yusheng!

Nihao y'all... so how are you guys there? anyhow we got to

toss yusheng today... during class.. hahaa.. it was really fun and

messy. yonglin bought the yusheng and was looking for all the

auspicious chinese words to go with it.

The good thing: he found all the words like 'nian nian you yu', and i

cant remember what else. The funny thing: most of the aupicious

words were for the cantonese yusheng... (and was not really

applicable to our yusheng) so we had to imagine that it was the

actual ingredient for the words to make sense... hahaa... but it was fun...

So they explain that the higher the stuff is tossed, the better, and

you can see in the pic, they kinda raised their hands to like practice

to see how high they could raise it.. hahahaa.. enjoy the pics

this is taken outside our school the pond FREEZE!!! cool rite.. kkk this is our school TU/e. Finally all of us managed to get a bike and that ends our misery of walking about in eindhoven. yeah. 

i should say that most people here are fun n nice people. they helped us! especially mdm dini... hahah . she gave us a ride when me, roy and allan were so stuck in a place far far away from our home! we were lucky i guess. :) thanks mdm dini.... yeah school starting soon. the system here is different from our system back in singapore. here we were allowed to choose the types of projects that we would like to do. hope we made the correct choice. :)

yeah and it is getting colder n colder.... much colder........ 

THE DAY I REALISED THAT EINDHOVEN IS ACTUALLY BIGGER THAN I THOUGHT IT WAS...

Because we've been practically walking around Eindhoven for the past 3 days, i had the illusion that Eindhoven is actually kinda small. Imagine taking a train down from Amst when each of us had like 2 big luggages weighing a total of 46kg, and then taking a bus (lugging all the luggages along with us) to Vestide, where we were supposed to get our keys for our accomodations and then moving in to our places by feet. (thanks guys! they helped us to moved our luggages cause my luggages was heavier than me.)

N so, yesterday we decided to visit the Saturday market(Woenselse Market) to get our groceries for today's dinner. We arranged to meet there at 130pm and amazingly, i managed to reach there without even referring to the map. i just cycled n cycled n turned when i thought i needed to....n tadah! i reached there even before the guys did!
However, the route back was horrible. We left the place at like 4 plus and i only reached home at 7.15pm. Over here, it starts to get dark at like 5 -6pm. N i was seriously hoping that i would be able to rush back before the sky was dark. Unfortunately, i didnt managed to do so.It was horrid because the front lights were drooping and the dynamo couldnt work cause of that. So i had to stop every few metres to adjust it, until i totally gave up aft like an hr or so. (note: u'd get fined 25 euros if u dont have ur lights on whilst u are cycling i think.) As if that wasnt bad enough, i had a basket full of groceries that threatens to topple over any moment whenever i stop to ask for directions. There werent that many street lamps n the signs were puny which made map reading even harder. (not like im gd at reading maps tho) At that point in time, i really wanted to have a gps desperately! N so, in total i asked like 7 strangers for directions.(each giving me diff directions n none of them were able to tell me where i was.)hmm.perhaps cause they cant really speak eng also? so we just communicate by pointing here n there.it was quite a funny sight actually. I was so desperate cause it was freezing cold n my hands n legs were numb aft cycling for damn long in the cold, that i wanted to just slp on the streets or knocked on sm stranger's door to ask if they could let me bunk in for the night or smth...

Then at 6pm, i decided to call allan to ask for the taxi no because it is quite hard to flag a cab in Eindhoven.(I think they only come by, when u call for it?) n then i tried telling them where i was by spelling out smth tt looks like a street name to me?Unfortunately, the operator said tt he couldnt understand so i had to cycle all the way to like another street which was quite a dist away,then call them again.so i parked my bicycle in front of this house and tried waiting for the cab which should only take like abt 10 mins to reach. However after waiting for like 20 mins or so, the cab was still nowhere in sight and thank god, allan called to say he knew where i was. So he tried to navigate me all the way back home through the phone. (oh n i was so pathetic..the bicycle went over my phone when i accidentally dropped it cause i had to "giap" the phone btwn my ear n my shoulder whilst balancing the "top heavy" basket.)

All in all, it was quite a tiring trip n i really regretted not bring yoko yoko or smth cause my muscles are aching like **** now! maybe next time i should give myself like a buffer time to get lost n leave the place at 3 instead..

This is the location of the place i stay and Woenselse market tt we went.

This is how far i'm supposed to travel.

this is hw far off i ventured.

Fantastic 5 and the land of 'Holland'

Hullo everyone! Its been a whole hectic 4 days since we arrived. And only today I found some time to talk about our great trip.

On the first day, we took a 14 hours flight on British Air

ways to London, waited in transit for 2 hrs and flew to Ams

terdam in 1 1/2hrs. Thereafter was a 1 1/2hr ride on train to Eindhoven station. We had our first Dutch 

encounter in the train. They are generally very nice people who are very helpful. We have not met any Dutch who refused to guide us when we are lost our or answer our questi

ons about Eindhoven. Royston, Weiquan and I brazed the 

cold winds to bring our 46-kg luggages to our hostels by foot! (Warning: never attempt such a feat 

if you happen to come here next time. Just take a cab.)

 Well, we saved on 

the cab fee which potentially could cost 10 euros.

The next few days were spent trying to get all our luggages (es

pecially for liren who gets her room late) to our respec

tive hostels, exploring the city and its routes, finding food and supermarkets and getting ourselves legal in the c

ountry. Its crazy to not own a bike here, especially when Lir

en, Xinyi and us (the guys) stayed almost 3 km away from 

each other. Walking along the streets e

ven when clothed can be

 so cold that we can't wait to be back with our heate

rs. The sun is coming in and that didnt help either. So if you do come, get more warm clothes! It really helps! 

In the meantime, the main highlights of the stay here are:

1)   Meeting our hostel mates who come form all over 

the world. (Royston with clean and neat Italian Girl, Weiquan with resourceful Ah tiong, me with not so hygenic Indian, Xinyi with Slovakian, Liren with Romanian)

2)   Meeting fellow singaporeans!

3)   Getting lost in the city center

4)   Getting excited over finding Singaporean products in their multitude of supermarkets

5)   Trying to find bicycles that are cheap and not stolen

6)   Trying to know how their 3 way traffic works (bicycle lane, walking lane and roads)

7)   Liren getting lost while on her way home by herself (well women are from Mars)

8)   Watching PSV play live in a pub full of Dutch near the Philips Stadium

9)  The Saturday market at Woensle Market

10)   Blowing smoke out of our mouths without having a cigarette

11) Cooking together!

12) Cycling around the city

At Heathrow Airport!

We made it!!!

Wallpaper costs only 4.50 pounds in UK! Dats half the price if u get in Singapore!

At Amsterdam Airport!

He is a Chef!

posing in the cabin

trigger happy Aydan

Are you sure about not taking a cab?

Browsing through the Turkish menu, our first dinner in Eindhoven

More pictures to come in the next few posts! For now, Happy Chinese New Year to All! Have a very Happy Holiday!

singapore updates.

Nihao y'all... greetings from singapore...
wanna know what we have been up to in our "international studio"?
well, we brought our new friends out, to eat and just walk around singapore...
as you can see, our class is acutally quite big... hahaa..
enjoy the pics!

did i mention i'm there for studies?

Orange Country! Here We Come!!

STA International Student Card : $15

Hostelling International Discount Card: $22

Winter Wear :  Few hundred dollars

  

 Exchange Programme to Netherlands : PRICEYThe fantastic Five is going to set off for the Netherlands soon! Quite excited about the British Airways Flight later. But Liren says alot of forum says it sucks and has a high possibility of baggage loss. So i'm gonna pray hard now.. Guess that's will be the worst way to start off the exchange.

Anyway, i decided to risk not bringing a few 'key' things. Like the ALL IMPORTANT rice cooker among other things.  I will update to inform if i will live to regret that decision, including the decision to get the STA card and hostelling card. 

Meanwhile can't wait to smell the Airport air and enjoy the BA inflight entertainment!!

(ps. im a noob at bloggging. as u can see i don't even know how to rotate the image. opps.)

hey hey!

"hey hey!" 

that's how the swedish usually greet each other. it's 3.22am here in sweden. the temperature is 3 deg celsius, and i'm sitting on my desk by e window blogging abt my first week here.. 

i left singapore on the morning of 10 jan (thanks to my family and friends who came to send me off. u guys rawks!!). 14 hrs later, i arrived at copenhagen airport. bought a train ticket to lund. the train is damn cool. 

when i reached the centralen in lund(train station), it's was freaking cold.  i hurried to the nearby budget hostel and booked my accomodation for e few days before i get my accomodation on the official arrival day. ''the train'', is an amazing place. it's literally an old train that's parked permanently near the centralen, wif well furnished interiors to house guests. facilities include a cafe, an entertainment room, a games room(wif ping pong table) and rooms. it;s dman cool, except for e limited space. but it's hell lot cheaper than normal hotels. only 40 sing a night, wif breakfast included.

soon arrival day arrived, and i got my new home!! sparta, e place i live in, is relatively new. the surrounding is pretty clean and well facilitated. my room is big, biG, BIG!! it comes with a personal bathroom as well. check out e pics! shared facilities include a kitchen wif space for own cabinets, cleaning room(there's vacuum cleaner!) and ironing room.  wad's cool is there's also a barbeque pit. heh! 

anyway, the next few days were spent doing admin matters. i went ard taking pics too, and i must say lund is truly an amazing place to go to for a break from work. the life is rather relaxed here, the ppl are friendly(though they dun appear approachable), and the architecture is simply awesome. the first one week is really amazing for me, and i'm looking forward to more things in time to come... 

(add me on facebook to check out more pics. toh_allan@hotmail.com)

ID-ling around the world begins!

In the coming months, ID cohort 06/07 will be disperse around the world. This blog is set up with the intention to keep each other updated and share our experiences. Not only for the people on exchange, but also for those in Singapore! We all wanna know what Prof Teh and friend(s) are up to! For those on exchange, provide informations so the rest get more knowledge while planning for travels. For example, which hotel sucks, or which restaurant has super nice CHINA food, or where are definitely on the to-visit list, or which spots to be more careful!!

This will be an open and public blog. 

And if it works out well, this blog could provide a platform for future batches of ID to take reference. So we can include the look of our accommodations. Sucky things that happen at school or things we should have prepare for when we are in Singapore.

Happy blogging/ traveling/ photo-taking/ but most importantly DESIGNING!!!