Thursday, February 19, 2009

Save Peish!

I have been feeling funny the whole of today- jittery, anxious and restless. And oh yes, i have been swinging from ends of extreme hunger to extreme bloatness. (1h ago i was so full i wanted to explode. Now my stomach is making sounds.) And Im tired mentally (hence, blogging.) and yet unable to sleep physically. Heart palpitations have been even more seriously today than ever and lack of sleep is not making me very tired. Diagnosis anyone? It's getting quite perplexing :(

Anyway, because Im bored with working on the past yr papers and also VERY bored with anat (of which i have done like a grand total of 10%, and i dont even know if its my head), i have been surfing BBC and Straitstimes interactive again. But.. Nothing very interesting these few days really :(

But speaking of which, Im glad that Singapore's finally tightening the control on the influx of foreign workers (Budget 09). Ive nothing against them really (although i dont sound it), but somehow, i feel that in the service industry, these people (esp from a certain country) tend to be ruder than our good ol' local aunties or uncles. It makes a huge deal of difference to a meal/ shopping experience okay (at least to me it does).

http://www.straitstimes.com/STI/STIMEDIA/sp/budget09/dont_shoot_the_cook_from_china.html
"Sure, Singaporeans complain routinely about being served by China workers who cannot speak English, or about how their laksa is now made by a cook from Shandong province and no longer tastes the same.

But will low-income Singaporeans take - and stick with - jobs that involve waiting on tables or slaving over a hot fire for hours? I am not sure how such jobs acquired a stigma here, but the years of plenty could have led people to associate serving with foreigners from developing countries."

Actually i think the best food in Singapore are made by locals, and i dont think they are ashamed to be hawkers. Why make us sound so atas? I dont think everyone looks down on servers and cleaners (the problem lies with those that do).
But seriously, even then, cant we be slightly more strict about hiring staffs with some decent attitude?
And note, once again, i have nothing against the people from the abv-mentioned country (just those with bad attitudes), afterall, where i am now, they are possibly considered by the angmohs to be cooler than me.

Okay, maybe its time to get back to work. And i realise that my state of mind when blogging is completely random (just like this line). I just ramble on whenever a new topic comes to mind. Much less the completely irrelevant title.

(PS. Peish is very sad coldplay would be in Singapore on March 23, but she is still stuck here. 2nd concert she is missing out!)

xxx

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Mika's New Music!

Green and Black's Chocolate Ice Cream.
I normally dont like chocolate but somehow something got into me and I got this ytd, and although it was good (chocolate lovers are so gonna love it), i finished 1 small tub alone and then felt so sick after that.

GBK
I went out randomly after class ytd (despite the looming exams) for some burgers at this burger joint, which serves awesome stuff. (http://www.gbkinfo.com/)
Been there a couple of times, heard that their beef's awesome, but i cant have it. So i have tried their vege stuff (Mushroom and Camembert is kickass), and chicken (cranberry's good).
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/cheap-restaurant-deals
--> And this is the real reason why you should head down there today (or tmr). Offer ends on thursday :(

Bad choice though, felt wayy to stuffed and sick after BOTH of the abv and went to bed with a headache.
As expected, was bad sleep.

But....

MIKA!
For people who appreciate good music, awesome voice and cute face all in one:

Mika is coming up with new works! Im excited. Hoping that he would have a tour up real soon as well!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The things people say.

Referring to the previous post, i meat 399 Kroners :( And thats for 1 ticket only okayy. (I was supposed to book for everyone.) Either way, I should get over it already.

Anw, i have no idea what I am doing at 3.30am reading stuff like this, but these are funny:

1. The World's Shortest Man
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/World/Story/STIStory_337950.html

'My dream is to continue to hold the world title of smallest man,' Mr He said.
He said one chicken nugget was enough to fill him for the day, although he said he can eat up to a bowl of hot noodle soup when he's feeling particularly hungry.

2. 13 Year Old Becomes a Father
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/World/Story/STIStory_337952.html

'When my mum found out, I thought I was going to get in trouble,' Alfie said. 'We wanted to have the baby but were worried how people would react,”
'I didn't know what it would be like to be a dad. I will be good, though, and care for it.

Seriously, the things people say.
Well, but still, its entertaining (: We need stuff like this in the world to spice it up a little.

Monday, February 16, 2009

DAMNNNNN.

I just sworeeee. (Prisc was shocked to hear me say it.)

All cos of this stupid mistake i made while booking trains from Oslo to Bergen online.
Dumbass me just booked 26th March instead of FEB, and cos its a "student" ticket its not refundable nor exchangeable. Meaning that I just wasted 288Kroners :(

And good news, Prisc is visiting in June ((:
Now this is exciting!

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Peish's 25.

1. I love green.
2. I dyed my hair olive green, but no one can tell. It looks brown. Im waiting for it to fade so I can put in another colour.
3. I like green food. Like Pandan cake, Green Tea Pocky and Green Tea Mochi!
4. I love coffee. If it wasn’t bad, I would have 5 cups a day.
5. I like taking showers, and if it didn’t make my skin so dry, I wont limit myself to 3 a day.
6. I tend to like things starting with H- Heroes, House, Harry Potter.
7. I love Pachelbel’s Cannon in D. Its been my favourite tune since … forever.
8. I hate chocolate, the milk ones especially.
9. I hate the cold. Bring on the hot sun anytime.
10. I would rather be tanned than fair.
11. I always wished I could fly or teleport so that I don’t have to wake up so early for school. And that’s also cos im don’t like plane rides.
12. I hate IT stuff. Im a technophobe (if there’s such a word).
13. I got a Mac cos stef told me that its for computer idiots who don’t know how to deal w viruses.
14. I haven’t updated my ipod for more than 1 yr.
15. I like oldies. Hence, no need for ipod updates.
16. I cant survive on less than 6hrs of sleep.
17. I have slept for more than 24h without waking up once before. I would have gone on if my friend hadn’t called me.
18. My nickname Peish came about when I forgot to write in the other part of my name in sec1. As to why JC friends and uni friends call me that too without me telling them, I have no idea.
19. Peish sounds like Peach in French (Peche). The angmohs find it easier to pronounce it than my name.
20. My dream was to visit all the Disneylands in the world before I turn 21. Seeing that it is not possible, now I hope to do it within my lifetime.
21. I have never gone clubbing before.
22. I believe in horoscopes and zodiac signs and lucky colours and charms.
23. I wish Australia has the same school holidays as UK ☹
24. I like people who make me laugh and I laugh the most when im with the losers. I also laugh at grape and may and hing and my yrmates and the councilors and many others whose feelings im too kind to hurt.
25. I want to go to the beach and watch the sunset and cycle. I want lily to then drive us to Maxwell to pig out after that. (hint)

-

I dont want feb intermodule tests to come up, someone tell me how is it possible to finish mugging in time!
And winter makes me sooo sleepy. I sleep for more than 8h and i still have to take naps.

Anyway, randomly today my cute little kids in Mandarin class started sticking to me. Omg, This is def what makes the long travel down worthwhile ((:

Ok back to books!

Friday, February 06, 2009

Snow Snow come again! Dont wait for another day!

The weekend is here finally :)
After a week of screwed up sleeping cycles, i finally have days whereby i can sleep at odd- ball hours legitimately. I have no idea why i can concentrate on stuffs at night, and no matter how early i sleep, i get so sleepy in the noon anyway. Which is why i kinda stopped trying Rae's healthy lifestyle plan of sleeping early and waking up early.

Anyway, according to some of my PDS group mates, it seems like it might just snow again on monday, hopefully it would be bad enough to have all our lessons cancelled hehe. I'm such a terrible (but normal) student. And im wishing this even though we will face the consequences in time to come when the make up lectures start piling up. But Carpe Diem, let us live the moment for now!

Im still torn as to whether I would go for HC night. I really would like to go, but there is that silly feb intermodule test coming up which is making me feel so miserable. And my 3k (or is it 3.5k) word dissection essay due the same week, cos i would be in norway when the project's due. And i think me and miche have officially abandoned our head. I dont even think i completely removed all the fascia over my parotid gland.

Randomly, I still have yet to solve the mystery of the delicious London Pandan cake. I got it from the shop that Jason said it was from, but it still doesnt taste as good as that night's. How come ah, unless he is not sharing his secret!

And the pound is now rising :(

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Overdued Pictures.

Internet in MIC is finally up, after 2 very long and frustrating weeks!

And so here are some random pictures, others cant be bluetoothed from my phone for some strange reason :x

Lanterns in Chinatown. As with most Chinese, they have this mentality that more is better.


I particularly love that Yeo's sign. Yay to singaporean brands (:

Curry puff (the one on the left) and Part of our Nasi Lemak at Rasa Sayang. Im thinking they call it special curry puff cos the cant recreate the ones they have in Singapore.
The owner apparently owns Inn Noodle at Tot Court too (or so someone i met at SUKA's CNY dinner told me).
Food here is not bad, not fantastic though, but has quite a few Msian and Singaporean dishes. With real spice, not the brit level of spiceness.

I absolutely love this picture of Grape.
nAnd here she is looking quite happy with Nasi Lemak and "Curry Puff". But to be fair, the curry puff was qte good and relatively reasonably priced (by London standards at least). 3 for 3pounds.

At the CNY fair with Rae

Finally I see Mark and Pauline.

With Guotong.



More pictures would be up soon hopefully, now that my internet is working.
And now its time to fix dinner ((: I shall make tangyuan tonight too!

Love it that school's out (again) cos of the snow. Hoping that there would be a snow storm today again!

Monday, February 02, 2009

School's out!

Its official thats schools out 'cos of "adverse weather condition".
Yeahhh, its my first time have classes cancelled cos its snowing too heavily for lecturers to come to class and cos people having the keys to LTs are not around. Awesomeness! Im crossing my fingers that tuts would be cancelled too.
I actually hope tmr would be the same, and hopefully feb intermodule (would be perfect).

Its actually really beautiful outside now, cos everywhere is white and clean and the nights have become brighter cos the snow reflects light (right?), and its too cold for punksters to create a mess and the snow are just floating about gently in the skies.
My phones buzzing nonstop about lectures being cancelled, constantly reminding me of the good news, and im in a (relatively) warm room (wish it was warmer though, but heater's already up at max).

-

I know Stef's anti-blogishment, and hates it when people publish stuff about her, but I hope she wont mind it cos its meant to be a fundraising event.
They were involved in Jailbreak, which was a fundraising event in cambridge whereby participants travel as much as possible without any money, by getting donations or hitchhiking. They then get people to pledge donations depending on how far they travelled.

And here's Stef & Limin's Jailbreak story. (Copied from an email from Stef.)

Dear Friends,

It's been a long two days. Thanks to several kind souls, we have managed to escape from Cambridge:

Distance: 821 miles
Borders crossed: 5
Modes of transport: Car, Boat
Number of hitches: 6
Final Destination: Lodz (pronounced whooge), Poland

If you might be interested, here is our story.

Hitch 0 - we left Parkers Piece at 9am and camped out at Madingley road just after Northhampton with 2 signs - 'a lift please?' and 'for charity'. We attracted strange stares, smiles and pointing fingers. The best was a snazzy 2 seater silver BMW which stopped! The guy wound down his window, got our hopes up, and said 'are you going to Morocco?'. Alas, all that came next was 'good luck' and off he went.

Hitch 1 - a nice guy who heard about jailbreak on cambridge radio picked us up on madingley road and dropped us at the bus stop by the M11 junction.

Hitch 2 - kind cambridge resident saw jailbreakers on her way to M11 and thought us two girls looked 'harmless'. She dropped us at a roundabout about 10 miles away before exiting for her unique 'carpaint' manicure.

Hitch 3 - under the advice of manicure lady who used to hitchhike, we crossed the roundabout to a slip road where some trucks were parked. Trucks are really tall, and that's where signs come in handy. The driver invited us on board when we said we were heading south. Little did we know that he was actually heading to dover, which was our intended destination all along!

Our truckie worked for a delivery company and our truck was en route to Germany, carrying frozen air parts for Airbus. Truckies are friendly. We even found out the exact birth time and date of his nephew and his father. He must have told us more, but his accent was so thick that we got lost in it half the time. He was pretty decent, and even offered to bring us across the channel but trucks were not allowed to take passengers, lest they were illegal immigrants (which apparently flood the B&Bs in Dover). The only dodgy bit was the pictures of nude girls on his window. Hmmm...

Hitch 4 - Martin, our amazing benefactor. He drove us across 5 borders over 17 hours on 6 cans of red bull and about 1 hour of sleep [all this after a night shift at work!]. We met him at the port of Dover ticketing office, which was an uncanny coincidence as the place was nearly empty that Friday noon. We thought he was a frenchman going to France and he thought we were 2 'gorgeous china girls' just wanting to cross the border. Only after we got onto his car did we find out that he was a polish man working in england heading home to bring his family back here. He planned to drive there nonstop through the night, and welcomed us to tag along!

The 2 hour ferry from dover was amazing - it reminded us of the titanic. Casinos, food, an outer deck etc.

Then began our epic journey across continental europe. Martin took us across to Belgium within an hour, and to Holland in another 3 hours. We crossed into Germany shortly after, and got into Poland at about 4am. We treated Martin to supper at a 'gold medal polish food' place called port 2000 Las Vegas. He tried to get us on a truck towards Lithuania by stopping at many truck stops but there were very few trucks on weekends and the drivers were mostly sleeping. We eventually got him to drop us at Poznan as we didn't want to trouble him any further.

Martin was quite a character. His accolades included:
- 3 time EU karate champion (just when we thought we would be safe because we outnumbered him)
- being an ex-convict jailed for 4 years for fighting
- a proud father married for 3 years, with 2 children aged 6 months and 2 years

Some of Martin's quotes:
- His favourite: 'for fuck's sake!' used to express any sort of emotion (his command of english was limited)
- 'I cant believe it! I have two beautiful china girls sitting in my car! I like china girls!'
- 'Do you like sex?'
- followed by 'you a virgin?!'
- 'you do harsh heroin, no?'
- 'how much do prostitutes cost in singapore?'

We tried to stay awake as much as possible, in fear that he would fall asleep on the wheel. We fed him clementines, red bull, changed cd after cd of polish disco music. Martin was very thoughtful, incredibly sweet, completely harmless, and the one driver who went all out to help us with our quest.

Hitch 4.5 - we approached more than 10 drivers with lithuania plates amongst several truck stops, but they were either sleeping, grumpy, unhelpful, didn't understand us, or thought we were illegal immigrants.

Hitch 5 - after Martin left us, we wandered around a rest stop unsuccessfully, trying to avoid the many dodgy looking truck drivers (we think it might be the eastern european look). We finally found a decent-looking guy pumping petrol who could drop us at the next service station near a big town, lodz. Due to the language barrier, it was a quiet journey as he sped down the highway at 160kph.

Hitch 6 - although we would have liked to keep going on the highway, the quiet saturday traffic and language barrier made us decide to take what was offered - a ride to Lodz city centre. We reached at about noon on Saturday.

In Lodz, we visited the largest mall in poland - Manufaktura. It had amazing architecture, as the reconstructed old town of Warsaw, the capital of Poland. With lightly falling snow amidst a beautiful backdrop of red brick buildings, it was decided to be our landmark of choice for our destination city. We didn't go further because:

- Hitching from the city was even more challenging than the highway! Most people were city residents.
- Lodz was about the same latitude as cambridge, so travelling north or south would not make as significant difference. Eastwards would bring us to Ukraine, which we were warned against...
- We didn't want to be stuck on the road or at a small town when dark well, not knowing how the place worked nor the language. Bear in mind dodgy-looking polish men.

So we spent the next 2 hours building Martin the jailbreak snowman in the middle of a park, as a tribute to our dear friend martin. [Picture attached]

During our time at Lodz, we received a telephone interview from Cambridge Radio! Exciting stuff.

Homeward bound: we took a bus to the tiny Lodz airport, only to find that we were the only ones there. Since it was a low traffic airport, the ticket counter only opened 2 hours before departure. We waited and waited.... only to find that the ticket price was about 4 times what we expected - at £215 per person. We checked all different flight paths from other places in Poland, but they were equally if not more expensive. Germany was cheaper, but it was near impossible to get there through the night, unless we hitchiked again [which we already established was highly improbable and unsafe]. We tried walking around the airport with a cup and our jailbreak documents - all the polish people [even non-scary ones like mothers and grandmothers] thought we were delinquents/beggars and shooed us away or called security. We had no choice but to grit our teeth and pay the money - this would be our gift to charity for a long long time to come. We did manage to get a free ride on the National Express from Stansted, and we reached home at about 1am, Sunday.

Jailbreak was an incredible experience. But it's great to be home. And no, we don't want to quit medicine anymore. :)

At your convenience, please pass to us the following amounts [or your maximum] and we will forward it to Cambridge RAG.

At 821 miles,

1p per mile: £8.21[= S$18]
√2p per mile: £11.61 [specially for Matt Falder]
2p per mile: £16.42
3p per mile: £24.63

Also, the results are out, and apparently, we've travelled furthest by land!
The team who travelled the furthest [by flight] travelled 3745 miles to Detroit, USA. Impressive!

Pictures at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=74919&id=728616862&saved#/album.php?aid=74919&id=728616862

So if you guys are interested in contributing to their cause as well, you could contact them directly, or tell me and I will add it on to the amt Im already pledging to them. (((: