Friday, September 28, 2007 07:12 p.m.
We're off to Gothenburg early tomorrow morning! :)Friday, September 28, 2007 04:56 p.m.
Guess what came in the mail today? Our FedEx package with our train tickets!! :) It's for 3 days of train travel within Denmark as well as 5 days of travel within the Scandinavian countries! We paid a bomb for them (almost equivalent to 3 Copenhagen-London round trips) but sometimes train travel is a much better alternative to flying because the trains in scandinavia are very comfortable, they have very good timings and they bring us right into the city!
I opened my laptop this morning and was pleasantly surprised to find a postcard from Oslo written by Kenneth and Wanling! They're really very sweet and what a nice surprise! E and myself had simply scribbled our thank you note to them on the back of a receipt in Oslo! But looking at that postcard really brings back fond memories of Oslo and it makes me want to go back there for some relaxation and staring out at the sea!
I'm going to the supermarket now to grab some food for dinner!
Friday, September 28, 2007 03:45 p.m.
Last night, the fire alarm in our residence went off and within 3 minutes, 2 fire engines were on our street and the firemen were using a ladder to climb their way in and all. Very cool stuff (the fire engine had blue lights) and I'm quite surprised the fire department came so quickly! It was really cute because there wasn't any fire and I was busy taking photos of the firemen while they climbed in and then I ran to the stairs to take photos of them again while they were trying to silence the alarm. Haha. This is like the second time the fire engines have come to our street and Kenneth and Wanling were pretty amused. Haha.
Friday, September 28, 2007 11:04 a.m.
Guess who came to visit from Oslo? Kenneth and Wanling! :) So we got to see them again and bring them around on a one day whirlwind tour of Copenhagen! We met them at Kobenhavn H, brought them to get a glimpse of Tivoli and our city hall square before making our way to the Carlsberg Brewery! E and myself have never been to Carlsberg Brewery so we were obviously looking forward to it! It was a really educational and interesting trip! We saw rows and rows of unopened beer bottles collected from all over the world, advertisements of Carlsberg and Tuborg from the past, got to see the horses that were once used to transport the crates of beer, read about the history of the beer brewing industry here in Denmark and how J.C. Jabobsen and his son, Carl built up the Carlsberg empire. We also got to read about how beers are brewed, browsed around the souvenir shop where E bought a shirt for himself and Matthew and probably the best part of it was finishing the whole tour and landing ourselves up at the bar where we were served 2 beers each and we could actually see the brewing and bottling process happening downstairs! The beer we chose was really smooth and nice and it'll be nice if we could have it with peanuts (E substituted it with barbecue chips) but by the end of it, we were all red. It's really worth while going to Carlsberg brewery!
After Carlsberg, we brought them to Frederiksberg park where we went to last weekend for the mooncake and lantern festival. We showed them the Palace and after that, we walked back to school to show them our school and also to have lunch. I think they were pretty impressed with the lifts at Kilen. Haha. After lunch, we went down to the City, they climbed the Round Tower while E and myself walked around the shops a little. We were inside H&M and he decided to just go to the other shop across the street and when he came back, I was paying for a new skirt! :) I think I spend way too much money shopping in Denmark and I calculated that I'll have my tax refund if only I don't buy only one piece each time I step into H&M. Ah.
We introduced them to one of the famous ice cream parlors here in Denmark but they said it cannot match up to Italian gelato. I can't wait to have italian gelato then! We walked down stroget, walked past Kongens Nytorv and went to Nyhavn to see the pretty buildings! After that, we continued on to find Little Mermaid and on our way, passed by the Marble church and Queen's royal residence. On our way back from the little mermaid, we hopped on the ferry so that we could get closer to the new opera house (it was rather magnificent) and it was already getting dark so we made our way home to cook indian curry (they brought the paste up from Oslo) and oyster sauce vegetables!
They left early this morning and we wanted to have breakfast together but when we went to the McDonalds at the train station, they weren't ready to serve us yet so the both of them had to make do with hot dogs and sandwiches and take the train back to the airport! I was so exhausted when I came home, I didn't hear my alarm ring and so missed my international econs class! Ah. The four of us are planning to meet up in Stockholm in November and hopefully that goes through because they're a really nice couple and we've really enjoyed their company and I think their traveling patterns and all are pretty similar to ours!
Wednesday, September 26, 2007 04:11 p.m.
I risk my life to show you pictures that I secretly took of men selling weed just downstairs my residence a few minutes ago. I'm not too sure if possessing a small amount of weed is legal here in Copenhagen but it sure looked really illegal. This group of men huddled round while one guy dumped a whole stack of weed into their green shoulder bag in exchange for the money that was in the bag. That was when I realized that they were trading weed so I hid behind my blinds and whipped up my camera. 30 seconds later, a white car drove up and the man carrying the green bag dumped some weed into the car and the car drove off. The weed they had looked like a bunch of rotten vegetables! The group of men then walked up our street away from the main road to distribute it amongst themselves. These probably aren't the best pictures and I wish I took one of this guy stuffing the weed into his jacket's breast pocket but I was too late!
Monday, September 24, 2007 09:48 p.m.
Business strategy presentation was surprisingly quite alright. I'm just glad it's over!Sunday, September 23, 2007 10:28 a.m.
We went to the Singapore-Denmark club's gathering yesterday afternoon! We met at Frederiksberg Park and it's a really beautiful park! There's a palace in the park and a zoo nearby! It helped that the weather was extremely beautiful yesterday! I wish the weather could be like that all the time in Denmark. Anyway, we met up with some fellow singaporeans that are living/working here in Denmark. Some of them have been here for 20 over years, some for only a year, and most of them have kids! After a while of basking in the sun and mingling around, the kids carried the lanterns (we even had candles!), walked around the park and made our way to Rozita's house which is just along Frederiksberg Alle for mooncakes, fortune cookies and tea! Rozita's flat is really cosy and beautiful (chinese rosewood furniture) and she was a really lovely host! Managed to talk to a few ladies while chomping down mooncakes and they were sharing with me their struggles of learning the danish language, of not being able to find chinese food, the difficulties they face in adapting and having to sacrifice for the family or pack up and move whenever their husbands have a new assignment. One lady also shared about how her package from Singapore always get taxed by the customs and how they rip apart her package and all (even squashed her pineapple tarts) and she has no idea why they do it but can only speculate that it's because their family surname isn't danish. I know that marrying a foreign husband and moving with him to his homeland is not easy (my aunt in the states testifies to that and I can see it too) but I didn't realize that it involves so much more sacrifices on the part of the woman. AH. Well, after the warm get-together, Ben, Dickson, E and myself headed back to the park where the guys played frisbee for about an hour.
Dickson and E went to meet their SMU friends who came up to Copenhagen for work so Ben and myself went back to our residences and cooked dinner! I cooked oyster sauce vegetables while Ben made porridge with eggs, minced meat and potatoes and I was never a huge fan of porridge but I've been converted. Haha.
Saturday, September 22, 2007 11:03 a.m.
Yesterday after my international econs class, Ben, Dickson, E and myself took a train down to Malmo for some sightseeing and shopping. Malmo's a swedish town that is about 40minutes away by train from our main train station and it's probably one of the closest swedish city to Denmark. Well, Malmo is pretty small compared to Copenhagen but it was quite quaint and definitely much cleaner and cosier than Copenhagen. Lund university is about 15minutes away from Malmo but we didn't have time to drop by Lund. We got there past noon, walked around their main town square and the guys did all the shopping! I was hoping to get some items from H&M because the exchange rate is more favourable (4.4sek-1sgd as compared to 3.5dkk-1sgd) and the things are really much cheaper there but I couldn't find anything nice at all. I think I'm destined to pay more for my clothes in Copenhagen and not get tax refund. The guys on the other hand, stocked up their winter clothings and even managed to spend enough to get their tax refund. Haha. We had china box take away for lunch, continued on walking around Malmo till we landed ourselves in some thai restaurant which surprisingly served up pretty decent thai food! I haven't had proper asian food in such a long time, it tasted so good! We sat and talked till about 9pm before we took the train back home!
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 10:53 p.m.
I was craving for some soy sauce chicken in class today so I googled it up when I came home and cooked it! I'm extremely proud to say that my soy sauce chicken was extremely delicious! :) It went really nicely with rice and we even had oyster sauce vegetables to go along with it. It's funny how about 5 weeks ago, I couldn't even cook 5 dishes, let alone be found anywhere near the stove (or sink) but now, I'm just experimenting and trying new dishes! I'm really beginning to like cooking even though I still hate the washing up!
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 07:12 p.m.
International econs final exam on the 22nd of october!! I'm starting to panic a little so I've decided to stop procrastinating and start reading my text. I'm a little worried too because I don't really know what the exam format is like or what we're expected to do. The mid term break is just right before the exam date and we'll be in Italy (we're only coming back on Saturday and my exam's on Monday) so it's additional pressure to get started on my revision and make sense of everything.Wednesday, September 19, 2007 09:35 a.m.
This can only happen to me!! I got an email yesterday from the course secretary telling us that the international econs class has been pushed forward to 8.55am instead of 2.25pm and I immediately thought it was today's class that was being rescheduled instead of some other time. So I grudgingly dragged myself out of bed at 7.50am this morning, jumped into the shower and knocked on steven's door to wake him up. We got to class on time but realized that there was another class happening at the same time! When we checked our emails again, we realized it was for next wednesday's class and not today's class. MAN. I felt so bad especially since steven was having a partial hangover and you could tell he was really tired! On Monday, I went to school thinking there was international trade class but when I went to print my notes, I saw the e-notice informing us that our lecturer's sick and the class will be rescheduled. I almost killed myself because I was rushing out of the house thinking I would be late for class. So it's my second time this week and ARGH.Tuesday, September 18, 2007 10:04 p.m.
I cooked chicken rice tonight!! My first time trying it and it was really yummy! We even had oyster sauce vegetables (bought oyster sauce for like 10sgd at the indian greengrocer) and sambal chilli to go along with it! :) Good stuff seriously. We're just missing the chicken feet in thai chilli sauce and black sauce!
Crashed E's EU and business strategy class this morning and it was really interesting! Today's guest lecturer talked about law and technical standards in the EU and it was really really interesting. I like classes like this and I'm intending to go for the remaining classes even though I'm not enrolled in it. It builds up my current knowledge and since I'm here in Europe, I might as well learn something about the EU. It's also nice that I can take a class, learn something and not be tested on it. Had business strategy project meeting after that and it was surprisingly quite producitve. The french guy in my group is brillant. He doesn't say much but when he speaks, he always gives valuable input! I hope our presentation turns out fine!
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 01:33 a.m.
We're going to Italy during our one week midterm break!! :) Woot woot!! The flights are booked and the plan is to spend 3 days in Rome, 1 day in Florence, 1 day in Pisa and another day in Venice! Now, we just need to settle accommodation and our train tickets up to stockholm and we are good to go! :)Monday, September 17, 2007 07:17 p.m.
Guess what came in the mail today!? A parcel from home!! Mum nicely packed all the books I needed and dumped in soup mixes, spice pastes and a couple of instant noodles!! I was so excited when I got the email from the international office this morning informing me about my package and so I hurried the boyfriend down, came home immediately and started ripping apart my package! Now I can start making chicken rice and hopefully get started on my readings! :)
Sunday, September 16, 2007 10:07 p.m.
We didn't do much this weekend because the boyfriend wasn't feeling too well and so we settled for shopping on Saturday (before I came home to pack and clean my room) and some walking around our central train station and its vicinity this afternoon. Yesterday, we headed to Field's shopping center which is supposed to be the largest shopping mall in scandinavia and I was naturally expecting something like Vivocity or Takashimaya but what I got instead was something like Centerpoint. It was only 2 floors high (third floor was restaurants and cafes) and most of the shops can be found on Stroget (the main shopping street in the city) so it was quite disappointing but E was secretly rejoicing that our shopping trip wouldn't be so tiring! Haha. We checked out train ticket prices today (exorbitant!!) and tried looking for mooncakes in Chinatown today but it was quite a futile trip because most of the shops were closed.Saturday, September 15, 2007 09:58 p.m.
The boyfriend always calls my room Hurricane Hannah because clothes are strewn all over, the plates are in the sink and everything is messed up and dirty. So to prove him wrong, I took the vacuum cleaner from the third floor and did a major spring cleaning during the weekend while he cooked fish&chips in his room! I even took out all my clothes in the cupboard, put them in my luggage while I cleaned the cupboard and folded them back nicely! Now my room's all clean and nice :) You get to see the before and after pictures! :)
Friday, September 14, 2007 10:36 p.m.
Ben's pre birthday dinner last night so I cooked fried rice, Dickson brought roast pork and meatballs (it went super well with strawberry jam) and the birthday boy made long beans with potatoes and eggs with minced meat and the four of us singaporeans met in my room for some good local food and chit chat!
At midnight, some of the other guys from our residence went over to Ben's room to wish him Happy Birthday but they also had a 'present' with them. They gave Ben a tequila bottle and a shot glass but that wasn't it. Ben was supposed to drink one shot every hour till his birthday was over. Haha. But because he wanted to sleep through the night without the guys waking him up every hour, he drank 6 shots in 15 minutes to last him till 6am. Haha. It was no mean feat and in between all that, Ben wrote all our names on the bottle and named his bottle "ben's whore" Haha. It was really quite funny and I'll put up more photos when dickson sends it over to me!
Friday, September 14, 2007 01:18 p.m.
Halfway through international econs class this morning, the fire alarm rang so we all had to evacuate the building and stand out in the cold for the next 15minutes and I contemplated leaving while we were all standing outside but my conscience got to me and so I stayed. E cooked lunch when I came home and halfway through cooking, the fire alarm at our residence went off too! Twice today! What's with the fire alarms and fridays! Anyway, econs class this morning was once again very interesting and intellectually stimulating! It really isn't one of those boring 9am classes. My professor is really brillant and I like it that he uses the blackboard to explain the concepts and draw out the diagrams. He's not only good at what he teaches but he can be quite witty at times. I really enjoy my econs classes here and learning about all the different models and how they apply to the real world and all but getting a good grip of it and really being able to explain the concepts and the mathematics behind it is no mean feat! Business strategy project meeting later!Friday, September 14, 2007 08:02 a.m.
Waking up at 7.45am on a Friday morning to go for international econs class at 8.55am is no joke. I haven't had friday morning classes since year 1 semester 1 (statistics) so this is going to take a while to get used to.Thursday, September 13, 2007 06:53 p.m.
E and myself went down to Vesterbro this afternoon to explore the neighbourhood. Vest means west in danish so it's basically the area west of the city center. I'm at Norrebro which means north and Osterbro is east of the city center. Well, Vesterbro is pretty much like any neighbourhood except that it has an iMax theater and also a cinema that is only showing Shrek 3 now. A movie ticket costs 95kr (30sgd) and I doubt I'll be watching any movies for the next 4 months. I spotted a few nice looking restaurants in the neighbourhood so might check them out and bring E there for his birthday dinner!
Going to start preparing dinner! We're having a Singaporean dinner to celebrate Ben's birthday tonight!
Thursday, September 13, 2007 11:32 a.m.
My little sister's email to me: "Eh, I think Dad's damn stressed at work. He bought 4 sleeping t-shirts on Sunday that said Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Then he said he'll buy Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Holiday when he has the money. He's damn weird right!" Hahaha. And my dad emailed me this morning telling me about his birthday dinner and how it was supposed to be a candlelight dinner for him and my mum because sarah has 2 prelim papers today but ended up complaining about the candles. "They should know I'm 51 years old already! We sit outside and they only give us one small candle! How am I supposed to read the menu and order food? I need a burning torch!!" Hahaha.Wednesday, September 12, 2007 12:28 p.m.
I just got the photos from Kenneth's camera and I remember this shot. We were climbing up the cliff to get a panaromic view of the fjords and also find the perfect picnic spot when I shouted "Wait! Photo opportunity!" So we all froze in our tracks and I snapped a photo of Kenneth and Wanling using my camera and Wanling took a photo of E and myself using their camera. Haha. It was the funniest thing because we just froze there for a minute (if we moved, we've have fallen down) and the boyfriends were just amused that we could do something as ridiculous as that while climbing a cliff.
Classes later at 2.25pm! I need to get started on my readings!
Wednesday, September 12, 2007 11:52 a.m.
My dad's birthday today so I called home a few minutes ago and wished him happy birthday and update him on my trip to Oslo! He's got the birthday card I sent back home so I'm really glad!! I wish I could send him a birthday present though. I've been eyeing the Formula 1 Ferrari Lego set and I know he'll really love that! It's also his 30th anniversary as a christian today so my mum and sarah are bringing him out for a nice italian dinner! I wish I could be back home to give my dad a big hug and also go out for dinner with the family!
Wednesday, September 12, 2007 03:11 a.m.
E & myself went to Ikea today! It's about 30minutes away from our residences so it wasn't too long a journey. We were pretty excited about it because Edwin and Kenneth have been telling us about their Ikea back in Sweden and Norway. Ikea looks exactly the same as what we have in Singapore and everything's almost the same price in Singapore except that there's a 25% tax slapped on every good in Denmark so everything ends up being more expensive. Despite that, we ended up buying bedroom slippers, a new mug (I've no idea what for when I have like 6 mugs in my room), alarm clock and some folders to put my papers! There were other warehouse shops like Toys R Us and a mega computer shop nearby so we checked them out and had dinner back at Ikea (Swedish meatballs!) before coming home to chit chat and have the famous strawberry tarts with the guys at Ben's room.
And check out the second picture where E is holding a white Ikea plastic bag!! Here in Denmark, the stores rarely give out papers bags and you have to pay about 1sgd to get one paper bag. So E decided to use the Ikea plastic wrapping paper that they have for free at the checkout counters to make himself a plastic bag to hold our stuff! I have to say, he's especially creative and he even included a handle so it made carrying it easier! I was seriously quite proud of him and it's amazing he can even think it up and go on to cut and tape it all out till it's a plastic bag! :)
Tuesday, September 11, 2007 10:22 a.m.
Came back from Oslo yesterday morning at 10am and had to attend classes at 1.30pm. I was too tired and saturated after international trade class that I decided to skip business strategy. I printed some notes (60ore for one page!!), met Dickson, went to the supermarket, cooked a quick dinner and crashed out at 9.30pm. Anyway, Oslo is a very beautiful and idyllic city!! I really like it! It reminds me of Seattle because of the harbour and all the greenery. The pace of life seems much slower than Copenhagen and it's a really nice place to spend a weekend relaxing. I might consider heading up there to retire when I grow old! Oslo is also quite different from Copenhagen because Oslo has alot of mountains, hills and lakes where as Copenhagen is just a flat piece of land with lots of buildings. Kenneth and his girlfriend, Wanling, were excellent hosts and tourist guides and their company made Oslo even more beautiful! Kenneth and Wanling's residences is slightly different from ours. They've also got 2 individual rooms except that they share a bathroom and their kitchen is shared with their floor. I like the concept of 2 bedrooms and one bathroom and it'll be splendid if they had their own kitchen! Anyway they live in a middle of a university residences so everyone there is a student and when you sit on their study desk, you look out and see a hill! It's very beautiful and you really feel like you're overseas when you're at their residences and it makes you want to just start studying. Back here, I just feel like I'm in another city with all the city noises going on.
On our first day, they brought us to take a ferry to a nearby island where the maritime museum and Fram museum is housed. The maritime museum turned out to be much more interesting than we had expected because we could see all the ships on display and also learn more about the maritime industry in Norway. I think part of this interst is attributed to my internship in LA. The Fram museum was also very interesting because they had the life size boat of the Fram which was the boat used by norweigan explorers to head up north and explore the north pole. The fram has a smooth surface so that the ice can easily slip away and it can hold coal and food that can last the explorers for up to 5 years and there were times when they were stuck in the ice for 3 years. I cannot imagine how cold it'll be up at 86degrees latitude. After the museums, we went to have a picnic on top of a fort that overlooks Oslo. Beautiful scenery from there and we walked around the fort after lunch, sat in a jazz concert for a few minutes and came back home to cook dinner together!
On our second day, Kenneth and his girlfriend brought us for a personalized tour around their school, Norweigan school of Management. It looks pretty much the same as CBS with all the glass, natural light and wood except for the fact that they have this long escalator that brings them to the library and their school is housed in one building while our school spans across 4 buildings.
After the school tour, we trained down to town and explored Oslo! We had yummy yummy, very filling kebabs for lunch, walked down Karl Johans Gate and did some shopping, went to the national museum to see the Munch paintings, walked past the law faculty of the University of Oslo, visited the Queen at her residence and when we came back home, we went to the lake near their residence to watch the sunset! That lake is pretty amazing and it was really beautiful seeing the sky change colour and the ducks paddle around in the lake. It's seriously a nice place to just chill out and the view is excellent! We came back, made our own pizzas and pepper fries before having ice cream floats for desserts!
On our third day, we were supposed to take this 2 hour cruise round some island to see the Oslo fjords but we decided to do it ourselves and take a ferry to the island instead and that was the best decision we made!! We got off at Nakholmen island, walked along the coast picking up purple coloured seashells and climbed a cliff (beat that!! Wanling and myself were so afraid of falling down) just to get a panaromic view of the fjords. It was totally worth it and the view from on top of the cliff was breathtaking! We had the fjords in front of us and Oslo city behind us. Awesome. I could just stare out there the whole day. We had our picnic there and after that, climbed down to play with the rocks and touch the icy cold water before heading back to the pier. We took another ferry that brought us to another island and this time around, we didn't get down but from the ferry, we could get super nice views of the fjords as well!
When we came back home, we cooked curry chicken (I brought the paste up from Copenhagen) and had a last dinner feast. I realized that Wanling always cooks rice and 2-3 dishes for dinner whereas, I'm always doing one dish meals like pasta, pineapple rice and noodle soup. Haha. But it was certainly nice eating eggs, vegetables with oyster sauce, soup and rice and she's a good cook! Makes me miss home so much! I've really got to say I really enjoyed this trip up to Oslo! Kenneth and Wanling were excellent company and Oslo was really very beautiful and it was a good weekend of rest and relaxation! :)
Wednesday, September 5, 2007 02:53 p.m.
My timetable and courses are more or less settled. I'm going to take international econs, international trade, business strategy and logistics and transportation econs. I'm dropping asian economics and business practices which means I won't get to take any classes with E. I've got a 3 day week this quarter (mondays, wednesdays and fridays) and after the mid semester break, I have classes on mondays and fridays only. Monday will be a full day and friday is an early morning class. If I'm back in Singapore, I'll be rejoicing at such a splendid timetable. It's just that I'm in Europe and I would love to travel during the weekends but I must have classes on mondays and fridays. How lucky can I get? Well, at least the air tickets to everywhere is exorbitantly expensive so I don't feel so sore about my class timings.Wednesday, September 5, 2007 10:28 a.m.
Dinner last night was awesome!! Dickson came over for dinner again so he cooked asparagus with bacon wrapped over it and I made pineapple rice and we had a nice cold beer to go along with it! Dinner was seriously good and it was supposed to be a feast to celebrate the fact that my card works and I can now go shopping! The hilarious part of it was that Dickson set off the fire alarm while frying the bacon. Haha. Thank goodness the firemen didn't come again! E and myself went out at 10pm to the caribbean bar near the Norreport station for some drinks with the others from our residence and came home to plan weekend trips with Dickson and Ben. I hope we'll find somewhere to go during the weekends! All the flights are either so expensive or sold out and it's getting annoying! I wish all the flights were as cheap as the ones we paid for Oslo!
Tuesday, September 4, 2007 07:15 p.m.
OH MY GOODNESS!! You wouldn't believe it! My mastercard works!! I can go shopping now!! After international econs class just now, Steven and myself made a quick stop at the H&M near our school and I saw this really beautiful sweater that I just had to get and I decided to try swiping my card and it works!! It works!! I was so freaking happy, I almost jumped over the counter and kissed the guy! And because my card was working, I went on to buy another top!! :) The guy at the cashier was just laughing when I came back a second time to use my card! But it works and it just completely made my day! :) International econs class was definitely the best econs class I've been to. I have a danish professor and he once taught at the John Hopkins University in America and worked at the Danish ministry of trade and industry and he's really brillant. He kind of talks to the floor but he throws in jokes once in a while, gives us practical examples (a lot about the USA) and oh my goodness, he's brillant and I really loved the lesson. Some parts it got a bit hard to follow along and I sure hope I manage (econs is an interesting subject to study and learn but it isn't nice taking an econs exams). I think he's as good as the spanish professor in international trade and I'm so glad the econs classes have been going good so far! :) I'm going to cook dinner now! It's a happy day! :)Tuesday, September 4, 2007 11:28 a.m.
We're headed up to Oslo this weekend! :)Tuesday, September 4, 2007 11:09 a.m.
E secretly buys the famous strawberry tart from Lagkagehuset, gives it to me, we take a photo of it and I eat it all up because he's allegric to strawberries and can only try the crust. This is the best strawberry tart I've tried! It has white chocolate shavings on top, a chocolate crust, cream underneath the strawberries and when you buy into it, it has this really interesting taste. I have no idea how to describe it but it's the best!! Seriously. You've just got to try it if you love strawberries and chocolate!
Anyway, international trade class yesterday afternoon was mindblowing! My professor is from Spain (she looks alot like Penelope Cruz) and she goes at the speed of a bullet train but brings in practical examples and she really has alot of knowledge in this area and you can really tell she's passionate about international trade. She's amazing. I really like the class (my danish buddy is also in the same class as me!) but I don't know if it'll get too tough because international trade is really not easy. There were times when I lost her completely. I was walking out of the class yesterday and she talked to me and we walked all the way to the bus stop together! I think she remembers me because the lecture hall was quite small and I'm the only Asian but I had quite a good conversation with her and she was asking about Singapore! I really love econs professors that are interesting and passionate.
Business strategy class on the other hand was a complete waste of my time. It's management accounting and marketing all over again. Two modules I completely hate! We have to present a case and also give feedback for another case group. The professor's from Italy and he's so slow, he gives a break every 50mins and I really think this is a talk nonsense class. I think he reminds me alot of my marketing tutor (whom I really hate) and he's using slides that he used in the fall2004 semester. ARGH. I would love to skip the class every single week and just take my exams in december but apparently, 25% of students taking business strategy each semester flunks the paper. AH. I guess you can never always have good professors who inspire. International econs this afternoon and it's not going to be easy with foreign exchange and all that but I hope it's interesting!
Monday, September 3, 2007 09:46 a.m.
Last night, Dickson (the third SMU guy living in our residence and that brings the total number of singaporeans living in this residence to four) came over for dinner and he, like many of us, have never cooked in his entire life but was feeling very ambitious after the fruitful supermarket shopping trip on Friday and so he decided to whip up potato salad with raisins, fried onions and sausages! Good stuff really and it was a wise choice to put in raisins. It's his first cooked meal (he's been eating bread and more bread for the last week) and that's his graudation photo and I appreciate the hard work he put in (one and a half hours in total just to make potato salad!!). Haha. He promised a full meal by the time we leave Copenhagen so I'm eagerly waiting for that night! We also had tom yum soup (that ended up tasting like beef soup) and rice and good conversations all the way till 11pm!
Monday, September 3, 2007 08:24 a.m.
I got woken up early this morning at 7.40am because the fire alarm was going off at the building across the street and so it was ringing and ringing and the next minute I know, the fire engine was at our street and the firemen were trying to climb a ladder and enter the garage. I couldn't get to bed after that and I'm still so damn tired.
Classes start today! I've got business strategy class and I was just browsing through the course content and we're going to be doing some cases on some danish/european companies like Lego and SAS! I hope it isn't like management accounting 202 and we don't have to present cases on a weekly basis. I've also got international trade today but I'm not too sure if I'm going for it because it clashes with Asian economics and business practices and I have to choose either one of those to attend but I'm not too sure what I should do. I think it'll be nice hearing what people have to say about Asia and E is in the same class as I am but it'll also be fun doing international trade alongside international econs and I know international trade won't be easy and at least it's once a week compared to asian economics. I really can't make up my mind now. I guess I'll just attend international trade first (since there's no asian economics class today) and next week I'll attend the asian economics class and see which one I'll choose since it's still add/drop period! I'm quite excited about classes though! :)
Sunday, September 2, 2007 11:21 p.m.
Edwin & gang came down from Jonkoping, Sweden for the weekend so E and myself played hosts and tourist guides! We picked them up from Kobenhavn H (our main train station) on Friday night, showed them a little of the city (mayor's square and Tivoli) before we had kebabs for dinner at some restaurant near our residences. Yesterday, we set out early and explored copenhagen. We walked to Nyhavn, saw the house where Hans Christian Andersen lived when he was a kid, visited the marble church, saw the changing of guards at noon at Amalienborg which is the official residence of the Queen and the royal family. Apparently when one of them is in the palace, the flag is raised. On Friday, I was with my orientation group for the exploring copenhagen tour and this american guy asked if the flag is lowered when the queen goes out for a movie. Haha. Anyway, we walked along the harbour, saw the new opera house (nothing like Sydney Opera house) from across and looked at the submarines and naval ships all on display. Our destination before lunch was the little mermaid and we finally got to see her! She's really small and my mum's right when she said you can get a little disappointed if you were expecting some huge mermaid. After finally seeing the little mermaid, we had pizzas for lunch and made our way to Christianhavn which is across the bridge from the city. At Christianhavn, there's this village, Christiania, where hippies live and it's basically a freetown and there's graffiti on the walls (it's actually quite beautiful) and apparently, you can even get soft drugs there . It was really run down (kampong style living) and looks super unsafe so we didn't stay for long. We dropped by the famous local bakery, Lagkagehuset, where they sell very delicious looking pastries and strawberry cakes and I thought we wouldn't be able to get any strawberry cake this time around because E said they were too expensive and he's allegric to strawberries but when I turned around, he got a small cake for me! :) We came back around dinner time, cooked a simple meal and I crashed out after that.
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