Where East meets ... North.

OK the fun begins --> Berlin

2009-04-17T08:09:00.000-07:00

OK this is where the fun begins. Ankit and I have decided to travel together for 2 weeks, taking off the week before the Easter holiday week. We bought a Eurolines bus pass for about 165 Euros, which entitles us unlimited travel for 15 days. Our plan was to travel on short trips from one city to another so that the travelling time won't kill us, and night buses as well to save on accommodation. Well every plan has its flaws, we'll see.

Anyway, our plan was to travel from Copenhagen -> Berlin -> Amsterdam -> Paris -> Geneva -> Lausanne -> Interlaken -> Zurich -> Prague -> Copenhagen in 15 days. The plan changes at Geneva, we'll be joining 2 of Ankit's Indian friends, and they will be renting a car to drive through Switzerland, cos as we all should know, Switzerland is known for its mad costs.

It didn't start off very well. The printer wasn't working, the computer wasn't reading my thumb drive and I had a bicycle accident when I cycled into a rock at night. The stupid road lamp wasn't working and I was going down a slope, so I was praying that I didn't hit the huge rock but I did and ended up somersaulting, luckily I landed on my back. Cuts and bruises here and there,but that's about it. I was panicking, haven't had dinner yet and some stuff still unpacked. It was really last minute thanks to the stupid printer which I needed to use for my documents like hostel confirmation. I had to throw in my cookies with my pillow cos we didn't want to miss our bus. And yes my head pillow was sugared by the time I reached berlin.

The bus stand was in Copenhagen near the Kobenhavn H central station. We couldn't locate it as well and there were dubious people standing around cos it was 11:45pm at night and that street wasn't very safe. I don't get it, why do they not have a proper bus terminal? We couldn't even locate the right bus cos the organization was so messy and we had to ask every bus driver. And bus drivers' moods at 11:45pm without coffee weren't exactly pleasant so we just had to be a little patient. Finally the Berlin bus came and we boarded it.

There were many lone rangers in the bus (people travelling alone), mostly backpackers and some of them came up to us introducing themselves, and everyone said the same thing about the horrible organization. The bus was just half full, so I had 2 seats to myself, it had a mini washroom and the seats were relatively comfortable.

If your geographically educated, it would be wiser to travel by a ferry from the island of Zealand (which Copenhagen is located) to Germany. And that came to us as a surprise. I was sleeping when the driver woke us up telling us to get down. I had no clue where we were, the bus was parked at some type of carpark but I didnt' even know we were in a ferry. But it was very interesting, I bought some cheap chocolates and I enjoyed some refreshing night sea breeze as the ferry whizzed through to Copenhagen in an approximate time of 45 mins.

We finally reached the Berlin bus terminal, it was so different from the shitty street in Copenhagen. It looked proper organized and there was a washroom. BERLIN! We then went to check in at our hostel, of which we had to take a metro to. It cost us 2euros to get there.

Here's more details about the Eurolines pass. In order to get a reserved ticket for the trip to our next destination (which is Amsterdam), we have go to the Eurolines office in the country of embarkation which in this case is Berlin, and we have to book a ticket. But the stupid office wasn't open yet because we arrived so early, so we decided to go to the hostel first which is 40 minutes away. Here's the thing, if the office says that the bus is full, you're screwed. And there's no way of reserving the ticket before arriving. So we just had to take a little risk. And of cos pay 3 euros for reserving the ticket.

We decided to take a free tour (cos its free) and our tour guide was this lady by the name of Maria. She's half Swedish, half Japanese and she's a part time actress. I must say she's brilliant, the way she projected her voice, explained the history behind the attraction and danced around was amazing. The basis of these free tours lies in tips. So basically she has to work hard for good tips. We regretted not giving her tips because we wanted to save our $$, but we regretted it afterwards. She was very animated, detailed and engaging.

Might seem like a normal road mark but it is the line that divides East and West Germany. Interesting point out from Maria.

The Holocaust Memorial which the Germans spent about 27 million Euros in building. It's like an area of rectangular blocks of varying high on uneven slopes. And it's like a maze inside. The concept of it as explained by Maria, was inspired by an idea of a journey in which one loses his old friends and meets new people. There was also a Holocaust museum which we went later, and it was very very sad. It had letters of relatives writing to each other just before they were being sent for execution or to extermination camps. And I saw pictures of women made to strip and lie down in a pit before being shot so as to make it easier for them to be buried. It was so disgusting and repulsive.

The Berlin wall

Haha. Not the real berlin wall. But a nice parody of it.

The tour lasted about 3.5 hours, and by the time my legs were non-existent. We wanted to save money on metro so we walked back on a journey equivalent to that from Science Centre to Bukit Batok MRT station. yes.

Our hostel bar area. The hostel was run by some very friendly Australians, they even offered us Breakfast when we arrived. It was so pleasant, there's eggs and cheese, I loved it.

DAY 2

We took a tour to Sachenhausen, a concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin. I mean how can you come to Berlin and not see it. It was a paid tour so we didn't have any concerns of giving tips this time. But the guide wasn't as good as Maria, he was informative but not as animated. I guess animation wasn't required there, it was a solemn place because many people died. Very sad and grossed out from the way he described how the Germans executed the Jews, the homosexuals and the handicaps.

Toilet bowls in the camp!

Uniform.

This was the place where the Germans shot(executed) the prisoners. I was told that they begged for their lives upon seeing their imminent death and even the Germans soldiers suffered depression upon shooting so many civilians. They decided to resort to gas because it was far more efficient and it takes away the pressure and anxiety of having to execute prisoners face to face.

This was the place where they did the laboratory testing for the gas chambers. And there were ovens which they would cremate the bodies after they were being gassed to death. The prisoners were made to think that they were undergoing some sort of a medical examination when they were just being treated like lab rats. How repulsive. I didn't even want to take any pictures of this cursed place.

Some sneak pics of my classes

2009-04-17T07:58:00.000-07:00

The concept of the classes here is pretty interesting. This module on Materials Science (MLE) requires us to create a poster in an exhibition-like concept which involves us presenting to other students alike followed by a q&a session. So much different from NUS. And I loved that we could print out posters for free at such great quality. My team include Jay, Tobias and me. Tobias left before we took this pic, oops.

Danish class. My teacher's name is also Jonathan but pronounced as 'Yor-ner-thern'. Danish pronounce J as 'Y'. Same goes for German. But Danish is getting harder, I hate it when they just throw us sentences and not teach us the grammar. It's hard to recreate sentences, and to just purely vomit out sentences which we memorize, I think that's quite ineffective to learning any language. But nevertheless, the class is still interesting and manageable. Just that we have to read THREE STORY BOOKS. And that's mad, I took one hour to realize that the main character is just going to the kitchen to look for food.

Copenhagen Round 2

2009-04-17T07:34:00.000-07:00

I know it's 17 april now but this was exactly a month back, we got a little tired of school so we decided to go to copenhagen to jalan for a while. Nice start to the day with an Indian buffet at this restaurant called Indian Palace. My indian friend Ankit didn't really like it too much cos it was a little oily but it suited my palate. I found it to be fantastic, mutton and chicken were tender and of cos spicy.

We decided to take a tourist trial around Copenhagen and we chanced upon several places like the Supreme Court, the Parliament, the Rosenborg castle etc. But there's something about Copenhagen history that doesn't really interest me as much as say Berlin and Rome. A little boring on the history although Denmark was attacked by the Germans during the world wars. Nevertheless, it was interesting as we did a little shopping at the Stroget after sightseeing. I'll probably visit Copenhagen again when Tivoli park opens during the Summer.

Dinner, dinner and MORE dinner parties!

2009-03-07T12:33:00.000-08:00

This week has been filled with dinner parties all the way, because of birthday parties, leaving parties etc. The first one was a dinner in 'honour' of Kasia's departure. haha. In fact, there has been a significant change of container residents in C, Kasia and Dabi moved out while Samuel from France and Ana from Portugal moved in. Glad to have new blood :D Kasia found a home near Lyngby because she has to move out sooner or later .

Kudos to Sergi for this excellent dish from Catalonia. Superb.

Next: Ankit's birthday... I made this card for Ankit, I used the leaves outside my container room and made this from other scrap materials I had from magazines etc. Now that's creativity.

Kasia's birthday (actual one) She gave us chocolates and BAILEYS! nice

Amazing food, I made Nasi Goreng, apparently the Koreans liked it cos it's spicy. haha

When you're drunk, never play 24. 'See' Emmiline for details.

Next, we had a dinner party with my introduction week. Luca led a team of chefs to make some godlike Rizzoto and baked beef, which was excellent excellent excellent. Italian food just hit the next level for me. and Matthias as usual brought beer, while I practiced my new Danish phrases with Stinne. She understood! The red wine was great!

Finally, Kasia's belated birthday party. Although she moved out, we volunteered our container for her party. It was great! We gave her a DVD, flowers and a superwoman card. haha. The salad she made was godlike. LOVED it.

Kasia's birthday speech.

Finally!

2009-03-07T12:26:00.000-08:00

A bike can come in handy when you really need it and it can really torture you at the wrong time. I had to extract the external tyre to check the tubing 3 times! It's really tiring, so I'm glad I had it all done. In the end, it took a new tube to settle the problem. So much for plastering and gluing, I should've just got a new tube in the first place. Kasia reccommended me this nice guy at the bicycle shop and he said that my old one was cheap and in poor condition. That settles it, 50 DKK for a week load of hard work and basic course to repairing a bicycle.

Steam Egg to reward my hard work :D

The good and the bad.

2009-02-21T14:54:00.001-08:00

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

2009-02-21T14:31:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-21T14:13:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-16T02:56:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-16T02:43:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-16T02:30:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-14T04:56:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-11T14:43:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-06T14:10:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-02T16:00:00.001-08:00

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'

A solo trip to the deer park

2009-02-02T15:50:00.000-08:00

I was pretty bored in the morning so I decided to test my new bike by taking it for a ride in the deer park which we didn't complete last week. It's a picturesque area, very windy but you can see people jogging in the cold climate! Crazy Danes. There's actually a small little castle in the middle of the Nature Reserve and it's really really nice. Great weather for cycling and sight seeing.

The Sea!

I finally found the deers but I realized that they were antelopes not reindeers as my Spanish friend had described to me. But anyway, they were pretty faraway.

I actually found this frozen pond which was quite cool. I actually tested its ability to withstand my weight but it gave way :( I had the crazy idea of sliding along to the centre of the pool but maybe it could've given way in the middle and I would have a free icy swim.

Orientation 3rd day (Trip to Carlsberg)

2009-01-30T15:19:00.000-08:00

In the morning we went to apply for our CPR number at the local Kommune. The lady told me that she will be mailing me my CPR card in a week's time, which will contain an assigned doctor's name. Medical treatment will be free but I might have to pay for the medication. No way.

Afterthat, I met Jay and my polish friend Jacek and headed over to Enghave ("Eng hale") where Carlsberg museum is. I met Jay's guide, Carl, a big and jovial Dane, and we compared a lot on the simple practicalities of life in Scandinavia and Asia. He said that living in Denmark is way more expensive than Sweden. And he also talked about National Service in Denmark behaving like the lottery system. If you 'kena', you can choose to serve the army or do community service for a few months. And he was confident that no one will attack them and vice versa. So different from where I'm from.

Some pictures of Carlsberg.

The collection of antiques

Aunty 鸡饭一盘

The garden of deformed sculptures.

I was having a block nose and I could still smell the brown stuff at the btm of the pic

7% alcohol.

I was so tipsy I just had to cook my Nasi Goreng. My first attempt and it was superb =)

Orientation day 2

2009-01-29T15:08:00.000-08:00

Today was excursion day, we went to Copenhagen for some sights on a private double decker posh bus. Of course, we started with the famous Little Mermaid statue, but as usual it's pretty overrated, like the Manneken Pis in Brussels, but it's a lot bigger than the latter. After some readings, I realized that the Disney Little Mermaid came from this Hans Christian Andersen Folk tale.

from left ( Thomas, Matthias, Jacek, Stienne, Kyle, Kelsey, me and Luca)

Afterthat, we went over to the National museum for a guided tour, we took a bus to the National Museum, where we were led by a very nice but BORING guide. My rationale is that, since we're in Denmark, we're probably interested in Danish pre-history, but no, they sent us an Egyptologist. As if i've not seen enough over all the museums i've been to. I don't hate Egypt's history but I guess I'm here for Denmark's history and he didn't cover it as much as he ranted about Egypt. Well, some interesting stuff i learnt was that most of the artefacts were gifts from the Egypt government, and I saw REAL MUMMIES. No, I'm not uploading those pics here.

I lied

Things people do when they get bored in the Museum.

We ended the day with a nice buffet at RizRaz, a restaurant in downtown Copenhagen. I especially love the Meatballs and pasta. It's really crispy. I took like 9 of them. We ended our night at StudentHaus, a student pub in Copenhagen. The ambience was great and everyone was friendly. Superb.

Orientation 1st day

2009-01-29T14:48:00.001-08:00

We met in the morning at the Canteen at 101, where I met my Danish guide Stienne, and Matthias from Austria. Soon I met the rest of my group, Kyle, Jim and Kelsey from the US, Luca from Italy, Tim from Australia, Thomas from UK, Jacek from Poland, Liene from Latvia and Christianna from Greece. Very friendly people, we introduced ourselves, had breakfast and talked about random stuff.

We were taken on a trip around the school by our very friendly guide, followed by a very amusing lecture by 2 international students on Danish culture, a Mexican and an Italian. We then played a game that required us to run around school and answer some random questions, for example, my guide's age which was a little strange. she's 26 anyway. oops.

We had another more interesting game in the evening, which required us to build a tower made of random materials that were given to us by our guide. This tower had to hold as many beer cans as possible, stacked above each other. The winning formula was given by (height of tower)^2 x number of beer cans. Obviously the secret formula was to build as high of a tower as possible and to hold at least 1 can. But we didn't really figure that out at that time :P I was a little too lazy to think anyway.

Brainstorming / Teamwork!

Final product!

It held 4 cans! Not the tallest though :)

Great dinner

As usual the finale party at CellarBar. It was so crowded we had to stand for quite some time.

Random updates

2009-01-26T21:40:00.000-08:00

I did some random cycling around to school to test my new bike which I got from a leaving exchange student from Turkey. It's a little smaller than I expected but it's quite alright. It has 7 gears, and the seat is a little spongy so it absorbs all the moisture around, thus my butt got wet. And when you ride down the slope, the wind blows into your face and i felt i was given anaesthetics. Need to find a tudong soon.

There's green grass!

We wanted to go to the Reindeer park so we had to search for it. Initially we went into the wrong direction, but some kind old folks told us it's the other direction and it was very far. So we walked and along the way we saw some horses and we explored the neighbourhood of the Danes in Lyngby. I think this neighbourhood belongs to the upper class. Below is a short video.

Anyway we didn't get to see the reindeers cos it was getting dark at 4pm and we were so tired walking so far, a few kms i guess. The next time I'm riding my bicycle. after jay gets hers.

Yesterday, we met some students from HKUST, Hong Kong University of Science And Technology. At first we thought they were Koreans, but they had to drag their huge luggage from the airport and by the time they reached the accommodation office they were so worn out, so we decided to introduce ourselves and help them around. I also met Dan, an american, and we brought them all to the groceries store at Lyngby storecentre, a huge shopping mall located in the heart of Lyngby. They kept asking whether it was safe to drink from the tap water, and yes I told them it was safe, and yes I have been drinking it for the past few days. Too lazy to boil water after a while.

Nørreport and food

2009-01-24T07:47:00.000-08:00

Emmiline, this NTU girl I met in DTU suggested that we go to Nørreport to meet her friend and some other people. It was a 4 zone ride to and fro, and it cost like 44DKK --> SGD11. and it was just a 20 mins ride. Madness. Basically you have to buy a clipcard and you have to clip the corresponding zones accordingly. So if you buy a 4 zone card and it has 10 clips, you can travel to a 4 zone to and fro like 5 times, or an 8 zone area 5 times. Trouble is, if the place u wish to go is 3zones, u have to buy a 3 zone clip card. It's simple maths. 3 zone card for 3,6 , 2 zone card for 2 , 4 and it's always better to buy 4 zones cos its cheaper than 2 2zones. And i don't expect you to understand all these either, cos i didn't. And it get's more complicated. You can also travel to another 4 zone destination if you are within 1.5 hour. So if you can go there and chiong back in 1.5 hour time, u just need to clip once. And Singaporeans still complain about the E-link card.

It was really dark at that time and the wind was cold but it was quite shiok so we didn't wander around much so we ended up buying groceries. Groceries in Denmark are NOT THAT expensive, especially for discount items, I bought fillet fish for like 6 pieces 45 dkk, 1 long piece like SGD2? Normally I'd shop at Netto which is by far the cheapest, compared to other higher-end supermarkets. I even saw Nissin Cup Noodles selling for about 10dkk for 1 cup.

My room

2009-01-24T01:48:00.001-08:00

The place where I'm residing in is the campus village, famously known for its container accommodation. Each container(unit) houses about 10 students, with its own kitchen, washroom but I need to outside to wash my clothes in another special container, which comes with dryers too.

I was really surprised when I entered my room after getting the key from the Accommodation office. It was really huge, had my own lamp, nice bed, with proper bed sheets and nice comforters. Huge wardrobe and personal heater.

And of course my very first breakfast. Prepared by yours truly.

Lunch: Fried yee mee with some sliced meat balls

Denmark the beginning

2009-01-24T01:27:00.001-08:00

I had like 3 bags, altogether about 30kg, but I checke in like 24kg to be safe. As long as you don't cross 25kg even if they said 20kg. I left changi at 0030hrs, because there was a slight delay and there was a long queue of germans to the boarding hall, which was worrying because I might miss my connecting flight at Frankfurt which had only 2hours of buffer.

I was placed like the last row right at the back just near the toilet which was a good thing cos I had easy access to the washroom and I get my food first. And behind me there was a huge space for me to get up and stretch my leg. I sat beside this long haired German guy, which initially felt rather spooky, but then he turned out to be my life-saver of the day. His name is Joerg, and he was also going to Copenhagen because of his work and he just came back from Indonesia. It was a good thing cos I now have a travel companion to my transit in Frankfurt which was horrible. Food was mediocre, we both agreed.

I had to find my way to the security check which took like almost 45 minutes considering i had only 2 hours to run to my flight. Then I had to climb up and down 2 stories walk another 1 to 2 km just to reach to the end of the huge Frankfurt airport to at Gate 42(see above). Damn tiring. When I reached there, there was another delay with the connecting flight (good news), because there was a strike. Anyway it's alright because I have to wait for Jay's flight to arrive at Copenhagen anyway. Delay means I have to don't need to wait.

They swapped gates one more time, and they made us take a bus to the plane itself. yes. and it was ok and I just had my jacket and T shirt on but it was quite shiok for the first time. Loved the drizzle.

I finally reached Copenhagen airport at about 10am exactly and I met Jay with a friend. Joerg offered to send us to Lyngby, he was so nice, so we bought him a SGD7 muffin. Yes it was that expensive. We sat in his van and he sent us to DTU, at first we got a bit lost, but i recognized the place a little so we got lucky. He helped us settle in and he waited for us to settle down before he left. Jay was so touched she gave him another packet of her Sri lankan special tea. The trip saved us so much trouble in taking the train and also the $$, accompanied by the problems of figuring out the zones of getting to Lyngby.

Why choose denmark???

2009-01-13T08:15:00.000-08:00

Frankly speaking, I have no idea initially. When the list of universities came out, I just had a glance through and I just looked through the European ones, since I'm more interested in them. Then I saw the Finnish, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian universities and I looked at their websites one by one, and DTU stood out for me.

DTU in Danish, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (Don't ask me how it's pronounced), has a rather rich variety of ISE-related modules that I can map back. Of course mapping in NUS engineering is another major hurdle. But then again, it looked good upfront. It has a rich curriculum, small student to teacher ratio and it's one of the top technical universities in Europe. Of course, I applied for it.

I always wanted to visit Scandinavia, althought it's expensive, but hey, living there is probably cheaper than touring the country in a week. I get to experience their winter (my first!), get to cook my own food and FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE, study without worrying about the grading system. Hopefully get to meet nice exchange students from all around the world.

Some people have mentioned to me (and websites too) that Danes are generally reserved, like you may be 'dao' by them if you approach them for any particular reason (not all i guess), but I really don't want to jump into any conclusions when I'm not even there yet. I guess there are ugly Singaporeans as well eh, just that we're the nice and educated ones.

Right now, I'm taking about 6 modules there, 2 PhD level modules, and the rest are pretty much undergraduate ones. The one i'm particular interested in is Planetary Physics... DTU actually has its own Space Institute heh.

Oh ya, I'll actually be living at the campus village where there will be a number of containers housing us. Each container will house about 7 to 10 students, where we will share the kitchen, toilet etc... But I doubt people will bathe a lot in winter. hahaha. Anytime I need ice cold ching teng i can just open my window and grab some. Plus I'll be getting my own bike from departing students, so I can cycle around ( and maybe to Sweden heh). Of cos see if i can tahan the cold wind.

I have seriously no impression of Denmark or Danes, other than Carlsberg, Mærsk and Lego. Which is why I wanna go there.

To Start with...

2009-01-04T00:16:00.000-08:00

I'm actually not a big fan of blogging. I used to think that it is a waste of time and it's really stupid. Well I guess I'm being a hypocrite myself now. Anyway, I'm heading over to Denmark really soon like ~ 3 weeks time and I think this would be a great way to keep in touch with my family and friends as well.

Yea and for your knowledge double degree students can go for exchange as well as summer schools. Well I did. My exchange will be at Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in the coming Spring semester 0f 2009. I did my summer school last summer 2008 at Korea University.

So much for lots of free time. I'm currently exploring the different functions of blogspot. It's pretty user friendly though. I wanted to take up html but it killed me halfway so I decided to continue my Dota post-advanced course. Anyway any interested course mates please drop me an email.