The good and the bad.

Let's start with the good. I learnt how to bake a cake from Victoria our pastry queen, it's some kind of a sour cheese cake, really nice, crispy on the outside and really soft and cheesy on the inside. Not very sweet. And fresh from the oven. Fantastic. I've not tried yet but at least I got to know how it is made. 

2 nights ago, we had some kind of a Catalonian dinner with some of Sergi's friends who came over from Catalonia and brought some stuff over like deep fried pork fillet with cheese. It was really good. And I got to try some really good cheese, some sausages made from eggs, some eggs, chopped up baguette with tomato puree and oil, and some spaghetti which Sergi said 'contained some pork blood'. It tasted damn nice. I forgot to take pictures of the dinner with everyone else, but I took some from the leftovers below.

Spaghetti

Eggs and cheese

Let's start with bad. See that thing? It appeared in my room. And for your information, my room is perfectly neat and tidy, I don't need such guests in my room. It was dangling at the wall where I normally put my feet and the mere grotesque notion of it crawling on my feet made me cringe with absolute repugnance. I hate spiders, centipedes and scorpions and this one was especially huge. It looked like a baby tarantula, and gross I have nightmares of them once every month. Looks like nightmare became reality on Wednesday morning. 

Funny thing was, I chased it under my door with my broom and it DISAPPEARED. That's the worst thing. If it had died I could sleep peacefully. Now I'm paranoid that it's gonna treat my face as a playground at night or my gloves as its bedroom. Please get out of my room. Forever. I swear if i see it again i am going to smash it with my 3kg Mathematical programming textbook (since i hate this module as well.) I spared its life once and it should know better than to return. Today I saw a baby one and I threw it out of my window into the snow. Good luck. Pay rent next time.

Secondly, my bicycle tyre punctured. I shall say no more.

And lastly, I think i have to postpone my london trip. Because I didn't consider the trip from Copenhagen to Billund and back, which cost and astounding 650DKK ++, ~approx SGD180. I found cheaper flights from CPH to London itself and Ankit and I were thinking of starting our Eurolines journey there during the Easter break. So looks like I have to miss my Ryanair flight and lose my SGD55. Sigh. I need a good sleep to recover from this. Without things on my face.

Journey to the lake

Kasha, Sergi, Kelsey and I decided to take a little cycling trip down to a lake near Lyngby and it was so beautiful. It was tiring cycling back to our home and I perspired like mad because of my bike. But anyway the lake was stunning, because it was frozen. I even stood on it! Hoping it wouldnt crack, but it didn't. haha. Kasha took the photo so when I get it from her i'll upload here.

Container C international dinner

We had another international dinner last Thursday, it was our first get-together to get to know each and every container mate in container C as well as to establish some ground rules regarding the kitchen. yup especially the kitchen.

As usual we prepared some dishes from our country, this time I tried to make some chap chye, and tom yum soup. The chap chye was not bad, but the tom yum soup was way too sour cos i left the limes inside and i forgot to take them out and they made the soup really bitter. For me, it was too much, for the europeans, it was overwhelming. Anyway, I had some nice meatballs from the Polish, some nice streaky pork from Dabi(Korean), stir fried eggplants from Sarah (Hongkong), and some lovely raspberry tarts from our pastry queen, Victoria from Estonia.

We stated some ground rules about the kitchen, especially for the fact that people tend to wash and leave the plates on the tray to dry and then forget about them. So they accumulate after a while and it results in a pile of unsightly garbage. So we declared that we have to wash, dry them and put them back into the cupboard. and wash them properly. I remembered seeing pasta stains on my pot. Disgusting. And the cup I used had tea stains.

Which brings us to a new problem. WET dishes in the cabinet. Now the cabinet stinks, cos all the wet dishes(those not being dried properly) are left in the cabinet. Of which will be the main topic for our next dinner. Actually, relative to other containers I have been to, ours is actually quite acceptable. My container mates are rather clean, considerate, and they seldom mess up the place. If we were to choose a culprit for all the cooking mess, I guess it would be me cos I'm always cooking with a lot of chopped up stuff and sauces on the table. But I CLEAN THEM UP. Convenient scapegoat or dartboard would be me under any circumstances.

I brought up another fact about people walking in like 200kg obesities wearing high heels in the middle of the night when they return from the party. It's damn noisy. And some times they bring in their drunk friends, who wail like mad ghosts. Well, the wall doesn't really provide effective insulation so there's nothing much I can do. I must count myself lucky cos the only Spanish guy in my container isn't a party animal, and the polish are pretty considerate people, plus the Asians who won't get drunk. 2 nights ago, my friend was sandwiched between 2 containers which had parties and couldn't sleep the whole night. 

SNOW, SNOW and more NOISE

February is the coldest month apparently. It's been snowing lately, almost on a daily basis. And it's a beautiful sight. People are building snowmen, throwing snowballs at each other and at me. I got hit by a huge one on the head when I was cooking in the kitchen, just so coincidentally when I opened the window to get the smell out. I went out in my shorts and singlet in the winter cold to take my revenge. This morning at around 6 am someone was using the Changkul outside, burying some kind of a dead body. The continuous scraping was so noisy, and as I was sleeping near the door, I couldn't sleep for some time. So inconsiderate. Ended up oversleeping by 3 hours.

Was cooking this when i got snowballed.

Sergi the 'Catalonian' (from barcelona) guy.

International Dinner Tuesday

DTU Buddy association came up with this little event to promote the international culture in DTU. Basically we were encouraged to bring a dish or 2 from our home country and share it with others. I made fried wantons! 

I found Wanton skin with a few other treasured items in some asian shops in Copenhagen. Along with the skin i bought Black pepper sauce, Tom yum sauce, and Nasi Goreng sambal sauce. Oh ya sesame oil too. It's tough buying meat here because my kitchen doesn't have a freezer. I mean, the temperature outside is way colder than my fridge. I have to eat my vege and meat in at most 3 days. 2 days ago, my pork and beef turned slightly grey and my long beans started producing white pus. But I boiled them anyway and ate them.

김 밥 !

There were like 100 people, but only 13 wantons. Initially I made like 20 but i ate 7 along the way. lol

Ankit, me and a few others at cellarbar after the dinner.

Trip to Rokskilde part I

Rokskilde is a medieval city best known for its Viking heritage, so we decided to take a weekend off to venture over there. The train system is particularly weird, because it does not get proportionately expensive on the number of stops to your destination, rather the zone that you're in. Going to Copenhagen is more expensive than going to Rokskilde (for example) if the latter falls into a further zone. And this is something we should have researched on before we boarded the train. Since we had only 4 zone clip cards, and the journey to Rokskilde is 5 zones, we decided to 'cheat' a little by clipping at 2 stops from our boarding system, because they will determine the effective number of zones from the station which we clipped at. Unfortunately, the station that we clipped at was on a further zone, so we ended up paying more, running into the train conductor (which we played as dumb tourists to escape being fined) and spending a lot more time than we should. Guess we should've just paid the respective amount. haha. 

But we sat on first class. We pretended we didn't know.

I wanted to go to the Viking Museum but my friends didn't want to because it was too expensive and it was small, and it's not going to have such a 'wahhh' effect, so I was pretty disappointed with this trip, but nevertheless I get to see a beautiful ghost city with shops closed on a Sunday.

Rokskilde Part II

Rokskilde Cathedral ( Preserved as a sanctuary for the Kings and Queens )

Beef!

Look at the size of the moon. It looks smaller in the picture though

Dinner at Stienne's

We were invited for a traditional dinner at Stienne's over at Nordhavn near Copenhagen with the rest of my orientation group members. She made some meatballs and potatoes, ending the night with Gelato ice cream. The meatballs were superb and we had a nice little tour of her little apartment, which was neat, well-furnished and cosy. 

First week of lesson and random stuff

My first porridge. It dried up after a while and my friend thought it was rice.

First week of lesson was pretty ok. The professors, all of them, were really nice and engaging, albeit boring ( a little). Some of the courses are quite heavy but I guess I'll manage, cos nothing can beat NUS's workload. I have lessons on all 5 days, which is NOT the norm because I'm taking 6 courses. The day is divided into 2 slots, which means in 1 week there are 10 slots to choose from. So I have 4 half days and 1 full day. Full days are really mad. but 4 morning classes at 8am is also mad. Thank god it's Saturday tomorrow.

One peculiar stuff I observed is that projects are graded on an individual basis(some only)! Which means that we have to state what we have done for the project and the lecturer will grade us according to how much we have contributed. So even if your project gets an A, and if you have done nothing, you'll fail. 

As much as people have said that danes are quiet and unfriendly, I would think otherwise. Maybe they are quiet but certainly they are not unfriendly. I've never met any Danish classmate who has been unkind or rude or anything. Not one yet. Maybe I'm just lucky? I heard complains and bad stuff( alittle racism) from other friends in other unis in other countries, but so far I've only good stuff to share. Most of the bad stuff I heard came from business schools? haha new stereotypes i guess? Engineering students are nice people.

The classes have like 6 blackboards, I dont really know for what reason. And printing is FREE. Finally something worth mentioning about! The lecture-student relationship here is really relaxed, u can call the lecturer by his first name, and sometimes he puts his leg on the table while chatting(discussing) with the other students. So stress free. I love it.

Each week we will have approximately 4 hours of lessons for each course, the first hour or so will be taught by the lecturer, while the remaining 2 to 3 hours will be exercises. Normally I did my work fast so i left early, and they are not graded anyway. It's all independent work so if you are really unclear about something you have to ask the lecturer. I met some people I knew beforehand in my classes, which is really nice because we tend to discuss our problems and lack of expertise in certain areas because we were all educated in different universities and are from different backgrounds. And there's a lot of group work so I get to meet other students and Danes.

I'm beginning to get used to the weather, nowadays i try not to wear the brown scarf because it's like 2 metres long and it itches my neck a lot. It's not really as cold as the time I arrived, either because it is getting warmer(which i doubt so because feb is the coldest month) or I'm just getting plain used to it. Nowadays its just a T shirt and a jacket. 

And I found chilli padi, amazingly. I found it at Fakta, it came at a price of course. 19 DKK. That's like SGD 5 for 1 packet. But the value addedness to my mental sanity is way more than that. Garlic, soya sauce and Chilli padi --> Heaven. I'm going to copenhagen tomorrow to search for Sesame oil. Might need it to make meatballs and porridge.

It finally SNOWED! LOOK at the blue sky!

the Christiana Escapade

I went out with Matthias and Luca for a little Copenhagen exploration in the afternoon cos I was a little bored. We wanted to check out Christiana, a free town notorious for its rampant drug abusers and yup all the vices I guess. Below are more pictures of the very picturesque and modern Copenhagen...

We were not allowed to take pictures inside, or at least that's what Matthias warned me so I just took one at the entrance. Basically as you can see from the pictures below, Christiana is a ghetto area, very unlike Copenhagen although they are just like a km away from each other. There are graffitis all over the place, rundown places, and dogs running around like you would see in Melaka. There were people crowded around bonfires, papers were flying around with the aid of the wind, and people wearing hoods staring at me the Chinese foreigner wearing nice shoes and an expensive jacket. Of course I freaked out haha.

And then there were drugs like in the shape of blue and green plasticines, displayed all over the table like the flea market. It was pretty scary. My Italian friend Luca didn't like the place either. But I guess you have to see it once in your life. Not stepping in there again.

And I took a quick snap illegally. Wait there's no law in Christiana. Paradox.

The House of Hans Christian Andersen (In white)

The ice skating 'ring'