Friday, November 30, 2007 03:16 p.m.
Dinner again last night with my favorite girls from this residence and Birte made a really healthy and wholesome salad that had lots of capsicums, squash and tomatoes in it while Melanie on the other hand, baked the most sinful chocolate dessert that had melted snickers bars and rice bubbles for the base and some belgian chocolate as the icing. It was so good, I probably finished like half the tray and couldn't stop licking my fingers! I cooked chicken rice because Melanie likes rice and E joined us for desserts and tea because he couldn't resist when Melanie called him and offered some of her chocolate desserts! Haha.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007 09:33 a.m.
The sun was out yesterday (very unusual for Copenhagen when it's always seems to be grey and windy) so E and myself decided to go down to the lakes! There are 4 lakes right in the center of the city, just outside zone 1, and I think it used to be a moat for Copenhagen and subsequently provided fresh water for the people living inside the city walls. Well, we always pass by it on our way down to the city but we never stopped to walk around. So E put on his running gear, I brought my book and we went down to the lakes! The sunset was amazing, the lakes provided some sort of therapeutic relief and the shop houses and restaurants across the lakes reminded me of Nyhavn (my favorite spot in Copenhagen) and really, it's the perfect place to come to and read a book (provided you're nicely wrapped up) and just let the world pass you by.
Monday, November 26, 2007 07:28 p.m.
It snowed last night and this morning at 8am, while walking across the slippery floor to class and trying my best not to slip and fall and make a fool out of myself, it started snowing again. At that moment, it just felt so surreal to be here in Copenhagen and I couldn't help but give thanks that I have this opportunity to come up here, experience the weather, be in a different classroom environment, take interesting and intellectually stimulating classes (with the exception of business strategy), travel and see so many places and have a taste of living overseas and away from home.Sunday, November 25, 2007 06:58 p.m.
E and myself went down to Ny Carlsberg Glyptoteket this afternoon. It's a sculpture museum right in the city founded by Carl Jacobsen (the founder of Carlsberg Brewery). The whole museum is just filled with sculptures from ancient Greece, Rome, France and Denmark and I much prefer paintings and modern art but when you actually take time to notice the elaborate details on the sculptures like the facial expression, hair and muscles on the body, it really amazes me. I've no idea how someone could sculpture something so beautiful out of marble and actually make it look so real. Right in the center of the museum is the Winter Garden because I think Carl Jacobsen wanted to explore the Mediterranean climate so it's a lush green oasis with palm trees and just the perfect place to come to on a rainy day and read a book!
Sunday, November 25, 2007 11:39 a.m.
The boyfriend knows how much I love rib eye steak so we made a special trip down to Irma yesterday, bought 2 pieces of rib eye, came back home to marinate it with red wine, pan fry it and served it with fries and broccoli!! The meat was so tender and flavorful and it was done just the way I like it. Perfect and definitely one of his best home cooked meals so far! :)
Saturday, November 24, 2007 11:48 a.m.
E and myself are spending christmas in Barcelona so I thought it'll be nice to treat him to a live soccer match. I'm told you should have no problem getting good tickets for about 40euros unless they're playing against their arch rivals, Real Madrid. So I went to check out their official ticket site and guess what!?! They're really playing Real Madrid the weekend we're there and so all the seats are sold out and the only remaining ones are going for 467.50euros. Sure, it's front row seats and they've got Ronaldinho and Thierry Henry in the team but I'm not going to be that crazy and spend 1000sgd to watch 22 men with ugly legs chasing a ball. What a bummer, seriously. The boyfriend's parents left early yesterday morning so we got up at 3.30 am (after sleeping for an hour only because I was writing my paper) to help them carry their severely overweight bags to the airport. No joke. We got back at around 6.15 am, I finished up my paper, went for class, handed it in, came back home and crashed out till 4pm. I feel like I've been traveling since London because we got to bring his parents around everyday and to be honest, it has been the most difficult and exhausting 2 weeks. I like his parents but they're very different from my parents in so many ways and just having to get used to having them around just makes me miss home (and my parents) so much more.Thursday, November 22, 2007 04:54 p.m.
Desserts with my favorite residence girls, Melanie and Birte, last night at Mel's room after I got home from Tivoli! Melanie once again baked the most deliciously sinful chocolate and I brought ice cream and the three of us just sat there feasting on desserts and chatting away. E joined us for a while and I think he can't believe we were having such yummy melted chocolate with rice bubbles, he had 3 portions and I think he's a tad jealous we didn't call him along for all the previous times we had dinner and desserts! Haha.Thursday, November 22, 2007 04:33 p.m.
E and myself brought his parents to Tivoli yesterday to see the Christmas lights and shop at the christmas market! Tivoli's a really old amusement park right in the center of Copenhagen, just next to our city hall and central train station and they have a few rides in there (definitely can't match up to those at Disneyland or Magic Mountain) and there's plenty of restaurants in there! The whole place was beautifully decorated for christmas, every tree was made into a christmas tree and the shops were all selling lovely christmas stuff! It really makes you feel like you're in christmas village. Haha. We made it a point to get there at around 2pm so that we could see the inside in the day but I think it's definitely much more beautiful at nights when all the christmas lights are turned on! Unfortunately and as always, it was freezing so that made it less enjoyable! The christmas food stores were selling Glögg, gingerbread man and all the christmas goodies and stores were selling little elves, crystal snowman and all! We also watched this laser show (not as good as the sentosa laser show), went inside this little house that had elves skiing and I even managed to climb into some kid's igloo! Haha. We walked around the park till about 7pm before we headed back home for dinner! :) I think I'm most definitely coming back here closer to christmas with the girls and take a photo with Santa!
Wednesday, November 21, 2007 12:40 p.m.
The boyfriend and I brought his parents to Malmo yesterday afternoon. This time around, we explored a different side of Malmo. For the many times we were there, we simply walk straight to the shopping streets and eat china box take away. But yesterday, we ventured east of the train station, walked to the King's Park and saw their pathetic castle, walked down the streets that remind me of Odense and had lunch at Saluhallen which is this food hall that sells all sorts of food. His folks had chinese food (they really love chinese food) while E and myself had kebabs! After lunch, we walked down Malmo's shopping street (they're going to have an ice skating rink too for christmas) and I got a thicker pair of leggings and new gloves with some thermal insulating function to keep my fingers warm! :)
Tuesday, November 20, 2007 11:35 p.m.
I've got another logistics and transportation economics 72 hour take home assignment so I've got to finish it by Friday. This time around, it's more focused and it's on Denmark's cruise industry. I know nothing about it so I've really got to do tons of research and get started on writing. I don't know how I'm going to do that when we've got to bring his parents around and AH. Well, the first take home assignment on the deregulation of the airline industry in EU and how it has developed since then was returned yesterday and I'm really surprised and happy with what I got so hopefully I can produce the same kind of quality writing and analysis with this second paper!Tuesday, November 20, 2007 10:08 a.m.
The boyfriend's parents are here in Copenhagen for the next 5 days so we've got to play tour guides and bring them around. I'm so tired because it feels like I've been traveling for the last 2 weeks already so I'm not exactly keen on it. It doesn't really help that they always say "anything" when we ask them what they want to eat or do so it's quite hard to plan their trip and I also find that they're so different from my parents so it is certainly taking some patience and effort to get used to having them around. Ah well, that said, E and myself plan to bring them to Malmo today to let them see Sweden and do some shopping. We went to Wokshop Cantina for lunch yesterday and they serve up really authentic thai food in a cosy warm restaurant! Their pad thai was amazing and it was so damn good eating kway teow and beansprouts after so long! Haha. I came home to sleep after lunch while E brought them to see the little mermaid and when they came home, I cooked pineapple rice for dinner and we had the strawberry tarts for desserts! :)
Monday, November 19, 2007 11:36 p.m.
After Oxford, we spent the next 3 days walking around London, taking in its world famous sights, eating and shopping! E's parents finished their guided tour around Europe in London so they were there with us for the rest of the trip. On our third day in London, we headed down to the British Museum! The good thing about most museums in London is that it's free and they actually do house some good exhibits! We managed to quickly see the greek and egyptian sculptures, read about how the function and use of money evolved over the years (very interesting for an economics student) and even saw real egyptian mummys which was a little freaky! Haha. The British museum is in this ancient roman looking building but the inside was really new and modern!
Melvin joined us while we were in the British Museum so after we were done with the pieces, we walked towards Covent Garden, had dim sum for lunch at Imperial China at Leicester Square where E's dad just freely ordered dim sum like there's no tomorrow and we ended up stuffing ourselves like crazy. After that, we walked up Regent street, walked along Oxford street where we got to see some of the preliminary christmas lighting and did crazy shopping at all your big name high street brands!
The thing about the pound is that it's very deceptive. When you look at the items on display and check out their price tags and you see things for 10 pounds, 5 pounds or even 15 pounds, everything seems cheap because it's such a small denomination. That's especially if you come from another country where the denomination is very big (like denmark) and we're used to seeing numbers like 150kr, 500kr or 249kr on the price tags. But if you actually convert the pounds back to singapore dollars, it becomes freakingly expensive so many a times, I've got to put back what I was looking at because in pounds, it sounded cheap but in sgd, it was damn expensive and totally not worth it. Having said that, I managed to get shoes (2 different colours of the same design because they looked so pretty), underwear (according to the boyfriend, enough to sink a battleship), tops, leggings and a box of lipgloss from Benefit! E got this christmas tree for 7.50 pounds (see, sounds cheap but it's actually 24sgd) from Selfridges because he wants to put it up in his room in Copenhagen. Haha.
After shopping, we went down for dinner at Strada across St. Paul's cathedral and met up with the BRMC folks studying in London. Melvin, Amanda, Lish (Glad to see you after ages!!!), Edward, Josiah and Guan Sin was there so it was really nice seeing them together. Food was good but desserts was so good, the 8 of us finished off the 4 we ordered in less than 8 minutes. We went over to Melvin's place for a while to book our airtickets (we're going to Amsterdam and Brussels somewhere in between my exams) before coming back to retire for the night!
Our fourth day in London, we decided to start at the Tower of London. It's a castle looking building (UNSECO heritage site) and it used to house some famous prisoners and also some members of the monarchy. It currently houses the crown jewels and ravens which legend has it that if the ravens ever leave the tower of London, the monarchy will fall. Well, we wandered along the Thames, saw the Tower of London bridge (which people often get it mixed up with London Bridge) and had lunch at Wagamama's.
After lunch, we walked along the Thames, cross the real London Bridge (it really is just a plain bridge in London with no tower of anything magnificent), walked to Borough Market (the place where Jamie Oliver buys his ingredients), passed Shakespeare's globe theatre and continued on to see the London Eye (looks exactly the same as our Singapore flyer and I really like how it looks) before we went to Harrods to do shopping! Harrods is probably one of the most high class stores in London and they have people opening the doors for you and chauffeurs waiting in big Mercedes Benz for the London taitais. I didn't really fancy it because it just another departmental store and I prefer individual shops on its own but I love the foodhall where they sell what seem to be the finest food and they even have Krispy Kremes! The one thing I really appreciated about London is that I could get my Starbucks fix and eat Krispy Kremes for breakfast! Well, the 3 of us ended up eating pies from the food hall before roaming around the floors and the guys played foosball at the kid's section. Well apparently, Harrods closes its stores for one day to allow the Queen to do her shopping! Haha.
After Harrods, we took the tube to Bayswater to have dinner and roast duck at the Four Seasons restaurant. E's parents really like chinese food so we kinda had to eat chinese food. They're not really adventurous when it comes to food and I don't know, but throughout the trip, I realized how different they are from my parents and E and myself have realized my parents and his parents are really from different generations even though they're only like 8-9 years apart.
Our last day in London, E and myself decided to have some together time alone and went down early in the morning to South Kensington for its crepes!! :) That was one of the best meals in London (along with Strada) because the crepes were yummylicious!
After filling our stomachs with crepes, we went back to Buckingham Palace to meet his folks and see the changing of guards. Haha. Stockholm has an entertaining changing of guards but I've to say that London's guards band plays the nicest songs. Haha. It seemed like all the tourists in london just descended on the queen's residence (What a pity I didn't get to see William) and it felt like some national day parade. Haha.
From Buckingham Palace, we walked pass St. James Park, Winston Churchill's war bunker, Downing street (we couldn't stand right in front of 10 Downing street for security reasons) and landed ourselves up in front of Big Ben. In my opinion, Big Ben and the London Eye are the nicest attractions in London. We took a quick peep inside Westminster Abbey (the place where kings and queens had their coronations) before we took the tube to Borough Market.
E's parents are not the kind of people that can stand around and eat food so they settled for lunch inside this fish restaurant while E and myself, happily trawled the market looking for good food! We started off with Roclette which is basically boiled mashed potatoes with cheese over it and pickles on the side. For 5 pounds, it was quite expensive but damn damn good. We had fish & chips after that because E just needed to try England's fish & chips and I'm not a big fan of fish so I didn't really like it. Melvin joined us halfway while we were eating and after we were done, we walked along the Thames again and went inside Tate Modern (I like this museum), crossed the Millennium Bridge to St. Paul's cathedral before we tubed to Oxford street for a little bit more of shopping and ended up having a chinese dinner again at Bayswater (just at a different restaurant even though his folks wanted to go back to the same place).
After dinner and to end off our London trip nicely (I had quite a hard time with his parents around), E and myself decided to tube down to King's cross station's 9 and 3/4 platform!! Haha. The station people brilliantly rode on the success of Harry Potter and erected this 9 and 3/4 platform and even stuck a trolley to the wall! Haha. E and myself had fun 'pushing' it while the younger kids around us just laughed when they saw us doing it. Haha. We came back and packed all our shopping up before waking up the next morning to come back to Copenhagen! :)
Monday, November 19, 2007 11:11 p.m.
Oxford, in my opinion, is a much prettier city than London. It has this intellectual vibe to it (we actually saw a guy reading a finance book while walking) and it's really quaint and pretty! I really like it and it feels like how a typical English town should be like. We met up with Tim (E's close friend since primary school) and he did the most amazing job bringing us around Oxford University, the town itself and just telling us about the history. To be honest, if you just simply take a bus down to Oxford and walk around the town and the different colleges, it'll be quite meaningless because you'll not know the history and the events that took place. Well, we got there Wednesday morning after 1.5 hours on the Oxford tube. We walked around the Wednesday's farmer's market, had pies and coffee and walked down Oxford's orchard Road while Tim was at his tutorial. We were told that Oxbridge's tutorials are not the kind of tutorials that we are used to. It's one to one or one tutor to 2 students and I cannot imagine how stressful it can be. You probably can't skip it at your whim and fancy and you definitely have to speak up and read your readings. Haha.
We met up with Tim again after he was done with his tutorial and he showed us around his college (Trinity College), the chapel, the dining hall and the cosy beer cellar down at the basement. We walked past the square where 3 catholic priests were burnt for their faith, passed St. John's college (the richest college in Oxford) and had lunch at The eagle and child cafe! :) I had so wanted to go there for lunch and coincidentally, Tim suggested we had lunch there! It was the cafe where CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien (the guy who wrote The Lord of the Rings) met up regularly to eat and talk! They affectionally nicknamed the cafe "the bird and baby". Haha.
After lunch, we continued our walking tour of Oxford! We went into Blackwell's bookstore which has over 160,000 books in the basement alone and the shelving stretches over 3 miles. The bookstore has 3 floors so you can imagine how many books there are! I could easily spend hours in there! We passed the original site of the Oxford University press, the dry bridge of sighs (because there's no river flowing beneath the bridge), climbed up a church tower to get a magnificent view of oxford and the sun setting. We also went into the library which has one copy of every copyrighted book in the UK and walked pass the river where apparently if you jump in and manage not to break your leg, you'll graduate with first class honors. Haha. Along the way, Tim shared with us about his life in Oxford, gave us the most interesting history lesson and brought us to eat Ben's cookies!
We couldn't get into Christ College (the scene for the stairs in the Harry Potter movie and the dining hall was also in the movie) because it was closed and I would have been quite disappointed if not for the fact that Tim said the movie wasn't really filmed there and they merely replicated the dining hall. Haha. The guys ended up playing foosball in Trinity College's common room and chit chatted before we hopped on the Oxford tube back to London and had dinner at a chinese restaurant!
Sunday, November 18, 2007 11:55 p.m.
I don't quite know how to describe this trip down to London. On one hand, it was really nice to have Melvin and Amanda bring us around, meet up with the barker road folks studying in London over dinner, take a day trip down to Oxford and have Timothy bring us around and tell us the history. It was also very beautiful walking around London and taking in its world famous sights and definitely mad fun shopping along Oxford street and getting sucked into consumerism and not forgetting, eating at all the nice restaurants and having lunch at Borough Market. Yet at the same time, London's a really chaotic and busy city. Everyone's rushing about, there's so much traffic on the roads and when you go shopping, everything seems to be screaming for your attention that it can get quite tiring for the eye. It's not the city for a quiet weekend and it's easy to feel like you're just another face in the crowd. E's parents were also with us and they're lovely but it took a while to get used to having them around and I think I now know why some married women get scared of their mother in laws. I didn't take much pictures this time around and I think it's because I didn't really know how to capture the city in pictures. For Oxford, I felt like the city was too beautiful for pictures and I should just appreciate its beauty and leave it in my memory. But still, I'll post whatever pictures I've taken after I'm back from school tomorrow. I've got an early morning class at 8am so I need to scoot off and head to bed!Tuesday, November 13, 2007 08:33 a.m.
Friday morning saw E and myself taking a 4.5 hour train up to Stockholm to meet up with Kenneth and Wanling! :) Stockholm is really beautiful and I like how the capital of Sweden is just scattered across a number of islands. The city has this old and new feeling to it and there, you really feel like you're in a scandinavian country. Sodermalm kind of reminded me of San Francisco (which is still voted my #1 favourite city in the whole world) and some parts of it (especially the water and the cobble stone streets and beautiful colorful old buildings) reminded me of Venice. I really liked Stockholm and I think it's one of the most beautiful cities in Europe that isn't messy or rush rush and I definitely want to come back here again when the temperature's much warmer! We got there Friday morning and checked into our accommodation. E and myself decided to steer away from the conventional sleeping places and booked a room on this red boat docked at the waters in between Gamla Stan (old town) and Sodermalm. We weren't expecting much but thankfully the place was really clean and the whole place was just so warm and cosy! Location was also perfect because we could walk to almost everywhere!
After checking in, we had lunch at Nystekt Strommming at Sodermalm. Apparently it sells some of the best fried herring in Stockholm! I had fried herring on top of a crust bread while E had a herring burger and it was really really good! :) We took the ferry to Djurgarden which is another island about 15minutes away. There's a few museums and a theme park (Tivoli) there and I think it'll be real nice during summer to rent a bike, cycle around and stop for a picnic by the waters in between museum hopping! We took a quick peek inside the Vasamuseet where we saw the flagship Vasa which apparently sank a few minutes after it was launched but was somehow brought up to the surface again.
After that, we walked across the island to Skansen which is the world's first open-air museum and they basically is Sweden in miniature. They showcased Sweden's different industries as well so we could walk into some of the houses and see people doing glass work, printing using the old machines and demonstrating how to make furniture. It's really quite an eye-opener. They also showed houses from different parts of Sweden. Other than that, the view from Skansen was really good and we could get a good view of Stockholm from up there. We wandered along the streets and walked to the Nordic Zoo where we got to see those scandinavian animals like reindeers, wolverines, beer and all! Haha. E was so excited he managed to see Rudolph and a real bear! :)
By the time we left Skansen, it was all dark (the sun sets at 4pm now) so we made our way to the City center where we had spicy Thai food for dinner and went to the Absolut Icebar at the Nordic Sea Hotel! :) That was an experience in itself as well. We were given this silvery thick coat to put over and gloves and we had 45minutes inside the ice bar where the temperature's set at -5 dc and everything's made of ice! The glass which we drank from was made of ice, the tables and the seats by the side was made from ice too! I have no idea how they made it and how they ensure that it doesn't melt! It's quite cool and it's really much nicer to drink vodka under such cold temperatures because you don't feel so hot! We walked around the city center for a little while more before making it back to our red boat! :)
On Saturday, E and myself started out early and when we got out of our boat, we realized that it snowed the previous night because the cars had snow on them! We walked to Gamla Stan (an island in between the city center which is on the mainland and the island Sodermalm) and had swedish pastries for breakfast at this quaint cafe. We met Kenneth and Wanling at Stadshuset (City hall) which doesn't look that big or impressive from afar but the grounds is huge and it also houses the Blue Hall where the annual Nobel prize banquet is held.
We walked back to Gamla Stan and made our way to Kungliga Slottet (royal palace) where we saw the rather entertaining changing of guards. Lunch was at this cafe where E and Wanling had roast beef while Kenneth and I opted for seafood soup. I realized that the swedish version of seafood soup is very different from what we usually think seafood soup should be. We wandered around the Old town after lunch before walking over to Sodermalm where we took an old lift up to Katarinhissen where we got an excellent view of Gamla Stan and the old town. It was 0 dc when we were up there and with the wind blowing, it was freezing!! My nose was all red, my toes felt like they were going to drop off and my eyes were stinging like mad!
We walked around the main pedestrian street at Sodermalm after coming down and had dinner at Creperie Fyra Knop which served up one of the most delicious and thinnest crepes I've tried. We walked back around the central train station area before hopping on our train back home to Copenhagen! :)
Sunday, November 11, 2007 06:36 p.m.
IT IS SNOWING IN COPENHAGEN!!! :) I was trying to churn out my assignment when the girls came banging on my door and the boyfriend at the same time saw snow falling from the sky!! So we quickly threw on some warm clothing, wore our sneakers and ran downstairs to play with the snow and let it fall softly on our heads!! It was the most amazing thing ever!! We went up to our residence's roof terrace after a while and the whole place was white!! We girls just stood around and tried to keep warm while the guys rolled snow balls and started throwing them at one another!! It was so fun!! Now I can't wait to go ice skating in December and make a real snowman!! :)
Sunday, November 11, 2007 01:18 a.m.
I'm back from Stockholm but I've got a 72 hour written assignment for logistics and transportation economics class due on Monday morning at 8 am. I've looked through the question and it's rather open ended and very europe-focused so I definitely need to plan my answer carefully, do some thorough research and get started on writing since I've already lost 48 hours. I'll update on Stockholm once I've handed in my paper!Thursday, November 8, 2007 10:14 p.m.
A big dinner feast with the residence girls today! :) Melanie baked the most yummylicious desserts, Birte and her german friend grilled german sausages and cooked red cabbage and potatoes that went really nicely with the warm gravy and I cooked thai pineapple rice! It was one of the best all girls only dinner affair with good food, excellent company and wonderful conversations!! :)
And in less than 3 hours, the boyfriend and I are off to Stockholm for the weekend! :)
Thursday, November 8, 2007 11:39 a.m.
The boyfriend and I did a day trip to Odense yesterday! Odense is the third largest city in Denmark and it's on the island of Funen and that took us about an hour on the train! Odense is the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen and the town is definitely much prettier than Arhus. There were cobble stoned streets, brightly painted buildings (reminds me of Nyhavn) and sculptures of those characters in H.C. Andersen's fairy tales all over the city!
When we got to Odense, we made our way to the Hans Christian Andersen museum. There, we got a chance to read about his life, watch a video about his life and his works, listen to his famous fairy tales like the emperor's new clothes and the ugly duckling and walk through the corner yellow house where he was born. H.C. Andersen lived in that house till he was 2 and at the age of 14, he moved to Copenhagen to work at the Royal Theatre. I think the financial director of the royal theatre recognized his potential so he was sent to school but he had quite a hard time there and after that, he started writing because he needed to make some money. When he was in Copenhagen, he lived at Nyhavn and we got to see a model of his flat at Nyhavn!
According to the exhibits and the movie, H.C. Andersen was ostracized because he was really tall for that time (1.83m) and he was ugly. He was also born into the lower class of society and suffered from extreme poverty. I think because of that, he was quite sensitive to criticism about his works. He was the first son of a cobbler and a washerwoman and he had 2 loves in his life but he never married. He died at the age of 70 and to be honest, while he wrote a lot of fairy tales that are still famous to this day, I think he led quite a sad life. We got a chance to read some of his writings and I have to acknowledge that he was mindful of God in his life and how we are all God's children. There was a quote of his that said he hoped that the fact that we all belong to God can be heard through all his writings.
After the museum, E and myself walked along the streets of Odense (it really is very quaint and quiet), had another china box for lunch and E spoilt me and bought me a whole bar of milk chocolate with hazelnuts on it from this chocolate store. We also went to see the cathedral where H.C. Andersen was confirmed. The inside definitely wasn't those elaborate cathedrals you get in Italy but I thought it had this really warm feeling. As you can tell, there's really nothing much to do in the town but follow the footsteps and life of H.C. Andersen. We walked to his childhood home which was near the cathedral and that was where he grew up.
It was freezing so we walked around a little while more before catching an early train back to Copenhagen! We came home and made ourselves a really hearty dinner of bacon. bread, scrambled eggs, fish fillet and tomato soup. I'm going to meet the boyfriend soon in school and we're going down to the bookstore at Norreport to check out the books and I've got a big dinner feast with the girls tonight so I'm really looking forward to that! :)
Wednesday, November 7, 2007 10:32 p.m.
The boyfriend invited Chris over for dinner tonight and so I cooked chicken rice, miso soup and vegetables for dinner! Chris is his french friend, project group mate and the two of them also play PSP together very often and trade PSP games. Haha, it was my first time meeting him after hearing so much about him from E and he's a really nice guy (he brought red wine over for dinner). I have to say he speaks very good english for a french and it's funny how he really liked sambal chili. Haha.
After dinner and washing up, the boyfriend and I decided to be hardworking and healthy and so we squeezed our own orange juice! I like the first picture of the boyfriend because it reminds me of how he's always so prim and proper and how he can sometimes be a big time mummy's boy! Haha.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007 11:56 a.m.
Melvin and Amanda came up from London to visit so it was 3 whole days of excellent company and wonderful fellowship! :) On their first day here, we had a quick lunch at the kebab store near our place before we headed down to town. We walked from Norreport, down Stroget, they went up the Round Tower and after that, we continued on to Nyhavn where we managed to see the bridge being raised so that one of the ships could come into the harbor! Kongens Nytorv was fenced up because they are starting to prepare and build the outdoor ice skating rink for christmas! We had tea at Magasin and came back home to cook Japanese curry, watch Ratatouille and catch up with each other!
On Sunday, the two of them made their own way down to Carlsberg Brewery while E and myself slept in. We met them at Kongens Nytorv after lunch and from there, we walked towards the Queen's official residence (Amalienborg Palace), went inside the Marble Church and continued on to see the Little Mermaid. We hopped on the river bus to Christianshavn, had the yummylicious strawberry tarts from Lagkagehuset, walked on to Christiania (hippie free town in Christianshavn), stopped for coffee at Bastionen og Loven which is this really quaint and cute tea house! It was really warm inside and probably one of the nicest place to have tea in Copenhagen so I'm going to bring the girls back there for coffee!!
Dinner was at The Custom House which is a building by the harbor near Nyhavn. It's brown in color and shaped like a pencil box so the danes call is the pencil box and there are 3 different gourmet restaurants in there. The pencil box should be the place where ships would embark for Sweden but the whole concept reminds me of One Fullerton. We settled for the bar&grill because that was the only restaurant opened on Sunday night. I can't really remembered what we all had but if I'm not wrong, we ordered the Skagen Prawn toast, goat's cheese and some brioche with mushrooms for starters. For the mains, Amanda had baked cod, Melvin had some danish fish, E ordered entrecote and I had duck leg confit. The food was decent (a little salty in my opinion) but the ambience more than made up for it! We came back home really stuffed and the boyfriend went on to make us hot chocolates with ice cream on it! Haha.
I had morning classes on Monday so the three of them came to look for me in school. We went down to Frederiksberg Park (the trees are all almost bare) and headed down to Vesterbro for lunch. We wanted to try this Italian restaurant first but it was closed so we looked for the Vietnamese restaurant (which was also closed) and in the end, we settled for lunch at this cafe where we had omelette and burgers. Both E and myself went back to school for class, Melvin and Amanda walked around town and I managed to make it back and talk to them for about an hour before they left for the airport. E and myself are headed to London in less than a week so looks like we'll see the both of them again! :)
Saturday, November 3, 2007 09:41 a.m.
I prepared sushi last night!! :) E and myself went down to Norreport yesterday afternoon to walk around and stumbled into the asian supermarket where we found them selling Yeo's soya bean drink, crab meat, spring roll, dumplings, kimchi and all the other asian food! So we decided to buy all the necessary ingredients we needed and came back home to make sushi! We fried the eggs, cut the sausages up, shred the crab meat, cooked the rice with vinegar, substituted the Japanese Mayo with Kraft's miracle whip and rolled it up in seaweed and ate sushi while watching die another day! YUMMY. I even had wasabi and miso soup (Mum sent me the miso paste and dashi) and I threw in some seaweed so the only thing we were missing was the tofu! I haven't had sushi since coming up to Europe so it was definitely one of the best meals I had and it reminds me of some friday evenings when my maid would make sushi and E and myself would just sit in the kitchen and stuff ourselves with sushi that my maid just rolled!
Melvin and Amanda are here from London to visit for the next 3 days so we're going to meet them at the train station soon and bring them around town! :)
Friday, November 2, 2007 10:27 a.m.
The boyfriend and I went to Arhus yesterday! Arhus is supposedly the second largest city in Denmark after Copenhagen but it sure doesn't feel anything like Copenhagen. It has a population of only 30,000 and I initially thought it would be a big city with a lot of people and noise but it really is a small quaint town, with cobblestone streets and canals that reminds me of Malmo in Sweden. Arhus is on the Jutland peninsula (the one that links Denmark to Germany and hence, mainland Europe) so it took us 3 hours on the train to get there! There really wasn't much to do there except to eat and shop. We wanted to do the old town where it's actually an open-air exhibition on all the old houses from Denmark a long time ago but we decided against it because there's a much bigger and better one near Copenhagen so we might as well do that instead. So we ended up walking around the city center, bought some stuff, had china box take away again and walked to the harbor before taking the train back to Copenhagen!
Friday, November 2, 2007 09:46 a.m.
It was Halloween 2 nights ago and our residence had this major party where people from all the other residences came over to our place. E and myself weren't intending on joining them because we were out the whole day and had to go to Arhus the next day but after watching Ratatouille (the movie was so cute, I'm inspired to go to paris and try it!), we went up to the third floor to meet some friends and ended up talking with a whole bunch of people till 1 am.
I didn't bring my camera up so I don't have much photos to show but that's Birte and she's from Germany and probably one of my closest girlfriends in this residence. She was dressed up as a witch and she even had a fake crooked long nose that had a wart on it! Haha. She knows how much I love Ritter Sport whole hazelnut chocolates so when she was back in Germany during the term break, she got me a few of those! Haha. E and myself joined Alex, Karen, Melanie and herself for some wine, played with her nose (do you know that we asians cannot wear that fake nose because all our noses are too flat?!) and also talked to Holly (Hong Kong girl from another residence but in my international economics class) and Pooi Fun as they were dressing up as a vampire with blood dripping from her eyes and a student with spiders on her. Haha. I saw a few other random but interesting costumes like Jeremy had this box around his manhood and when you open it, a huge fake dick will pop up in front of your face. Haha. There was also another guy who used the Carlsberg beer cans to make himself a gladiator costume but other than that, most people were dressed up as vampires or witches.
I don't know what time the party ended but when I was going to bed at about 3.30am, there was still music downstairs and I could hear people talking. The next morning when we were leaving for Arhus, the whole place reeked of alcohol and there were cigarette butts and empty beer cans lying all around and our main glass door was cracked. Disgusting.
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