printing?! Darn NUS!

One of my favourites in the exposition. Haha! Forgot who the designer is, but pretty obvious what his theme was, isn't it?

And the result of our project

White Winter Wonderland

2007-02-10T00:48:00.000+08:00

It snowed again yesterday and it was H-E-A-V-Y! Everything turned white within an hour. Unfortunately I was stuck indoors when it was snowing and I had noone to play with outside anyway. But I was really enjoying the walk back home from school. Here are some pictures.

When I was briefly outside running between buildings

My first ball of snow. It was like soft ice, all squishy, mash-able and freezing my fingers! (excuse the pimples)

Snow!

ID building in TU/e

Too bad the river wasn't frozen. Would've been cool to see it.

Ok, snow's not all beautiful, like this one by the road. Its all muddy and icky!

Dirty snow frozen on a car's mudflap

The snow was this deep

Reflection: me, snow, cathedral (in order of importance, haha)

The view outside my bedroom window

See how the snow falls sideways!

Squishing a ball of ice!

Winter Wonderland!

2007-02-08T04:43:00.000+08:00

Yay! It snowed today!! Wohoo! It was so exciting!! It was just some light snow, but to a person who never saw snow, it was like flying to the moon! It was so pretty. At first I thought it was just raining (rain here is just like being sprayed with mist and not like our hard water drops back home) but then the further we walked, the more white and ice we saw and we realised it was SNOWING! Let the pictures do the talking!

A fallen tree just outside my place (I think it might have to do with one of the horrible storms that hit Europe before we arrived)

Frozen Mercedes

Well, snow and ice are not all fun for everyone. Poor guy scraping ice from car windscreen. Haha! (And the little blur blubbly areas in the photo are SNOW!

Frozen cute little plantlets (my own word) on the ground

Frozen outdoors seat-thing

Frozen bicycles

My personal favourite, frozen spiderweb. Amazing!

And lastly, me in winter wonderland!

Cross my fingers that I'll see more of this (temperatures expected to be down to -7 degreees C) in the next few days!

Just landed

2007-02-04T05:18:00.000+08:00

Its been 3 days since I arrived in Eindhoven. I'm still settling and I quite like this place. Its pretty cold, especially when the wind blows. And the cool thing is that there is the smoke-outta-your-mouth thing when you breathe out. Now, that proves that you're in a COLD country! I dress like an eskimo (while the others don't) coz I'm cold. And I look CHUBBY in those down-jackets. My lips are chapped and my skin's peeling even though I moisturise and have started to use lip balm. Its dry.

At the airport before we left.

A couple of weird things about Holland:
- Sometimes there is no clear distinction between the road, the cycling lane and the walkway. Its all paved. So sometimes we find ourselves walking on the cycling lane/road and have to siam (get-outta-the-way) when we suddenly see a bicycle/vehicle heading towards us.
- The toilet and the bathroom are separate. And the toilet is one small room with nothing else but. So after you do your business, you'll be using your dirty hands to touch the light switch and door handle. Then you have to go outside, (using your dirty hands) turn on the bathroom switch and wash your hands. Hmm.

Today we went to the open market near where I live. Its quite like the pasar malam back home in Singapore and Brunei. Its there every Saturday. Here are some pictures.

Where do mushrooms come from? Rocks?!

Pretty, pretty flowers!

Chocolates! Glorious, glorious chocolates! Me and Yixian about 200g (about 12 pcs) for Eur 3.

And I actually saw one stall selling (what I think is) weed! Cool, huh! Its like rolls of thin-looking-cigars. But didn't take a picture of that or saw how much it was. Maybe next week.

And finally (for now), here's a picture of my room. You know its REAL small if I can take the whole room in one shot!

And hell, I just realised that I paid about Eur 40-50 more than what they told me earlier. The others are paying about Eur 270-280 for rooms that are 3-4 times my size and closer to town and uni but I have to pay about the same for this puny room?! Not fair!! Will go to the office on Tuesday to argue my way.

Stay tuned!

The Stress of Leaving

2007-01-25T15:08:00.000+08:00

For the past week, I've been having nightmares about leaving! One night, I dreamt that I couldn't get a taxi to the airport on time. Another night, I had some weird dream that had something to do with rail passes (been so stressed about deciding whether or not and which passes to get for the past few days). I think the stress of it all is just that much that its invading my subconsiousness.

Besides that, packing is a NIGHTMARE itself. I've got all my clothes in my luggage and its already touching 30kg, which is the max. Any more excess weight, I'll have to pay $50-60/kg! I don't understand how the others aren't even near that yet. I've got my bedding (pillow, blanket, sheets), winter clothes (which are a bloody lot! haha) and normal clothes in the luggage now. I think I'm overpacking. Need to lessen the load. But I can't leave anything out! I'm already not bringing my beloved kettle. Plus, I still need to bring my electronics and chargers and stuff, as well as my toiletries (I've decided to just get travel sizes just to last me the first couple of days). And I also wanna bring over some bak-kwa and ba-hu. Those would probably weigh another 2kg or so. Argh! *pulls hair out* Why can't they just let us bring as many things we like!

About a week now, and I'll be off! Can't wait but can't bear to leave either. Mixed emotions.. Life!

Blog Virigin

2007-01-10T10:24:00.000+08:00

Wow, never thought I'd be blogging but here I am! Thought I'd start a blog to write about my travels and experience of my trip to the Netherlands. For those who don't know (like I didn't), the Netherlands is the same as Holland. What's it famous for? Amsterdam, original red light district, LEGAL 'soft' drugs like marijuana. That's right, you get to smoke weed legally! Before I left Brunei, my friend Sze Yee always said to me 'you're not gonna consider doing such things, are you?' and I always say 'don't worry, i won't do anything illegal'. Haha! And then Monica will go (with a smirk) 'its overrated'.

But seriously though, I'll be staying at Eindhoven, which is like pretty far from Amsterdam about an hour and a half away. Hope to do LOTS of travelling and please, please, please, I WANNA SEE SNOW! I'll be flying off on 31st January, so that's still some time away. Got LOTS of things to settle like tickets (yep, not completely settled yet!), insurance, visa, packing (should I or should I not stock 6 months' worth of toiletries?!).

Well, that's about it for my very first blog. Come back soon for more ADVENTURES WITH JOYCE!