Cruise to Stockholm

On board Gabriella

Yea, it was a totally worth it trip to Stockholm, because it only cost us 5 euros each to get there by a beautiful ship. It is not as big as Star Cruise... its quite small compared to that, but for 5 euros, thats really quite something. It's so cheap because the organizer is someone who has some special connections with the Viking Line (the company) and thus we could get it at this price... so lucky. It took us 16 hours to get there, and then we spent only 7 hours or so in Stockholm.




For those who wanna buy 4D... this is the room number. Win already remember to share the prize $ with me. Haha


4 persons to 1 cabin


Sigh, this cabin reminds me of my flat mate.. Fauve. She was supposed to come with us and supposed to share this cabin with us. But when we reached the harbour, she realised that she forgot to bring her passport. At that time, we still had about 1 hour or so before the ship leaves. She could go back home and get her passport, we thought there might be enough time... but she didnt make it in the end. She was like less than 5 mins late!! So poor thing. I was quite upset... cause this may be a good chance to know her better. And the stupidest thing was that, we didnt even use our passports at all! We do not really need the passport when going from one european country to another... Ahhh... Poor fauve.

Daryl.. hunting for chips at the supermarket on the ship




It was very cold outside cause we were not properly dressed. We came out awhile to take photo and ran back into the ship...




Daryl bought a few bottles of wine for fun. Those small bottles at the side cost only 2 euros. (from spain and france). The one in the middle is more ex, abt 8 euros, made in Finland. See those bread behind? We brought alot of bread with us for this trip to settle the meals on board. Hahaha.


Stockholm

It is a pretty old city!! They have like alot of shops along these little streets... Too bad we were didnt have much time to go in and buy souvenirs. So sad. But we will be going back to Sweden with Pin Xiu again, so can buy later. The cost of living generally about the same as Finland, maybe slightly cheaper.


We had PingYong (PingHong's twin brother) to bring us around, luckily. It was so nice to have a "tour guide". Good leh. Dont need to look at the map.. just walk around blindly with him. All I did was to keep snapping pictures of all the buildings there cos they were really pretty and non existent in Singapore!


We had lunch at the kebab fastfood restaurant. According to PingYong, this is the cheapest meal that they can get in Sweden. Can't really see the meat in this pic, but it was quite alot, and very yummy. (about 4 plus sing dollars)


Beautiful sun...


Outside the Royal Palace








I still find this pic nice though its blurred


Coca Cola ice sculpture


The ISE people


We said goodbye to Sweden. The Singaporean gang together with PingYong and his friends in Sweden. :)


I just ate dinner twice! Feeling so full and fat now. Daryl's flat mate just made some Hungarian meal for us. Yumzzz! Will upload photo next time~

movie night and more...

Went to a 1 euro movie today... haha.. i was expecting a small theatre, but it turned out to be a room in a house, and the movie was played using the laptop and projected on the screen. Haha, too high expectations for 1 euro already... Oh no.. what about this saturday's 5 euro cruise? Anyway here are the guys in the room...


This is how the train station looks.. at night. I felt a little lonely and scared travelling home alone at night. But generally, Finland is a safe country.


This was my lunch today. Super delicious KOKA instant noodles, with a small slice of salmon and chicken drumsticks! Yumyum... think this was one of the best lunch daryl and I cooked, ever since we came here. :)


My lousy attempt to make a toasted bread with ham and egg. Haha.. pls dont laugh at me... I even burnt my hand while reaching for the bread in the oven. Oh no...


okays, here is the bus stop where I take my 512A, which is a straight bus all the way to school (about 15 mins). But its not very frequent and I often have to take 512 and then change a bus at Leppavaara. If its late, like after 7, there will be no buses.. and i will have to take the train. The snow on the ground is so thick and everywhere looked so white and pretty!


this is what i see looking through the glass at the bus stop


I just realised that i only know how to put photos and type crap.. haha.. a pic says a thousand words. Hmm.

Me and the beautiful school

Market Square

I saw these birds outside my house, stationary on the boh tak trees facing the same direction and so i took a picture of it. Quite cute!


And the sea is frozen today! It is -10 degrees today. Very cold! After a while in the cold, when i tried to speak, I felt that I couldnt open my mouth properly to speak. My cheeks were not moving! Its quite a scary feeling... like the whole face is already frozen. And I think these ducks have to migrate soon, they are standing on ice instead of waddling in the water...



We went to the Market Square today.. its outdoors. Well, it was a great disappointment because the picture on the brochures shows like 50 over shops, and the description was "the best place to buy souvenirs and gifts". And what we saw was like 4 shops? This photo shows how pathetic it was. haha.. I guess its because of the cold winter. Hopefully by spring I can see a different Market Sq! And the things they sell are not of any interest to me... and they are expensive too! Very expensive.


Next to the Market Square, there is this old market sq, which is indoors. This is a pic of the building.


The things inside are again, not affordable for students like us. But i found some interesting things inside... Like:

The shop selling chocolate! They have choc in many shapes, sizes and designs. Very pretty.

these are chocs too


bear meat~


Yeah.. coke are 1.30 euros per can... Brion, its expensive!

Anyway here's your present from ur bro

Shopping and slacking

I am so blur today again. I was supposed to meet Daryl at Leppavaara. So I happily walked out from my house to take a bus after checking the time of arrival of the bus, and when I realised that the bus was late, i looked at the schedule again.. to my horror, there is no available buses on weekends! So blur!! So then I have to walk all the way back to the train station to take a train there. Total travel time: 1 hour. (the bus trip only takes 6 mins to my destination)

Ya, its another day of Leppavaara... No where else to go? haha.. We went there to shop a little. And Daryl spotted these cute animals which came home with us after our shopping trip. Haha..
The chicken is really cute. By strangling it, it will struggle and scream and choke. Haha.. Lame hor? Usual Daryl stuff~ Then the other 2 animals are actually hand puppets. They will sing when we open and close their mouth...

Daryl was too hungry cause he waited for me for so long to reach Lepav. And so we ate at Hesburger today! Waste money!!! The portion is so small. See the fries.. so small a packet that i think daryl can pour everything into his mouth at one go. *evil laughter* And its super expensive. We shared 1 meal of course... Its very yummie, but cost 6.20 euros. Sigh. Nevermind, must at least try once... its finland brand~



At the supermarket... Look at the cute bananas hanging on top


For dinner... we tried fried bee hoon. Cooked too much. One mountain full of bee hoon. This pic was taken after we ate abit... But we still finished it. Hmm, taste okay la. Edible loh.

frozen mud puddle!

Its finally minus degrees! Today it was -2 to -3 degrees.. quite cold. But its fun to see ice everywhere, especially coming from up there! We were playing with the frozen mud puddles, cause some are not totally frozen and if u stepped on them, they will crack and the inside is still water. But today i can stand on it on both my feet! The roads are really slippery.. when the snow becomes ice after people stepped on them.


Had 2 lessons of Finnish language. Not bad. Quite hard to learn... But its fun. Everyone is like ahhh oooo yuuu haha.. its going to be tough memorising "new words". Like from 1 to 10, its like yksi, kaksi, kolme....kymmenen. So hard!

I realised my flatmates like to close the door and hide. I find it quite hard to interact... But the France girl did this name thingy and stuck it on the main door for us :)


oh yah. did i mention that the transport here is great? Not in terms of the price (of cos) but in terms of punctuality! It will come super on time. And there is a schedule at every bus stop when and which buses arrive. And we can also check online what time they come to which bus stop, so we dont have to wait in the cold! Here is a pic of the schedule i took..

my "first day of lectures"

yea.. today was supposed to be our first day of lectures, and in the end we had none! We actually have 2 lectures, 2 hrs each. The first one was the course that we were planning to take.. Corporate Finance. In the end it was conducted in Finnish so we couldn't understand. The lecturer told us that we can still do the course by reading the slides that are in English, supplemented by text book. But the text books here are super expensive! So i think we are giving up the course. The text books here can be more than twice the price that we can buy in Singapore. The 2nd lecture was a mistake.. it is supposed to start next week and we all were too blur to realise... We even went to find the planning officer then she taught us to go to a website which had this annoucement that it starts next week. Felt so dumb after that...

Well, at least I stepped into lecture rooms today. Haha.. Ermm.. kind of boh liao.. cause i have to step into them anyway. But I found that the ergonomics of the seating arrangement is well designed! The seats are kept like those in movie theatres when it is not in use, and the tables are placed in front of the seat, and you can pull the table towards your seat. Well.. some pics may help to explain what im talking about...

U see.. u pull the table towards u.


TU 2 lecture hall


Let Meiqing do the demo.. haha


yesterday.. me n daryl went leppavaara to shop again. daryl at the wrong noodle bar...


Behind us is a gambling place.. its like open to everyone. No one guarding the entrance at all. Of cos we didnt step in. Haha... who would dare to throw euROS away!

We will be quite busy once all the lectures start. Cause each course has its assignments and some of them will be ending in March, so all the due dates are all together. And we have also joined a cruise trip to Stockholm with the other exchange students at the end of January!

GooDies frOm HoME

School started today... But i've got no lessons on a mondaY! 4 day week for the time being.. hehe. I went to collect my parcels that my mum sent today,cause i was not around when the post man came. Yea, me and daryl sweat like mad carrying the 2 boxes and walking back to my hostel. It was a 0.9km walk, according to the "journey planner".

My smashed like dunno-wad Pineapple Tarts


The goodies in the box


yeah there is chicken stock, kaya, chicken rice type of chilli (they dont sell them here).. my fav. and lots of other stuff.. amos cookies, biscuits...


yeah :)

mY sNowMan!

SHORTI


yeah.. it is still snowing! Daryl and I just built this snowman about an hour ago while it was snowing heavily! Its really fun... initially we didnt know how to start and tried to gather ice and we ended up with a lump of lousy ice. Then he started to make a small snow ball and roll it all over the ground. Gradually the snow ball became bigger and bigger. But it is still very out of shape and dirty because of all the grass and broken branches all over the ball. We had to hit to try and shape the ball to a proper one. The body of the snowman is my work and the head is daryl's. the scarf and the hat are mine..Yea.. wanted to build a very big one (like the one we saw yesterday) but i think its really too difficult. This snowman is really abit hard to make already! Im happy with the size lah. Ha.. We gave it a name "shorti"!


daryl being hit by the snowball i threw


there is a playground just below my apartment