quick catchup post 4 : pancakes, ollievisits, johnturns21, sketchingclass, claireturns22!

24th feb 2007:

artistic pancakes(a butterfly? two heads?? someabstractnonsense?? :) made with Marta and her free oatmilk lactose-free pancake mix she got free from a school field trip to a oatmilk factory. she's studying food science!


2nd march 2007:

ollie visits!! and gets secretly caught on phonecam in one of the most interesting museums i've seen so far. skissernas museum of public sketches. so the ideas and sketches are exhibited instead of the final art pieces. cool huh?
more about ollie's visit as blogged by thomas the good neighbour..


4th march 2007:

john turns 21! remains of the cake.. the super power cake made by gabrielle..


6th march 2007:

sketching class during workshop week in IKDC...intense stuff but i have finally forced myself to learn to make perspective drawings...not been easy though! but a super patient teacher in Daniel Paulin and 6 survivors at the end of day 3. didn't complete my final marker rendering but it was still an achievement definitely for me.



and claire turns 22! just realised that john and claire actually have the same birthday, just that the birthdays were celebrated a day before and a day after their shared 5th march birthday...


OH YES!! and my bike has been successfully zhnged!! thank God!! i can now ride uphill all the way home from town!! woohoo!! it is no longer a 25 mins walkstruggleridegiveupshiver journey home from town, but a 10 mins quick and cheerful zip home on bike!! joy.

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

school begins..with a cold.

hej hej,

school has started proper for me here in Lund.. and it is certainly not going to be easy. i was feeling quite apprehensive about the workload (cos it was recommended that we follow the year three track) which means that i am going to be as busy as a full time 3rd year ID student in Lund...and that was probably the original idea of going on exchange so hey, why not? i will definitely be learning alot for sure, and as for losing out on all the weekend trips everyone else seems to be taking here, i will have plenty of time to travel in june and july so no loss in the end i think!

someone said to me before i came over that "the first things all asian students catch when on exchange is a cold" ... and just as i was feeling happy that i managed to stay healthy for about 2 weeks....wham! here i am with a pretty bad cold. but i'm sure i will survive! got all the medication with me and i've decided to use my ricecooker as a boiler for my room too, to help heat it up a little more and add more moisture in the air too.

and today i realised that even though i utterly fail at making rice in my ricecooker, i am still a fairly decent porridge-maker with the ricecooker.. but then again if i manage to burn porridge then i really really win liaos..

more about school, i'm taking 5 modules here..
1) industrial project II which translates into the main studio module, for me it's probably going to be an accessory design project with sony ericsson.
2) electronics: possibilities and limitations. this has been quite tough for me cos it is reminiscent of junior college physics and chemistry...which to put it mildly, didn't quite work out for me.. but i think it is useful knowledge that ties in with the sony ericsson project so shall try to persevere on with it! had to borrow a scientific calculator from my kind neighbour thomas to do the online quizzes...
3) 3D Modelling.. i think this will be a short Alias rendering course, pray that i can pick it up quite efficiently..
4) Design Management I .. it feels like us going to business to take marketing modules... not been thrillingly exciting so far but i think the project will be quite interesting too.
5) Svenska for utlandska studenter : swedish for foreign students.. it's tough stuff but fun too. first time i am learning a language that i don't already know from young.

oke i need to get back to work and then get some rest now.
hope all of you are well, especially those back home, those going abroad, those already abroad, and all reading this. oke so that's everyone..

take care lah! pray for me! talk to me soon.. : ]


lund fun facts: did you know that sony ericsson's headquarters are based here in Lund?