oranje.

oh wonderful holland.

2007-02-08T09:39:00.000-08:00

i was amused to receive this in my nus email inbox recently:

Dear Erasmus exchange alumnus,

Great memories, trips, exam stress, friends for life; we hope that you
can look back on a successful exchange semester (or year) at the School
of Law at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Perhaps you have even thought
about coming back to Rotterdam.
In this light we would like to bring to your attention the possibility
of following one of our English taught 1-year Master programmes:
* International and European Public Law (Legal Studies, LL.M.)
* Commercial Law (Company and Commercial Law, LL.M.)
For more information on these programmes, please check our online
brochure: http://www.llm-erasmus.org/content/downloads/files/llm.pdf.
Courses that you completed during your exchange and which are part of
the new programmes, will remain valid for 5 years, meaning that you can
save time to complete your LL.M. programme in Rotterdam. Tuition fee for
students from the EU/EEA is approximately EUR 1550/year, tuition fee for
students from outside the EU/EEA is EUR 9500/year
Please note that selection criteria are set for these programmes
(Bachelor Degree of Law, min. TOEFL 575 etc.)

Please do not hesitate to contact us. We look forward to welcoming you
back in Rotterdam!

Kind regards!

PS If you are interested in a post-academic LL.M. degree in Business,
Corporate and Maritime Law, please visit:
http://www.llm-erasmus.org/?do=programmes/BCML/index, tuition fee for
all students:
EUR 10950

great memories? yes. trips? 99% of the time self-arranged, thank you, because the only trip we had officially was to kinderdijk. exam stress? definitely, especially if you have only closed book exams. friends for life? elena and teresa are definitely two of them! this time, though, i'll make sure i stay in kralingen because it is so much nearer to school. boo you erasmus housing desk! :(

still, 9500 euros (its been a month since i've used the term euros to describe the notes that come out of my wallet) is rather pricey! and 10950 euros is even worse!

(and if you haven't noticed, i have a love-hate relationship with holland. love, because i love holland so much, and hate, because i hate the administration there. it takes you 1 month to open a bank account: 2 weeks to send you a letter that says that you'll be able to access your account in another 2 weeks.)

on a separate note, to all the lovely people still on exchange: have lots of fun, because we're all living vicariously through you, and most importantly, please, stay safe.

tot ziens, nederlands!

2006-12-29T03:37:00.000-08:00

i'll be going home to my sunny island of singapore, but as to actually going home, that's not really true, isn't it? while singapore is and always will be home, holland is also my home, since home is where the heart is and you can't live in a place without feeling some affection for it.

i really appreciate the chance to go on exchange. even though its only a semester you really learn so much, and i really wouldn't exchange it for anything in the world. i've seen the places i really want to see, met so many people from all walks of life, and i've learnt to appreciate everything. that's something that's not really tangible, but its there all the same. i really love holland because i think it has brought out the best in me. i feel the same sense of acceptance that i feel in singapore.

i'll miss the language that sounds like you're spitting (het is mooi!), the strong winds that threaten to blow you into a canal and give you pneumonia, and the snack-of-the-century, patat speciaal (de lekkerste frites!). i'll definitely miss the happy friendly tolerant dutch, and i'll miss all the friends i've made and the friends i already know but will not see for another semester, both within and outside erasmus.

i'll even miss the canals and i'll really miss being able to travel to other parts of europe in a snap. i'll miss being on the same time zone as all my other friends on exchange. oh, there are so many other things in holland i'll miss, but i'm sure i'll be back one day!

i guess i won't be needing this blog anymore, and that makes me pretty sad. its been a chronicle of everything that has happened these past four months.

i won't miss the administrative red tape in holland though.

still, i had a great time on exchange, an absolutely smashing time in which i didn't find answers to the questions i had, but had more questions instead, but that's alright i guess - i had a lot of fun.

tot ziens, nederlands. ik mis je!

amsterdam love.

2006-12-28T09:14:00.000-08:00

long overdue, but here we go:

canal/the shopping street/lift bridge/rembrandt's the night watch/canal/canal/canal/me along a canal/the palace/canal by night/canal/hello rembrandt again/all the leaves are brown and the sky is grey/pretty blue sky/in front of the palace/a shaky shot

me again/another canal/in front of the palace again/holding captain francis banning coq's hand/canal by night/lift bridge/canal/canal/canal and me/canal and me again/fountain with soap suds/AMSTERDAM!/alf and i (get it, get it?) /canal/baker & mckenzie/alf and i am.

i loved loved loved amsterdam. it is such a funky city - the red light district is just next to the normal areas, and the red light district is something you should go and see. honestly, i loved it better than berlin, and it was a last minute decision to go to amsterdam (i love making last minute decisions like these!) and alf was such funny and great company!

ironically enough, i think its the best thing i love about holland - little wonder its the capital.

dear tnt post.

2006-12-27T01:40:00.000-08:00

please give my friends their postcards which i have mailed to them BEFORE i left on my holiday.

thank you :)

HOME!

2006-12-26T12:49:00.000-08:00

sorry that was in caps, but as you can tell, i'm REALLY EXCITED TO BE FLYING HOME SOON!

this saturday i'll leave the netherlands, and fly home to SUNNY SINGAPORE! (i hear that its currently very rainy and cold, though, but play along with me. holland is getting colder; today the temperature in eindhoven where i was reached a max of 2 deg celsius. and that was in the day, mind you.)

i'm finally back from two weeks of solid solo backpacking/travelling, and i'll be squeezing in a last bit of travelling to amsterdam before i fly off.

anyway, see you on the 30th of dec at 4 pm, singapore and everything that it stands for! HOORAY!

xoxo
tar

in dublin's fair city.

2006-12-23T09:36:00.000-08:00

DUBLIN! i'll let the pictures do the talking!

thanks ashanti so much for opening your home up to me!

ve speak zerman.

2006-12-22T09:48:00.000-08:00

linz and stuttgart and tuebingen!

vielen dank, olga, philo und elena!

greetings from linz.

2006-12-21T00:46:00.000-08:00

hello friends!

i'm now blogging this from linz, austria, where my former housemate and always friend elena and her lovely family come from. linz is BEAUTIFUL with a capital everything. its a really old city (unlike rotterdam which was bombed out during the second world war) and the view of the city at night is beautiful! and it SNOWED! pictures soon, as always. i promise.

have to go now, next stop is salzburg, and then vienna, and then an irish christmas in dublin.

here's wishing everyone a lovely and warm christmas. stay happy, stay safe, and much love from me to you, wherever you may be.

deär stuttgärt, deär simmersfeld, deär ältensteig.

2006-12-16T01:24:00.000-08:00

just to üpdäte everyone including my mämä thät i äm now in stuttgärt visiting olgä, my exchänge buddy in njc. älso, becäuse guojun missed his train from trier, i now know how to spend 7 hours in ä träin station. so deärest gj, hope you're häving fun with tommi und bernd, secondly, you owe me big time, thirdly, we need to send thät postcärd to fräu schräudolph läh!

stuttgärt ist echt schön - very pretty in germän - änd whenever i wälk through the streets of simmersfeld/ältensteig, äll those memories of when i wäs 16 come bäck. some things äre so fämiliär thät they don't chänge - five yeärs läter they still hold the säme meäning äs they once did for you. the fields, the winding twisting roäd through the bläck forest, the hills, everything comes bäck to you with ä renewed fervour. änd its älwäys lovely seeing old friends, especiälly olgä whom i've missed deärly.

excüse the umlaüts: you see, her keyboärd is reälly interesting. for one, its germän. äctuälly thät should expläin everything but never mind. secondly, its 'ä' key häs decided to strike änd äläs i äm left typing with umläuts.

i häve ä post lurking äbout how säd i äm thät i wont see äll my exchänge friends änymore, people like judith änd teresä änd pävli änd luckä, but i wont spoil the mood.

the things you learn when you're abroad.

2006-12-13T15:30:00.000-08:00

for transport and maritime law, not only was the paper supposed to be three hours long, from 6.30 pm to 9.30 pm, our professor saw us scribbling away frantically and at 9.30 pm, said "okay, would everyone like 15 more minutes?" and actually gave us 20 minutes.

like far said, one can only dream that will happen in NUS.

and not only did i have my eu law exam in a weird lecture hall, the girl in front of me was using her own notes and passing a note to her friend in the same row.

if you think, "there's nothing wrong with the use of your own notes", well friends, think again. EU law was a CLOSED BOOK, treaties-and-nothing-else exam.

to make things even better, the guy sitting three spaces away from me turned to me, like turned his body 180 degrees, and said hey, what's affirmative action for question 3?

and there was only ONE invigilator invigilating a lecture hall slightly smaller than lt 15 in the old kent ridge campus, AND the lecture hall was separated by a half wall, kind of like the wall you get in the soccer stadiums with players' entrances.

the best part is, when i told someone this happened, she said that its the norm in europe. goodness gracious me.

well, one more exam left, i wonder what else i'll learn. yippee yay yo.

singaporean girl bashes dutch examiners.

2006-12-09T12:16:00.000-08:00

apparently, right before my exams, i was told that holland has one of the highest fail rates in the whole of europe for its students.

well done nederlands!

now i know why the dutch are so brutally blunt sometimes. their school system makes them feel like complete buffoons and tells them that 70% of them are complete losers who will fail their company law.

have a great day everyone!

and look what i found during my readings!

2006-12-02T05:13:00.000-08:00

thinking of you too, kueh xiuying, even when trying to cram everything within the space of 11 days!
and thinking of you, my dearest family and my dearest friends back home in singapore, although its less than a month before i see you again!

and thinking of you, dublin! WHEEEE HOLIDAYS COME QUICK!

i really should have started earlier. if i don't post anything, it means i'm drowning and trying not to get lawst.

exchange also need to study lor.

2006-12-01T11:05:00.000-08:00

i wholly agree with xiuying. whoever said that when you're on exchange, you don't need to study, deserves to be shot many times by paper bullets and then poked by paper clips or something. yes, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, grades matter because employers look at your grades on exchange to know what exactly you were doing for four months.

exams start in eleven days time, and i have no idea what is going on.
my very messy desk. oh, and what's on the walls are souvenirs from places i've been to. and an exam revision schedule.

my best friends. especially haak, and yes, you pronounce it the same way you clear your throat in the morning. smeele never gives breaks during the whole two hour lecture. he looks at his watch and goes "and now its time for..." and then you think its a break and there are some people who say break but then he continues by saying that its time for him to talk about salvage efforts. such is dutch humour, hardee har har.

uh huh.

at least i get one point.

thought you could forget your economics when you do international tax law? EEEEEH! wrong answer!

i refuse to post pictures of eu law. i hate that subject more than i hate the smell of weed. and i really, really, really hate the smell of weed. its everywhere in this country.

then again, only 28 more days till i go home. and holland, i know i'll miss you so!

my new room.

2006-11-21T14:05:00.000-08:00

for those who do not know what happened, i moved rooms (yeah, only 1.5 months left, and many people were like why did you move?) due to completely unforeseen circumstances. so to fill up space while i struggle to complete my readings, here's pictures of my new room!

schwarz-rot-gold, ich liebe berlin!

2006-11-15T01:47:00.000-08:00

woohoo! another place where i can FINALLY understand the language!

i didn't take many pictures in berlin because i forgot to bring my battery charger and my battery kept dying in the cold weather. like terri says, so clever hor? its okay, i'll just justify it with a "berlin's too pretty to be captured in pictures".

i'm sure you guys wanted to see pictures though. so here we are! sorry for the shoddy quality, i was just too stunned by berlin!
the reichstag! yes, all three of the buildings and more i was given a long tour by tobi who works as a student assistant for an MP. that place is HUGE. and grand. there's a huge underground complex. and muy bonito! its a mixture of the old and the new, for while the entrance is old, there are so many other buildings that are new, and within the reichstag there are artwork by the americans, british and the russians and of course, the germans (remember your history?), blending traditional and modern, pastiche with posh. and hey, the best thing is, i didn't have to wait for one and a half hours like all the other tourists to get in!
Der Himmel über Berlin: the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, from the inside, from the inside again (it is a moving memorial - words can't express what i felt), the view of the Reichstag as seen from the Willemsbruecke (i think that's the bridge's name), along the path of the Spree River, the view of Berlin from the Reichstag (yes, all that IS Berlin!), another view of the Reichstag and lastly, part of the Reichstag again. do you notice the old and the new next to each other? damn cool lah!

Brandenburger Tor! finally i see it, NOT wrapped up as it was when i was there four years ago. oh, it seems such a long time ago! ignore the fat person in the jacket.

isn't it just BEAUTIFUL! that's the französischer dom by night, in platz der akademie. one of the most beautiful places in berlin, i think. why is there no exchange to humboldt uni or something? bah. life is so unfair.
olympia-stadion! very shaky, unfortunately.

the germans are VERY passionate about football, and its part of the whole deutsche kultur that's so fascinating to me, so off i hopped to the olympia stadion to catch a football match between hertha bsc and vfl bochum. the fans are MAD. well other than the fact that it was really cold, i really had fun! but bochum was supposed to be a bottom league team, and hertha number 6, and yet they drew 3:3 against each other. the best thing, they interrupted it with scores from other matches that were played the same time, and when bayer leverkussen scored 2:1 against bayern muenchen, everyone in the stadium cheered. BAH HUMBUG! so then when bayern muenchen won 3:2, i cheered. and yes i support bayern muenchen! i was the only one cheering though. sad huh. i thought this was really funny! a really old german law book, from 1914. i don't know why i thought it was funny but it was funny to me. er, yeah.

the HUUUGE 2.70 euros pizza that i had (hey, it costs 8 euros for the same size in good old rotterdam), a singapore restaurant, more old buildings - i love berlin!

what else did i do? i went to cafe bilderbuch with some really cool people (who by the way laughed when i apologised for laughing about hamburgers being from hamburg. i really felt bad man!), checked out a sheesha place called cafe sahara (i didn't smoke any though. my lungs'll collapse. and i still need to go to dublin!), watched another bundesliga match in a typisch deutsche sportsbar.

and that's a wrap for berlin! like i said, not many pictures, but loads of memories. and its easier to think back on the memories rather than look at pictures and try to figure out what they meant. i do hope i'll be able to come back one day, someday!

i promise i'll update...

2006-11-14T10:58:00.000-08:00

when i get THIS HUMAN RIGHTS ASSIGNMENT OUT OF THE WAY URGHS BLEARGHS YUCKS

*stabs self with pencil*

this is what comes out of four days in berlin. it just serves you right, taryn.

herzlichen glückwunsch!

2006-11-11T17:03:00.000-08:00

when in berlin, do as the berliners do.

herzlichen glückwunsch (zum geburtstag) lynn!
thank you so much for everything. and since i'm not as eloquent as xiuying, i'll let her do the talking on her blog. but still, happiest and fondest birthday wishes, hugs and kisses, from me, to you, 9915 km away.

busy busy.

2006-11-07T08:57:00.000-08:00

apologies for the serious lack of updates. i've:

1. got a 4000 word essay to work on. thank goodness its pair work.
2. been packing to move from my present place.
3. been packing for berlin.
4. been checking out places to go and things to do in vienna/amsterdam/dublin/stuttgart. half the fun is in backpacking alone, i say.
5. been trying to lose weight, after two people said my face looks rounder than ever before. bah.

next update will probably be from berlin, if i can steal wireless. my light and road-ready laptop and i go everywhere together. the last time we were separated when i travelled, i had to replace the motherboard of my laptop.

actually, i need to work on the assignment in berlin.

as a parting shot, EUR's version of IVLE is called SIN-Online. I'm sure its unintentional, but its hard not to think of the connection between its liberal laws regarding drugs and prostitution and that very unique name.

dear friends who're on exchange in the EU, do note!

2006-11-05T11:45:00.000-08:00

i got this email through KLM, so here i am sharing it with you!

New EU-legislation for hand baggage at all airports in the European Union
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Effective November 6, 2006, new rules for the contents of hand baggage will apply for all airline passengers throughout the European Union (EU). Passengers may only carry small quantities (max. 100 ml per container) of liquids, gels and aerosols in their hand baggage. The packaging of these products must also meet specific requirements. This applies for all passengers departing from or catching connecting flights at airports within the European Union.The new rules apply for liquids such as water and other drinks, but also extend to gels, pastes, lotions, and the contents of aerosols. This includes toiletries such as toothpaste, shaving cream, hair gel, lip gloss, facial creams, mascara and liquid lip balms.

These are the rules for liquids in your hand luggage:
1 You can only bring on liquids and gels in containers of no more than 100 millilitres.
2 These containers must be carried in a transparent plastic bag.
3 There is a limit of one transparent plastic bag per person.
4 The volume of the transparent plastic bag may not be greater than 1 litre.
5 The transparent plastic bag must be re-sealable.

You may bring a suitable plastic bag from home. During the introductory period, free transparent plastic bags will also be given out at all concerned airports.

There are two exceptions to the above rules:
- baby food needed during the flight;
- medicines needed during the flight.

Purchases in duty free at the airport:
- If your trip includes a transfer in a European Union country (including French overseas territories), the retailer must place your purchases in a bag. This will be sealed and must remain so until the end of your trip. This bag must be accompanied by a proof of purchase that will be checked when you transfer at the screening inspection point.
- In Paris, if you are transferring between Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly airports, you are authorized to carry these duty free articles in the cabin of the following flight only if you retain your bag sealed, accompanied by the corresponding proof of purchase.
- If your purchase occurred in an airport located outside the European Union, and you are transferring to a European Union country, you will not be authorized to carry your purchases onto your next flight. They will be taken away from you.

Onboard purchases:
If your purchase occurred onboard an aircraft belonging to a European airline departing from an airport located outside a European Union country, it will be accepted when you transfer in a European Union country, as long as it is placed in a sealed bag accompanied by the proof of onboard purchase.

Separate presentation of contents
When passing through security control, you will be required to present all liquids separately. The transparent plastic bag should accommodate all containers and be easily sealable. You are also required to separately present your coat, jacket and larger electrical equipment, such as laptops, when passing through security control.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

prices, splices, but i love nus muchlys.

2006-11-03T06:34:00.000-08:00

i was talking to my sister about how expensive stuff in europe is generally. and if you don't believe me, here's a snapshot of my booklist.
that's just three of the four courses i'm taking. thank goodness i ordered the fourth book through amazon. still, i must remind you that all this is in EUROS.

exchange, thy name is expensive.

but having said that, i love you nus for the same reason that xy loves nus deepdeep. thank you nus for giving me money for exchange!

and a happy dst-adjusted, blistering-cold halloween to you too.

2006-11-01T14:05:00.000-08:00

my body clock is screwed up. it doesn't help that i'm coughing away like mad and i wish i were back home in sunny singapore so that i could at least get some sunlight and not look like i fell into the flour bin. yes, i'm finally sick.

anyway, my point is, my body clock will be even more screwed up once i finally digest that daylight saving time (also known as summer time) has ended.

and good old wikipedia says:
DST is not universally accepted and many localities do not observe it. Opponents claim that there is not enough benefit to justify the need to adjust clocks twice every year. The disruption in sleep patterns associated with setting clocks either forward or backward correlates with a small increase in the number of fatal auto accidents as well as lost productivity as sleep-disrupted workers adjust to the schedule change. It is also noted that much effort is spent reminding everyone twice a year of the change, and thousands are inconvenienced by showing up at the wrong time when they forget. (Almost happened to me today for International Tax Law. What the.) Since DST exchanges morning daylight for evening daylight, late sunrises occur when DST is in effect either too far before the vernal equinox or too far after the autumnal equinox and darkness in the morning can be undesirable for early risers like schoolchildren and workers who must awaken at 6:30 a.m. or earlier.

so now i'm 7 hours behind singapore. great. fantastic. hooray.

let's not start on the weather. fall is here, and while fall was beautiful in germany because of the leaves on the trees turning golden and red before slowly dropping off, the trees here in holland seem to have mostly misread the memo on fall coming and they just shed their leaves and turn a dinky, rotten brown. and fall on my head. and get stuck in my hair.

and of course, with fall comes really horrible kind of weather. the temperatures here range from 2° C to 10° C. whee. well done you, holland!

just you compare and contrast.

so friends, appreciate the warm toasty weather in singapore. try not to complain when you feel the sun shining on you. i know they say that you never miss the water till it runs dry, but how cold it is now is simply ridiculous. and i'm sure all my other far-flung pals in europe and canada will agree with me. and wishing for a bowl of super hot tom yam soup to cheer us all up.

and i'm sure i'm turning a lot of people off from applying to rotterdam for exchange, complaining about the weather. heh.

soooooo... no don't mind grumpy old me. just go ahead and apply for rotterdam. you'll find its an eye-opener indeed. :) i've really learnt so much here, that i think i wouldn't exchange my exchange for the world.

the munich mannequins.

2006-10-31T12:37:00.000-08:00

munich. so much history, so lovely, so typically south germany, its a pity i fell sick. hmm, terri told me she fell sick in bavaria as well, so we hereby conclude that germany has a lot of germs. yup, that's corny alright.

but while i was still able to get up and about, here we go: pictures!

and there we go: munich!

in other news, anyway, thank God i passed the PIL exam! phew! and i finally have my residence permit! (details white-d out, of course)

(this is) london calling.

2006-10-30T10:36:00.000-08:00

i didn't manage to kidnap these guys. and for the blissfully unaware, that's richard quest, colin firth (for lynn) and hugh grant, and hugh laurie. sigh. they must have heard of The Grand Plan To Tapao Them Back To Singapore For My Friends. no, actually, london's a really big place, the chance of you running into the same people twice is really low (unlike rotterdam) but i did have a lot of fun with lou and penny!

the eurolines bus i took left rotts at 9.30 am, and at about 4 pm we reached france. as you can see by the french flag. then it was on to the french border/customs at calais. the only time they'll smile at you is if you say bonjour to them. you have to get off the bus, walk right to the french customs, then do a u-turn and walk left to the uk customs. and its funny how the uk customs have huge signs saying our home office officers deserve to work in a safe environment etc and how any threats to them will be dealt with severely. in the first place, who'd want to threaten customs officers? sheesh. i was so happy to hear someone speaking english to me, though, that i almost gave the border officer a huge hug. do you know what english language deprivation does to you? it makes your command of the english language degenerate and you're left with grammatical and spelling errors when you write your assignments. but anyway. someone on my bus got pulled off at the uk customs, i have no idea why. i do remember him getting on the bus at breda, so imagine, he came all the way, and could have almost made it! the second picture is of the type of car ferry that i took to cross the english channel (which was super choppy on my way back to rotterdam) and the last picture is of the famed white cliffs of dover.

at blackfriar's bridge, lou and i on the tube, lou and i on millenium bridge, an iconic lamp (you know, the typical british thingy you see), lou and i again along the river thames (pronounced tems), penny and lou at portobello market searching for a pumpkin for halloween, penny and i in a shop at portobello searching for halloween costumes, lou and i doing the same thing, penny and lou looking übercool in their halloween costumes (lou's supposed to be a cabaret girl, penny's supposed to be will turner from pirates of the caribbean)

portobello market, lou and i pointing to the portobello market sign (we had to wait ten minutes, everyone else wanted to take a picture with the sign), one of the famed blue plaques to commemorate george orwell (or more specifically, to tell everyone he lived in a house along portobello road), two pictures of us trying on hats in portobello market, me along the river thames, FOOD! the first picture is of lou's meal in the tate, and the next is of my meal, which was some chicken liver pate, and that's the famed fish and chips! they taste really different from the ones you get back home (duh). the price is killer though - they range from 5.95 pounds to 11 pounds for a plate of fish and chips. this one cost 6.95 pounds and came with cake too. yum. and KRISPY KREMES! where do i start? sigh.

london from different viewpoints. the 2nd picture in the top row is of st. paul's cathedral from millenium bridge. the 2nd and 3rd picture in the third row is of county hall (a super posh place in london) and the british library respectively.

trafalgar square: the national gallery, nelson's column, the national gallery again and don't ask me what that person is doing in the background, lou and i again, the flag of england, in front of the national gallery, trafalgar square again for the next two pictures, the cenotaph.

big ben and westminster abbey.

london eye as seen from westminster bridge, lou with this mummy dressed up for halloween, lou and i with the london eye in the background, the river thames at night, the sky from penny's window, the spoils of london's supermarkets (JAFFA CAKES! ANZACS!), met up with father bert (haha!), nutella contains nuts - a real sign, london eye again.

and all that in just three days! its true what samuel johnson once remarked - when a man is tired of london, he is tired of life.

you have no idea how much i love london so. thanks so much lou and penny! :)

greetings from munich!

2006-10-27T08:41:00.000-07:00

survived another 14 hour ride.

munich is beautiful. BEAUTIFUL. we're staying in mammendorf which is 3 zones outside the munich city centre. its very calm and peaceful and lovely.

photos soon, but not before i share this extract with you from the beach - a wonderful traveller's book.

I don't keep a travel diary. I did keep a travel diary once, and it was a big mistake. All I remember of that trip is what I bothered to write down. Everything else slipped away, as though my mind felt jilted by my reliance on pen and paper. For exactly the same reason, I don't travel with a camera. My holiday becomes the snapshots and anything I forgot to record is lost. Apart from that, photographs never seem to be very evocative. When I look through the albums of old travelling companions I'm always surprised by how little I'm reminded of the trip.

If only there were a camera that captured smell. Smells are far more vivid than images. I've often been walking in London on a hot day, caught the smell of hot refuse or melting tarmac and suddenly been transported to a Delhi side-street.

and THAT, my friends,is travelling.

update, update.

2006-10-23T08:22:00.000-07:00

yes i'm still here, thank you very much.

back from london, 6 am rotterdam time to be precise. (i feel cheated. eurolines said we would be back at 6.45 am. never mind, the driver was nice and kind though. made the choppy sea journey from dover to calais bearable. i wasn't seasick, so maybe i should go into shipping law. hmmm. thank you so much lou and penny for being lovely, gracious hosts and showing me around wonderful london.

i am a(n) ~~secret~~ anglophile, i tell you. all the stuff i've read about london really really is true! johnson had it right when he said that when a man is tired of london, he is tired of life. pictures soon. once i stop sighing over how beautiful london is.

will be off to munich on wednesday with xian and xian ma, so if you don't see me online, you know where i am. after that its off to berlin, and then its my attempt to squeeze paris and brussels and dublin and brussels somewhere along the way. and move house, too. once i find a house in a neighbourhood that's safe enough. and then its a human rights research essay to hand in. and between that there's a position paper to write. busy, busy! so everyone, i'm really sorry i can't reply your emails and all, but will do so soon!

selamat hari raya aidilfitri!

for those who know the inside joke.

2006-10-16T08:10:00.000-07:00

now we know why he hasn't been coming to school.

he's been running a restaurant in brussels! tsk!

thanks xian for the picture!

aarghs part two.

2006-10-10T14:00:00.000-07:00

this is just a very short post to let you all know that if you don't see me online i'm trying to cram one month's worth of work in 3 days and that its a closed book exam and the last time i did a proper closed book exam was in jc 2 and as proof of how cannot-make-it i am i told xian i was craving for sweet and sour fish at wok to go this chinese fast food place complete with chinese takeaway paper boxes you see in movies and then i ordered chicken in peanut sauce and i didn't realise till i paid and was waiting for my food and haha very funny xian stop laughing you its not funny and i shall go back to reading pil and i think that when i get back to singapore i shall never complain about studying for exams again because they are mostly open book.

cameras and photographs.

2006-10-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

three things today:
1. today as i was on my way home there was this old woman with a camera around her neck and using a walking stick. she looked about 50 or 60 and as you all already know, a camera around the neck just screams tourist! anyway, we were all on the tram and i was opposite this group of surinamese women. the tourist just took her camera and snapped a picture of them, and my goodness, one of them was like hey, vrouw, was macht u denn? (in dutch it means what on earth are you doing?). the tourist replied in dutch that she was from new zealand and this surinamese woman replied something to the effect of i don't care where the bleep you are from, you don't take my picture without permission and started taunting her and shouting at her. like, heckling, verbal abuse, you know, that kind of thing.

i immediately got off the tram. also because it was my stop and i had to get off. scary.

2. looking through my pictures on my laptop, i realise - its been a whole year since i did the lsirc buddy programme, and its been a whole year since canan, matt and tobi first came to singapore. wow! time passes really fast eh? now i'm in their place - feels pretty weird actually.

3. also looking through my pictures, i look fatter now. oh dear, i need to exercise. its all those potatoes and slagroom and heavenly hazels (douwe egbert's SUPER NICE coffee) and stroopwafels and balisto chocolates's fault!

anyway, random pictures.
kids in a rotterdam playground!

my study table/room. thanks xiu, shao and shan for the book - i LOVE magician! thank you SO much!

i bought frozen tang yuan from the china boat supermart and then i had instant ginger tea (also another singaporean product off the china boat) and i had ah balling!

one of the two packages my mum sent me. thanks so much mum. and xian who came with me to collect the packages and had to be subject to me singing and who got lost (literally) with me because the dutch people that we asked for directions do not know their directions although its a tiny country if you compare it to the other european countries. tsk, for shame. the other picture's how full my cupboard is.
eating swirl at centraal station. swirl is this REALLY yummy ice cream by wall's (goes by the name of ola here - and did you know its a unilever brand, and unilever's anglo dutch? and the lever from unilever comes from the lever brothers of the bell v lever brothers case that we did in year 1?). you can mix whatever you want in it and its kind of like mcflurry, but with more options. yum!

arghs! i miss mooncakes!

2006-10-07T14:28:00.000-07:00

Having post-Midautumn withdrawal symptoms? Missed out on mooncakes
because your test fell on the day of Midautumn Festival?

No worries! There's still the STAFF/STUDENT MID-AUTUMN CELEBRATIONS!!

Brought to you by your friendly neighbourhood canteen operators and
the Dean himself, there will be yummy Halal mooncakes to savour
including Four Seasons' heavenly durian snowskins! Besides Chinese tea
and pomelos, you also get to play with lanterns and sparklers too!

Plus, enjoy all these with the staff -?among those expected to turn
up include the Dean himself, Ms Goh Mia Yang, Michael Hor, Burton Ong,
Eleanor Wong and Tang Hang Wu. Other teachers are expected to drop by
too, so grab your gang and just head on over to the Quadrangle at 7pm
on Monday!

See you there!

i think the saddest, saddest thing is that when i got this email, my first thoughts were:
1. at least everyone back home doesn't have to pay 26 euros for a box of four plain lotus paste mooncakes.
2. halal mooncakes. enough said.
3. durian snowskin mooncake. durian. snowskin. mooncake. say that slower and you'll have me trying to stab myself with a pencil, because it causes the same amount of pain.

tres abominable (pretty sure i screwed up the accent somewhere). people look forward to hobnobbing with the dean and other members of the faculty, and i miss the mooncakes.

in other news, the immigration and justice ministries here sent me two letters in dutch. other than the fact that it took two precious hours of using my landlady's dutch-german dictionary to figure out what they're talking about (i have to report to some housing office because there's a minor hiccup with my rental agreement - i am a squatter in my landlady's house by the looks of it), my residence permit has been approved and i am now a legal resident of the netherlands. phew!

and now, back to PIL. that's public international law, for those who are lucky enough NOT to know what it stands for and what it's about.

(far and xian: that annoying song is still stuck in my head! )

one month (and a bit more)

2006-10-05T12:21:00.000-07:00

i really can't believe i've been away from home for a little more than a month!

so many things have been learnt, so many things are to be learnt, so many things i have to unlearn.

i think what one of my fellow exchange mates said its true - when its time to leave, you'd feel like that it was nice while it lasted, but enjoy it while you can. and you know, when you're so far away from home, you start missing things you never, ever missed when you were back home, things like:

1. popular bookstore - i miss buying ALL my stationery at such cheap prices and IN ONE PLACE.
2. NTUC - everything is so cheap (as compared to here, even counting in the difference in euros and singapore dollars) and i get free plastic bags.
3. the ubiquitous photocopying auntie/uncle - just hand her/him the book, and collect it 2 days later. instead of here, where i've figured out how to use the copy machine, and yes the instructions are in dutch, to the point that even this dutch student who saw how pro we were asked yixian and i for help. HAH.
4. public transport - at least i know the mrt and the bus workers won't strike.
5. predictable weather - if its sunny, its sunny, if it rains, it rains. the weather forecast doesn't say sunny and then the whole day you're stuck with wet squelchy shoes.
6. hearing majulah singapura when channels go off-air/switch to morning programming - don't ask.

where did the first month go? sometimes, as i'm buying my groceries in albert heijn (the supermarket here) or i'm walking home, i think to myself: why am i here, and will i ever be back here again? will i ever see stuff like vla and slagroom and stroopwafels and swirl and patat speciaal and kibbeling again? will i ever see people cycling like madmen? will i hear the clangclangclang of the tram ever again? will i drink douwe egbert's heavenly hazel coffee ever?

i know, these are funny questions to be asking myself at 2 pm on a rainy wednesday, but then i realised that there's a reason why, out of all the places in the world, i'm here.

and as much as i may complain about the netherlands (my top three favourite complaints: i-hate-the-transport-system-here, i'm-going-to-get-blown-into-a-canal kind of weather and this-place-is-so-inefficient), i must say that i really like it here so far, though on tuesday i got struck by how much i miss my family and friends so. but yes, holland is a beautiful country, so if anyone's considering on going to exchange to holland, don't be turned off by my grousings - please just go! you're really going to enjoy yourself here.

but for now, for me - three more months in holland!

and if you don't believe me when i say NUS is way better than my exchange university: here we are.

still, i shouldn't complain. I'M HERE IN THE NETHERLANDS! EUROPE! YAY!

and i have an exam to study for, if you'll excuse me.

ps. xiuling, thanks so much for your email! will reply as soon as i get this exam out of the way. :)

to erasmus and back.

2006-09-27T14:27:00.000-07:00

note: this post has been edited! :) scroll down for pictures/updated information!

whoa, when i get back to singapore, i'm going to have muscular thighs and calves the size of tree trunks.

for everyone who wondered how we got through the transport strike, we cycle and we cycle 6.5 km to school and 6.5 km back and its not funny because you have to be gung ho and chiong when you approach the traffic junctions with no signals because the cars are supposed to give way to you but then some cars (or rather, their drivers) are inevitably speedsters and you're like AAAAAARGHH and when it rains you feel like you're going to contract pneumonia and then you regret complaining about the transport system back home and you wish people wouldn't whine about the transport fee hike back home too much because they have transport at least and you feel your thighs are going to give way on you and its really not funny when you see 75 year old ah-mas whizzing past you like nobody's business and you're holding up bike traffic because you're ultra slow.

ahem, anyway.

yixian stayed over on monday and tuesday because its easier to cycle from my house to school than from her house, and we had lots of fun!

we managed to find prata (they call it roti here) in a turkish bakery and then we ate prata and durian ice cream that we bought from the china boat! yum!

dinner! after that, we stayed up to read (yes, hardworking, we are) and then we watched high school musical! ITS SUCH A NICE SHOW!

erm, okay, moving swiftly along, here's a collage with us and the bikes. not much to say except that my thighs are aching, and it costs Euro 6.50 to rent a bike a day, so altogether i paid 13 Euros. sigh.

on monday, on the way back home, we made a detour to kfc!

nothing like fried chicken to get you going!

been really busy with readings and stuff - i think i'm working so much harder here than i am back home! it may be due to the fact that everyone here's very much older and wiser than us, or it could be that one of my classmates thinks i'm 10, and someone thought i was 16. haha, not funny. and something disastrous happened to my laptop today! it was charging on a table when some really blind, idiotic, gundu donkey of a library staff member walked by and tripped over the VERY VISIBLE wire and sent my laptop crashing down to the floor. and its a considerable drop from the table to the floor, but so far, other than a broken battery catch and a broken air vent plastic covering, the hard disk's been alright. SO FAR. and the worst thing is, he wasn't even apologetic! he got super defensive even though we didn't raise our voice or accuse him of anything - that's such a clear admission of guilt, and i just hope that he gets his karma. idiot. let's hope my laptop can survive!

a few more pics of life in class, because i'm bored:

playing games in class, during the break for tax law. ah, feels like home, doesn't it?

my classmate jenny from manchester! she's really really nice and reminds me of one of my really good friends back home in singapore who's now on exchange in canada. try to guess who! next to her is this guy from sweden whom SOME people (read: not me) think is not bad. YOU be the judge.

EDIT: NOTE TO JALIY: jaliy i don't have a pic of the buffon lookalike because he's not in any of my classes. but i'll try to paparazzi him if he's around school. sigh, i'm being reduced to some cheapo photographer.

my classmates from transport and maritime law. the guy in blue looks like zac efron from high school musical! again, i have to surreptiously take his picture so that my sister can show her friends. wah.

another edit: well we also went to a chinese restaurant, because yixian, rachel and i were missing the food from home, so here are the pics!

alright, enough nonsense - back to reading!

bulletin bulletin bulletin!

2006-09-20T06:51:00.000-07:00

Maandag nieuwe OV-staking in Rotterdam
Het cao-overleg woensdagochtend tussen de vakbonden, directie, wethouder Jeannette Baljeu van Vervoer en de ondernemingsraad (OR) van de RET is woensdag op niets uitgelopen. "De directie wil ons niets bieden", aldus de voorzitter van de OR na afloop van het gesprek op het stadhuis. Dat betekent dat het personeel van de vervoerder maandag voor 24 uur het werk neerlegt.

Never mind the dutch language and its unpronouncability, this just means: THERE IS TO BE ANOTHER STRIKE ON MONDAY FOR TWENTY FOUR HOURS FOR THE METRO, TRAM AND BUS WORKERS.

(by the way, those are the ONLY THREE FORMS OF (cheap) PUBLIC TRANSPORT.)

Wah lau eh! how am i supposed to get to school!

*curses in the background*

I'll update more soon.

(I've edited this post because I realise that it previously contained a number of grammatical errors. This, friends, is what comes out of living in a non-english-as-its-native-language-speaking country.)

strike!

2006-09-18T03:14:00.000-07:00

i love holland.

really, i do.

i love it so much, i wish the transportation workers wouldn't strike and leave everyone in the lurch on monday morning. and make me walk 30 mins, and about 5.6 km, in the morning, just to get to the central station.

my legs are now on strike.

EDIT: tagboard up, but last 5 recent posts are gone. no idea why.

the weekend is here!

2006-09-17T10:01:00.000-07:00

here's my weekend in pictures!

theoretically this wasn't my weekend, but i'm too lazy and i'm feeling sick so yeah. anyway, this is at the erasmusbrug (otherwise known as the swan) at about 8.30 pm.

every tuesday and saturday's market day! flowers are really cheap here!
after that, i tried raw herring - it tastes like sashimi, and its a dutch delicacy, but when i got home i felt violently ill.

i popped about 3 panadols and went to sleep (panadol overdose) and woke up the next morning to go to delft with farida, yixian, pavlina, zuzanah, lutska and zana!

the oudekerk (old church) of delft, where jan vermeer and anton van leeuwenhoek are buried, slants!

if the photos look shaky, please note i took like two more panadols before i left home. told you i was overdosing myself.

we are ~~smart~~ cheapo travellers, though. we went through the royal delft porcelain factory and didn't pay the entrance fee to the museum (4 euros) and we went to the botanical gardens but didn't pay the entrance fee of 10 euros either.

on the way to the royal delft porcelain factory!

in the factory itself!

in the technologische universitieit delft's botanische tuin (botanic gardens).

righto! i should get more rest, because it looks like another busy week ahead - so tata!

ps. i know the tagboard is down, so in the meantime, leave your comments through the comment system, dank u vel!

feels like home - the wrong way.

2006-09-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

whoever said that exchange is a time for you to slack because your credits are not counted anyway?

i have two chapters of tax law to read, one chapter of human rights to read, one chapter of european union law to read, and three chapters of international law to read. and let's not get started on transport and maritime law which hasn't even started yet because the exchage students' timetables say that it starts on the 13th but the masters students' timetables say that it starts on the 20th and it turned out that the masters students were right and that we were all idiots for staying back in school till 5 pm when class ended early at 9.45 am.

to photocopy something here costs 3.7 euro cents (6 singapore cents) for ONE copy. if you think that's alright, remember that this is the cheapest rate available. the copy card with 500 credits costs 18.50 euros (37 singapore dollars) and it is no joke photocopying entire books on your own because there is no auntie florence from the photocopying room in the law library to help you out or there is no photocopying uncle to send the book to and pick it up in two days time. there is no library solely devoted to law here (friends back home in NUS, we are spoiled indeed) and the central library only has three levels and the shelves with law books come up to the grand total of ten shelves. and have i mentioned that its only us singaporeans who take notes with our laptop? i can't even type without having to stare back at someone who looks around to find out where the noise is coming from. and everything is in dutch so you have to play guessing games about what the product contains. knowing german helps a little but some things are completely different.

still, i'm having a blast here with fantastic fellow exchange mates and made some cool friends and met some really nice people, but on a final note: if i sound really unfriendly and kiam pa and whiny, well i'm sorry, but you try being nice to people who try your patience severely.

muchos gracias!

2006-09-13T12:47:00.000-07:00

on the serious side, the little things show me that in the midst of all this fun and hard work too, its nice to know that you don't need to be popular, just to know that people care for you, even when you're far, far away.

To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away...always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.

stop press!

2006-09-12T07:26:00.000-07:00

hello friends!

again, sorry for the lack of updates!

two things have happened since i last posted:
1. i've had two classes, crash course in international law, and international tax law, so far. crash course in international law is taught by this argentinian lawyer, and international tax law has a lot of international students, including this thai guy who was really happy to talk to another fellow asian.

2. i've spent so much money on books. 21 euros for international tax law, and 42 euros for the crash course in international law. if you think the sum is alright, please bear in mind that 1 euro is 2 singapore dollars! sigh. xian and i have also photocopied an entire book by ourselves! (ie. no auntie florence in the photocopying shop) cheer for us!

that's it for today! must go mug international tax law - its so dry!

courses and more courses.

2006-09-10T10:37:00.000-07:00

my FINAL course list: (haha, finally)

Human Rights In International Law
- this course sounds really interesting and human rights is a pretty wide field with many areas like governmental policy and interference in human rights, to explore, and it doesn't seem too dry, and so i'm taking it.

Introduction to the Law of the European Union
- i figured since i'm in holland, which is a founder member of the european union, it would be more interesting to study it here since i'm in europe anyway. apparently the professor is highly regarded in the field of studies on the european union, so i'd probably get a good perspective as well from my classmates as well as the professor.

International Tax Law
- canan, my dutch friend who was from EUR and came to singapore last year, told me its an interesting subject, and since i'm pretty interested in corporate work, this would be a good backing for any corporate work i'd do in the future. the other choice was transnational organised crime, but while it sounds interesting, its actually really jurisprudential and i hate jurisprudence, so here i am with tax law.

Transport and Maritime Law
- they don't have a COMBINED (haha, thanks francis!) course like this back home! its also super interesting learning about the shipping of goods in a city like rotterdam, which has the biggest port in europe (but not in the world - that's singapore and shanghai! hah! the international office coordinator mentioned that fact and suddenly, i felt like singing majulah singapura at the top of my voice while standing on top of a table.)

Introduction to International Law
- because i have to take it since i don't have any prior knowledge of international law. sigh.

first day of (proper) school tomorrow! hope it goes well! i'm quite worried, because like i always say, it doesn't mean that just because i'm on exchange and my modules won't be counted, i can slack off. some of my classmates are doing their masters, so i'm not expecting it to be very easy. though one of my friends said that while he was on exchange, he experienced the same thing, and some of them are just posers, i just hope i can cope with the pace of the class. i'll just put my faith in God and hope that everything will turn out fine!

the hague part two!

2006-09-09T09:25:00.000-07:00

today, yixian, rachel and i went on a tour of the netherlands - all in one place! we went to madurodam - again, here's some information off wikipedia:

Madurodam is a miniature city located in Scheveningen, The Hague in the Netherlands. It is a model of a Dutch town on a 1:25 scale, composed of typical Dutch buildings and landmarks, as are found at various locations in the country. This major Dutch tourist attraction was built in 1952 and has been visited by tens of millions of visitors since then. The miniature city was named after George Maduro, a law student from Curaçao who fought the Nazi occupation forces as a member of the Dutch resistance and died at Dachau concentration camp in 1945 and whose parents donated the money to start the Madurodam project.

when we arrived, imagine how happy we were to see this:

at least someone knows where singapore is. oh singapore, we're 10 000 km away from you!

and rotterdam is 39 km away from the hague! okay, well you can't really see it , but yeah.

i know i'm small, but in madurodam, i feel like a giant. whoops, i mean, i just have giant feet.

bicycling in holland is common, but a very dangerous hobby. look, even the cyclists in madurodam fall over.

i'll let the pictures do the talking!

more pictures!

hans brinker! if anyone doesn't know the story, well its here.

where the madurodam is located.

and then we went off to the binnenhof again, just to get to the escher museum, when we saw a large crowd in the binnenhof - lo and behold, it was open monuments day, so we managed to get into the binnenhof and the ridderzaal!

xian and i in the queue to get into the binnenhof, the erster kamer (first chamber) where the upper house of the parliament sits, inside the ridderzaal (that's where the queen sits and gives her speech), us in the erster kamer, us again, a close up of her chair, the tapestries on the wall of the ridderzaal, the ceiling of the erster kamer, the walls of the erster kamer.

the escher museum:

that's it for our trip to den haag!

kinderdijk and name changes.

2006-09-07T10:20:00.000-07:00

hello everyone!

thanks for all the emails and well wishes! i'm having a great time in holland so far - but maybe that's because school hasn't started. sigh. but i want school to start now! i need some focus in my life. anyway i've changed my courses. i'm now taking international tax law instead of transnational organised crime.

so anyway, this week's orientation week, as i've mentioned before! today the erasmus university rotterdam school of law organised an excursion to kinderdijk, so off we went! kinderdijk is a village 15 kilometers east of rotterdam, and its situated in a polder. there are 19 windmills built around 1740 and amazingly, they've survived the bombing of world war two. kinderdijk's on the UNESCO world heritage sites list, so hooray, i've visited a world heritage site! whoopdeedoo. here's the origin of the name:

The name Kinderdijk is Dutch for "Child's Dike". In 1421 during the Saint Elizabeth flood of 1421, the Grote Hollandse Waard flooded, but the Alblasserwaard polder stayed unflooded. It is said that when the terrible storm had subsided, someone went on to the dike between these two areas, to see what could be saved. He saw in the distance a wooden cradle floating. There was no hope that anything would be living in it, but when it approached, movement was seen. When the cradle came nearer, someone saw that a cat was in the cradle trying to keep it in balance by jumping back and forth so that no water could come into it. When the cradle eventually came near the dike, someone fished the cradle out and saw that in it a baby slept quiet and dry.

altogether now, awwww!

some of my classmates on their way to the pannenkoekenboot (and by the way, some of them have started hooking up. whoa mama! its only been a week! fast workers man, some of them.), and that's the pannenkoekenboot (pancake boat) that brought us to kinderdijk.

why is it called the pancake boat, you ask? that's because there's a pancake buffet onboard the pannenkoekenboot! all-you-can-eat pancakes for free! theoretically its not free, because the school of law paid for us, but let's not dwell on technicalities. hurhur.

that's yixian's pancake on the right, with ham slices, apricots, jam and eggs, and that's my pancake on the right, with chocolate shavings, candied ginger, chocolate rice, raisins and apricot slices. this is what was responsible for the sugar high that led us to do some crazy poses. more on that a bit later.

after that, we went up to the deck to get some fresh air after stuffing ourselves and we met some more of our classmates!

jess, me, annette from austria and julia from germany are hidden (whoops), juan from spain, nora from france, farida, zizana from slovakia, pavlina from the czech republic, yixian!

after one and a half hour's journey, we finally reached kinderdijk!

doesn't it look so picture-book like?

we only got to spend one hour in kinderdijk (silly, i know - the journey's longer than the time we spent there! bah humbug!), so us four singaporean girls decided to take pictures. i blame the sugar high for the next few embarrassing photos.

we decided to do something memorable - and memorable means jumping, smu style.

here we are, getting ready to jump. please note that EVERYONE was staring at us by this time. wahhh, how embarrassing.

and we jumped! but why do my legs look so short and stumpy! sigh.

haha, and guess WHAT! when we jumped, all of us shouted wheee! that in itself led to more people looking at us. all in all we jumped three times! lots of people were taking a photo of us jumping, triple sigh. i think we should charge them, because we may be crazy singaporean girls but we're not free zoo exhibits! i guess we made it worse by breaking into really raucous laughter. but we had a lot of fun!

moving swiftly along, the rest of the day passed without incident. here's a few more pictures of kinderdijk - the pictures do NOT do this beautiful place justice! its really romantic and its really like how vermeer or rembrandt or gerrit dou would have seen it hundreds of years ago.

okay dokie, that's enough picspamming for today. i really can't wait for school to start !

of art thieves and durians.

2006-09-06T10:19:00.000-07:00

sorry for the lack of updates! its been almost 2 weeks since i've left singapore. i haven't gone for any of the exchange student welcome parties they've been holding in clubs, simply because i don't go clubbing and i think i'd get violent if i have to explain one more time that singapore is not a part of china. next time, whenever someone asks, i shall say "oh, you're from [insert country here], isn't that part of [insert another country here]?" and see how they react. i apologise for the lack of pictures as well, because i would like to conserve battery life on my camera. i promise i'll have more pictures once mummy sends over the rechargable batteries. if you're wondering why i don't want to buy them over here, that's because they cost 40 Euros (that's SGD 80) and the normal AA batteries cost 6.70 Euros.

i've displayed the famous singaporean don't-cut-my-queue-or-you-die look to some people who can't read the signs and follow the queue (like that horrid person in the EUR PC-Lab queue), and i've even skipped some of the orientation activities they've held for us. i've skipped the library tour in EUR, since its kind of like the library tour in nus in our first year - in the end, everyone who needs help just asks carol or su-lin anyway, and i've also skipped the campus tour today just because i think its useless. i mean, i'm only going to the L building, the T building, the B building and the M building - and we know where all these are. besides, farida went for the tour on our behalf, hurhurhur.

contrary to popular belief, you cannot go into a coffeeshop and smoke weed or other soft drugs just like that. this policy is only open to dutch citizens, and its not that i've tried it (ewww) but someone told me and i was like whoa, really!

and now, friends, i can add setting off museum alarms to my list of majorly embarrassing things i've done!

since today's weather was excellent (the first time we're wearing just jeans and t-shirt in a LONG time!), yixian and i decided to go off visiting museums!

on the way to the museums i saw a rose! a real rose blooming off a real shrub! i was so excited i had to take a picture, haha.
actually we wanted to go to the chabot museum (the building in the background) but it was closed, so off we went to boijmans van beuningen.

it all started here, at museum boijmans van beuningen. this museum is an art museum with a slice of everything in it, stuff from the 1500s all the way to modern day contemporary art.

in the museum shop!

there is an exhibition by rene magritte, a belgian surrealist artist, in the museum. here are some of his pictures:if you look really carefully, the bedposts are actually music scores. i found the picture of the rose so pretty!

here's me trying but failing miserably to replicate the pose of the lady in his picture. the only thing we have in common is that we're both in green, haha.

anyway, we stopped at one painting which intrigued us because it looked like he just cut and pasted it when actually he did a gouache on paper, when yixian moved a bit and her shoulder nudged the picture frame. and the alarms went off! it went BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP and the lighting went a bit dimmer. there was this old lady who covered her ears and looked at us like we splashed paint on the paintings. i half expected some big burly men to whisk us off someplace to question us but man, there was no one! because we were majorly maluated, we even moved into the next room to run away before the security guard came and reset the alarm. however, the security guy gave us this REALLY dirty look and i swear he followed us from the room we were in to the next, until he was satisfied we weren't stealing the paintings or anything.

we wasted time in the room a little till we were satisfied no one was going to stop us and we weren't going to spend time being interrogated, and we saw this really cool sculpture!
aaarghs! a man coming out of the floor! and yes, that's someone's leg there, just to prove that he IS popping out of the floor.

we made our way out of the magritte exhibit, and if that weren't embarrassing enough, i saw some dali work which i thought were really cool.and yes, that IS a chest of drawers coming out of the statue of venus.

i wanted to take a picture of landscape with girl skipping rope when i stood next to the picture and the blasted alarm came on again and went BEEP BEEP BEEP and i literally JUMPED out of my skin before our security guard friend (yes, that same guy) said "not too close" and then the alarm stopped. and then i realised that if you cross over a certain black line, the alarm rings!
landscape with girl skipping rope. if i look a bit pale, that's because i am, after majorly embarrassing myself with alarms.

that's the black line that separates you from tourist normality and the art musea's blacklist.

the tower of babel!

thankfully the rest of the museum trip went by without any incident, but i'm sure that museum boijmans van beuningen will be on the look out for two chinese singaporean girls who have the propensity for setting off alarms.

after that, we took a tram to find some asian supermarket that's apparently the closest thing to ntuc supermarket. it is now officially my favourite place, after the eurolines bus company office.

they have yeo's chrysanthemum tea! wooohoooo, go singapore!

and now i come to the hallmark of a truly asian supermarket: yes friends, i am now proud to announce that there are durians to be found in rotterdam, south holland, the netherlands!

albeit in frozen form, of course. still, beggars can't be choosers.

and mummy! how come you have this brand of spice mix and didn't tell me! haha. though you're so much prettier than the lady in the picture!

they have beancurd and chinese cashewnut cookies and... they even have lao fu zi here!

see, that's why i love this place so much. WHEE!

alright, its a really long post and its been a really long day, and tomorrow we're off to see the windmills of kinderdijk - so till then, tot ziens!

more photos from the harbour!

2006-09-06T09:36:00.000-07:00

more pictures from the harbour! the cube house! that's the kitchen of the cube house. look how angular the walls are! the next picture is how the cube house's roof looks like from the attic. that's a wall in the cube house (all walls are angled like this) and that's an AMAZING collection of lord of the rings figurines. koony, take note! :)

here we are at the erasmusbrug! as you can see from my hair, the wind is really terrible. yixian's closing her eyes because the wind was blowing everything into our faces. this may explain the pimple breakout i'm having. in the next pic, we were in this boat with its second level underwater, so we started joking what would happen if the boat had sprung a leak, and then we saw that porthole with the water sloshing past the window! how cool is that man!
since the wind was so strong, this is my half-baked attempt to fly. obviously it failed, or else i wouldn't be here blogging this. that's rachel, yixian's housemate from beijing who studies in UNSW (and she has this amazing american-chinese-australian accent) and i with a view of the harbour over erasmusbrug.

food and the harbour!

2006-09-03T09:20:00.000-07:00

food, food, food! that's farida and yixian and i in some donner kebab cafe in the hague, me tucking into the HUMONGOUS pita kebab thingy, and that's farida and i in the erasmus university cafeteria with our soup, drink and sandwich, which cost us only about 5 euros!world port day in rotterdam! that's the erasmusbrug (doesn't it look suspiciously like the bridge at safti mi?) view of the harbour (see the flag of the netherlands?)

sailors singing a sea shanty, more ships, the ship parade at the rotterdam harbour (and yes, i took the picture because it boldly declared "port of rotterdam" on the ship.)

yixian and rachael (xian's housemate from beijing) attempting to eat candy floss in the wind, a REALLY CUTE DUTCH TODDLER (this statement is in caps because the toddler's really cute. really really really cute!), more flags proclaiming that its world port day.

more photos soon, of the school, and the port, and more updates on school itself, including some of my classmates who don't know what tort law is, once i settle my modules, and work out my timetable and book all those eurolines buses to places.

tot ziens!

running around rotterdam.

2006-08-31T10:19:00.000-07:00

i'm sorry i don't have any pictures this time, because my dear camera's batteries died on me again. honestly, i'm not sure if its just the cold weather, or is my camera conking out on me. but i promise i'll get photos off xian, far and jess, so thanks in advance, girls, for the photos!

the four of us went to the university again today, this time to submit our application forms for our residence permit. i am now without a passport for ten days! no travelling outside the netherlands for ten days! then again, with the residence permit, i will be able to travel to the schengen countries (generally, the countries in the european union) without needing a visa, as i'm a temporary resident of the netherlands! whee!

i was rather shocked that we had to take a tuberculosis test (which turned out to be just an x-ray, more on that later) because singapore's ranked very highly in healthcare services and all worldwide. apparently the dutch beg to differ, so from erasmus university in woudestein, we took the tram to schiedamsdijk and walked to the gemeentelijke gezondheidsdienst (ggd for short, in english it means the public health and environment services) to take the x-ray. if i had a picture of the very interesting way they direct you to the right room, i'd put it up, but i don't, so i may get it from yixian later.

anyway, i must tell you that here when they x ray you, they violate you. yup, you're made to bare your top half of your body whereas in singapore, you wear a loose gown. and its so cold here, you can imagine how uncomfortable you feel. they then press you to the x-ray machine and you can imagine how cold the screen is as well. sigh. i feel violated. we all did. we had horribly shocked looks on our faces when we came out of the x ray room.

after that, we went back to the university to hand in our forms and we've to go to the rotterdam city hall again to hand in our rental agreements. after that, we split up and jessica and i went to check out the central shopping area again. i bought a saucepan and then we went to check out wireless routers in this place called media markt. why, you ask? jessica's landlady's LAN is nowhere near her and her computer is super laggy, whereas my landlady has ADSL connection but its plugged in to her desktop computer which is ultra laggy, so both of us aim to use our law student skills and persuade them to get a wireless router, which only costs EUR 49.90 here. you see, with the router, both of us can do our work in our own room instead of tapping on our neighbour's wireless which is super unsteady, and what's more, for me to tap on wireless, i've to sit in the living room. where is my privacy, i tell you.

anyway, friends i've found out where the nearest kinko's is! this is good if i'm supposed to fedex stuff to you, ahem.

FedEx Kinko's Coolsingel (ned0862)
Coolsingel 207
3012 AG Rotterdam
Nederland
Phone: 010 7507800
Fax: 010 7507801
coolsingel@fedexkinkos.nl
Hours: Maandag t/m Vrijdag 07:00 - 20:00 | Zaterdag & Zondag 10:00 - 18:00
(monday to friday, 7 am to 8 pm (this is the first store i know of which opens so early and closes so late!), saturday and sunday, 10 am to 6 pm)

tada!

well, wish me luck! i'm off to make my dinner now, so tot ziens!

it never rains but it pours.

2006-08-30T06:40:00.000-07:00

i was supposed to go to yixian's house to explore and to check out the area but like i've said, it just keeps raining and raining! its like someone overturned a canal on mathenesserbrug. besides, i've been going out every single day since i've landed so i guess its time to save some money, haha.

that's the tv dinner i had for lunch! =) its salmon lasagne from the supermarket chain albert heijn, kind of like cold storage back home. the food is quite yummy! the pictures are all postcards i got from mauritshuis (EUR80 cents for one piece - ouch) and the last picture is rainy old rotterdam. sigh.

not many pictures today because i'm bumming at home after buying my groceries and stealing my neighbour's internet as much as i can, to blog, upload pics, watch youtube - so tata!

more pictures from the hague.

2006-08-30T00:53:00.000-07:00

amsterdam to party, the hague to live, rotterdam to work.

2006-08-29T09:58:00.000-07:00

a typical meal in holland consists of bread, cheese and a slice of meat. the dutch also drink a lot of milk. now someone please tell me why they're all so tall and not very fat and they all look so healthy? my theory is that just as the wind blows the sand into weird wind formations, so does the wind blow the dutch upwards. alright, that didn't make sense, but there you go, this happens after you walk around the hague in the rain and think you're going to die of pneumonia.

den haag centraal! the hague has a VERY different feel from rotterdam. rotterdam's edgy, gritty and in your face, whereas the hague's very refined and genteel. you have swans and deer (yes, deer) roaming in the parks and the buildings are really very european in nature. the architecture is beautiful!
like this building! it was opposite den haag centraal, but we have no idea what that building is.
binnenhof! it means inner court in dutch and its the location of the dutch parliament. yes, their parliament house looks so pretty! and unlike singapore's parliament house, this parliament house is open to walk-in visitors but naturally there's lots of politie (policemen) around. and there are these huge beefy men in suits and sunglasses with an earpiece watching your every move. still, the atmosphere more than makes up for it.

outside the mauritshuis - the home of vermeer's girl with the pearl earring, jan steen's the way you hear it is the way you sing it, view of delft, rembrandt's the anatomy lesson of dr nicolaes tulp and many other famous pieces from the dutch golden age.

girl with a pearl earring - she's REALLY small.

at the ridderzaal (knight's hall), where the queen of the netherlands holds her annual speech!

the international court of justice/peace palace - unfortunately it closes at 3 pm, and we reached the peace palace at about 3.30 pm (yes i know, murphy's law) so we could only take pictures from the outside.

again, if i look fat, its because i'm wearing four layers this time. yes folks, it is COLD in holland. if i'm not careful i might just turn into a huge block of ice.

tot ziens!

finally, erasmus!

2006-08-28T13:39:00.000-07:00

dag van zuid holland!

when it rains in holland, its not like the rain in singapore. it rains and rains like no one's business. its as if someone decided to play a joke on holland and suck all the water out of the canals and pour it on this flat little country. or, if you believe what the dutch say, God is spitting on holland when it rains because the dutch proclaim that God created the world but the dutch created holland, when what they actually forgot was that God created the dutch. and the wind! i now know why the dutch are so tall and stout. because if they aren't, they may get blown right into a canal when the wind blows.

if i'm rambling, please skip past the words yada yada yada till you see the pictures.

anyway, today yixian, farida and i made our way to erasmus universiteit rotterdam to register ourselves and get the visa and residence permit settled. erasmus feels really different from NUS. for one thing, its pretty spread out and there's stuff like lakes and canals and lots of greenery around. for another thing, the food in the cafeteria is definitely better than the food in the business canteen or btc. and its rather filling too! you can get a sandwich for EUR 2.50 here and its enough to last you through a whole afternoon of exploring rotterdam. and tomato soup is only 0.50 euro cents! i have a feeling i'll be eating at the cafeteria often.
doing the typical tourist thing. if i look rather plump, which i am already, its because i'm wearing three layers and a really baggy jacket. this is, as i'm sure you are able to see for yourself, the entrance to erasmus universiteit rotterdam.

outside the entrance of the school of law. this picture was taken by this aussie student... who turned out to be yixian's housemate who just moved in when we were out. God works in mysterious ways.

outside the school of law, there's this really pretty lake with ducks swimming and all, and its really peaceful! i don't think its very deep though.

right, stupid blogger won't let me post up anymore pictures, so i'll give this a break for now and get some rest after walking all the way from rotterdam centraal to kipstraat (at least 5 km) to get to dunnet, this computer store that ostensibly could fix yixian's x key but couldn't in the end.

tot ziens!

now comes in technicolor!

2006-08-26T21:22:00.000-07:00

EDIT: more photos below!! my camera is finally working!

this is a hotel that's built over the road. :)
this is a typical dutch road. i told you its so flat.
first sighting of the modern windmill!
yet again, the hotel over the road.
at burger king.
on the plane again!

they have sudoku in klm's meal boxes!
my dinner. fruit salad, some fried rice, khong guan biscuits (i will miss you!) and cake and achar with turkey breast.
+++

thanks to yixian, i now have photos!

our first view of amsterdam through the plane window. granted, it doesn't look like much, but hey, it was 5.10 am!

us on the plane. haha.

in amsterdam and while waiting for my friend to pick us up. we were trying to see if there was any internet in the airport and there was internet... only if you were willing to shell out 10 euros for 24 hours of usage. if that's not daylight robbery, i don't know what is.

klm planes!

the rotterdammers are all together.

2006-08-26T09:52:00.000-07:00

hello hello! greetings from rotterdam!

unfortunately i don't have many pictures up because *gasp* there's something wrong with my camera. or at least the batteries. whatever it is, there's something wrong with my camera. sigh. i will try to get new batteries on monday because shops here don't open on sunday. that's one thing i've to get used to. oh, and i haven't seen a single 7-11! my heart breaks.

anyway, thanks so much to everyone for your well wishes and love! and THANK YOU to everyone who came to see me off. LOVE! i opened the presents on the plane and i almost teared. i can't believe i won't be seeing everyone for four months!

well, we (xian and i) landed at about 5.10 am. this means that at 5.10 am, all of the rotterdammers have safely made it to the european continent! point to note, people - this ain't singapore no more. doggies, and i mean pet doggies, roam the airport freely! and i truly believe singapore changi airport is really the best airport in the world. even after seeing schiphol which is all new and modern. its just the air, i guess. my friend who was supposed to pick us up overslept so we had to wait for her till 8 am. but i'm glad that i managed to see her after all, and that she finally came and we all made it to rotterdam safe and sound. still, we just nua-ed in burger king before she came :) and people here are really TALL! i feel like a dwarf. okay not to mention that i felt like a dwarf even in singapore, but over here, even the 8 year olds are taller than i am.

the first thing that strikes you about holland is that the country is flat. and big. and as far as your eye can see, you see... flatness and sky. it would actually be quite beautiful, i believe, if
1. i weren't missing my lovely family and people so much
2. it wasn't raining every half an hour
3. my neighbour would just switch on his wireless more often so i can tap on it (using my landlady's computer now, teehee)

and its cold! its 18 degrees celsius now but the wind blows often and whenever you stop look and listen all around you, its really your typical european idea come to life. ducks on the canals. canals running parallel to trams. trams almost running people down. people shouting at each other on the street. the street being filled with chewing gum residue. chewing gum in abundance here. and this on my first day! and yes, there's the ubiquitous peep show, even in residential neighbourhoods like mine. it stands between a shop selling washing machines and a chemist. just think, the wife goes in to the chemist to buy a few things and then goes in to the washing machine shop while the husband goes off to the peep show. how interesting.

still there's so much to see and so much to do, and this is my first day and so far, i've gone out and seen the neighbourhood with my landlady. she's an austrian and we basically communicate through a hodgepodge of german and english. and i bet you this is the part where some of my friends have been waiting for, so: sorry girls, but there's no such thing as hot dutch guys. leastways not in my neighbourhood. i mean, have you looked at the dutch national football team? my neighbourhood is mostly dominated by the surinamese and the turks, and they add flavour to the neighbourhood. okay but anyway my point is, some of the turks are not bad looking. (i'm saying this purely for the benefit of one of my friends who is interested in fat turks.)

its 7 pm now and can you believe it, it looks like its 5 pm in singapore. no wonder my landlady said you can still walk around at 8 pm. when i look out of my window, i see people washing their clothes and hanging them up. and my spectacles are avant-garde in rotterdam. everyone here, well at least in my neighbourhood, either has perfect eyesight, wears contacts or wears wire-rimmed spectacles. when i told my landlady that a lot of people wear spectacles like mine in singapore, and that in singapore shops don't close till 9 pm and that there are 24 hour food centers, she was pretty much incredulous. though i'm not sure which part she was incredulous about.

i'm jet-lagged and all, and this post probably doesn't make sense, except to tell you i'm safe and sound and i'll miss you guys loads.

till the next update!

sigh.

2006-08-22T06:54:00.000-07:00

this time next week i'll be in rotterdam with yixian and farida and jessica, and we'll be away from singapore for four months. i don't think we'll be very homesick and four months really passes by you in a flash, and besides, there's always skype and msn and as jessica says, its not as if we're going to disappear into the system. so i guess this blog is more of a place to put up pretty pictures and all.

well, thank you to everyone for your well-wishes and your care and concern! there's really no need to see yixian and i off if you're not free (or simply not interested, haha) because as we keep stressing, its really only four months and there's no drama involved. just your well-wishes are enough. :)

its been a super duper busy past few weeks, especially after working non stop and finally stopping work last week. now its just meeting up with people, packing, eating lots and lots of stuff i'll miss, making arrangements with the other 3 about going around while we're there, freaking out over the weather there, packing, spending time with my family and loved ones, packing, saying goodbye to people i won't see for an entire year because they're going on exchange for an entire year, packing, packing and did i mention packing?

packing is such a pain. i've got 10 kg worth of clothes - and that's clothes alone. i haven't packed in shoes, bags, toiletries, food that i'll confirm plus guarantee miss and let's not even start on my carry on luggage. my laptop comes with an ultrabase (its where the cd-drive is) and the whole thing weighs 2.04 kg already. i haven't packed in my camera, my laptop charger, my handphone charger - the list is endless.

and i'm only gone for four months! there shouldn't be this much drama with my luggage!

i feel violently ill. i think i'll go lie down now.