Eka's little Bottle

Leaving

2012-01-19T12:16:00.002+08:00

I wasn't sure if I was to write anything, simply because I have nothing good to say. I know one may say, here she goes again, down that hole of self pity and negativity and depression or what have you, the usual shit hole of Eka. Oh well. Since I last wrote, as foreseen, the days haven't gone fast enough. In fact today still feel like a torturous existence. Even though the past days have been filled with Modern Family, Glee, and some newly found songs, and telling my woes to people who would listen, it still wasn't enough to make me feel better. However the clock never stops ticking and today's arrived. In a few hours it's home to Jakarta and to my wonderful bed which I miss so. You know, I am not kidding about the shit hole I am in. I know a lot of things are just how we respond emotionally to things that happened to us, but like last night, I was so sleepy and for some reasons I let my mind wander and it wandered so far that I ended up feeling fully awake and I'm not sure what time I finally slept, perhaps 1 plus. Yes that is my fault, just like everything else is my fault in this world! So anyway, that made me miss my bed even more so.

So home. I am sure the time spent there will pass too fast for my liking. Perhaps it's the zone I am in right now but I am not feeling much love about home. Somehow being home and of course chinese new year demand one to be super social but I am really really really not in a social mode. I am not looking forward to meeting many (happy) people. I just want to sleep, wake up late, relish that short time everyday when my house is empty except just for me. However I know that meeting and talking to these (happy) people will reel me in and see what really matters and bring me into perspective and hopefully make me more positive and optimistic about the future. I really need this since I kinda made a chinese new year resolution yesterday. Please let the stars be aligned, please the universe, please conspire to help me, PLEASE!!!

First Week 2012

2012-01-07T20:23:00.008+08:00

Hello peeps, how's your first week been? All's been good? My first week of 2012 and my last week of 2011 were rather rough but today has been a good day so it's all as we always say, at the end of it is good.

In the last week of 2011, one of my auntie passed away. Mom, dad, aunt, and uncle flew for the funeral which was done very very quickly. I think our culture and tradition are different from the Chinese here who do the 3-day wait. Anyways, my aunt and I lived in different islands and now in different countries so the geographical distance did make it rather impossible to develop such strong connection. I did however felt good that I managed to see her 2 years ago. That was my last time seeing her. I think it's been more years for my brother or other cousins. The death kinda brought a lot of questions to my brain. I was picturing how I'd answer my kids, if they were to ask where people go after they die? Well I have absolutely no idea. If we follow the story of they're becoming perfect and freed from their sickness and go to paradise, well my aunt had down syndrome. What does that mean for her to be perfect? She'll have down syndrome no more? But that wouldn't be the auntie that I know and that made me feel rather sad. Then I was thinking about the bright light that you suppose to walk into and I'd like to think my other aunts were there to welcome her. The thoughts really posed so many different questions into my head and let's just say that for a day, I had quite an existential crisis. I wasn't planning to blog about that, but since I did, maybe I shouldn't go on further.

Another sucky thing was that there's something wrong with my ipod. The earphone jack needed to be replaced. Apple as you know it (well I'm not sure if it's everywhere or just Singapore), doesn't do repair, it replaces. I need to pay a whole lot to get it replaced. With a bit more, I could get a new one and I don't want a new one, I want my one be repaired with all my things inside it! That kinda makes me feel icky about Apple. So anyways, google provided some answers which included me to almost operate the ipod myself but I refrained and in the end opted to trust a dude from the internet. It was distressing but at a certain point, I decided to just let go. If I was to be fooled then so be it. I wasn't, the guy did a good fast job, all for S$59 and it was rather painless for me. So that's one thing that make this week rather good.

In the last 2 weeks, I also managed to watch War Horse. I didn't write it earlier because as mentioned I've been in a funk. I just didn't feel like sharing much. I'm still trying to get out of it now. So anyway, at the beginning, I wasn't interested in watching War Horse. It's about a horse, how interesting can it be? However the reviews were glorious and so I decided to give it a go. Well I like it, though I can feel that some people may find it boring. There were a lot of handsome blonde actors and it's always good to see handsome guys :P The story was pretty nice though I cannot understand the undying love the boy had for the horse, but I am pretty much void of any kind emotion like that in my life, so not understanding is expected. Of course there were many horses being used to play the main horse and I found it amazing that these horses had so much characters in them. It seemed that they were also acting at some points with their looks. Steven Spielberg does really have good eyes. The ending scene felt like an old hollywood movie for me and it felt good. I am looking forward to watching more wonderful movies with the Oscar season coming. Right now, I am really interested in watching My Week with Marilyn, unfortunately the timing sucks :(

It's like less than 2 weeks before I go home. It feels rather too soon with the so many things that I have yet to do but I'm sure come Monday, I will feel it's not soon enough. French class started again today. I actually felt that the 2-week break was too short. I had a hard time waking up today but to class I went. We got Mr. N again. Apparently everyone was at a different point taught by Mr. N. I thought he's nice as a person but I wasn't sure if his class was nice and the class has shrunk so much that there were only 3 of us today and I don't know if we're gonna be having exciting times with him. Overall I thought the class today was so so. The good news was I got to speak english and that made me feel rather good. I know there are many of those who would be saying, I'm there to speak french not english, so having to speak english in class sucks! Yeah whatever. I just felt good to be speaking english and making sure my points get across without being reprimanded. On mornings when your brain is slow, this flexibility is most welcomed for me. Well I always believe what the students get out of the class is as much what the students do as what the teachers do. I am sure if we are proactive, the class can be awesome too. I am quite worried though about the survival of our class. There are only 5 of us in the class and it's evident that our attendance record is not so good. Today there were 3 and after next week, I'll be missing for 2 weeks. I really hope that this class can continue on until I finish advanced :( Let's keep our fingers crossed.

I'm pretty hungry now. There are many things to be thankful about this week. One of the thing to be thankful about today is my Max time. I haven't been talking much to him simply because his aunt has been around and so he's been spending time with her and also because he's started working part time. I caught him just before he was getting ready to leave for work today. He promised to give me free meal at the place he works (good boy!) but I rather not get him into some trouble. Then he insisted that I watched some youtube videos which he found hilarious. It was about this (I think) American guy who was criticizing and making fun of an 18-year old Singaporean boy who was kinda threatening another Singaporean boy, who's 14, who seemed to be "stealing" the 18-year old girlfriend. All in youtube. Do take note that the American put himself into the drama. Yeah, they are all crazy and stupid. I didn't find it amusing at all, so that shows how a 13-year difference between Max and me really does reflect the huge difference in how our brains work. That doesn't mean I think that people with such huge age difference will have nothing in common. I believe as the younger one grows more mature and the older one basically just grows older, it'll get easier to understand one another.

Alright, that's about it peeps. May your days are filled with sunshine and your nights are filled with cool air and the bright moon and stars illuminate your way :)

We Bought a Zoo

2011-12-28T16:04:00.001+08:00

Watched We Bought a Zoo yesterday. While I still thought it was good, I couldn't help that the "Hollywood treatment" ruined this movie. Before we get into that, let's talk about the actors first. I was never one who thought Matt Damon to be extremely cool or anything like that. Lucky for him, he did the Bourne Identity movies and I also watched him in Green Zone and he started to kinda appeal to me. Anyways, the Matt Damon in this movie looked kinda chubbier but he's still so likable playing a widower. So good job for him. During the beginning of the movie though, the actor that stole the show was the daughter Rosie, who was very very cute! Everytime she delivered the line, we bought a zoo!, you just want to squeeze this cutie. The guy who played his brother is not so bad looking as well but his character was rather moody in the movie so he did come across as a brat. Understandable though considering their situation. Then we met the other casts, like Scarlett Johansson and Elle Fanning.

Elle Fanning's character was super cute. It felt so nice that she with her blond hair and dorkiness contrasted so well with the moody dark boy. If this movie needed any kind of love story element into it, then I thought hers and the boy was good enough. However Hollywood had to bring Scarlett Johansson. I'm not a fan of Scarlett Johansson and while I think she's not a bad actress, I thought her character's presence in this movie ruined what sweet, heart-warming, wonderful, inspiring potential this movie has :( You see, Matt Damon played a widower who's shown throughout to be still in love with his death wife and Scarlett Johansson played the head zoo keeper. There wasn't much attraction going on between them and yet Hollywood had to add the scene in the end when both of them kissed. Aarrrghhh!!! It's so Hollywood and that's why Hollywood movies can be so ... well so Hollywood (crappy) sometime, aarrrghhh!!! It's so formulaic that a couple had to kiss. I cannot help thinking that if they did have to add that in, why not just stick with the 2 young kids who obviously like each other a lot and way cuter together.

So that is how Hollywood ruined a movie and made me unable to like it wholeheartedly. Instead of a memorable movie that this movie could be, it went into some tv movie which will be nice to watch on a relaxing weekend. I did a bit of a reading this morning about how the true story actually went down and it's a pity too that Hollywood excluded the grandma in the story. Come on! If you add in the grandma, remove all the unnecessary Scarlett Johansson's part, the heart-warming factor will definitely increase. I do have to say it's not Scarlett Johansson's fault. Any girl playing that role will still ruin the movie *sigh* Other than those comments, I have to say that it's also nice to see the animals and a bear no matter how dangerous it can be, can still look so cute.

Christmas Holidays

2011-12-26T14:16:00.011+08:00

Merry Christmas! Well Christmas was yesterday but it's still a season of wishing good things :) How have been the christmas holidays for you guys? Mine was great. I've been having good things this holiday so I am what you call happy, or to underplay it a bit, rather happy :) One of the best thing about this holiday is being able to wake up late! It feels so glorious to be waking up after 9, mostly 10. Seriously the simple thing of waking up without the alarm is something that I really treasure. Well, let me tell you the other things that I did.

Saturday I went to watch Wicked with YeeMaggio. Wicked was wickedly good and I love it! I have to say that I love my seat too, it's worth the money and the super early booking and the whole thing felt like a nice christmas present for myself. I do have to comment that it's rather surprising to see the quality of the actual seat in Marina Bay Sands Theatre. I'm pretty sure the seats in Esplanade are better than MBS. We were commenting that some cinemas here may even have better seats than MBS. Anyways, don't want to complain more. Wicked was really good that the seat thing was a realy tiny minor thing. I love the set! They're awesome. The costumes (there's a Lady Gaga-esque girl) and actors were great but I guess it's the whole overall thing that made it so awesome. It's a very good production! One thing that came to my mind. The original Broadway actress who played Glinda was Kristin Chenoweth and I can totally see her in that role, being super bubbly and funny and blonde :D Anywho, it's such a great show and I love it and I was really really happy that I got to see it :)

Sunday being Christmas is Museum Open House Day in Singapore. To be honest, I have never made used of this open house thing. It was my first time and I was actually inspired by Oshie who made used of it some holiday back. So me and YeeMaggio went to National Museum of Singapore to see the Dreams and Reality exhibition, which contains some paintings from Musée d'Orsay. I had wanted to visit Musée d'Orsay when I was in Paris, but the queue was crazy long that I really didn't have the time for it. All I had from getting to the museum was 2 photos of a horse and rhino sculptures in front of the museum. So that was quite a shame but now that there are some paintings from the museum here, I really really wanted to see them and it feels really cool to see works from Monet, Cézanne, Degas, and some others. It was extra special for me though to see works from Monet and Cézanne since I've been to Monet's wonderful house in Giverny and I've been to Cezanne's town of Aix-En-Provence. The highlight of the exhibition was of course Van Gogh's Starry Night Over The Rhone, which was really incredibly beautiful and dreamy. I didn't bring my camera because I felt rather lazy packing them and I didn't know if photography was allowed which actually was. In the end, I took some pictures from my Nokia. I'm not really the type of person who takes pictures from camera phone. I rarely do that but my phone is all I had and it turned out not so dreadfully bad. The exhibition is not necessarily big but I think it was still nice all the same and here are the few that captured my eyes :P I actually googled each of this to get the title and the name of some of the artists which I've forgotten.

Philip Wilson Steer's Jeune Femme Sur La Plage
This was the first picture that got me snapping away. I love how it's just a girl by the beach. She looked beautiful, a bit lonely, but I just felt something with the painting. I love the simplicity in it and perhaps the solitude of the girl :)

Monet's Woman With Parasol

Monet' Regatta

Monet's Branch Of The Seine Near Giverny

Monet's Meditation, Madame Monet Sitting On A Sofa
This is interesting for me because I'm pretty sure I saw the red flowery sofa in the sitting room of his house.

Monet's Camille Monet Sur Son Lit De Mort
This felt sad because Camille was his wife, which I believe was also the lady with the umbrella. It must be sad for him to paint her this way when she's dying.

Cézanne's The Card Players
I had a feeling that this painting was in my elementary french book.

Cézanne's Madame Cézanne

Renoir's Railway Bridge At Chatou
I love the flowery tree. I thought it was Monet's but thank God for google search image :P

Théo Van Rysselberghe's A Costal Scene
You gotta appreciate the effort in painting with all those dots.

Fréderic Bazille's The Improvised Field Hospital
The man in the picture was actually Monet who was injured or sick or something.

Van Gogh's Starry Night Over The Rhone
This is the picture that captured everyone's attention. It was truly beautiful. I love the stars which were like little suns. The fact that all those brush strokes can form something so beautiful as this can only be described as brilliant and amazing :)

After the museum, it was off to the cinema to watch Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. We didn't get really good seats that I wondered if it influenced how I perceived the movie. It felt long. There wasn't anything particularly interesting that really captured my attention aside for the fact that I love the slow motion effects for the fighting scenes; they made the fighting scenes beautiful. It was still nice to see the interaction between Robert Downey Jr's Sherlock Holmes and Jude Law's Dr Watson. There's still something a bit too lovey dovey about their relationship, especially coming from Holmes. It was also nice to know Sherlock Holmes' brother. I really didn't know he has a brother. Overall, I think it's not a bad movie. I think it's still interesting but perhaps some people may find it boring.

The day ended with dinner and shopping. I had quite a good deal because of the sale so it was a good day for me again. This week is the last week of the year. It hasn't hit me yet but I suppose it will. 2012 is me turning 30 in a few short months. It's depressing but I'm trying to push this fact away from my head. I had a good week last week and I think this week would be too. As I am writing that, I've decided that I'm gonna be having fun this week. I'm gonna do things that I want to do and with or without people I want to do it with. I wish you guys a great last week too. Eat well and be happy :)

Liberté

2011-12-18T00:05:00.004+08:00

I am so tired and sleepy and I have so many things to write. Today's news have been filled with the fact that the metro system (mrt) in Singapore broke down again when the company just apologized yesterday for the Thursday evening breakdown. I was actually affected by it this morning. I am too tired to write what happened in details but I thought the staff didn't communicate well on what's going on to the passengers and what options were available for them. It was quite frustrating being on an almost empty, free bridging bus knowing that there were so many people waiting for a train whose time of arrival were ranging between 20 minutes. I sympathized with all the staff who had to work hard or who had to come to work on a Saturday because of this. However if they have to be there, they should be more useful. So obviously Facebook was buzzing with everyone giving their opinions on this. One facebook friend wrote that a metro breakdown is like a natural disaster for the people of Singapore. Another wrote it's like a freak event. Both kinda ring true. Someone I knew once said that one of the safe characteristic that Singaporea has is that its chance on getting a natural disaster is pretty low. I don't necessarily agree with that because I think if God wants to obliterate Singapore, He could easily do so. It does bring into discussion that the fact that Singapore doesn't really face things like natural disasters and the fact that everything is so effective in Singapore, things like a metro breakdown does feel like a disaster. Due to the fact that everything is pretty predictable in Singapore, I often feel that Singapore gets flustered pretty easily when a curve ball is thrown their way. I've been in this country for 11.5 years and I can only recall 2 incidents when there's a black out because there's something wrong with the electricity. 11.5 years in Indonesia, you'll be lucky if the number of black out is only 100 times more. However due to the fact that Singapore is highly efficient, it's also rather hard to accept that such thing happens in Singapore. If there's one place in this world where it shouldn't have happened, that place could well be in Singapore. The fact it did happen does make one wonder, what the hell is wrong with Singapore now? Why are you getting sucky? It does seem like a harsh judgement because shit does happen and things don't always go perfectly all the time but I guess because it's in Singapore where things run reliably 99.99% of the time, people are getting pretty critical about this. So well, that's my take on the whole thing.

The title of the post is to signify that I feel free today. It's like it's time to play now. Today was the last french class for this year. We had a test and I am totally disappointed with how I did. Mr. F decided to split the tests into 2 rounds, the first being last week. It was a reading comprehension test and I did badly, scoring only 13.5 out of 20. It was demoralizing and disappointing. The other day Max thought he heard I said 13.5 out of 50 and he was ready to laugh at me. Upon knowing it's out of 20, he thought I did good. I really didn't think so. The same score range was reflected all throughout today's rounds. In total I think I score 73 something out of 100. It's the worst test result I've had since I started studying french. I think the highest part I scored was for writing a letter, in which I score 16 out of 20. Mr. F thought I did a good job on that, writing a complain letter to a mayor, and yet he only gave me 16 :( Overall I passed each of the parts, it's just I didn't score particularly high. I was rather surprised with the marks I got for listening and conversation. I thought I would score pretty low on them. It's really disheartening not understanding the listening part but then when I heard my teacher or the other teachers speak and I could understand it, I thought man! it's pretty cool and how far we've come. The other day Mr. F was revising the grammar in using the different past tenses; all the explanation was in french and I actually got it. It reminded me to the time back in my Italian class where my teachers could be speaking all in Italian and I got it. It felt good and yet when it's time to watch something or listen to an interview and not getting it, I just feel so down. Anyway, no more classes, no more studying for test, it really feels like it's time to play. So I'm gonna be in a more relaxed mood these 2 weeks. Just need to put the shield up so that annoying people will not be able to enter my dome of inner serenity :P

I managed to watch 2 movies this week. The first one was New Year's Eve. I'm not gonna tell you that the movie is great. However I feel it's better than Valentine's Day. It had a weak storyline but as a girl I do get dreamy with all the sweetness. I think my favorite story was the one with Michelle Pfeiffer and Zac Effron. By the way Zac Effron and short hair, HOT! As for the rest, I don't feel like commenting much. All I can comment on is how different Abigail Breslin looks now that she's older. Hillary Swank looked pretty though she's really not your typical pretty girl. Ludacris was cool but his character in the movie was pretty useless. I really didn't love the storyline between Jon Bon Jovi and Katherine Heigl. Sofia Vergara was of course sexy but much much dumber in this movie and you can kinda miss the feisty Gloria in Modern Family. Lea Michele sang in the movie, surprise? She should try to walk away from Glee like connection. It was good seeing Ryan Seacrest. Watching the host of X-Factor really made me miss Ryan and oh Josh Duhamel was as always handsome but you kinda wondered if it mattered that he's in the movie. Same goes for Halle Berry. Since my comments are as weak as the movie, I'll stop commenting it now.

Today, I watched Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. I though it was good. It felt pretty long but I think it was very well executed. I am most impressed at the stunt that Tom Cruise did in Burj Khalifa, Dubai. It was scary and the fact he did the stunt, he deserved an applause. Josh Holloway was in this movie but he died within the first few seconds :( So why do I feel the need to write about him? Well just because you kinda wondered what Lost's Sawyer was doing next and also because his wife happened to be Indonesian (lucky her). Anyways, not loving his short clean haircut. He looked so much better with Sawyer's hairstyle. The opposite goes for Tom Cruise. His haircut in this movie is not so nice. He looked better with short clean cut hairstyle. Aside for those 2 guys, I thought Jeremy Renner was kinda stealing the scene too. It's shallow of me to say this but there was a scene when I thought that he had a nice butt :P Okay, back to the movie. The action was great and they really went all out and it's really like saying that if one wants to do an action movie, one should really do it this way with seriously a lot of amazing action scenes. It's rather amazing that the director was Brad Bird who directed the animated movie, The Incredibles.

I have to add, there's a scene in the movie in which using a screen, the good guys could trick what a security guard was seeing. It made me wonder if the same technology was being used in the Transformer 3D ride in Universal Studio Singapore. They were able to deceive the passengers by making us believe we are in the middle of a crowded city with tall skyscrappers when in fact we're indoor in a building of at most 3-storey high. There are really so many amazing technology out there. I do recommend you to watch Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. I think it's one of the promising movies this holiday season. It's highly entertaining.

On other news. Well a few things did happen since the last time I wrote. One of it was when someone basically told me to be less of a bitch for a better future for my social self. As much as I think there's some truth in the request but I know that I'm just not that malleable. I register a lot of things in my brain and I just cannot forget a lot of things. Not just things like the details of what happened but also things like how I felt when those things happened. Hence I cannot get pass many things because when I think of a bad situation, I'll still get angry or sad and I cannot be all sincere in the "let's move on" action. So what I want is basically, you do your own things, I'll do mine. Don't be a dumbass and bother me and I'll also not gonna trouble you. Sounds selfish? Well I stand by my opinion that some people would have fared much worse if they had been in my situation. I react the way I react and whether it's the right or wrong thing to do, I could only react the way my heart allows me to do and I don't like being judged or whatever on the way I should react. I don't care if people think I'm such a bitch or anything simply because I don't care much for people who may think that way. They are not the most important people in my life. In fact they're not even in the list of people whose opinion I value. You see, I still get pretty intense as I am writing this. That's proof that I couldn't get pass certain things.

I don't want to end this post on such a negative tone so let me say my thanks. I am thankful that though I got confused this morning because of the train breakdown, I managed to find my way and thank God it was a Saturday morning so traffic wasn't too heavy. I was half an hour late but there were times when I was that late as well simply because I was slow in the morning. So overall, the damage for me wasn't too great. The thing I am most thankful about is that a little thing happened today. It was such a small thing and yet it managed to make my heart smile. So thank you God. God, if you can make the tiny thing bigger, that would be great. However Thy will be done and in God we trust :) Alright, I'm really tired and sleepy now. Good night loves!

The Week With My Brother and Cousins

2011-12-06T22:49:00.000+08:00

My brother was here the whole of last week and we got to meet twice. The first time was for dinner exactly last week. My brother and I are not close, we don't really talk to each other so the idea of having to spend some time during dinner was slightly nerve wrecking for me. It turned out to be pretty awesome. We talked a whole freaking lot that I'm sure my mom would be in the state of disbelief if she had seen us. After my opening of asking what he's doing in Singapore, conversation just flowed to other things and we had some good conversation that I felt it was such a pity that we didn't have more time to talk. I wanted to write that it's like seeing my brother in a new light but I think it will be more correct to say that it's seeing what he really is as an adult and I think he's pretty okay. It was rather eye opening and encouraging and humbling to be listening to his thoughts about life now and the future. Something that made me feel that he's rather wise and perhaps more acceptant than me is how he embraces the path he's in. Unlike me, I'm not embracing the path I am in and I'm pretty sure I am leaving this path. I'm just waiting for that sign when I feel I have enough. For my brother, as much as perhaps he didn't fall in love with his path on first sight, since he's already in it, he's making the full use of it and strive to be the best that he could be in it. I knew that he works long hours, I just didn't know what the drive was behind it and upon listening to him, I'm pretty much in awe at what I heard and it caused me to question myself on why I don't have the same drive and don't have the same willingness in embracing my path. I guess that's what makes us different. As I said it's a humbling experience listening to my brother and maybe I'll see things in a new light bit by bit. I do hope we get to hang out again. I guess we two as adults are pretty cool adults. Though we are different in how we think but there's certain similarities that we have, like how we want to kick ass, and how we're kinda pretty good in what we do. So if there's anything that I would like to be thankful about, I am really really really thankful to God that I got to spend a real nice time with my brother last week, especially after my weeks which hadn't actually gone trigger happy. So thank you so much God!

Other than my brother, 2 of my cousins and baby girl Mikaela were here. They arrived on Thursday and I got to meet them on Saturday as we were going to Universal Studio. My brother happened to be there also. He didn't plan to be there again since he has visited it on Wednesday but he was and he sent me an sms in the morning telling me about it. It seemed that he couldn't use his phone to send messages out anymore after that 1 message so I wasn't banking much on being able to meet him but lo and behold I spotted him as we were standing outside the entrance. My brother gave us S$30 food vouchers. So that's pretty good. His job seems pretty glamourous to me. So anyway me and the cousins entered Universal Studio pretty late in the afternoon. It didn't really matter for me because I only wanted to try the few which I missed on my visit last year, which were basically the monster house rock, the Madagascar ride, and of course the hyped up Transformer 3D ride. With my brother, Shrek 4D ride was the first we tried. Then my brother had to go. We wanted to watch the waterworld show but because of the rain, the show was cancelled for that hour. The rain was really stopping us from exploring everything. So anyway, then we went to the Madagascar boat ride. After that Mikaela was taking her nap.

Because of the rain and the long queue at Transformer, my cousins decided that they would just walk around and watch Mikaela and so I went to the queue alone. It didn't feel as weird as I thought it would be but perhaps I was too tired to think much about it. I think I queued for 50 minutes. It felt very long, snaking in and out. I got pretty nervous about the ride as I was getting closer to it. I think I started to feel it's not gonna be as mild as I thought it would be. My brother was right, it's a bit of a combination of the Mummy ride and Shrek 4D. So I was alone and I was seated at the end of the cart. I was a real chicken because I was really scared to the point that I really prayed that I'll be alright and not gonna die from a heart attack. As the ride started, I started to scream which took me by surprise because during exhilarating / scary rides like this, I don't scream. I don't know why I started to scream on this one. Maybe I was alone? It was a real awesome ride though. So awesome and I was blown away on how it looked like. I wonder how they made it. I wonder what's the track and surrounding actually look like. I was very very proud of myself that I managed to do this ride alone. After the ride, the girl sitting next to me was looking at me. I wondered if she's wondering if I was okay or she thought it was strange that I was alone. Overall I came out of it feeling utterly happy. It felt like a big accomplishment :)

After the ride, I met up with my cousins again. We watched the monsters house rock which I didn't think was awesome. Then we had dinner. After dinner was the fireworks show. Mikaela didn't think much of it, I think she didn't like the exploding sounds. My cousins thought it was pretty cool. I thought it was too darn short. It's the same thing as what I saw last year and to be waiting some time for it in a very bad weather with the rain, it just felt like a let down. However, they were delighted so I guess it's cool. I met with them again the next day (Sunday).

They weren't checking their phones so they didn't see my message telling them I'd arrived. By sheer luck, I spotted them, just like I spotted my brother the day before. I like how my cousin described it, it's like we're being pulled to each other :) I like those moments when words twined together in ways that I don't think of could light me up unexpectedly. So anyway, Sunday was spent accompaning the cousins to shop then we're off to Singapore Flyer. I think the improvement they did on Singapore Flyer was great. However the ride itself was boring for me. Maybe it's because I've been in it before and I was really tired, again the rain really brought down the spirit and energy level. One of my cousin was having problem with the height and Mikaela wasn't interested at all. You can never be sure with a 4-year old on what would interest them. She ended up playing and making lotsa noise with the other 4-year old Singaporean boy in the capsule. We ended up talking with the boy's grandpa. Anyway we ended up leaving the Singapore Flyer quite late and I was so tired that we decided to just take taxi. It was frustating because there was no taxi and I called every single number on the list and couldn't go through. I decided to stand by the street and there was a free taxi passing by but it didn't stop even though I was waving like crazy and almost stood in front of its way. I don't understand this and it often happens that an empty taxi just doesn't stop. I don't understand. Luckily behind it, there was a taxi which was willing to pick me up. I felt so happy because I haven't been standing long by the street but I did wait sometime at the taxi stand. My cousin thought I walked out to cry. So anyway, it's been a very tiring weekend for me. Maybe it's also because of the rain, I'm not feeling sickly these few days. Been having migraine a lot and feeling rather feverish. The brother and cousins had returned home and I kinda miss home a lot now. I miss my bed.

It still felt pretty nice to be spending time with the family. One thing I realize was that travelling with a kid can be quite a hassle. Do you know how fast one can walk pushing a stroller? It's weird considering that I've been pretty eager to see what kind of kids I'll have. After the 2 days with Mikaela, I felt pretty thankful that I am single and I have a lot of freedom to do things that I want to do. Not that Mikaela is a bad kid, her mom and auntie surely speak pretty highly of her and I know many people I know also speak highly of their kids. It's just having kids really does restrict you on the things that you can do and for that I am so thankful that I don't have all these responsibilities in life (yet). It makes me feel pretty good about being single and being able to explore the things that I want to do or just simply being able to walk fast without much care. Okay, it's been quite late. So I should stop now and lie down. Meanwhile, I leave you with a picture I took from inside the Singapore Flyer's capsule.

HAPPY FEET TWO

2011-11-26T19:28:00.002+08:00

If you want it, you must will it. If you will it, it will be yours.

What can you learn from Happy Feet Two? Baby penguins are so adorable! They're fluffy and so cute that you just want to bring them home and just hug them. Penguins walk funny and also that line above, If you want it, you must will it. If you will it, it will be yours. However I am not in a very positive mood today or this week for that matter. So I'm kinda not really inspired by the line above. Before we go into that, let's talk a bit about Happy Feet Two. Was it good? Well I thought it wasn't bad. I think there's a hint of global warming issue but it wasn't explored much, perhaps they didn't want to get too preachy. Story wise it's not so bad but not exceptionally amazing as well. There's a story about 2 krills voiced by Brad Pitt and Matt Damon. I'm having difficulty understanding what't the message is in their story. Is it good to go on your own and go against the current and make your own path? In the end Brad's character was back with its swarm. So I'm not really sure what to make of that. As for the message, If you want it, you must will it. If you will it, it will be yours, it also didn't seem to be the main message of this movie. I think if there's ever any message to this movie is don't give up and by working together, people or penguins and elephant seals can crush icebergs. Oh well it's an animated movie maybe I shouldn't overthink or analyze it much. There were many kids in the cinema, for obvious reason. One boy next to me was kinda dancing during some of the songs and there was one time, he or his brother cried. I'm not sure why. The songs were pretty nice but I cannot recall any, so perhaps they're not so memorable? Anyways, so that's the movie. Oh I have to say that though Pink is a better singer however her speaking voice made Gloria's character sounded so much older than Britanny Murphy. So Britanny Murphy is kinda missed in this movie for me.

So this week ... well today kinda can make me say that I am in a sad mood. Although since this week is thanksgiving week and I have been searching deep within my soul if I have to give thanks, are there things I'll be thankful about? and I realize I do, I still feel like the energy level and the mood level is pretty down, specifically after today. I guess my Saturday didn't go as great as I hope it would be. Then again, it's kinda a truly high expectation to put on Saturdays to lift your spirit after 5 full days (5.5 if you're including Sunday evening) of melancholy. All I can tell myself is, so what you wish and hope is not gonna happen, but God will give you bigger and greater things than you can ever wish for. However since the spirit is rather weak now, it's hard to keep the faith in that right now. I guess I have to though. I should stop all my own wishful thinking and just believe that the way God will make it work out eventually will be awesome.

On other news. My brother is coming tomorrow. For one week it seems because of work. I'm not sure how his schedule will be like or if I'm gonna meet him. Mom seems to be under the impression that we're not gonna meet. We'll see. My other cousins are coming next Thursday and tentatively I'll be going to Universal Studio with them next Saturday. I am looking forward to try the Transformers 3D ride. However the weather in Singapore these days, as cooling as it does get, is not really ideal for outdoor activities because of the rain. Overall, I am kinda looking forward for these people to come so that I get a little distraction from my mundane and unfulfilling days.

On a more positive note, I'm gonna try to list things I am thankful for. I was thinking I should end each of my blog post with this, however as I try to list 5 things I am thankful for from Monday to Friday, I couldn't really find them, so I may not do this as a regular thing. For now, here are the things I am thankful for this week.

- I am thankful for the friends who could see my point of view and not say that I am crazy for feeling what I feel. Well they are kinda my friends so perhaps they are bias but they have been telling me that if they were in my situation, they would feel what I feel. So thank you.

- I am thankful for people who came to visit me for lunch, people whom I have lunch and watch a movie with. This point is kinda more or less the same as point 1.

- I am thankful for Max. He's trying to find this blog, I wonder if he'll find it. I am thankful for him because I can rely on at least one little bit of conversation with someone a day (I don't count conversation happening in sms and instant messengers as "real" conversation). Anyway sometime I like this boy around, sometime not (like when he criticized my french pronunciation *sad*) but overall I am getting used of him and I am genuinely thankful that he's around. It's a bit like when Ann Claire was around last time. In the beginning I kinda felt that my space was invaded but in the end I did appreciate always having her around during dinner or breakfast and then I kinda missed her when she and her mom left. I hope I get to leave Max instead of the other way around because it's always sucky to be the one left behind. Well that's pretty selfish of me.

- I am thankful to God for making a really nice shade of purple that sometime happens during dusk. I love it.

- I am thankful that I am okay, kinda healthy, safe and sound, and not really lacking in anything.

Word That Burns

2011-11-19T19:41:00.007+08:00

I just watched the replay telecast of the SEA Games badminton woman's singles. That was a real disappointment. I felt rather sad but I know it must have been harder for Firdasari, the Indonesian player, who let down the whole stadium. Oh well. Anyways, just wanna tell you that this is going to be a long post. Things are swirling in my head but I will try to do this in a chronological order.

As mentioned, I went home last week. It felt really really great to be sleeping in my wonderful bed. I love my bed at home so much. The bad thing that happened back home is that water wasn't running smoothly. It felt like living in poverty because of the lack of access to water and that was quite literal. You see, in Indonesia, or at least in Jakarta and at least at homes like mine (I'm not really sure how they work for appartment building), we usually have water containers to collect water from the main pipe. I'm not sure what's the reasoning for this. I can only suspect that the water running from the government pipe may not be as constant as one expect so it's necessary to have big water containers to collect the water so when the time comes to use it, we will always have enough of it. In the case of my house and perhaps many others, we have 2 water containers. Indonesian has an exact word to describe it but in english I can only use water containers. The first water containers in my house is located under ground, in front of the house, under the small little area where mom has pots of plants. It is tiled. Now that I think of it, it will work well as a torture chambers :P Like one you can find in horror movie where the unsuspecting victims are kept. So anyway, it's not so big, it doesn't even occupy the entire underground area of our house. I guess for construction safety purposes, it's not a wise idea to have a hole filled with water under your house foundation. Now this water containers collect the water from the government main pipe. Then once or twice a day, dad will use the electric pump (I'm not sure if this is the correct word) to pump out all the water up to the other container located at the half level of my 2 and a half storey house (my house is small, hence we have to build up). The pump is not working really well, so instead of flicking the switch and barring one of the bar (I'm having difficulty explaining this) and have it work automatically, some other works need to be done and in my family, only dad knows how to do this. So the water goes up and water from this container is the one will be running down and being used by all the taps in the house. For some reason when I was there, the water wasn't running very well. The big plastic water container on top is old so moss does grow in it. It is gross but imagine fresh water from river, they also flow through rocks and moss and plants. Anyway we only use the water for washing not drinking or cooking. We use water from gallon bottles for that. Okay so, water wasn't running properly so that means it's clogged with debris somewhere. It's quite a nightmare because at two and half storey, there's a lot of pipes behind the wall that can cause the clog. If only there's an X-ray machine that can scan this kinda thing exactly. There's isn't. Everyday I just prayed that it would work out by itself. Mom decided to settle this after I leave but even then their trustee handyman wasn't available. Anyway, lo and behold mom said it did work out by itself 1-2 days after I left. It seemed the water finally managed to kick all the debris out and dirty water just came out from one of the tap and mom let it run its course out until clear water came out. Thank God! Thank God it worked out because it would be a major work to destroy walls and find where the clog is and thank God it worked out on its own because I think mom and dad not gonna be behaving nice in the face of all the reconstruction work :P So that's the long story of home.

Dewi's wedding went okay. I really don't like getting dressed up and getting my face all heavily made up. But I did. Me and cousin Marlisa attended the buddhist religious ceremony. The parents' part of this kinda thing is always touchy and the weeper of this one seemed to be Dewi's dad. Everyone was making jokes that's because Dewi's is the favourite kid :( I didn't cry because I tried my best not to. Her wedding reception was going in a very efficient manner that I was impressed. I think she really got most of the things done in 2 hours. I think they're really done by 3 hours. I basically just stuck around Emilia and her family. I don't know many people anyway. Dewi and Sofyan actually went to Singapore and Malaysia for their honeymoon. I met them for dinner this Tuesday. On my way home that evening, I realized that our conversation was really done in high speed Indonesian. We spoke really really fast. I always attribute this to us being efficient but even though we covered many things, there are still things we haven't talked about or I forgot to ask her. So anyway, that's one of my best friends who got married. I was expecting for Marlisa to follow suit next year. It could still happen, we don't know but anyways, it led to this next subject.

I expected the question of when my turn is. My school friends with husbands, kids, fiance asked me that. I remember Emilia answering on my behalf, soon. I know it's really nice of her. She just wanted the heat off me and didn't want me to be discouraged or stressed out. But the thing is and perhaps this is the wrong way of thinking, I don't want to be focusing much on it, is it very wrong to be single (at my age)? It is for the same reason that even though Dewi asked the organisers to specifically call my name out to participate at the throwing of the flowers, I refused to move. Don't get me wrong. I really want to get married. I want to have kids. I think I can be an awesome mom and teaming up with me will definitely be pretty cool because I am crazy, fun, smart, and at the same time pretty capable on many things. When one gives their loyalty to me, he can expect the same and it's one character that I really value deeply. It's just the whole idea of you are only complete when you are married is not something that I share. I'm pretty sure Oprah had discussed this one time. I am a whole on my own or at least each and every day of my life I strive to be a whole on my own. My name in itself already means 1, it doesn't mean 0.5. I am not someone's half. I don't really share that sentence that is often said in wedding, now you are one kinda thing. I have mentioned it before, my idea of marriage is more of Kahlil Gibran's version. I imagine myself being married to someone who is also like me. We both are 2 whole people on our own. We are already 2 strong and intelligent people. We are together because we love each other, we have massive fun together, great conversation and we make sense together but we should also be able to be independent and strong on our own. Alright, I don't know if I am explaining my points well. My point is, all these people and my parents who ask me this just don't seem to get that about me and I don't even try to explain this because I fear that the concept maybe too radical for them. I know dad and mom as parents would really want to see us kids get married and dad perhaps at his age (when people his age and his siblings had died) is rather worried he may not see the day. I also really hope that God grants us the chance to be married with our parents around. Mom and dad also just really want someone to take care of me which is also a nice and logical wish as parents. I get that. The thing is many people will argue, they should wish for you to be always able to take care yourself and that is exactly something that I strive. I don't know if I will be able to do it down the road, being 70-80 something. However at this age, with what's in front of me, with what I have or what I don't have, I strive to be okay on my own by own. It's really imperative for me to be able to be this way hence I don't want to pine or hope or actively looking for that person to take care of me. Yes, there is some worry that I will be single forever. At my age now, I don't know if that chance to be married is getting smaller or bigger. What I know is I don't have a boyfriend, not seeing one in the near future, so instead of trying to get one, I am preparing myself to be more contented being alone. I don't think it's a pessimistic point of view. I don't think that means I give up. It just means, I'm not gonna sit here just waiting. I'm gonna be doing stuff and maybe we'll meet when both of us are doing our stuff.

This subject relates to a conversation I had with a Singaporean taxi driver who drove me when I arrived back in Singapore. Seriously, often time I wish Singaporean taxi drivers are not so chatty. This one was so chatty he missed my turn and had to drive back. In less than 15 minutes, he's given me support about love and the pressure of marriage, told me about an Indonesian maid he knew who committed suicide just 1 month after she returned home to get married, and his phillipina friend who had to perform illegal abortion in a Singapore hospital and the moral conflict she had to face. At the end of trip, I knew about his marriage, which area his house is, how many rooms in his flat, and the area his 2 kids live. Very chatty! So anyway, he commented on how Indonesians get married young compared to the Singaporeans. I commented it is so and hence mom is pushing me for it. He was telling me, let love happens naturally as he believes that people who looks for love is looking for trouble so let it find you. Following that logic, someone still has to do the searching, no? :D He said the usual thing people often say, as long as you are happy now, why does it matter if you're single? So the annoying question comes. Are you happy? If I have to be honest, I don't really know how to answer that. I think what I feel most of the time is not happiness. Is it sadness, then? I try not to think of it as sadness. I mean just because you are not happy, it doesn't necessarily mean you are sad, right? I just feel restless most of the time and to say that I am restless just because I am single would be so shallow. I am restless because of many things, because of where I am in life, what I am doing in my life, what I want to do in my life, or more profoundly what I need to do with my life. I always have all these philosophical questions weighing me down. So that's me and my issues. To say I am not satisfied and disappointed with my life is also incorrect because I know for sure that if I have to die tonight, I will be thankful to God and I will leave feeling okay because although there are many things I haven't done or don't have, there are many things I managed to do. For God's sake, I managed to cross the number one things off my life list, managed to put new ones and crossed them too, and I am still putting more things and trying to do them. So in that sense, my life has been great and blessed and I am happy, really genuinely happy that I know I can feel that. So what's the conclusion? I don't know. Maybe I just need to ramble. Hmm ... I really hope I don't have to write about this kinda thing again because who likes repeated recycled materials :P Let's cross our fingers.

Movie of this week is The Adventures of Tintin. I watched it alone while waiting for Dewi and Sofyan to come for dinner. I like it and enjoyed it but it is rather heavy to warrant a second viewing. I have never read any Tintin comics. In fact each time I see the picture, it just doesn't interest me. However I watched it because it's Steven Spielberg's and also it reminds me of a very cute french guy by the name of Arthur who was rather excited when we saw the posters in Cannes. I think he will like the movie too :) The story was pretty good and for some strange reason I thought Tintin was rather handsome in the movie :P It is still strange though for me to see someone his age dressing the way he is, it just makes him look like a boy.

Now let's continue to the title of the post. If you think the inquiry about me and marriage is the reason for the title, well it is not. Something darn shitty happened this week. Someone said something to me that just caused me to freeze. This is the freezing in which I see no way of going back to normal. People who know me know what I am like. I do wonder if I am being emotional, sensitive, dramatic, but I am really sure if the same one word is to be told to the girl, she will also feel utterly pissed off. I mean I told 2 people that this girl used this word about me and without hearing the story, these 2 people already felt that the word is such a mistake. They felt she shouldn't have used the word. I stand by my reasoning that I did no wrong and even if I did wrong, I shouldn't be faulted because it's not even something that I should be doing. I will battle this out if need be. Mom even told me to fight this out. To add to that misery, another girl had to of course put pressure on me and told me something along the line that I am not being understanding. I was really in that I-want-to-scream-FUCK-OFF-and-throw-things kinda mood. Of course I didn't. So anyway yeah that is so shitty. Just one word and it got me to freeze and I know it is perhaps one bad character of me that I can just cut people off. Seriously though, as much as I want to forgive and forget, I can't. Can you still forgive someone even if you don't ever want to talk to them ever again? Does that mean the forgiveness is not sincere? I don't wish this girl or any people whom I don't ever want to talk to ever again harm. I wish them well but I just can't be all sincere and be all buddy buddy with them ever again. The annoying voice inside really led me to question if I am being unreasonable and I am lacking of patience in life. I will admit that I am not a patient person. However, I think I have been pretty patient in enduring many shit from many people in my life. I seriously think there are other people who would have taken the shits that I have had to face in life in a less admirable state than I do. So in that sense I think I fare okay. The thing is, there are just certain things that can freeze me over. Sometime I don't even know them until they happen, they just burn my inside and I freeze as cold as an iceberg (how's that for a paradox?). It does sound unfair though for people having to guess if certain things will fly with me when even I don't know it. I guess my advice is don't be a dumbass. Put the words or the action towards yourselves and see if you'll feel pissed. If yes, then don't try me unless you really want to hurt me. If you do, then I salute you because at least you are being honest :) Just be ready for me not to be all smiley and be friends in the aftermath :P Well you all gotta live with the consequences of your actions right. So that's the shittiest thing that happened this week. It spurred a desire in me to make a major change. With changes there is always fear and fear is always paralysing for me but sometime when it comes down to it, people just have to make the jump. I really hope that God will guide me in each step of the way.

What else to say? I was really nervous about going to class today because 1 week without french class does wipe everything in my brain. I know I just left for a few days but somehome this trip felt so much longer to me when I came back. All seemed so different and foreign that I felt like I am in the state where I am trying to get used to things again. Talking about foreign, I realize I haven't even written about Indonesia. I actually have some things in my head about this. I hope I'll get to write these thoughts down, maybe it does have to simmer and be boiled longer in the brain. So anyway french class. I was horrible, aarrrgghh!!! I made the stupidest mistake ever. For some reason I thought that the word for people in french "les gens" is singular. I like to blame the italian equivalent which is "la gente", which is singular. In Italian and French, the article 'la' is singular but I should have no excuse in making the mistake when "les gens" starts with 'les' which indicates it's plural. So anyway I used all the third person singular verb in my writing and made the stupidest mistake (for my level) in my writing. I should have asked it back and made all the correction instead of letting Mr. F continue reading it. I think he wasn't impressed. I just tried to laugh it off. God, I cannot imagine if it had been Mr. C. Then Mr. F was also speaking really fast in class that one time I didn't even realize he was asking me a question. Embarrassing. Speaking of Mr. F, I think with 1 week me being away, he's forgotten my name, sigh. I really need to study more. We need to take a test at the end of this term and man so many words conjugations have successfuly fleed my brain. Not to mention the memory demanding subjonctif, aarrrgghh! Today I was also having more difficulty in writing things. I was drawing blank. I think my writing was horrible. But I always think that way :( I think I have to start dedicating my time to go through all these words but man I am so lazy :( I really need to whip myself :(

Today I actually had to attend a 2-year old birthday party. I was actually really thinking about going but then I realize that I will not know most of the Indonesian guests and I hate the awkward social situation. I also know for sure that certains Indonesians just don't go well with me. I know it's weird of me to say this but really it's just like that. Not all Indonesians are as fun as my best buddies. It's just a matter of being able to click and sometime I feel I don't click easily with Indonesians. Geez, another whole page of things just come to my brain but I will not write it now. So anyway, I just said to the mother inviting me that I've been feeling under the weather. I just want to rest at home which is true. It's been a demanding week this week. I arrived Monday and I only unpacked my suitcase on Wednesday and also there's the whole shitty thing and the bit of flu (I've been self medicating). It so happened that la Gioia was also asking if I wanted to do the tree top walk today after class. I had to say no even though it's something I want to do. I just want to spend today and tomorrow catching up with the tv series I've been missing. It's been awhile since I have a free weekend. The last many weekends had been spent trying to (hopefully) enrich (literally) myself. So now, I'm just gonna stop writing, eat a chocolate bar and watch House and Grey's Anatomy in my cold room. It's been really long. Hmm, I am in need of some nice ice creams or cakes since life has been sucky this week and I think it will continue to be so in many weeks or months to come. I wish your days are much better and happier. Buonanotte tutti!

The Ides of March & Tower Heist

2011-11-09T12:21:00.000+08:00

I am sitting here supposedly having to do something useful with my time since it's the only right thing to do. However as how the world works, noone really does the right thing all the time, at least not me. All I can do is try to do the least number of wrong things as I can. Alright, enough with the self justification as to why I am blogging at this hour. I didn't give a good "because" to the "why" anyway and I just don't want to go there.

So home is tomorrow. I'm not sure who's gonna pick me up in the airport. I don't think mom will be there because as it has been the last few times I'm home, she's not picking me up. It kinda makes me really sad, but I guess that's just the way it is. She still kisses me when I arrive though. Moving on. Have I packed? Nope. Today being Wednesday means it's laundry day as well as Glee day. I don't know if I'd be able to throw some stuff in after I finish those 2 tasks. If not, it would be the last minute throwing things in, getting my laundry down, and tiny bit of room cleaning tomorrow. They don't sound fun at all.

I really want to go home, but as mentioned before, I am not looking forward for the whole wedding thingy. Somehow I am more not in the mood now than I normally am on the prospect of dressing up. Normally I would just find it as a chore and annoying, so a mood less than that makes me really REALLY dread the whole thing. Other than that, going home also brings another chore. Need to get me a new ID card. Well, need to get the whole family the new electronic ID cards. Indonesia being Indonesia, the processes seem to be quite painful, as complained by the facebook friends back home. The queue system is painful because you get a number but you cannot estimate when you will actually get served. It may take hours before you get served, because 1 number can be for the whole family of 4 or 10, instead of 1 number for 1 person. So for people who have to work, waiting 3-4 hours will make you darn hungry, as told by Dewi when she was doing hers. So I think my dad's plan is to get me there waiting, and when our number is about to come, call everyone to come down and get our application done. Genius, cheating, lame? Well, it's up to you to judge. I basically just have to do what my parents want me to do and wait I will. I guess our whole family are in unison about not wanting to bribe the staff to get our application processed efficiently. So if it means waiting, I guess I have to do it. There are people who do that by the way, give something to the official to get bumped ahead of queue. My reasoning is, if we want a corruption free country, then we should not initiate this nonsense. I do want to make a complain to the office on why their queueing system sucks but unlike Singapore, I don't think Indonesia has a feedback methods in place. Nor do citizens write to the local newspapers on things that annoy them. It's just Singapore. So anyway ...

The reason why I want to blog is actually to talk about the 2 movies I managed to squeeze in before I go, The Ides of March and Tower Heist. The Ides of March was directed by George Clooney. Reason for wanting to watch it was because of Ryan Gosling and oh how he's so handsome! Love him! and love the fact he chooses nice movies to work on. The Ides of March itself is a good movie. I love it. All the actors were quite the heavyweights in Hollywood and they were very good. As much as I love seeing Ryan Gosling, I have to say that I don't like his character much. I think he took quite a childish approach in trying to solve the conflict. Overall, it's quite an interesting look on how a political campaign in America works and it's sad to learn that back door negotiation is always there as well as the fact that there's no real clean politician out there :( I think it's a really good watch but I know some people wouldn't watch things like this. In fact, most of the people who filled half of the cinema I was in were mostly of the older demographic. So if you think you're into this kinda thing, do watch it. I wonder if Ryan Gosling's Drive is also as interesting. I'm giving that one a miss though, since I don't have the time.

Tower Heist is also a nice movie for me. Of course it's not deep or anything but I think it was quite entertaining and I like it very much. Some has compared it to Ocean's 12, well in a way it is a bit similar in terms of the unbelievable heist they pulled but Tower Heist is less cool and crazier. Still I enjoyed it very much and the casts were great as well. How did Ben Stiller get to be so handsome? Must be the nose and eyes :P Casey Affleck was rather mumbling his lines, I'm not sure if he's funny in his attempt to be funny. Matthew Broderick looked pretty chubby. Eddie Murphy was fun to watch, not loving his character though. However it's Gabourey Sidibe, who got famous because of Precious, who's the must fun to watch. Her character was really funny. Maybe I was in a rather different state of mind but I really did enjoy this movie and love it. I can see it though if some people may just slam this movie since it is really silly.

Well, I guess that's about it peeps. I don't think I'll write again before I go but I'll be back soon enough. Too soon to my liking but that's just the way it is. Take care, aight!

The Very Long Post on a Saturday

2011-11-05T21:18:00.005+08:00

Hello peeps. This is going to be a long post so bear with me or you can just leave half way, whenever it gets boring which I hope doesn't happen at the end of this sentence. There are just a few thoughts in my head and a few things to share. I don't really want to talk about what happened this week because now that I think of it, I cannot remember much of the things I did this week. Anyway, my week has never really been the interesting one. Let's start with today.

My morning today was rather weird. My brain was really not working that I did many stupid things even before I left my room. I am too embarrassed to tell you all of it in details but to illustrate what I mean, let me tell you my first stupidity. So this morning I was putting my contact lens and for some reason I still couldn't see after I put them in. I thought I put the left lens wrongly so I kept on taking it down and putting it in. I did that for 2-3 times before I realized that I had already put my left lens and the lens that I stubbornly tried to put into my left eye is actually for my right eye. I cannot comment on this stupidity. I don't know if anybody has ever been as stupid as me. I think there is someone out there in this world who had absent mindedly done the same. So that's that and it just seemed one wrong thing after another. It really made me wonder how my day was going to be but french class today was rather uneventful.

Now we have Mr. F. Our first class with him was last week. It was slightly overwhelming last week. You would think that Mr. C's regime would have made us well prepared ... well he did prepare us well. It's just Mr. F started last week with shooting questions to each of us. It was simple questions like introducing yourself and giving opinion on simple things but the speed that it happened made us really sit straight and start preparing our words as the people before us was questioned. He was like questioning me if I'm javanese. I said nope, I was born and raised in Jakarta and he still continued asking if my parents are javanese. It must be my big wonderful eyes!!! I told him that mom and dad are from Bangka. I wonder if he knows where that is. It's really a different class with Mr. F now. His topic is not as heavy as Mr. C and yet it doesn't necessarily make us be more chatty in class. He did ask us to speak up but for some reason I felt people were more quiet. It's surprising that lighter topics make us more speechless than discussing England's riot or 911 for example. Mr. F also always asks us to write which is good but again the topic was pretty light. He was telling me that I did really really good and today he told me I'm in a good level. Last week I told him, really?!?! Because Mr. C is really difficult. He just nodded. My statement is true though. I think Mr. C would think what I wrote these past 2 weeks is not even worth commenting :P It is really strange. I've written it before that Mr. C looks so harmless and yet he could be so deadly and tough. Mr. F looks kinda scary for me and yet he's really generous with the praises. He was rolling it out to everyone when he marked our works. Everyone is great. He also speaks english pretty often and he is okay when we (or mostly I) speak english. It actually made me feel really good because there were many times last time that Mr. C had to say, okay Eka stop, no no no! :( I don't know though if this lighter lenient approach will be good for us in the long run. I felt good not being reprimanded for speaking english but the fact remains that I spoke english or horribly broken french when I should be speaking or putting more effort and control in french. So that's class so far. I'm not coming next week because I'm going home this Thursday.

Ah home. I really look forward to go home however it's such a short trip and the reason for this is Dewi's wedding next Saturday. I'm not really looking forward for the wedding because it's gonna be a whole day thingy and I have to dress up and I'm not loving inches of make-up on my face and a whole can of hairspray in my hair to make them look dead stiff. However it's a once in a lifetime event and true sisters is always there for their soul sisters, right? I just hope that when the time comes for me to get married whenever it is or most importantly wherever it is, they will come to my wedding. Anyways, I think I will only have 2 full days spent with my family and that's not enough time to catch up with mom :( At this point I don't know if it's because I'm just missing home so much or just need to get Singapore off my system but I just really want to go home asap. It can also be because of the blogs I've been reading make me miss Indonesia quite a whole lot.

You see, in my boredom I had to find things to entertain myself. It started with googling for Italian or French blog entry about trips to Indonesia. I wanted to improve my language skills hence the topic. I did stumble on some interesting thing, for example an Italian wrote this about Monas, un grande obelisco che si trova nel centro di una piazza enorme. It means, a big obelisk which one can find in the center of an enormous square. It really got me laughing because I never see it that way. It's really interesting to see your country in the eyes of foreigners. More googling led me to blogs from American Peace Corps volunteers. You can google more about peace corps yourself but basically what happens is, there are a group of Americans being dropped into villages in east Java to teach english at the local schools for 2 years. I think they are all encouraged to blog about their experience. They are living with the locals while they are there and all of them go to different villages. I'm Indonesian and I found it to be scary and overwhelming. I don't know if I can do it. If I tell my parents I want to do this kinda thing, I'm pretty sure they're going to object. I think some of them even have to teach in a madrasah, which is an islamic school. I will feel so self conscious knowing I am the only non-muslim in a school or a village of muslims for that matter and they are American! However it seemed people have been treating them well and they have embraced it all with much eagerness. I haven't read all the blogs yet but from the few that I read, the writers even voluntarily fast too during the fasting month just because they wanted to try it or simply to blend more with the community. I think they are pretty awesome.

What I really like and what got me laughing most of the time reading the blogs are their first impression of Indonesia, Java, and all the things that they have to get used too. Again I haven't read all, but from the few I read, the similar things they wrote are like about their briefing in which the issue of using squat toilet was discussed in great details :D They also wrote about eating rice everyday and tempe is always there as well in every meal (this was rather surprising to me, maybe because it's Java). None of them have written about Indomie so far and I found that to be very surprising, since it's one of our national food :P They talked about how their host parents will always pile more food in their plates and ask them to eat more. One girl wrote about the host parent asking her to take a nap. It's very funny and it does sound silly but it's Indonesian alright. Which Indonesian has never been asked to eat more or to take a nap? :D I cannot list all the things that made me giggle but things they wrote like having to take a shower using a pail did make it to one of my lunch conversation this week. It becomes really funny when you realize how something so normal to us is able to make someone else stumped. Someone asked one of the girl if she would bring a gun. I almost burst laughing. Indonesia's crime rate is not necessarily low but crime with gun is almost unheard of. I guess the prefered weapon of choice is the old reliable axe or other sharp things or of course the favorite bomb by muslim extremists. So anyway, I'm glad there are these blogs for me to pour over, I hope they will write often. I have to comment on one other thing. I actually watched a speech one of them made in Indonesian after they finished their 3 months training or something before starting the real thing. I have to comment that the guy's Indonesian is so awesome considering 3 months prior he didn't speak Indonesian! I suppose the Indonesian teachers had a hand in helping preparing the speech but his pronunciation which included the standard islamic greeting in arabic was spot on. However I still got a bit of a giggle because he spoke with a Javanese accent. It's so funny for me and I guess that boy doesn't even realize he's not sounding the standard Indonesian. But still I think it's cool that he can have a javanese accent which got me thinking. I guess the guy was one of the best one in the Indonesian class that he was chosen to make the speech but I wonder if he's also so talented to be able to hear clearly how things are pronounced and be able to emulate it. I for one, feel that I am kinda bad at this hence when Mr. C used to break into impromptu phonetic session, I felt pretty tortured. So that's one of the most interesting thing this week.

Movie of this week was Footloose, the reboot, which I watched alone this evening. It was horrible. The storyline was weak. I don't know if it's better or worse than the original one because I never watch the original one. I was only 2 when that movie came out. This 2011 was really bad. I don't even think the dancing was cool. Seeing the dancing, I am thinking Harry Shum Jr will be so much cooler in those scenes. Nice comments that I can make about the movie is so superficial, like the main boy is handsome. I found myself liking the sidekick more though, even though he's not as handsome. I guess character will always be a bigger draw than look. The sidekick is this goofy funny guy, and so he's more interesting to watch. So that's that, I'm not gonna write more about this movie.

Alone is quite the word I have a lot in my head today. This week brought to me moments when I was alone which I actually like and moments when I was alone which made me feel pretty lonely :( In the face of the loneliness, I just have to tell myself, being alone is a fact Eka and being with someone or with people is a blessing, luck, opportunity, hope or perhaps at time despair :P You can deal with the fact and with the rest you can only hope. So with the fact that I am alone, I tell myself to embrace the fact and just be happy that you can do things on your own. So after feeling quite alone today, I felt really good at the slightest thing. Like when the auntie who got me my lunch commented that she hasn't seen me for some time. She's nice and she knows exactly what I normally choose. Also the auntie who gave me my movie ticket today also made me feel warm and fuzzy just because she said enjoy your evening.

Although it didn't actually make me much happier but my Max's dosage for the day did get me laughing a bit. Max is trying this new thing to shock me everyday. Yesterday was a good one, he was hiding behind the door and suddenly just screamed boo! He almost gave me a heart attack and yet it did make us laugh (me less, he more). Due to that very successful attempt, he decided to make it an everyday event thing. Obviously I am not liking this much, simply because I really believe my heart is not that strong and I don't want to accidentally drop my dinner especially if there are liquid inside it. Today he tried again. Confidently he chose the same spot as yesterday. Me, who we agreed has become paranoid, started looking for signs and I spotted him behind the door and I told him, I can see you!!! It felt good to ruin his plan but this surely will make him be more determined to try more things.

So this week I had the chance to have quite a long talk with him which helped me to see things in a different perspective on the whole relationship thing between him and his aunt. Geez, I hope the aunt is not gonna stumble into this blog. So the 15-year old Max apparently has been going to clubs, though in his defence, it's only been twice since he came here. The thing is, he's 15. So how on earth did he manage to go inside Butter Factory? The answer is, using a common marker the boy turned 95 in his french id into 89. It wasn't even a neat work and yet the people at the club let him go in. I can only sigh. Maybe it's because I am an Indonesian who's been raised in a rather strict Indonesian family in regard with this kinda thing but I really against him going to clubs. I know for sure his aunt too because I've heard her complaining on the phone with this boy's mother and all of the sudden the times when she caned this boy make sense. That's also exactly what my parents would have done if we had done something as bad as this. Then this boy brought the argument of it's all being so normal back in France and he even drank more back there. He argued that right now it's like asking him to be a horse when he's a zebra. Well he didn't say that exactly, it's just my analogy of what his point is. I got it. I see his points and I told him that's why it's rather hard to comment on this. However the fact that he's doing this illegal things behind his aunt's back is just so wrong and now he has even made me promise not to tell his aunt. Well, I am no Sheldon Cooper with secret but all this information do get me tormented a bit. By law of non involvement that my mom imposed in me in relation to these people, I do kinda have to do what this boy asked of me as well as not trying to tell him to do anything even though I disagree truly with what he's doing. It's very mind opening hearing him telling me that his french friends now think he lives a boring life here while in my eyes he's already living quite a destructive life. Imagine having to raise children with someone with such different cultural perception like this whole Asian European way of thinking.

Maybe I am being too dramatic especially as he pointed that he only clubbed once in 2 months now but I am just really really strongly against him hanging out with all these older people and doing stuff he shouldn't be doing just yet. I asked him why he just doesn't hang out with people his age. He said because people his age are just wasting their time playing games. Point taken. Still, it doesn't really warrant him to be clubbing and all right? Again maybe it's the Asian thinking, or the Indonesian way of thinking, or just me thinking based on how I was raised and what is expected of me when I was young. I told him as Asian, we like structure. Maybe I don't explain that clearly to him but it seemed he gets it. I think as Asian or again perhaps as Indonesian, it's important that things are in its place, people are within their boundary, doing things that they suppose to be doing at the time they should be doing it as dictated by the norms that have guided generations before us. Westerners are perhaps more liberal (for lack of a better word). I am pretty certain the majority of Asians who find their kids clubbing at the age of 15 will give hell to the kid when perhaps the westerners's punishment (if any) will be less severe. Some may argue with me on this but really seriously think about it, canes and belts will most probably be on the hands of the Asian parents. Maybe this is disturbing, but I don't see anything wrong with the Asian's reaction. The way I see it, Singapore highlights the situation even better. If parents fail to discipline the kids themselves, one day it might be the Singapore government who cane them. So it's all quite understandable.

Another topic which brought a lot of discussion was when he told me he's meeting a girl for dinner. I asked him, oouh is it a date? He was like, why do you all do this? Why do you all have to think it's a date. Can't a boy and girl just as friends go out together. Of course they can, I say. Apparently he asked a girl if she would like to meet up with him and the girl asked him something along the line of if he trying to date her and that made him really frustrated. He said back in France he could say I love you and I miss you to all his friends who are girls and noone will think anything out of the ordinary. I told him, it's again the whole Asian thingy. We don't say I love you (often). Maybe we should but we just don't and I told him to be more careful in navigating this. Unfortunately I don't think I explain my point well here. Perhaps because my point is wrong. This is the way I see it, of course a guy and a girl can go out together just as friends. However when you just meet someone for a few times and haven't actually talked much to each other, it's still not a long enough time to ask someone if they want to hang out just the two of us without one of the other party thinking if there's something else going on. Yeah, I agree that one shouldn't read much into this kinda thing. But seriously, you meet someone for 2-3 times and in that 2-3 times you were in a group. Then suddenly you just choose a person of the opposite sex from that group and ask the person if you want to hang out. Why do you that? Choose that one person? He said because I like her. There you go, the word "like". He then retracted by saying like as in the normal like, not "like". I told him, I get that it could be that way but what if the girl thinks the other way. So anyways, it seems girls are throwing themselves to him. He said just by one comment in FB to a friend, 4 other girls of this friend suddenly asked to be his friend in FB and started sending him messages. I asked him, and you don't feel cheap that they only like you because you're half french? If you were an average Chinese Singaporean boy, you wouldn't get this much attention. I don't think he gets me or he just likes being cheap.

Today this boy was like asking my opinion on how his body looks. Oh God, you know these day I just try my best to be cool and I repeat to myself "it's french", each time this 15-year old, who is taller than me, walks around in his short boxer. So anyway, he asked me to comment on his body and I told him why he cared so much. Apparently he has self confident issue because he used to feel fat when he had to go to swimming pool so now he's trying to sculpture his body. The fact that he's telling me that made me feel how crazy the world is that he has to feel that way. I'm not saying that I am super confident with my body. My problem is I have issue with exposing much skin but I guess that's a good issue to have :P My point is if your body size is not extremely outside the normal range, just be happy and be confident with your body. I found myself telling this boy "who cares" a lot. On many things we talked about, I will often be screaming that line.

I'm tired now. I didn't take a nap today. I feel like I still haven't said all the things I want to say but this post is already very long and I'm really tired. So good night peeps. Hmm ... I would like to specifically say, buonanotte amore, mi manchi tanto e veramente spero che posso parlare con te, spero che sia presto, per favore Dio?

Blog Change!

2011-10-26T15:09:00.002+08:00

Hello peeps. Well, I guess you can see it. I change the blog's design. It's been awhile coming. Been planning to do it since I started meddling with HTML5 and CSS transition. However I've been lazy (what else is new?). Finally I do it today because after 2 days of confining myself to my room*, I decided that I really have to do something useful and here you go. It's developed with HTML5 and CSS transition things in mind, though I don't really use much of them or do it in a way that matters. The irony is, my vaio is running in windows XP so my IE is unable to show the page nicely because IE9 cannot be installed in windows XP. I really need a new computer but I still love my loyal vaio very much (loyalty is darn important for me). Anyways, I still have Google Chrome to see it in the display I am aiming for. The thing is, you gotta hand it to IE, it's able to render to font nicer than chrome. The texts are too sharp in chrome while it's nice and smooth in IE. I'm OCD this way.

I remove the comment box because I just feel so lazy maintaining it with all its spam. If you have anything to say, you can email me, write on my facebook wall, or just sms me *thank you!!!*. I add a flickr section, it will randomly select a picture from my collection and display it there. It's kinda nice :) and another treat I have is I added a javascript code which will randomly choose a banner picture. There are 3 different pictures. All are pictures of flowers taken from my Keukenhof's visit. However the design is made with the blue flowers in mind, so perhaps the rest of the flowers don't match nicely into the color scheme. Whatever. I'm still pretty pleased with the design and I hope you too. So that's it for this public holiday today. I do get bored yesterday but I still don't want tomorrow to come. Life is rather good when I can watch Charlie and Lola.

*I was still not feeling well eventhough I had taken a whole box of medicine during the weekend. In desperation I even mixed some flu medicine together and I think I took more medicine than the dosage allowed. On Monday I just couldn't take it anymore and off I went to see the doctor. Surprisingly she gave me the letter to rest on Monday and Tuesday. She never gave me 2-day off, so I was really really stumped that she gave me 2-day off without me asking. Anyway in between not having money and I feel like I have to not betray the doctor's trust that I will rest, I really just stayed in my room. I slept a lot and I felt really bored. At least I achieve something today :P

The Help

2011-10-22T19:16:00.002+08:00

I'm down with flu right now. I'm pretty much sick and don't have much energy and concentration, so I don't know how detailed I can write about movie of the week which I really like. Movie of the week is The Help. Maybe because I was sick when I watched it, my emotional state was rather affected that I actually shed many tears while watching this movie. The Help tells the story of african-american maids during the time when segregation was still the law in America. I seriously feel that anyone fighting for equality and acceptance should see the history of african american in America to keep the fighting spirit alive. It took a long way and the discrimination and perception was really hurtful but right now they have a black president. Discrimination sucks. I know because I'm an Indonesian Chinese. You may not like certain things about someone but to treat someone badly and make them feel inferior than you, that's just something that I despise.

I'm digressing. The Help was really good. I think Viola Davis who played one of the maids should get an oscar nomination. It's heartwarming and touching. I like how it really focused on the maids. Even Emma Stone's character who's one of the lead didn't really hog the limelight much. I thought the guy he was seeing was handsome and it was really disappointing that that guy was disapproving of her book and they broke up. The white characters were just as interesting to watch as the black ones. Among the white one, I have to choose the character Celia Foote. She's crazy fun and it's fun to see her managed to make the character Minny Jackson to be rather speechless a bit :P Those two were hilarious. This movie was definitely carried by the actresses and they were really awesome. Each one of them from the mean one, the old lady, to the little baby girl really made the most of their scenes. This movie also had some witty lines. One line that really registered in me was, Love and hate are two horns on the same goat, Eugenia. And you need a goat. It's funny. Do watch it peeps. The critics has kinda called this the little movie that could, meaning that it actually stand a chance to win best movie in Oscar next year. Well we have to see the other contenders before we make our pick.

So that's about the movie today. I had a hard time waking up today. I was feeling really tired. It turned out it's just me feeling sick. As usual, I didn't really feel like thinking or talking much in class but Mr. C still had to call me up. A depressing thing happened. It turned out he's not gonna be our teacher for the next term, starting next week :( Everyone was feeling sad about it. Me too. All this time I have had teachers whom I wished could teach me for more lessons and it's always kinda sad when a teacher we liked gets changed. Like being the operative word there. On the case of Mr. C, I just felt that I finally get used to him and yeah kinda like him since he is very hardworking and does strive to make us really really better. If it had happened on my first few classes with him, I would have breathed a sigh or relief but now after finally accepting him and now that he gets my quirkiness and my flaw, it's really disappointing, no? As much as I don't enjoy getting told that my sentences are still not compact enough, that I'm repeating too many things, and my style of writing is still not so sophisticated, I do want the chance to try again and again and to finally shut him up :P It sounds like I'm dying of acknowledgement, ya? Maybe I just like being tortured. I do liken this sentiment to like having stockholm syndrome :P

On other news. Well, maybe there's 1-2 things to say but my nose is killing me. So I'm just gonna stop now. Take care peeps. Stay healthy!

Minuit à Paris

2011-10-15T23:10:00.000+08:00

Movie of this week was Midnight in Paris. Am I a fan of Woody Allen? Well I haven't watched enough of his movies to call myself a fan. The reason why I wanted to watch this movie was because it seemed interesting and I've seen the posters all over when I was in Cannes this year. Basically I'm just drawn. Back to if I am a fan of Woody Allen. Well his movies often have some elements that I don't really like. Most of the time because the characters in his movie were often so flawed. However, as I was watching the movie progressed, I found myself liking one aspect of Woody Allen. He wrote and direct the movie himself and it seemed he just didn't care if the movie will make sense, if it will be silly, if it's meaningful, if it's gonna appeal to anyone. I feel he's just doing what his head churned out and film it the way he wants it to be. It's very admirable of him.

I like Midnight in Paris. I like Owen Wilson, so it's a good start for me :P Does the movie make sense? Well scientifically obviously not. Does it have any message or does it enlighten me in any way? Not really, except it did get me thinking a bit on which period of the world history, I would like to live in. I'm still undecided on that. The movie felt fun for me and it made me feel I want to experience it as well :P Something about this movie though, I think you'll enjoy it more if you know the historical figures. Other thing that I can talk about the movie? Well as I said, I like Owen Wilson. His nose seemed to be more crooked. He's still ever so likable. I thought Carla Bruni is quite pretty in this movie, which is weird, because I don't normally find her so. The rest of the actors were really interesting too. It was a good ensemble. For the ending, I wonder if the girl is from the future. It would fit the theme. I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised that I understood the french dialogues. So all the french lessons did have their effects :)

The thing that ruined my movie experience was the fact that a mom brought her 2 young kids into the movie and for obvious reasons, the kids were really really noisy. The mother didn't even try to quiet the kids. I felt like I wanted to throw things at her. Seriously? Why would you do that? Bring your kids to a movie which definitely gonna bore them and then have them ruin the movie for everyone. Selfish much? I was also rather disappointed with the Cineleisure staff who allowed them in. However YeeMaggio did remind me that by right they could go in because the movie was just rated PG. I just wanted a nice time enjoying the movie which was rather good and yet I got utterly annoyed during it.

I have to be honest, I'm not really in a forgiving mood. Yesterday wasn't a good day. The suckiness of SMRT made me feel pissed even more. As I was trying to go to sleep last night, I thought of what it was that made me feel pissed the most. The answer is how people could be so self-centered. It's the same old story of me listening to people telling me their issue and the moment I sent out 1 line to tell them something about me, they didn't respond. I actually asked out loud, why does this always happen to me? I cannot deal with this. What kind of people are these people? Seriously? Can you just not step aside for 1 minute and think of other people than yourself? Do you think I am always interested and free to be listening to your woes? No I didn't but I tried my best to respond, especially to distress call! I was pissed as I was going to sleep and I was actually still feeling rather moody when I woke up. Was feeling so tired as well that I had to drag myself up and get ready for class. For some reason, I actually made it on time to class. Class was alright I guess. Maybe not for Mr. C because he's rather sick (poor thing). I think the only comment I can make after each of his class is, I survive it. I think I'm getting used to him but his class still makes me nervous.

This week still has its good points. Did a blackberry app this week. It works. So I've done an android app and a blackberry one. It kinda feels good to be able to do all that. There are other kinda good things but as usual, I'm not gonna write about it. Maybe I'll share some of the things that people said about me this week that kinda threw me off balance a bit (not exact quote):
"you're outspoken" --> somehow this kinda thing can still bother me even though I'm most probably that way. Probably? Denial, Eka? I even said if you have an opinion, you should say it. If not, what's your brain for?
"maybe you just like to be in control, but right now you're not" --> yeah, I'm power hungry, as usual.
"you look happier" --> this is very disturbing :P

REAL STEEL

2011-10-09T19:51:00.000+08:00

Movie of this week was Real Steel. To be honest, I wasn't interested in watching anything because I thought there's no good movie at the cinema right now. However YeeMaggio asked me if I want to watch anything and we settled with Real Steel. It appeared to me as a kiddy movie but I thought it would be a better choice than all the chick flicks around. Real Steel turned out to be such a delight.

I'm not really sure what makes this movie pretty good. It think it was the execution. The story was not incredibly wonderful or anything. To a certain extend it's rather expected, except for the ending perhaps. The ending kinda disappointed me but I guess if it had been a happy one, it would have been too predictable. The robots were interesting and the main robot, Atom, was really a real star. You just gotta like him. I really wonder how they did the robots scenes. Did they make actual robots? That would be too expensive. Another star of the movie is the little boy. He's so cute, adorable, and loveable. His eyes really could melt you away. As for Hugh Jackman, well I'm never really a fan of him because I am not one who likes bulky guys :P However I kinda like him a bit in this movie. He's less bulky and when traces of his daddy side appeared, he is rather charming. I wasn't totally taken by him though because his character was pretty much a jerk. I couldn't believe his character was willing to sell his kid without putting much though into it. Then there's Evangeline Lilly who was looking pretty, without freckles this time around :P One thing to note, it seemed Hugh Jackman is pretty tall. Either that, or Evangeline Lilly is not as tall as she appeared to be. So anyway I like the movie, I like that feeling of going in with so little expectation and to come out of it pleasantly satisfied :)

The Tree of Life

2011-10-02T19:24:00.002+08:00

Movie of this week was The Tree of Life. I watched it Vivy. Haven't seen her since March. Anyways, the movie was kinda painful for me. I read the wikipedia entry before watching this movie and so I knew it received such polarizing reviews but I also knew it won Palme d'Or at this year Cannes film festival. So I thought it's a movie to watch. It turned out to be a rather painful experience for me :( At 2 hours plus, it felt really long. I checked my watch a few times and I remember thinking when it reached the 1 hour mark, that I still had another hour or so to bear :( There were actually people leaving after about 15 minutes and I think the lady next to Vivy wanted to leave as well but I think because of her friend, she preserved. I remembered reading in wikipedia that there are scenes with dinosaurs and so I was hoping it would come soon so that there's some excitement, however the T-rex was just a baby T-rex and again it was another scene which left me thinking, what??!?!

Watching the movie is like watching installation art for me. More often that not, I don't get installation art and don't like it. If the movie has some kind of message that people should get, I don't get it. I don't understand it. I understand it in the way that your brain can be weird though. Your brain can move from one place to another, relate certain things, experience, and emotions to certain images. So in a way, I get the weirdness of the movie because my brain works that way too sometime. The movie started with a news of the middle son of a family died, then it went fast forward to the present day when we saw the adult older brother (Sean Penn) grappling with the anniversary of the death of his brother. Obviously it still affected him a lot. Then the movie moved back to the lives of the brothers with their loving and expressive mother and their strict father (Brad Pitt). Along the way, some imageries not unlike things you'll see in national geographics were being inserted. It's kinda hard to make sense of all this and they seriously made you wonder, what are you trying to say? I just see it as the imageries and the selected memories from the older brother reflected how the older brother felt and saw his life. I think that after all this time, he's still quite visibly broken, he needed some therapy :P

The last scene was rather weird again. I don't know what this supposed to mean. It showed the adult brother walking through a door in an unknown landscape and he met people from his past lives in all the different ages. For this scene, I saw it that when we finally die, we're going to meet ourselves and all those people from our past in all the different ages that we were and we're gonna reconcile with all of them. In this scene, everybody looked happy. Some had tears, but they were happy tears. Since I think of it that way, this scene was really really comforting for me :) I always believe what you are now is your past, present, and future combined. I always feel that you shouldn't do things that's gonna disappoint your past and future. Try to fulfill the dream of your young self and don't make your future self has regrets in life. Anyway, so that's that about the movie. I'm not really gonna recommend this movie because I don't know how you're gonna react to it :P It is rather disheartening that right now there aren't many good movies in the cinemas. Some of them are actually pretty dumb :( I actually feel rather disappointed that I don't have much things to see :( I'm waiting for The Help but it's still quite a long wait :(

On life, it's same old same old. I don't like being older but I kinda want next year to come soon. Geez, I need to slow it down and just enjoy these last few months of 2011. The previous post was pretty long that I forgot to write something that I wanted to write. There's been an addition in the household, I'm just gonna call him Max here. This year we had Chloe and Max back. While Chloe left, Max stays. I kinda like the kids but as they grew older, they do come with their teenager attitudes. On one side they are teenagers so they are allowed to be teenagers with all their way of thinking and attitude. It's just it's been a long time since I was a teenager and God knows I don't deal with them a lot. The last time I had to deal with them, I was more in a place of authority so my relationships with them, which I still call kids regardless of them being older, was perhaps rather different. Now having Max around, I do get stumped sometime seeing how he behaves. Last night at 1 am something as I was about to go to sleep, he got into trouble with his aunt. I don't know why they always have such bad timings. Even last time when Chloe was around, I got awoken at 5 am something with all the shouting :( I was quite fearful that someone would call the police :( So anyways, I had my dinner today and Max was at the table. For some reason he started the conversation in french, which was good because I could ask him what happened last night. He explained it to me and he said sorry when I complained to him that I was trying to sleep. That was kinda sweet of him :) I do think that it's all good between me and him. Between our love for The Big Bang Theory and my lack of authority over him, I guess he sees me as someone who he just could talk to as a friend. I'm not sure if he sees me as an older sister because he has one. Just like me who don't really see younger guys as my younger brother just because I already have one.

I do feel that the boy needs some discipline going on. I think he may even have a slight ADD. I don't know, it's been awhile since I'm a teenager and when I was a teenager time was really different than now. I feel he needs to find his center and be anchored a bit and not have his mind float all over the place. Am I asking too much from a teenager? I'm not sure I fully agree with how his aunt deals with him but it's not my place to say anything. I just hope that the boy is not too damaged and all will be good between them. As I said yesterday when we were all sitting at the table, it's like a battle of will power among them and the aunt was really sure she has stronger will power. The boy agrees as well but it's just been less than 3 months so we'll see. Anyway I do have my paranoia having him around. It could be nothing, just my paranoid self, but I could also be right as my senses usually are. Anyway, I can only say prayers to God so that what I fear will not happen *please God!* I seem to have written such personal stuff about someone else here so perhaps I should stop. Let's hope for a great week ahead *amen!*

Sunday Recap - 25/11/11

2011-09-25T19:02:00.002+08:00

This week hasn't been good. On Monday for some reason I lost the contact lens of my left eye. I don't know how it happened. I was just sitting on my table. Then it was gone. Alright, perhaps I did kinda rub my eye but I wasn't sure when exactly it was gone. I tried looking at it all around where I sat but I couldn't find it. I wondered if it's possible that it got lost in my eye. Googled it and the answer to that question was not really. It wouldn't go to the back of your eye but it may get stuck in your eyelid or something. So me being half blind, made my way the optician. She helped me look for it and confirmed it's not there and now I am waiting for a new one. She's giving me a temporary replacement for the time being. It's a double bad news because my contact lens were actually new. I had it made less than a month ago I think. Even the optician was feeling rather bad about it. I'm not loving the unexpected expense that I have to fork out :( but shit happens.

More shits happen this week but I guess it's a matter of perception. Some people may take it with unbeatable energy and so on but this week I am not taking it well. I am trying to be emotionless but I believe some people find being emotionless is equal to being negative. I think this kinda people should just shut it. I stand by my opinion that I may not do certain things gladly and with a big smile on my face but I'll get it done with my utmost effort. How I feel has nothing to do with how I'm going to do things. Anyway if people want to care about how I feel, they shouldn't be an ass in the first place. But I guess as shit happens, dumbass are all around too.

Another thing this week that made me very very pissed was something that my dumbass cousin said in Facebook. She wrote about how one unknown cousin she's friend with in Facebook has been relaying her status updates to his / her parents and those information come back to her parents. She is like 19 or something so perhaps she should be excused for being brainless and a dumbass but I was very pissed because I thought she was refering to me that I had to ask my mother about it. My mother told me she doesn't want to intrude with other people's dealing anymore since a certain experience with a certain family has scarred our families a lot. I almost wrote some nasty message in the wall of my cousin but thankfully talking to my mom stopped me from doing so. Perhaps I am a dumbass in my own right because I often feel the need to voice out my opinion and when I am strongly against something, I like to make it known even though it may come across as nasty and rude. But I guess we need to rein this kinda thing in and hold certain things back.

Speaking of Facebook. I think this week, they changed the layout the same day Google opened Google+ for all. Personally, I've been contemplating on quitting Facebook or any social network things for some time now. Reason being are all the unnecessary and unimportant things written by my "facebook friends", like my cousin there. I do have Google+ account but I've only had 2 contacts there. I've never post anything there and so I've been just seeing what people wrote. I'm not really sure how to use it. With more contacts in the account, I feel some information overload may happen. The same thing with the new Facebook, I don't like it. So login in to Facebook has kinda become pointless to me. Another thing that annoyed me about Facebook is with how people have used it rather wrongly. Okay about this, maybe I am the idiot one who think more of a person when in fact the person don't think the same way about me or value me as much as I value them. I just feel that when you are close with someone, there are certain things that you should let the person know personally, instead of from Facebook. Imagine knowing something through a status change, with the rest of the 500 something "friends" that the person has. I think it's rude. When I told the story to some people, the first thing they asked, are you close with the person? Well I thought I was when that person had told me some personal stuff, but I guess I am the fool here. We're just facebook friends and seriously for me facebook friends do not necessarily mean we are friends. There are people in my friends list whom I have no intention to speak to ever again. "Why don't you just drop them?", some will say. Simply because I don't care much about Facebook, they can be there or not. Being friends in Facebook doesn't validate the level of your relationship with someone, at least for me. On the example above that I mentioned, it does enlighten me of certain people and people who know me know how strong headed I can be and so instead of dropping that person in Facebook, I just drop them in real life. Loyalty is very important for me in friendships. Some people have the idea that friends come and go. I really don't like that. If I have invested my time and emotion in getting to know someone, I would like the feeling to be mutual. So if someone is gonna be insensitive and self centered then I am just the fool, aren't I? Why would you put someone on the top of your list of people when they don't do the same? I know it sounds selfish and insincere but I dare anyone who thinks they can do it. I think if there's such person, it's what the definition of "loser" is. Don't be anyone's door mat. You deserve better! So if someone is only gonna charge to you when they are sad and all and never share their happiness with you and never listen to you when it's your turn to be sad, then that person is not worth your time. In the case of me, I would rather be all alone and extremely lonely than having to wait around for this kinda people.

On other news, this morning Ms. J flew to Bali and so there goes my lunch partner for the coming week. I wonder how this coming week gonna be for me. Oshie also flew home today, I think he might already have reached home. It's for good. He went through with the plan which he had concocted for some time now. I felt rather heartbroken when he told me but I guess most of our interaction are done online so in that sense there are not much changes. He's been using his last week meeting people around, having his last meal. I got the lunch time slot on Thursday. It was rather sad waving goodbye. Even though we are not amazingly close, it really feels like losing one of your comrade. He asked me if it's never in my mind about going home for good. Oh well it is. In fact the deadline is approaching really fast and as it approaches, I'm torn if I really gonna do it. I'm not extremely fulfilled here and I'm pretty sure I will not be extremely fulfilled at home as well. But as Oshie said, you'd never know. We've given Singapore 11 years and we don't feel belong here so why not give home a try and see what it's like. For my own life, I have no answer for this. I am hoping God will just throw a curve ball or something and just make things clear for me. So that's today's musing guys. I'm gonna spend the rest of weekend with Grey's Anatomy and Fringe now. Hope your week will be splendid!

Contagion

2011-09-17T19:39:00.002+08:00

Watched Contagion today. I thought it was good. I have to say that the draw of this movie for me was the cast however I do think overall the storyline was pretty good. I wonder how close it is to actual life. I wonder if such event should ever happen, there will be an actual draw to determine who's gonna get the vaccine first. I actually thought that that kind of system was rather inefficient and perhaps unjust. Another part which I felt was rather cut short was the resolution of the story for Marion Cotillard's character upon knowing that the Chinese village was given placebos. I thought her storyline was rather interesting. I thought she had Stockholm syndrome. I know some people would think I'm heartless for saying that :P I thought the cast were great but most particularly I like Kate Winslet's character. It's really sad to see her die. It's quite an enlightening movie to see how the world react to an epidemic though the focus of this is only the USA. I don't know how the HongKongers feel with them being portrayed as the source of the virus, like as always. Looking at the map that they were showing to illustrate the spread, I thought it's kinda nice to be living in islands. You're kinda contained to yourself. If you block all flights in and out, you kinda can be fine. The map didn't show much spread in Indonesia though I do have to admit that it's perhaps rather unscientific. The cosmopolitan Jakarta will surely get infected pretty fast, with many of its population travelling to Singapore. Anyways, as I said, it's quite an interesting movie. I'm thinking what will be the next movie I should watch.

On other news, if I have to rate this week, it's actually been quite a good week. Though it is not exact, but it kinda marks a year of me truly leaving a life which has taken quite a big part of my life, 6 years or so, and settling in to a new one. This week should indicate that life is better for me now. I am grateful for it especially if I look at what I left behind but I haven't stopped feeling restless. I still feel that often, so I guess I'm not in a place where I want to be. Either that or I'm just such an ungrateful child.

Other musing right now as I look at this week is also about someone who sticks to a path he's been planning since last year and finally making the jump. If I think about it, I actually get sad so I'm not gonna elaborate it here until I really have to. Another thing was, someone told me about something rather bad happening to her family. She was really really calm about it. In fact it came out rather out of the blue. It wasn't the first thing she told me when we met. Perhaps on one side, she wants to keep this personal thing private but I think it's more of the other side that she doesn't want to make many people worried. I thought she's really strong about it but I guess one needs to be strong for people who are currently vulnerable and need all the support they can get. For all these people, I hope only good things will come to them and that things will be better and better. As for me, I guess my life has been rather okay, so I should just be thankful for the fact that in the eyes of many people, my life is awesome. Allora, buonanotte tutti! Spero che la tua settimana sarà meravigliosa :)

Sunday Recap on the 10th 911 Day

2011-09-11T20:01:00.002+08:00

Hello peeps. How are you guys doing? I'm feeling rather lazy. Well it's Sunday, I should be relaxing and stuff but I have stuff to do and I really don't want to do it but I think I really should :( So maybe I'll do my recap as fast as I can. By the way, I feel the weather is rather cold now. I think it's a good thing I feel that way. I was down with flu this week and to not feel cold is I think a good thing. I'm not totally well yet but I think I'm okay. I'm still not looking forward for this coming week though.

This week has had certain things. Hmm, I'm not really interested to talk about some of it. I think this week I realize that certain things or feeling that you thought will never pass will eventually pass. As cliché as this may sound, time does really heal. Well perhaps it doesn't really heal because certain things can't just be forgotten, however you just simply kinda don't feel the same thing or with the same intensity anymore as time goes. So even as you don't feel so well now and you don't know how you'll be able to feel okay anymore, one day you will feel okay. You just gotta get yourself to that day. On the contrary of that, this week I also realize that there may be certain things that you want to last for a long time but again you can't help that these things will just slip and slide and it will be gone no matter how hard you hold on to it. It is rather sad however I think that's just the way time works. It takes from you the good and the bad.

On other things this week. I did watch a movie, The Smurfs and my God, it was horrible. I can't even begin to describe how bad it was. It was really for kids, maybe below 10. I don't know even know if this movie can capture the attention of a 10-year old long enough for them to last the whole movie. I like Neil Patrick Harris in this movie though and Jayma Mays, my goodness isn't she just the cutest sweetest thing :P Storyline, it's so weak. They had this one part of Sofia Vergara's and Tim Gunn's characters plotting with the evil Gargamel and it became pointless because it wasn't addressed even more. It's like a waste of time. I also think that sometimes the live actors wasn't believable when they're acting with the smurfs. It's kinda sad because the world of smurf is something that I am sure many people want to escape to. Perhaps they should focus on that rather than bringing them into the real world. I do have to say that it was rather smart of them to address the smurfs as a myth with the wikipedia reference, etc. Still, I think there are better movies out there to watch.

Other thing that I managed to do this week was to check out the lantern festival in Chinese Garden. It's been absent for some years so it's kinda nice to see it back but it wasn't so good. The only one I'd been had a Sanrio theme. I'm not one who's into Hello Kitty and stuff and yet I do feel they made a more interesting and cuter festival than this year's. To see pictures, you can go here.

Crazy, Stupid, Love.

2011-09-03T23:05:00.002+08:00

Hello peeps. How are you guys been doing? Today I went back to the cinema after almost one month without watching anything. I guess I've just been having other stuff to do and so though there were some movies which I wanted to see, in the end I decided not to. Some was also on the ground that I should save some money and perhaps I could watch it back home through my bro's dvds. Anyway, finally today I went to watch something. It's Crazy, Stupid, Love. which I watched with la Gioia and YeeMaggio. The reason why this movie attracted me was Ryan Gosling. Then I read the review for the movie and it was good so I thought this movie has much credibility. It was really so.

First off, I need to start with how I really really like Ryan Gosling :D When others first noticed him from The Notebook, it was Half Nelson for me. A movie which I really like. His other movie that I watched was Lars and The Real Girl. Those movies were obviously heavier than Crazy, Stupid, Love. and so it's really nice to see him play a different role where he can just be fun and hunky :P Story wise, it was pretty okay up to the point when a twist happened. I really didn't see that coming and I think the whole cinema was gasping and saying "oh my God!". That moment made the movie really great :) I think all the cast were really good that I really couldn't choose anyone who eclipsed the rest. I do have to say that I think Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling are great but perhaps I am bias :) Steve Carell's character's son was also an interesting one, he's so cute. I also have to comment that it's rather amazing that they managed to make Josh Groban so ordinary and not so handsome in this movie :) I really really recommend you to watch it. Ryan Gosling is really handsome :)

Starting this post, I felt that I should write more in details about the movie. However I'm pretty hungry right now and I'm talking to someone in msn. So my thoughts are being splitted into 2 screens. It's weird how you can feel sad about certain things that have very little connection to you. I wanted to elaborate more, I even have typed it out but I erased them all simply because I thought it's just too much personal information. So what can I talk about which is not too personal? Not much really. I mean there's certain opinion I have on certain people which I cannot write here. There's also personal stuff which people told me which I also cannot disclose. So I should stop here? Yeah my own life is pretty same old same old. Like today, class started again. My alarm didn't ring and so I woke up late and got out late and yet it didn't stop me from having a proper breakfast which caused me to be later than my usual late when I arrived in class. I didn't have much time to read the texts Mr.C asked us to read and when I asked if I could read one more time, he told me to arrive on time :P Today a realization did come to my head that I should really be putting more effort in his class. For some reason, there were many times I actually forgot that we had homeworks and so I didn't do them. I really can't explain why. He normally found it funny when I get a bit flustered in class upon finding that we did have homework. Anyways, I think I should really try harder. There's only so much a teacher can teach you, the other part comes from you yourself. So I really need to actually try. I know as much as I was gung ho about it when I left class, that spirit may just die down as I enter class next week. However since I don't have much time left, I should really make all the time I have now really matters. Hmmm, that's it for now peeps. Buonanotte!

Politically Charged Saturday

2011-08-20T21:05:00.001+08:00

Hello peeps. Today is the last day of my french class for this term. We're having a break next week *yay* Today in class we had quite a political discussion. Life / class with Mr. C is laden with heavy topics but I think this is the first time that I feel compelled and really really interested to talk about the discussion, simply because it got me thinking about a lot of things. I have to say it's been several hours since class ended and as usual thoughts come in and out of my brain randomly that I have formed opinions and came to certain realization which didn't occur to me in class.

It all started during the break when the Chinese boy (from PRC) next to me finally found out where I'm from and he made a remark something along the line of, oh I like Indonesian chinese but not the rest of Indonesian. Mr. C was walking in when he was making that comment and he heard that and Mr. C made a comment along the line, hey I don't want to hear that kinda comment in my class, it's awful. I have to say that Mr. C could come across as very stern in making comments such as this and it kinda could make you feel a bit shocked, like being reprimanded by your teacher when you were young. Yes, he IS our teacher but I guess in the age that we are now, to be receiving comments in such tone do make us a bit uneasy. I told him, it's fine, it's okay, no? In which he said, how is it okay to say that? By the way, I have to tell you that this conversation happened in english. His argument is, as french, the way things are done in his country is to eliminate comments such as I like certain race / culture / religion, they are better, the others are not. To be honest I didn't get what the fuss is all about at that time. Now that I think about it, it's perhaps because I'm Indonesian chinese so I didn't feel offended. I pointed to the Singaporean classmates that I had a discussion with a friend in which we felt Singaporean Malays are nicer than Singaporean Chinese. Okay I have to admit that this discussion was with an Indonesian friend. However I did say truthfully what we thought when days later it so happened that a Singaporean Chinese guy I know asked me how I find Singaporean. In answering his question, I did tell him it's such a thorny question but I told him the sentiment that me and my friend shared. For the record, I think that Singaporean Malays are generally nicer on first meeting simply because we are Indonesians who share certain similarity in language which cause them to tend to be friendlier to us than the Singaporean Chinese, but this is a generalization. There are really really nice Singaporean Chinese aunties and uncles out there. Anyway, in class my point is if a Singaporean Chinese found out that they are at the bottom of the scale on which race is the nicest in Singapore, shouldn't they ask why. What make you think this way and try to use this to reflect on how they project themselves to foreigners. That was my point in class.

After many hours later, I do realize that such comment can be hurtful. If the guy has said, I hate Indonesian Chinese because so and so. I don't know if I can be all calm about it. Come to think of it, if I had been a better Indonesian, I should have argued to try to clear his point of view. I should have argued on the basis that I should see myself as an Indonesian, not Indonesian Chinese. Anyway, Mr. C said such comments is banned in France and there is a law about it. Remember John Galliano's case? This got me thinking what if such comments have been made in Indonesia? I'm pretty sure we don't have such law. I'm pretty sure if a non Indonesian Chinese makes a hateful comment to an Indonesian Chinese, the Indonesian Chinese will not fight back and will just walk away from the situation without making much comments. Perhaps there are those who will stand up and fight such comments but Indonesian Chinese are generally trained by their parents to give in in a conflict with non Indonesian Chinese, simply because we're out numbered and we are not going to win this conflict even though we are on the right side. However if such hate comments is made between the Indonesian Batak or Javanese for example, I am sure it could lead to the machete being drawn or rocks being thrown. Each will stand their ground. This leads to a question, the Indonesian Chinese don't have a ground in Indonesia? Yes there have been a lot of talk about respect and acknowledging Indonesian Chinese as just being Indonesian like the rest and being part of Indonesia, especially during Chinese New Year. However I think for many Indonesian it's just a political talk. If a riot like 1998 targeting Indonesian Chinese should happen again, will the rest of the Indonesian stand to protect the Indonesian Chinese? I know for sure that my parents, aunts, uncles have scepticism about this. It is perhaps our fault that we choose to be a victim. I agree and disagree to that partly. I remember hating so much when my mother didn't do anything when a boy at the end of the street was throwing rocks at me when I walked by simply because I was chinese when I was really really young. The hatred and injustice feeling were really strong but I understand now that even if we had lodged a complain, we would not have won that argument. So is there still discrimination for Indonesian Chinese in Indonesia? Since I don't live there, I don't know. I have a feeling there's still might be a bit. Indonesian Chinese get bullied more perhaps in their business. I'm not sure though. Either we have become acceptant with how things are and have adapted to just rise above it or there's isn't any major discrimination currently happening on us, that right now I don't think there's a major change that Indonesian Chinese demand to see in Indonesia.

Mr.C said one should stop talking about these differences and see each other to be just the same. However I think in Indonesia, we are just simply proud of our cultural identity, not necessarily for our religions but more for our ethnic groups and for this, I don't see why we shouldn't accentuate this about us. Yes, emphasizing on the differences can lead to problems because you may get carried away thinking you are better than the others. However I like to think that we're unique because we are different and we shouldn't hide that we are a certain way because of our cultural identity. Of course I'm coming from the point of view that people should be respectful of these differences and find it as something interesting rather than something that separate us. He said he was surprised that when he arrived here, he had to fill in the race column in a form. Only then did he realize he's caucasian. He didn't see the importance for this. Even more surprising for him was a religion part in a form. I commented, c'est normal, non? He was flabbergasted and argued, how is this normal? What is normal? Again in France, these type of information is irrelevant to who you are and as such, such questions should not be asked, and I think it's in the law that you shouldn't demand for this information. While I agree that I don't like the race column because based on the Indonesian experience, it's racial profiling which specifically target the Chinese, it's something that I have come to term with. Why do I say it specifically target the Indonesian Chinese? Because with the so many ethnic groups in Indonesia, the options will take a whole entire page. While the Chinese boy today said there are 50 something ethnic groups in China, there is apparently around 300 ethnic groups in Indonesia. So anyway, I think that column in an Indonesian method to see if you are Indonesian Indonesian or Indonesian Chinese. Now as for the religion, since the first foundation of Indonesia, the belief in God, this is something that is ingrained in us. We believe in God full stop. This lead to the second part of the discussion.

This part is in French so I may get understood wrongly since I couldn't really say what I wanted to say clearly and I may also not get the question correctly. A Russian girl asked a question (which I think) how about atheist in Indonesia? I told her, do not say you're an atheist in Indonesia. Okay, perhaps this is my perception and perhaps I do not know Indonesia well since I only spend less than 1 month a year there however I really do think that Indonesian do not accept this belief (can you use the word "belief" for an atheist?) or this notion of there is no God. Again, this is a generalization because I did some googling before writing this and it seemed the number of atheist in Indonesia is increasing but even them said that it's not easy to come out in the open and say I don't believe in God and as much as they want to push for this freedom, they also understand that at this point, it just doesn't seem possible. The first time I heard anyone declaring they're a free thinker and don't believe in God was in Singapore and it shocked me greatly. Over time I came to accept it's something common in Singapore but it didn't stop me from feeling a certain sad emotion hearing that, for example when this Russian girl declaring proudly that she's an atheist. I guess perhaps in Indonesia, out of courtesy, just don't declare you're an atheist to an Indonesian because perhaps it will make the Indonesians uncomfortable and awkward. I like to think Indonesians are nice enough to be non-judgemental and start lecturing you however I cannot guarantee this. The Indonesian law guarantee the freedom of practice and expression based on religions or beliefs. This law combined with our country's foundation does not factor in atheism and I told them we are not evolved enough to accept there are atheist out there.

The Chinese boy whispered to me, so what if you don't have a religion. I said you choose one which is closer to you. Many Indonesian Chinese choose to state that they are Buddhist. I pointed that in my case this is what's written in my identity card even though I'm not a "true" buddhist. Mr.C asked, because you don't practice it? No, not because of that, but because I'm not a buddhist the way my brother, cousins, and Richard Gere are. There were only 5 options during my time, so that's the closest we had. The thing is you grow up in a family that since your grandparents time has had religion, so even if you don't practice and follow it, you just choose that option in your identity card. The Russian felt this is wrong, there's no freedom when you cannot acknowledge the atheists. It's discrimination, it's violation of human rights. While perhaps she is right to a certain extend, I wouldn't stand on her side. If there's a certain group who tries to push for atheism to be acknowledged in Indonesia, I will be against that. Does that make me an extremist? Having a religion is not something which is important to me. God knows, I'm mixing my religious upbringing and my religious education in my life. However I think the belief in God is important. I do agree alhough the first thing in our country's foundation is the belief in God and while all Indonesian can say what their religion is as stated in their identity card, we are not the holiest country in the world and our government is for sure far from being clean. However for me, giving the option that you don't believe in God, when God is often time our moral compass and the guide in our life, will be more dangerous. Where is that moral compass then? Christians often use WWJD in their life and I admit I mock this many times, but I find that this is useful, that this is important. I agree with the separation of state and religion. Just like many Indonesians out there, we don't want to see Indonesian being ruled by one certain religion (even though perhaps it already is). However I want a country in which the people believe in God. I agree that the government cannot push you to have a religion or to believe in God but I do not want a government that allows you openly be an atheist. I know it's contradictory, I know it's a matter of freedom, choices, and human rights however that is just the way I feel and so I like the fact that we are "forced" to have a religion. I feel at the very least, even though right now you don't believe in God, there perhaps will come a day which will make you wonder if He exists and if you want to learn more, you can go to that religion stated in your identity card. Also if atheism is not flourishing, perhaps the influence of the so many religions in Indonesia can influence you to consider your view in God.

It's been a long post, I don't know if I am making logical correlations. As usual I don't know if I am making any sense. I know I am perhaps short-sighted in my view. Maybe I'll change my opinion as I grow up. I don't know if I have written all my thoughts. There were many things said in class which will make this post super long if I write them all. I don't know if I've made rational justification, perhaps not. It's hard to be writing your thoughts without much time to filter them and mull about them. By the way, some articles that you can read (if you're interested) about atheism in Indonesia, I promise you it's in english, you can go here, here, and here.

On other life news. Well nothing interesting. I had a long day yesterday. I was very tired and for some reason there are many ants in my room :( and then I was awoken at 5 am something when Jenny was screaming at the twin (okay, they're not twin). I think it was Maxime that got into trouble now and Chloe tried to argue on his behalf. I don't really know what the problem was, I did hear one line clearly. She was so loud, I was wondering when the neighbours gonna come and complain. I really wondered what the hell happened that such altercation happened at 5 am. I wanted to call mom just because I knew they would have been awoken at 4 am Jakarta time, but I decided not to. Went to class today feeling über sleepy. Met LM for dimsum lunch after it. I'm glad I got to meet her before she pops her baby which from the look of it, it seems it's gonna be soon but she said due date is in the middle of September. I don't want to talk about other part of my life so ciao for now. Hope you have a good week ahead!

Looking Gray

2011-08-15T12:58:00.005+08:00

I only know this is sadness
restlesness
feeling I would rather be elsewhere

the mind moves a million miles per seconds
fleeting to memories I've forgotten

now it's me in that cold
staring at the pond with the ducks
alone
wondering if it's where I should have been

was alone
and yet I'd rather be there
than here
in that cold

I was told to rein this in
to see the sunray through the gray clouds

I've tried to silence this
but it's seeping out
and I just don't want to contain it anymore

I don't know the because
of the question why

or maybe I do

I'm just sad
and I would rather be elsewhere

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011-08-08T21:05:00.002+08:00

Went to watch Rise of the Planet of the Apes yesterday with YeeMaggio. Why did I choose this? Because James Franco is in it. Seriously, that guy is like perfect, no? There are many handsome actors out there. There are many talented actors. While some are handsome and talented at the same time, to be like James Franco who's really handsome, talented, and actually really intelligent (the guy is pursuing a phd and also teaches in a university) is rare. In fact I cannot think of any other actor who's like him. He's really handsome that I relished everytime he appeared on the screen :P I guess for that same reason, I don't like Freida Pinto's character much and to be honest her character didn't really make much a difference in the movie. I was actually pretty annoyed when they had to kiss before James Franco's character dashed off to talk to Caesar, the chimp. It's not because of the fact they kissed (which wasn't a really good kiss by the way) but more because it was so typical Hollywood to insert something like this just before the climax. Despite of this cheesy part and some other parts which perhaps are totally predictable, the movie was actually pretty good. I think Caesar the chimp was really really cute when it was a baby and when it was so young. It didn't look cute anymore when it was older. I do have to praise Andy Serkis who did the motion capture for Caesar. It was really really good. I'm amazed with what special effect can achieve. The apes all looked totally real. I also have to comment about Tom Felton a bit. He's also one of the reason I wanted to watch this movie. First comment is, he looked pretty handsome :) tall and with his original hair colour. Second comment is, it's a bit of a shame that the role that we see him next fresh from Harry Potter is pretty much the same like his Harry Potter's role :( It's rather disappointing. He should have chosen other thing, so that we can see more range from him. But I supposed to reject the opportunity to work on such big movie like this would be so stupid.

I totally recommend this movie. It has a pretty good story and many touching moments brought to you by Caesar the chimp and John Lithgow who played James Franco's dad. The movie also got me thinking about a few things. The first scene of the movie was so moving for me. It showed how poachers hunt these chimps and get them shipped into medical labs in the US. It was really really sad and I don't wish this fate on any animal. I also don't wish a life of being a test subject for any of these animals :'( However I do realize the importance of animal testing. As illustrated in this movie, James Franco's character is trying to find a medicine for alzheimer. It kinda torn me a bit :( Sometime I try to justify things like these using the argument that if there's reincarnation then it is in the karmic duty of the animals to go through this. Yeah, I know it's such a weak argument but I really have nothing more to say. Alright, I'm gonna stop now and relax a bit. It's so hot now in Singapore, I'm really having a bit of a hard time with it :( I wish for rain tomorrow though I know Singapore is hoping for a sunshiny day. Oh well. For all the Singaporeans out there, enjoy your break tomorrow! God bless!

Sunday Reflection

2011-07-31T21:41:00.001+08:00

I'm actually not planning to write today but there are many things that swirled into my head this weekend. Yesterday in french class, we talked about how foreigners perceived the french and that got me thinking of how foreigners perceived Indonesians and then it led me to think what makes an Indonesian and if I am an Indonesian or why do I keep on emphasizing on the fact that I am an Indonesian when perhaps I'm not so Indonesian anymore. Then today, I finally had a small talk with Chloe. She and Maxime have been spending some time here. Jenny was asking them to speak french to me. I actually just woke up from my nap so the brain was not receptive to listening and speaking french. As usual, I deflected and started answering in english. Chloe was surprisingly open about her life. At one point, I was telling her something like this, I hope you didn't do X because of Y, because that would be so stupid. I was thinking that it was actually really really rude. That got me thinking further that I really really have to stop doing all this saying things without filtering them. It's not amusing anymore, it's just plain annoying and hurtful sometime. So talking to Chloe, who's 10 years younger than me made me think about more stuff, about how I feel so like an adult. I wish I can talk longer to her because she seemed interested in talking to me too but Jenny was around and I have a feeling that Jenny may not like her being so open to me. I don't know, just a feeling. Anyway, with that many topics going around in my head, there are many things to talk about, no? Let's try.

Do I want to pose that question of what foreigners think of Indonesian? I think that there will be a lot of negative answers which I will respond with, but Indonesian are very nice! Are we? Are we very nice? I do think Indonesian are very nice. I have to admit, I'm not a very nice Indonesian though. I think they are very patient. They are easy going which some may take it as being lazy and ignorant about the proper ways of doing thing. For me going back home is always important because it's going back to the Indonesian roots. Things like speaking Indonesian. It's getting harder for me to say full sentences in Indonesian without breaking in English. On the few trips home, I even had moments when I pointed something to mom and asked how to say that in Indonesian. I knew how to say it in English but I actually forgot how to say it in Indonesian :( It's very important for me to be able to speak Indonesian well and even when I do speak it, I realize I don't really speak it the way my friends speak it. I try my best though. Why going home is very important for me is also because you go back to your place or position in a family and it puts a different perspective about your life. Being here alone it's all about me and surviving but when you are back in the family, it's about how you are part of an entity or a group. Meeting my aunts, uncles, and cousins and seeing their lives is important in a way of telling me how my life could be when God is kind enough to give me a family of my own. That's another thing I think Indonesians are, that they move in a group. I don't think Indonesians are very individualistic, it's always about their place in a group or a community and actions are made with regards of the group. There are just things about Indonesia and how things go about there that can teach you a lot, at least if you are an Indonesian. Everytime I'm there, I always feel that I am at least being taught to slow down, relax, take it easy, and have more patience. Things will not run the way you want it, in an efficiency and standard that Singapore has, but it's all good, people there have put up with it and they're happy in life, perhaps they are even happier than the average Singaporean though they have less, so be happy, be thankful. Being thankful is also another thing that going back to Indonesia teaches me. I do feel I am not thankful enough in life.

So anyways, there have been a few people who told me that I'm westernized simply because I could be very direct in saying my opinion. As mentioned above, my conversation with Chloe did make me feel like I have to tone it down a bit and also perhaps use the F word less. Actually I do not know if being direct is a western thing. If my characters do change in a way that people think of it as being westernized, I think it's not because of the western influence, it's more because I've been in Singapore for a long time and all the experience of just trying to survive on my own. Things become like a problem - solution kinda thing. You have a problem, you face it and find a solution to it and often time it involves saying how you feel or say it as it is to the people who contribute to the problem or who can help you with it. So that's just how I feel. Another thing, I wrote about how Indonesians move in a group. I see that in the Indonesian "friends" back in NUS days. I put friends in "" because I don't think we are actually good friends if we don't stay in touch now. Maybe it's just me. Anyway back in NUS, we did things together and in a group and now that I see it, I feel it suppressed certain interesting and unique qualities of my friends. Now that many of us have kinda made it in the real world on our own and be the wonderful individual that we are outside that group, some of them are great. Like who knows that Oshie actually can tweet about someone being a dick. Back in NUS days, he's like the calm innocent kind but he's pretty spunky and witty and I love this fact :) and I don't know if it's a sign of being westernized, but people with their opinions and uniqueness interest me more than people who don't have any opinions or who are more comfortable being with the crowd or following them.

On that note, it kinda relates to the conversation I had with Chloe today. Apparently the girl quit her psychology studies and turn to movie making. I was stunned that Jenny was okay with that. She said she was failing as she wasn't making any effort at all and she decided to change course. I asked her how long movie making school will take. She said 5 years and I almost fell to the floor. She talked about spending her first year in the hostel and then feeling lonely because she didn't make any friends. She talked about how her friends are just as relaxed in life like her and she even used the word 'hippie' on them, basically to signify that they just bum around. I seriously didn't expect this from a western culture. I thought parents are ready to kick them out when they're 18 or something. But she is European instead of American. I was stunned to hear this girl who just doesn't seem to be quite mature yet. I expected more from her considering her family history. I was thinking that I was more mature than her when I was her age. I told her that I moved to Singapore when I was 18. She was telling me how her friends are the real french kind who like France and don't even think about leaving it. Even when asked why she didn't try to study in Paris, she said why? since the weather in Montpellier is great. That got me thinking if having lived in such a beautiful place does make someone to not want to explore the world more and it's all the people who are living in a developing country and are experiencing a lot of hardship who are eager to see the most of the world. Anyways, hearing her, I was thinking if I had been too hard on her. I mean Jenny who's pretty strict could accept her and be patient with her though she did say that by 21, she better gets her act together because that's the deadline before she gets cut off. I wonder why I was so taken by her and felt a tiny bit of disappointment hearing her. I was thinking if it's because of my strict parents. My dad was disappointed when my cousin wanted to quit orientation before it even started. It just seemed that quitting is not something which is tolerated by my dad. However, after all that have happened to my family, extended family I mean since there are only 4 of us in my core family, I do think that my parents have become perhaps more lenient, tolerant, and acceptant on certain things. I mean we have cousins not being able to move up in their classes, cousin who decided to stop studying or working, and teen pregnancy. My aunts and uncles are living with that and so again patience is something which perhaps grows as our parents grow older. So perhaps my parents are not strict anymore as well with our lives. It seems the consensus among my parents, aunts, and uncles are as long as the kids are happy and healthy, it's all good :) They are so nice, I don't know if they're doing us good with this. As for me, it seems that I'm so gonna be a tiger mom :P Anyway, another thought came to me. Talking to a girl 10 years younger than me, I felt so much older than her and I wonder what a person 10 years older than me can tell me about life. If they are feeling I'm not mature as well, if I still have a lot of growing up to do. Hmm, it's been a long writing there without much deep substance I fear so I guess I will just stop this rambling now. Hope we all will have a great week ahead :)

Larry Crowne

2011-07-25T21:50:00.000+08:00

I feel very very sleepy right now :( I don't think I really slept last night. Don't ask me why, it's common for my Sunday nights to be like that. Hence I often get cranky on Monday. I wasn't cranky though today. Today I had some time for myself which I spent with watching Larry Crowne, eating a comforting Indonesian nasi goreng, doing something which I didn't expect to be doing at this soon, and getting my eyes tested. The nasi goreng special was such a comfort food that it made me forget about my fear and nervousness for awhile. My eyes test seemed to show that my degrees went down. I wonder how that is possible and I wonder if I did the test correctly. Maybe I was too tired that I wasn't sure what I saw or said anymore. The other thing I did which I obviously didn't want to elaborate here kinda made me sad and brought me more questions about my life. YeeMaggio was really comforting, telling me that she also felt how I felt and I'm not alone in my despair. I'm just gonna close that at that.

Let's talk about Larry Crowne. I actually like this movie a lot. There's a survey in America that showed most of the audience for this movie was above 50 years old. I was telling Ms.J, why am I drawn to this movie? I'm not old! She herself likes the movie too. Even stranger, I actually find Tom Hanks to be quite attractive in this movie. I feel like smacking my head to stop all this stupidity, I cannot be drawn to guys who are so much older. Surely there are guys not so far from my age group who could be interesting, no? Anyway Ms.J was right, Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts are just so good that when you put them together, they will just be great. Julia Roberts really has a deadly smile. I was thinking about this movie. I was thinking how frightening it is to be in their age and finding that their whole world collapse. Tom Hanks' character lost the job he had had for many years and ended up losing his house as well. He had to reinvent himself and start something new, taking classes with people who are young enough to be his kids. Julia Roberts' character had a job which was losing its meaning to her and was going through a divorce. I just found that to be frightening. I have my life crisis at this age of mine nearing the end of my 20s and going to be 30 soon, however as much as it gets really suffocating thinking about my life, I do have to say that worse come to worst, I can just pack up my life and go to the comfort of my parents. I know some people will criticize me for saying that but that is true. As much as I often feel so alone, I have my mom who will embrace me with open arms. Now when I think about having a major life changes and problems at the ages of Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts character, for me that's just scary. It's the age where they should have had all the answers, where life supposes to be all figured out and yet it's not and as shown in the movie, they're pretty alone in that rocky stage of their life. It's really really scary for me. I wonder when I reach that age and I am in that situation, if all the years that I will have had will give me the wisdom and strength to march on like Larry Crowne. Well there you go, the thoughts that came to my head after thinking more about the movie.

A thought came to my tired and sleepy head just now. It's of taking a conversational Italian class. I just saw the class listing and there's one on Friday evenings and I was thinking I could actually do that. However now, I realize that would be a lot of extra expenses. Hmm ... non so ... forse perché il francese è troppo difficile per me adesso and sono diventata molto pigra così vorrei smettere studiare il francese. E anche perché dimentico tanto le parole italiane e la grammatica :( devo usare un dizionario per scrivere queste righe :( Sono molto stanca adesso. Allora fermo qui. Buonanotte tutti!

It All Ends

2011-07-23T22:19:00.004+08:00

I'm so late perhaps but I've finally watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and how I love it so much. I think it's the best Potter movie of the lot and I'm planning to watch it again. Before I go on to describe how awesome it was, let me just comment on the IMAX theatre first. So I watched this with YeeMaggio at the only IMAX theatre (currently) in Singapore. During the trailer it occured to us how big the screen is and there was a trailer for Under The Sea and the big screen felt like it's really in your face and the 3D was totally awesome. I was wondering how on earth I was going to survive an adrenaline pumping Harry Potter movie which runs for 2 hours under this circumstance but the fact is Under The Sea was really made for 3D and IMAX, Harry Potter was not. So watching it in 3D in an IMAX theatre was like the same as watching it in another cinema. The good point was perhaps the cinema is new so it felt clean and nice and the screen was big but honestly I didn't notice it much anymore during the movie.

Now about the movie. I have to repeat that it's AWESOME!!! The best Harry Potter movie of all and I'm happy how nice it turned out. As a fan of the books, just like many people who may have their complains about things being left out, I also have a bit of disappointment on some things but overall I think it was nicely done. I'm gonna use numbers for my thoughts.

1. The character I love the most is Professor Snape. I love him dearly and from the first book, I never waiver in believing he was good. Seeing him for the first time on the screen was enough to make me feel bitter sweet because this being the last movie, we're not gonna see Professor Snape anymore. I always felt that his screen time was too little in all the movies. Even on this one, his lines when he was alive weren't much. His dying scene was sad and touching for me (I had some tears) not because it was amazingly good but because knowing his story, it was really really sad. I was glad he had more screen time when Harry looked into his thoughts in the pensieve and I think they did Professor Snape's justice. It felt good to see his vulnerable side after all this time him appearing pretty heartless and emotionless. You could really see how much love he had for Lily Potter and how tormented he was for what happened to her. So I'm pretty satisfied with his storyline :)

2. Neville Longbottom. I remembered reading the last book and thinking I hope they don't just dismiss this boy and push him to the side. Just like for Professor Snape, I think they did him good. By the way, who would have known out of all of them, Neville would grow up to be the hottest of them all. I love how strong Neville has become in this movie and they did make him look so cool when he slayed Nagini. It felt really good to see Neville in the spotlight and be all natural and sincere about it. You can't help feeling proud of him :)

3. I gotta talk about Draco a bit. Draco is one character who I always look forward to see in all the films. I never really hate Draco. Starting from Half Blood Prince, I was already sympathetic for Draco. The fact that he's so tormented means he had some heart though perhaps some people may argue that he's just a coward. I actually like seeing him being tormented :P

4. Ron and Hermione's kiss. Oh my God!!! I thought it was bad. I mean come on, these are 2 people who we know like each other so much for the longest time and even in the book we all gasped and grinned in joy when they kissed but in the movie I think it was a disappointment! The angle that they chose most of the time was with Ron's face covering Hermione's. The kiss wasn't obvious. I wonder if after all the takes, they couldn't find any good one :( It was just a big let down for me.

5. Ginny and Harry's kiss on the other hand was good. It was short but it became very sweet when she said, "I know" and Harry dashed off. I'm not one who love the idea of them being together but with that scene I gave them my blessing :P

6. The battles of Hogwarts was epic. I thought it was cool. I think there are more magic shown here than in all the previous movies but of course I had my disappointment. I would have loved to see an actual battle scenes that show people like Fred, Lupin, and Tonks died :( I also expected a more epic duel between Molly Weasley and Bellatrix Lestrange. Overall though, I think it was awesome. Scenes like between the giants and the army from the wall was good. Seriously when Prof. McGonagall was conjuring the spell to wake the soldiers from the wall, my mind went to the churches I visited in Europe and thought how awesome it was if all those statues can come to life as well :P

7. Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley. I just want to say I love them all. I actually love Harry the least, even in the movies and in the book, but you really cannot help loving them all after all these years. After all they've gone through together and after all the fun we had reading them. Geez, I'm feeling sentimental now. I just want to hug all of them, all the kids that have grown over the years and turned amazing :) I'm not loving the 19 years later scenes though. With them playing an older version of themselves, it just didn't feel realistic. I would have been satisfied if they just chose actual adult actors to play their older versions.

8. Lord Voldemort. In french class some weeks ago, Mr. C brought to our attention the fact that if you read that name in french, vol de mort, it means the flight of death. One of the many smart things that J.K. Rowling put in her books. I thought Ralph Fiennes was really really good playing him. You can feel the seriousness and a bit of fear hearing him telling Hogwarts and Harry Potter to surrender. The half whisper voice that he had was rather terrifying. He's so good being bad that I was really glad when he finally died. That's how good of an actor he is :)

9. To summarize on how good this movie is. Take note that I cannot comment if it's confusing for non readers. I think the story line is great, the pace was quick. You feel like it's one adventure after another. The special effects were great. It is pretty dark, I have to admit that some of the scenes were a bit scary. Many of the scenes were so touching that I had a tear or two. So I had tears not because it's the end but because the scenes were really nicely done and the actors were great that you couldn't help feeling touched. For example when Voldemort tell Hogwarts to turn Harry over and one of the Slytherin pointed to him and one by one people stood up to protect him, you can't help feeling touched. Seeing all of them standing up to fight knowing that they're most probably not going to survive this made me a bit teary and I didn't expect that :) Writing all that, I really cannot wait to watch this movie again. Maybe in 2-3 weeks from now :P

I can go on and on about how nice this movie is but I will stop now :) So how's life? Life is uneventful. Err ... well something did happen this week. I'm scared and nervous about it. I really didn't see this coming but it's here now and as much as I am scared about it, I can only walk forward. I need to repeat the mantra over and over, If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it. As usual my mind is going all over the place, plotting all the what ifs when it's too premature to do all that. This causes me to be all jittery. I really need to just breathe and take it one step at a time.

On other news. I think I finally had a break through with Mr. C. I need to start of with how this morning started. I met Mr. N as I was entering the building and we started talking. He asked me how's class been going. I said it was difficult. He said it couldn't have been difficult for an intelligent girl like me :D I have to write this down simply because everyone has a narcissistic side and it's always good to be complimented :P I told him the teacher is Mr. C and so it's difficult. He funnily agreed with me, saying, aaah C ... yeah it's difficult :D It made me laugh. When I told this to Mr. C, he was laughing as well. I'm relieved that he could laugh about it :D So anyway the break through happened when I submittted my homework to him. I thought everyone was going to do it, hence I actually made an effort to do mine. Little did I know, noone did it. In fact not many people came today :( So anyway, I submitted mine through email simply because I just didn't want to have a discussion about it if I hand it to him in person. However Mr. C is so hardworking. I guess it is right about people who expect a lot from others, they expect more from themselves. I wrote 3 paragraphs and Mr C's reviews on that went to 3 pages. He said he appreciated my work so much so he had to do me justice and give me proper comments. I could only scream, aaaahhhh!!! when I saw that. I knew he's gonna butcher my writing because even I know it was bad. The arguments were weak and the writing style was not sophisticated at all. Instead of feeling sad however reading his lengthy and detailed comments, I couldn't help feeling a lot of appreciation towards him (it took him 2 hours to write his comments) and I actually felt bad that I subjected him to read such poor writing. One can only imagine his exasperation when one of his comments came with 3 exclamation marks :( Things that he said include how I repeat myself many times. Well even in english I do that, how many 'awesome' in this post alone. He also asked me to combine my sentences and make them more compact and efficient. Errr ... yeah that's hard. Anyways, I do feel better after telling him that he's stressing me out and he's the most difficult teacher I had :) It's good that he knows I sucks. I guess things are better when we know how we perceive each other :D At the very least I think now he knows my name :D I feel a bit better but still his class is nerve wrecking and I still don't know how to survive it. Maybe things will get better. Okay, I gotta stop now. You guys take care 'aight!

Sunday Musing

2011-07-17T14:54:00.003+08:00

I'm usually asleep at this hour but I'm not. I woke up pretty late today after sleeping quite early last night for a Saturday night. Had a bad night or perhaps day yesterday. French class was as usual as it has been since we got Mr. C, it made me feel downhearted. For the records, it's not his fault, it's just je pense que je ne suis pas assez bonne for lui. Anyways, I had a bad neck pain yesterday morning but I managed to make it home. Weird incident in the bus back. There was this crazy chinese man rambling in chinese. I didn't understand what he was saying of course but he sounded angry. I think the bus driver asked him to get off but I think he scolded the bus driver back. It sounded pretty scary and my mind just went to the Hongkong tourists who were taken hostage in Manila, so I got off at the next bus stop. I was kinda worried for the safety of the bus driver and the other passengers but there's no news on TV about anything bad, so I think they're doing okay. Anyway, as I was reaching home, I felt worse. I felt nausea a bit. I couldn't even finish my lunch. I took my nap but when I woke up I wasn't feeling better. My temperature was rising. After some panadol it just seemed to subside awhile before rising again :( So I took more panadol, slept early and prayed. Woke up a few times at night and I recalled it was at 3.11 am something that my body seemed to be doing okay, the temperature was okay. It was like it has calmed down. I wasn't feeling totally well when I finally got out of bed today but so far my temperature hasn't gone up yet. So thank God. The neck pain is still killing me though :'( I know it sounds like I'm such a whiny baby but seriously it sucks being alone when you are sick really bad and become so weak that you wonder if you're gonna collapse or anything :'( As usual I became very emotional about it. Luckily since I was no longer feverish, I didn't reach the emotional state of having to bawl and sob like mad.

So anyway, since I decided not to have a nap today, I've been spending the afternoon keeping up with the tv series which I missed during my holiday. I wanted to watch Larry Crowne today but I decided to do the right thing and stay in, but I do need to get out soon to get something proper to eat. Since the last time I wrote, there's nothing much to write. Perhaps that's the reason why I hadn't written. I did watch Transformers: Dark of the Moon. It was your usual bang bang boom kind. I think I was more amused with the witty lines that Shia's character had, especially with his parents. When the rest of the world are rushing to the cinema for Harry Potter, I will only be going to watch it next week. Gonna watch it in imax. I'm really looking forward for it. I booked for the tickets last Sunday and it was filling fast. This is definitely the first movie that I ever had to book 2 weeks in advanced. I seriously thought it was crazy.

Nothing much else to say about my life or anything that I can say here. I've been feeling a bit restless again with life and something happened that made me feel if it was a sign. I'm too tired to think about it now but I kinda need to make a decision soon. Yeah, I really don't want to talk about it now. I also don't want to talk about the people who pissed me off. So since I have nothing to say, I'm gonna stop now. I hope all of you are in good health. Take care!

The Netherlands ~ Keukenhof

2011-07-06T22:44:00.001+08:00

Last post about the trip peeps, more than 1 month since I actually came back from my trip. I feel kinda sad because there's a finality that comes with writing this last post, like it's really over. But it's been over since long ago. I guess I was just in denial and kinda tried to extend those memories and the warm and fuzzy feeling and that feeling of being so thankful and blessed for being alive just because I saw something breathtaking. Anyway, let's start with this last post.

I took KLM for my flight back to Singapore. KLM doesn't have any direct flight from Italy to Singapore. I had the option of having a stopover in Paris or Amsterdam and I chose Amsterdam. I chose quite a long stopover because I wanted to visit the Keukenhof garden. I could have chosen the earliest flight out of Rome but I didn't, thinking I would have enough time. My flight was supposed to arrive in Amsterdam at 1.05 pm and the flight to Singapore was at 9 pm. It seemed like I would have enough time but as the day approached, I did have my worry about it. I was thinking what if it took a long time from landing to actually getting out of the airport and I was wondering if there'll be an immigration check. I remembered asking Copper about it and we both kinda thought that there shouldn't be any immigration check because flight between EU countries should just be treated as a domestic flight. We were right :)

I knew I had to get out of the airport but stupid me, for some reason as I walked towards the exit, it didn't occur to me to really get out until I really exit the airport. When I asked where the bus terminal is, I was told to get out of the aiport *duh!* Well, I'd never really got out of the airport without having to go through immigration check or wait for my luggage, so this very liberating way of exiting an airport felt a bit unusual and unnatural for me that I was feeling unsure :P Anyway, if you go to Keukenhof's website, one of the suggested way to go there is by going to Schiphol airport and take the shuttle bus from there. From the web you can book the ticket to enter the garden that includes the return shuttle bus tickets, at 21€. I did just that and it was so easy to find the bus terminal. It's just outside the airport. I had no difficulty finding the bus. They ran every 15 minutes or so and when I reached there, the bus just arrived and so I didn't waste any time at all :) It took around 35 minutes or so to reach Keukenhof and seeing The Netherland's open landscape was pretty interesting. Oh yeah, I just remembered something. One of the plane's runway in Schiphol was actually an overhead runway with quite a busy road underneath it. It was actually kinda freaky for me. It was so unusual but I guess they're used to it, so it was nothing strange for the people there. Well it was a first time for me :P

Back to Keukenhof, I arrived easily. I've kinda been in The Netherlands before. On my Italian trip 2 years ago, I also had a stopover in Schiphol and one thing that I realized there was they everyone speaks English fluently. So I wasn't so nervous about not being able to speak Dutch :) So anyway there I was. The stupid me didn't even think of getting a map. I just started to walk, following the paths and the flowers. It's very cold there. It was strange coming from Italy which was a bit hot. I didn't expect it to be that cold because I was in Paris 2 weeks before and it wasn't that cold but I guess it happened to be a rather cloudy day in The Netherlands that day and the garden has a lot of trees, so it was colder than usual. I kinda couldn't take the cold much. I think I was a bit under dressed. So I went indoor every chance I got. There was an flower arrangement exhibition which was awesome. The lady doing the demonstration was doing it in English and Dutch. I didn't really watch her demonstration. All the flower arrangements there were really beautiful. There were flowers I hadn't seen before. Then there was also a lily exhibition which was so interesting for me because when you walked in, the area smelled amazing!!! I didn't know that lily could smell that nice which was stupid of me since they use lilies to make parfume. It was quite a big area filled with all kind of lilies, very big lilies, so the whole air was filled with their sweet smell. I kinda didn't want to leave because the smell was really comforting and it relaxed me. I had a hot chocolate drink here. The girl serving me was pretty sweet. I wanted to use up all my coins but I didn't have enough coins to pay for the drink :( So when she gave me coins as the chance, she was telling me sympathetically that now I had more coins. We laughed about it :P

I tried my best to explore the garden. There was a small zoo with a pony like horses but I don't think they were ponies or horses. I saw pigs, sheeps. There was a bird show. There were some fountains and ponds. There were many ducks and swans in the ponds and fountains. I kinda expected to meet some Indonesians there and I was just waiting to hear some Indonesians which I eventually did. There were 3 of them and I asked if they could take my picture. One of them kindly helped me. He was friendly, while the other 2 weren't so. On another occassion, I asked some Italians to help me take my picture. A realization came to me that I could actually ask people in 4 languages now and I should make use of that. Anyway, since it was cold, I have to admit, it was hard for me to keep on exploring the garden. When I wanted to leave, I saw there's a map of the garden and there's a windmill there. However I didn't want to risk going there because I didn't know how far it was and I am prone to get lost and missing my flight back to Singapore would have been catastrophic. A pity but perhaps this is a call to come to Keukenhof again one day :) So tulips being the attraction of the garden, here's a picture of some red tulips.

The garden is really really big. If the weather had been nicer, it would make exploring it so much more comfortable. As luck would have it, as I was about to leave, the cloud started to part and the sun shone through.

So that's Keukenhof. More pictures can be viewed here. I took the shuttle back and arrived in Schiphol with enough time for me to eat before my next flight. I kinda still remembered the place pretty well from my previous transit. I ate at the same place 2 years ago. I was still missing Italy so much so I chose to have pizza. I chose a set which came with a soft drink. The guy was showing me the cup for the drink and I gasped and commented it was so big. This made the man next to me laugh at my reaction. It took me by surprise and I continued with saying, I'm gonna get diabetes, and that made him laugh harder, the waiter too :D I love that, being able to make him laugh :D He just said, it's okay, you're young. If only they knew I wasn't that young. As I went to the cashier to pay, I saw the name tag for the cashier. It's an Indonesian name. Widjaja, I think. So I told her that there was no ice in Indonesian. This got us talking. I asked if she's been there long. Well it's been around 40 years for her and so she's already a Dutch citizen. I told her I live in Singapore. She was so eager to hear my opinion if living in Singapore was better. Hmm ... people who know me knows I would never say (or be able to say), I love Singapore. I'm here because being here allows me to fund certain things that I want to do than if I'm in Indonesia. So as much as I often feel sad with the loneliness, the part where I feel I don't belong, I just have to swallow all that in and be strong about it. Well anyway, as I left the cashier, she said, "selamat makan sayang!", which means "bon appetit darling". That really made me feel so happy. Warm and fuzzy to be more exact :) I really feel thankful to God for all the kindness that strangers show me. Another thing to comment was that the security check at the gate was daunting. We had to go through this machine which I believed scan our body. If the scan showed anything out of the ordinary, we got a pat down by the officers. Lucky me, I got the pat down. It was by a female officer but still it felt weird. Nothing much can be said about the flight. As mentioned in a previous post, I sat next to a French girl from Nice who's travelling to Bali alone. I hope she had a splendid time in Bali. I tried to sleep in the plane. I think I only watched 1 movie, which was an Italian movie, Baciami Ancora. My classmates and me actually watched the first movie of that sequel in class but we didn't watch it in its entirety so I felt kinda sad not having watched the first movie.

I guess I was really missing Italy and I still do now. Out of the 3 countries which I visited in this trip, Italy is still first on the list. I guess first love really never dies? Then it's Spain and then it's France. I don't know why France didn't really capture my heart much. I guess I just love the warm Southern Europe more :P I also think I can eat better and have less problem choosing what to eat in Italy and Spain. Another thing about France, despite of Paris being a typical big city with a lot of hustle and bustle, I actually love this city the most out of all the places I saw in France. This is despite of the more charming life in Provence. Still, overall, I just didn't feel connected with France the way I do with Italy. Maybe if I can speak french better then I'll feel differently but I don't know it I will ever be.

Anyway, I kinda finished sorting out the pictures. I have even added a set in Flickr with pictures I took from the road. My next project is actually going through the pictures again and picking out the ones which aren't featured in any of the set and turn them into black and white. I think they're gonna be awesome :) There are lots of them though :( I also need to photomerge some of the pictures which I planned to photomerge. Still so many things to do I guess. So still a few memories to relive and to make me smile. It's late, so I better stop now. Buonanotte tutti!

Italy ~ Capri

2011-07-02T19:37:00.006+08:00

Our last day in Italy was spent visiting Capri. I was really looking forward to see La Grotta Azzura. The prospect of that did make me feel rather excited as we made our long journey from Rome to Napoli again. Well a cornetto with marmellata also helped me feel better about having to start our day so early :P So in Napoli, we took a ferry from Molo Beverello to Capri. Here's a picture from Molo Beverello, it looks pretty, doesn't it?

I only have a few pictures from Napoli. You can see them here. Moving on, learning from the time when I got seasick on a ferry trip to Bintan, I took a pill for motion sickness before we sailed. It helped a lot and I was so thankful I took it. Our ferry was pretty fast, around 40 minutes to reach Capri but it was enough to make many people sick. Maybe there's something wrong with the water that day, the wave was rough. Mau herself was feeling rather sick but she made it through without having to throw up. The crew were looking at people and giving them plastic bags, just in a case. We did saw an Indian girl siting a few seats next to us throwing up, poor girl.

Because the water was rough, we couldn't go to the blue grotto. Aarrrgghhh!!! I was so disappointed :( But what could we do about it :( We started the day at the Piazzetta. We were given time to explore the place. The view was really nice from the small piazza. The guide was telling us, the wind was really strong so it caused the wave to be pretty rough but at the same time it cleared the sky, so we did get a beautiful view and we could see mountains nearby pretty clearly. In the piazzetta, there's a church, Santo Stefano. Its wall is all white. It looked so bright and a bit blinding under the bright sky :P I went in and it was all white inside as well, white wall, white chandeliers. It looked kinda rich. After that, I just hung around in the piazzetta, absorbing the view. Then suddenly there was a newlywed and their family walking towards the piazzetta. I think they just got married and they were releasing some white balloons. I did saw a girl walking by with a bunch of white balloons before that and I wondered what they're for and then I knew :P Some of the white balloons got stucked in the wires, pretty cute. Capri is really pretty. I can imagine that the piazzetta is also pretty too at night.

After that, we headed to Anacapri which is basically at the higher part of the island of Capri. We made a stop to try some limoncello first. Holy God! It was pretty strong. One of the American commented, it's like taking a shot :P At first taste, it actually tasted really nice but once it got into your system, it was really really strong :P We had lunch in Anacapri, it wasn't a good one. We found out that there's a Singaporean couple in our group. So we sat with them during lunch. They were friendly. I couldn't remember their names. The husband is a Singaporean but the wife is a Thai who speaks like a real Singaporean :P After lunch, the guide told us what we could explore in the area. One of it was taking the chairlift up to Monte Solaro. I wasn't keen on doing this because it seriously didn't look safe at all :( But I was thinking there's nothing else we could do there but that. I forget how much we paid but I think it's around 9€ or perhaps 15€. Mau was unfazed about taking that chairlift up and I was freaking out. I don't think I have a fear of height but I do have a fear about getting hurt badly. Hence I don't have trouble about taking a plane but once there's heavy turbulence, I will start praying fervently. So with this chair lift, I was really really scared about falling down to my death. Seriously, it's not so safe, you can open the safety barrier yourself during the ride. Mau seemed to think my fear to be rather amusing. I was not making any move at all when the ride started and Mau was turning back looking at me and telling me to relax and take pictures. She herself was taking pictures all around but I was really really scared. I seriously didn't move at all. On the trip down, I did get a bit relaxed, even though it was scarier because the sky turned rather dark and it got windy but I did take a few pictures and one of it is the picture of the chairlift. So here you go.

Tell me, it doesn't look safe right? Alright, perhaps I am such a chicken. I was glad when it was done and I felt so much better seeing the view. It was really really nice up there. It was rather worth the ride up :P Looking around, I think it would have been nicer if we could just take a boat and go around all the different parts of the island. The weather was good when we got there, blue sky all around. However then the sky turned rather dark and so I asked Mau to go down before it started raining. It got really cold as the sky turned dark and weather like this was annoying because you ended up underdressed for the cold air. Anyways, here's a picture I took from up there in Monte Solaro.

The blue water is pretty, isn't it? For more pictures from Capri, you can go here. So that was our trip to Capri. It was rather uneventful perhaps. Again we reached Rome pretty late. We decided to eat at the restaurant next to our hotel again. We had the same waiter again. Since it's my second time there, I guess he was friendlier to me. He served me better, complete with a wink and a smile :P I overheard his conversation with the guests on the table in front of me. It seemed he's from Napoli. We didn't talk much though this time around. It's okay I guess, since I was leaving. I did feel kinda sad about leaving Italy. On the road from Napoli to Rome, I felt sad that I was leaving Italy again. I don't know when I'll be back or if I ever gonna come back (I really hope so!!!). Of course, I felt sad too that holiday was ending :P It had been a long journey and a completion of any journey would make you rather sentimental I guess. We left the next day. Mau left first because her flight was earlier. I had time for breakfast and lo and behold I saw the Singaporean couple. Apparently they were in the same hotel as us. So I ate with them and then I rushed off as they made their way to the Colosseum.

In the Termini train station, apparently the track for Leonardo Express to Fiumicino airport was quite far. Now I knew why 2 years ago, I managed to take the wrong exit! Anyway, dragging my luggage, I made it to the train that I wanted to take. It was like a workout, walking really really fast without stopping while dragging your luggage. In the airport, we had to use the machine again to check in and an Italian lady next to me was complaining of how confusing it was. I told her I didn't like it either and she ranted all the way in Italian telling me how she did everything and it still didn't work and one of the staff quickly came to help her. I think it was rather a silly system. The whole point is for the passengers to do check in themselves easily and yet it does get confusing. A staff had to help a big group of chinese tourists. I felt sorry for the girl who had to help all of them one by one. So anyway, I didn't encounter any problem. I went to my gate and I heard someone called me. It was surprising and it was more suprising to find out it's Mau. She got on the wrong train in Rome and so she missed her flight and ended up in the same flight as me. Poor her. She did leave very very early so perhaps she wasn't totally awake yet when she was at the train station. Our flight was actually for Amsterdam. I planned a longer stopover there because I had one last thing to cross off my life list, which I will tell you more in the next post. Mau on the other hand was staying the night there. On the plane, I was seated next to this young Norway girl, maybe around 17. I think she was stunned to find out I'm 29 :P Her english was amazing that I was stunned to hear her. She said it's common for Norwegian to speak english. She was going back from a holiday in Florence and Cinque Terre with some American friends. She looked pretty tired. All and all, I arrived in Schiphol without any problem. I didn't see Mau anymore though when we landed. Anyway, I'll stop now and I'll continue in the next post :)

Italy ~ Pompeii

2011-06-28T20:56:00.001+08:00

So one of the day tour that I took from Rome is a day tour to Pompeii. I first heard about Pompeii 2 years ago when la Gioia asked me if I was going to visit it. It wasn't in my plan 2 years ago. However I did some reading about it (wikipedia is my usual source) and it sounded pretty cool. Part of the things that I wanted to do in Italy this time around is not to do the same things that I did in my previous trip. Well it's logical that I had to explore new things right? My dad was already protesting that I was taking a trip to Europe again and mom was like telling me, didn't you already go to Rome that time around? So something different was really necessary. So this time around in Rome, I chose 2 day trips, one to Pompeii and the other to Capri. We did the Pompeii tour first on Saturday, May 14th.

We actually started in Napoli first, to pick up the local guide. We saw a bit of Napoli, not much. It seems like a big city. It didn't seem rich. I saw a few homeless people. The guide, Vittorio, was complaining about the mayor of Napoli. The mayor earned 15,000€ a month and according to our guide the mayor didn't do much. I was pretty stunned hearing the 15,000€ / month salary that I wondered if I heard wrongly but I seemed to hear him correctly. It was a really high salary. The majority of the world population do not make that much in a year. Anyways, Italy was having election for new mayors in the period when I was there. I think spain too actually. Anyways I think the people decided to have a new mayor for Napoli now. This reminded me of the guide in Milan who was saying that they were going to have an election for a new mayor. She said that most likely the incumbent mayor was going to stay, however I think the people chose differently. They voted for a change. All these incumbent mayors were from the prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's party. I think the Italians are getting really tired with his scandals and his party. An American who was in the same tour with me in Milan was asking who's Silvio Berlusconi. I was flabbergasted on how ignorant people can be. I know he's not the only person in this world who doesn't know who Silvio Berlusconi or even cares to know. I just still can't stop shaking my head sometime with this kind of people. This American also said, if he's not a good baseball player then I don't need to know. Well ... okay, what can I say?

I'm digressing. So we went to Pompeii. At this last leg of my journey, I was actually feeling pretty tired that I decided to just follow the guide. He did give us a map and gave us the option to explore Pompeii on our own. However the place was massive, it's hot, and I just didn't want to end up getting lost. We saw a few interesting stuff there, starting with the amphitheatre. The we saw a small vineyard. Obviously it's not the same vineyard as in the ancient time. The plants were planted in the same place just to give an idea to the visitors on what it was like back then. I was pretty moved seeing the plaster casts of victims, especially seeing the kids there. It's so real and to think that there's actual body inside it, it's kinda freaky and very very sad at the same time. You can see the pictures here. From the posture you can see that they didn't really have much time to save themselves and they just died. Very very sad.

Other than that, we also saw an inside of a house. Obviously I have forgotten many details of what the guide told us. I remembered there's these stepping stones in the middle of the road which the guide said were used by the people in the case of heavy rains that the street was pretty flooded. I had Mau take a picture of me in that thousands of years old stepping stones :P However obviously I never post any picture of myself here or even in Facebook :P One of the major attraction was apparently Lupanare or the brothel. There was a jam of many different tour groups in that small street, all waiting to enter the brothel. The guides were negotiating which of their groups should enter first. The Lupanare was actually very small. I think there were 4 paintings on the wall depicting sexual acts. The people of Pompeii seemed to be really liberal in their sexuality. There were obvious signs pointing to the Lupanare. What I mean by obvious is a big penis sculpture on the road or on the wall pointing to the direction of the brothel.

The last stop was seeing the forum and the open area around it. Pompeii is very interesting. It's massive though, so walking exploring all of it will require a lot of energy and appreciation of the history :P It may not be a place for everyone. Will I visit it again? Well it's not on the top of my list to see in Italy anymore. Just like I think I'll be okay about not visiting the Vatican the next time I'm in Rome. I'm glad though that I have seen Pompeii and walked inside this ancient town :)

Leaving Pompeii for Rome, we had a break along the way. We met these 2 nice ladies from Texas and in one of the break, we sat with them. They're really nice, saying you can sit with us. We chatted a bit. The funniest bit was when one of them pointed and said, look at that guy with the pink scarf. It was pretty funny because them being from Texas, they just felt it's so not gonna fly in Texas. Well perhaps if the guy is gay, it's okay. It's pretty funny how unexpected topic like this can come out among strangers :D

We reached Rome quite late that day and we decided to just have dinner at the restaurant next to our hotel. I was tired and it's late and so I was rather annoyed that it took quite a long time for the waiter to come to us. I noticed that there's a weird restaurant system in Rome. I am not sure if I'm right. It just seemed that each of the waiter is assigned a certain section and they only have to deal with that section. So even if a waiter is quite free with not many people in his section, the waiter is still not going to serve the guests in another busier section and the guests are left waiting. So we were left waiting for our waiter who had to deal with other quests. I was very annoyed with it. Eventually he came and we placed our orders. We had to wait again and they seemed to be very slow that Mau decided to go up to our rooms and charged her phone and left me alone. The waiter then finally came bringing our drinks and he asked me where I'm from. I guess he was perhaps wondering who this impatient girl was. As I said I was very tired, pretty annoyed with the long wait and on a mental state like that, I didn't actually welcome the question much. For some reason though or perhaps simply because I didn't welcome the question much, I didn't give him the answer straight away. I said, "indovina", which means guess. That took him by surprise and he said, "indovino?", which means I guess?. It actually took me 1-2 seconds to understand him. That 1-2 seconds was enough to make me question if my Italian was correct :P but I was correct. Jokingly he said, Italian? which of course I'm not. Then he said, Singaporean? This answer made me feel better because if he had said, Phillipines, I think I would have been more annoyed :P His guess made me smile and I told him, I live in Singapore but not a Singaporean. Next he guessed, Malaysian? Which I'm not. Up to this point, I decided to stop him because I was feeling Phillipines was going to be next, so I told him I'm Indonesian. I asked him if he hadn't seen an Indonesian before, if there weren't many Indonesian tourists there. He said it was his first time seeing an Indonesian. It was a nice moment for me, being the first Indonesian one met :) I should have asked him if he knew where Indonesia is. I tried my best to speak Italian but when you're tired it's even more difficult. I wanted to ask for some ice but I did it wrongly that it made him laugh. I asked him how to ask it correctly and I actually wrote down what he said in my phone. I guess this little conversation made him nicer to me and it's good to be treated better :) Our last dinner in Rome was also in the same restaurant and in his section again and he was really nice to me :) These kinds of little connections and interactions are really the memorable ones for me and so I remember them pretty vividly. Well as for now that is, I know I'll forget them someday or perhaps soon so it's good and important for me to write them down :)

Italy ~ Rome and Vatican

2011-06-26T15:19:00.000+08:00

The story continues. We're supposed to depart from Milan on May 13th. Mau was stuck in Venice the night before. There was that thought of what if she couldn't make it back in Milan for our 10 am departure but for some reason I wasn't really so worried about it. Maybe I would have gotten worried like half an hour before if I didn't see her. However she was perhaps rather worried that she took the first train out of Venice to Milan. I think the sun hadn't really risen yet when she left Venice but she did make it on time because of that :) She had enough time for a shower and breakfast. The uncle declared to me happily when I went for breakfast, "your friend has arrived". Yeah she did. So all was good. I felt a bit sad saying goodbye to the uncle because he was really nice. Anyway, I didn't spend much time in Milan, but I do have to say that there's something about the city that I like. Being rich, it just has such a good infrastructure and things tend to be cleaner. Milano Centrale train station was great. Milan's metro was also pretty nice. Leaving all that and coming to the chaotic Rome, you just feel a bit let down :P

Anyways, I got the fastest train for us to Rome. It's more expensive but it only took 2 hour 59 minutes from Milan to Rome and that's actually really fast. It didn't make any stop and as Mau said it's kinda like a bullet train which I'm sure not really but it was very fast. I spent the time taking pictures from the window. An Italian dad asked us to let go one of our seat so that he could sit with his family and so Mau got to sit with a handsome Italian guy but they didn't talk :( My other entertainment was watching Carlotta, the 3-year old daughter of the family. It's obvious that her dad loves her so much and she's such a daddy girl. She's clingy to her dad. She's very chatty with her dad but when I talked to her she was shy. Too bad I couldn't really get what her dad told her when I asked if she has any brother or sister. Her dad was friendly and her mom as well. They were okay about me taking a picture of Carlotta. Her dad asked if she smiled when she told them that I took her picture. She told them that I took her picture! I was thinking, you're such a tattletale :P Luckily they didn't tell me off or anything.

Arriving in Rome, I kinda still knew my bearing. I found our hotel easily. Getting out of Termini station, things were still familiar for me. The metro was a bit disorienting for me though. I guess because they're doing renovation, so certain entrances and exits were different. The state of Termini metro station was so much worse than when I was there 2 years ago. I really really hope they get the renovation done quickly and it will look amazingly great when it's done. The state it is now is worrying. There were things in the ceiling which I'm not sure what they were, perhaps they were moulds. My first thought seeing them was, biohazard! I was very disappointed with our hotel. It was spacious but wasn't clean and the wi-fi doesn't really work inside our room. So coming from the nice Milan hotel, this place totally brought my mood down :( It's much more expensive as well :( Rome is pretty expensive in terms of hotels :(

Anyways, we put our luggages and we went straight to the Vatican. Mau booked an entry to the Vatican Museum at 3 pm. So I dropped her off and I went to St. Peter's Basilica. The queue was long but I did stay in the queue. Seeing the basilica again was something that I really felt like doing. Between the queue and the taking a lot of pictures, I didn't have time to do my initial plan which was to visit Castel Sant'Angelo. Instead I went to an exhibition about Pope John Paul II's life which was held next to St Peter's Basilica. The exhibition was in conjuction to his beautification. It did give such an insight about Pope John Paul II as a person. Seeing his conviction and faith in God amazed me and it was really admirable. After I finished with that, as I was walking in St Peter's square, an American dad came to me and asked if I could take pictures for him. I asked him what he wanted to see. He said, his family. It made me laugh. Perhaps my question was rather silly as well. But you know how some people would want their pictures to be taken with certain things and you're being told, please make sure this thing and that are in the picture. For him it was about the family and it's great that way :) I think there were a few generations there. I think there were grandma, grandpa, maybe aunts and uncles and of course the kids. He asked me to take 2 pictures. I had to wait for the second one because as they were changing position, one of the boy was taking his time to pose, a little divo :P After I was done, he stunned me by giving his hand first to shake my hand to say thank you, instead of taking his camera. He was genuinely nice that I was taken aback at how kind people can be. It's like a moment of realization as well of why can't you be that kind to other people yourself?

After that, I made my way to Castel Sant'Angelo. I promised that I would meet Mau there when she's done with the Vatican Museum so that we could go to Piazza Navona together since she has booked a Rome walking tour which departs from Piazza Navona. I spent the time waiting for her in Ponte Sant'Angelo. It was a totally Angels & Demons moment for me. You know, I've been in Rome once before this but there are still things that I haven't seen and still haven't seen even after this second trip. She succesfully found her way there. We didn't have a map of Rome, but I did have a print out from google map about the area which I wanted to explore. It really helped. We found Piazza Navona without much difficulty. I left Mau there and off I went to the Pantheon. However there was a mass in the Pantheon when I arrived and so it's not open for tourists and all the tourists were waiting behind the barricades in front of the door. I decided to go back to Piazza Navona and see its fountains and all the artists there. There were many people there for a Friday afternoon. Then I made my way back to the Pantheon. The mass still hadn't finished yet but I decided to wait. After the mass was done, we all went in and I do have to admit that I wasn't in awe as much as I was when I saw these places for the first time. Instead I had a feeling of comfort, a real good feeling for being able to be there again :) After the Pantheon, I made my way to the Trevi Fountain to do the customary coin throwing. Hey, I would really really want to come back to Rome again :) Then off to Piazza di Spagna. There were many people there and I had walked a lot that I didn't feel like scaling the steps to go to Trinità dei Monti. I was also feeling too tired to walk to Piazza del Popolo. I did take picture of the street leading to Piazza del Popolo and over here an Italian guy was like saying hi and hi to me. I was ignoring him but he persisted. So I did stop from taking pictures and look at him and he asked, where are you from. A too freaky question for me that I said sorry and just walked off. Yeah he wasn't that handsome :P but still the whole thing was freaky for me. Anyway the sun was setting, so I decided to go back to the hotel and rest. This is a picture of the sun-kissed Trinità dei Monti as the sun was setting. I love how majestic it look.

Mau said she had a good time in her walking tour and her Colosseum pictures with all the lights were really pretty. That was Friday. We had Sunday off without any day tour plan because initially Mau asked if she could attend a mass on Sunday in the Vatican. So I'm going to continue this post with the Rome and Vatican story from that Sunday. In the end, Mau said, it's okay not to attend the mass. I still wanted to go to the Vatican because I wanted to see the Pope :P There are 2 ways to see the Pope if he's in town. Come to his Wednesday audience or come to his Sunday blessing. I've been to his Wednesday audience but I wasn't sure about this Sunday blessing. I wasn't even sure where he would appear actually. There were many people at St Peter's square at that time. It amazes me how people really love the Pope. He does this twice a week and there are still so many people adoring him to fill up the piazza. People were also bringing flags of their countries and excitedly waving them.

Mau was hesitant about joining the crazy queue to enter St Peter's Basilica but in the end she did join the queue. Meanwhile, I just waited at the square for 12 o'clock, trying to figure out where the Pope would appear. Then I saw a banner being lowered down from one of the window some minutes before noon and I found out that it's the window where he's gonna make his speech and I tried to find a good spot to take pictures from. Despite of my zoom lens, he was still looking small in my pictures. The crowd really went crazy when he appeared :D He's really like a rock star. He's really playing it to the crowd too. He spoke in many languages. I'm sure he spoke in Italian, English, Spanish, German, perhaps French and perhaps there were others languages too and he would greet the crowd and addressed them in the native language of the crowd. You could see the flags going crazy :) Geez, I forget now what he talked about. He spoke for 15-20 minutes or so and then he's done. I felt like an accomplishment for me that in the 2 times I've been to Rome, I saw the Pope on both times :) It was hot that time and there were really so many people. I actually saw a lady faint :( The heat wasn't really nice but now when I compare it to the hot weather Singapore has been having for the past weeks, that day is nothing compare to Singapore :( So since I didn't want to brave all the crowd who were leaving the Vatican, I decided to go to Pope John Paul's exhibition again and enjoyed the air conditioned place. After I'm done with it, the sky actually turned cloudy and there was a bit of a drizzle :(

I actually wanted to go to Villa Borghese garden. I made my way to Piazza del Popolo first but the drizzle was becoming more like a light rain :( So I just walked straight to Piazza di Spagna and took shelter in Trinità dei Monti. With the rain, the Spanish steps were actually empty of people. It made it nice to walk up without the so many people but it was slippery because of the rain :( I was telling Mau that it would be something to be in the Pantheon during the rain so I actually had a good chance to do that, that Sunday. However the rain really didn't make me feel like I want to walk under it to reach Pantheon. It was chilly as well and I just didn't want to pay 5€ for an umbrella that people were selling. Trinità dei Monti has a special place in my heart. 2 years ago, I found it accidentally and I felt happy seeing it and seeing the view from its ground. On this trip, it gave me shelter from the rain. There was comfort and peace when I was there. I didn't remember how much time I spent there, maybe 1-2 hours. I just sat and started writing in my journal. I hadn't had time to write the days before, so I used the time to write. The rain didn't stop though so after some time I was thinking I should just go back and perhaps take a nap.

When I arrived at Termini station, I went to the bookstore and got myself a book. I haven't started reading it though. It felt good that I still remember a few stuff there. I remember that there's a supermarket, bookstore, and such. As I exit the station, the sky actually cleared up! So I put my stuff in the room. Mau was there slacking. I decided to go to the rose garden near Circus Maximus and see La Bocca della Verità. The Rose garden wasn't open yet. So I just explored the area as I tried to find my way. Then a couple of chinese tourists stopped me and asked for direction in Chinese!!! Hello, do I look chinese? I guess they were desperate. I told them I don't speak Chinese in Chinese, which I think stunned them :P They wanted to go to the Colosseum however they didn't know how to say it in English, so the guy had to flipped in his mobile phone to show me the picture. I reckoned they wanted to see the Colosseum and I was right. I could actually give them direction, the correct direction mind you because I actually know where it is exactly. However in between them not being able to speak english much and the girl looking not so happy after being lost, I couldn't give a detail direction. The girl actually walked away when I was trying to tell the guy how to go there. I think the guy felt bad for it. I wasn't too annoyed because I understood the frustration of being lost and of walking too much because you're lost. I just found the whole episode to be funny. In Rome, there happens to be a lot of Philippines and people often thought I'm from the Philippines. It annoyed me greatly!!! So this time around, someone came to me and started speaking in Chinese, I felt really amused :P

Anyway, I managed to find Santa Maria in Cosmedin church in which La Bocca della Verità is in but it was closing and they're not accepting any more visitors. An Asian girl pleaded with the guard to let her and her friends in, but he wasn't having it. I wonder if I could sway him if I pleaded in Italian, but I decided to just let it go. I did manage to take a picture of La Bocca della Verità (go see my flickr set) and I saw the remaining tourists queuing to take pictures with it. Then I made my way to the Colosseum. My initial plan was to get ticket to Palatine Hill and the Colosseum. I really loved Palatine hill the last time I was there. However I was there quite late so I decided to just take pictures around the Colosseum. The sky was blue now. Seeing the pictures, I had some really nice pictures from there. After that, I went back for dinner with Mau. That was my Sunday in Rome. It's a city which I've visited twice now and as much as it can be so chaotic sometime with the so many tourists there, I think I actually love it more now :) Of course I want to come back there again. I threw coins into the Trevi Fountain, so I really hope I'll be there again soon. For pictures of the Vatican, you can go here, and for pictures of Rome, you can go here.

Italy ~ Verona and (the stupidity in) Lake Garda

2011-06-22T22:52:00.004+08:00

So our second day in Milan wasn't actually spent in Milan. I wanted to go to Verona and Mau wanted to go to Venice. How did Verona come about? Well I always research about the cities I'm gonna be in and I also look at the day tours that depart from those cities. There are day tours going to Verona and Venice from Milan. Unfortunately they do not go everyday. The tour that is going to Verona is going to Lake Garda too and so I just started reading more about these places, how to go and such. I didn't want to go to Venice because I've been there before. We should explore something new, right? Although I did think if I should spend the morning in Verona and then the afternoon in Venice since Verona is half way between Milan and Venice. In the end, I decided to just go to new places. If I was to finish seeing Verona earlier, I would go to Lake Garda and so that was the plan.

Me and Mau bought our tickets at the automatic machines the day before. These machines are so convenient and pretty easy to use; I didn’t know that. We bought return tickets which is a mistake for me actually. I bought return tickets from Milan - Verona - Milan. This is a mistake because the station for Lake Garda, in the town of Desenzano del Garda, was actually between Milan and Verona. So if I were to go back to Milan from Verona, I actually had to go back to Verona from Desenzano and then pass this town again on my way to Milan. For some reasons (so unlike me!!!), I didn't plan things in details, I just wasn't committed or sure if I could make it to Lake Garda so I guess that was me subconsciously buying the return ticket so if I didn't make it and ended up spending the whole day in Verona, I'd have had my return ticket ready. So anyway, Mau's train and mine was actually the same. It's just I got off first. It took around 1 hour 30 minutes from Milan to Verona and close to 3 hours from Milan to Venice. Our train left on time but it got stuck halfway, I don't know what happened, it just stopped for some time that we ended up arriving later than planned and this caused Mau to miss the day tour in Venice that she booked.

In the train, there's this stunningly beautiful Italian girl sitting in front of me. I think she's Italian. Anyway, I thought she was so beautiful that I was thinking that it was rather incredible. Now that I wrote about it, I wonder if my guy friends will think she's beautiful because often times the ladies whom I thought to be pretty are considered so so in their eyes and they often cited girls whom I thought as ordinary to be pretty. Okay, why does this matter? Well, I just want to show you how my brain works, the things I see, the things I remember, and maybe you'll get an idea of how I am like. Anyways, the girl was looking rather sleepy. Well I guess if you are commuting for around 1.5 hours from Milan to Verona for work, it does get tiring (she was looking all formal with a laptop bag). There's also a chinese tourist sitting in front of me, okay I forget where she's from, maybe not chinese. Maybe Korean or Japanese. She got separated from her boyfriend or husband that they were not sitting together. They got off somewhere which I also couldn't remember, perhaps Brescia (Note to self: google Brescia). Moving on, I arrived. Wanted to pee but you had to put some coins to get through the toilet barrier. Italy! I'm speechless sometime. Some of the important infrastructures are not well managed and yet they can put automated barriers for the toilet. Granted, not all toilets are like this. Anyway, I didn't have enough coins. So off I went without shame, asking the first Asian tourist I saw, if I could get some cents. I forgot how much I asked. The girl kindly gave me. I couldn't quite pin point where she's from, perhaps Taiwan. So after I managed to pee, I went to a magazine store asking if I can buy a Verona card, which is stupidity on my part. I knew it's being sold in the Tabaccaio and yet I went into a magazine store. Obviously the lady said, go to the Tabaccaio. So I went there, wanted to buy the 1-day pass but I was told by the lady that there's no 1-day pass anymore, either you take 2-day pass or 3-day pass and off she went lecturing me that the 2-day pass is worth it and so on. I said okay and I took the 2-day pass and it cost 15€. This is a proof that my Italian is better than my Chinese because if the explanation had been in Chinese, I wouldn't have been able to understand as much. Done with that, I got out of the train station and oh dear I started to get lost. As far as I looked, there's nothing like the city center or a piazza outside the train station. By the way, the lady in the Tabaccaio didn't have a map of Verona to give me :( So what I could do but to walk forward? Walking forward led me to the bus terminal. I chose a random stop / shelter and saw that there were many buses going to the Arena. So I thought okay, take the bus. You can take the buses for free with Verona card. I took a bus and it's weird. In Singapore you could count the bus stops and know that you'll get off correctly but it wasn't like this with this Verona bus. When I saw that the bus was stopping near something that looked like a piazza, I got off. I walked towards the fountain and then I saw the Arena *praise the Lord!!!* and so that was my first stop.

The Arena is like the Colosseum but it's so much smaller. I didn't stay much actually because there's nothing much to see. Unlike the Colosseum, there are many seats all around the Arena. I'm not sure if it's always like this or they were preparing for a performance. There were some people working on the stage. I didn't spend much time there. Met a girl from China who asked me to take her picture. She was travelling alone. You know now that I think of it, I've met a few girls who were travelling alone but I haven't met many guys who travelled alone. Girls are really more daring than guys? Moving on, after the Arena, I just walked, kinda following the crowd. Wanted to go to Casa di Giulietta / Juliet's house. However for the life of me, I couldn't find it! I'm that bad with direction. I took a turn somewhere and ended up kinda on the outskirt and I saw the river and the bridge. I didn't cross the bridge though, I just walked along the river. I should have researched more about Verona and have a map! At that time, I still hadn't had a map.

So anyway, took a turn somewhere and saw a church. I checked if it's listed on the Verona card. It was and I went in. It's Chiesa di Sant'Anastasia. It's kinda a nice church. What's interesting was seeing the hunchback who had the holy water basin on its back. I just looked in wikipedia, apparently there are 2 of them, but I only saw one :( After the church, I went to Torre dei Lamberti. I found the lift, so I obviously took the lift while a horde of french teenagers were taking the stairs. I was thinking, I'm too old for that. It's kinda nice to see the Verona from the top. The lift doesn't stop all the way at the top. There are more staircases. I didn't take it because I really didn't want to tire myself out. I tried taking pictures of me by myself and a nice lady offered to take it for me. I like it when people are nice to me :) This is a picture of Verona which I took from the tower :)

After I got down, I finally got a map and got direction to Casa di Giulietta. I found it but I almost missed it again! It's quite a small entrance and the sign was covered with graffiti, hence I missed it the first time around. The entrance was filled with writing on the walls by kids, it's so dirty and crazy and I think a lot of chewing gums were pasted there, so it's kinda a biohazard :( If you have watched Letters to Juliet, it's really not like that. There were many people there. I entered the house which is not the house of Juliet. Romeo and Juliet is a fiction although the fact that there's Juliet's house and Juliet's tomb in Verona may make you question it. The house is like a museum that contains illustrations of the story Romeo and Juliet and also of the bed and clothes and many things that people in that period of time used. Juliet's balcony was actually in the hall, not in her bedroom and so if she existed, it would have been impossible to converse with Romeo without being noticed by the people in the house. The balcony was small. I was contemplating if I want to have my picture taken on the balcony. I couldn't find anyone to ask :( Then I thought they had such a sad love story so perhaps it's a good thing that I didn't have my picture taken there, lest I jinx my already-very-sorry-non-existence love life.

There were so many people in the courtyard of the house. A lot of teenagers. A lot of people taking pictures with Juliet's statue with their hands on her boobs :( I feel sorry for the statue. The so many teenagers apparently caused too much annoyance for the people working there that they called a vigile. I'm not really sure how to translate this in English, perhaps the security? In Indonesian, I guess it would be satpam. A lady vigile came and she came blowing her whistle loudly and started screaming at the kids, telling them, Do you think this is your house? You have no respect at all, so noisy until people called me. I actually kinda grinned because I found it funny. It's funny how in a different language, people still can scream and scold in the same manner, the sentence of, do you think this is your house? is something that an Indonesian in that situation will scream as well, as I do think a Singaporean will do as well :D I think I saw people trying to distance themselves from the kids :P

After that, I decided that I was done with Verona and it's time for lunch. Looking at the map now, I feel sorry that I didn't do any research about Verona because I should have gone to the Duomo and Teatro Romano :( Anyways, I went back to Piazza delle Erbe because I saw there were many restaurants there and I settled with Ristorante Alla Torre. I was greeted by the signore, who's the owner and he's very funny. He's like the no bullshit Italian guy. He was chasing away people by saying, no pizza here!!! I think it annoyed him greatly if people asked for pizza. He then mumbled in Italian, if my wife knows about this, lucky she's not in the kitchen today :D He gave me the menu and when he said why don't you try today's special, the pasta ai porcini, I was surely not gonna argue with him and straight away said okay :) He's actually pretty nice, asking me if I have a map and he wanted to give me a more detailed map but I said I didn't need any. He asked me where I'm from and since I spoke Italian, I guess it confused him a bit. He guessed correctly that I came from Milan but I meant as in I came in from Milan that morning, not that I live there. He's originally from Milan but he left and move to Verona many years ago because he likes the smaller city. He asked me if I've been to Venice, I thought it was a rather funny question, us being in Verona. I said I did visit it 2 years ago. He said, oh you travel quite a lot, which I actually don't. He said he liked to travel too. He's been to Singapore which he said was great. He stayed in Singapore for 3 days. He's been to Bali but then he said he's never been to Indonesia. I wanted to tell him, but Bali is in Indonesia! But I had my pasta to focus on at that time, so I let him slide. After I'm done with lunch, he wanted me to explore more of Verona. I said okay not wanting to disappoint him. He obviously loves Verona so much. I excused myself and said good bye and made my way to the train station. To see pictures of Verona, you can go here.

In the train station, I got my train tickets. To go to Lake Garda, the nearest town with the train station is Desenzano del Garda. I got a return ticket back to Verona because of my earlier return ticket of Verona - Milan. The stupidity!!! So anyway, it took around 15 minutes or so to reach Desenzano from Verona. However, it's a long long long walk from the train station to reach the lake, where the boats and ferries are. I didn't see a bus and I didn't even know if I was going the right way. I just walked straight ahead. It felt really good to finally see the water! I found the booth where they sell the ferry ticket. It's perhaps because it's not peak period, there weren't actually many people. I got the ticket to Sirmione which is the first stop from Desenzano. It's a return ticket. The frequency of the ferry is not so good, it's not every 15 minutes or so. Again perhaps this is the Singaporean influenced me speaking. I expect more convenience :P So I had to wait for half an hour or so. I walked a bit, took some pictures around the lake. Sat down and get tanned. When I got into the ferry, I think there were only less than 10 of us who boarded the ferry.

Reaching Sirmione, the first thing I did was getting gelato. I enjoyed it while watching swans on the lake. Since I was having gelato, I couldn't take a picture of these 2 swans who were perhaps doing the mating dance and were facing each other that their necks was forming the heart shape! That's my first time seeing that in real life and yet I didn't have a picture of it. It was rather nice seeing the water, ducks, swans, while enjoying my gelato. After I had my gelato, I walked around the lake. There were some kids but noone was swimming, perhaps the water was still too cold. There's actually a castle like building in Sirmione but I didn't enter it. I was making sure that I had enough time to go back to Desenzano. Since the ferry doesn't run every so often, if I missed the ferry, I wouldn't have time to go back to the train station and that exactly what happened to me!!!

So what happened? What happened was upon the time in which I think the ferry was going to Desenzano, I started getting down to the dock. There were so many people that I was so focused into getting into the ferry without asking if it's the right ferry. I want to blame the staff there who didn't check the tickets!!! The irony was, there was this Australian couple (I think they're Australian) who were with me on the ferry in to Sirmione. They were also in the dock at that time. I was behind them. I thought they decided not to take the ferry because they didn't want to squeeze and being the trained "kiasu" person here in Singapore, I managed to squeeze in. As the ferry took off, I saw them in the dock and I actually felt sorry for them that they didn't get into the ferry! I should instead feel sorry for me!!! So in the ferry, the staff started checking the ticket and the staff told me you're on the wrong ferry! I was like, WHAT??!?!? and SHIT and FUCK was going interchangeably in my brain. He told me to come with him to the front steering area. Wow, as I am writing this, I still want to say shit and fuck. Anyway, he talked to his colleague and then told me in English, either I get off at the next stop and paid the difference or just stay on until we finally reach Desenzano. He said my best possible option was to stay in the boat simply because it's the fastest way to go to Desenzano. I weighed my option. What options did I have? One, get off at the next stop and find a way to go to Verona which is surely gonna be problematic because I don't know if there's any bus going there. Two, stay in the boat, and be late upon reaching Desenzano which would mean I wouldn't be able to make it to Verona on time to take my train back to Milan. However, I was pretty sure there'll be trains from Desenzano to Milan. The choice was obvious right. I still found it pretty hard though to just calm down and accept my fate :'( I'm just one of those people, I can not calm down in the face of mistakes and problems :( So I said, alright I'd stay in the boat. It seemed that I didn't have to pay anything because my ticket was for Desenzano - Sirmione - Desenzano without any stop in between. So even if the ferry took the long route from Sirmione to Desenzano, the trip I took was actually valid according to the ticket as long as I didn't get off in any of the stop. Well, it's either that or they just felt sorry for me that they didn't ask me to pay more. So anyway, I was very sad. One of the other crew asked me where I'm from. I replied in Italian that I'm Indonesian but I live in Singapore. Straight away he was like, Singapore - the airport is great!!! Such an amusing comment but I was too bumped out to be amused :( Anyway the crew were entertaining these 2 American girls, so I decided to leave that steering area and tried to find a seat among the many German tourists. I was so sad and pissed and there were so many Germans there and all I could hear was German and I was thinking, I don't want to hear this anymore!!!

At one point, everyone got off. I'm not sure which stop that was that I was kinda left alone in the boat. Well there were like 2-3 people boarding in but the crew who spoke to me in Italian did say, you're staying alone? I replied sadly, yeah, I have to stay, right? :( After the ferry moved again, he came to talk to me. He's actually very nice. I felt so touched that he came to talk to me!!! That's like my first time having an Italian guy coming to talk to me. Now I kinda forget what his first question was, perhaps what I was doing there and such. He asked me if I've been to Venice. Again, I found the question to be amusing but I seriously was too sad to focus on the good part. You know even when he said he liked Asian culture and food, I couldn't really reply much. I could have asked him, e la ragazza asiana? (Asian girl?). Seriously, looking back, I'm such an idiot. I think he's actually quite handsome behind his ray ban glasses and instead of making more small talks, I didn't really ask him much stuff. I didn't even ask him for his name :( I did let out a bit of a scream and said, arrghhh sono molto stupida!!! (I'm very stupid!!!). He said, why? because you got on the wrong ferry? I said yes. He said have patience while gesturing towards the lake, kinda telling me to enjoy the lake. I could only say softly, Si. Then he's off to work again. I think he did make me a bit relaxed. I did take a few pictures of the lake after that. When we were reaching Desenzano, he told me, we're reaching soon. I said finalmente! I kinda dashed off that I didn't try to see him again before I left. At this point, I don't know if you think I am more stupid for missing the ferry or for not talking to him more. Stupid stupid me!

Anyway, I walked really really fast to get to the station. Still there was no way I could make it on time to Verona to take my initial train. I was hoping that the train would stop at Desenzano like my train in the morning. I asked the signore at the counter. He wasn't friendly at all :( He said no and told me to get new ticket. So that's what I did. You know I should be thankful actually. The train that I was about to take was actually late by half an hour or so hence I could take that train. If not, I would have to take a later train. So at this point, my Verona - Milan ticket was wasted but I still have a Desenzano - Verona ticket. Unlike the Verona - Milan ticket which has a seat number and could only be used at the stated time, the Desenzano - Verona ticket was not marked like that, instead it was valid for 1 month (I think). So I was thinking of giving it to the first Italian I saw in the train. I sat down next to this lady and I had difficulty explaining to her that I wanted to give her the ticket. The mixture of Italian and English didn't help. I don't think she speaks English. Anyway in the end she got it but she wanted to pay me which I insisted that she didn't have to. She insisted but she didn't have the exact amount. It was actually very cheap, I couldn't remember how much. I think I took 1 euro something from her. I asked her if it's gonna be useful for her. She said yes, so that's good. I told her that I was so stupid that day and she was very nice and told me, no no, you're just distracted. When a seat by the window became available, I moved so that I could sit alone and be left with my thoughts. The lady was very nice that when she got off 1 stop before me, she looked at me again and we said good bye.

In that train ride, I got an sms from Mau, telling me that she missed her train from Venice. That train was the last train to Milan and so she's stuck there. I guess it was a really bad day for us. As mean as this may sound, that sms actually made me rather happy because that meant I got the room all for myself. When I finally reached Milan and got out of the station, I was actually feeling better. It was late and it was already dark outside, luckily our hotel was near. The uncle at the hotel was there and asked me where my friend was. I told him about Mau being stuck. He asked me, you didn't travel together? He also asked if I've been to Venice. It's the third time someone asking me that. It's very amusing. I guess it's because Venice is very very unique. You do have to try to visit Venice if you're in Italy. I don't think there's another place like Venice in the world. So anyway, got into my room, had pizza for dinner. Had shower. I felt more relaxed. The tv was showing Leonardo diCaprio's The Beach. God, that guy was actually quite lanky in his younger days. He has become so plump now. With all the mistakes that I made, I actually managed to feel happier when I'm in that hotel room alone. The solitary was really what I needed. I will always need my alone time and in all the days of our trip, that day was the only day in which I spent the most time alone and it's good for my soul :P I almost forget, for pictures of Sirmone and Lake Garda, you can go here. So that's the very long story of that day. The next day, we were off to Rome. I'll leave that for the next post.

I should end this long post, but let me just add this bit. Went to watch the Italian movie, Il Vento Fa Il Suo Giro or Le Vent Fait Son Tour in French or The Wind Blows Round in English with YeeMaggio on Monday. The story is about a french family, a goat cheese maker, who decided to move into a small village in Italy. They were greeted with people who welcomed them kindly as well as the people who just didn't like the foreigners. Unfortunately in the end, the hatred won, and it drove the family away. The saddest part of the ending was when one inhabitant of the town, who's mentally challenged, killed himself. He used to lived on the street but the french family actually welcomed him into their house. When they left, they didn't bring him along, so I think he was broken hearted that he killed himself. It's kinda a sad movie. It's weird for me to say this, that I don't get the resentment towards foreigners but at the same time I understand the feeling that you want to keep your community the way it is and not take any outsider in. Anyway the movie was in Italian, French, and Occitan. It was funny for me of how there are conversation in which one person was speaking in Italian and the other person replied in French and for some reason, they understood each other. This has been a really long post. I have to go to sleep. Buonanotte tutti!

Italy ~ Milan

2011-06-18T21:58:00.007+08:00

Today marks exactly 1 month since I came back from my trip and yet I haven't finished telling you all the stories or sorted out all the pictures. I guess, bear with me with these outdated stories? This blog is to voice out what I think or want to say and since people are not asking me detailed stories of my trip, I'm just gonna put it here because I want to let it out.

In the last post, we ended with the overnight train from Barcelona to Milan. I thought the train was pretty nice. It's not luxurious or anything but it's adequate. I had dinner on the train. I still remember the waitress' name, Tamara Hier. I thought she's quite pretty and very nice and friendly. She speaks very little English and mostly Spanish but she's very nice, very helpful, and friendly. She offered to have Mau's left over paella to be microwaved so that she could have it hot. I thought that's very nice of her. So I booked the room with a bunk bed and a water sink, with that we got a free breakfast. I think if you book the one with the toilet and shower, you'll get free dinner as well as breakfast. Anyway, the water sink was adequate enough for us to wash our face and brush our teeth and there's a common toilet you can use. The dinner and breakfast I had was so so. There weren't many options in the dinner menu. Still, the whole experience was interesting for me :)

Met an Italian lady in the train and I started practising my Italian with her. I have to say that I'm very very bad. I addressed her informally instead of using the formal words and verbs conjugation. The Italian perhaps have a more relaxed rule in this than the French but since she's a much older lady, I think I am still considered as really rude. But she was nice enough to respond back to me and I guess after she got over the fact that this non-Italian girl was trying to speak in Italian to her, she just got used to me. She's from Firenze (Florence), which is a really really nice city, and apparently she goes to Barcelona quite often because her daughter is living there. The daughter has lived there for some time. I thought because the husband is Spanish but the husband is from Sicily :) They have a son, which I couldn't remember if she mentioned to me the age, but anyway the son is very cute with curly hair. I can sense that this grandma loves him so much :) She said the grandson is now speaking 3 languages, italian, spanish, and a bit of english :) Grandma is taking the train all the time because she's too scared of flying. Unfortunately this time around the trip is not so nice for her. I found out from her that there was a strike in France. It was rather weird that when we were having dinner the night before, the train wasn't moving. Tamara didn't know why when Mau asked her. It was still stationary when I went to sleep at around 11 pm something and perhaps it contributed to the fact that we could sleep really well. Either that, or we were just plain tired, or having a bed is really a major factor. Anyway so we're 3 hours later than expected and obviously that threw grandma's plan off the window. She still had to take a train to Firenze. Lucky for me and Mau, when we arrived, we still had time to check in to our hotel and then go for our half day tour of Milan. We supposed to get a 50% refund because of this lateness however I couldn't find out how. I tried my darnest to get the information in the station but there was nothing substantial. I got really really frustrated. Perhaps the nicest thing that happened was that a signore, a staff in the station, praised me for my Italian, which I thought was bad but I think he just appreciated it that I could speak it and in a manner which he could understand and I could understand him. Before I continue on, let me show you this picture.

I think we have crossed the French border and was in Italy at the time this picture was taken. Take a look at the mountains. My geography sucks but I think that the snow capped mountains might be the Alps. The lady was the one who pointed them to me. I forget to tell you that our rooms were side by side and she spent much time standing at the corridor and looking at the window, which I followed suit but it was me and my camera. I tried to ask the lady what's the name of the mountain but she didn't know what it was and I didn't really know how to say Alps in Italian, I did think it might be called Alpi but I just didn't try. I think it is though, well if anyone could confirm that to me, it would be great :)

So arrived in Milan. After some asking around, we found our hotel, Hotel Stazione, which I love dearly!!! The irony of it all, it was the cheapest hotel that I chose and I thought it's not gonna be so good but I was thinking we're just gonna spend 2 nights there so I could rough it up. It turned out to be the best of all!!! It was totally value for money. For a double room, it was less than 100 euro. I don't think it's easy to find good hotels in the big cities in Europe with that price, in a location near the train station. Trust me, I tried, I couldn't find any except for this one. Yeah it's not luxurious and all, but what I love was that it was really clean and surprisingly spacious! The room seemed to be new, all the furnitures seemed new. The wi-fi connection worked great. The place for breakfast was really really small but there weren't many people anyway because the hotel was really small (only 1 floor) so I didn't mind it. There's always space for me to have breakfast. Either way, you can take your breakfast to your room. The kind uncle even brought Mau's coffee to our room. I thought the breakfast was good, love the cornetto!!! The uncle was really really nice. I talked to him in Italian and he's just really nice and tried to make sure you have all that you need. For me, it was definitely the best hotel we stayed in and seriously I was thinking how ironic it was because I was preparing myself for it to be the worst; that honor actually went to the hotel in Rome - another story, another posting. So if you happen to be going to Milan and want a hotel which is not too expensive and near Milano Centrale train station, I'm totally recommending this hotel to you :)

Moving on, I actually book a half day tour of Milan. Why? Simply because I wanted to see Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper. To see The Last Supper, you have to book in advance and really that's the only way to see it. There's no queue at the place because everyone booked for it and everyone must come on their time slots or they just couldn't get in. I didn't want the trouble so I thought let's just book the half day tour, we got to see Milan with a guide and we got to see the Last Supper. You know what, I just checked how to book for the Last Supper and see how crazy it is, for July there's only 1 ticket left, on July 31st. In August, there's a total of 12 tickets left on 3 different dates. September still has some tickets in each of the day of the week. So point to note, book like 3-4 months before your actual visiting date! That is not very convenient, isn't it :P

Anyway, our day tour started with visiting Teatro alla Scala. It's actually pretty small. Well it has been around for more than 300 years so the fact that it's still a functioning theatre and still matters a lot, well ... shows how awesome it is :P When we were there, there's a ballet company practising at the stage. We got to see a bit of their practice. I can imagine that it must be an honor to be performing at La Scala. Next was Galleria Vittorio Emanuele. Saw the luxury goods shops and the first Prada shop as well. An interesting thing to mention, when most of the McDonalds in Europe mostly have their golden arch behind a green background, the one in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II has it behind a black background. That is so that it blends in with the rest of the fancy shops but I think its presence still makes the rest of the high class shops look at it in disdain :P Galleria Vittorio Emanuele is pretty impressive. We did the turn with our heels at the bull on the floor so that our wish could come true :P I couldn't remember what I wished for :( Exiting the galleria, we reached Piazza del Duomo which brought us to Duomo di Milano. I didn't know that this Cathedral was one the biggest church in the world. I think the thing that I would remember the most about this church was Saint Bartholomew's statue. You can see the picture and the rest of the pictures of Milan here. I didn't have many pictures of Milan actually. I only saw Milan from this day tour and didn't explore it more in depth on my own. After the Duomo, we went to see Castello Sforzesco. We didn't go inside though. Before I continue, this is the picture of the Duomo taken from the bus, so the colour is a bit weird.

The last stop was to see The Last Supper. I know that this was a mural on a wall in a church, Santa Maria delle Grazie. However I didn't expect that it was housed in a separate building of its own. I thought it still inside the church but it wasn't. It was a very very unique experience seeing the mural. They only let at most 25 people to see it at one time and for 15 minutes only. I remember we had to go through 2 separate waiting rooms. Supposedly we are being purified from the dust or whatever pollutants we had on us. I was expecting a strong wind would blow us or something like that but nothing of that sort. Nothing happened actually in the waiting room, we're just waiting for the next door to open. There's only 1 staff waiting in the hall of where the mural is. Do you think she's lucky to be able to see the famous painting for as long as she wants when people only get to see it for 15 minutes? Anyway the mural is on one side of the wall and on the other side of the wall, there's a fresco by another painter. The rest of the wall is just painted white. Don't ask me what's the different between a fresco and a mural. I just know that Leonardo's Last Supper is not a fresco, it's a painting on wall ... I hope I am correct by saying it that way. Anywho, our guide tried her best to explain as many things to us in the 15 minutes we had. I remember so few details about it, like a door was actually made on the wall hence the bottom part of the painting (where Jesus's feet should have been) is not there anymore. Over the course of the history, the hall had been used for many things, they all contributed to the damages of the painting. Some of the faces were actually not clear anymore. The guide said during restoration, the people didn't want to alter much of the painting so they left some of the smudges as is. Seeing the painting didn't actually bring much emotion in me. I guess I was thankful that I got to see that in person, something that I can boast about :P The whole experience in getting to the room was more memorable for me than my actual feeling of seeing it. I remembered taking one last look at the painting before I had to leave the room, simply because I know maybe I'll never get to see it again. It felt rather sad at that time. So that's the story of Milan. Why didn't I explore much of the city? Because the next day I decided to go to Verona. That's a story for the next posting.

So how's my life since I last wrote? Life is so so, surviving. Feeling abandoned by some people but not gonna go into it here. Watched a few movies. Last week, I watched 1860, which was an old black and white Italian movie about the war, at the free screening by the Italian Cultural Institute. YeeMaggio kindly accompanied me to it. It got me reading about Giuseppe Garibaldi in Wikipedia and learnt that Nice in France used to belong to Italy and it was actually called Nizza. Giuseppe Garibaldi is an Italian hero who was bornt in Nizza. He was really pissed that the city eventually went to France. Another Italian movie that I watched this week was Signore & Signori (The Birds, the Bees and the Italians) with Carl and the rest. By the way, the Italian season is happening right now until the 21st of June so there's a few Italian related events happening, like the screening of several Italian movies. I'm thinking of watching another one this coming week but I'm not sure if I will eventually do it. Anyway Signore & Signori was another old black and white Italian movie. It was funny. There are 3 different kinda overlapping stories about the Signore and Signori of a town in Italy. They're funny, they're so pretentious and hypocritical. If there's one common thing that threads the different stories, is how they tried to hide certain things that they did. My italian is not so amazing that I still needed the subtitles :(

A more mainstream movie this week was Super 8, which I watched with Oshie. He was having X-Men: First Class and Super 8 back to back. I kinda abstain myself from super heroes movies this time around, exception is only for Transformers. Oshie was saying why?!??! It's the summer. Yeah I know but they just don't excite me anymore. I also think there should be a law banning an actor from appearing in more than one super hero movie. I'm gonna let Chris Evans slide because Fantastic 4 movies weren't really that deep. Back to Super 8, I like it! I thought the kids were great and they are the gems in this movie. The way they spoke was really fast sometime but they were funny, they had the best lines, and they were cute and adorable! Funny lines were like when one of them said, production value!!! or drugs are so bad. They're hilarious. As for the suspense, well the Lost style which was implemented me kinda annoyed me at times. You know there's something bad and big but like in Lost, J.J Abrams decided not to show it to us, instead he teased us with sounds or the rustling of something, very very Lost style. I thought the ending scene was rather sad for me, maybe it didn't matter for other people. I was hoping the boy got to keep the necklace but he didn't so that is sad :( If you're watching it, stay tune for the movie that the kids made during the credit roll. Osh told me that the zombie movie was really made by the kids. It was really funny and cute. They are really talented kids and I'm sure they had lots of fun doing it. For actors like them, I reckon it's harder for them to be acting bad than good :P I hope these kids will be great in the future. Elle Fanning is definitely blooming and showing she's as good as her big sister. Do watch it peeps, it's really good and the kids were really entertaining :D Okay, gotta stop now. Buonanotte tutti!

Spain ~ Casa Batlló, Casa Milà (La Pedrera), Park Güell ~ Barcelona

2011-06-12T10:57:00.007+08:00

So with the so many days in Spain spent not in Barcelona, we actually didn't have much time to explore Barcelona itself. In our last day in Barcelona, we were leaving for Milan at 7.30 pm something. It kinda gave enough time to see a few things but I wasn't really sure if I could see all the things that I wanted to see. Initially I thought I was just going to visit Casa Milà (La Pedrera) and Park Güell. Obviously Park Güell is a must and from my reading La Pedrera seems interesting as well. Then I was thinking if it's possible to visit the Picasso museum as well. I happened to meet Carl before the trip and she spoke about how she liked Casa Batlló so much and so I put that into the list. I took note of the metro station in each place, thinking I would just take the metro but Mau decided that she was going to take the hop on / hop off bus, especially after being told by the Australian tourists, who took the Provence tour with us, of how convenient the buses were. I got swayed, so I took it as well. It is very very convenient. There are 3 routes and there are a lot of stops all over Barcelona. You just hop in and hop off anywhere you like. I think it might worth more to get the 2-day pass for 30 euro than the 1-day pass at 23 euro. I don't think you can cover the whole 3 routes of the bus in one day and still stop at places to see some things. I didn't even have time to try the green line. It's really really worth the money and the staff were really really friendly :) The guy at booth made me smile when I got my ticket.

Again since our hotel is by Plaça de Catalunya, we just needed to cross the street to go to the booth to get our tickets and got on the bus. Both Mau and me took the blue bus but we had different things that we wanted to see. I was off the bus in the first stop. First stop was Casa Batlló. I LOVE Antoni Gaudí. You can call him quirky or such but I love his design aesthetic. I think we match :P There are so much details in what he did. There are curves in the handle of the stairs so that they fit your hands perfectly. There are different mosaic glass on the windows which will change colors as the light goes through them. The walls are tiled in blue tiles which goes in gradient of light blue to darker blue. There are glass panel which will reflect those tiles like reflection on the water. The chimneys are not just chimneys, they are pieces of arts, colorful and wonderful. The colors, I love the way the colors are. I love everything about this house and I think a house should be like this, unique and fun! I really love everything he did. Barcelona is really a Gaudí's city and I'm sure I haven't seen all that he did but from all the things that I saw, I love them all. To see my pictures of Casa Batlló, you can go here. By the way, look at this picture of its exterior facade, look at the details of the walls and balconies, pretty! It's a well managed house too. I saw some people fixing the mosaic and they did it with such care and in a really meticulous way.

After Casa Batlló, the next stop in the blue bus is Casa Milà or more famously known as La Pedrera. It is very very near. You start exploring La Pedrera with the roof. There's actually elevators but stupid me took the staircase because I thought there are some things to see in the floors reaching the roof but the way you visit the place is designed so that you start with the roof first. Reaching the roof, I was impressed but at the same time not so blown away. I guess it's because you came from the colorful roof and home of Casa Batlló and then you reached La Pedrera where the chimneys are more in a brown color without much mosaics on them. It's still a stunning and incredible roof because all the figures are interesting. You see faces on them and you can't help but smile a bit seeing them. I think the roof is bigger and there are stairs all around so walking up and down may get you tired but of course all the energetic kids were running around excitedly. After the roof you go down to see the apartments and the rooms that were used by the people who used to live there. Some of the items were really really cute. I feel that it's also another nice place to live in. I can imagine going to the roof as the sun was setting down or rising, it must be so beautiful up there. It would great if I can live in building like this. The pictures are here. Here you can see the picture of the roof.

My next stop was Park Güell. Well the bus stop to the park is not so near, you kinda have to walk up. I stopped for lunch because I needed the fuel :P I had meat on skewers, fried eggs, and fries. The meat was scarily a lot but it was good :P Anyway first impression of Park Güell was that it's unique. You see the stairs from the entrance and you can sense that it's something different and unique. Then you turn your back and see the 2 houses at the entrance, very unique houses. I guess the only thing I don't like is that there were just too many people and I hate that but I guess the park will never really be empty of people. There are many many interesting parts of the park. I love the mosaics, I just love them! There were many artists, many musician, so there were a lot of different musics playing. You also have people selling many stuff and there were also artists who paint. If you hike up a bit more, you get away from all the crowd below and see more greeneries. I didn't hike all the way up because the paths were rather steep and it was rather hot and I didn't know how far it would lead me and I didn't want to stray too far and end up taking too much time to get back. The quiet moment up there was really really nice for me. I just love the peace and you got to see Barcelona. It's wonderful. Many people have told me to be careful in Barcelona because of the pick pockets and I remember Yeni telling me that there were pick pockets going into her bags so I didn't fancy having a lot of people there and the park really lived up to that bad stigma unfortunately. I saw a caucasian tourist chasing after one of the people who were selling stuff, they were running so fast that it gave me a shock. Then some minutes later, again I saw people running away from something. It's very very unfortunate that the park is not so safe :( I didn't feel like I want to stay there long but that was also attributed because there were just too many people to make it a pleasant visit. Sometime I wonder if me being alone roaming around kinda caused all these bad people to pity me and not target me. Well I do make it a point not to open the map in public and look obviously like a tourist. Maybe some think that I'm just an exchange student and perhaps they think just don't hassle to solitary girl there :P Whatever it is, I am thankful that God always protect me on my way. Pictures of Parc Güell is here. This is the picture of the 2 houses at the entrance. The one on the left made me think of a gingerbread house. Gaudí was really really religious, you can almost always see crosses in all his works and I really admire his devotion.

After Park Güell, I basically had nothing else that I wanted to see (badly). Well I have a few things that I could think of but I didn't have the time. I wanted to visit the Picasso Museum but it's on the other way and so I thought I should just sit on the bus and see Barcelona. Point to take note, when you are on this double decker open top buses, obviously you want to sit on top, however it gets really really windy! It became rather uncomfortable for me. It's bright and the sun was shining but it's windy, so I had my jacket all zipped up which perhaps made me look really weird, but I really didn't like the wind. Anyways, it was a sunny blue sky day in Barcelona so my pictures came out all with blue sky, I love them :) It is hard though to take pictures on a moving bus, so I don't actually have many pictures. They give you earphones in the bus, so you get to hear commentary about the places. It's interesting :) You can see the few pictures I have here. I actually love Barcelona very very much and I didn't expect that I'm gonna love this city that much. I don't speak Spanish so obviously I'll have difficulty navigating myself in this town but it is such a great city. I thought its infrastructure was great. I only took the metro twice so I didn't actually try it much but from the little I saw, it was better than Rome and Paris. I think it has a laid back feeling but at the same time it's also cool and modern that it doesn't come across as too laid back perhaps. Gaudí is of course a huge draw, you can almost see his influences everywhere. I would definitely want to come back to Barcelone one day and explore more of its city and also other parts of Spain. Oh I also have to say, I love the food. You can feed me paella anytime and I'll be happy happy happy :) I was talking about this with Carl the other day. She said she didn't love France much and I shared her sentiment. It's harder for me to eat in France, I couldn't find something that I'd just know I would like. It's so much more easier for me to eat in Italy and Spain. Anyway here's one picture of Barcelona. I'm glad and thankful that I've been here :)

So that's it peeps, the Spanish stories. I seriously felt rather sad about leaving Barcelona even though we were heading to Italy. I just felt that I haven't gotten enough of it. Anyway we took our overnight train to Milan. When I saw our room it was actually small and it made me rather sceptical. We saw 2 seats there and so I wonder where's the bed. Well there are beds but you need to get the staff to set it for you and the lady set it up for us when we went for dinner. I was impressed when I got back from dinner to see the bunk beds. I'm very bad at taking pictures of things like these, hotel rooms and the meals we had because it just didn't come to my head that I should take pictures :P Let's just settle and say that I was really impressed. Well that is before I watched Japan Hour recently in Channel News Asia and their overnight trains were so much better! So I guess our train and room were so so but I still love it and I had a good night sleep and I'll do it this way again :) More stories in the next post okay, ciao!

Spain ~ Girona, Pals, and Costa Brava

2011-06-08T20:54:00.006+08:00

The following day, May 9th 2011, Mau and me had a day tour to Girona and Costa Brava. We met Adrien at the meeting point. Amazingly he remembered our names. It's very nice of him because I think some people would just don't care especially guides like him who see many different people every day. Unfortunately he wasn't our guide for the day, though I would have loved to have him again. We had Anna. She's this petite spanish girl who's ... well on one side, one can say that perhaps she's a bit unprofessional but I think it's the way how things are run in Singapore that I kinda expected things to be carried out a certain way, so perhaps it's just me. On the other side, she's very open in talking about her personal life and such which perhaps can annoy people but I think it just showed how easy going and friendly she is and she's actually a very nice person because she took extra care of the Australian lady who was with us, who physically had difficulty in walking on some paths. Again it was a small group, we had the Australian couple which I don't know if I remember their names correctly. Anyway, the husband is British and the wife originally from Sri Lanka and they're currently living in Perth. Then there's the young Canadian girl, whose name is Michelle (I think). If I remember correctly she's a 2nd year university student and at that time she was alone in Barcelona because all her friends have left and she's waiting to start her summer studies in Mallorca. This group wasn't as fun as the day before but I did have some gelato time with Michelle in Costa Brava. We sat at the bench looking at the blue water and misty sky while having gelato and just talked. Sometime when you're travelling alone, you kinda get really lonely. I know because I've been there. So I hope she enjoyed that little human interaction with me :P

We started the day in Girona. Girona was having its annual Temps de Flors exposition. Apparently they have it every year during spring. So you have many installation arts all over the town and they are all decorated with flowers or plants. I didn't see everything but I thought it's pretty cool. It really made exploring the town so much more fun and they were many locals coming to see it. The exposition really made Girona memorable because if not, I think it will be just another town. As suggested by Anna, I went through the Girona's wall. You know as silly as this may sound because it sounds tiring, it's just kinda nice to be walking alone exploring the paths and taking turns here and there, you were left with your thoughts and sometime you saw unexpected wonderful things :P

This bridge view kinda reminded me of Firenze, maybe it's the colors. You can see more pictures here.

After Girona, we went to Pals. The road was so quiet on our way there and even in the town. It was so quiet and we hardly saw any people!!! It was rather strange. I wondered why that was so. I didn't ask Anna but I really wonder if it's because it's the siesta time. We were there after lunch time. It's all blue sky in Pals and it was hot and I think the combination of those and the fact that the town was quiet, we decided not to stay for long. So I don't have much pictures of Pals, you can see them here.

Next stop was to see Costa Brava. Unfortunately when we arrived there, the weather wasn't good. It was misty and rather cold and because Pals was hot, I left my jacket in the car :( But it didn't stop me from having gelato though later on :P The fishing village we stopped in was Calella de Palafrugell and I have to say that even though it was misty and cold, it was really really beautiful there. Again there's not many people around which would have been ideal if the weather had been nicer. I think there weren't many people because there's no sun to enjoy and the water was too cold to swim in. I didn't touch the water though. As we were about to leave, the sky started to clear up :( The blue sky started to appear and the water echoed the its blueness and everything looked really nice and blue. It's very very unfortunate for us. I am sure that it's even more beautiful when the weather was better. To see the pictures that I have, you can go here.

Spain ~ Montserrat and Parés Baltà

2011-06-06T20:56:00.002+08:00

So the story continue. I actually had very little knowledge of Spain and Barcelona. I just knew I wanted to see Sagrada Família but after that I basically don't have anything else that I wanted to see. After much googling and wikipedia-ing, I do want to see Alhambra but it wasn't on the way. So anyway, I browsed and looked at the day tours that departed from Barcelona and I actually was really interested in going to the Pyrenees. However in the end I decided not to simply because I think it started quite early and I thought it was gonna be physically demanding and so I decided on the Montserrat day tour that includes a visit to a vineyard. I think the wine tasting and the vineyard visit was such a huge pull factor :P You know, I am glad to say that I have been to a vineyard in Italy, France, and Spain. As snobbish as this may sound, I think it's quite an enriching and cool experience in my life :P

Montserrat is a mountain near Barcelona which is famous for the church Santa Maria de Montserrat. This church is famous for its Black Virgin, but me and Mau didn't queue to see it. Anyway, it was a small group, there were only 4 of us, me, Mau, and an american couple, Gwen and Thomas. At first I felt rather uneasy because I was hoping for a bigger group so that we wouldn't be all so quiet. However the group of people were rather awesome. Our guide was Adrien, a french, who's been living in Barcelona for 12 years. We were with his colleague, Anna, the following day and she said that he's fluent both in Spanish and Catalan. That got me googling about Catalan. Apparently it's a whole different language but I doubt you can find a place to learn Catalan easily outside of Spain. Anyway, with Adrien, again perhaps it's a french thing but he has a certain cheeky sense of humour, which is okay for me and it made it fun :D Well proper people bore me to death! It's better for me to be rather quirky, crazy, and bold, it makes you more interesting. So anyway, I had quite an interesting talk with Gwen and Thomas. Thomas used to or perhaps still works for HP and he's been to Singapore. He was fascinated by the pink dolphins :D and as many foreigners who's been to Singapore told me, Singapore is impressive because it's very orderly. With Gwen, she talked a length about her daughter, Shannon, who has a bachelor degree in Neuroscience and now pursuing a master degree in Business Management or something like that. I can feel that she's so proud of her. This makes me wonder if my mother or my father have ever talked proudly about me or my brother. I highly doubt it! It's just not in our genes, I guess. I wonder if it's just the Asian culture in which we are always feeling that what we achieved are so so and we always look at other people who have achieved more. I don't know.

We started in Montserrat and it was cloudy and rainy when we were there. I was a bit down with that. Adrien took us to the church and started telling us about the history and all and I had a feeling that he really really wanted us to pay attention :P However, seriously there's no way my brain will remember all the things that happened in the 1700s or 1800s or even older than that. He told us the things that we could do and then left us to explore on our own. We were there on a Sunday and since it was still drizzling, Mau and me, decided to go into the church and watch the mass. The monastery was famous for its boys choir. Initially we wanted to wait until the mass was over and then hear them sing but they were already singing during the mass so we thought it's the same thing and we didn't stay until the mass finished. When we got out, the sky was blue and I was feeling happy :) That day being Sunday saw more people and more locals visiting the church. Adrien said it's a very common thing for the Catalans to come to Montserrat to pray to the Black Virgin and come back to give thanks when their prayers have been answered. So since it's Sunday, it seemed that there were more activities than usual and there were traditional catalan dance performances outside the church and many people selling local products. The dance seemed pretty fun. They were performed by kids, youths, and even older people. They were in traditional clothing and they used colorful ribbons during the dance and they all get tangled and such. The kids were looking pretty cute doing the dances :D

After watching the dance, we got lunch, and then we took the funicular to go to the higher ground of Montserrat. The view was awesome!!! I'm not one who's been to many mountains. In fact right now if I have to think about it, the last mountain which is also perhaps the first mountain I've been was Mount Bromo in Indonesia. I just want to say that it's just an incredible feeling being on top of a mountain and looking at the view. It's the view and it's the experience, it was just breathtaking. It just felt so awesome. There's a trail that you could follow to explore the area but we didn't have much time to explore everything. I did feel a bit scared that I was going slip and go trudging down the mountain, that would be so tragic! :P I think the view from this mountain is the main highlight for me. It was really really awesome :)

You can see the pictures here. After Montserrat, we went to Parés Baltà, a vineyard which in Adrien's word is small. Well I don't know how do one classifies a vineyard as small or not. It seems that this vineyard only produces a few thousand bottles a year, which I think is actually quite a lot. Anna, the british girl who worked there took us to see the vineyard. I have very little knowledge in wine making so I just listened. Gwen seemed to be very knowledgeable. Anyway, the vineyard in Parés Baltà is not watered, they totally rely on rain. I found that to be very interesting. Obviously such thing will not work in Provence where they don't really get much rain. So it's interesting for me how different regions grow their grapes differently. After we were shown the vineyard, it was time for wine tasting. The grandpa of Parés Baltà came to greet us. He was such a nice person, very humble, and seemed to be genuinely happy to see all of us there. Such a warm welcome do really make you warm and fuzzy inside and you just love the place even more :P I think we tasted wine from 5 - 6 bottles. I couldn't really remember :P We tried 2 cava and some other wines, I think 1 white and 2 red. They gave us biscuits, cheese, and bread which we ate with the olive oil. All were so good :D I'm not a big wine fan but I think I like one of the red wine. Anyway perhaps it's the wine, I ended up getting a bottle of Rose Cava and a bottle of olive oil. Everyone bought something. It guess wine can really do something to you. Mau is always more chatty after she has wine and I could sense that even Gwen was more relaxed :P I on the other hand went into a defensive mood, that is I could feel that the wine was doing something to my head and so I tried extra hard to pay attention to everything, drink less, and since there were no water, I ate more :P I just became really really more careful in what I do and say, perhaps I became quieter? I believe I have a bit of OCD. After the wine tasting, we headed back to Barcelona :P I still couldn't believe I got those 2 bottles. I was dragging them all the way to Italy and Singapore and they survived, thank God! I'm actually gonna drag them home to Indonesia, the next time I go home. I thought the last time I got a wine from Tuscany was already silly enough and yet this time I was getting bigger bottle and not just one, I had another bottle of olive oil. It's the wine!!! :D

So we arrived back in Barcelona pretty early. It's being Sunday, the shops / malls were closed!!! I couldn't believe it!!! It's such an unbelievable concept. We decided to get paella for dinner and so we explored Las Ramblas. Seriously our hotel was really in a good place. There were a lot of artists there, you can see all kind of paintings and some of them were really really good. We kinda reached the end and so we just chose a restaurant. The paella and octopus were great and the serving was great as well. It's so much cheaper than in Singapore. I love seafood! We ordered sangria as well and it came in such a big glass, very very big. You can have your breakfast cereal in it. For some reason, I decided that I wanted to finish it and I did. I don't think Mau even finished half of it. I don't know why I wanted to do it. After all that, I realized that my vision was impaired and it's really really hard to focus. I think I still walked straight but it was rather hard to do so and I think it was by God's grace that we could get through Las Ramblas and reached our hotel safely since this street is also famous for the pick pockets. I was very very intoxicated that I really had to shower carefully and hold on to the wall and by the time I reached my bed, my head was just spinning. There was a little feeling that I wanted to puke but I didn't. It was such a bad feeling, I hate it so much. The feeling of not being in control of yourself and I realize this is the part where bad things could happen to you and I was just lucky that I was already in the safety of the hotel room. It's such an enlightening experience and you really do need to experience certain things to really know what it really feels like and now that I have felt that and hated that helpless and weak feeling, I really really don't want to drink much anymore. I hate not being in control and though I almost gonna say I'm not gonna drink anymore, I'm not gonna say that. I'm just gonna say I'm gonna try not to drink if I can help it and if I do drink, it's not gonna be a lot anymore!!! Okay, that's all for today. I'll try to continue soon :)

Spain ~ Sagrada Família

2011-06-05T18:43:00.004+08:00

Hello peeps, let me continue with the story of my trip :) So we left France for Spain on Saturday, May 7th 2011. It marked a week since we started off on our journey. It was a bit like we were half way into our trip. At that point in time, there was a bit of sadness about leaving France but I wasn't actually in love much with France. I remembered telling Mau that the place in France that I loved the most after all that we've seen was Paris and that was regardless of how chaotic it is. Even Provence didn't make me fall much for it. We were going to Barcelona and I was excited about it because I will get to cross the number one thing in my life list. You see before my Italian trip 2 years ago, the number one and two thing in my life list were to go to Italy and have a trip alone. I don't know in what sequence they came but I was glad that I got to cross them both at the same time :) After that, it changed me a bit and with all the things that I googled and read, the number one thing that occupied that life list was to go to Barcelona and see Sagrada Família and I am thankful to God that I got to do that. I crossed that off my life list!!! I felt so thankful to God for the blessing and opportunity to do that. No matter how I try to describe how it felt like, I don't know if I can do it justice. It's the feeling that you are so thankful for being alive, for being there, for all the things that God gives you that get you there. I'm not one who wants to give life advices because I don't think that I'm highly successful in life or anything like that but I do urge people to have a goal in life or a life list. I know this sounds annoying, like the things your annoying bosses or people who interview you will talk to you about, but I'm speaking from my experience. I have goals in life, things I want to do in my life list, and the moment I got to do that, the feeling is amazing. Some people may think that my life list is meaningless and perhaps aimless and so not ambitious but they didn't feel what I felt everytime I managed to cross something off it and that's something that they couldn't take away from me :) So I do urge you guys to have something and try to fulfill them. I guarantee it, the moment you reach that goal, it's incredible, it's what being on top of a mountain feels like and since I was kinda on the high ground of the Montserrat mountain in Spain, I can tell you it feels amazing and incredible! It'll take your breath away :)

Wow, I'm like preaching there. So back to the story. We were in Marseille and to get to Spain we had to take the train, first to Montpellier and then to Figueres Vilafant and then to Barcelona. In Montpellier we got into the wrong compartment. The stupidity just baffled me!!! I don't know how else to explain or justify on how we couldn't find the right compartment. Anyway the lady conductor told us to get off at the next stop and we had around 9 minutes to run with our luggages to the correct compartment which was many metres away. I was devastated with things like this but Mau found it to be really funny and memorable. I really really don't like mistakes!!! It took me sometime to calm down from the mistake :( But anyway we arrived safely at Barcelona Sants train station. My first impression of Barcelona and the station was that of utter pleasant surprise. The station was really really nice and big, like an airport. It's modern and it's really cool, awesome cool I mean. I like Barcelona on the get go :) We decided to take the taxi to our hotel because we just didn't feel like dragging our luggages through the metro. Luckily our hotel which is basically at Plaça de Catalunya is pretty near and so it wasn't expensive. We checked in, I dropped my luggage and proceeded to go to Sagrada Família.

I was musing for sometime on which day I would go to Sagrada Família and in the end I decided to do it on the first day I arrived and I think it's apt that visiting it was the first thing I did when I arrived in Barcelona :) The whole trip did revolve around giving me the opportunity to cross this off my life list. Anyway I have heard the queue was going to be long and I have heard of people giving it a miss because they didn't want to queue but I was thinking that if I got there by 4 pm and had to stay in the queue for 2 hours, it would still be okay, because thanks to daylight saving time, the basilica was closing at 8 pm. That's how eager I am to see it :) So I took the metro and again I was pleasantly surprise because the metro train station was pretty nice. Yeah it's kinda dark and all but it was pretty clean and nice and there were big signs everywhere and you will not have difficulty finding your direction. The metro itself was nice and clean. Obviously not like Singapore standard but it was way better than Paris :P So I easily arrive at Sagrada Família and the queue was round the corner surrounding the compound. It was long but not as long as I expected it to be and I gave it 40 minutes before I'd get to enter the basilica but the queue actually moved really really fast that I think I got in within 20 minutes :)

I really can't describe what it felt like being there. It was cloudy and windy in Barcelona so I quickly got inside. I think the bad weather also caused the lifts to be not in used that day :( but it's okay. I hope I'll get to come back again, maybe when the church is finished. Hmmm ... I can put this in my life list :) Anyway, I got in and the high ceiling just took my breath away. The mosaics on the window was beautiful. The design of the columns, the ceiling, and the windows is awesome. Every single details of it is amazing. What made me so taken about this church was basically Antoni Gaudí and his dedication and commitment to God in building this church. He was so passionate about the church and you can see it in all the details. It's really inspiring and I am sure if you are an architect it will inspire you even more. I'm really really glad that they are finishing the church and it's great that way.

The outside of the church is also amazing as the inside. The front part where the Nativity Façade is, is so different with the back part where the Passion Façade is. The Nativity Façade has more nature elements in it and you are just in awe looking at all the shapes and all the little details, the animals and the angels. The Passion Façade has a more clean look. I love the expression of the statues. I think the artists did an amazing job. You can see the pictures here. Unfortunately, I don't think the pictures came out nice :( Anyway in the compound of the basilica you can also visit the small museum which gives you more explanation on the building of the basilica. Oh yeah, they made you queue to go into the gift shop :P Maybe they only do that when there are too many visitors (which I imagine is always). It was kinda funny for me but it did make a more pleasant experience browsing at the stuff :)

So that was my first day in Barcelona. After all the mistake with the train, I ended it feeling really happy and thankful to God for the opportunity to see Sagrada Família :) After that I got back to the hotel. In the Plaça de Catalunya metro station, I was pleasantly surprised seeing people dancing to some of the musicians who were busking there. It was such an impromptu thing. There's an old couple dancing sweetly and there were 2 young girls who didn't really follow the rhythm :P I loved it. It's definitely not something that happens in the shy Asia. I love how easy going and laid back people are. I have heard the song they played before as I am sure you too but I don't know what it's called and it's driving me crazy now trying to find out what song that is especially since I can only remember the melody :( Anyway I didn't watch it for long because I was still cautious about Barcelona and the pick-pockets stories. So I got out to go back to the hotel. I have to say that our hotel was really really in an amazing place but I didn't actually like it much when we first arrived :( The room was big and clean so it was a plus point but it is noisy as well. We arrived on a Saturday and as usual there's a football match on the weekend and some of the supporters were making so much noise at Plaça de Catalunya. It seriously drove me crazy and for some reason there's also too many noise from inside the hotel itself, maybe it was the lift. However, apparently when you are really really REALLY tired, you can sleep anyway. I did sleep and I had a good deep sleep so overall the hotel still does have its plus points :) Hmmm, I thought I was going to write about our trip to Montserrat as well here, but I guess not, maybe tomorrow. So I'm gonna stop here for now :)

Una Notte Da Leoni 2

2011-06-04T22:51:00.003+08:00

Hello peeps, how are you? I had a pretty long day today. Earlier this week, I actually planned so that today would be easy and relaxed; I was to go home straight from class, have a nice indonesian lunch, and then sleep. However that's not the case. Somehow I didn't sleep well last night and I don't think I slept for long as well. As Mr. C stepped into the class today, I was feeling rather nervous because I really don't know how I was to survive his class. I guess I survived it by being quiet. I don't have anything substantial to say anyway. I noticed something about Mr. C today. He's very soft spoken and such but I think he has a sarcastic side as well. I wonder if it's a french thing or it's a teacher thing that he does to try to push his students. Anyway I start to get all analytical in his class. I'm trying to strategize my way into surviving his class until at least the next term. Unfortunately I have nothing so far :(

Anyway after class, I went to Cats of The World Photo Exhibition that Carl and friends organized. I went with YeeMaggio and we met up with Casryn there. Casryn has a picture in the exhibition. She took the picture in a cat village in Taiwan. Do google this cat village in Taiwan, it seems so interesting. After the exhibition, YeeMaggio and I decided to watch Hangover 2 and that's actually the title of this post, in Italian though.

So in Italy, Hangover is translated as Una Notte Da Leoni. It was 2 years ago when I went to Italy alone and I remembered the trailer from the first movie was playing all over the tv in Italy at that time. This time around, I've seen the posters of the sequel in Cannes as well as the trailer for this movie in Italy again. For the life of me, until my recent trip I couldn't figure out the meaning of the Italian title. Well for the sequel, the tagline that the Italians used is, I leoni sono tornati, and I kinda got it then. In the movie (english version), the guys called themselves the wolf pack. In Italy, instead of using the word wolf, they use the word lion. So it took me 2 years later to finally get the meaning :P

Anyway, I thought Una Notte Da Leoni 2 was very entertaining. I couldn't remember much details from the first movie. I remember it being crude but highly entertaining. The sequel was like that as well, crude and crazy and funny. It did pretty much follow the formula of the first one but it's still crazily funny. The actors were great. I love Bradley Cooper!!! His character always comes off the crazy night pretty clean. Justin Bartha's character is always kinda being left out and Ed Helms' character always has some physical misfortune. He's very very funny though. I'm not gonna comment about Zach Galifianakis' character; Alan is kinda too annoying for me. Anyway, the last part of the film during the credit roll is always the craziest part and as usual it is censored heavily here in Singapore. Well I suppose it's alright? Because from the look of it, some the pictures look pretty gross. Well I think it still remains as a guy "guy" movie but for me Bradley Cooper is just way too handsome :P

On life, I had a very tough week. A conversation with YeeMaggio today kinda put things into perspective. You know, I have known people who would not even listen to me fully on the things I say and give much respond. I've also known people who would quickly dismiss me as a complainer and a whiner. The ones that I appreciate the most are the ones who listen to me well and sympathize with me and try to give me their point of view without much judgement. So today it's pretty good to be hearing a different point of view from YeeMaggio and I do appreciate it a lot. I'm feeling very tired, so I'm not gonna talk more about this dreadful week. Take care peeps!

France ~ Côte d'Azur

2011-05-31T22:42:00.001+08:00

Hello peeps, this is the last post to wrap up the trip in France. So the crazy me proposed the idea to Mau if she wanted to take a day tour exploring the French Riviera (Côte d'Azur), but that tour started in Nice and we were going to stay in Marseille. She said okay. It's pretty crazy and very very gung ho of us, considering it takes almost 3 hours by train from Marseille to Nice but we actually did that. I was just curious about Nice and Cannes so I guess I was interested in seeing what they're like.

We made it on time. Were rather confused on how to meet the guide that supposed to pick us up but we met him. His name is Arthur and he was handsome and super cute. His company has a weird rule requiring him to dress formally with suit and tie. I was actually smitten by him when I got to talk to him, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's start with the trip and pictures. To be honest, I kinda forget the details of each of the places we saw. First stop was on top of a hill where we had a gorgeous view of Nice. The water and the sky was so blue and I have to admit that it was really really stunning.

I think we saw more of Nice and its beaches on our way back. I've seen the stunning Nice like the picture above, the beach where people suntan in the nude, as well as the city. It's a bit of a contradiction. The city is chaotic like any other French cities that are not small. I remember waiting to cross a street and there were teenagers girls screaming at each others at the top of their lungs. It was pretty scary for me, simply because I think I'm not used to these kinda things in the proper Singapore. Anyway, since we had time to burn when we were waiting for our train back to Marseille in the evening, we managed to go to FNAC and I got a picture book. I haven't started reading it though. Somehow I think it's important to get a book, one to help me improve on the language, two ... well just because I suppose to be the geeky one who reads :P Anyway I was rambling away there.

After that photo stop above, we went to Fragonard Perfume Factory in Èze. I love perfumes!!! We saw how they make soaps and perfumes and then we were given some perfumes to smell. I wish I can buy a lot of things there but in between not having much space in my luggage and not suppose to spend too much money unnecessarily, I only got 1 bottle. Then we explored Èze a bit. I remember thinking that it was quite pretty.

Then we were off to Monaco. I have to say it is a very very rich place. You can feel the rich atmosphere :P There were many yachts and when we were there, they're also preparing for the F1 race which took place at the end of May. The palace was a bit under renovation, it seems. I guess because the Prince is getting married in July, they are sprucing things up. Arthur did say that they are trying to fix everything so that everything will be ready to welcome all the guests for the wedding and obviously they want the wedding to be bigger or at least matches Prince William's. So anyway, in front of the Saint Nicholas Cathedral (where the wedding will take place), I had a little conversation with Arthur. Well he started it, asking me where I arrived from that morning. I asked if he's french because his english is pretty good and I wondered if could it be he's from Monaco. That would be something, wouldn't it? Meeting a citizen of Monaco. Well he's french, was bornt in St Barts, but moved to Paris when he was 2. He said the reason why his english is good is because he studied for his master degree in the United States. He tried to explain to me where St Barts is exactly but we just settled that my geography knowledge sucks and he laughed. Man! He's so cute when he laughed :P The curious me apparently wasn't satisfied that I told him his name was misleading and I asked if his dad was British. He said that yeah it's rare to see one being named Arthur but he said he sees more and more kids with that name but he's the oldest one he knows :P I asked what's the french version of it, it's basically the same, just with different pronunciation, that got us really laughing :D Anyway, on our way back from the whole trip, we found out he has a girlfriend (Sad!!! They always have someone, don't they? or gay?). His master degree was for Marine Biology from the University of Hawaii. Upon finding that, I exclaimed, you should be a scientist! In which he said, I am a scientist. So the curious (or kaypoh me) asked, why are you doing this then? He said when he was graduating, there wasn't any decent paying job. There was one in Kenya but the girlfriend wasn't ready to move there. Then there was a job offer from Exxon but he promised his teacher not to take it. Well he did get the scientist job in Nice but it's starting in June, so I guess meanwhile he's just doing this whole tour guide thingy. You know regardless of me being so "kaypoh", I did hold my tongue and I didn't say, well I hope you really end up with your girlfriend because you are making a life changing decision based on her. See, I guess I really don't know what it's like to have that one great love in which you are willing to let go big things in your life. I like to think that, that great love will always be there no matter what and allow me to reach the things that I want to reach. Let's hope that I'll have it someday and I'll let you know what it's like, if it's worth sacrificing the things in your life or if it's really like the fuel that help you reach your goal in life. Maybe it's both :)

Hmmm ... upon writing all this, I feel it's very very bad of me to be writing this guy's life here. I know I would feel rather annoyed and shock if someone write such details description about me online without asking my permission. Hmmm ... well maybe he will never find out? If he does, he seems like a nice guy and I will be more than happy to remove all that I wrote about him. So anyway, that's Arthur. Mau was amused in seeing how taken I am by him :D Well it's always nice to see a handsome nice guy!!! and he's real nice. Well maybe he's required to, to be polite and all, but he seems genuinely nice. I am blinded :P Okay, enough about the boy. So this is Fontvieille, Monaco. For more picture of Monaco, you can go here.

After Monaco, we went to St. Paul. There's a lot of art shops / galleries there. Some are interesting. Again like all the places in Côte d'Azur, this place is also for the rich and famous. Apparently Michael Schumacher recently bought a property there.

Next stop was Cannes. Err ... I can't say much about Cannes. People were preparing for the film festival at that time and by the beach they also started setting up tents and stages for parties and such.

The last stop was Antibes. We saw the old lighthouse and the view from the hilltop was amazing. The blue water and sky looked rather peaceful. Then we also saw some of the rich yachts docking.

Did I fall in love with Côte d'Azur? I have to say no, not really. Somehow I feel I'm not rich enough for it :P The blue water of Nice is amazing though especially on some part of the beach when there weren't many people. Anyway, I put everything in 1 set in flickr, except for Monaco because it's a country on it's own, you can see them here.

Coincidentally on the flight back to Singapore, I sat next to this french girl from Nice. She looked so young, at most 22, maybe not even 20 yet. I have to say, at my age, other people are most probably younger than me, even perhaps Arthur :( Anyway this young girl was travelling to Bali alone!!! Again the protective older side of me came out, I was praying for her so that she would be okay. It's her first time in Asia. She does speak english but her tendency was to speak in French. She should be back in France now. She said she was going to be spending 12 days in Bali. I hope she had a nice experience and comes back to Bali soon. I'm passionate about people visiting Indonesia :) Anyway it's a totally different place and culture for her. I was really amazed by her. I told her that she's so brave, in which she said thank you, grinning. I admire her. YeeMaggio asked me why I admire her when I had already done a trip alone myself to a far away land, in which she admired me for that. I guess because I did my first trip alone at an older age, with some knowledge of the local language, with a comfortable amount of money. To be travelling alone to a far away land at this girl's age was just amazing for me. I do have to say, everyone has their own time in this world. I don't think I was ready to be travelling alone at her age. God gave me the right time for my journey and with that faith, we should believe that whatever it is, it will come at the right time for us. Okay, so that's it guys, the end of the France part. I actually feel a tiny bit sad now :P It's like closing a chapter but I do have to start the Spanish chapter and I'm kinda very interested to see the pictures. It's late, buonanotte tutti!

France ~ Aix En Provence and Marseille

2011-05-29T22:19:00.006+08:00

Hello peeps, before I continue with the story of my trip in France, let me just begin with normal life first. Well actually I'm not gonna talk much about this week. Yesterday I had Indonesian lunch with La Gioia, YeeMaggio, and NanSee. I kinda forced these non-Indonesians to have Indonesian food just because I hadn't eaten Indonesian food for almost a month. I think since before I left for my trip. Lunch was at Tambuah Mas and it was really really good (at least for me), the fried chicken wasn't its strong suit though. After lunch we went to watch Kung Fu Panda 2. I actually wasn't so keen in watching anything in 3D anymore but La Gioia seemed to be more interested in watching it in 3D, so we did and I have to say that it was a good choice. I think the 3D effect was nicely used and overall I think the movie was really really good. I think it's even better than the first one and it's rare for a sequel to be better than the first movie. I think the story has more weight in it (can I use the word 'weight' to describe the story?) and also I love it because the cinematography is beautiful. As for the characters, I think Po the panda is showing more and more of Jack Black's mannerism in its movement. His vocabulary is also definitely one that comes from Jack Black. The bad guy this time around is a peacock and I think he's really cool when he spreads his wings. I think it's very clever of the people in Dreamworks to make full use of the characteristics of each animals. I think it's also very clever of the writers not to show Po to be extremely amazing in his kungfu, instead they showed him relying on his friends a lot in each fight. I guess the part where I was perhaps rather disatisfied was when he was shown to be able to master moving a water drop easily, but I suppose it's a movie afterall. Oh yeah I have to add, Po called his teacher Master Shifu, it's actually redundant! :D Well, it's been 2 pretty good movies in the past 2 weeks. Next week is when Hangover 2 comes out. I really hope it's not gonna be so bad. So far the summer blockbuster movies have been pretty good for me, looking forward for more :)

Now let's talk about the trip. So after 2 nights in Avignon, we moved to Marseille. We didn't miss the train this time around :) It helps when your hotel is just next door to the train station. Actually Marseille wasn't in the early plan. I planned to just stay in Paris and Avignon while we're in France. However I made the mistake of not reading the day tours that I wanted to take correctly and so we kinda run out of ideas on what to do in Avignon. I was looking around at other cities in the south of France and somehow Marseille was chosen. I actually kinda forget why this city was chosen after all the other cities. I guess because it allows us to keep our schedule in going to Barcelona and though it's far from Nice, it allows us to arrive in Nice just in time for a day tour that I wanted to take in Nice. It's rather a crazy story which I will tell you more in the next post. I turns out I need to write another post to finish my story about my time in France.

Okay let's go back to Marseille. We arrived, put our bags in the hotel, and instead of exploring Marseille, we went straight to Aix en Provence. Since I didn't plan to stay in Marseille, I didn't read up or plan much about exploring the city. I instead read about Aix en Provence and I did hear about this city from LM who stayed there during her holiday last year. So I thought it's a nice city and so we took the bus there. When we got off the bus, we're actually a little confused about where to go and we met a young South Korean girl as we were looking at the map. Her name was Wang Yong (I think that's how you spell it) and she's studying in Bath, England currently. She was alone spending her easter holiday in the south of France. I thought it's pretty brave of her, being 22 and all and alone, and not speaking the language. By the way, she went to the Buckingham Palace with her friends to see the kiss during the wedding day. Anyway, we found the center of the town, went to the tourism office, got a map, and started walking. I didn't feel much for this city. It was bigger than Avignon and I didn't feel it to be pretty charming. Our first stop was a bakery which was amazing. Every single thing there was amazing! I love it! I got some calisson. I think Aix end Provence is its birth place. People are raving about it, including the uncle I talked to in Paris, but I'm not really a big fan of it. It's not as extremely amazing as I expected it to be. Well maybe it's just me. So anyway, Aix en Provence is Cézanne's hometown. The map I had shows many places related to his life. We ended up visiting the Granet Musesum but I don't recall we saw much of his works there. I remember seeing a work from Picasso though. It is a small museum. Then we walked around and I was not impressed with the town. We ended up in Vendome Pavilion, the small garden was pretty nice, we didn't go inside the building though.

This is where I decided to just go back to Marseille and see what Marseille has to offer and so we parted ways with the South Korean girl. Meeting someone her age often makes me realize how old I am and it gets me feeling rather like the older sister or something that I really hope she'll be alright in her trip and nothing bad happens to her. Anyway, I have only few pictures of Aix en Provence, you can go see them here.

Knowing that we don't have much time to spend in Marseille, I only had one thing that I wanted to see there and it was the Basilica Notre Dame de La Garde. For some reason (which I also don't know why), I am one who don't really take public transports if I can, in the cities I travelled in. If somewhere in the world wide web it is written that you can walk there, I would walk there. I'll take the metro because I think that is straight forward but I don't take buses. This time around, Mau kinda made the decision of no, we're not gonna walk there, we're gonna take the public transport! I have to say, she made the right decision. First we took the metro down to the old port (Vieux Port). This is a port where there are many boats dock.

Arriving there, we went to the tourism office to ask about the least painful way to go to the Basilica up on the hill. The nice guy told us the bus to take and after some time waiting, the bus did arrive. It happened to be a crazy day because there was a pretty massive jam. I got a seat next to a french lady and I asked her if it's like that every day. She said no and she wasn't sure why the traffic was so bad that day. When we got through the jam, it was time for the bus to navigate through the very narrow and pretty steep road up the hill. Both me and the lady thought it was very incredible that the bus and its driver could do this. The lady was pretty nice. She thought I was a japanese and I think it's hilarious. Thanks to her, we go off at the right stop which is actually the last stop for the bus. The bus stops in a few bus stops near the church compound but if one doesn't stop at the last bus stop, one still needs to climb up to reach the church. The lady said she lives next door to the church but there's nothing else but the church in that area so I wonder if she's actually a nun but I don't know what the french word for 'nun' is so I couldn't ask her. Little conversation like this really made my trip memorable. I got to talk to a stranger and obviously my french is bad but to be able to speak to her in french and she understood me and I understood her, I think it's pretty cool. It would be good if our conversation can be deeper and longer, however I can only speak so much with my limited french and I don't think she speaks english.

Anyway I was blown away by the basilica. Its location being on top of the hill, I guess made it not so easy for people to visit. Well maybe because it's already pretty late in the afternoon when we were there that there weren't many tourists and I liked it that way. Also because of its location, you can see a great view of Marseille. The sky was blue and bright and you can see the blue sea as well. It was breathtaking. The church itself is so beautiful for me. Granted it's not the biggest and richest (richly decorated with gold artifacts and such) church I've seen but I love it. The lady said, La basilique est très jolie. I thought jolie (cute / pretty) is understating it, I thought it was really really beautiful. I wished I could tell the lady how I love the church. It's bright and airy and being bright is such a plus point because many of these old churches tend to be dark inside them but this church is naturally bright with its windows. It has a lot of decoration related to ships in it. It makes sense because Marseille is a port town. I think it makes it pretty unique. As for the facade, the marbles reminded me of the Duomo in Florence and Siena. I just read in Wikipedia, it seems the white marbles did come from Carrara, the same place where the marbles that were used in the Duomo in Florence and Siena come from. The basilica really took my breathe away. The wind was strong though and at one point it made it pretty scary to explore the outside area. The silly me felt scared I would be blown away. Hmm ... now that I wrote such glorious compliments about it, I kinda missed being there, seeing the view I saw and feeling what I felt. It made me hope and wish I can go back to Marseille again one day, see the church, and spend longer time there. It felt pretty peaceful to be seeing Marseille from the top, especially knowing that it's so busy and chaotic down there. The church is the only thing we saw in Marseille, so I don't have many pictures of the city. You can go here to see pictures of the Basilica and Marseille's Old Port (Vieux Port).

By the way, the hotel we stayed in Barcelona was very very near Plaça de Catalunya and Las Ramblas. I was thinking that it must be so crazy there yesterday with the Champions League final between Barça and MU, which Barcelona won :) Also, with the recent Spanish protests happening which I think will continue to happen in the near future, I feel kinda blessed that it didn't happen when I was there and at the same time, since I fell in love with Barcelona, I really hope that things will get better in Spain soon and this beautiful and amazing city don't get ruined.

PS: I couldn't remember where I watched this music video, most probably in Paris. Anyway I made a note to get this song and I did and I got the whole album, Cantina Paradise, and I LOVE IT!!! It's interesting to know that the singer was bornt in Marseille :)

France ~ of Avignon and Provence

2011-05-27T23:36:00.001+08:00

So let's continue with the story of my trip, though actually it's better if I go to sleep now, but since there are so many things to go through, I better get them all out before I forget them. Let's begin.

So it was on Tuesday (May 3rd) that we were supposed to leave Paris and head to Avignon. We actually missed the train! By 6 minutes. I don't know whose fault it was and perhaps there's no point of assessing whose fault it was but I couldn't help to take it as my fault. If only I had made it so that we left the hotel earlier and if only I had been more alert perhaps we wouldn't have been lost on our way to the metro station (which we had used a few times) and didn't lose so much time. I was pretty devastated because I don't like mistakes and failures. I put a lot of F in my facebook's status that day and Carl said that I wasn't meant to take that train and I should take it easy. Still, an 85 euro mistake is (still is) very hard to swallow :( The new tickets cost more than double than the previous ones and I still feel kinda upset about it because I planned this and yet it got screwed up. If God wants me to learn about letting go and accepting failure in this trip, I know I still fail pretty badly in that. I just can't take things not going as I want them to be, but that is the very essence of life, no? Okay, enough ranting about things that I shouldn't keep in my heart anymore.

We made it to Avignon although a bit rather wrongly. We supposed to arrive at the Avignon Centre train station but the replacement tickets that Mau got, got us to Avignon TGV train station. Luckily there's a shuttle bus and for some reason, it was free. I have to say that in Avignon TGV train station, we saw a bird who's flapping its wings frantically and yet it didn't move at all, it just kinda hovered in the sky. We don't know why and we are kicking ourselves for not taking any picture or video of that bird. Other people were looking at the bird as well but I didn't see anyone taking any picture or video either. Anyways, back to Avignon. Avignon is a town on the south of France. Our hotel was near the station. I'm gonna tell you how directionally challenged I am. To go to the main sights of Avignon, one just needs to follow the straight road that runs from the train station to the centre of the town's historical landmarks. A straight road and I managed to take a turn somewhere that I was a bit lost when I wanted to go to Palais des Papes!!! Stupid me!

Palais des Papes was the first thing I saw in Avignon. I didn't it like much. It gave me the creep. I think because it's old and rather dark and I just can't see how the popes could love staying there. Maybe it was rather nice back in its heyday. So I didn't spend much time there. Here you can see the picture of Palais des Papes and the one with the gold Virgin Mary is Notre Dame des Doms.

After leaving the palace, I wondered around and next door there's the entrance to the garden Rocher des Doms. I love this place. It was not completely void of people but there's not really many people there and I just had a nice time, strolling alone, looking at everything and taking every view. I was feeling rather at peace and I guess I calmed down because now that I think of it, I didn't think about the fact that I missed the train when I was there, I was just thankful to God for being able to be there. There's a cave like structure with a fountain inside it. The only way I can explain it is it's like an open cave. Anyway you can go to the top of it and it's pretty fun navigating yourself among the rocks. I spent quite some time looking at the people there and looking around, there's a small vineyard nearby. Definitely my favourite place in Avignon. I didn't actually visit many places there. I did cross one thing that I wanted to do in France, which was to go to Carrefour :P Anyway, digressing. After which, I went to see Pont d'Avignon / Pont St-Bénézet. The ticket covered both Palais des Papes and Pont d'Avignon. Pont d'Avignon is a bridge which is now only half of what it used to. Flood caused a lot of damages to the bridge and so some parts of it collapsed. Now it's like a bridge which is a bit stuck in the middle of the Rhône River. I didn't listen to the whole audio guide. Basically there's a story about a shepherd (Saint Bénézet) who got a vision from God to build a bridge. The local government said there's no way and no point of building a bridge. Then he kinda managed to lift / put a heavy stone as the foundation of the bridge and people then became believers of him and started building the bridge. So that's Avignon. As I said, I didn't explore much. There were a lot of shops selling lavender products (Provence is famous for its Lavender) but I didn't get any. I thought I'd come back to the shops, but I didn't have the time to. To see more pictures from Avignon, you can go here.

The next day we had Provence tour. The day started with visiting Orange. We saw its Triumphal Arch and the ancient Roman Theatre. Granted the Roman Theatre is not as what it used to be but it is still a working theatre. If I recall correctly, I think a production of The Phantom of the Opera is gonna be staged there soon. I think it's so much fun and definitely memorable to perform at such an old stage in which it has been used for hundreds of years.

After Orange, we had wine tasting at a vineyard, Ogier, which is at the Châteauneuf-du-Pape area. I don't drink a lot and often but I kinda like visiting vineyards :) and now I kinda like the smell of wine as well :) Anyway at Ogier, the grapes are grown on 4 different types of soil, there's the soil that are covered with rocks like pebbles and other are covered with other types of rocks. The same grapes grown under these different soils do produce different taste of wine, it's interesting.

After the wine tasting, we headed on to the village of Roussillon. This place is so beautiful for me and its images really lasted in my head. When I was in Provence, I didn't think that Provence was so amazing actually. I kept on comparing it with Tuscany and I was thinking of how I love Tuscany more. However Roussillon with its colors were just amazing for me. The ochre landscape is striking being set against the blue sky. I love it so much! There's a hiking track that one can follow to explore the area. Unfortunately we didn't have much time to spend in this village that I only explored a little bit of it. I felt kinda sad about it. Even though I only went in for a short walk, I love it so much. The colors were amazing for me. Even though the part which I walked in was small and the landscape were totally different, but because of the colors I kinda had a James Franco's 127 hours moment there :P I really really think this place is awesome. I guess because I've never seen anything like it before.

After Roussilon, we visited Gordes. Unlike Roussilon, this village is kinda all white. With the sun shining brightly, Gordes appeared kinda shiny :P As I was looking at the pictures I took, I really have to say that this village is quite pretty :)

The last stop was to see Pont du Gard. Pont du Gard is an aqueduct, which means a bridge which was used to transport water as well. It was big and the sun was still in the sky but it hit the wall at such an angle that my head was telling me how I love the way the sun kissed it. I love it because it just looked so majestic and as usual I'm a sucker for historical and old stuff and to see something like that, I was just in awe, in full of gratitude to God that He gave me the chance to see such things. My travel always made me feel thankful to God for being alive and for being able to be in the places I've been and see the things I've seen. Is it wrong for me to say that I need to travel more, simply because travelling brings me the moments I am most thankful for my life?

Anyway, to see more pictures from the tour, you can go here. The weather was great but the wind was crazy. Adeline, the nice and sweet guide, explained to us that the wind is known as Le Mistral. I remembered Mr. Ben explained this on his first class with us. It's a really really strong wind. There were times when I felt that I was being pushed. But this wind drives away the cloud and as a result you get a really really blue sky. Yeah, it also causes them not to have much rain, I think they have less than 30 days of rain a year but since they have rivers all around, I think they're doing okay and Provence is not actually a hot place. I remembered when we were driving, I loved how the strong wind caused the grasses to move like waves, it looked pretty nice. Still, I can't really say I'm a big fan of the wind :P I'm gonna stop now. I think one more post about France and we're done with France *hopefully* Darn, it's really late now, I really have to go to sleep. I really don't know how to face Mr. C tomorrow :( Buonanotte tutti!

On Stranger Tides

2011-05-22T12:22:00.014+08:00

Ciao tutti! I'm back. I've been back for a few days now. Arrived here on Wednesday and I've been trying to install myself back to real life, normal routine and such. It hasn't been going great physically though. I'm still feeling so so tired. I'm tired and yet I don't sleep well and I get headaches sometime. Perhaps this is how jetlag feels like. I want to blog about the trip and post pictures and all but with close to 20 GB of pictures, 4700 something of them, I don't know when I will finish sorting and uploading them all. I'll try my best getting them out and writing about the trip, okay. I'm gonna start now but let's just begin with what's been happening with life since I came back first.

Well I never discuss certain things about my life and it will remain so. Let's just take it as I've been living the normal life routine as usual and normal life routine include french class on Saturdays. Yesterday was my first time attending class with Mr. C. Jacq told us that his class is tough and stressful. I didn't expect it to be really really stressful and yet it was, I was at lost for words, literally since I speak only little french. The class is suprisingly so big right now. I don't like it because it feels less personal. Our level is supposed to be advanced but I don't think I'm advanced enough for him :( The rest seems to be keeping up with him, it's crazy. His choice of topic is also very advanced that it's a totally different ball game. Another really stressful thing is his workload. Man! Students days supposed to be way behind me now. I need to really step it up but I just don't have any energy for it now.

After class was lunch at an Italian restorant with La Gioia. I'm still missing Italia so very much, so I'm all into pasta and I finally got my panna cotta. One of the waiter in Rome told me, since it's not summer, they're not serving panna cotta yet. I don't know if he's right. After lunch we went to watch Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. I'm a huge fan of Captain Jack Sparrow so watching this movie is a must. I don't know if it's because I was so tired but I kinda had to force myself to stay awake at the front part of the movie. Well perhaps the movie is not as exhilarating as one always hopes in a Pirates movie but I will still always come back because of Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow. He's still so awesomely cool. As for the story, I think it was so so. It was pretty straight forward. No major twist or turn. I don't feel much for Penelope Cruz's character. There are 2 new characters added in the mix, the clergy man and the mermaid. They seemed to be added to fill the void which was left by Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley. These characters were played by not so famous actors (yet) but I thought they were pretty nice actually. I choose the clergy man over Will Turner any time and I also think the mermaid was prettier than Elizabeth Swan :P As much as perhaps I'm not so impressed with this movie, I will definitely come back for future pirates movie for as long as Captain Jack Sparrow by Johnny Depp is in it :) So that's life, let's talk about the trip.

I'm only gonna write about the time I spent in Paris, simply because those pictures are the only pictures I managed to upload in flickr so far. I arrived in Paris' Charles De Gaulle on 30th April 2011. The flight in was with Air France. I didn't like Air France much, but since KLM and Air France have merged, I have no choice in it. I was so happy that it was KLM that brought me back to Singapore. Anyway, arriving in the airport was rather weird for me because after we landed we actually took the stairs to get off the plane and walked to the ground in which a shuttle bus was waiting for us. It was early morning (6 am something) and it was so cold. Immigration check was a breeze. The officer just asked me to scan my finger in the scanner and no other question was asked. I was very very pleased about it. Then I followed what my research told me and waited at the train departure area until Mau landed. She did land and we found our train, found our hotel and we did discover that the Eiffel Tower was within walking distance from our hotel. We went there and parted ways because she was trying to meet her friend and I wanted to visit Museum D'Orsay.

Since May 1st is a public holiday in France too, it kinda threw off my plan, because many things close on that day and on Monday, many museums are closed :( Anyway, I couldn't find the metro station in Eiffel and I didn't feel like taking the metro as well. The metro and the metro stations are not really nice. The stations sometime smell of pee and it's dingy and the trains are not any better. I don't understand why people need to open the door to the train themselves. We are so pampered here in Singapore. So anyways, I walked all the way to Museum D'Orsay which was a really long walk but I got to see Paris. There was sun but it wasn't so hot. Reaching D'Orsay, I was so disappointed because the queue was crazy long and I didn't have the time to do that because I had a Versailles tour in a few hours :( So that was the first disappointment. I decided to go for lunch instead.

Mau joined me for lunch and then we were off in our Versailles tour. Versailles is one of those things in my life list that I wanted to see in life. I grew up with Japanese comic books and one of the things I read was Rose of Versailles and its spin off, Lady Oscar by Riyoko Ikeda. In fact Rose of Versailles was kinda my source of information for the French revolution which is not really a good source since it was peppered with fiction. Anyway, I'm thrilled that I finally got to go there. The compound is huge and looking at the map, I didn't see all of it. Since it's so big, perhaps one needs a whole day to explore the whole thing. I love the garden. It's huge and a bit like a maze. One can just get lost in it. Imagine if you live in the castle and you need to get away from someone, you can just choose a section of the garden and just enjoy the fountain, the air, and the sun. You can see some pictures here.

The next day was Sunday. We had a Giverny tour. Thank God that as I confirmed the Versailles tour, I enquired about this tour and found out it leaves in the morning on Sundays instead of in the afternoon as written in my print out. I don't know much about Giverny, I just stumbled into it when I was browsing on tours in Paris. Monet the painter spent a lot of time and his remaining days in Giverny. So we were visiting his house and his gardens and I have to tell you, it's the most beautiful garden I've ever seen in my life! He has 2 gardens. The first one is in front of his house which is bursting with colors of flowers, it was amazing! It's not so big but not so small as well, you can find your little corners of peace there. I was told that the flowers are different depending on the seasons and I can imagine so. When I was there, there were many tulips and many other flowers. The colors were just incredible! The second garden was a very short walk away. It's sometime called the water garden or the japanese garden. This is the garden in which he had the pond which inspired his water lilies paintings. Unfortunately when we were there, no water lilies blooming. It's still a nice garden, it's different. It's more green but you get the pond and the small river running around it. It's a different kind of feel and seeing the reflection of the plants on the water is amazing. I still love it but I guess I like the colorful garden more. Too see the pictures I have of them, you can go here. Monet's house itself is rather small but it's not so tiny or anything. I just find some of the bedrooms to be really small, around the size of my room actually. I do like his sitting room though (I think it's called the sitting room). It's kinda spacious. Right now it's filled with replicas of his paintings but I can imagine how nice it is to be sitting in it, in his sofa, reading, having tea, sleeping, again enjoying the nature outside from the windows and the sun and the air. A good relaxing existence, I imagine :P

We were actually joined by Mau's friend and her colleague in this tour. After Giverny, we went for lunch and headed to Basilique du Sacré-Cœur. The way this church is located reminded me of Trinità dei Monti. You have to walk many flights of stairs to reach Sacre Coeur but the feeling I got getting to this church was that of utter strangeness. There were so many people in the areas below the church doing all kinds of different things which is weird considering that it's happening in front of a church. Well some were pretty harmless but people making out and drinking beers in front of a church is just too strange for me. Well to be fair perhaps those grounds don't belong to the church so they cannot say anything about it. Anyways I felt really really bad that I didn't actually try to take any picture inside the church at all. There was a mass going to happen and yet they still let tourists in. It was so weird.

After that, Mau accompanied me to go to the Pantheon. I wanted to go to the Pantheon because the one in Rome captivated me so much so I wonder what the Pantheon in Paris would look like though I know there will not be any hole in the center of its roof. We got lost. When we got there, it was closed. Perhaps because it's Sunday but it could also be because it's May 1st. Then we walked and overcame being lost many times and we reached Notre Dame de Paris. I have to say that I was very very bad. There was a mass going on and again like in Sacre Coeur, tourists could still go in and people were taking pictures all over and I was one of them :$ Yeah I am very very bad! It's so weird. On one side I get that they perhaps want to be nice by letting people come to see the church eventhough there are masses but on the other side I felt it was so distracting to be praying and listening to a sermon when there's so many noises and camera flashing from the tourists. When I was in Rome last Friday (the 13th), I wanted to enter the Pantheon and there was a mass. They actually closed it for the tourists during the duration of the mass and people just had to wait outside by the door. It's inconvenient but I guess it's better that way. I guess it's just 2 different ways of doing things in France and Italy. So anyway, I didn't go up the Notre Dame de Paris. Perhaps one day when I get to go back to Paris, I'll do this and I'll take better pictures of the gargoyles.

After Notre Dame, we went to the Eiffel Tower. The sun was setting and it was getting cold and the queue to go up the tower was crazy. We didn't go all the way to the top because we were tired of queuing. The view was pretty nice though. I think the Eiffel Tower is kinda over rated but yeah I get the draw, it's iconic. I didn't step into Champ de Mars at all though. Again perhaps this is one of the thing I have to do if I ever come back. Anyway, here's a picture of Paris taken from the tower. To see more pictures of Paris, you can go here.

The next day was Louvre day. The museum is so big and we were there before opening time (9 am) and I think I left sometime before 3 pm. There are just so many things to see. I did see the Monalisa. It's a big draw there. The pushing and shoving was crazy, I didn't like it very much. To see some of the things I saw, you can go here.

After Louvre, I actually didn't have anything planned. Initially I thought I would go to the Orangerie to appease my disappointment for not being able to go to Museum D'Orsay. However, after Louvre I just had enough arts for one day, so I decided, okay I'm just gonna walk pass through Jardin des Tuileries and perhaps walk in Champ Elysees and see how far I could go in that straight path. That's when I met a french uncle. He happened to be walking along and I responded when I think he was talking to himself saying it's raining. It was rather drizzling, a light rain. With my limited french we managed to have some conversation. My french is so sucky that I didn't even use the formal form in talking to him, I feel so sorry for that. For him though, I think I'm some kind of this interesting thing. Here you have an Asian girl from Indonesia who's alone, who happened to speak a bit of french. I asked if he knew where Indonesia is. He said yes, it's the first area which was hit by the tsunami. He commented on why I learn french. My answer that it was for interest didn't satisfy him much. I know, who would want to be tortured by french grammars and conjugation just for fun? I guess it's the unexplainable me! The weirdest thing happened when he invited me for a meal. I was stunned and shocked and since he's forward like that, I was also forward in telling him it's weird for an Asian to be asked this considering we just met less than 15 minutes ago. He said it's innocent, anyway it's during daylight, if it's during the evening it is perhaps kinky :P Well we parted ways in the middle of way. He still tried to interact with me, telling me if I don't have anything to do, he could show me the church Madeleine which was very beautiful. I heard of the church but I was thinking that I don't want more stranger things to happen, so I declined. In retrospect I think I did kinda throw caution to the wind when I talked to him. I mean I told him about my trip, that I'll be visiting Avignon, Marseille, Barcelona, etc. In Indonesia and other parts of the world, talking to a stranger could get you hypnotized and you'll end up in a bad place and I perhaps disclosed too much information to him. But thank God, nothing bad happened and he was perhaps really harmless. He told me that I'll eat better in Avignon and things'll get cheaper than Paris and I should be extra careful in Marseille and Barcelona. So he's a nice uncle, I guess :)

Anyways, so I continued walking and I reached Arc de Triomphe. It's a really really really long walk. The fact that I did that under the light rain without umbrella is rather remarkable. I have to say I was so proud of myself but I was even prouder with what I did next. I did plan to visit Arc de Triomphe but it was for the days before and since I was rather tired, I didn't get to do it the days before. So anyway now that I'd reached it, I decided that I shoud really go to the top. I paid the 9.50 € entrance fee. I read in the internet that there was a lift but I couldn't find it and I ended up having to take the 214 stairs up! I realized something about me, I hate circular / spiral staircase especially when it's inside a closed structure. I'll start to get disoriented, claustrophobic, and dizzy. There were thoughts in my head that I wasn't going to be able to do it and I thank God almighty that I made it. As dramatic as this sounds, but I really want to say that I almost died doing it. I was rather out of breathe and mentally it was hard. I couldn't be so proud that I managed to do it considering the many steps I have taken since morning and the view from the top of was just so rewarding for me. It was really really so rewarding. After I was done, I saw that there was a lift and I took it to go down. The staff at the lift was looking at me funny perhaps because he thought that I shouldn't be in it, but he didn't say anything. Upon reaching the bottom I saw that they're preparing some sort of ceremony or something at the Arc De Triomphe. From the taiwanese guy who talked to me, I found out that they do this everyday but I don't know if he's right. I think it's their way to respect all the fallen soldiers. So that was my day that day. My last day in Paris. After writing all that, I have to say that the last day was pretty remarkable. I accomplished something on my own and I got to talk to strangers. I do have to say my most memorable moments in this trip were the moments I spent alone and I feel great about that. Okay that's all for now, I'll try to write the next part and get the pictures out soon.

The Day Of The Wedding

2011-04-29T17:09:00.004+08:00

I'm writing this as the wedding of Prince William's and Kate Middleton is going on. Some random thoughts. Kate looks so skinny!!! I love the queen's dress, it's so sunshiny! I love how Prince William was smiling when Kate was reciting her wedding promises. Love the trees in the church. The ceremony of them being married was pretty short actually; to think all the fanfare surrounding it has started hours ago. I have to say they look pretty compatible together. Good for them I suppose. Another person my age getting married. Well ... if I have my turn, the guy must be one hell of a guy :) If I don't, maybe I'll understand why.

Anyways, so today is the day I'm starting out on my journey to cross out some things in my life / bucket list. I'm actually feeling pretty nervous about it. My luggage is full and I don't know if I have missed out anything. I've taken notes on all the things that I can think of and yet my mind still race now and then on other parts which perhaps I haven't covered. I have some fear in me. I really don't know why. The last time I made a journey this far, I was kinda in a come-what-may and surrender-in-God mode and yet right now even though I'm not on this trip alone, I'm feeling pretty nervous about the unknown. Perhaps because I have done it one time, I know what could go wrong, what will get extremely confusing, and when I think about all that, I just get a bit of a panic attack. It's the control freak in me who doesn't like the unknown (but you cannot control the variables, honey). I really should just let go and embrace each unknown thing that will come my way and have faith in God, my shepherd. Anyway, I have prayed today and I know I'll be praying a lot throughout this journey, mostly I guess for the blessing for being able to do this :P I guess at this point there's really just God and me in this journey.

Paris seems to be really cold right now, that's worrying. I hope the temperature will be nicer when I arrive there. Because of the wedding, I didn't take a nap today. I kinda regret that. I should have slept! I really hope I can get some decent sleep tonight, especially since I'm really gonna hit the ground running and start crossing things of my list when I arrive. I never really pray for a safe flight, perhaps I should. I remember reciting the Lord's prayer a few times on my flight back from Italy to Singapore because the turbulence was pretty scary for me :P

Okay, I'm gonna call mom before I go. There's a few people whom I want to thank. The first person I want to thank is perhaps Copper who have really taken the time to answer my questions in great details. There's also Carl, who's ever so supportive about people taking a journey and exploring new things. There are also others who have listened to me and took time to answer my questions. I contemplated if I should write their names here, but I guess one name will raise questions, so I will refrain from putting any name :P So that's it peeps, last post before I go. If there's a bit of a disappointment is that I will miss the Singapore General Election. It's looking rather interesting this year and the fact that I personally know one of the candidates makes it more interesting for me to follow. Take care everyone. I'll try to blog if I can. Ciao!

One Hundred Years of Solitude

2011-04-23T22:35:00.003+08:00

Hello peeps, how have your easter weekend been going? My mind goes to my primary and junior high school days. We always had celebration for easter and it's really fun. Do you once awhile miss your childhood days? It would be fun to be decorating some eggs now.

Moving on. The title of the post is from a book which I recently finished, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. I got it as a christmas present for myself. Well some people may think it took a long time for me to finish it but I think it's pretty fast for me :P The book got me thinking and doing stuff which I'm not gonna elaborate here. It's a pretty interesting book, especially the ending because I totally didn't see it coming. I guess I was expecting some enlightening ending like in Paulo Coelho's books but the ending of this book wasn't like that. There's like a twist in the ending and I thought it was really good and sad at the same time. The story is about the different generations in a family, from when they began to when they ended. It's pretty sad because I think each of the characters had a very sad and tragic ending in their lives. The family just seemed to be experiencing one bad thing after another. One character that struck me the most was the main matriarch, Úrsula. She's so awesome. She's such a strong woman both in characters and mind and she's simply stronger than any of the male characters though they get more focus in the story. I'm glad that Úrsula lasted longer in the book. I admire her a lot, her strength when she chased after her son who ran away, when she confronted his son who abused his power, when she tried to keep her family together in such turmoil, and her comfort and openness in instilling good values to her children, grandchildren, and great great grandchildren. It's an interesting book and at times I can relate to the characters who felt restless in their lives. Somehow I feel that no matter how old I'll be, whichever stage my life is, I'll always have that feeling of restlessness. Some of the characters in the book buried themselves in some kind of work but I don't think it eased their racing mind and it just felt sad :( On other part, the story ended with the fact that the whole story of the family had been written before it even began. All the family members had in one point or another tried to decipher the notes but they couldn't to. It was revealed at the end when the last surviving member of the family was dying. I wonder if such things are not meant to be known. I mean if you have known how your whole entire life story is, you would perhaps have tried to change its course, no? It got me thinking on my way home today. But still I would like to know about one part of my life, I'm just wondering if I'll be okay :( Hmmm ... I've just been in a rather downhearted mood these days, since last week actually :(

Anyways, today started with the last class in this level. We had a test. Mr. M was super nice, I'm not really sure why he's that nice actually. I wonder if all the whining really got to him or he just wanted us to do amazingly well, which we all did. Everyone is like scoring 90 and above. First he allowed us to do the writing part at home. With the help of a dictionary and my notes, I actually made so few mistakes that I was totally in awe. I managed to go through many lines without any mistake, so that's amazing for me. Then he, as many of the teachers I have had, left the class for some time, so that allowed people to "discuss", but the worst possible thing (I think) was that people eventually just openly discussed the questions and answers when he was actually sitting in the room. I don't really know how to comment on this. I felt bad but perhaps it really didn't matter to him. Oh well. We'll be having Mr. C after this. I'm not sure how he's like. Hope he's cool. We have reached advanced actually and it's unbelievable. I remembered the day when we were getting the book we're using currently and I wondered if I was actually gonna get through it. I actually did. Time really flies? I'm not sure if our french knowledge warrant us a place in advanced class. I think we're not that good. I don't think I'm that amazing. I still don't understand most of my teachers when they speak and listening comprehension is almost always devastating for me. I'm trying to recall how it was like when I was studying Italian. I think though perhaps I couldn't understand a movie or a listening exercise, I could always kinda understand my teachers. I hope I get better but sometime all the memorization are too demanding for the lazy me. It's hard to push my brain to store all these information :(

Anyway it's a one-week break for my classmates. Except for LM, everyone seemed to be on board and I'm happy about it. I'm sad though that LM will not be in the class anymore, because she's kinda been my constant, but she does have her bundle of joy to welcome. I'm so happy for her considering all she's been through. One-week break, but it's a longer break for me. I wonder if I should elaborate it here, but perhaps I should. For my 29th birthday present this year, I'm getting myself a chance to cross the number one thing on my life list currently, which is to go to Barcelona and see La Sagrada Família. So that's the plan :) I'm leaving next Friday and this time it's not a solo trip. Mau asked if she could join me and I said yes. It makes sense economically and it allows me to cover more area. So this time around, I'll be going to France (staying in Paris, Avignon, and Marseille), Spain (staying in Barcelona), and Italy (staying in Milan and Rome), and I'll have a 7-hour plus transit time in Amsterdam which I hope gives me enough time to go to the Keukenhof garden. I really look forward to be back in Italy again, mi manca tantissima!!! We'll hoping to visit other cities and areas along the way. All are already planned and I really hope all will work out well. I'm looking forward for it but as usual I have other things to deal it. So until next Friday, I'm just gonna keep it cool and focus on the tasks that I have to deal with. Though Mau will be with me on this, there'll be time when we'll be on our own different paths. It kinda made me nervous but I'm also looking forward to it. Somehow when you have other people to think of, you perhaps get too comfortable and rely on the fact that someone else would be there for you but the truth is and this is what's really important for me, I should always be able to do things on my own. That comfortable feeling made me rather nervous and worried about doing things alone, but I have to fight through it. I know I would have loved the experience of exploring alone. Anyway, there's a crazy person starting fire at La Sagrada Família a few days ago :( I really hope they will not close the church because that would mean I don't get to go inside it!!! That would be heartbreaking. Though the list did say, just go to Barcelona and see La Sagrada Família, I would really really really want to enter it and see its inside, so please please God, please!

So can we talk about my feeling now, please? I've been feeling rather heartbroken. It's really stupid actually. I've seen it happening on other people and I have listened to people pouring their heart out on the same thing and now it's happening to me. It's stupid!!! I can remember the day it all started and I remember thinking that I'd be fine because there's no way I was gonna fall for this guy and in the end I did and it's so unfair!!! I remember Astley once told me that I had this huge wall that made it hard for people to enter and yet this guy managed to tear it down easily. As usual with my luck, nothing is gonna happen and I can't help wanting to scream, WHY??!?!? WHY GOD? I just hate this heartbroken feeling that I have right now, this feeling when your heart is in pieces :'( Still, I couldn't help feeling that God's timing IS perfect. In my last Italian trip, I got to get away when my closest allies were leaving. This time, I have this Europe trip to get me out of the mess I've made. I don't know how I'll be when I come back. I'm thinking I'll be more depressed but we should just be hopeful, right? I mean what else can we do but be hopeful. Be hopeful that something perfect and amazing will come our way and even if they don't, we're still gonna be alright. I'm way too heartbroken right now to be able to say that with any conviction. So I'm just gonna stop now. I hope you guys are having better days. If not, just take comfort that another long weekend is coming next week. Take care 'aight!

Limitless

2011-04-09T22:18:00.001+08:00

My head is kinda throbbing right now. I had another long Saturday. Hmmm ... if only I could have one of those pills from the movie, Limitless, which I watched today. Perhaps I would have had some clarity right now and this post will be extremely interesting. Let's start with the movie, Limitless, which I watched because of Bradley Cooper. Hmm ... it's weird, perhaps I'm kinda over him but I didn't find him to be extremely gorgeous here, except for when he appeared in the ending. He looked good clean cut. The one thing that captured me about him in this movie is how blue his eyes are. They are so blue and so captivating. NanSee thought he used contact lenses :P Anyway, Limitless wasn't as amazing as I thought it would be. I particularly didn't like the ending but I supposed it's a logical ending for it. I mean if a drug could make you be so smart, then you should really use that intelligence to figure out what's inside the drug and make it better and safer. Still, a life which was kinda based on cheating and without any major consequences doesn't really gel well with me. So basically I'm not raving about this movie :P

As usual my day today started with class. Nothing much can be said about it though the morning started so unexpectedly. De was the only one there when I came and he was actually late, which meant I was also late too if you're wondering. Yeah, I've been coming pretty late these past few weeks. Anyway, I'm just so relieved to see De there because being left alone with the teacher is nerve wrecking for me. De said, "But Mr. M is not bad". Well it's not him, it's just any teacher will make me nervous if I'm left alone with them. Simply because I don't speak french. So since there were only the 2 of us in the morning with Mr. M, I think we got to know his personal side more. After class was ramen lunch in Ippudo with some of the classmates and Yeni. Oshie loves this place so much that other ramen places fell short in his grading :P Well, I did love my ramen there but I'm pretty easy, I guess. I just don't like Ajisen Ramen :P

So anyway there were things said during the lunch that made me think some things about me. I was pretty relieved to be meeting NanSee afterwards. By the way I've been meeting her for some Saturdays in a row now, that I told her I feel like I'm dating her. Errr ... that is so wrong!!! Anyways, I just needed her opinion regarding some of the things said about me during lunch. She kinda knows me for some years now and she's still around in my life, hence I think I do have to be thankful that someone can accept me for who I am and also at the same time it shows as a proof that I'm not totally bad, that some people do find me nice, interesting, and worthy enough to be kept in their lives. Well maybe they are just amazingly nice people. The thankful part really made me feel thankful for the friends in my lives. My first thought goes to the people in Singapore who knows me well, like NanSee and la Gioia, who really get me and know what I will like or dislike and accept me for everything that I am and don't get surprised anymore with how I think, feel, or behave. I remember one time la Gioia told me that she knew that there would often be times when I need my space and she also knew how distinct I am in my opinion of things and I am very clear in what I want or don't want. These are the same knowledge of me that my good friends like Dewi and also perhaps Marlisa and Emilia understand about me.

So they get me. Even if they don't, I think they are not so surprised with what I can say or do. I don't really know how to describe how I feel or bring across my point here. Let me try. This week someone told me that she thought I was the happy-go-lucky kind, echoing the same thing that people told me as I mentioned in the previous post. This person didn't expect that I could be so emo*. Well I just basically told her that I need my space a LOT and I would rather be alone rather than be with boring people. Like seriously, my God, boring people are just ... I just feel I'm wasting my time if I have to hang out with them. Time that I can use to do other things that perhaps can calm me down or make me happy. I'm gonna be fair here and say they are not perhaps boring but they're just not interesting for me. They're perhaps a lot of fun for other people, but for me they just don't have anything interesting that can capture my attention and make me want to get to know them more, and worse still as I found out today, if they don't get my sense of humour. Well fine, some things that I thought are normal or funny or a-kind-of-a-joke things perhaps can be interpreted as being totally uncalled for, rude, too straightforward or direct, out of place, or plain wrong but guess what, there are crazy people out there who are as crazy as me or get my craziness and I have so much more fun with these kinda people. So as I was contemplating if the comments should make me reflect on myself and my characters, I ended up just wanting to say fuck it! So you think I'm crazy and improper for saying the things that I say, well fine, I don't hold that against you. I guess we're just not in the same frequency and that's fine, let me hang out with people who are more in my wavelength :) But I think if you can accept this about me, you will realize that I can be kinda fun or funny and my honesty can be something beneficial for you. I do actually hold my tongue, though perhaps many people will not believe this about me but really I do and when I do, I do it in every aspect of the way. I start from not saying what I really think about the person to the point of when I don't correct the person when they do something wrong and this is actually not beneficial for them and this basically shows that I don't give a shit about them, that I really just don't care. I don't know about you but I think it's better when someone cares about you, rather than not. Hmm ... I sound angry, don't I? Oh well ... there you go, I think I manage to say what I really want to say. If you're gonna mark me as stubborn, so be it :D

What else to say. This week has its good fortune but that doesn't mean I still don't have problems to deal with. I'm getting really tired and frustrated with things but I have to push on. I guess I just have to see it as noone else will look out for me except for myself. I guess noone else but God can do it better anyway. So God, please show me the way. Yesterday started and ended in a more relaxed mood and I think the start of next week would also be more relaxed and calmer. I guess what I need to try to do now, is try to keep being level headed (as if I ever am!) when the mess come trudging my way. Of course I like to just pray every night so that God protects me and keeps me from harm way. That's about it peeps. May God also protect you and keep you from harm way. Buonanotte!

*I really don't know how one describes emo in proper english, so I used the word as is. I guess my best bet to describe it is to be a cross between emotional and temperamental?

Good Movies This Week

2011-04-02T20:48:00.003+08:00

I'm very tired now that it's really hard to push my brain to churn out sentences. So let's try if I can make this brief and avoid repeated sentences. There were 2 good movies this week and so let's start with that.

On Tuesday, I met YeeMaggio to catch up and talk about her newly acquired freedom. I think good things really come to people who work hard for it and she's one example of that. We went to watch Morning Glory which also highlight that idea, that when you work hard, something good will definitely come out of it. I love Morning Glory very much. I came in not expecting it to be amazing but I thought it was really good, funny, and entertaining. I kinda could relate with some of the things that happened to Rachel McAdams' character. I thought the cast was great. It helps that there's a handsome nice guy in there too :) Love it, love it, love it.

After class today, I had lunch with YeeMaggio, NanSee, and JM (my brain is too tired to create a name for her in this blog). We didn't spend much time together after lunch because me and NanSee decided to watch Mary and Max. I thought it's really really good. It's an animated film for adults based on a true story. The movie is about a young australian girl who randomly picked a name from a phone book and started writing letters to that person, who happened to be a 40 year old something guy living in New York. I felt that the way the story moved kinda mimicked the growth of the characters. When the girl was young, it was funny. As she grew older the story became deeper and more serious. The ending was pretty sad that I shed 1-2 tears. It was funny, touching, and enlightening, it's really really good.

I don't really feel like writing more. I'm so tired. This week has had its difficulties that if I have to list them all, I'll just get sad. With some things that kinda get resolved, more difficult and problematic things come my way. Damn, why can't things just be easy? In the class today, Mr. M asked us to talk about stress and such. I had U as my partner and she was stunned to know that I get stressed a lot, get depressed, get sad, and get withdrawn from the world and be unfriendly when I get stressed out. For the record, that conversation didn't take place entirely in french :P Anyway, U was surprised to find out this about me because she said I always look happy. Err ... Also this week, SC was telling me that I didn't seem to be the kind who get depressed. He thought I was the happy-go-lucky kind. I don't know how to respond to this. I'm still pretty twisted and restless. Obviously there are people and places who make me feel more relaxed and happy. Sadly those places or people are not in my everyday existence, so I guess I just try to get by. I don't really know if you get what I mean. I guess why I wrote this is because I'm just so stunned with how people perceive me. On one side, sometime I feel that they just don't know who I really am, what I am like. On the other side, I wonder if I am all that, that they think of me, it's just I just don't realize it yet. I don't really don't know.

There are perhaps may other things that I can write about. Feeling, sentiment, frustration, worry ... but I feel that by not talking about it or writing it out, I can kinda contain it and not let it go because when they go out, it's like a flame which get bigger and bigger and I'll end up being emotional and right now there are just too many things that I need to solve, that emotion is crippling. I don't know if I am making any sense. Take care peeps!

Of Sarcasm and Thoughts

2011-03-19T21:28:00.003+08:00

Hello guys, how are you doing? I had a 14-hour day today. I'm pretty tired. I'm glad to be all showered, smelling kinda nice, and just be in my room. I'm digging my brain to get a coherent flow of thoughts to be put here.

This week hasn't been awesome simply because my mind is so obsessed with something and that something doesn't happen. Well perhaps not yet. So many people are telling me to be patient and that's exactly what I am not. I'm thinking if I should be plotting for plan B but I'm way too tired to do it now or this weekend for that matter. Please God, please the universe, let me have this, and let it go really really well, please?

So today, I went to watch Rango with NanSee. That girl was sorry that she forgot my birthday (she realized it after logging in to Facebook) that she got me a chocolate mousse today and treated me for a movie. It's really a sign of people who know me, they know I'm easily satisfied with movies and food. I have to say, I really really love the treat. It's always nice when someone gives you something, no? So I chose Rango because of Johnny Depp. However I'm not liking the movie much. I even found it to be rather boring. The characters were all these desert animals which are far from being cute, except for the mariachi owls, I think they were pretty entertaining. I can't comment much on the story because I thought it was rather predictable. There's a character who kinda thought pretty highly of himself, who luckily got into a position of importance, only to be proven to be a fake when it mattered, but then found his way back to redeem himself, and then everyone lived happily ever after. There were some pretty funny moments though. I did have a good laugh but it's not really a movie which I will watch over and over again. It's rather weird that I found this movie to be not too appealing especially since the reviews have been encouraging and there are many people raving about it. I think it's totally necessary that everyone has different opinions in this world but I really wonder why I'm not seeing how great this movie is, the way other people see it.

Other than the movie, I accompanied NanSee to get her ticket home from a travel agency in Chinatown. I showed her the touristic area of Chinatown. Chinatown really has some contrasting sides. On one side you have the tourists / (I think) caucasian expats area and on the other side, it's the Chinatown area where the locals and the people from China hang out. They are really 2 completely different sides of Chinatown. I will refrain from commenting further just because I don't want to appear so judgmental ... but wait, I'm already evidently and obviously judgmental :P but yeah, I'm just not gonna comment any further.

Today someone said something to me. After hearing what was said, I was thinking if she's being sarcastic and I thought it was kinda hurtful but again I'm not sure if she meant what she said or realized what she said could imply. It's interesting because today NanSee was telling me about this girl in her world which didn't seem to get how people perceive her and the sarcastic comment that some people gave to this girl. So it really got me thinking about the opinion which was uttered to me. Was the person who was saying that being sarcastic? I have to say it was rather good because it was so subtle. I'm not even really sure about it but I got pretty annoyed. It could be just me who perceive negativity really well. Maybe she didn't mean what I thought she meant but if she did, her subtleness is really good. However for the literal me, I feel it's kinda a waste. If you want someone to know how you feel, I think you shouldn't wrap it so delicately that the person may not get it. Make sure the person gets it, because if not, what's the point? I agree that you can be nicer in the way you phrase your sentences but I think being too overly diplomatic is not effective and efficient sometime because the person may not understand fully what you mean. That's just me. I have had people telling me that I am harsh for being this way but believe me when I say, I don't say most of the things that are in my head. I think that's me being nice, that I keep some things for myself. So when I do say something, I really really want it to be clear and understood fully :P Okay, let's just stop this topic here.

So I was talking to U after class today. We're talking about lives here and such. It's interesting the way she views her life now and I'm wondering why I am not seeing my life the way she sees hers, like ever. I really really don't see my life as amazing, even though I know how sinful this point of view is, especially since there are many people who think that my life is great. Why is it so? I don't know. I keep on thinking that there's something missing in my life but I don't know what it is actually. The stupid answer that people usually give me is that I need a boyfriend. Aarrrghhhh! I actually suspect that it's not an actual thing but more like a point of view or a state of mind, of just being thankful. I don't know if I'm right. It's 2 different things, of knowing what's right and actually doing what's right. So yeah, food for thoughts. Maybe to be like U, I should just learn to let go and accept what's here and appreciate and make the most of its every single second. She's still looking pretty positive and calm with all the things happening in Japan now. I really really hope things are going to get better there soon, especially because her parents are staying put in Tokyo :( despite of the fact that her sister and brother in law are coming here.

On the boyfriend part. Simply because I had some girl talk with NanSee today, I will try to answer the question that many people have asked me, of what kind of guy that I want / look for. One time, I tried to be unique and original and answered he should be intellectually interesting. This time, I'm gonna be practical and say, he should be tall, rather skinny, knowledgeable, funny, and interesting. I think the funny part is important because God knows, I need laughter a lot. I also have to add that for me, an interesting person is one who is rather smart and knowledgeable. So that's kinda important. On the way home today, my random thought told me, so that's what you want but perhaps that's not what you need and God always gives you what you need instead of what you want. So perhaps I've been setting the wrong criteria? Who knows :P Hmmm ... So that's my brain today. Take care peeps. Buonanotte!

The 10th Prime Number

2011-03-14T21:19:00.002+08:00

Hello peeps. So I turned 29 today. It's an odd number (I like odd number more than even number) and it's a prime number (which I like even more). When I thought of 29, I was just thinking that it's the last prime number between 20 and 30. A quick look in wikipedia showed me this. I love the fact that 29 is the sum of three consecutive squares (2, 3, and 4) and Saturn requires over 29 years to orbit the Sun, what do you know! Cool trivia.

So there have been many kind souls who wished me on my birthday. Love them all. Was wondering who were the people whose sms would reach my inbox first and I was delightedly surprised because the people are not who I expected. I haven't even talked to 2 of them for some time. So it was pretty good to hear from them. There were also some who I'm sure forget, but when they remembered, it's pretty nice. Then Facebook is of course such a good help. People don't even have to remember anymore, they just have to login.

All and all, there's nothing special about today. I wanted it to be low key and calm anyway. I've survived today, thank God!!! I prayed and made my wish last night. I have to say my wish this year was pretty mature. Hope God grants me what I wish soon. How do I feel? I feel okay. Knowing how cool 29 the number is, I feel pretty excited to be in it. Too bad I only have a year. I have decided to give something awesome for myself, hope it will work out. I cannot wait but as mom said I really just have to wait. Talked to mom just now. She's funny. I wonder if I really don't have much things that require a lot of attention in my life that I can remember a lot of stuffs. Mom was surprised that I remembered something *sigh* Sometime I wonder why many people don't remember things. Is it really because there's not much things in my brain that I have a lot of space to store things? I don't know. I don't think so. This rambling is getting weird. Anyway, I guess there's nothing much to say. I just want to give thanks to God that I'm breathing today. As much as I don't want to be older, I have to say 29 is better than 28, simply because 28 is an even number :P Sorry for this boring post but it is my birthday. May I have more patience, may I be nicer to people, may I be more useful to the world, may I be more thankful for my life and be happier with me. Buonanotte tutti!

Last Week in the 28ths

2011-03-13T21:21:00.000+08:00

I'm not really sure if the title above is grammatically correct. Anyway, looking at this week, I had quite a social and expensive week. Yeah there were the mundane days but I met a few people this week.

Monday - I did something which is the first step to something that I really really want. I cannot elaborate much about it because I'm pretty superstitious. There's no news so far and it kinda makes me rather worried and down. I think it's me being so impatient. Patience is really not one of my virtue.

Tuesday - I met up with NanSee for dinner and movie. I don't have anything that I really want to watch these days but she seemed to really want to watch a movie. So I thought why not. I was thinking that if there's a time I really want to do something with someone, I would really like to have someone who willingly do it with me even though it doesn't interest them much. As usual she came into the cinema not knowing what we were going to watch. I settled for The Adjustment Bureau. In the ad, it was mentioned that it was like, Bourne meeting Inception. I don't find it to be such an encouraging review simply because for me it kinda shows the lack of originality. It kinda implied that the movie took elements from 2 successful movies and put them together in the hope it would be great. However I thought it was kinda better than I expected it to be but maybe I'm bias. I just loved seeing Anthony Mackie. The black dude is hot, yo! At the core of it, despite of the science fiction elements or what have you, The Adjustment Bureau is a love story and it is kinda inspiring in a way. It's between choosing your heart and your head. The sceptical-in-love me really wondered if choosing your heart will always make you happier. Hmmm ... maybe the key is being happy, not happier.

Wednesday - It was the normal routine. Laundry. Glee. I love Glee but even I, have to admit that the story line has become pretty questionable these days. Maybe it's just me.

Thursday - I went to an Adobe Refresh talk and I saw a few people I know but the most surprising thing of all was when I saw Gascoigne. Holy God!!! We haven't seen and talked to each other for a long long time. He kinda went into a hermit mode. It was really good to meet him. There's so many things which I want to tell him. I also want to ask him what's been going on all this time but alas we don't have enough time to go through our lives in these past few months.

Friday - Nothing much to say here.

Saturday - Class as usual. U was telling / reminding me about the fact that I'm getting older really soon. Yeah, at that time, what bounds to happen was going to happened in less than 48 hours. She was comforting me again, telling me nothing is gonna change. Yeah, I really don't want to think about it and to be honest it's kinda stupid to be focusing on the fact that your age is changing when there are bigger and more pressing matters happening in the world. I was glad to hear that U managed to contact her family in Tokyo and everyone is okay. She said that she only managed to reach her dad at 1 am Saturday morning. She mentioned that there were worries about the fact that there are nuclear plants near the area of the earthquake and as evident from the news, they are causing concerns now. I remembered studying physics back in junior high school and I was totally fascinated with how much energy a nuclear reaction can give and I thought it's such an amazing idea to generate that much clean energy. However hearing nuclear leak and such like right now, it does make you wonder if the risk is worth it.

Yesterday I actually wanted to have someone to watch Jakarta Maghrib with but I didn't ask anyone so I thought I wasn't gonna watch it. Lo and behold, Oshie sent me an sms asking if I wanted to go for dinner. Let me pause right here and say, for all those people who told me how can you just sit and hope for something to happen to really happen if you're not gonna do anything about it. Well sometime it happens okay, sometime God just drops things for you. I suppose if you want it to happen faster or make sure it happens, you can just make your moves but seriously if it's not meant to be, it's just not gonna happen. So anyway, I asked him if he wanted to watch the movie. He said why not. Jakarta Maghrib is a short Indonesian movie, running at just 1 hour plus. It is actually a collection of short stories about the people in Jakarta during maghrib time. I don't watch many Indonesian movies. In fact this is only the second Indonesian movie that I watched in a cinema. The first one was also in a Singapore. I've never watched an Indonesian movie in an Indonesian cinema, strangely. It's just these days most of Indonesian movies are horror movies which I cannot watch anyway. Then Indonesian movies and tv series tend to be overly dramatic so that is such a turn off. However I found Jakarta Maghrib to be pretty good even though the english subtitle sucks so badly. God! How I really really hate bad english. I think my english is not like totally Shakespearean, I'm sure I make mistakes but little simple mistakes annoy me greatly. Back to the movie, I thought it was pretty good. I don't think it's Academy Awards material though (Crash it is not) simply because it's so deep in the context of life in Indonesia, I don't think people from other cultures can relate to it much. It's also pretty light-hearted which is fine for me. I enjoy seeing it, seeing Jakarta, and listening to Indonesian the way it's really spoken there and perhaps the way it's not really spoken by me anymore :( I really enjoy and like it. Sadly it's kinda a bit too short. Oshie thought the girl in one of the stories was pretty :D He really needs to go home. Anyway he dropped me some news which I cannot elaborate much. It got me thinking about stuffs on my way home. Seeing Singapore from the train windows, being under the night sky and air with its half moon, I kinda feel rather sad about things. I know it's melodramatic and I know I shouldn't be feeling sad about anything but I couldn't help it. I tried to contain it though by trying to block everything from my mind and I really really do, not want to think about anything right now. The sun has set and it will rise tomorrow and it's by God's grace that we're going to breathe again. So be it, we'll learn to live.

Sunday - Alright I have only a few hours left in my 28ths. I don't have anything special that I want to do. It's another Sunday evening and it's perhaps gonna be the usual Sunday night in which I wouldn't be able to sleep much and get cranky on Monday. Nothing changes perhaps as U said. Let me try to get back to you tomorrow.

TRUE GRIT

2011-03-05T21:56:00.001+08:00

Was supposed to hang out with some people today but I couldn't bring myself to do it, so I decided to hang out with Ms. J instead and watched True Grit. I had a good lunch, the movie was pretty good, the afternoon tea was great as well, the talk was thorough, so all in all my Saturday has been pretty good. I did feel sleepy during True Grit but it's not because the movie was boring. As usual my Saturdays start early and I had lunch before the movie, so I guess being sleepy is expected. I have to say that the English was not so easy to understand but it's still so much better that Brokeback Mountain. I actually love many of the lines. They really did speak differently back then. It just sounded more poetic and if only people do speak like that once awhile now, it will make things more amusing. I thought True Grit was pretty good. The lines were pretty funny at times and the casts were great. Special mention for Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld. They do deserve their academy awards nomination. The Oscars have been handed to the winner, but let me just tell you (as if you care) my preference among the 4 movies which were nominated for best picture which I had watched recently. They would be (in order of preference) The King's Speech - True Grit - 127 Hours - Black Swan. I don't mind with the fact that The King's Speech won best picture but somehow I felt that it should have gone to Inception because it was so brilliant in terms of the story and special effects and the casts weren't bad as well.

On other news. So Saturday started as usual. I sat next to U today and I was telling her that I start to get panic attacks and feel depressed that March is here. She tried to comfort me by saying that it's okay and that she felt the same way when February came but when her birthday came she said that everything is just the same, nothing changes. Talking about being in total denial :P I guess for us we are really hanging on to this last year in our 20s. Maybe we'll really be in a zen mode next year or maybe not, we'll see. So with my cousin turning 29 today, it means it's 9 more days 'til it's my turn and I'm really not ready. I don't want to think about it but I know I have to eventually face it. On one part I want the days to go by fast so that I can experience the birthday present I'm getting myself. However on the other part, I really really don't want to get older :(

So today was spent with Ms. J. On my way home today, a thought came that it's been a long time since we first met and were Ms. J and Ms. Eka. I do have to say that there were times I miss being Ms. Eka. Anyway, I'm really in need to tell someone about something and it was good that there's Ms. J around. She counseled me on something which I've already known. However hearing it from her didn't make it easier to swallow and if anything it kinda made me a bit sad but as often it goes, reality is not as we wish it to be :( I've told her though that even as I understand what she means and my head is telling the same thing, I still feel what I feel and it's even growing stronger. Even as I know that I have to control my feeling instead of the other way around, I still do not learn how to do that. I even often let my feeling roam freely around and even at this point, the point where I'm gonna be a total foolish girl pretty soon, I'm still not trying to contain it. I learned a new phrase today, il n'y a pas de hasard, maybe I should keep my hope in that. Oh well. I hope all of you are having a good weekend. There's something that I need to do Monday morning and I feel totally nervous about it. I'm trying not to think so much about it, but I'll be praying a lot so that everything will go smoothly (PLEASE GOD!!!). Allora, buonanotte tutti!

127 Hours

2011-02-23T21:52:00.003+08:00

Went to watch 127 Hours with la Gioia yesterday. To be honest, initially I wasn't interested eventhough James Franco is such a luring factor. I was thinking if it's gonna be like Cast Away, where following that 1 person got really boring. I mean it's okay to watch it one time, but Cast Away is not really a movie I can watch over and over again. In the end, the James Franco factor kinda won so I contacted la Gioia who had expressed interest about it. I have to say James Franco was really really good. He was so goofy but when he came down to it, I thought he was able to convey the inspirational story that was behind this movie. Cinematography wise, I thought it was really really good. I love the scenes and the canyons are so beautiful. It made me feel like I want to include visiting places like that in my life list.

Anyway, the movie being based on a true story really made me think how I would react on the same situation. I really don't know how I can survive. It also got me thinking of how hard it is to die. I think at a certain point he was expecting to die and yet with every morning he woke up and was alive. I guess he realized there's a reason why he's still alive or since he basically had nothing to do, he might as well try to cut his hand and try to get out. It's tough tough tough! and I really admire Aron Ralston for being able to get through it. It is really amazing. The movie felt pretty real in describing the shittyness of the situation, the fear and sadness of being alone and stuck, and obviously the amputation. I actually covered my eyes in many of the scenes because I really couldn't watch it. I thought it's a really well made film and I like it more than Black Swan but I still love The King's Speech more.

There's a line in the movie that really captured my attention.
You know, I've been thinking. Everything is ... just comes together. It's me. I chose this. I chose all this. This rock ... this rock has been waiting for me my entire life. Its entire life, ever since it was a bit of meteorite a million, billion years ago. In space. It's been waiting, to come here. Right, right here. I've been moving towards it my entire life. The minute I was born, every breath that I've taken, every action has been leading me to this crack on the out surface.
I thought it was really poignant and at the same time poetic and I kinda feel that it's so true and I hope hope HOPE, there's something like that rock for me in my life. Something that will come into my life and make me realize that I was destined to meet it. I do hope it's not like being stuck somewhere and I hope it's something nice but I do hope I get to meet that something that make me realize how it's meant for me and for my life. I don't really know if I am making any sense. Oh well ...

Black Swan

2011-02-20T19:46:00.002+08:00

Went to watch Black Swan today. I didn't like it much. I think it's because I just don't like the pyschotic theme around it. I don't like the dark element around it and the dark elements literally on the cinematography. Natalie Portman did do really well as a frail paranoid dancer but I don't think she blew me away with her performance. I guess I'm really not excited about this film at all. As I was watching the movie, especially towards the end when Natalie Portman's character got more paranoid, I was thinking if I'm gonna get a nightmare tonight because of the kinda scary (for me) scenes that I really should watch some lighthearted things before I go to sleep tonight. Anyway, if I want to compare it with The King's Speech, I guess I like The King's Speech so much more. I was looking at the list of movies which are nominated for Oscar this year. Obviously I haven't watched all of them, but I'm thinking if I should give my vote to Inception since I was totally blown away when I watched it and I like it a lot. For now, I'm kinda very interested with True Grit. Let's see if we can schedule that and 127 Hours in.

On life. I was thinking that I wanted to say there's nothing interesting happening in my life but the truth is there are a few things that I could share and in fact I would really want to share. Unfortunately I cannot write them here and as much as I want to share them, I kinda don't have people whom I can talk to about, well at least people who would just give their time and attention and to hear me completely. I guess it's pretty interesting whom I put my trust into. Like there are people whom other people would never have suspected who knows a great deal about things that I keep quiet. It's rather weird how I choose the people whom I tell my deep thoughts to. Even I get surprised at the randomness of it, especially when I realize one of the people who know quite a whole lot is a boy who's 7 years younger than me. How I became so trusting of this boy, I don't know. I guess when you can talk really well with someone, the conversation just flows. It's too bad this jabber boy is not gonna be around this week. Something happened yesterday and on that instant I was thinking that I wanted to tell him about it. As a substitute I told NanSee about it when she called me last evening. However I don't think she really got it because I couldn't give her a reenactment. Anyway yesterday in the class, I said something along the line that my heart is okay. It happened when we wanted to know how to say, my heart is broken. U thought I was heartbroken and so I said, no my heart is in an okay mode. It is really true and I want to keep it that way. I want a calm and peaceful heart. So whatever butterflies which are trying to flutter, they gotta be crushed. I'm borrowing that line from Blair Waldorf of Gossip Girl. Yes, I have to embarrassingly admit I watch Gossip Girl :( Hmmm, since I cannot elaborate much, I guess I stop now. Have a good week ahead, peeps!

The King's Speech

2011-02-16T22:23:00.000+08:00

Went to watch The King's Speech with la Gioia yesterday and I enjoyed it very much. I think it was really good, fitting of its nomination for Best Picture in this year's Oscar. A lot have been said about Colin Firth in this movie and yes he was very good. However I was actually more drawn to Geoffrey Rush. He was a delight to watch and knowing that he was the one who played Captain Barbossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean just made it more amusing for me to watch him. It was also interesting to watch Helena Bonham Carter. She's just so different than the normally manic her in the Potter movies and in Alice in Wonderland. Seeing her being so nice and supportive is such a nice change, she made her character so loveable. By the way, it has been said that most of British actors and actresses (almost everyone) acted in the Potter movies and yes it's perhaps true. I recognized the actor who played Dumbledore and there's the actor who played Peter Pettigrew.

Watching the movie kinda made me wish I am a royalty and people will have to call me "her majesty" or something like that :P I'm glad that la Gioia asked me to watch this movie and since it's so good, I really wonder if I should check out the rest of the movies which are getting Oscar buzz. I am planning to watch Black Swan soon. Anyway I'm totally recommending you to watch The King's Speech. If you think it might be boring, it's not boring at all. It's touching, kinda inspiring, witty, and really heart warming to watch. Hmm ... I should comment on the part where King Edward VIII abdicated for love. I don't know if I can do that if I'm in that situation. How do you know that love is worth a whole kingdom? I'm not sure if walking away from your responsibility for the sake of following your heart is the right thing to do. I guess I'm so uptight and really sceptical in love :P

Okay, I will stop now. I wanted to watch Glee but all the sites are too slow. I should sleep early I guess. I've been wanting to sleep early and yet I couldn't managed to do it in these past few days. Good night peeps!

Back & Sick

2011-02-12T20:16:00.009+08:00

Hello guys, how are you doing? I hope you are doing better than me. I'm down with flu. It's really bad. I've been having it for 1 week plus. Yesterday I finally surrendered and went to the doctor and man was that expensive. My usual doctor is not back yet from visiting her son in England that I have to go to a different clinic and it cost me double than usual. I do feel much better but I am not totally well that it's pretty annoying. I really really hope I will be great by Monday. There's so many things that I have to deal with and I need my brain to be working. If it can work better than usual it would be even better.

So I arrived here on Tuesday night. The plane was 1 hour late and so I arrived later than I wanted to. I had my flu and there's something with that and the air pressure that there was a point where my ears hurt a whole damn lot. I remembered it had happened to me before but I was still pretty worried. I couldn't hear really well after that, it felt like there's water in my ears. Luckily by the time I woke up the next day, they felt much better. I was so heavily medicated that I kinda lost my taste sense and basically I was just plain miserable. I felt so bad for having to stay at home yesterday but I thought I needed to. I was thinking the long weekend would be good for me to get a good proper rest. However I did go to class today. We are starting at 08:30 for our remaining classes to make up for the class we missed when Mr. M went for a holiday. It's not ideal for me because I already normally come late when it's at 9. So it's hard for me to be half an hour earlier and you can be sure that I am not making it on time. Well at least Mr. M is entertaining. I was thinking that one of this day I would on reflex punch him because he's so mischievous.

Let's talk about home. Well it was so great to be sleeping on my bed. I really really really love my bed at home. I hope I can have it here in Singapore :( I had a haircut. I met with the girls, Marlisa, Emilia, and Dewi and confessed something to them. I confessed the same thing to my mother though I downplayed it a lot. It's so weird that I am telling all these people. If it really goes my way, I think it would be nothing short of a miracle. But as I wrote that I don't even know what my way is, what I want is. Maybe when it comes down to it, I just can't commit. Moving on. So Chinese New Year rituals and traditions were the same. Saw the aunts, uncles, cousins. Heard stories. Saw changes. I seriously only get to see most of them once a year and for the adults, you don't see much changes in them but for the little ones like my cousin's kids, it's a whole lot different. I love seeing Little Alden because as my aunt said it, he seemed to be very open to be around me. The last time I saw him he was just learning to walk but now he's walking and maybe next year he'll start singing like his sister, Mikaela. Man I still remember the time when Mikaela was so young that she peed in our living room without warning :P Anyway, baby Alden was so funny. He was like a turtle. When you put him lying face up, apparently he couldn't get up on his own. My cousin said one time he bumped his head or fell trying to get up that it seemed he's traumatized to do it again. So they are using this to punish him. As mean as it is for me to say it, it is really funny to see him get frustrated and starts crying :P

Me and the aunts and an uncle and a cousin took a trip outside Jakarta this time around. We went last weekend actually. We went to Puncak. My auntie has a really wicked driver. He kicks ass. Well under Singapore standards he may be seen as reckless. I even had my worries when we were going down a mountain on a foggy dark morning when it was only 4 am. Well roads in most mountains are always in a spiral, so there's always a lot of sharp turns. We had fog and it was dark because the sun is not up yet and it's Indonesia which means when I say it's dark it's really dark, it's not as properly lighted as Singapore. I do wonder if living in Singapore all this time is like living in a sterilized bubble. I am prone to sickness more easily in Indonesia because things are not so clean as here and I've become rather spineless because it's always so proper and by the rule here. Anyway so that driver under that condition, still managed to go at a really high speed and overtook some people. I was pretty worried at that time actually. I think he got us down a mountain in around half an hour so it's actually totally awesome! When we were going there, the sun was slowly rising so it wasn't so dark but the fog was pretty thick and yet we could arrive substantially earlier than my uncle who left earlier and whose house was nearer to Puncak. My aunt and uncle were so impressed with the driver that they wondered if we flew there :P

Anyway it's been a long time since I went to Puncak. It's cold there. We went to Taman Bunga Nusantara. It was actually pretty nice there. It's unexpected that Indonesia has such a place. It's not like totally amazing but it's not bad and I think for Indonesia to have such a place, it's pretty cool. Then we also went to see a waterfall in Cibodas. It was quite a walk to get there. The trail wasn't actually smooth so it was actually quite a fun walk. Well at least for me, I know some people had difficulty going through it because of the distance and perhaps the fact that walking on the path was like walking on cobblestones. Again the Singaporean influenced me was thinking of how actually the path was not so safe and there weren't actually staffs or people who you could call if something went wrong. There were little boys who worked to help tourists to go to the waterfall. Not actually a good business since you can't possibly go lost when you just need to follow the path but I did see a boy who piggybacked an Indian boy as the Indian father ran behind them. Obviously they were tourists. I couldn't help feeling it's ironic and amusing at the same time. 2 boys with different fates in life and as much as I pity the Indonesian boy, I thought it was cool of him for being able to do that :) By the way these boys are like 9 or 10 years old. Anyway the walk was fun for me because you just felt so good when you completed it both on your way in and out.

Another interesting visit on our trip was when we visited a factory outlet. I know many Indonesians are crazy about factory outlets but I had never visited a good one until this time that I felt pretty sad that it's after chinese new year hence I couldn't shop :( I so want to go there again. All the branded goods were like 4-5 times cheaper and I'm pretty sure that some of them could be even 10 times cheaper. I do question the originality of the goods but they seemed pretty authentic. My aunt who has a clothing store said that they are authentic because as you know your clothes though they are american or italian brands, they do come from places like Indonesia, China, and India. Even the recent gap jeans I bought was made in Bangladesh. So my aunt said some of these goods are rejected goods but that doesn't mean they are bad. The mistakes could be so minor that you wouldn't even notice it. She also said that sometime these goods are left over. Like the factory was told to make a dozen and yet they make 13 or 15. When I touched the fabric, they did feel pretty good. You have things from Armani, Gap, Guess, Esprit, Marc Jacobs, Prada and many others. I was pretty shocked when I saw something from Desigual there. I can go crazy inside there. Even for an Indonesian price, it's really not expensive. So who cares if a button is perhaps not so perfectly sewn in. I hope we can go there again but the thing is, it's pretty far :(

That's about it peeps. Here are some pictures from the trip. I took a lot of pictures of flowers that even my mom was bored with it :P The peacock picture is from Taman Bunga Nusantara. For more pictures you can go here. Stay healthy all!

Hereafter

2011-01-23T20:26:00.005+08:00

Went to watch Hereafter today. Alone. It's one of those moments in my life when I felt that I need to do something alone. I was quite interested in watching Hereafter after reading the synopsis in Wikipedia and also after seeing how cool Matt Damon was in the Bourne trilogy and the Green Zone, I was thinking why not, this movie could be really interesting. I think only after the movie started did I realize it's a Clint Eastwood's movie. If I have to describe Hereafter with only words, I would choose haunting, loneliness, sadness, and darkness. The story is built around 3 people; a french lady who survived the tsunami disaster, a british boy who lost his twin brother in an accident, and Matt Damon's character who is a psychic who can hear dead people. In the end one way or another, these 3 people had a chance to encounter each other and perhaps got some resolution in their search for peace.

Although the theme of the movie is what happened when you die, the theme didn't actually resonate with me. What resonated more with me is how the characters were, especially that of Matt Damon's and the boy. I actually cried on the scenes when Matt Damon's character was doing a reading for the boy. As for Matt Damon's character, I guess I really relate with the loneliness :P As much as I thought it's so "hollywood" that his character ended up with the girl, the perfect girl who would understand him, I guess I should take comfort in it, that there is a specific person for you out there. We should have faith that he / she is out there and you will find your way to him or her. I guess this is the part where we all say, Amen! :P

Home is this Friday. I am looking forward to it. I'm kinda nervous though because I still have to face this week and many things can still go wrong. Again me and my paranoia and pessimism. Anyway, I am totally broke now. Not gonna be bringing a lot of stuff home this time around. I do have to say it's more because I have gotten for myself some stuff which are not exactly cheap and I actually still have my eyes on certain things. Alas, I have to refrain myself from buying them :( I guess I'm just not generous this time around. Well, nothing much else to say peeps. If I don't get to write again before I go, I just wanna wish you a Happy Chinese New Year! Happy holidays! :)

My Ramen Sister

2011-01-15T20:47:00.006+08:00

Hello peeps, how are you doing? I'm so sleepy right now :( Spent time with NanSee today after class for lunch, movie, and some shopping. Well we wanted to shop but we couldn't find anything that we like. The title is in reference of her. Been spending time with her for 2 Saturdays in a row now and we've been having ramen. For some reason, I'm kinda obsessed with ramen now :P Been having a lot of girl talk with her and it does make me feel like calling her 'sister'. You see, my best friends back home like to call each other 'sisters'. To be honest, I can't really relate when they call me sister, simply because I haven't spent much time with them and shared a lot of my thoughts, crushes, and stuff. However with NanSee, I do tell her all that. We share each other's insecurities and hopes and so I do feel like she's a sister. She's a person whom I would totally feel sad about if she should leave Singapore and she said the same thing about me, though I feel she'll get over it in a week time. It feels really good to have that girl talk and to have someone really listen to my story and follow up on it. She was advising me on something and it made me rather stunned to see this side of her. I told her, she's so like Gascoigne, which by the way is kinda gone from my life now. I have no idea what's going on with him, maybe he's sulking in a corner or something. I do hope he's alright. Anyway back to NanSee, I have to say that she has grown quite a lot since the first time I met her. She has matured a lot and it's perhaps my older sister trait that I'm always seeing her as this younger girl :P When the truth is, I kinda can remember how I was when I was her age and I was pretty mature and independent at that time, so I think she is too now :D

We watched Burlesque today. I thought the songs were pretty nice. The story was not amazing though. It was rather patchy and the resolutions to all the conflicts came rather too easily. It has some questionable lines which combined with unconvincing actings made me squirm and roll my eyes. But it does have its entertaining values in the singing and dancing. I cannot say much about Christina Aguilera's performance because there's no difference with what she has been doing all this time. In term of her acting, well her character is never deep enough to begin with, so nothing much can be said about it. Cher was so so too though I suprisingly like her singing in, You Haven't Seen The Last Of Me. She was pretty awesome there. If I have to point out which actor I love seeing the most, it would be Stanley Tucci. I think he's just so fun to watch :)

Okay life's news now. This week has been okay. I don't think I'm stressed out or anything but I've been finding myself getting awoken up so much earlier than I wanted to every morning and it totally ruined my morning mood :( The fantastic news is, home is in less than 2 weeks and I totally cannot wait for it. My jabber boy is back this week though it's only for a week, but it was really nice to be talking to him again. I just love the random things that we can talk about, songs and such. I need that from people. I need people to be interesting, to get me thinking about stuff I wouldn't think of and get me wiki-ing stuff and expand my knowledge :)

Talking about being interesting, french class has started again and we have a new teacher now. Technically we should call him Mr. E but we're addressing him as Mr. M. Okay we don't actually call him Mr, I just like to put Mr in this blog. It's really interesting for me to see how a short form of his name can be derived from his full name, because I would have never thought of it that way. I'm sorry I cannot elaborate much on this :P It's the second class today. On the first class I asked if he knew Mr. P. He elaborated much, saying that he was his best friend and all. Anyway, at that point, I didn't know why I asked that. It just came out of my mouth. I guess it's just the way my brain work sometime that I put certain seemingly random things together and they just fit. Now that I think about it, my question was totally logical since he shows the same narcissistic streak that Mr. P has. So he reminded of Mr. P and he's really kinda like Mr. P though I think he's perhaps nicer and less sarcastic? Well it's too early to say so :D I guess the consensus right now is that we like him. LM even said that french becomes interesting again for her. Well, no offence to Mr. Ben but I guess change is good and with Mr. M, we don't know what his antics are going to bring us :D On the first class, he called me kaypoh Eka, all because I just easily jumped on the opportunity to ask him any question. My classmates can be very tame sometimes, the reserved Singaporeans and all. If you are given the chance to ask someone anything, surely there's hundreds of things that you can ask, so I don't see why people could be so quiet.

This brings us to the point of me realizing who I really am. It's like me finally meeting and getting to know me, or perhaps accepting myself. You see for the longest time, I thought of myself as the shy person who is uncomfortable among people whom I don't know. I remembered Yeni and the rest laughed when I said I was shy. The truth is I was that person in the past. There was a long period of time in my life when I really couldn't do things without anyone I know doing it with me. However, now I can be let off in this world and most of the time I can make it on my own :) I'm not that shy anymore. I'm opinionated. I ask question and I'm not afraid to ask questions. I have to work on the filtering system though because the questions I ask may come across as intrusive and the things I say may seem direct and harsh. I guess now that I admit this about me, I can fully understand why people whom I find to be interesting are the people who can form opinion about things and voice it out. I think people with no opinion are the most boring people ever and it's a waste of brain if you cannot form any opinion on something at all. Even when something makes you feel indifferent, you can still explain why it makes you feel that way. Alrighty now, I want to lie down. Take care my darlings!

A New Decade

2011-01-01T21:19:00.000+08:00

Ciao peeps. How has your new year been? Mine was uneventful. Did a bit of shopping. Didn't really get much stuff but I did spend quite a lot of money. Well, I have my weaknesses :P So today, I went to watch The Tourist. The review for it wasn't good, but there's Johnny Depp in it and it's set in Venice. I really miss Italy!!! Dear God, can I go back there soon? Anyways, I read that The Tourist is a remake of a french movie. With the bad reviews going around, I wonder if the french movie was better. So out of curiosity I went to wikipedia and read if the Hollywood version's storyline is the same as the French's one. Yeah, I sometime don't mind knowing how the ending of a movie goes before I watch it :P Actually I think knowing the ending of this movie made watching it more enjoyable. I was like, does she know, does he think she knows, how does he feel seeing her, how does he feel seeing what he prepares for her, etc. Okay what I wrote may not make sense to you, but I'm not gonna put any spoiler here. I think I like The Tourist, simply because I like Johnny Depp and it was lovely seeing Venice. Johnny Depp seemed a bit fat for me and I think he should really really not have eyeliner on unless he's doing Captain Jack Sparrow :P The other day LM was telling me that she thought that Angelina Jolie is beautiful, well I think LM is maybe right, Angelina est vraiment jolie. I think she looked stunning in this movie. The Tourist may not be exceptionally memorable but I like it :)

So it's the new year, I've been hearing a new decade being said and it really really hit me hard. Goodness me. It's been a decade since 2000 and 2000 was the year when I arrived for the first time in Singapore. It's been almost 10.5 years of me living in Singapore. I don't want to sound depressing or anything but you know if you think about it, what the world didn't have 10 years ago and what the world has now, what has happened in the past 10 years. There are a lot of things that have happened in this world. There are things that have happened in my life too but I guess the ungrateful me just feel that there are too few little things, too little accomplishments in my life. I know I am being remarkably stupid for feeling that way. Well I don't know. On one side I want to think that it's so wrong to feel that I haven't done enough with my life but on the other side I do believe that I have wasted a huge part of my life. I'm not gonna go into it further because we shouldn't start the new year with negativity. Anyway in between going to be 29 this year and not being able to bear to live my life the same way for the next 10 years in Singapore, I really really REALLY hope something big and wonderful will come my way.

Not that this year hasn't been great for me. This year I got out from something which was a part of my life for 6 years plus. Yesterday as I was writing in my diary, I realized that I am more thankful to God now that He has helped me in this new chapter that He's given me than when He delivered me from the hole I was in. So relationship ended, friends come and go, I got the meet new people, make new friends and overall, I think I ended the year in a calmer and more at peace state of mind than when I started the year. Now if only I can keep being more hopeful and positive in life maybe more good things will come my way :) So I guess that's it. I'm feeling sleepy now. For some reason, I've been feeling tired these past few days. I keep on wanting more time to sleep :( On other news, the malls have gone to Chinese New Year mode. Singapore is highly efficient but the speed at which the Singapore malls can go from celebrating christmas and new year to preparing for Chinese New Year always amazes me. I am too have started my countdown and feeling excited about going home in 4 weeks time. I'm getting pretty nervous if I will have enough time to get all my shopping done before I go home. I feel I may not have enough time. Maybe I should be more worried if I have enough money :P Anyway, I can't wait to go home. So looking forward to it!!! Okay enough of this repetitive rambling. Take care peeps, buonanotte!

of Indonesia - 29/12/10

2010-12-29T21:06:00.005+08:00

The second half of the AFF Suzuki cup final just started. If you don't know, it's between Indonesia and Malaysia. We're kinda down 3 goals from the first leg of this final. It's looking pretty slim that we can win this but the Indonesians are trying really really hard. There were a lot of miss chances in the first half. A quick look in twitter showed that the malaysian goalkie is a trending topic. Many Indonesians are tweeting about how lucky / good he was. Aaarrrghhh, the Malaysian just scored. My heart is breaking :'( I'm gonna stop with this live update of the match.

Anyway, I've been wanting to write about how there really is power in number. The Indonesians have managed to steal the limelight of twitter trending topics a few time. Also a few days ago, this article appeared in CNN. It's very very interesting for me because I don't think Indonesia is a high-tech country. Obviously in term of infrastructure, we are so far behind countries like Singapore, Japan, or South Korea but since there are many of us, apparently we can still rock the world :P

So anyway, yesterday I watched Gulliver's Travels. I think every Jack Black's movie would have some song and dance in it :) I thought it was pretty entertaining and fun. It wasn't deep in term of the story but it was pretty fun. I kinda like Jack Black. He has this annoying air about him but he just seems to be such a fun guy. Anyway, nothing much can be said about the movie but the tilt shift effect at the beginning of the movie reminded me of when I used to play with that effect with the pictures that I took. Here's one example:

The house at the end of the street is my aunt's. I miss home so much. I'm so looking forward to go home next month. Well to be more exact, I think I just can't wait to leave Singapore. I just need the change of air. As I wrote that my mind goes to someone who's been working really hard for the past few weeks and months and I think I shouldn't be complaining :(

Anyway, I kinda made a new year resolution this morning. It happened because U sent me an sms telling me that she passed DELF. By the way, I really welcome the unexpected sms or call from people. Well NanSee is the only one who would normally call me. I guess what I'm trying to say, I just welcome the distraction a lot. Unfortunately I'm not that friendly to return the favor and be suddenly sending people sms just to distract them for awhile :P So back to U, she passed DELF and I said woohoo!!! I told her that she made me want to do DELF but I'm too lazy to do it. She said we should do it together and I kinda said okay, I will try to do 1 DELF next year. Since I said it, I should do it, right? It's kinda a new year resolution then ... errr, I have to make it happen :( I printed a sample test for B2 and I'm regretting saying that I would do DELF. It reminded me of CELI 3 and they are of the same level. I struggled a lot with CELI 3 but if I can really do DELF B2, it really shows how my Italian helps me a lot with French. Okay my rambling is pretty boring, isn't it? Anyway take care guys. If I don't write again before this year ends, I just want to say Happy New Year. 2011 will be awesome!!! That's me being positive :) Buonanotte tutti!

2010-12-25T14:11:00.004+08:00

Hello everyone! Let me start off with wishing you a great merry christmas! The picture is from the Vivocity's christmas tree. I thought it was pretty nice :) So how has christmas been going on for you guys? Hope it's merry. I had quite an uneventful one. Was pretty happy that I could wake up late today. Loving these 2 weeks break from French that I have to say I am not looking forward for classes to commence again. Speaking of French, the French test that I had to take last week was difficult, aarrgggh. I hope Mr. Ben would be pretty nice in the marking but I think no matter how nice he is, it would still be hard to get a good mark. Oh well ... I don't want to ponder about it.

I remember Mr. Ben was telling me how sad it is that I would be spending christmas without anything special planned or without anyone. Err ... I kinda like it that way? I had a good day yesterday and I had a good day today as well, alone with myself. I needed space and I'm having time for myself this weekend. Went to watch Little Fockers yesterday and although it wasn't amazing and was almost boring on some parts, I thought it was pretty entertaining. I guess I just needed some light entertainment. When did Ben Stiller get so handsome? I first noticed how handsome he became on the posters for the movie and it took me by surprise. Then I saw him in the movie and he was really appealing and it did help a lot that his character was so likeable. I think the most unexpected character for me is Jessica Alba's. I didn't expect that she could be such a bimbo :P Anyway, nothing much else can be said about the movie. I am looking forward to watch Gulliver's Travels and The Tourist though both movies didn't get good reviews but I suppose they'll still be an interesting watch.

What else that's been happening? Nothing much. I finished reading Love and Lust in Singapore and I've chosen One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez as my next book. The title appealed to my sentimental-melancholy-tend-to-be-depressed self :P I've also started planning for my birthday present next year :) I think I have quite a kick ass organizational skill. I'm impressed with how much I could get done in less than 1 week. I'm pretty paranoid about it though. As usual I'm the half empty glass. I'm afraid that's it's not gonna come true and so I'm only telling a few people on a need-to-know basis because I don't want to jinx it. I think I need to pray about it every day so that God allows to do this plan, especially since it involves other people. I really hope God puts his blessing on this. Okay I don't want to speak much more about it. I think I'm gonna lie down and have a nap now. I'm so in a relaxed mood today :)

Of Life - 11.12.10

2010-12-11T22:28:00.000+08:00

I am so tired right now that I feel like I should just go to sleep. There's also this uncomfortable feeling in my chest. I can't describe how it feels like but I just don't feel so good. Still, let me tell you how my week is, as if any of it is interesting.

Movie of this week was The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I watched it in 3D. I don't know what's wrong with it, it was so bad that my eyes couldn't focus and it was pretty painful to stay in the cinema for that long watching something that felt like it came from some pirated dvd :( For the first time, I actually felt dizzy watching a 3D movie. I have heard some people complaining that they got dizzy watching a 3D movie. Finally I got what they meant. I thought it was just me but la Gioia who was watching it with me felt the same way :( I think it totally ruined the movie for us. I actually think the movie is not so bad. Who doesn't love adventure? Well if you don't, what a boring person you are. I have to comment that it just felt rather ilogical that kids would just approach the unknown, like approaching a city filled with bad people, without fear. However I do have to acknowledge that kids are more daring and adults take a more calculative approach and that makes us so not fun at all. Ooopss ... am I saying I'm an adult? When I often say I'm a child. That's pisces contradictory trait for you. I actually googled to see if what I just said makes any sense and this is what I found. I think it's so true. Need to show this to Ms. J and hear what she has to say, she may agree completely too :D

On this week, it was okay, I guess. I want to be positive and not say it's not okay. Let's just say I survived it and we're moving on to the next week. Let's just be thankful for that. Coincidentally I met Carl this week who said I look happier now. It was a moment of err...??? I guess it's kinda true but it's not like my world is free of merda. Shitty things still happened, like yesterday for example, but I guess the point is I survived it and I haven't cried yet. I guess we're just taking it day by day, prayer by prayer, smile by smile :)

Had lunch today after class with LM, Mau, and Jac + husband. Lunch was Italian food. I didn't have pasta even though I was thinking about it so much. I had risotto instead. I think I'm more of a pasta person. Aaaahhh, now that I am thinking about it, I so want to have pasta :( I chose panna cotta for dessert and we were given tiramisu and hazelnut mousse as well. Surprisingly I like the tiramisu. I don't drink coffee, so stuff with coffee in it doesn't really excite me but the tiramisu was really nice. I guess I just really like creamy fattening stuff :P After lunch I finally went to the mall to get christmas presents for some people. I was only thinking of 2 persons this year but suddenly there was an extra addition and the present for this person proved to be the hardest to find. It became harder because people whom I consulted to and who replied back to me had very strong opinions on how much I should spend on it. They're really logical people and they were right about the spending part since I think I may have spent close to S$500 today alone. I am too scared to actually calculate how much the damage is but I think it's around there :(

So Christmas is coming soon. I want to be all christmasy about it but after today, I think my head is bogged down with the fact that I have a french test next week. I need to study but I'm so lazy to do so. Seriously, verbs conjugation, pronouns, and tenses can be so so torturous :( Mr Ben actually said the test is a bit difficult. Darn it! I was actually wondering if I could survive it without studying but now I guess, I really have to study :( 1 week left and I haven't really touched my notes. Compared to the previous tests, I have never been this unprepared, so panic is really sinking in :( I guess it's time for me to stop talking now. Take care peeps!

Tangled

2010-12-04T22:05:00.001+08:00

Ciao tutti, come stai? How are you guys doing? I was asked how my week was this week. I answered, "cette semaine est un peu difficile pour moi". I wish I could have answered differently but it was what it was. I even pulled an anti social mode yesterday and went for a rather expensive italian lunch alone. Well I just don't feel that S$6 for a small ice lemon tea is acceptable. I felt rather strange about going for lunch alone but I realized I should be able to do things like this and it went well. I spoke italian to the waiter and he understood me. Obviously I didn't have a lengthy conversation with him. I was just asking simple questions and he was replying with simple words but it still felt pretty good that he understood me and most importantly I think it felt good to step out from my current existence and just be transported away to some place which felt different simply because I was alone and forcing myself not to speak english. It was only for less than an hour but I guess there's always a time when you need to step out and you should really do it no matter if it's only for a short while because it helps to keep you sane.

This week hasn't been all totally bad. There were moments of pure smiles and sincere laughters. There was a short moment when I could actually say that I had a good time. I think it's pretty note worthy since I mentioned it to some people, well to most people in my world actually :P I am maybe being foolish again but as I have explained it to LM today, life kinda sucks sometime or most of the time, so you should just be happy if there come moments when you can really smile with your heart, no matter if it's logically not right. I spent some time after class with LM today and we had a good long talk about stuffs. Again she's surprised with my contradiction. She said that she saw me as someone who is rational and so she found that the story I was telling her to be irrational. I could only say, you feel what you feel. You can't help it but of course the rational thing would be what you do with that feeling or emotion that you have and yes I do know that I should be taking the rational route.

So today we watched Rapunzel / Tangled. We watched it in 3D. I thought it was pretty nice. Rapunzel was pretty and her long hair is enviable. I thought he looked different when her hair was cut short and turned brunette. It's kinda nice that the movie has songs in it. It made it kinda classic disney. The lanterns scenes were really pretty that it really made you warm and fuzzy inside. As how it often happened when I watched a 3D movie, I don't think the 3D elements made much different in how nice the movie was. It made wonder if I should watch Narnia in 3D. I kinda don't have much else to say about the movie, other than it's pretty nice, which I already said above :P

Overall it's pretty good to be spending the afternoon with LM. She's always surprising me with how chatty she can be. There were a lot of stuffs being talked about :P Seriously maybe you cannot really know what's inside a woman's heart and mind. On another woman story, I was asking U today, how does she feel with the fact that we're turning 29 next year. She said that she feels rather sad about it and she was so funny when she was asking me if I'm ready and if I have prepared everything :D Yeah, as if we're gonna die. It's really funny but it's really my sentiment actually. LM was like why are you girls taking it this way, but I guess only if you have passed it and be 30 and above that you can actually say that it's not a big deal. It was really comforting that U feels the same way, that I am not that crazy. Life is amusing in its ways that an Indonesian and a Japanese with different upbringing and life experiences could feel the same about turning 29 :D

I know some people would roll their eyes when I told them how sad it is to be turning 29 but it's the last number in which we could say that we're 20 something. Yeah, it's just a number etc, but man being 30 just feels like you have to change and be more mature and wise. This week, I was telling a boy, the 20s is the year of reckless living and when you reach 30 onwards, it just doesn't seem that you can be that free anymore and there's so many things that you have to factor in in your life. Another guy told me this week that when he reached 30, he was okay about it. But now that he's 35, he's feeling rather sad about it. When I asked him why, he said it's because it's nearing 40 :D and Mr Ben last week said it's awful being 40 something :D I guess everyone is hating their numbers :P I have a theory that only if you haven't gotten or reached the things that you want to reach in your age, that you would feel sad and dread about being older. Well I have some months left in my 28. I am not one who loves even number but I am holding dearly to this 28 :P Oh well, buonanotte tutti! I am feeling very hungry. I think I'm gonna try to sleep early today. I felt pretty sleepy and tired this afternoon.