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

Leppavaara - shopping day

This photo is the main building of Helsinki University of Technology. Nice right? The ground is all filled with sNOW! Cause it snowed today again~~



Today the 3 of us again, went to Lepavaara, where there is a shopping centre with 2 HUGE supermakets. The whole place is rather big, and the shops mostly sell winter wear, boots..yea and of course food. Not bad a place to shop! Oh ya, there is SUbwaY in it too... (my fav fast food in singapore.. the price? same as SG but in euros.. meaning twice as ex). We spent about 3 hours there... And i bought something I really think is quite worth! There was this shop having sales, and i bought a jacket that was on a 70% sale! So it only cost me 15 euros! And i realised that the jacket is 50% down and 50% feather, so i guess its quite a good buy. Then i dont have to look the same in every photo anymore. hahaha..

Inside the shopping centre

Outside


And there was a pet shop too. They sell pets like hamsters... and this:



.


Daryl and I made this small snowman in the morning b4 we went out, outside his house. And then when i came back to my house, i saw this BIG snowman that someone else made!! Its really BIG. oh man... bigger than me. I think i want to try make something like that tmr, since i've nothing to do on a sunday here. haha... we shall see!


This was our dinner.. haha. 2 chicken drumstick and a plate of veggie with ham and meatball. i miss guo tiao!!

Suomenlinna

It snowed today! Finally.. I woke up and saw the ground filled with ice... So cooL!!! When I walked out of my hostel to meet daryl and meiqing in helsinki city, i had my very first experience with SNOW!!! It was really really pretty, and the feeling of ice falling on u.. its so fuN! Its so different from rain. It was snowing quite heavily... took a photo of my own scarf while walking.


And this is the place where I stay.. this building.


Oh and i wrote my name on the snow for fun! this is the train station (kannelmaki). My "hometown" in Helsinki!

Today the 3 of us went to Suomenlinen, the sea fortress that is built on islands just off the coast of Helsinki (national monument) and one of Finland's cultural treasures. (copied frm the brouchure). Its very pretty there.. we took alot of photos. It has museums, restaurants etc, but we didnt visit those places. We took photos outside and luckily because of the snow today, the photos we took were nice, i believe. :) The place can be reached by taking a ferry near the helsinki city.

can see me? im at the back...


this is the frozen "lake" that we found.

This is daryl trying to create fake snow from the sky for me.

Oh ya... we witnessed some weird rally. ha.. then got a few police cars surrounding it. Nothing interesting, but something that i dont get to see in singapore. Hmm.. and we also saw some marching. But dunno which country's one. Nvm if u dont understand me.. cause i dont know what i saw too. hahaha...

Btw, i will be wearing the same jacket all the time, so i would seem to be in the same clothes everyday... haha.

More pics?

My attempt to make ice kacang for my daddy.

me and the beautiful botak trees...

Just tried msn video call with my mum! abit laggy but its okie.. quite fun! think skype can do better but my mum never download skype.. can make do with msn. :)

Just went Prisma (a supermarket that is quite big, near my hostel) to shop today and that's all... Didnt do much the whole day... Oh ya..forgot to popst pictures of my room and apartment!

This is my bed.. and i purposely shift the table such that i can use my laptop from my bed.

Another view... daryl is playing his PSP.. On the wall is my audition game poster.

This is my cupboard and shelf beside the door behind my bed... and that poster is my lin jun jie!!

The little kitchen in my apartment.

The living room/ dining area of my apartment.

And this is the common corridor inside the apartment.. the opened door is my room. My room is numbered 1. The nearest to the toilet and the main door. (turn left)

Basically the whole apartment feels very white to me when i first stepped in. Imagine 2 opened doors and empty rooms and the stillness of the whole apartment? its quite eerie to be alone.. but now it feels better!

Orientation day... photos!

Today is the orientation day. The whole orientation is just sitting in the lecture room and hearing different people speak, informing us about the practical things and the life in Finland blah blah... Wanted to sleep halfway through. But it was useful, overall. Still in the midst of mapping modules. Sigh.. quite troublesome. Cos we have to beg for more Credits to map to our modules in SG.

Oh and I finally have room mates after 1 week! =) So happy to see them in the apartment when I came back, but I still don't know how to get closer to them. Cant force myself to talk to them and stuff. Maybe i should just wait for it (talk and become closer) to naturally happen. Anyway one of them is from Australia and the other is from France, and that's about all I know about them for now because I just met them tonight only. And they sleep so early! 9pm only they say goodnight le. Hehe..

Pictures...!!

This is my fav. snack i found in Finland. Doughnuts! Small ones.. quite cute. Hopefully I dun grow fat eating them.


And this is the cheapest brand for all types of things I can get from supermarket. X-tra is the brand! They sell pizzas, spagetti, hot choc powder .... to toilet paper. haha.


Oh and i saw this dog barking inside the car on my way to Tapiola yesterday. Poor dog locked inside the car!!


This is the city of Helsinki. The building on the left is the Central railway Station.


This is the cheapest food in school. 2 euros.


The only place where there are free toilets. Elsewhere in the city, have to pay!!

Tapiola

Yup.. today we went to Tapiola, which is rather near school to shop. We found out that the things there at "S Market" (a supermarket) is a little cheaper than the supermarket (Alepa) that we always go to. There is also Stockmann there, and other departmental stores... and a few supermarkets. We realised that our favouritest activity is still shopping for food... haha. We were the most awake doing that. --Photos will be uploaded later.

Yeah thanks mel for telling me that youtube has project superstar... haha. Im so blur, should have suspected that they should have. Well all my favourites have been kicked out already, only left Nat to support! hehe... But dont really like him as much also... Darren is improving alot! =)

nose bleed again

sigh.. this is the 3rd time le.. and it happened when i was sleeping. I have really been drinking alot of water already. dunno why still like that. Very scared that it will be often.. then there is really something wrong with me.

Its bad on weekends, shops are closed!! Luckily the school's supermarket is still opened. So unlike singapore... on sundays, people are on a shopping spree.. I miss singapore. papa, mama. I miss them so badly. And i miss the local channel 8, 9 pm shows. I miss project superstar. I miss the food in singapore already too.

helsinki...

Been walking around helsinki central and familiarising myself with the place. One shocking thing I found out was, only one departmental store has free toilets, and the rest have to pay to get in... and it cost 1 euro just to pee! oh manzz... yup, and we didnt know that today is a holiday in finland and happily went to helsinki central. Stockmann ( the departmental store) was not opened! But we sort of cheated to get into the toilet... there is no one collecting the money, we have to insert the money into the door then the door can be opened. So we just waited outside the door for the person inside to open the door so that we can enter for free. haha...

The weather is slowly starting to get colder... just now there was ice formed on the ground already... so its abt 0 deg cel now. I suffered a terrible nose bleeding experience 1 or 2 days ago. it was really scary cos i dunno when it will stop and it really did take quite a long time to stop. And when i lift up my nose abit, i started to cough out the blood through my mouth with "tan". very scary. luckily daryl was with me.. =)

Daryl has been cooking for us... cooking is so much cheaper than eating out. But we are always almost cooking the same stuff... meatballs, FROzen veg (not frozen one very ex), ham and spagetti in tomato sauce.. ewwW... missing singapore food already..

some photos...

the four of us, at matti's house on the 1st day

taken near matti's hse

admin stuff to do

jan 03, went to do all the admin stuff. went to sch to register and see the school, then to the registrar office to register as citizens so that i can buy the travel card etc etc. Couldnt have done all of these in 1 day without the help of my tutor. But still, i wanna complain him!! cos he always answer out of point when we ask him questions. Not onli that, i thnk he is weird too. He helped me and fuxiang buy burger for lunch and didnt even ask us which one we wanted. In the end I bite one mouth... oops, beef. sigh. had to change to burger. its like he just went straight to buy n never tell us that he is buying for us too. And he did alot of other weird things. And i cannot really understand his english... argh.

After a whole day, i asked daryl to come over my place. It was a really tedious trip for him. he spent alot of $ calling for help =( and had alot of difficulties finding. And his hands were so cold because he had to use one hand to press the hp buttons and call. Yea, we cant survive without a pair of gloves. exposed to the air for maybe 1 min, we will feel our whole hand numb. It will be worse when its -20 deg cel.

still trying to get use to the life here, and getting to know how to travel to places... =) more upcoming~~