xin in france!

last post

2008-06-30T06:28:00.000-07:00

I'm currently blogging from Sam's room on sam's comp. I have already checked out of my room. Had a really hectic day no thanks to the bank. I went down to BNP paribas today and they told me they didn't have cash in that branch so I had to go down to another brunch to get my money. Great, huh.

I had a great time in France. Made lots of fantastic friends and wish I could stay here longer. Parting is never easy.

Alors, au revoir INSA de Lyon, au revoir Lyon, et, j'espere que c'est pas au revoir a la France, mais a bientot. Merci pour tous.

And see you guys in Singaporeeee real soon.

goodbye part 2

2008-06-29T04:18:00.000-07:00

I went to take a last walk around lyon on Sat with Cheekeat and Tiffany.

We visited the market place beside the Saone River.

One last glace of Fourviere.

Escargots, again.

:)

We also had Oysters at the roadside. (Yea, at the roadside!) The seller had a really strong Southern accent; we couldn't understand certain words he said.

Cheekeat and I had lunch at a Lyonnais Bouchon at Vieux Lyon.

Starters with rosé wine. I had a Lyonnais Salade.

Plat.

The dessert was chocolate Crepe, and it was the best crepe I've had here.

***

Cheekeat and I visited the Sunday market for the last time on... sunday. (duh)

We bought chicken, potatoes, grapes, and perrier and headed to Parc de la tete d'Or for a picnic. :P

Yums. I loveeeeee picnics.

goodbyes

2008-06-29T04:04:00.000-07:00

I had a picnic with my classmates Michal (from Slovakia) and German (from México) on Friday night. Michal will be going to Dublin next sem for exchange, while German will be coming over to Singaporeeee!

The dudes making Ice cream milkshake. These dudes can speak so many languages. Michal can speak about 9 languages while German can do 4 and learning a 5th now. I can only do 3:(

Michal with cherry sobert.

We talked about lots of non-school-related stuff. It was quite cool because we 3 were from 3 different continents, so lots of different cultures going around.

We also discussed where we'll meet again next time. :P

Michal was leaving the next day so I went over to say goodbye in German's room.

German (sleeping), Michal and me.

Annecy

2008-06-29T03:35:00.001-07:00

INSA has cut off my internet connect, so I'm blogging in Cheekeat's room. (THANKS INSA FOR CUTTING MY INTERNET BEFORE I LEAVE.)

On the first day I arrived in Lyon, I met a woman on the bus to Part dieu from the airport. She was the first person living in Lyon I talked to, and she told me to go to Annecy.

So, I went to Annecy with Oscar, Rosa (students from Taiwan) and Cheekeat on Thursday. I waited until the last few days of my stay here to go to Annecy, not on purpose, but coz I didn't have time to do so.

We had a picnic lunch on a shady grasspatch beside the lake.

Cheekeat and I.

Rosa and I. Annecy has a nice big lake surrounded by mountains.

We rented a motor boat. Wasn't too expensive because there were 4 of us to split the cost (43 euros per hour). All four of us are mechanical engineering students, so we were joking that we could repair the boat if it failed halfway.

The guy who rents the boat out giving Oscar instructions on how to drive the boat. Sounded really complicated.

Oscar driving the boat.

The river water was really very clean, and it wasn't salty.

Oscar.

Getting a horrible tan.

Giving my toes a tan.

We took turns driving the boat. I'm better with driving a boat than a car.:)

4 of us.

Mountains.

After the one hour boat ride, we went to walk around the Vieux Ville (old town) of annecy.

Looked a bit like Venice, but with less touristic shops and less people.

I bought escargots from a random shop. Fantastic stuff!

We visited the Chateaux d'Annecy, but it was.... bof. Nothing special. Pas grands choses.

More venice-lookalike-shots.

Look! A dam!

After we came back to Lyon, I went over to Cheekeat's place to cook dinner and to watch the Spain-Russia match.

We had a Malaysian-Singaporean meal.
On the left: Veg dish that Cheekeat cooked. On the right: Chicken rice that I cooked.

Europa Park

2008-06-29T02:32:00.000-07:00

Ok this is a reeeeeally outdated entry. I have been too lazy to get the photos from Sam, and when I finally did it, I lost my USB before I transferred the pics to my com. Great.

I didn't take many pictures so I won't write much about it.

Europa park is the second largest amusement park in europe after Disneyland. This park is more for the big kids. This park is located in Rust, Germany. The german club in our school organized a pretty resonably priced trip there.

Yitan, me and Sam with the Europa Mouse mascot.

There were many rides.

By lunch time I was already feeling a little giddy from all the crazy rides, but was ok after lunch.

We saved the best ride for the last- the silverstar (the high roller coaster tracks in the background). Even the tracks look scary. I was seating beside a little french boy and I was telling him that I was scared. He then told me that that was his third ride on the Silverstar. -___-

Sam and Yitan enjoyed it so much, they wanted to go again. As for me... ahahaha I had enough for the day.

Guinol

2008-06-27T02:00:00.000-07:00

The summer sale has started!!! I went shopping on the first day of the sale (thursday) and it was like a war zone. Well I bought a dress I have been eyeing since pre-sales (its made in Spain) and a top.

After shopping, we singaporeans went over to Park de la Tete d'Or to watch the famous lyonnais Guinol puppet show.

I scream, you scream, We all scream for Ice-creeeeam! Rar, rar, raaar! (sam, kane, me)

Acting like Ah Bengs.

Next show was at 18h. Sam doing his usual... wierd poses.

The guys invited *AHEM* 2 other singaporean girls who were in the the immersion here. It was a good thing because after they came, Sam was more well behaved instead of sprouting nonsense. (That bugger is trying to psycho me to clean his room for him. FAT HOPE).

Cheryl, me, sam, Kane, Rabbit girl. Sam decided to be a sissy and tie his hair.

The puppet show cost 2,80 euros (we were considered enfants). The show was quite cute, though I couldn't understand the front part of the story because the narrator's voice was quite muffled. The puppet on the right is Guinol.

after the last exam..

2008-06-27T00:14:00.000-07:00

My exams ended on Tuesday lunch, and after that I was a free man! :D

Sam, Yangfang and I watched the french version of "a long engagement" (Un long dimanche de fiançailles) on the grasspatch outside Sam's block because it was simply too hot to watch it in the room (no aircon no fan).

We put sam's blanket on the grass and watched the movie on his laptop.

After the movie, we went over to kfet to have farewell drinks for yangfang. There we met one of my Irish friends who liked to headbutt people. :S

And after kfet, Sam stole a magazine stand back to Kane's room.

Magazine stand in Kane's room.

As if that wasn't enough, Sam dragged me downstairs to kope a trolley. He sat in the trolley and I pushed him to surprise Kane.

Sam, you are damn heavy.

We stole another trolley the next day to dig out the 1 euro. Only mechanical engineers would find this kind of cheap trills finding loopholes in other mechanical engineers' designs. I think our profs will be so proud that we are put what we learn in good use.

Sam trying to file the hook latching the coin while I tried to use 2 keys (so that I can hit the curved side of the hole) to simulate the thing you insert to push out the coin (same concept as picking locks).

Well, Sam managed to find the sweet spot with the keys later on and earned 1 euro for his effort.

2008-06-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

I've been so busy ever since exams ended. No time to even read through my FYP list (which I plan to spend one afternoon doing when I have the time).

Have been saying many goodbyes to many friends from all over the world I've made in my 6 months here. For this time, it's not 'a bientot', but really 'au revoir'. I'll probably never ever see most of these people again.

You know, even though all of us come from different parts of the world, we are all essentially the same- we all grapple with similar problems and we share the same ambitions and aspirations in life.

2008-06-23T03:59:00.000-07:00

Today's cinematics paper was awful (worse than expected). Never felt so lost during a paper in my life. It was so bad I wanted to walk out after half an hour, but stayed on anyway to just TRY to do the paper. It was so difficult I couldn't even smoke my way through the last few questions. I will miss the retests in Sept so I will have to take the module again in NUS.

For some wierd reason there was a spanish song by Juanes that kept playing in my head during the exam. Must be craving for a siesta.

One more paper tomorrow, my last one. After that there will be a notes-burning ritual at the park with all the students.

***

How fast time flies. Next week at this time, I will be going to the airport and taking the plane back to singapore in the evening.

***

Why I love french presidents:

Sarkozy's famous "casse toi pauvre con" (sod off poor bastard) line.

Sarkozy drunk in G8.

Chirac drunk. This president is hilarious. I was laughing at every video of him because of the way he speaks. I wonder how the politicians keep a straight face during parliament sessions.

HAHAHHAHAHa. I have a teacher who speaks like that, except that he prefers to shout most of the time.
"Vive la République et vive la France" =)
***

The most absurd thing I heard today: it's ok for french to curse because their swear words sound nicer because they are not so offensive (compared to other languages). This was what my classmate (who is not french) told me during breakfast today and he was serious.

LIKE whATTTTTTTT?!!?!

study time

2008-06-22T05:24:00.000-07:00

[Oscar.T] says:
so you're not going out today?

xin in lyon! says:
nope. not really

[Oscar.T] says:
gosh
don't be nerdy

xin in lyon! says:
i've got an exam tomorrow dude

[Oscar.T] says:
I know

xin in lyon! says:
and the day after

[Oscar.T] says:
but.........all work no play, make Jack a dull boy

xin in lyon! says:
hahaha i played yesterday

xin in lyon! says:
all play and no work makes jack a loser who fails his exams

Another evil force luring me out today. No more going out today!! Time to study!
(Yes Sam, I mean it! No mango rum/whisky/whatever today!)

Fête de la Musique

2008-06-21T17:22:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday was the longest day in the year, and the first day of summer (solstice).

Went to the Keith Haring exhibition in the noon with Kane. We managed to finish viewing the exhibition quite fast. There is no need to stare at a pop art era picture for too long since they are mostly very in-your-face. :)

I went to Cheekeat's place for dinner.

He cooked chicken with veg, a very typical asian dish.

Herbal chicken soup!!! :D:D

After that, Fx and I went over to Hotel de Ville for the Fête de la Musique!

Look how blue the sky was! It was cloudless and HOT, which was a bad thing because Hotel de Ville was so crowded and smelly.

There were bands everywhere with all kinds of music- Jazz, rock, big band, country.

We bought ice creams.

Big group of people dancing outside the St Jean church.

There were even bands in people's backyards.

Fx and I.

Rock band playing in front of a protestant church.

SIDA pamphlet. SIDA means aids.

longest day

2008-06-21T13:49:00.000-07:00

Today was the longest day in the year, and the first day of summer. The sun rises around 6am now and sets near 10pm, so we get lots of sunshine. Temperature is around 32 degrees now, probably gonna rise later in the summer. The bad thing is... no aircon, no fan in my room! No wind outside either.

Funny how in Rhone alps we get the lowest temperature during winter, and the highest temperature during summer. Chaudddddddddd!

euro2008- au revoir Croatia

2008-06-20T14:20:00.000-07:00

Damn there are euro2008 soccer matches every night, and they are streamed on the internet for free. Jiaaaaaalat.

The Turkey Croatia match was crazy. 2 goals around the last few minutes of extra time, leading to penalty kickoff. (Croatia really stinks at penalties). So whoever watched the first 110minutes would have wasted 110 minutes of their life on the boring match.

Right now lots of Turks are shouting and horning outside now. Think there are lots of Turks here.

Hoping for a more exciting match tomorrow: Holland vs russia (which Holland is gonna win).

***

Speaking of tomorrow, there is a fete de la musique (music festival) tomorrow in France to celebrate the beginning of summer. Today (20th June) was the solstice, where the earth tilts closet to the sun. hotness!

Temperature here now is as hot as singapore, though the sun is more glaring here due to the axial tilt of the earth. I went jogging with sam at 3pm today and it felt as though I was jogging in singapore at the same time.

Also, bad thing about here is... no aircon!!! yikes.

2008-06-19T05:49:00.001-07:00

I got into a big panic just now. After doing my grocery shopping at Carrefour, I went to the tram stop to find out that there was an (impromptu) manifestation affecting my line!!! There was an announcement calmly asking us to take the metro instead. As if the metro goes everywhere!!!

I went into a semi frenzy because I was under the hot sun carrying a bag full of groceries. The only 2 modes of going back were walking (impossible due to heavy bag of groceries) or cycling (impossible coz I was wearing skirt).

So I called mr Kane to ask him to help me find which bus goes back. While waiting for help, I made friends with a Jap girl at the bus stop, stranded like me. While we were in the midst of wondering what to do, a tram appeared from another direction to our stop and picked us up!!!
=)

***

I'm done with 2 papers, 2 more to go next week. So far so good, I should be able to pass the last 2 I took; I did my best. I answered some of my Mat Science in english for certain questions when I really couldn't do it in french.

***

Seems like people bond better over tough times; I've gotten quite close to my classmates during the exam period. Leaving here will be so tough.

Toulouse

2008-06-18T14:55:00.000-07:00

Again, another very outdated post.
After Bordeaux, FX and I took a train down to Toulouse!

Ohlalala. Toulouse, famous for having lots of students (third largest student population after paris and lyon), lots of artists, lots of engineers and of course, AIRBUS headquarters!!!!

We visited the Airbus factory (Jean-Luc Lagardere plant) and went for the airbus A380 tour, which is like, almost every mechanical engineer's dream!!! (Or at least that's what I think). Yes, visiting Toulouse is not complete without visiting the Airbus plant, located in a little ulu village outside of Toulouse.

I changed our train tickets to Toulouse JUST to fit in this tour.

I could not bring in my camera so I don't have any pictures of the factory. The tour was in french.

When we went into the workshop where they assembled the A380s, guess what?! The plane closest to us was an SIA PLANE!!! I was squealing like a schoolgirl who had just seen Brad Pitt's buttoms. At that point in time I felt SOO PROUD to be a singaporean; yes, we bought 10 x 50million euro planes!!! The guide also went on to say that SQ was the first to confirm the Airbus stats and that SQ is now flying the world's largest plane! WOOO!!! :D:D:D:D

*BEAMS*

Assembling area for the tour, which was impossible to find. In fact it is not easy to get to Jeanluc Lagardere plant if you don't drive.

My trip to airbus would be one of the more memorable things I did in France. =)

A few Belugas (A300-600ST) in the distance.

After the tour, we stopped by a little housing village in the outskirts of Toulouse to change bus.

Little park near the bus stop.

Fountain.

We went walking around Toulouse later on.

Place du Capitole

Strike going on in front of the place.:)

Allez les bleus!

2008-06-17T00:06:00.000-07:00

Tonight, Italy vs France! Big stuff big stuff! "Dit moi, si tu vas jouer Benzema~" =)

Hmm. Wonder which country Carla Bruni-Sarkozy will be rooting for. Hehe, after all she is italian sometimes.

**
I'm studying 6 months' worth of work in one day. Everyone is studying to PASS. It's impossible to score here. My american friend told me a few days ago "I've never been so close to failing an exam in my life."

Alors, Bonne chance et bonne courage a moi!

***

As for my previous post on singlish, I think some people read it with a big ???. Paisae I got the meaning of condone wrong. I think singlish is fine; I use it all the time with singaporeans.:) The only problem is that now I'm also doing Franglais (french + english). Franglais and singlish.

***

So sad, France is out and ended up last in the group. The weather here: rainy. AGAIN. (It just started to rain a few minutes after the match; I swear the weather is mocking us here man). Let's go to an italian restaurant to drown our sorrows (hahaha).

I just hope the Solids mechanics lecturer doesn't lash it out on us students.

masses

2008-06-15T14:45:00.000-07:00

C'est Vrai. I've put on 10kg in 5 months here. This was my weight after going jogging the past 3 days. So at this rate, I'll go back to singapore 12kg heavier than when I came here. Wonder if the airlines will charge me for 'excess baggage'.

ok lah, I was already expecting a massive weight gain, but didn't expect my weight to shoot up to mid 50s. I was also more calm this time when I weighed myself. No screaming, just a shocked silence.

At least I know I'm not the only one. I saw my Swedish friend last night (looking dejected after sweden lost) with a nice belly. This is a girl who runs more often than me, can outrun me, and gave me a nice big bruise the last time she knocked into me when we played soccer.

***

Tonight's Turkey Czech match was ... insane! Last minute goal! And I thought Turkey was a goner when they were down 2-0.

parc de la tete d'or

2008-06-15T04:09:00.000-07:00

After studying for a few hours yesterday afternoon, I decided to take a mega break and enjoy the nice sunny afternoon in parc de la tete d'Or. Why study when the weather is so good?

After harassing a few people to accompany me, I managed to drag my german friend there for a picnic. I brought the wine and strawberries and he brought the cheese.

Lying on the grass doing nothing, something I never did in sg.

We weren't the only ones.

Our food. We managed to finish one bottle of Beajoulais. Good stuff. Rhone Alps wine rock!

Nice view.

Walking back.

We saw some wedding couples taking wedding photos in the park.

Roller bladers.

2008-06-14T15:47:00.000-07:00

Russia vs Greece: Crazy match. The ball was going from one end to the field to the other in a matter of seconds! The players were just kicking long distance balls most of the time and running. Even the poor referee couldn't catch up. Oh well Greece is out.

Sweden is out too. My friend kept making fun of my swedish friend over their early exit, hahaha.

***

Cool video of the woman who does the MRT announcements, sent to my by Flo.

Gosh I love her voice! :)

Bordeaux

2008-06-14T00:56:00.000-07:00

Bordeaux. Darn these tourists offices in Bordeaux really know how to capitalize on this bordeaux = wine association.

We took a flight over to Bordeaux (it's 6 hours by train because Lyon and Bordeaux are separated by a row of huge mountains; 45 minutes by air), and right outside the airport, we were greated by rows and rows of grape vines. hur hur.

Bordeaux has very nice architecture.

Notre Dame.

Some porte.

Look! I'm doing a Jesus-walks-on-water!
Mirror d'eau, a piece of flat ground with a shallow layer water to reflect Place de la Bourse behind (apparently some royal square in the past).

Statue at esplanade des quinconces.

Statue. Bordeaux used to belong to England for awhile, and this statue is a monument that has to do with remembering that or something like that.

Marche des grands hommes, very funny name for a market place. Translated, it reads market of big men.

We went to try out Lunchs, a specialty of Bordeaux. It's a small cake made of rum and vanilla. I didn't like it that much.

Taken outside the tourism office.

We spent the morning in Bordeaux walking around, and went for a vineyard tour in the noon.

The vineyard tour was in french and english; the guide would speak in french first, then translate.

Grape plants all around. There is no way you can see vineyards in Bordeaux unless you drive or go for a tour. The vineyards are not in the citycenter (duhhh).

The first chateau we stopped at was one that made white wines in Sauternes.

Wine degustation. The white wine was a little too sweet for my liking.

Wine cave. For this particular white wine, they used the rot of the grapes (called noble rot) to make it. So they have many harvests to cut the rot out. And taste it well, you have to gurgle the wine in your mouth before swallowing. haha!

A private Chateau we passed by. Some royalty lives there still.

The second chateau we went to was at Graves. We tried red wines from different years there.

I liked the tour pretty much because I learnt some stuff about AOC wines there. Plus, it was quite cheap for students (11 euros). I wanna go to Pomerol and Pauillac next time I come here. ;)

After the tour, we went to a wine shop because fengxue wanted to buy wine for her friend. She managed to get a 2000 red wine for 13 euros! I didn't get anything because I felt I could get cheaper (but younger) wines in the supermarket that taste good too.

Old wines are actually not THAT expensive here. A 1967 Lafite 1er cru classe only cost 620 euros, a 1968 (crap year) cheval blanc 1er grand cru classe costs only 600 euros. I also saw another 1929 (fantastic year) 4ieme cru classe (crap class) wine going for 500 euros! Cheap cheap!

Bordeaux lamps. very colourful.

Funny book I saw at a bookshop at the train station. Sarkozy and his women; a man under influence.

quelle horreur

2008-06-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

4-1. Wooow. The second part of the match was more exciting, which was a good thing because I spent the first half of the place walking around St Jean and hotel de ville trying to find the pub my friends were in. Yeah, we were finding the darn place for 1 hour!!

Anyway I walked in around the 50th minute, while it was still 1-0. Then 2-0, 2-1, 3-1 and at the VERY LAST MINUTE 4-1. The match was so bad that some french people in the pub were clapping when holland scored the last goal. But most of them were just stumped after the game, looking quite defeated.

I became french for a day.

Ok lah, I don't think france played bad; Holland was just too good. My brazilian friend thinks otherwise though, and I had to remind him that Brazil lost the last two world cup matches against France. HAHAHA.

Thiery giving after-match commentary. Can see a super sian french seated in front of me. You have no idea how many times I heard 'putain' in the last 20 minutes.

On the way back, some people asked us for the score and they were shocked when they heard it. There was also one drunkard on the train that grabbed my arm, but my friends came to my rescue and pushed the guy away.

Let's hope france wins Italy.

***

You know you are becoming french when.... you start using a knife and fork to cut your ribs instead of using your hands to eat them. I didn't even know I was doing it until my singaporean friend Jinny (full time student here) told me it was easier to use hands to eat the ribs.
We went to a mexican restaurant before the match and had a plate of ribs+coleslaw+potato and a pitcher of rose for 17 euros each. Not bad.

The day I got stuck on the lift in Kane's block.

There was a GMC picnic (for mechanical engineering dept), and it was great! There was wine and rose (though they were the cheap/not nice type). There were yummy cakes, paella, and lots of food too. Plus the profs were there hanging out with the students.

Great stuff.

I finally bought an oyster knife. Cost me 1 euro, but works very well.

2008-06-13T00:50:00.000-07:00

Today, Pays-bas vs Les Bleus at berne, 8:45pm!

While I hope France will win.... well, let's just say I think Netherlands will win this eurocup. If not netherlands, then portugal. The french team is getting really old.

***

Last night I went over to my mexican friend's place for tuition. And after the studying he showed me his design project for this sem.

Boy, was I impressed. What they did with 3 people in one sem, we took 8 people to do. Their reports were very in-depth too, with pages of excel readings, calculations and graphs. His first sem project was doing transmission gear system, while he was doing a system to lift 20 ton trucks this sem. He had so much pride in his work; he was beaming and you could see the enthusiasm in his eyes (even though it was 1am) when he did the explanations.

I walked home asking myself why can't we have the same level of passion towards our projects, why we need so many men to do what 3 people can do. Is there something wrong? Are we lazy people? Or inefficient? Or doing things the wrong way?

****

AGHHHHHHHHH!!! Green-Lagrange tensor!!! Almansi-Euler tensor!!! Eigen values! This came out for past year re-test paper. Shiok.

Brotteaux

2008-06-10T08:34:00.000-07:00

I went over to a restaurant in Brotteaux yesterday for a farewell dinner with my german friend.

Art Auction house in Brotteaux. I think Brotteaux is the rich man's quartier in Lyon.

We crept into the Art auction house and I witnessed a real life art auction (in french)! It was really fast with thousands of dollars and bids rushing in. I even witnessed a picture going for 26,000 euros. And these auctions go really fast. "1600 euros... 1600 euros..." Bang, allez, hop! Next!

The interior of the restaurant.

Ok, like all French restaurants, the food was fantastic.

Entrée

Plat Principal- Beef done a point (medium Rare). It was practically bloody, my mistake. In france, medium rare = rare. Always order one level up. There is a joke that if you order rare here, the waiter will bring you a live cow.

From these 2 dishes, the thing that made it so tasty was the sauce (which is what lyon is famous for - good sauces). I still can't figure out how they made it.

Fromage Blanc. This one tasted really bad; too bland for me. Then again I am not a cheese fan, even after 6 months here.

My choice of dessert: Chocolate cake. My friend took the crème brûlée, which I should have taken because it was yummy.

My german friend and me.

2008-06-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

My 2 french classmates sitting beside me today were very fascinated by the way I twirl my pen. They were doing some kungfu actions and asking me to teach them how to do it. -____-

Later on, they asked me to write their names in chinese. First name: Pierre Antoine, which I wrote as 比叶安.. I didn't know how to write "段" so I told him I didn't know how to do the chinese equivalent of toine.

Ha, next name was worst: Guillaume (the french equivalent of William). This one I couldn't even write.

***

Transport strike today (till Thursday), some trains not working. My friend didn't go to work because there weren't trains. So shiok.

***

The DJs called a pizza place today and asked for 3 free pizzas because Italy lost 3-0 and so they must offer free pizzas coz they played like merde. "If Italy lose 4-0 on friday then the pizza place should give 4 pizzas free". HAAHAHA!

Meanwhile one of the students here decided to hang his Spanish flag outside the window after the 4-1 win.

euro2008

2008-06-09T15:04:00.001-07:00

Group C matches were played today, France had a goal-less draw with Romania. QUOI? Ok lah, my french friend was saying today during lecture that he didn't think they would win, and the press hasn't been very optimistic about this match.

Meanwhile, Italy got trashed by Holland. I can see Sam in holland grinning away like a Cheshire Cat. Talk about being at the right place at the right time. The radio DJs decided to irritate an Italian dude by calling him repeatedly and telling him "ton equipe, c'est un peu de merde..." Hilarious stuff.

random

2008-06-09T02:39:00.000-07:00

Exams are near!!

Oysters you should never eat:

When your oyster looks like that, you should never think of eating it. (I didn't, of course). I couldn't open 2 oysters in my last batch of oysters (lesson learnt: always buy oysters from male servers; they choose better oysters), so I dehydrated them so that they would open automatically. Well that was what I got- a gross looking oyster.

***
The French use a different way to find Inertia (the way they section the pieces of an odd-shaped object). Can you imagine, if they use a different method to find such a basic thing, what about more complex stuff? And I'm not very keen on using the French way to find Inertia because I am not convinced that their way is accurate.

2008-06-05T05:46:00.000-07:00

My german friend just sent me the old DDR(Deutsche Demokratische Republik aka East Germany) national Hymne and I realized that... I don't have an mp3 of Majulah Singapura to send in exchange!!!

Oh well. In return, I gave him links to Vanessa Mae videos, one of our more famous western exports (apart from Annabelle Chong).

***

I usually listen to a particular french radio station at night, and every night the DJs love to play pranks like calling random people ceaselessly, or pretending to be lovers of people's partners.

Tonight, they called facebook to complain.

"ello, I'm a frenchman and I have a problem with the username. My name is Bastard (they pronounce it Basthad) but I can't register it in."

The american tele-operator must have been thinking "what stupid french" and promptly connected him to some "leave a complaint after the beep" line. HAHHAHA.

***

Mon examen de francais a ete.... frenchissment je m'en fous. (My french exam was... frankly I don't care).
The oral comprehension was so damn fast, we were telling the teacher "thats not french!". I can understand normal french but I couldn't really catch the oral comprehension. Strange huh!

**

Will be going to Bordeaux tomorrow, and Toulouse the day after. Will be going for a vinyard tour in Brodeaux and my airbus A380 tour (in french at the airbus factory) in Toulouse!!! YAY!!

Porto

2008-06-04T21:52:00.000-07:00

Woo, finally!! The last over-due post from my 3 week backpacking series!

Porto.

Porto has many lovely bridges and one loooong river cutting through the city.

Bridge.

We walked over the bridges a few times and it was quite an experience to do so. The view was spectacular and the wind up there was really strong.

Over at the other side of the bridge, there are loads of wine caves. Yes, the famous porto wine caves. We actually got this piece of advice to cross the bridge from fellow backpackers we met at Lisbon, because some totally missed out on the wine caves by not crossing the bridge.

Wine caves. Most of the tours are not free, but we were thick skinned enough to ask around for free tours, and found one cave that had free tours!

One great thing about this wine caves area is the free wines! You can just walk in and sample free wines, drink till you're jolly and saunter out. (Again, advice from the backpackers).

We tried about 9 different types of wines including green wine. I had about 12 glasses because I was helping Fengxue finish her wine. Yes, all freeee!

We went to check out the beach the next day. Nothing much, but at least it wasn't jammed packed with tourists (like in Barcelona's beach).

We saw a few surfers riding the wavesss.

Too cold to sun tan.

We got back to Lyon on the 1st of may, the "Fête du Travail" where everyone doesn't work and go on manifestations for pourvoir d'achetes. Shiooooooook. No bus, no metro, no tram, no taxis. So we had to walk from the train station back to school (3,8km), lugging our heavy backpacks (mine was 5kg, Fengxue's was 7kg)

2008-06-04T13:05:00.000-07:00

Today I asked my friend if method marks will be awarded in the exam in the event that I make a mistake in calculation in the earlier sections. To my horror, she said probably not.

"But WHY!!!" I asked in horror.

"Because if you make a mistake in a real life engineering problem, merde alors. Your bridge collapses and kills people, no matter how correct your method was in the later part of your calculations."

How true.

***

Today 2 china girls were gushing about how thin singaporeans are (they saw the new batch of singaporeans here for immersion programme). We very thin meh? During my whole stay here I never got a "you're thin" comment from any french. In fact most french girls are thin here, me being the fatty-bom-bom in my swimming class (just see the amount of water displaced when I dive). Yes I am serious.

ça craint du boudin

2008-06-04T04:49:00.000-07:00

Allo le monde! Je suis à la biblioteque maintenat, en train d'etudier pour mon examen français demain. je suis naze et je veux faire dodo.

Il y a un petit voix dans ma tete qui me chante:

Je ne veux pas travailler
Je ne veux pas déjeuner
Je veux seulement l'oublier......

Alors, ça reste 2heures plus d'etudes. Allez, xin, allez!!!

2008-06-02T14:15:00.000-07:00

- Just emailed my reservation to take the Toulouse Airbus Factory tour this sat (to see the manufacturing line of the A380). Cross fingers, hope they still have space to accept me.

- I was the fastest female swimmer for my swimming class today! We did timings for 4 laps consisting of butterfly, backstroke, crawl, freestyle. I beat a spanish girl (the next fastest) by just 1 second, hehehe. Who says asians can't swim fast? ;)

- Also during swimming class today: I did a 5m springboard dive! What guts, huh! It was reeeally scary and I wanted to back out when I was on the springboard looking down at the water. But I didn't want to be a wimp and so, viola, I did it!! WOOO!!!

Random

2008-06-01T09:38:00.000-07:00

Just came back from Europa Park, which I will blog about later.

On the bus ride journey back from the park, I had a 3 hour conversation with a french guy about politics, laws, sexual revolution (I felt real stupid because I didn't know about it; I thought it was only limited to france) , 1968 revolution, environmental policies (kyoto protocol), ALL IN FRENCH. It was really tiring, and I didn't understand a lot of what he said. And sometimes when I tell him I didn't understand, I got the weary, helpless look that I always get when I talk to french guys that can't speak english.

In addition, although I did not concur with everything he said, I was just too exhausted to argue in french. He also gave me a list of movies I should watch to better understand the framework of European society. yay.

Anyway! Pictures taken in the canteen by kane:

Exchange students from Sg having dinner together. :)

Issac, me and Kane's ex-roommate (all brazilian). As you can see, I cut new bangs. (my new fringe)

Sample of our school food. In this picture, Starter: bread, some wierd crepe wrap with cheese inside. Main: Couscous with sausage and meatballs and some gross stew. Dessert: yoghurt and kiwis.

Another sample of school food.

I went over to Flo's to try out some red tuna cooked Tahiti style on wed! We went to Carrefour first to get the fish, then drove over to his place for dinner.

Flo cutting the fish.

I loved it. We ended the meal eating cheese with bread, watched some "little britain", and chatted a little while watching lightning. (yup, it was first time I have seen lightning in Lyon).

On Friday night before we left for Europa Park, Sam and I went down to take a walk along the Rhone river up till hotel de ville and check out the night scene there. We initially wanted to see the Marquese, which was apparently famous, but it was CLOSED!!! AGHHH.
Other than that, nothing impressive, really. The good thing about here is that all the bars have free entry, so we went into a few bars, walked one round, and walked out.

LOL. Half naked bar tenders.

We were surprised to see Absinthe (green fairy) being sold. At such a cheap price, too!

Stuff I cooked this week:

Seafood salad (afternoon snack).

I did Patatas Bravas today for the new immersion students. No photos, unfortunately. Wasn't too successful because it wasn't spicy enough.

Steak for dinner. Again. Steak is a lazy man's dish. If I ever need to impress someone with my cooking, Steak would be it. Easy to cook, yet yummy.

What I shank (with kane's swiss army knife) and eat every week- oysters. Oyster season has ended, but I'm still doing it, and I usually pair them with wine. :D I usually buy 16/week from Carrefour and eat 4 each day. I only had a tummy ache once because I didn't store my oysters properly and they dehydrated. Oui, c'est la vie!

2008-05-30T10:00:00.000-07:00

3 of my friends have left Lyon today. And I have one more month left here.

SOBS!!!

Lisboa

2008-05-29T06:57:00.000-07:00

Lisbon! By the time we got to Lisbon (after 2 weeks of non stop travelling), we were getting very tired.

We stayed in a party hostel which celebrated it's 2 year old birthday on the first night we were there. However, we were just so tired we missed it. I was also very very tired of socializing by then. It's fun to meet fellow backpackers initially, but after awhile, the conversations are all the same. Where have you been?, what's there to see here?, where you come from? etc.

Another funny thing was that everyone in our room, coincidently, could speak french. We had Americans, a Venezuelan and a Canadian.

Baixa.
Lisbon was really sunny and hot, but it isn't such a touristy place so we took things easy.

We travelled around by boats, which was really cheap and offered great views of the city.

Another mode of transport is the famous pok-eye yellow trams. It's crazy to WALK because there are 7 hills in Lisboa, so by the time you walk from one point to the other you might be dead from heat stroke or exhaustion. We didn't hop on the yellow trams because they were a small and filled with pick pockets.

On the boat. Things in Portugal are cheap. Way cheaper than in France.

Bridge. Lisboa is also beside la mer! La mer, qu'on voit danser le long des golfes clairs, a des reflets d'argent. =) (yes i'm listening to that song as I'm writing this).

Ok I took the boat partly to see Jesus too. And I didn't know what the monument name was so I kept telling people I wanted to see Jesus when asking for directions.

HAHAHHAAHA. HELLOOOOOOOOOO JESUS! I went into a camera clicking frenzy every time the boat passed by Jesus.

A hugeeee church in Belem. The police in Lisbon are really slack; they actually stopped the car to smile at us.

We tried the Portugese Egg tart at the Pasteis de Belem, a pastry shop that is more than a hundred years old and serves the REAL THING. The darn shop was SOOOOOO CROWDED, and the portugese egg tart was two times more expensive than the normal ones in sg. Tastes more or less the same too, just a little more burnt.

All our dinners in Portugal were kinda the same: the fries-salade-meat meal that comes with a drink. They sell this meal set everywhere. Oh and the tube top I am wearing was bought in Zara and was made in Portugal. I also bought a dress from Mango that was made in Italy for 20 euros (42 sgd).

Lisbon has really funky train stations with nice tiles and graffiti.

On our second day in Lisbon, we went to the Orient Train station.

Oceanario de Lisboa.

Soft toys.

Torre Vasco Da Gama.

Pavilhao Atlantico

Cool picture taken in the station.

mind your language

2008-05-28T22:11:00.000-07:00

During lecture yesterday, I was sitting with my Irish friends when my American friend came over and asked me if I wanted to go over to her place later to collect a pail.

After that conversation, my Irish friends gave me a puzzled look and said
"Pills?"
"Yeah, Pails", I said
"Pills?"

This went on until I realized Pail was american english, while Bucket was British English.

"Yeah Pails, I mean, BUCKET".

They later told me that for awhile they thought I was a drug addict taking pills.

***

I'm awake at 645am to do a tutorial. I must be mad.

***
Exams coming in 19 days. I remember reading Andi's blog entry he wrote during exam time and he was saying something along the lines of only people who are actually studying here will understand the difficulties of taking exams in french.
=(
=(
=(

Madrid

2008-05-27T00:22:00.000-07:00

Madrid has nothing much to see, honestly, unless you dig museums. We did not have to spend money in Madrid on transport because a couple gave us train tickets they could not finish using. :)

I forgot which palace is this (coz I can't find my madrid map).

Madrid's emblem, right smack in the middle of the shopping district. People in Madrid speak Spanish.

We visited one of the three museums in Madrid, the Museo Nacional del Prado. It was a really huge museum with fantastic works from Raphael, Rembrandt and Goya(there was even a Goya exhibition then!!!), and we only paid 3 euros (student price) to get in.

I saw Goya's the third of May 1808 there (depicting the horrors of the French Revolution in Spain), and it was larger than I expected. The Goya exhibition also had his works from his disasters of war collection with very negative taglines.

We stayed very close to all the main attractions. This is the view from our hostel. We shared our room with a freaky old man and a wierd girl who looks like she's a red-indian descendant.

Some famous fountain. (I lost my map, LAH!)

We visited Parque del Buen Retiro

The park.

The Puerta de Alcala at Independence Square.

Hehe, what is going to Madrid without seeing the Real Madrid stadium! :D:D "Real" means Royal. I didn't go in though, because between the Barcelona Camp Nou and Real Madrid, I heard the former was more worth the money. (yeayea I know Real Madrid was the last La Liga champions, still...)

Strangely, although Spain has quite a good League, the world cup has always eluded them.

On our last night, we met up with a French dude who lives in Madrid who brought us to eat typical Cheap Spanish food. We got to know this French dude in our Rome hostel.

First stop: Ham museum. Very famous, must-eat place.

We had ham with cheese for dinner, which was yummy.

After dinner, we went to a bar to try Patatas Bravas, a typical Tapas dish. Speaking of Tapas, I think Tapas is a waste of money. Each Plate costs 3 euros and you need to buy at least 2-3 plates of Tapas to be decently full. Tapas = finger food, typical Spanish stuff.

Patatas Bravas is potatoes soaked in Hot sauce. Quite easy to make, will try to do it someday.

We ended the night enjoying Sangria under the stars in an open air bar. Sangria = wine with a mixture of fruits, sugar, ginger ale, gin and chilled 24 hours before serving.

Nice hotel in front of us.

=)

Throughout my stay in Spain, I did not try Paella because it was soooooooo expensive. I managed to get my first taste of Paella in Corsica for a cheaper price.

Barcelona

2008-05-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

Barcelona has fantastic architecture, thanks to one great man- Gaudi. Barcalona is located in Catalonia, and people there speak Catalan, which I totally did not understand and did not learn (because I thought the whole spain speaks spanish, which was not true).

Catalan is very different from Spanish. Labels are written in 3 languages- catalan, spanish and English.

As you all already know, my bag was almost stolen in Barcelona. We arrived in Girona airport (budget airport outside of barca, stupid budget airlines) and had to take a one hour bus to Barcelona. We only reached Barcelona at 11pm.

When we reached Barcelona, it was dark, we were tired, and we were a little lost because we could not find the metro station.

To cut the long dramatic story short, this stupid guy threw stuff on our backs (I carried my bag in front of me) and told us it was bird shit. I put my bag down to clean it, got distracted by that guy, and his accomplice took my bag. When I turned back to check on my bag, it was gone. But I was fast enough to see his friend carrying away my bag, so I shouted and ran towards him.

He dropped my bag and they left.

I was really lucky because had I reacted a few seconds later, he would have walked out of the bus station. And I was lucky he didn't run (though if he did I would probably be able to catch him). But I was badly shaken that night because I was so close to losing all my money and my passport. And from then on, we were very very careful with our bags.

Anyway, barcelona is a really dangerous city. I've heard of many cases of people being pick-pocketed, it's amazing how swift these thieves are. Conards.

Parc de la ciutadela:

Nice green river.

Nice bottoms.

From the park, we walked over to the sea side:

There were many beautiful buildings lining the sea-side.

We wanted to have seafood there, thinking the seafood would be fresh, but all the restaurants were sooooooooo expensive.

We ended up eating kebab in an Indian restaurant, where we met a Singaporean Sailor who was stopping over in Barcelona because his boss (who owns an F1 team) was there for the F1 that week. Again, he managed to identify our nationality through our accent and the way we mix english and chinese words with glee in a single sentence.

The Barcelona beach wasn't that impressive to me. Pretty small and crowded.

Work of Gaudi.

The Mercat de la Boqueria, a huge market with lots of yummy edibles.

Some old building.

Nice building.
The Catalan style (reflected in the architecture) is very colourful and funky.

The second day we were in Barcelona was the Valentines day (called Sant Jordi there)

There were flower booths... (that yellow and red drape is the catalonia flag)

.. and book stands. Apparently guys will give girls flowers, and girls give guys a book in return.

We went to Barcelona FC camp nou that morning because the place was closed in the noon. (The Man U vs Barcelona match was played that evening there)

Champions League cup, in the Barcelona FC museum. Barcelona FC was founded by a swiss, who lated committed suicide because he was chased out of the club. Sad.

Mes que un club - club motto. (more than a club)
A match was played later that day in this very turf!!! Too bad we didn't see any players training when we were there, but we saw the TV crew laying cables. I watched that match later in my hostel with Barcelona fans.

Parc Guell.

One of the must-sees in Barcelona, with Gaudi's architecture.

:)

Was damn crowded though.

We also visited the Picasso museum. I loved it very very very much, though all his more famous pictures weren't there. But the collection was still none the less impressive, with paintings from different periods of his life (blue and rose and of course, cubism period). We also saw his variations of Las Meninas by Velázquez! (We later saw the real Las Meninas at Prado museo in Madrid).

Sagrada Família church, another of Gaudi's masterpieces. It has been under construction for more than 100 years (since 1882) and is slated to be completed in 2026. Insane, huh.

Status were modeled reflecting the cubism style. Check out the magic square; each column adds up to 33- Jesus' age when he was crucified.

We paid a sum of money to get inside. The interior is still under construction, and you can see the workers working on the scaffold. The pillars here are supposed to resemble tree trunks.

We also visited the museum that explains the inspirations for the designs and the mathematical/graphical details behind it's execution.

I was particularly impressed by how Gaudi used sandbags hanging on strings to simulate the stress distribution among the pillars. The

Gaudi's work, again.

Last but not least, Torre Agbar, which I did not go to but passed by it on the bus back to the airport.

Barcelona is a huge, vibrant city, ideal for young people going with a bunch of friends. Pretty dangerous, though.

OL wins double championship

2008-05-25T05:47:00.000-07:00

OL won the coupe de France last night against PSG, making them the double winners! (They are also the ligue 1 champions).

WOOOOO! Qui ne saute pas n'est pas lyonnais!

***

"summertimeeee... and the living is easyy..."

I watched Gershwin's Porgy and Bess last night. I felt like it was a cross between the opera style and american broadway style, though the version I watched seem a little TOO broadway. It received a standing ovation none the less.

I also love the music! Heard some of my favourites like summertime, I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'(the piano reduction was one of the ABRSM exam pieces) and There's a Boat Dat's Leavin' Soon for New York.

However I thought the story was a very poor representation of the blacks, with heavy emphasis negative sterotypes (i know, negative sterotype is an oxymoron) of the blacks.

***

Went to a sunday fellowship today. It was held in a Colombian woman's house, and it was like a mini International gathering there, with no french. There were spanish speaking south americans and chinese speaking asians. So we had our fellowship in: French, Spanish and Chinese, with some people translating Chinese-Spanish and French-Spanish.

***
Today's mother's day here. Happy mothers day to all.

***

Did you know?
Mandarin is the most spoken language in the world (there are 2 mandarin speakers for every 1 English speaker), followed by English, Hindi, then Spanish. There are more German speakers than French speakers. =)
***
I haven't seen lightning for 5 months.

And the sun rises at 6am and sets at 9pm now. Impossible to not get a sun tan.

paella!

2008-05-24T04:42:00.000-07:00

I cooked paella today!!!

It was really yummy and wasn't THAT difficult to make, but the ingredients cost me an arm and a leg. The stupid clams cost 3+ euros (>6SGD), and the uncooked big prawns cost a bomb, so I bought small prawns instead.

Wasn't the most healthy thing to eat, but it sure made my taste buds happy. Will try to sneak some Chorizo back to sg to cook paella back home. :D

***

Ok, horray, so Singapore has grown a tiny wheeny bit after Pedra Branca has been ruled to belong to Sg. I honestly think this tussle over the Island's Jurisdiction is just so silly. An island the size of a foodball field? awwww... come onnnn.

Kane, Sam and I huddle in Kane's room yesterday after lunch and were talking about Sg policies and politics over a cup of coffee. It was a great session, since it has been such a long time since I had the chance to talk about Singapore, and also because only we singaporeans will feel so strongly about these issues.

musings

2008-05-22T13:49:00.000-07:00

- 23 singapouriens coming over on sunday for immersion. WOO!

-Did you know? 130,000 died in myanmar cyclone, 51,000 dead in china earthquake.

-Pedra Branca verdict out tomorrow. What do I think? Stupid fight over an island the size of a soccer field.

Pertubations

2008-05-22T00:33:00.000-07:00

First and foremost, MAN U WON THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE!!! WOOO!! I was watching the ultra exciting match at pop cafe last night, and damn, the match went on to penalty kick-offs. What a loooooong match. I only managed to get back at 12 and had class (or so I thought) at 8am.

Well, apparently that class was cancelled (damn all the french emails that I keep deleting), so I went back to sleep before the next class.

Big transport Pertubation (strike) going on today. The tram to my school is not functioning, so I don't know how people are gonna come to school. I can only hope this is a one day thing because I am going to do weekend grocery shopping tomorrow and I NEED THE TRAM!!!!!!!! TGV paris-lyon line is also not running today.

***

2 restos closed today, big resto didn't serve entree and the plat was quite crappy. There is a rumour that there won't be dinner tonight. I had 2 classes cancelled, and heard that lots of uni workers (yes, even from insa!) went to protest today. The whole france is on a 36 hour strike.

So what is the issue? The french are pissed off that the gov wants to increase the number of years one has to work before one can draw pension from 40 to 41 years. Teacher striking against plan to cut number of jobs and Illegal workers protesting for work permits.

PLease please please I need the tram tomorrow!!!

bienvenue chez les ch'tis

2008-05-20T14:11:00.000-07:00

I just watched one of the hottest movies in France. This movie grossed US$168 million in France alone, soon overtaking Titanic. It's about people living in Bergues, north of france. There is a stereotype about the people and the place; that it is always raining and cold (because it is in the north), and that the people are poor and depressed, and the film goes against the stereotype. There was also an article of it in Bloomberg.

I really liked this movie, and I understood most of the jokes! :D:D yippy!

Roanne

2008-05-20T00:10:00.000-07:00

After I came back from my 20 days backpacking adventure, I took a train with my friends to Ronan(my friend's friend)'s house.

He lives in Roanne, a little town in Loire Valley. Loire Valley is beside Rhone Alps, where I live.

His house. Loire Valley, to me, is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to, other than Corsica.

HE HAS A SWIMMING POOL! And a piano in the house!! :D:D

His living room. His house is quite big, with many many spare room with spare beds for sleepovers. Amazing. We managed to fit 6 guests in his house, all sleeping in different guest rooms.

Having breakfast beside the pool. From left: Wanqing, Fengxue, Ronan, Me, Wudi and Wangyi.

We went to watch ronan play soccer. He was representing his department. (I still don't understand the concept of Department in these little villes).

Soccer field. IT was super hot and sunny. Why don't we have such nice warm weather in Lyon!!???

Ronan, number 14. The one in blue is the referee. Ronan's team lost 0-1.

Ronan's fans. Kinda hilarious seeing a group of chinese girls cheering for a french dude. Must have been his lucky day.

We later on headed over to take the petit train to see Roanne. Ronan drove us to the train station, and well, FRENCH PEOPLE DRIVE LIKE MANIACS!!! I think I have sat in enough french-driven vehicles to deduce that.

Loire Valley. Beaujolais is also located in Loire. Wineeee!!!

Nice view.

Petit Train.

We passed by hills...

And big lakes. The water was actually glistening!!! IT was really beautiful.

I think that France has lots of beautiful little villages, but you gotta drive to get to these places and stay with people there because there are no hotels around.

Halfway through the train ride, we got down to see a magician.

He did the chinese links trick, which I still cannot decipher how it works.

We ended the day by having dinner on top of the hill, overlooking many other hills.

24h de L'INSA + other randomness

2008-05-19T06:43:00.000-07:00

I was randomly browsing through facebook and clicked on an ex-project mate's (mark) profile, to find that HE IS DATING MY DISTANT COUSIN!!!!!!!! WHAT?!?!!?!! SINCE WHEN!!!!!

*faints*

***

I'm tired of studying, so I'll blog a little about random stuff that went on last week. Pictures were taken using my lousy camera, so they're a little blurry.

Thursday: went to Oscar's place for a Taiwanese party. It was fantastic, with lots of taiwanese food (which is very very similar to sg food, since we are all decedents from the same area in china).

Me, Oscar's Korean-chinese friend (wearing a girl's dress), and Oscar (wearing the typical Taiwanese uncle outfit, complete with flipflops and white singlet)

Friday: went cycling with Kane and Heqi to see this little island (Ile Barbe) in the middle of the Saone river.

We saw Colourful Lion and Bear Statues around Vieux Lyon. Apparently there is a Quebec-Lyon event going on now, so the Bears represent Quebec while the Lions are Lyon's mascot. Lyon Lion Lyon Lion, get it?

My dumb hair. Tried to be jap.

View from The little island. It was an incredibly long bicycle ride (we borrowed the Velov).

We went to play at the playground in the little island. There was honestly nothing much there, but the cycling was good exercise. Plus, I went for a jog that morning.

A french guy we met who cycled with us to the ile, Heqi, and me.

Playing in the playground.

We had lapin for dinner in school. (rabbit). Imagine how many poor rabbits thighs were eaten by us.

Friday night, the first series of 24h concerts. The music was mostly folk-ish. I stayed till the end of the concerts (went back at 2am). It's fantastic to live in campus because the concert venue was just 50m away from my block, so I could easily walk home. Very good when I needed to pee too.

Saturday

Went walking around to see what was going on. There was a 24hour cycling event, some tents selling overpriced food, and other free concerts and games. This is the sumo wrestling game where 2 people wear big sumo suits (which must be filled with dried sweat from other players) and try to knock each other down.

Also found vomit on my stairs. Lifts were not working too, so I had to climb 4 stories to my room. Thank goodness I don't stay on the 6th floor.

Bike stunts.

I went over to my german friend's house to learn how to cook chili con carne, which I will attempt to cook for my sg friends when i get back. :D

Yummm. I felt a little left out during the dinner though, coz all of them were speaking in German. However, there was a nice french girl (who lives in berlin) who came over to talk to me when she saw that I understood nothing that was going on.

Yangfang, Fengxue, Me, Kane. Taken before we went for the concert on Sat.

Sunday:
Went to see an improvisation game, and could not understand most of what the french jokes. It was a competition when the judge would give a word and both teams would have to act it in a comical manner. Something like "whose line is it anyway?". Cool stuff, pity I didn't get it.

There were fireworks at night.

People playing with fire before the fire works.

The fireworks were AWESOME. THE BEST I HAVE EVER SEEN, and this was the closest I have ever been to the fireworks. They were exploding almost right above our heads, and it wasn't as crowded as the firework fest in Esplanade.

Fireworks in campus; how cool can it get? And it wasn't like "pop".... "pop"...
There were lots of fireworks! (more than the nus grad one)

By the end of the fireworks, everyone left with a smile on their face.

2008-05-17T11:25:00.000-07:00

I attempted to cook mussels and fries today. Was lazy to cut the potatoes to fries-size, so I made wages instead.

***

I was watching some spanish mtvs on youtube (blame my mexican and Argentinian friends), and some of the videos have more than 9million views! With so many spanish speakers around, perhaps I should learn spanish too.

A ella le gusta la gasolina! :D

Pompeii

2008-05-17T05:21:00.000-07:00

My last Italian entry: Pompeii.
Pompeii is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Italy.

Pompeii is situated near the sea.

Mountains can be seen from the city. It was tough navigating through the ruins because there were no proper street signs.

The famous ash-covered citizens of pompeii.

You can even see their expression at the time they died.

Little boy huddling.

The ruins were very very well preserved because the thick layer of ash prevented air and water from corroding the buildings. It's even possible to see drawings and carvings on the walls.

Mountain.

Brothel.

We managed to finish most of the ruins in 6 hours. The area is HUGE, though some parts are still undergoing restoration works. I think it would have been better if we had joined a guided tour because there are no signs around telling you what is what. We relied on eavesdropping on other tour groups to gather information.

24H de L'INSA

2008-05-16T02:14:00.000-07:00

The biggest student event in France starts tonight, right here at INSA (apparently INSA has France's largest school compound). Students from all over france will be coming over to enjoy free concerts and events.:)

2008-05-15T07:08:00.000-07:00

- The price of consumables here went up by 0,3% in April. Great.

- Grevistes(strikes, whats new).
Here is the list of sectors going on strike today: teachers, custom officers, financiers, culture (museums), hospital agents and practiciens, la poste (post office), France telecom, France 3, France meteo. (the list is slightly longer than this)

Viva la france.

- I did a brave thing today; I went to the board to present something. During solid mechanics class every week, the teacher will call students up to present tutorial questions. Today it was my turn.

Exchange students usually have a choice to do or pass. I decided to do it, just like all french students.

It was damn scary because I didn't really do the question before-hand; my hands were shaking as I wrote. Didn't turn out too bad, though I was a bit slow because I couldn't understand what the prof wanted me to write sometimes.

Marseilles

2008-05-14T05:28:00.000-07:00

Marseilles, the third-largest metropolitan area in France, after Paris and Lyon. We only spent one miserable hour there, instead of the planned 8ish hours.

So in that one hour, we visited....

The train station.

And the Vieux port.

On the train back, I saw an article of Michelle Yeoh and her frenchman Jean Todt. 16 years age difference between them and looking quite odd.

Nice!

2008-05-13T23:41:00.000-07:00

We had a 2 hour stop-over in Nice.

This is Nice.

The Nice beach, along the Promenade des Anglais. It was a rocky beach, not a sand one. After seeing all the beautiful beaches in Corisca, seeing the one in Nice did not impress me.

Saint Nicolas Orthodox Cathedral.

Me. Ok, nothing much in Nice. We practically saw all the attractions in Nice in 2 hours.

The train ride from Nice to marseilles was beautiful because the train was travelling beside the sea.

Can see waves just beside the train. We also passed by Cannes (which is going on now), but we didn't get down to gawk at stars. :D

fait divers

2008-05-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

One thing I find very amusing is that the french really love to curse. I was watching a soccer match in Roanne, and they were cursing every single minute. And when they ran out of french words to curse, they started to curse in english. HAHAHAHa.

***

anti-sarkomania!! I found this magazine cover really funny. It's not everyday and in every country that you can find the president's picture and a vulgarity splurged across his picture.

They even have a Sarko-game on the radio station I listen to every night, where listeners are posed absurb questions about the president, like who is the sister of the president. SOOOOOOO LAMEEEEEEEEE.

I was listening to french news a few days ago and was also very surprised with how the journalists report manifestations (strikes) with so much neutrality, and giving so much airtime to the opinion of the strikers instead of the gov. You don't get that in sg.

***

I was reading a report on Paris Match (a magazine that someone left on the train) about May 1968 in France. It was when a crazy series of protests that almost led to the collapse of the French gov and led to the breakaway of the conservative way the country was ran. The protesters were mostly university students carrying black and red flags, and girls wearing short skirts to protest for liberte sexuelle.

There were also students carrying vietnam flags protesting against the Vietnam war. One of the girls interviewed said that at the time of the protests, her dad stopped talking to her after seeing her carrying the Vietnam flag on Paris Match '68.

***

Erm, also on Paris match- an article on Michelle Yeoh and Jean Todt. eeeeeks. Jean was saying "A diner de gala, j'ai vu michelle et j'ai pense: c'est elle" (A gala dinner, I saw michelle and i thought, it's her). how french.

Corsica

2008-05-12T08:37:00.000-07:00

Corsica!

This is the huge ship we took to Corsica. Reminded me of Titanic. Most of the boat was loaded with cars. We bought tickets for Pullman, not knowing it was a seat not a bed. The seats were horribly uncomfortable, so, like all the other french, I ended up sleeping on the floor instead. (These french people can sleep anywhere; it's amazing where you find them sleeping).

Corsica has lovely hills and beautiful beaches. I really underestimated the size of Corsica (my first big mistake). Corsica is 10 times bigger than Singapore! I thought it was like any other french ville that can be finished in a day. I was so wrong.

We took a bus ride over to Saint Florent. The bus ride was horrible; the road was windy and the driver was... a typical french driver, approaching bends at top speed. I ended up car sick and my friend beside me was puking half the journey. But the beach there was lovely.

Clear water, surrounded by hills. On the way back, the driver kept making fun of me (in a friendly way), and I was surprised at how I was able to counter him, IN FRENCH! WOOOO!!!!!!!!!

Our fantastic driver. We were initially very hesitant about renting a car because 1) I am underaged to drive there, 2) Nelson only had never driven a left-hand drive car before. But we did it anyway. Nelson had problems with the car initially, trying to figure out the little buttons and getting used to driving on the right side. I had to keep screaming "tOO CLOSE TOO CLOSE!! Move to the left!!!!" initially.

Me reading the map. I did try to drive the car, and it wasn't that difficult. All went well, we came back to lyon in one piece. It was also cheaper renting a car than taking train/bus since we had 4 people sharing one car.

The journey to the north of Corsica- we were driving beside the sea, on cliffs. Tres beau.

Calvi beach. We were hanging out in the shady area outside one of the hotels there.

I got quite many "tu peux parler francais tres bien!" (you can speak french very well!) compliments in Corsica, which was very encouraging for someone who has been struggling with the language since coming here.

The next day, we drove to the south of Corsica.

We stopped by every now and then at beaches to rest, since our destination was 2 hours away.

Me, Yangfang, Yaochen, Nelson.

We passed by Vinyards.

Nice beach...

Another nice beach...

Finding our destination (plage de palombaggia) was really tough. There were, as usual, no street signs for it. I only saw a tiny "La Mer" sign and we followed it, and viola!

Eating lunch beside the sea. We dapao-ed food there to eat. I bought paella, which was yuuuummy and cheaper than in Spain.:D Wierd how I tasted Paella in France, not in Spain.

Drinking Corsican wine. The beach was, like all the other Corsican beaches, quiet and quite empty, unlike the beaches in Toulon and Nice. I weighed myself carrying a small bag in Corsica, and I was 55kg. AGH!!!!!!!! C'est pas vrai!!!!

Wind surfers.

On the road back..

We stopped by a vinyard for degustation.

Boy did we have a good time when the dude showed us a row of whisky bottles and said we could go ahead and try whatever we liked. There was also cheese for tasting.

What happened after was... insane. I really panicked when we got back and the car shop was closed.

I kept saying "Je veux retourner ma voiture" to everyone and people kept correcting me, saying "tu veux RENDRE la voiture." There are two different words for "return" in french.

Sun rise. We got up at 515am to rush down to the ship station to buy the tickets back to Nice once the office opened. We were very very lucky to get a FULL refund for our tickets for the ship we missed. We had to top up 14 euros for this ship to nice though.

Having lunch on the ship deck.
Some famous Corsican people include Alizée and Napoléon Bonaparte. But we didn't have time to visit Napoleon's birth place in Ajaccio.
The french also like to say Corsicans have an island mentality. But I am not sure what that means exactly.

Well, despite all the merde there, Corsica is one place I will definitely go back to one day (provided I still can speak french then, hahaha).

Roma!

2008-05-12T04:13:00.000-07:00

Rome! Yea, Rome wasn't built in a day.

We were eating Italian food everyday, and honestly, I don't think Italian pasta tastes any different in Italy than in anywhere else. The pizzas are better, though.

We visited Vatican City, the smallest state in the world! (No I didn't have to get my passport chopped there, har har). We visited the Vatican museum, a must-see in Rome. And, yes! I saw the 4 Raphael rooms!!! In fact I spent quite a long time in the Raphael rooms just admiring and taking in the paintings. It was a wonderful feeling.

And of course, the famous God creates Adam by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel! Very very very gorgeous. I spent lots of time in that room too just to admire all the paintings there. It was really really crowded and the guard was being irritating, asking people to shut up and stop taking photos.

Vatican church.

The Vatican Walls.

Vatican guards.

The statues atop the church.

I have been to many duomos and Notre Dames, but I have to say the Vatican tops it all. All my pictures taken in the church doesn't do the interior of the church justice, but it was HUGE, with tall marble pillars, marble flooring.

Trevi fountain! We threw a coin over our shoulder into the fountain to ensure our return back to Rome. I was telling Fengxue perhaps we could come back together to Rome in 20 years time; by then we won't have to eat lousy food and stay in cheap youth hostels where we have to share 2 toilets with 30 people.

Erm, another drawing of Fengxue.:P

CHINESE FOOD! It was the cheapest and most decent food in Rome, seriously. The chopsticks have instructions on how to use chopsticks, so funny.

Drawing I did of a very nice statue of an angel I saw on the roadside.

SPQR on the roadcovers. Stands for the latin slogan "Senātus Populusque Rōmānus".

We visited the Colossium on our day of departure. I have to admit the one in Verona was better preserved and more impressive for me.

The opening of this magnific colossium was inaugurated by Titus. HAHA!

Ok we also visited the ancient ruins of Rome but i am lazy to post pictures.:)

Toulon

2008-05-12T02:36:00.001-07:00

Ok I will continue with my bagpacking posts later on. I feel absolutely tempted to do this series first because I loved the beaches in Corsica. :D:D:D

We went to Toulon and spent a day there because our ship to Corsica was due to leave from Toulon.

Toulon, honestly, has nothing spectacular.

Port.

It has France's biggest naval base.

And 3 beaches crowded with angmos. No single asian around.

Well Toulon was so boring, we spent the afternoon just sun tanning to pass the time. We did see our share of toplessness, which was quite... eeks.

Sun set.

Yea, That's Toulon.

my crazy holiday.

2008-05-11T13:30:00.000-07:00

My toulon-corsica-marseilles trip managed to turn into a toulon-corsica-nice-marseilles trip.

(one of the many deserted beaches in Corsica)

Ok, initially everything went well. We got to Toulon, took a boat to Corsica. I slept on the disgusting floor because the seats were so awful; we should have paid more for a room.

The problems came in Corsica. It is impossible to get around Corsica because the transport system there is terrible. It is the product of monopoly; each route is monopolised by a bus company, so they can afford to have horrible timings and only make one trip/day.

I know my mom is gonna kill me for this, but we rented a Peugeot 207 for one day for 93 euros (cheap because it was shared between 4 of us).

I didn't drive on the big road because I am underaged to do so (must be above 25), so Nelson (my friend's boyfriend) did all the driving while I did the directing since all the signs are in french and since I was the only other person with a driving license.

The huge problem came when we wanted to return the car; the rental shop was CLOSED. We really panicked then, and I started calling every possible number I could that was printed on the rental slip, to no avail. Next thing I did was to find other car rental companies for help, and we caught the salesperson at Hertz before they closed.

Like the typical french treatment, she was telling me she's Hertz not Europcar and hence she couldn't help us. After some persuasion (french people like to make you admit that you made a mistake, that you're an idiot), she gave me the number for Europcar at the airport.

Soooo.. we rushed to the airport to return the car. While all this was happening, my 3 friends were close to clueless what was happening because every conversation I had was in french, and I was only giving commands without explaining what was going on because I was really panicking.

Well, we managed to return the car, and we missed our boat back to Toulon. When I realized we missed the boat, I wanted to scream. It was one crazy event followed by another. So we stayed another night in Corsica (we packed 4 people in a 3 person room; the guy slept on the single bed while we 3 girls squeezed on a queen sized bed).

The next day, we took a boat to Nice instead (we got our tickets refunded!), and from Nice, took a train to Marseilles, then back to Lyon. We managed to spend 3 hours in Nice and 1 hour in Marseilles, instead of the planned 8 hours in Marseilles.

As if all the action in one day wasn't enough, on the tram back, the ticket checkers came onto our train! Thank goodness I spotted them before the train doors opened, and ran to composte tickets for my friend and I before the dudes got in. Damn, my eyes are really very sharp nowadays. First Barcelona (with the bag-almost-got-stolen incident), now the ticket checkers.

Ok more pictures from my crazy holiday after I finish with my 3 week bagpacking posts.

PS happy mothers day!

on the road, again

2008-05-07T14:13:00.000-07:00

I am going to Toulon, Corsica, and Marseilles for this long weekend. (tomorrow's a holiday, Friday no class,Sat , Sun, Monday's a holiday).

Will be back on sunday. seeeeeeeeeeya!

****

My german friend was looking through my photos a few days ago and he stumbled across my photo of me eating Turtle soup. He wasn't too easy with the idea of eating Turtle. Later on, he saw another photo of me eating snake soup in HK. HAHAHAHa.

Well, let's just say he didn't talk to me for the next few days. LOL!

***

I cooked chicken rice for my french friend and his taiwanese boyfriend last night, and it was a success!! Woots!

On a different note, I realized that Singapore is very much like Taiwan. Our accent is the same (coz we come from around the same region of China), small land space, NS obligatoire, East-west influence (though Taiwan is more American). The taiwanese guy was very intelligent. He could speak french, chinese, english and german (all fluently), and knows the history of art very well. Well travelled too. And can cook well (or so he claims).

I've got a good impression of Taiwanese people now.

Pisa

2008-05-06T03:46:00.000-07:00

On the way to Rome, we stopped by Pisa to take a look at, what else, the leaning tower of Pisa!

Viola! No, it hasn't tumbled yet, but the tilt was more obvious than I thought it would be. And yes it is possible to go up there now. It was closed for 11 years because it was deemed dangerous to go up, but reopened to public in 2001. They also dug a hole underground at one side to straighten the tower (application of moments of mechanics here). The number of visiters are now limited so as not to retilt it too much again.

The leaning tower is actually the bell tower of the duomo (church) of Pisa.

We forked out a hefty 15 euros to ascend the TOWER ONLY. You have to pay another sum of money to go into the church itself. Well, the view up there was beautiful.

The tilt is actually very obvious when you are up there. We had to climb up a narrow flight of stairs to reach the top because there are no lifts in the tower. (Hence I think it's good to travel when you are young; stair-climbing won't be such a chore).

The top. Can you imagine, Galileo Galilei dropped the two metal balls from here a few hundred years ago (to test the relation between mass and descending speed)! :D:D

The bells.

Sketch of the tower, done on the train to Rome. One side of the tower is also built longer than the other side because when it started to lean, the builders started to build one side longer to compensate for the lean. So it looks a little like a banana now if you observe it carefully.
Well, no doubt this tower is quite screwed up, I think it's a must see in Italy. :)

au revoir, mon ami!

2008-05-06T00:05:00.000-07:00

My good friend Jean (French born chinese) will be leaving for Shanghai for his internship later today. He has been really really nice to me, helping out with my schoolwork, listening to all my grumbles and offering words of encouragement when I feel I'm fighting a losing battle here. And of course, bringing me around school functions and being patient with my horrible french. In fact I think my french improved a lot thanks to him, because I am forced to speak french to him.

Me and Jean, taken in my room. He came to say goodbye.

Alors, c'est triste que tu vas sortir de la pays avant moi. Merci pour tous, bonne chance avec le stage et bonne voyage! N'oublie pas- viens a Singapour!:D

***
I realize that I keep cleaning my room, almost on a daily basis. I can't live with a dirty room; I can live with a messy room, but not a dirty one. Perhaps I am too used to having a clean room in singapore (coz my maid cleans it everyday).=(

firenze

2008-05-05T14:45:00.000-07:00

Florence!

Heh, I think no one will want to travel with me after they see this picture. I drew this picture of my travel mate while she was sleeping on the train to Florence.

The campsite we stayed there was the worst I have ever stayed in. It was terribly cold at night (partly due to the fact that the campsite was perched on the mountain), and there was NO HEATER IN THE TENT (this is suicide during winter)!!! It got so bad that fengxue and I slept together on the same bed on the first night with 3 layers of blanket.

But the view from the camp was awesome.

Florence has 2 fake davids, one of them at Galleria Uffizi (where there are loads of other statues there). You can see part of the "FREE TIBET" red banner behind David. Don't ask me why or how this free tibet campaign is related to Italy.

We also visited the Uffizi museum (which houses. We had to line up for 2 hours to get in because we didn't make a reservation.

Ponte Vecchio, which was the only bridge in Florence that was not bombed during WW2. People would also put padlocks there and throw the keys into the river, sorta like locking their love eternally there. soooooooo lameeeeeeee.

Nice shot of the river.

View from Pizza Michelangelo. We met a Beijing TV producer (working in US) and we brought him up here. Nice guy, had dinner with him and listened to lots of his life stories. He treated us to beer, and wine later on at the campsite, overlooking the city at night.

Last but not least, the second david, atop pizza michelangelo. :)

funny picture du jour

2008-05-04T14:27:00.000-07:00

Someone sent me a ppt slides of sarkozy/carla bruni jokes. I thought this was quite funny (for those who can read french and understand french politics):

I just came back from my friend's house in Roanne(Loire). Damn, it's the most beautiful place I have ever been to (pictures up later on). And I still think France is one of the most beautiful countries in the world.

Venice

2008-05-03T03:38:00.000-07:00

I loved Venice. It's very unique, nothing like anywhere I have been. Other than being famous for it's gondolas, it's also famous for Gelato, and the Gelatos there are really cheap!

We had a real tough time finding our camping ground (yea, we stayed in a camp because it was cheaper). We got off the bus at the wrong stop because the bus driver cocked up and told us to get off at the wrong stop. So we ended up in the middle of NOWHERE, like there was only one house there and forest all around. Thank goodness this kind person living there gave us directions to our camping ground.

We had to walk to our camp site outside of venice, and it was cold, dark and raining. Plus there were no pedestrian walkways so we had to walk on this really windy two lane road. Cars were whizzing past just inches away from us, and I was really scared because if a drunk driver comes along we'll be dead. Or if someone kills us and dumps us in the forest, no one would know.

Our camp. The room had a heater, thank goodness. But we didn't bathe there because the toilet was some distance away from the camp and it was open air. Venice was really really cold and rainy.

Venice! Made up of 117 little islands and a zillion bridges. Every few meters you walk is a bridge. There are no cars in venice; only boats, boats and more boats.

People going about their daily lives in venice.

It was really tough navigating around Venice because there are so many little islands and so many bridges without names. Some roads also lead to dead ends. The tourists maps were not free either! what a rip-off!! We were lucky that a malaysian woman we met at the breakfast area in Verona gave us her Venice map before we went there. (She identified our nationality through our singaporean accent)

The famous ponte di rialto

WE LOVE CHEAP GELATO! 1 euro! We ate gelatos everyday when we were in Italy. :D

Gondolas. Gondolas are mainly for tourists to tour the area. We wanted to take one but it costs 80euros for a boat, max 6 people.

Ok one thing about the cost of the Gondola rides is that it is flexible. It was initially 150, then after that 120. After we walked away, one of the gondola rowers came up to us and said 100. After a few more steps, it was 80euros (student price). We didn't take it because they couldn't hit our target price.

We took the Traghetto instead. The Traghetto is used by the Venetians to cross the big rivers, and only costs 50cents, but the ride is only about 90seconds.

Fengxue and me very excited before the ride.

One rower in front..

And another at the back.

Ohlala. San Marco! Filled with pigeons and tourists.

Inside the palazzo.

Famous Venetian masks. More famous characters are: pinocchio (Yes he is Italian), joker and the fox.

The sea.

We spent a total of 1.5 days in Venice. No doubt the attraction places are touristic and it can get pretty squeezy because most of the walkways are narrow, there are some parts of venice that are less touristic and none the less beautiful too. It's a city like no other.

Verona

2008-05-02T04:49:00.000-07:00

Our lodgement in Verona turned out to be a ......4 star hotel!!! We had the BEST breakfast there and for 28 euros we had a whole room with our own toilet to ourselves!!! But we had to walk 1km from the busstop to the hotel. -__-

Oh, and most of the bus rides we took in Italy were... free :P We didn't validate our tickets.

Nice building.

We had pizza for dinner. We had to wait half an hour for it, but it was the best pizza I had in Italy. Maybe because this pizza shop was no where near the tourist area.
We bought a Verona card which gave us free transport and free access to all the attractions in Verona.

The Arena in Verona.

I thought the one in Verona was better preserved than that in Rome.

Juliet! We visited Juliet's house (from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet). People touch her boobs for good luck.

Mentions of Verona in Romeo and Juliet:

Two households, both alike in dignity
(In fair Verona, where we lay our scene)
—William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, The Prologue

There is no world without Verona walls,
But purgatory, torture, hell itself.
Hence-banished is banish'd from the world,
And world's exile is death.
—William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene III

Juliet's Balcony

The river that cuts through Verona.

View from one of Verona's tower.

The love well in Verona, which was incredibly difficult to find because it was tucked behind some residential houses. People leave locks there.

Last but not least... Juliet's Tomb.

bresca

2008-05-02T04:19:00.000-07:00

We were supposed to take a train over to Verona from Milan. However, because milan was sooooo boring, we decided to take an earlier train over. When we purchased our tickets, the dude at the ticket counter told us we could take the 3,4 or 5pm trains. So instead of taking the 4pm train, we took the 3pm train.

Well, the whole train station was chaotic because it was difficult to find which train berth we were supposed to be at. We then got up the train and forgot to composite our tickets, which we only found out after the train started moving. That threw us into a frenzy.

THEN, the conductor came and told us we had to pay 10 more euros for this train because reservation is obligatoire. Trust me, we weren't the only ones caught off guard; there were other italians who were surprised too.

To cut the long story short, I told the dude there was no way I was gonna pay for a train to the same destination, and it wasn't my fault because the ticket seller said I could take this train.

So we got kicked out at the next stop, Bresca! We explored the city without maps for one hour before the next train came.

Ok la, nothing much to see in Bresca.

milano!

2008-05-01T15:23:00.000-07:00

Ok, admittedly, there is nothing much to see in Milan. But the clothes there are fantastic and not too expensive. In other words, it IS really a fashion capital.

We took an overnight bus out of Lyon on 11th April night and reached Milan at 6am in the morning. The bus was filled with noisy boy scouts who seemed amused at playing peek a boo at us (which wasn't very amusing at 2am when you need to sleep badly) so we didn't sleep much.

Congregation of pigeons. Europe is FILLED with these birds. There are some trickers will try to put bird seeds on your hands and after the birds have eaten the seeds, they will tell you to pay for it. We were warned about this before we went so we didn't fall for it.

One of the very few attractions- the Duomo.

We paid to go up and gawk at the world's largest number of marble statues atop a church.

Heh. Milanese have 2000 statues constantly watching over their every move from the top of the duomo.

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, reputed to be the world's oldest shopping mall.

The inside.

And, voila, LV.

We also checked out the rich man quarter. Its said to be a good place to people watch, but we went there too early, so all the supermodels and rich people were probably sleeping.

The whole place was filled with branded-goods shops. Yea, name it and you'll find it there. It was really exciting to see them all in one tiny street.

miumiu.

Burberry, my fav. We didn't go into any stores though. Too poor. And there were so many D&Gs. There would be one D&G or macdonalds in every few streets.

We had dinner with a German dude working in Swiss for an american company (PwC) that we met while we were trying to find our hostel.

We also wanted to go to see the last supper painting by Leonardo Da Vinci, but you have to make a reservation to go to the museum, and you have to do so at least one week in advance. So... no reservation = no see.

One very important thing to do if you want to visit museums in Italy is to make a reservation, else you either don't get to see it, or wait at least 2 hours to get in (which we did in Florence).

Horse Statue done by Leonardo Da Vinci.

AC and Inter milan football stadium. Looked quite run down from the outside.

We managed to act like lost tourists and sneaked into the horse race course to see the horses training. :P

Dog with low center of gravity.

So... as you can see, milan is mostly a shopping paradise.

20 days, 12 cities.

2008-05-01T15:20:00.000-07:00

I am back in Lyon, in one piece. Very tired, but will start blogging about my trips.

I had to walk back to my place from the train station since the buses, taxis and trams were not working because the workers were out protesting.

lisbon

2008-04-28T22:13:00.000-07:00

hello all! i am currently in Lisbon, Portugal. It is now 6:14am and I am gonna catch the 8am bus to Porto.

Will be returning to Lyon on the first of May. Till then..!!

hola from barcelona!

2008-04-22T13:47:00.000-07:00

Hello! i am now in Barcelona! Weather has been fantastic, but Barca is dangerous. I almost had my bag stolen last night.

The man U VS Barcelona match will be played here tomorrow. I will be visiting the barcelona stadium tomorrow morning before the match, and will be watching the match from my hostel at night. Will also be going to Mango and Zara tomorrow to shop for spanish clothes!

Tomorrow is also the Catalan valentines day, where guys will give girls flowers and in return, girls will give guys a book. :S

And on thursday, F1 in barcelona! I met a singaporean sailor during dinner who told me his boss owns one of the F1 Ferrari teams (Indian team). One of my hostel mates is also going to watch the F1. As for me, I will be flying off to Madrid on Thursday noon. Seeya!

(Note to tata: Sorry havent taken photo of what you wanted yet)

hello from rome!

2008-04-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

hello .. all the way from Roma, Italy, the land where 90% of the words end with a vowel(yes, i am serious about that).

My trip has been quite a fun one so far. Met some fantastic people, saw many fantastic stuff, got into a disagreement with the train conductor and got chased out of a train.

I have been to milan, brescia (was not planned. we ended up there because i refused to pay an extra 5 euros to stay on the train to verona, long story.), verona, venice, florence, and now i am in rome. will be going to pompei tomorrow, and leaving for spain the day after.

Seeya guys soon!

insa lyon

2008-04-11T04:05:00.001-07:00

The NTU girls are leaving soon, so we decided to take a group picture of us singaporean exchange students (there are 12 of us here) in INSA Lyon. I'm glad the photo taking session turned out well. Many thanks to Kane for taking the photos and sending the email :D

Group photo outside Le Bleah (Bleah because the food there is comme merde, like shit), where we have our dinners and lunch (sometimes).

Against the backdrop of the industrial-like buildings of Insa.

The NTU kids, who are not here for exchange but for FYP and internship. Picture taken in a small park near campus, where the angmo undergrads love to go and lie on the grass.

The NUS kids.

The NUS ladies! From left: wangyi, heqi, me, fengxue. I'm the only singaporean.

I'll miss these guys because we've gone through pain, heartbreaks, struggles (with school), frustrations (with the langauge) and tears together. I guess throwing a group of people in a foreign land where language is a barrier can unite people.

2008-04-10T10:34:00.000-07:00

I will be gone for the next three weeks. I will be going to Italy (Milan, Verona, Venice, Florence, Pisa, Rome, Pompei), Spain (Barcelona, Madrid) and Portugal (Lisbon et Porto).

Amongst the three languages (Italian, spainish and Portuguese), I find Italian the most difficult. Oh well, hope all goes well.

***

As some of you guys know (yea, all 2 of you), the olympic flame was here in paris a few days ago. And lo and behold, some people decided to create trouble, some of which are not even from the region in question. A case of "eat already nothing better to do"?

And one of my friends said something very interesting. She said that the concept of "human rights" is a western concept, not an eastern one.

blablabla.

Berlin

2008-04-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

Or "ber-lahn", as the french pronouce it.

First and foremost, I LOVED BERLIN, though I think it's the kind of city that you can only visit once, unlike Paris. Yea, Berlin has got to be my fav travel destination so far.

Touch down at Berlin Airport.

We had Germany soups for dinner at a restaurant (because everything else was expensive). I forgot the names of the soup.

After dinner, we dropped by a toy store located near our hostel. This toy store was quite small, but it was FILLED with toys!

The owner was very friendly too.

Ok, it's not that I am short, but our tour guide was REALLY TALL. We took a walking tour (not the free one), and I strongly recommend it to anyone going to Berlin. It's not worth going to berlin and not talking a tour because you won't enjoy Berlin unless you know the history behind it.

Fallen chair artpiece to commorate the war. Apparently during the war, some soldiers stomped into a certain lawyer's house one night and the lawyer tried to stop them and got killed. He fell over his chair and died and... viola. The scene was like that.
This is eastern berlin; the buildings in Eastern Berlin are mostly Brownish, while those in West Berlin are more modern looking and more colourful.

Bullet holes in the buildings still visible. Sometimes you'll also notice empty spaces in the middle of a row of houses; those houses were most likely bombed and beyond repair, so the gov just scrapped the whole building, leaving a gap.

World's largest Jewish synagogue. It is guarded 24/7 by policemen and is located in the red light district. So at night, you can see prostitues walking around and talking to policemen in front of the church. Sin, God and Death, all in one place. Nice.

Cool building. Berlin is SUCH an arty farty place! I loved the art scene; so spontaneous.

This is a building for budding artists. They only pay like 1,50 to rent a room here. And the building is filled with graffiti.

The courtyard.

Inside the building, you can open any door and if its not locked, you can enter any room you like. Yea, including toilet.

They even made use of the piano strings to make the fence. :D

Berlin's Green/Red man is another trademark. It came from Eastern Berlin, and it was designed so that little kids will wait patiently for the cute green man to appear before crossing the road.

Me gorging like a pig, so classic.
Anyway this is Currywurst, sausage with curry powder. Food is cheap in Berlin! I was shocked when I went to the supermarket; everything was cheaper than that in france! WHY WHY WHY did I not study in berlin instead!

The champs Elysee of Berlin.

The stereotype about Germans is that they are very strict and meticulous people. But numbering trees! gosh.

British Embassy. the Wierd blocks in the middle is supposed to resemble a SHIP. Well, it does not look anything like a ship to me. It is worth checking out the american embassy too; it's SWAMPED with policemen and you're not allowed to take pictures of the embassy, hence no pictures here.

Hotel Aldon, the ritz of berlin, situated right outside the Brandenburg Gate. It's where Michael Jackson did the baby-swinging thing, at the 3rd story balcony.

This is the interior of one of the buildings next to the Brandenburg Gates. Supposed to resemble a fish swimming.

Viola! Brandenburg Gates! And I just spoilt the picture for you by posing in front of it, ha ha ha!

Picture of how the Berlin Wall was built AROUND the Brandenburg gates.

The line paved with stones represents where the Berlin wall was. If you wanted to cross from East to West Berlin before 1990, you would have to: climb over one wall, run through guards, run through barbed wires, run through many many other obstacles, climb over another wall. IT was not easy at all. Some people made it, many others didn't.

Reigstag, the parliament house. It was burnt in 1933 before the elections, and after that the Reichstag Fire Decree was put in place to punish anyone who was against the nazis. Who burnt the parliament house is still a mystery.

Entry to go up was free, so of course we went. This is the view of the glass dome.

ME

Interior of the dome.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe aka Holocast memorial. Very controversial memorial which cost 25 mill euros to build. From the outside, the cement blocks look very short... but when you go in...

Yea, they are NOT short. Some thoughts that I felt as I walked through the memorial: the walkways are one-person wide, so you are forced to make a solo journey through it. It's also very easy to lose your friends in there (because of the sharp edges of the cement blocks).

Can hardly see much of the sky.

:) I made it out alive.

Checkpoint Charlie, the disneyland of paris. You've gotta pay these guys to take photos with them, and they are strippers by night.

I ABSOLUTELY love this signboard, i don't know why.

BERLIN WALL (there is only a small section remaining).

Kane on the West side of berlin, me on the East.

Decorated pieces of the wall. Lots of berlin people own a small section/piece of the wall. There were good and bad consequences of the fall of the wall, but ultimately I think capitalism works better than communism. One East Berliner I talked to told me that he was really happy when the wall came down because he could watch the lastest James Bond movie.

Hitler's baby photo. I belong to the "hilter is crazy" camp, but I still think he was incredibly eloquent.

This is a memorial of empty book shelves outside a library in berlin (Bebelplatz),and there is a plague beside this memorial that quotes a phrase from a German Writer:
"Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen"
(Where they burn books, they will also burn humans in the end). Very chilling parallels to what happened there in 1933, considering this phrase was written more than 100 years before the book burning event.

This was where Hilter and his wife of less than 40 hours commited suicide, 50m below in a bunker. Lots of people like to stomp/piss at this patch of grass.

:)
I love berlin!

MERDE

2008-04-08T04:35:00.000-07:00

The cost of the tram tickets has risen!!!

xin (En ligne) says:
DAMNIT
the cost of tram tickets has went up

poopy is addicted to traveling says:
yes it went up on 1st april

xin (En ligne) says:
DAMNIT
how did u know

poopy is addicted to traveling says:
on the paper

xin (En ligne) says:
why no strike?!

poopy is addicted to traveling says:
........

GREVE GREVE GREVE!!! I will gladly join the greve contra l'augmentation de la prix du billet.

***
I bought a book today called "talk to the snail, ten commandments for understanding the french".

Getting really busy studying. Yea, I'm in deep merde and on my way to failing at least 2 modules.

random

2008-04-06T14:55:00.000-07:00

oh Man the weather is CRAZZY. Its gonna snow in the north and north eastern part of France tomorrow. And it's APRIL! And its gonna be 0degrees tomorrow morning here. COLDDD!!!

I watched benjamin britten's a midsummer night's dream at the l'opera de Lyon last night. I am not a fan of modern works, and found it a little difficult to appreciate this opera intially. I also didn't read the synopsis before going so I was a little lost in the beginning. But things picked up after awhile and I enjoyed the opera very much! Definately worth the 10 euros I paid, and I got pretty good seats. There was even an orchestra there in the pit, and the sets were fantastic.

I can't wait for Porgy and Bess next month :D

I cooked char siew for lunch today. Yummy stuff! This was the first time I cooked pork, and I was quite disgusted after handling the pork because raw pork smells bad. Like, seriously disgusting. But yummy to eat.

And I cooked the best steak meal I've done so far for dinner today. It took me TWO FREAKING HOURS to prepare this meal. The steak was done the way I liked to eat steak: 1/4 rare, and the rosti was good.:D

After dinner, I popped by Florian's room to catch up on stuff and I tried some of his interesting food. This is russian bread with poor man's caviar- the fish eggs. Costs 2 euros/bottle but tastes just like caviar. I also had asparagus with mustard+vinegar, fromage blanc, and Camembert cheese. Yums!!!

paris, je t'aime

2008-04-04T14:33:00.000-07:00

I spent my birthday in Paris, the most visited city and the supposedly most romantic city on earth (not true).

Paris is simply HUGEEE. And there are SO MANY LITTLE STREETS in paris, making navigating there a pain in the arse. Even the metro lines are confusing. Lyon only has 4 metro lines; paris has like, 8 + RER lines. Gosh.

I reached Paris on sat morning via TGV. The lyon-paris TGV line is the fastest around. And I was lucky to get first class seats, though I was stuck seating behind a group of noisy american kids throughout the journey.

PARIS! Something really funny happened; one of my friends who could not read french was cursing away because he thought that the C on the tap meant COLD, only to turn on the tap and find hot water flowing out.

Well, C stands for Chaud, which is HOT. F stands for froid, which means cold.

There was a manifestation going on down the street from where I lived.

Yea, viva la france! et les manifestations! et les greves! quoi d'autres?
This manifestation was for the handicap, because they only get 628euros/month and they want more.

Fantastic string ensemble outside the Louvre. The acoustics around there was fantastic. You feel as though you are living in Mozart's time, walking around the old buildings and listening to classical music being played along the sidewalk.

LOUVRE!!!!! I was soooo happy to finally see the Louvre in full glory! I snapped many pictures of the darn pyramid from different angles. All pictures came out more or less the same.-___-

Mini arc de tromphe.

Eiffel tower!

Notre Dame de Paris. It was so insanely crowded and there was a lonnnnnng queue to get in, so I gave it a miss.

I went into the Louvre musee on my birthday, 30th march. It is simply impossible to finish the Louvre in one day. C'est PAS POSSIBLE.

The louvre consists of 3 buildings having 4 stories each.

Speaking of my birthday, I got cheated because the daylight savings time kicked in on my birthday (at 30th march 2am, the time jumped to 3am), so I lost 1 hour. Yea, 23 hour birthday. I spent 30th and 31th march being very confused about the time because some of the clocks in Paris were not adjusted to the correct time.

Anyway, LOUVRE!

The inside of the glass pyramid.

Famous painting La Liberté guidant le peuple by Eugène Delacroix. Notice that the two victorious subjects are minorities.

THE FAMOUS MONA LISA!!! There were soooooo many people crowding in front of her, making it impossible to admire it for long at close range.

Aphrodite, aka Venus of Milo.

Next day... visit to the Eiffel tower!

At Champs Elysee.

Eiffel tower, the mega lightning rod of Paris, hehe. When it was first built, the parisians hated it. When the Louvre pyramid was first built, the parisians also hated it. And when the esplanade was first built, the singaporeans hated it too. hahahah.

Eiffel tower again! We had a choice to walk up or take a lift up. Since the queue for walking was short, we walked up. The key to visiting attractions in Paris is to go as early as possible to beat the insane queues.

From the top down.

View from the 2ieme etage.

OYSTERS for lunch. The fantastic thing about paris is, all the road-side resturants I ate in served fantastic food. The thing about french cuisine is that there is high weightage on presentation and service. We had oysters(flat Belons! Bretagnes!), crevettes and escargots. So french! And the meals are not very expensive; you can get a 2 course meal for around 20 euros.

Monday was spent in Disneyland (the only disneyland in europe)! I made a mistake and used the wrong ticket to take the RER to disneyland. Instead of using the 6 euro ticket, I used a normal 1 euro ticket. So we had to climb over the barrier to get out of the train station.

Disneyland is made up of 2 parcs: the studio parc and the parc with all the fun rides. Since I knew we won't have time to cover both, we bought the ticket for one parc.

Studio parc.

fun parc! :D:D:D

GOOFY!!!!!!!! I had the guts to take photos with these characters because I was the only BIG KID doing so.

Mickey! Mickey speaks french.

Sleeping beauty's castle.

Roller coaster. I rode all the scary roller coasters, those with high limits. Yes, I managed to ride them even with the high limits, I am not THAT SHORT. Out of the 4 scary rides, 2 of them had 360degree turns, so this was my first time doing those.

The perpetually smiling cat from alice in wonderland.

Alice in wonderland maze.

Alice in wonderland house.

"its a small world after all" ride!

They had little dolls representing all the continents. This one is obviously France.

Dolls!

Pluto! There were so many kids crowding around him to get autographs, it was so paisae to ask him to take a photo with me.

Space mountain! I got a little car sick after this ride.

Before leaving Disneyland, We managed to catch the march pass of the little disney characters.

Beauty and the beast.

Snow white.
There were many other characters like aladin, mickeymouse + co, sleeping beauty, little mermaid.

escargots!

I went to the most posh boutique I've ever been to my life in Paris-the Cartier boutique. They actually hired one dude to just open the door, and two women to stand near the door to dish out honey-coated "bonjour"s and "au revoir"s to you. It's just Crazy. If you are a poor man like me and go in, you'll certainly feel very uncomfortable.

The real Arc de Tromphe.

THE LV shop in Paris. It's 3 stories filled with LV stuff- clothes, shoes, watches, wallets, bags, jewelery.

Inside of the big LV store. Of the 5 days I spent there, I went to LV 4 times. Twice to the big LV, twice to the small one in Gallery Lafayette. Talk about LV overdose, I don't think I want to see another LV bag in the next 3 months.

One amazing thing about the LV boutiques was that it was FILLED with asians. Like, 3/4 of the customers were asians. At Gallery Lafayette, almost all the service staff were asians too. It felt as though I stepped into Chinatown. But it was also heartening to know that asians are getting more affluent. :)

Our loot! Nar, I didn't buy any LV bags for myself, though it felt really cool to go up to the salesperson and say "Je prends ca, ca... et ca" when helping my friends buy their stuff. I got the chance to see the LV bag I have been eyeing since last year up close, and boy was I disappointed! It didn't look as nice up close. :(

Oysters and crevettes for my last dinner there.

I love oysters =)

fetes!

2008-04-03T07:56:00.000-07:00

Was invited to a my german friend's room last week to try out some of his cooking. He calls me "essen" online. hahahahaha.

He cooked some mexican beans for us. Yum! I also learned how to play GO!, which I totally sucked at and lost badly. It was funny how he had to try to explain the game to me in English because I couldn't speak German. Doesn't help that I am quite a sotong at brain games.

***

Dumpling soiree organized by the Chinese students!

Wangyi, Seb (from canada) and Wudi making dumplings.
It was a fantastic soiree. I learned how to make dumplings, so maybe I can organize one in sg next time too! :)

Wudi, Seb and Heqi.

Dumplings made by me. There was a mini UN in the soiree: we had a singaporean (me), a few chinese, 1 thai, 1 mexican, 1 french, 1 thai. We were all listening to chinese music and speaking french, hahaha.

From left: Fengxue's french roomie, Fengxue and seb tasting the dumplings. Yea, it was later on that I found out the soiree was to celebrate Seb and my birthday. How sweet. thanks guys!

DUCK!!!! ROAST DUCK!!! AGHH!! It was SOOOO great to eat this. Fengxue bought it from chinatown and it cost 20euros (41sgd). yikes!!!

***

Some of the TGV trains are so hi-tech that even the toilet doors are operated by technology. You press the buttons to open and shut the doors. It gets quite scary because you don't know whether you can trust technology to lock the toilet door.

Strasbourg

2008-03-28T01:47:00.000-07:00

We reached Strasbourg on Sunday night, and it was FREEZING. I think the temperature was about -5 degrees and we had to walk about 20 minutes to the hostel.Brrrr.

The weather in Strasbourg, however, got better in the morning.

Palais de Justice

Wonderful weather.

Place de la republique.

Some really funky looking buildings in Strasbourg. Strasbourg was once a german ville until it was liberated by France in WW2.

There is a HUGE cathedral in Strasbourg. Like, real huge.

One of the horlorge in the Church. At 1230, the little dolls on the clock will start to dance. I waited to watch it and it was.... so so only.

See the two statues behind me? The one on the left represents the old testament of the bible and the one on the right represents the new testament.

Well, the weather got Reeeally crummy towards the afternoon. It was snowing really badly and it got REEEALLY cold. We headed over to a little island called petite france after watching the little dolls dance.

The german-inspired buildings.

Ok I'm kinda lazy to upload more photos and write more stuff. To cut the long story short, we got to the train station around 5ish to catch our 5 hour train back to lyon.

Nice TGV station.

Nancy

2008-03-28T01:13:00.000-07:00

Nancy, pronounced as "nun-cy" here.

To me, nancy wasn't that fantastic. Just a so so ville, but just like every ville, there is that special place in Nancy that is a must see.

Damn these french are smart. They disperse all the attractions in different villes to make you travel more to see them. Why can't they put all in one place!:P

inside of a church

statue.

Credit lyonnais building.
For some strange reason, some buildings which are attractions were taken over by banks. We were looking at the BNP paribas, societe generale and Credit Lyonnais buildings.

Inside of the credit lyonnais building. So chic, hor?

Protestant temple.

We had a pretty decent traditional 3 course lunch. I had the "honour" of ordering food in french. I had learnt how to do that like, eons ago in Alliance Francais, and I forgot how to say "medium rare" in french. :( I only knew bien cuite and Bleue.

None-the-less, the food was yummy. :)

After lunch, my aunt and my mom went to the museum with Yangfang and Yaochen, while I went on my own to explore more of nancy.

Porte Desilles at place du luxembourg, dedicated to military men who died for the country in indochine and korea.

place de la citedelle.

Church.

Palais Ducal.

The courtyard of the palais.

There was a huge park behind the palais, the parc de la pepiniere.

Garden clock. Reminds me of the one I saw in Geneva.

There was another FREE ZOO there. Darn, there are so many free zoos in france. I saw some monkeys from our beloved neighbour, Java.

Place de la carriere... which leads to the famous Place stanslas.

Check out the golden gates.

I love blue skies.

Place Stanlas, to me, is the only attraction of nancy. This is one of the side gates, and this picture was taken in the morning, when it was cloudy. I went to place stanlas twice that day.

Another gate, picture taken in the noon. Check out the goooold! :D

Goooold.

another picture taken during the cloudy morning. Place Stanlas is really really huge.

Ok I am obviously too lazy to upload more photos or type alot. just enjoy the pictures, lah!

Metz

2008-03-26T00:51:00.000-07:00

We took a day trip to Metz on Sat. I thought that Metz was really beautiful. It helped that the weather was good that day.

Porte des Allemands.

St Eucaire church.

me, mom, aunt. I was wearing 6 layers of clothes because all my clothes were pretty thin. I looked like a giant mash mellow the whole trip.

Saint Clement church.

The side of it.

This is the opera theatre. Nice hor?

The courtyard outside the opera house.

Temple Neuf.

The main attraction of Metz would have to be the hugeeeee cathedrale. It is the third highest church in France and has the world's most important collection of Stained glass windows. (The two higher churches in France are in damn ulu places).

Woooooooooooooooow.

Stained glass.

There was a rehearsal for the Easter Sunday ceremony (to be broadcast live on sunday on TV3) going on. We saw lots of TV crew around playing with the lighting and stuff, and we also got to see the easter sunday procession =).
We managed to catch the live telecast from this cathedral the next day at the hotel.

Esplanade

Palais de Justice.

Arsenal, now a concert hall.

There was a little hole at the courtyard of the Arsenal for people to throw money to these warriors who looked strangely very much like the terracotta warriors instead of french army officers.:P

We left Metz that night and headed over to Nancy.

Dijon!

2008-03-26T00:12:00.000-07:00

I am back!

Woo. 4 days, 4 villes, and I am down with a cough and flu thanks to the lousy weather. The weather over the weekend in France was insane. We experienced sunshine, snow and hail all in one day at Strasbourg. And I had a very very very bad experience with the french healthcare system yesterday. More on that later.

Dijon!

This picture was taken later on in the noon when it was sunny. The weather was kinda crummy when we reached Dijon. Rain, rain, rain.

Church st benignt

Another church, st jean. The good thing about Dijon is that there is a free shuttle bus circulating around the city center. So you can get up and get off anywhere you want. The bus comes every 6 minutes too. However, the bus route on our map was different from the route the bus took, so we got lost quite a few times.

Place de la Liberation

Palais Des ducs.

Cute drain. We actually spent a lot of time resting and waiting for the rain to stop.

Blink and you will miss it. The owl outside the notre dame. People touch it with their left hands and make wishes because it is regarded as a good luck charm.

One thing very distinct about Dijon is their little streets. The walkways for both cars and passangers are so small.

The rain got very heavy halfway through, so we went to the market in Dijon to seek refuge.

What's going to Dijon without buying moutard (mustard)! :D There were so many kinds of mustard, and we had a tough time choosing which one to buy.

Huge cheese called comte. I initially thought it was a chopping board.

Place Darcy.

the place darcy park. As you can see, good weather!

sunshine!!!! I was delighted.

As my mom and aunt were tired, we checked into the hotel early. I left my things there and went out again to explore more of Dijon.

Place St Bernard

Place de la Republique.

Yea, after that it started to pour again, so I headed back to the hotel.

It started to snow the next day:

Mom and aunt.

Yea, tell me about crazy weather.

off for the weekend

2008-03-20T15:05:00.002-07:00

Going off to Dijon, Metz, Nancy and Strasbourg over the weekend. Seeya guys and have a great easter weekend!

coupe de France (OL vs sochaux)

2008-03-19T02:00:00.000-07:00

I went the quarter finals of coupe de France, OL vs Sochaux at Stade de Garland on thursday night.

Match ticket! We bought 12 euro tickets at the middle block and got pretty good seats! It wasn't full house though.

Outside of the stadium. Upon entering, I realized that the stadium wasn't THAT big. It's actually really small, much much smaller than the now defunct Kallang.

Kicked off at 9pm. There were no goals in the first half, and my stand was the quiet stand where everyone just sat and watched the game. There was a small stand for standing spectators who provided the noise and entertainment.

This weird squirrel came out during halftime to dance.

The second half was more exciting. The first goal came in the 55th minute grace a Benzema, giving OL the 1-0 lead.

Then when I thought it was a win, an equalizer came in the 89th minute!!!! GEEZ!!! The whole stadium went really quiet after that, everyone being filled with dread.

And when we thought all was over, Benzema scored again in the 90th minute!!! Wah, that was insane. The whole crowd went crazy, and I was whacking yuvraj because I was so happy. Yea, the whole stadium was jumping and cheering.

Yea what a way to end the match!!! The goals were pretty clumsy though. They were those goalkeeper-screw-up kind of goals. And the stadium screen didn't show goal replays too. :( It was also kinda weird watching a soccer game without the live commentary.

Yay. :)

mind your language

2008-03-17T07:42:00.000-07:00

Lalala. I am still waiting for the Berlin pictures so the Berlin post will have to wait. Anyway, this is a short picture-less post about some problems I had with the french language.

Swimming lesson
This week is handicap awareness week. For swimming lesson today, we had to stuff cotton wool into our googles to impede our vision. We went through what swimming lessons would be like for the blind.

Well, it was quite horrible for me. Blindness was not my only disability; I was blind, essentially deaf (because I could not comprehend 80% of what the instructor was saying), and partially mute (because I couldn't speak to anyone). Throw a tri-disabled person into a pool and you'll get a swimming mess. Yea, that was me for 1 hour.

It got so bad that at one point I was begging the instructor to speak in English, which he didn't. My korean friend was lucky because her instructor spoke english to her, but mine didn't. I was very very lost and I could imagine the instructors laughing at me because I was so lost, wandering aimlessly around the pool and probably doing some other random stuff that everyone else wasn't doing (because I couldn't understand anything).

I could also feel myself swimming in a zigzag manner while doing laps, regularly bumping into the side barriers.

It was an interesting yet horrible horrible experience.

Rhone-Alpes Forum
There was a Rhone-Alpes forum last week, which is the equivalent of our NUS career fair, only bigger. There were companies such as Alstom, Yahoo!, SNCF, PwC, Renault, Societe Generale, Bosch, Shell, JP morgan, Esso, Toyota, Total, blablabla.

Anyway, I went to some booths to check out internship opportunities.

- One lady from some company told me they wanted to expand and asked if I could speak "canto". I said "errr... un peu ( a bit, because I thought it was cantonese ), and she told me they wanted to expand to "Canton". I responded "Canton? Not Hongkong? (since people in Hongkong speak Cantonese and there is no such place called Canton in my vocabulary).

Anyway, I thanked her and walked away not knowing what the heck Canton was until a few hours later when I asked my french friends.

APPARENTLY CANTON IS GUANGZHOU. FREAK!!!! I CAN SPEAK MANDARIN!!!!!! What a wasted opportunity, no thanks to my lousy french. They also call Beijing Peking here.

- I met some mean people during the forum too.

I approached one of the booths asking for an internship. There were 2 guys manning that particular booth, and one of them was nice to me. However, the other dude said "do you know how to do 'logiciel'? It's not easy, you know?"

Me, know knowing what the heck "Logiciel" was, decided I was probably not up for the job and left.

It was also later on after asking my french friends that I realized "Logiciel" means programming!!!!!!!!!!! AGHHHHHHHH!!! Tell me which engineer don't know how to programme?!?!?!? *FAINTS*

The last booth I went was the last straw for me. I just couldn't go on trying to second guess wth these people were saying. The lady at the last booth was asking which "batiment" I was from, and when I asked her to explain what "batiment" meant, she just shrugged and said "batiment". That was it; I said "fine, merci, au revoir" and left.

After this experience, I will think twice about working in France. Why? Because I feel that we etrangers are not very welcomed, not very needed. Anyway they have a huge population to support the economy, unlike singapore (don't get me started on our *&(*^ foreign talent scheme).

I also won't do my internship here because 1) I need to do a french CV (even PwC wants a french CV), 2) I only can work for 2 months, meaning I only can do operator work.

my dinner today

2008-03-15T15:31:00.000-07:00

Didn't go travelling this weekend because I am tooo tired. Went to my friend's house to study instead.

My dinner today:

On the left: potato wedges (I am still quite lousy with cooking potatoes)
Right: Beef steak (medium rare) cooked with red wine, button mushrooms and onions. Yum.

I tried to do my black sauce chicken with rice for lunch again, and it was better this time around because I had sugar. :D

Grenoble

2008-03-12T16:27:00.000-07:00

We hopped over to grenoble for the weekend. As you can tell, I simply don't want to waste another weekend in Lyon, hahaha.

Anyway, we left Lyon on sat morning and headed straight to the mountains when we reached grenoble. We went to mount Chamrouix, and since Sat was international womens day, Ski passes were 1euro for ladies.

It was a one hour bus ride up and it was quite awful. I got a little car sick.

Up there, The ntu girls and I rented skis while ben and ro rented snowboards.

Ro and Ben falling down from their snowboards.

Me and my skis. I also kept falling down. And what was worse was seeing little kids whizzing past me like pros. Gosh.

We took the ski lift all the way up to the peak.

Cable lift we took. It was quite a nice ride up. Wanqing and I were screaming away when the ski lift scooped us off the ground, much to the amusement of the other french skiers who must have been thinking "What swa-ku asians who have never been on ski lifts". We were quite scared that 1) we would fall off the chair, 2)our skis/ski sticks would drop off. Well, we managed to get up in one piece.

Peak!

It was really really cold and the wind was very strong at the peak. My ears felt as though something was pressing against it and my fingers really hurt (because my gloves were not water proof)

We had to endure the pain for a long time up there while searching for the easy slopes. It was only after a while we realized we made a huge mistake going up because the only way to go down was either by skiing or walking.

Wanqing falling down. Can see the clouds behind her. We were so close to the clouds!!! WOO!

The journey down was a really painful one. We kept falling down, and it is very very painful to fall down on snow because contrary to popular belief, snow is actually HARD. And when you fall, your legs end up in awkward positions because of the skis. Plus getting up is really tiring, but you still have to (get up) eventually. (Last sentence very applicable to life-skills.) I fell down so many times, I was quite worried I would break my hip bones or twist my legs.

We spent the WHOLE afternoon walking/skiing down. It was a real nightmare, but then again, you're only young once. I doubt I will be able sustain such falls like this when I am older.

I also spent lots of time skiing on my butt. Really funny.

We were quite touched by the french because many of them would ask us if we were ok. A few even helped us up and tried to teach us how to ski.

Our sun-burnt faces. Lesson learnt: wear sunblock because the snow reflects a lot of glare from the sun.

Taken while waiting for the bus back to Grenoble.

For dinner, we had chicken rice and curry chicken.

It's been almost 3 months since I have had chicken rice, and boy, it was sooooo GOOD!!! We even had a little sambal chili which we bought at the supermarket to go with it. The chili tasted wierd, but oh well, better than nothing.
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Next day, we had a picnic! (yea, we are very fond of having picnics). Damn, things in Grenoble are cheaper too!!! ROAR!!!!!

Cheese, wine, chicken, potatoes, chips, grapes. C'est la vie.:D Yea, I will try to organise some picnics when I go back to singapore too. And cook more. And travel more around SE Asia over weekends.

After the picnic, we went up to the basillic of Grenoble.

Crossing river (I know, "crossing river" is a very literal translation from chinese, hur hur).

Along the small streets. Asians are quite a rare species in Grenoble, so I think we attracted some attention walking around in such a big group.

This Basillic used to be some kind of prison (or so I heard).

On the way up.

View from top.

That night, some representatives from the office of international relations of nus came to grenoble to have dinner with the students there, so we went to meet them. GUESS WHO I SAW?!?!?! CHRIS YAP, my thermo prof!!!! I WAS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HAPPY!!!

The best thing was that he could answer some of my ME questions, and he seemed to understand fully what I was going through. I was soooo glad.

FOOOOOOOOOOD. We managed to give our complaints and worries to a REAL LIFE nus rep, not some secretary through some email, which was a good thing.

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I got back to Lyon on Sunday night with loads of bruises on my butt thanks to skiing. My whole body was aching and I had swimming on Monday. I told my korean friend "Hey I went skiing over the weekend!" and she replied "yea i know. I can see all your bruises".