Wednesday, January 30, 2008

post no. 992 - i'm home.

it's nice to be back, but so weird too.
it's like re-adapting to a culture and it's like playing catch-up.


------ Monday, January 28, 2008

this is post number 991 - i am leaving paris.. just finished the packing in charles's place.. gonna have lunch, go airport (very) early and continue tax refund and packing.

the time now is around 7pm singapore time on monday 28 jan. in 24 hours, i'll be home.



p.s. dad and mum, i want bak kut teh for dinner ;D


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last nite in europe, last nite in paris of cos.. charles's place is a godsend, thank god. i really thank his generosity (and my lucky stars) for having a place to rest and recharge in paris. merci bien kiki!

anyway, i've been reading quite a fair bit in europe, during times like waiting for planes/trains/buses/people, in hostels, even in cafes, and so i thought it'd be rather apt to have a list of quotes that i found interesting and that i happen to jot down..

"Humanity, without pain, would know neither fear nor pity. without fear, there could be no humility, and every man would be a monster. the recognition of pain and fear in others give rise in us to pit, and in our pity is our humanity, our redemption."
~ Dean Koontz - Velocity

"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing."
~ (can't rem where i read that from)

"In the west, we are used to loneliness. I think it's good for you to experience loneliness, to explore what it feels like to be on your own. After a while, you will start to enjoy solitude. You won't be scared of it anymore."
~ Xiaolu Guo - A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary - A Novel

of cos there are more, but i didn't manage to jot them down..

anyway, coming home soon. will be good to have a home to head back to i suppose. no more lodging at others' place.. maybe blog more tmr


------ Thursday, January 24, 2008

it's a funny little thing.. that when you are away from a place, u miss it. and when u are back, u just want away again. pourquoi??
i guess it was because of the things that happened in december, and now that it's january, it's different already. for one, the people are all different. had a nice dinner at arthur's last nite with nao, yurina, mai and yuta but nao and yurina left for amsterdam today. yuta is sleeping now hahaa. he's becoming so spanish, taking his siesta now. must be the long-time influence of carles and koldo.

anan told me last nite that he ran into a mutual friend of ours at a party some weeks ago. i guess i'm just glad to know that things are going well for everyone i suppose? i just hope that a few months or a few years down the road, we can look back on these days and remember the people who have passed through our lives and the ones who left their marks on us.


anyway. leaving rouen tomorrow morning and heading back to paris again for 3days plus. gonna do all the big ticket shopping and figure out a way to transport everything back to singapore. i'm coming home soon....

Flight number: BA0327
From: Charles de Gaulle (Paris) Terminal 2B
To: Heathrow (London)
Depart: 28 Jan 2008 20:20
Arrive: 28 Jan 2008 20:45
Class: Euro Traveller
Operated by: British Airways
Booking status: Confirmed

Flight number: BA7310
From: Heathrow (London) Terminal 4
To: Singapore
Depart: 28 Jan 2008 22:00
Arrive: 29 Jan 2008 18:35
Class: World Traveller
Operated by: QANTAS AIRWAYS
Booking status: Confirmed


i guess it's time to go home.


------ Tuesday, January 22, 2008

back for some short updates.. not been updating cos i couldn't get much internet access.. reason being i'm back on couchsurfing, and my hosts do not have wireless, so we have to take turns to use the computer. so now i'm quietly typing away when everyone is sleeping haha..

athens is over-rated.. the acropolis is the only nice thing, other than that, the city is over-crowded and over-polluted. traffic is terrible.. once again, it's the people we meet that makes all the difference. our host, stavros, introduced us to 2 of his friends and we had a nice dinner at a greek taverna, and ice cream by the sea. shiokness.

thessaloniki has nothing too interesting to see, but the city is much cleaner than athens. nightlife is supposed to be awesome but we didn't get to experience it cos a friend was sick on the first night and we had to have an early night on our 2nd night cos we had a 6am train to catch.

sofia is my least favourite european city. bulgaria is a really poor country, i can see that from sofia alone. the city is really dirty. snow is melting everywhere (not the city's fault), which is fine, but the snow is black cos the city is so dirty. u can really see the remnants of communism too. buildings are dilapidated, no street lights, roads are uneven and mostly not paved. on the train from thessaloniki to sofia, we saw so many dilapidated and abandoned buildings... roofs caved in, windows broken, some looked bombed. the signs of globalisation in sofia - kfc and dunkin donuts. both of which sucked.

our host's house was beautiful though.. she's an exchange student from italy, staying with another italian guy and a germany guy. beautiful interior, i think they got lucky haha. but anyway going to cities like sofia makes me feel truly truly fortunate that i'm born in singapore!


romania - i expected it to be on the same level, if not worse than sofia cos most if not all of the pickpockets in europe are from romania. but romania turned out to be pretty good. thou the first thing that strikes us was that EVERYONE was staring at us. guess cos they don get to travel, so when non-romanians (or actually non-caucasian-looking) appear, they can't stop staring.
our host, veronica, brought us around and introduced us to so many other couchsurfers in bucharest.. we had a house party on the first night, and so many people turned up.. mostly romanians but also an australian and 2 french. it was nice.

today we went to brasov to find count dracula's castle! it was way cool.. a pity it was closed today but just seeing it from the outside, oh man we went photo crazy. and thank goodness veronica came with us. we would've had a hard time figuring out how to get to dracula's castle ourselves.


exciting things that happened in romania:
- seeing 2 cute french guys turn up at a house party (hahaa)
- running for trains, buses and trams
- hunting count dracula in transylvania
- hitch-hiking in transylvania (YES we did!! we were real lucky but it was waaaay cool)


alrights gotta go now.. flying back to paris tomorrow, going back to rouen for 2 days, then paris for 3.5 days then i'll be flying back to singaporeeeeeeeeeee


------ Sunday, January 13, 2008

i wanted to blog about the rome trip when i was in rome but circumstances dictated otherwise. on the 4th nite after the guys left, i felt rather lazy cos it had been a long day. it's ok, i thought to myself, there's the 5th nite, of which i'll have nothing much to do since i'm pretty much done with rome. however, on the 5th day, i met huiting and we walked around rome and did shopping and i didn't get back to the hostel until dinnertime. over dinner, i was talking to this hostel mate who is from paris and after dinner, we decided to go out for drinks. by the time i got back, it was past 11pm and i had to check flight and bus timings so i didn't have time to blog. excuses heh.

rome is really beautiful.. it's different from the other western european cities. it really is full of ruins. everywhere, every 10 steps i swear. and the first time i saw the colosseum, my jaw dropped in wonder. the first time i saw the roman forum, i was in awe and amazement at the sheer size of the columns. insane!

vatican museum is really good too! i haven't stepped into a museum and be amazed at art pieces for a long time. the raphael rooms are splendid and the sistine chapel is sublime. michelangelo really is a genius. we were inside sistine chapel for a long long time just looking and talking at the frescoes even though sistine chapel is not that big. it really is awesome!

another big attraction for me is the trevi fountain.. if u've watched the hk drama "chong shang yun xiao" (by flora chan and ma de zhong), it's that fountain where they always run into each other, and where they threw coins into the fountain to make a wish. the fountain is huge and the sculptures are.... awesome, for lack of a better word.

we also took an afternoon out to look for this road - via appia antica. it is the road that gave rise to the saying "all roads lead to rome". it's out of central rome, just a cobbled street, but lined with private houses and yeps u guessed it, ruins. sublime stuff.


headed to amsterdam again for a day, good stuff i must say. i was originally supposed to be in a 4-bed dorm separate from jem and co, but when i checked in, the whole room was in a mess with lots of guys' stuffs and all their things were on my bed. i went to the reception, and the guy on duty was nice enough to change me to a 2-bed room, of which the other bed was unoccupied. so i got the whole room to myself!! all for the price of a 4-bed dorm. good stuff!


i'm now back in london again.. despite the suffocating tube, the high prices and the sometimes-gloomy weather, i really love this city. it's the way the tube is stuffy and congested, it's the way the people speak - the accent, the structure, the things they speak about, it's the way all the different races of people come together, it's the way they are so british... i love the way this city functions. it is efficient yet it is not too rushed, it is crowded yet it is not claustrophobic, it is busy yet it is not jammed. it's the way there are always so many things to do - u can shop at the malls, the boutiques, the markets. u can eat every cuisine imaginable. u can watch a movie, a musical, a ballet, an opera, a football match. u can sing karaoke, go pubbing or go clubbing. this city is alive, and as the old saying goes, the sun doesn't set on the british empire.

i just watched "wicked" the musical - it was kickass awesome!!! it's worth more than the 25pounds i paid, well worth the money. if ever u come to london, or if "wicked" goes to singapore, pls be sure to catch it.. it's.... fascinating and spectacular. i'm not exaggerating!


ok heading to greece on monday.. ancient civilisation here i come again.. 1 more day in london, i better make full use of it. i love london!!!


------ Sunday, January 06, 2008

buongiorno! i am in italy now.. land of pizzas, pastas, and of cos, handsome men. and it's true! italian men are really good looking! of cos, not all la but quite a handful. must be the cool shades. been eating all kinds of pastas and pizzas, some really good, others so-so..

this italy trip, i'm travelling with the boys and it's been pretty okay so far. they've been pretty accommodating towards me and thankfully, i can keep up with my monster of a backpack (nearly 14kg with the laptop) despite the occasional whining.. not too bad i guess.

anyway. summary of my italy trip so far! we squeezed our schedule because we've heard that there's actually not that many things to do in italy. so after flying in to milan on 31st morning, we took a train to cinque terre and spent new year's eve in riomaggiore, a quiet italian village. we cooked curry chicken for dinner and at midnight, fireworks went off. it's a nice way to usher in the new year i think.

the next day, we took a walk to 2 other villages in cinque terre and because we were really early, the toll booths were closed and we took the walking trail for free.


the stunning rocky coastline along riomaggiore


a view of corniglia, another village along cinque terre

boy was it beautiful.. i'm glad we decided not to skip cinque terre after all..

we left cinque terre for florence, and we had to change train at pisa so we thought what the hell, we might as well head to the famous tower, the only attraction in pisa. so with monster backpacks on our shoulders, we took at 1.5km walk (which makes it 3km both ways) to look at the Leaning Tower of Pisa:


i realised that subconsciously, i keep trying to correct the tilt when i take photos of the tower. some pictures i took actually featured a non-leaning tower of pisa!
pity the lighting couldn't be better though.. it was nearly 6pm by the time we reached pisa.

next stop - florence
nothing too much to do there besides the duomo and the museum of renaissance art (which we wanted to enter but didn't in the end cos the queue was just too damn long).. so we went around for food, coffee and gelato (had a real gd one, damn smooth) and of cos, to see this:


a replica of "david" by michelangelo

we left florence for venice the next day, spent a day there and took a night train to rome.. i'll update more tomorrow maybe.. free wireless in the rome hostel rocks. there's free dinner here too haha!

more tmr then (or day after, or.....)


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