i need to zhng my bike..

today after church, Elaine, Adam and i were riding home on our bikes and from the Domkyrkan to the AF building which is about 100metres i was already super struggling with my tiny bike that has spoilt gears. so Adam was really nice and offered to swap bikes with me for the ride home. his bike was too high for me so he even gave me a boost to start the bike going. haha i felt like a small kid learning to ride a bike for the first time.. and it was SO MUCH EASIER riding his bike as compared to mine! riding my tiny mustang bike feels like i'm trying to climb a vertical mountain with a stationary exercise bike man....the gears are gone, the torque is almost negligent, the seat is too low.....even on flat roads it feels tough.. at first i thought i was damn unhealthy or what but a few people have tried my bike and certified that it is true madness using it. like Elaine said, i also can't believe i have been riding like this for 2months man..

oke if the weather is better tomorrow i think i will head downtown after class to get this little pink machine fixed..

yeah finally forcing myself to zhng my bike!



*zhng - upgrade.. used similarly to pimp my ride..


and btw my bike is almost hidden in the shot.. but yeah that's how little it is. : ]

power postal service

somewhere out there in the world, either in singapore, the netherlands, or sweden, there definitely exists a super power postal service.. i can't believe the card still managed to find its way to me siah.

thanks Renjie for the still-in-time CNY card, much appreciated. and i hope you know where Lund is now hor!! haha.

Snökaos! Snow chaos in Skåne..

my own personal kiruna in the balcony i think i have no access to...


i had been sleeping for about 40mins from 630am to 7+am and woke up to resume work for the presentation today only to get a call from Ingrid my crazy funny classmate at IKDC who was part of the crew that dressed Alec up as a nun in Milan last year... i thought i was late for presentation or something but thankfully it was news that the presentation today was cancelled due to extreme snowing yesterday and overnight...it was truly bad last night trudging through calf-deep snow and getting snow blown in my eyes cos of the scary winds.

i was like shocked and then abit relieved cos i really wasn't that prepared for the presentation today and though undeserving i have been blessed with an totally unexpected extension. thank God. i will have to work hard over the weekend though, cos the presentation will probably be postponed to next week and next week Olivia will be coming to visit. haha maybe amidst all the cooking and shopping she can also train me more in perspective drawing.. or drawing in general..

oke time to catch up on some sleep. take care folks.

here, there and everywhere.

it is one of those nights i am up doing work and being an inefficient workaholic.

i think this blog has been quite happy dappy so far and i guess that was part of my positivity plan but it's probably more realistic to also say that there are the down days and this might just be one of them. but hey, that was part of it too lah, learning to overcome these things and growing up abit in a good way hopefully after this experience.

i miss people here, there and everywhere. but time is flying lah. soon i will miss my time and the people here too. humans are strange beings lah.

oke will have no regrets, be thankful, and get back to work now.

love and miss you all. but will be a strong little rock! and survive, well. :]

worry not, just pray for me, and trust.

take care and be well!!

reunion dinner! ...or the night i shocked everyone with how much i can eat...

the day started with a much awaited package from home containing power stuff like bak hoo and pineapple tarts and other secret essentials..



crazy preparation with alot of food in the bigger kitchen in sparta e and f corridor...



it somehow came together in good order with the tables rearranged and all and of course with the help of everyone and we were all set to makan! (eat!)



more guests from our corridor drawn in by the power smells of steamboat and other goodstuff in our dinner haha! we ate for like 5 hours nonstop.. Marona, my classmate at ikdc was truly shocked by how much i could eat without stopping. it should be made known here that someone once suggested that i was a bit of a small blackhole in terms of the bottomless pit my stomach seems to be... ever hungry! but the food was really good so well haha i could not help but keep eating that night.






haha and we actually made yusheng(raw fish, with vegetables and all) and loheied(tossed the raw fish and veggies) after surviving the power dinner.. haha i think we made lohei-ing an extreme sport. it was threatened that i would get a lohei shower but thankfully the table kenahed more of the shower than i did...
correct me if i am wrong, but we came to the conclusion that yusheng was a more or less rather Singaporean tradition cos they don't seem to have it in china or hongkong..



after our wonderful reunion dinner at Sparta we headed to Spoletorp to join the other Singaporeans for an overnight party and at some point in the night we found paul and eugene salsa-ing..hrmn haha.


when i got back at nearly 6am in the morning my brother msged me to say the relatives were at our home visiting and they wanted to skype with me so haha i think i must have looked really dazed but it was quite fun and wenxin(heartwarming) to talk with relatives who were at my home 9593 kilometres away from where i am now..


hai i miss home a little bit more now.

but time is flying crazily so i think i should probably treasure my time here more too. it's been...nearly two months! whoa.

take care you guys. and 新年快乐！ 万事如意！快高长大！ 身体健康！

kiruna, in between 44 hours on the train.

it all started with an unexpected free bus ride from kiruna train station as the ice hotel transfer coach driver took us even though i think the coach was only meant for people who were going to stay at the ice hotel.. and we met a few other kind souls along our way in kiruna, more bus drivers who took us further than they had to, caring folks at the lappish huts and all.



so our first stop was the ice hotel which is pretty much a must-go place in kiruna and it didn't disappoint but we chose not to stay there cos of our tight budget and instead stayed in an igloo at the Ripan hotel place...even though i suspected that igloos weren't really quite swedish but it was mad cold fun anyways.



the igloo had this mysterious blue foam door. haha that's like one of our model-making materials in ID..



lappland felt really surreal...a cross between the hobbit shire and the elvish lands with little hobbit huts and vast dreamscapes surrounding.



we took a bit of a walk during our last morning in lappland and ended up helping to chase the reindeers back to their living areas.. super surreal. this is peiching venturing ahead into reindeer land.. and happy belated birthday peiching!!! am super sorry i didn't double check with your mum and hence missed it..arghs.



i was really taken by the sight of our magic reindeer amidst all the forest....really looked enchanted siah.



ultimately i would still rate it as a super good trip even though it was rough along the way with the -30 degrees temperatures and having to not sleep for two days after cos i had the puma presentation the day after we got back. we didn't get to see the northern lights and were quite disappointed but i guess we only had one chance to catch it so the chances were slim to begin with... maybe if there's still time i'll go over to Norway to find jo and stay a week to catch them lah, but i think it would be really nice if the IDiots on exchange could go to lappland together and stay in the hobbit huts. sure feel like happy hobbits haha.

the puma presentation went surprisingly well also, i am very glad for that cos i think it was quite undeserving cos i had been away the week that we were supposed to really work hard for it. thank God for that and for bringing us safely home from our kiruna trip too. more pictures from the trip can be found on my flickr page..

haha and i'm getting abit lazy about the uploading pictures and blogging... please prod me more if you really want to see more entries. and thanks for reading and caring. anddd happy new year! 新年快乐！！

cha ye dan

because i was so happy that i got to eat a cha ye dan today, i gave up some sleep to draw this. haha. it was really a wonderful blessing because the night before i had been thinking about cha ye dans nonstop after Peiching told me about Stella, Linus and Robin making cha ye dans in Gotheborg.. and today at the end of bible study, Sandra(from China) whipped out some she had made for Annice (Korean-Canadian). and Annice shared them with us. wah happiness and joy!! my dayandnight-long craving very unexpectedly fulfilled! heh. Thank God for bible study, sandra, annice and cha ye dans. : ]


oke what are cha ye dans?

translated, they are tea-leaf-eggs. hard-boiled eggs that are cracked a little and then further boiled for hours in tea leaves, water and soya sauce and other good stuff that Sandra was describing that i didn't even understand in chinese, will have to see those ingredients before i can identify them... so the happy hard-boiled eggs soak up all the power essence of the tea leaves and soya sauce and end up super tasty happy hard-boiled eggs. commonly eaten for breakfast in China, or eaten anytime anywhere, in Singapore. haha oke actually i think we mostly eat it in chinese tea houses and also at pasar malams. (night markets) and also random stalls along the street.

mrmmms. happy. : ]

school school school

heyos, i've been busy with school. not really managing my time well or at all...so i've had to have some overnights doing work already.. not in school cos it's not quite a stayover culture over here but doing work at home on the comp. the design design part is really kicking in soon and today i more or less have to do most of the work for the puma presentation as i'm leaving for kiruna tomorrow and will only be back on wednesday afternoon..and the final presentation is on thursday.. GREAT PLANNING. haha! i should've known better.. but anyway it just gets tighter later on in the semester so maybe this will turn out to be the best time to have travelled anyway.

anyway i think i am starting to enjoy school more cos i am learning alot. the teachers are people still very much in the industry so their comments are really down to earth and constructive. you don't feel like you need to second-guess what they actually mean. they say it like they mean it. it is quite stressful though. i had thought previously that my 6 months here would be abit more restful than the crazy semesters we have in NUS ID but it was not to be... we're encouraged to follow the year 3 track so i did...and thus am living a familiar but tiring life now. not that different from back home - chionging overnight doing work, feeling stressed and panicky and excited, friendly classmates, crazy classmates sometimes heh, and helping out with the milan fair booth has been fun too. i hope i really will get to go down with them though! i just really miss the IDiots sometimes esp when working late on my own. cos although the class here is quite tightly knit and fun and all, i guess there's nothing as wenxin(heartwarming) and qingqie(closeknit) as home lah.

i miss the chingchongs/acronymgang much too. come online at weird timings in singapore so it's normal timings here more leh! haha but at least our facebook group is still alive so i feel a little happier everytime i see an update.

i miss alot of people. but i probably shouldn't try to list them all out.. later still miss out people then *lagi worse. (*even -more- worse.) i hope you guys know who you are! haha. and especially for those who haven't been great recently, be well soon. if i were back home i would get you out for a pint to talk. take care much!

i've been cooking quite a bit recently too. proper food oke! chia family style pork and potatoes and ma you jiang ji (sesame oil chicken, with ginger). friends' biased reviews were all good! haha. photos are on Marta's cam.. maybe i'll put them up when she gets back from her super short trip to London..

well i'll be in up north in Kiruna from tomorrow (saturday) till wednesday. so take care, be well, and talk to all of you soon again.

God bless.

rice and chops : weekend thoughts.

well, when the party chops(stamps) on your wrist start figuratively piling up it's probably time to stop and get some rest....just in time to do work for the rest of the week! it was quite a weekend with impromptu lindyhop-ish dances and cosy parties at some of my classmates' apartments in lund and malmo but weekends can't quite last forever. and it is not going to be an easy week as we have two presentations, tomorrow and thursday, and then the final presentation for the Puma brand extension project next thursday.....the day after i get back from the kiruna trip with stella and peiching... but i guess it will be much-needed good training for me to learn to work early and finish way before the deadline...so friday will be my personal deadline. pray for me! it is going to be quite rough i think..

other than that school is becoming more engaging and interesting, there is alot of opportunity to explore and learn. although i think i can't say for sure yet that things here are -drastically- different from back home in school in NUS(National University of Singapore) in terms of process and schoolwork. but for a start, the crits so far for the *main studio project have been very constructive and encouraging. brutally honest at times but always supportive and encouraging. something which maybe comes from learning from tutors who are still very much in the industry. so i've been learning quite a heckofalot which is always a good thing for me. i'm in a good place, i'm quite sure.

(*main studio project - i'm not sure i can explicitly say what it is about yet..no non-disclosure agreement signed or anything but just to be safe lah.)



non-burnt rice in a normal pot cooked on the stove!

and in other news, i have officially killed my rice cooker. i am really sorry!! especially to the dearest bunch that bought me the cooker for my birthday before i left. it is completely my fault.. i was using it as a boiler to heat up my rather cold room and one night i forgot to unplug it before leaving home....so it boiled until it died.... argh! felt really **pekchek but i guess maybe it was a blessing in disguise that it didn't burn my room down and also that i had just managed to cook rice properly both in the cooker and on the stove just a few days before it died.. so i should still be able to cook decent rice for the next 4 months.. just that my room will be back to its cold and dry original state again now.


***hai, rest in peace, my dear cooker. :/



** pekchek - frustrated
*** hai - sigh

i can cook good rice afterall + food and friends in my lundlife..

helped my neighbour thomas with cooking rice the other day and woohoo!! we got good rice!! and i tried some of the special bolognese that he made and wah it was actually power curry bolognese. and it went really well with the slightly salted rice. goodstuff never bluff! i even cooked perfect rice in a pot on the stove the next day oke!! not bad eh! haha.





i also had legendary pancakes with the legendary pancake maker very early one morning and that was kind of surreal but warm and nice. it more than made up for my craving for supper amidst work that we always have back home in Singapore. because they are so legendary, i cannot put up pictures of them. : ] oke actually it was american pancakes and not legendary swedish pancakes that early morning. but they are legendary by association lah heh.

and then yesterday i had mysterious mockmeat made from the same materials as mushrooms but no mushrooms were involved in the final product...disturbing. but it was quite nice and tasted wholesome cooked by Marta with sauteed zucchinis and the 5.90 kronor caesar salad pack from ICA that -everyone- has been buying..it was apparently sold out according to Kuba!

i must say, i am truly blessed with these food and friends in my lund life. makes life much warmer and happier here!