Urban Traveller

2006-04-23T18:10:00.000-07:00

Vienna

Have posted some pics in Vienna from day 1 -3 @ http://thechillax.shutterfly.com/

2006-04-20T14:50:00.000-07:00

Snowboarding Videos

videos are abit low quality ....have a good laugh = )

2006-04-18T01:50:00.000-07:00

Austrian Alps
Snowboarding @ Innsbruck

the rush , the speed, the fear n the thrills ... few words can adequately describe how it feels... so i'll let the pictures speak instead

Axamer Lizum 2340m

View from the top ..

thats PQ zooming past a ..err 4/5yr old kid ...hhaha.. what happen after u'll have to ask her

On par with the clouds ..Lean forward ...toe in and straighten the board and let gravity take u over the edge..

U only live once ...don't hold back ... Feel alive !

that said .. invest in some good "protection" .. hhaha...wrist guards and a back protector will go a long way ..

one final note: if John Travolta had told me that retro moves looked this good .. i'll probaly have bothered to learn some more mambo moves... haha

Monday "Flight" Fever

... the true story behind this pic was my left wrist was already busted when i attempted this jump, i was not going to let it brace my imminent crash landing which was why i made sure it was the last thing to hit the ground !

cheers ppl !

2006-04-03T17:10:00.000-07:00

Snowboarding ...

I am really looking forward to going to Austria for a little snowboarding trip. Will be leaving wed morn for Vienna .. Here's my plans for the easter break.

Vienna - Innsbruck - Munich - Berlin ...10 days in all ...cheers to all ! Seeya when i get back !

in the meantime ..enjoy the pics from paris ! oh ..btw we were there when there was suppose to be these student riots...but all we saw was riot policeman ..so no action pics.

sacre coeur

err we were not allowed to take pics inside .. but i just had to do it ..needed to preserve a part of history in my cam .. of course i never use flash just in case the walls allergic to the flash

Arc de Triumpe... check out the china man in the right bottom corner.

on the way to taking this pic .. we were approach by 2 chinese nationals asking if we could help them purchase some Louis Vuitton bags apparently there was some form of customs law that prevented them from spending more than 1000 euros. ... get this .. they wanted to buy 2000 Euros more of LV products on top of the 1000 they already spend ! best part of it all they told us they had the CASH .. for a split second i toyed with the idea of pulling out my pen to rob them ..hahah..jk

2006-03-31T02:54:00.000-08:00

Just for laughs ! REEF girls..

spot the dumb one !

specially for pow ... u would'nt be seeing much of this in ML.. CONGRATS w yer grad !

2006-03-22T17:51:00.000-08:00

Haiyah blogger giving me problems uploading the pics from Paris... but i promise i'll upload more very soon ! Stay tuned !

2006-03-20T06:52:00.000-08:00

PARIS Day 1

Headed over for a short trip to Paris to meet up with PQ's parents and of course get resupplied with some goodies from back home !! ... haha ... had to catch a 7am flight from copenhagen which also meant that we had to wake up @ abt 4am... which is usually the time i head to bed ! There's nothing much to say abt the Air France flight except that it sure as hell was not SIA ... cold croissant..some cold sandwich n smthg else.. oh well at least there was some food. Oh and we manage to get abt 50 euros worth of VAT refunds from our grocery shopping...being the poor students that we are, that was kinda shiok.

Having been to Paris b4 i was pretty interested to see how much of it has changed ... i kinda knew the charm and vibe that surrounds it and sadly also that it was gonna be dirty ...streets filled with chewing gum ... subway smelled like horse pee... dog shit on the pavements... etc etc . And of course the usual fun fair with the occasional french dude that pretends he does not know how to speak english and answers in french. However, my experience with the french exchange students here have left me with sort of a mixed impression. They have been really nice and fun to talk to, which led me to wonder if things have changed since i was last there.

Upon arriving @ Charles De Gaulle airport, you'll notice that it is quite run down which is a little surprising considering it is one of the busiest airports in europe constantly being ranked amg the top 3 in passenger traffic. I figured with that much volume they could at least spend some of that airport tax that they collect to beautify the place , afterall first impression can sometimes be a lasting one.

pq took these shots while i was busy sleeping .. haahah

After getting lost for awhile trying to figure out where to get our train tickets to the city center and spending a good 40 mins in the line, we were greeted by this counter dude. We werent very familiar with which pass to buy but we knew that we needed to get one for unlimited travel and to cut a long story short he was being quite a prick and was trying to hardsell us like a Sim lim square salesman some paris vista card which cost smthg like 50+ euros. We settled for the carte orange pass which was priced @ 31 euros (1-5 zones) for a week pass thats like 62 sing...its farking expensive when you consider the trains and the subway they have are in some serious need of cleaning. Even in comparision to copenhagen, its bloody dirty. Seriously, you'll really appreciate the public transport SMRT & SBS provides, not just the price but the cleanliness. I would also like to say a big thank you to the ah neh/ah soh/ah pek that cleans our mrt station ... it really makes a difference.

Afterall that initial ho-ha we finally got down to touring paris proper,

First Stop Sacre Coeur:

this dude plays the harp superbly and ... and guess what .. he sells his CD as well .. maybe the orchard rd tunnel guy should do the same .. but i think he maybe cmi ... cos his singing not exactly very zai...

2006-03-07T14:33:00.000-08:00

Traditional Danish Dinner & Carlsberg Brewery

Hi !

Had a pretty action packed weekend...

Sat night.. My landlord decided to do a traditional Danish Dinner... IT was a superb 3 course meal with Meat Patty, Gang tang n brown sauce for the main dish and a homebaked apple pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert. All this accompanied by red wine n a whole lot of gin n tonic.

PQ got alitte bored with me trying to set up the damm tripod.. i wanted to try some new night setting mode...and my cam sucks when i dun use flash ... kinda fail la

The apple pie was damm power .. ok ok does not look too power but taste damm power .. the biscuit like crust was shiok la

errr .. after this i had too many gins to take anymore pics ..hahha

I woke up on sunday feeling kinda hang over ... but we met up with my austrian pal Christian and his GF Vera for a trip to the carlsberg brewery to check out their museum and learn more abt the brewery process etc etc etc ... k .. honestly .. we just went to have some sunday afternoon beers ...without lunch : ) hahah ...

it was one of those days that the weather was half decent and at least the sun was out ! ..but while travelling there .. we got caught in some snow shower ..luckily it stopped after abt 5mins. The snow showers here are rather irritating .. its somewhat like rain but the worst part is the wind that blows it in all farnie directions .. the freaking snow can fly upwards into ur face la .. wth man !

we kinda took the wrg way so we had to walk one big circle b4 finally getting into the museum.

some pics of their bottle collection .. it looks like pearly's residence kitchen .. cept that at least the bottles a arranged neatly in rows ... in her kitchen .. its just all over the place...haha..

yea they had a couple of tiger beers there .. could not find any heineken though ..

Anyway i dun suppose any of you know this .. so i am gonna let you in on a little bit of carlsberg history .. well the name Carlsberg came abt cos the founder JC jacobsen named the beer after his son Carl, and the place it was brewed at Valby Hill (berg). So there u have it .. Carlsberg.. brillant eh ! haha ya rite...

and did you know tt the original sign adopted was a swastika which in ancient times was suppose to represent both luck and sun symbols ! ... never knew tt rite ? .. now u know !

pre-historic chics used to brew beer like tt...maybe thats why guys are "pre-programmed" to like some beer....kevin .. i think i know why u like beer so much .. hhahaha ..(sorry kel if ya reading this )...but than again my theory cant hold true cos that powster loves one but not the other ... hmmm... i think need some testing.

some poster on their beer sales to ancient china !

and finally ... we got to the bar to sample thier special brews ..hahah .. drinking on an empty stomach can help u save alot of cash if u really wanna get high ... just try not to puke in the process ...cheers all !

2006-03-05T23:19:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone... Need for Speed Most Wanted ! thats the reason why i have not been posting anything for the past few weeks ... hahha ... the game is fun la... anyway i just came to leave a short note to the singapore pals...

Its really farnie that most of you guys have MSN nicks that are always abt stress, sleep & work especially like 2 -3 weeks back ... must have been the mid terms and presentations.

Here's abit to fuel ur travel desires !

A couple from a day trip to malmo in sweden ..err a couple of weeks back ! hahah

check out their local pungol 21 marina concepts ... UFART is kinda a farnie sign to have maybe i'll bring one back..

The turning torso was like a architectural master piece ... all over the tourist information stuff ... but it was damm out of the way ...had to like walk there and its like located in some ulu industrial park like place ... haha

Malmo Castle ... which is kinda small compare to Tasmania, Hobart castle

and finally ... malmo Town itself ... which was alittle disappointing shopping wise...

..yea ! class ended ..oh i did not mention i was blooging this during class .. ciao ppls !

2006-02-07T13:52:00.000-08:00

LAzy blogger strikes !...

have been rather busy with stuff so have not really had the time to write much. Schoolwork wise ...The undergrad classes here seem rather basic, at least i have a pretty challenging and interesting course in Risk Management... i cant say the same for my other classes. Oh .. and my earliest class starts at 8am and its on a monday... its a torture to get up for it !

enjoy the pics

CNY dinner we had quite a feast thanks to the superb chef work of kenny and kelvin.

Pics from a residence hall party ... kinda happens everyweek in some hall... the theme was a traffic light party with red (attached), Green (single) and yellow (attached but available ) ... PQ wore green :(

Some random pics ...oh the falling icicles are damm dangerous .. i think gana ur head will tio concussion...serious...

k ciao ppl .. i went over to Malmo in sweden today .. will update some pics soon !

2006-01-29T03:19:00.000-08:00

Happy CNY !!

Well yest night we had sort of a closing dinner for the orientation week...it was great company had loads to drink ... i think it was 2.5 l in all ... which prob explains why my head kinda feels odd ... we'll be having a mini CNY dinner at kenny's room later in the mean time ...as usual enjoy the pics !

my austrian buddy christian ..(the botak dude in the later pics) said i hit the jackpot ... haah u go figure

Iceland is not so cold after all ... Heidrun

Dalgas Have was the nicely deco venue... but i think the forgot to buy the flags package that included the SE asia countries ... could not find the singapore flag ... the SMU bunch ...my dinner table

My dinner company... Manchester babes(camilla and naomi) who fortunately know their football and are liverpool fans , they are a hilarious couple...love the accent... my botak fren and my danish crash course classmates.

Lovely Alex from austria and Marc the catalan ..Giulia from italy...

thats all folks ... happy new year and collect more ang pao !

2006-01-26T16:18:00.000-08:00

Todays post is abt cocksters ...

Like everywhere in this world ... there will always be some cocksters that will totally ruin the name of their nationality. I guess its smthg that most exchange students would or may experience during their stint.

I shall use a hypothetical example of Kid A from country A.
1) U'll notice that the A's love to hang out together.
2) Kids from A (and i mean KIDS cos they act rather immature at times).. are loud and probaly never had the oppt to buy alchie since they legally have to wait till 21.
3) Therefore, for the first time in their lives tasted freedom like never b4 and head out to get as much alchie as they can.
4) Kids from A thinks the world revolves ard them and have no respect for other nationalities.
4) Kids from A need to go NS.

I don't mean to be rude or anything but you grow to respect the our own culture when u notice certain incidents like the following.

I was walking with my fren from Iceland and we were waiting to cross the road when a kid from country A walk by with a beer bottle in hand and shouted "Waiting is for losers !" and proceeded to dash across the road.

I would have loved to see a bus mow him down... but thats besides the point...I guess what really hit me was how much our society has progress and the mutual respect that we have for each other and it kinda made me grateful for what i have back home.

I would love to hear ur thoughts if you think Mr 369 ah beng would do the same ?

cheers all !

2006-01-22T06:29:00.000-08:00

i am a lazy blogger that just like to post pics... hahha...anyway i tried a little ice cycling ..and its damm hard ! My mountain bike is bullshit, it can hardly grip onto the pavement and the trying to cycle thru the snow is one of the best cadio workouts ... damm shag.

I have officially joined the monthly pass group ( which consist of all other SMU students ) hhaha ..and bought myself a mthly pass... gave up cycling cos its just too skiddy...

There has just been too much that i have not blogged abt so just enjoy the pics !

in some particular order ...from the past week...

19th - 20th jan
This is the slope that PQ struggles to go up everytime we cycle to school.. its now no longer a problem for her... cos she takes the bus. hahhaha...anyway imagine the path now filled with snow cos thats what its like right now. The park beside it has already been nearly competely covered in snow. That very night, we had a mini snow storm which was a nice welcome to the rest of the SMU ppl. My bike was like left outside for barely 5 mins. Lastly, a pic of the very well lit street on my way home.

In case you guys/gals are wondering how good a cook i am .. let the pics speak for themselves.... hahah ... ok ok its not mortons ...but its good.

Oh ya we are damm pathetic la, first time we wanted to cook we forgot to take out the meat. hahha u can imagine trying to defrost the meat in like temps of abt 0 - 5C ... haha impossible ... so we placed it on the heater.

21st Jan (after a night of pretty heavy snowfall) was also the first day all of us from SMU met.

Snow really does not look too good when its black and grey... its like ice kachang ...but like blackish... damm disgusting... and its all over the road the food paths etc etc . My bike was entrench in snow la... the seat had a layer of ice that u could break off to form a bowl ..and the handlebars can make ice cones ..haha... that was abt when i decided that maybe cycling is not too good an idea.. oh there is one pic of what i think YJ's car would look like in the snow. can make ice kachang if u sweep the snow off and put black sugar...

22nd Sunday.... Liverpool vs ....some bloody irritating team thats FOS with a bunch of FOS players and a FOS manager.. even the danes had to agree with the FCK Man U signboard ..hahaa...we went to this place called the sports bar to watch the match and headed over to a cafe (kinda like starbucks) ...its sort of a hang out for the danes at this time of the year cos its just too cold to hang ard the outside trying to spot chics.... i saw a couple at the cafe but my camera is damm buay sui, cos when i try to shoot em.. come out some cock blur shot...fail.

23 jan ... had some party at this place called grock... ok honestly its damm sucky..cos the place damm small ..and they made us wait in line in the freaking cold when the club was not very full ( chee bong la i dunno the world nightspot manager..my privileges only exist from ecp to aye ) ...think they MOS...even MOS the bald dude also tio sack... and we had to pay like some jacket charge.. At least got some eye candy la, eh its not just for me but for the girls as well can... but my blog only got pics of chics (& one mega hot chic ; p )... u want to find hunks go somewhere else .. i not gay.

24 jan- buddy dinner... damm shiok, the danish buddies cook for us to makan. Was damm power...danish meatballs, gang tang (potatoe) , salad and some damm power desert. We'll recipocate sometime soon suppose to cook local dish.. haha i dunno wat to cook ... any ideas + recipies ?? i kinda forgot to take pics cos ...so enjoy whatever few i have.

25 jan - its official ...icelandic chics are damm hot, french sounds really nice, americans/cannies are really cliquish, and my austrian fren is a cockster...danish folk dancing and time for me to head to bed ... ciao ppl

2006-01-18T16:08:00.000-08:00

It was a little colder today with ice covering most of the road... its currently slightly snowing but the weather is still pretty ok. PQ was too tired today and decided to take the bus instead.. leaving me to cycle ... its actually not that bad cycling cos you warm up after abt 5 mins... but your face freezes up and you cant speak properly hahah...

we finally got our course syllabus today and PQ has most of her courses while i am still arranging some of my..will write more when i am done with my course schedule.

anyway some pics for today ..mostly on my danish course mates and copenhagen @ abt 5- 5.30pm ... enjoy

2006-01-17T12:53:00.000-08:00

Have not been cycling for awhile and my body was telling me that when i got back on my bike today ... my butt and quads were a little soft . It was abit colder than yest and PQ still has problems with that "hamburger hill" of hers... its actually called Frenderiksberg and theres a park there which is rather frozen at this time of the year.. anyway i'll try to take a couple of pics tmo ... heres some of where our current classes are being held. The place is not as nice as the other buildings that CBS has. The canteen looks a little like the one in NTU just alot smaller.

Pic of my giant landlord which was also Noelle landlord .. Christian... most danish guys are pretty tall ... look like a kid standing next to him .. just for comparision a Canadian (Ben) whos in my class and also stays in the same hostel as PQ... u prob can imagine how much taller Christian would be.

We bought some stuff to whip up a meal tmo ... watch out for the sumptuous dinner that we're gonna make ..hahahha .. : )

2006-01-16T13:10:00.000-08:00

Hej og velkommen ! ( Hi ! , welcome ) ...its pronounced (hey aou welcome ..With welcome said like the dudes in little India do it ... With their heads shaking and all) ... haha ..so today started off with me fixing up some old bike ... and for the first time cycling in sub zero temps ... its actually better than it sounds just as long as u have a good windproof jacket and have a pair of thermal bottoms. It was a piss off with the chain dirtied my jeans so i decided to be a little obiang and tie up my pants with the boot laces, i later found out that the danish lagi obiang .. they stuff their pants into their socks ! haha ...

First day @ school was somewhat an eye opener ... CBS has several buildings surrounding the area ..smthg like SMU .. we had our first danish lessons in a small white building tts quite abit older than the other CBS buildings. The classroom was a walk back into primary school days .. Chalk boards .. tape recorder ... and prob the newest item they had was an IBM desktop... that the lect was complaining the screen was too big and was preventing him from writing on the board. We had our first taste of being an exchange student ... the usual hi i am XXX from singapore (half of them prob has no idea where singapore is ) ... and they have a worse time trying to pronounce my name .. and i had a first taste of what danish is like. I dont wanna sound disrespectful but ..in all honesty ... it sounds like crap ... half the time its like u are trying to vormit out some words...and the words end pretty abruptly. Anyway on a more positive note ...something that struck me during class was how many languages the europeans could speak. It sucks that i have a half bake mandarin and an even more half baked english .. the class went ard the table saying they could speak German, french, polish, spanish, catalan, finnish...etc etc ... came to me ...err english, mandarin, chinese dialects .. my hokkien cursing has been rather polished from my bengster days...and em ... i was contemplating if i should include singlish... else damm malu la .. sit there like and errr i only know 2 languages. Chee bong .. must resolve to learn more languages. Despite all tt, i still feel rather uninspired to learn danish..

oh and on a parting note .. PQ left her cycling lights that her buddy handled over to her today on her bike and the front one got stolen ... nice little welcome eh... bloody thiefs ! KNNCCB ..i hope they gana bang down at the junction ... (b4 i get some comments abt me not telling her ... i did ...but she said she did not hear it .. i think her ears gana frozen la ...)

oh oh ... haha and i just realised i wore like 6 top layers... damm mad .. t-shirt, thermal, shirt, sweater, another sweater, windproof jacket.. scarf...hahha power rite. Bo bian la ..damm cold.

Short notes on CBS & today:
My buddy is damm nice (she's the korean chic in the pic w PQ ) she bought me some cycling lights...
Takes abt 15 mins paddling in the freezing cold to get there...
Has a slope along the way that PQ is totally struggling to cycle up .. her bike is baby bike la ! ..for me effortless ..hahha
Food cost abt 22 - 28 dkk per meal ... no drinks ..only can drink sky juice ... save $$$
Nice main builing and library... reminds me abit of the law lib in NUS... but got more floors.

2006-01-15T12:01:00.000-08:00

some pics of my room ...

oh and i tried to capture some pics of chics for my dear pal YJ ... errmm my camera was rather slow with its auto focusing ...so was not very successful ... haha ...and my chic radar also abit frozen and the beanie is preventing me from detecting properly ..haha ...

as per sabz request ..i'll take some of the danish hunks ... they damm tall la .. like 2 X pq hahahah

heres some with PQ on her Jnr bike ... the bike is just pathetic and small la ... no wonder she got it for like 350dkk. I think shes probably gonnna have to paddle like 1000times to get to sch while others like take 500 times.

anyway schools starts tmo ... will keep you all updated ... PQ cant seem to get over the jet lag ... shes like sleeping @ 7 - 8 pm every night ...

2006-01-15T10:07:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

First up .. a big warm welcome from freezing Copenhagen.. am moving on from www.xanga.com/pearlyzz cos the pic hosting sucks... or at least i have no idea how to use it ... chillax and enjoy the pics ...

Meals here are really expensive .. a standard meal is abt 40 - 50 DKK .. although the shopping for clothes is relatively cheaper than i expected ... zara has a sale now ... and the pants are abt 99dkk which is abt 27 sing...

standard breakfast ...

theres a lunch time 11-3pm special for italian food (pizzas and stuff..usually made by middle eastern ppl ) for 30 dkk ..can share with 2 ppl la ...i intend to make full use of this ...haha ..cheapo la but bo bian ...no cash

2006-01-15T10:06:00.000-08:00

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