my name is forest, forest gump.

the show never fails to captivate me. even when it has been banished to the category of being an oldie all thanks to the very lousy resolution of the film in my com, it never fails to captivate me. no matter how many times i watch it. i'm guessing that if i watch the same show 20 yrs fr now. i'd still feel the same about it. its one of those classics that never fade, if you know what i'm saying. in fact, it'd be THE classic for me. i'd probably choose it if i had to choose one movie in my life. it must have been the 5th time i'm watching it, but i still feel the very same emotions in me as if i'm like watching it for the first time. and each time i'd just feel so 'bu gan xin' for forest because time and again, his love just leaves him for no apparent reason, and when she's finally back, she's dead soon after.

sometimes i wish i'd lead a life simple as forest gump. but well, after tonight's appreciation of the show once again, i realised i've got new findings in the movie. as if like i understand some of the words that Bubba was saying and so on from a fresh perspective.

so once again. i'm captivated. and anyone who hasnt watched this show has no idea what a classic is. serious.

10 things we take for granted in singapore

1. the weather. i have checked more weather forecasts in europe than all my life. no wonder singapore no career in being a weatherman.
2. cheap/readily available food. you have no idea what a food paradise singapore is until you leave
3. travelling time. we spend half the time travelling here and half the time on activities. whereas in singapore we are used to 20/80.
4. systematic way of life. ok. i know the buses might not come on the dot, but everything else, we have a much better system than where i am. even the universities.
5. speaking of university... the quality of lecturers! my God.
6. if you think singaporeans are generally not that friendly, wait til you go to prague. i would say that we are mostly comparable to countries here, especially things like train staff at mrt etc. people whom tourists come into contact with.
7. the..... BEACH!!
8. singapore is you have no idea how safe it is.
9. the public toilets/public dustbins. we dont have to sort our rubbish either. tho i think we should sometime in the future. i think its a sign of a maturing society.
10. lastly theres no place like home.

things are going fine

been requested by jiewei to blog to update. haha.

its day 11 of my travels in eastern europe. visited so far are vienna, bratislava, budapest and prague, and going to switzerland tonight on a 9 hour night bus.

things hav been really gd so far.. fallling a little sick, sore throat and diarrhoae and all. but still ok. people in eastern europe are really killing me. especially prague. first i got a hostel receptionist who disallowed us from dropping our bags in the hostel wheen we arrived at 8 am since we cant check in first. we had to go to macdonalds to sit down for 2 hours before we could put our bags in the rooms while they prepare it for check in. then today i got a ticket selling counter lady who refused to tell me the timing of the trains for that day to this particular place. saying information is upstairs. i got shouted at when i repeat my question. amazing.

these people ought to come to our country to have a loook at how its being done, before they display their european pride without knowing a thing.

these things really ruin ur trip, no matter how nice the views are and all.

night cycling

cycling home.. often alone.. plugged in to my ipod, always gives you a different mood.. and its so amazing how the selection of 1 or 2 songs can dictate your mood so much in a silent time like this. almost like my solitude time.... the emotions that evoke is amazing.. coupled with memories that are somehow attached to certain songs and how it makes you think about things in the past. this, coupled with the surroundings of unwell lit roads, leafless trees around you that make you feel so much in a foreign land. this is what i call studying abroad.

cycling

these days i have been cycling everywhere. even if the place is like out of the copenhagen city map, its still reachable. haha. in this little lady style bike that i am currently using. i have overtaken those people in those roasters.. i have also been overtaken by girls in normal bikes before haha.

but still i think the joy of cycling comes when you plug in your ipod and since changing the song is often too much trouble since theres still the gloves you have to take off, you kinda make do with whatver songs you have. and whenever that quick paced linkin park fades off to reveal the soothing sounds of hillsongs when you ride home, it just feels like you are 'going home'... you know what i mean? and all of a sudden i start to go with the lyrics, partially hecking what others'd think of this crazy Asian boy in a girl's bike riding along.. it just feels good.

today i rode to the outskirts of copenhagen.. for the first time since i am on wheels. haha..
today. so many things happened. mostly for the good i guess. haha.

i could really understand what people mean when they say that spring breathes a new sense of life into people after the long winter... i really could understand that statement today. its as if people woke up from their long winter hibernation and all came out at the same time. today i probably saw like 80% of the people in know in CPH, all in the same area, at different times. today i even impromptu participated in a flash mob in the city centre of copenhagen. a flash mob is like an activity that is spread by word of mouth to do something together at a presepcified timem period. so that msg today was like 1pm all freeze at town square. for more info visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ddhljeX-U0

it was awesome fun!

sick

all of a sudden. it just came like that. and ever felt the feeling that the whole world could come down on you just like that. and that life can be so frail, that one day you could be planning way months ahead, but without your health, forget about planning for the next day. by this argument should we just plan by the day? probably not.

falling ill badly really sucks. it really does. you dont know how to count your sleeping hours anymore because even if you are lying on bed, you just feel that you're working more than you are resting... i was on bed since like 10pm last night, and i finally got up at like 3 pm today for about 2 hours and i went back to sleep shortly after. and i wake up again, as if the whole world i have now is confined to this little room where i could only get out to the toilet to relief myself, to the kitchen to fix myself some hot drink and so on.

this is what i call satan's haunting. i used to have this feeling when i was young. i clearly remember it because i still sometimes feel it now. especially when i am incapacitated by something liek this. when i was young, there was once when i remember i got quite a bad jetlag from a trip to the US or something. and i came back to singapore not being able to sleep. and i started thinking about where people'd go when they die. and i started to feel really scared.. i even remember asking my mum that question and she couldnt really answer it. haha.

today seems like this.

after sort of preparing myself to like see so much of europe this period, sometimes i wonder: travelling is definitely not about clocking mileage. neither is it to make you feel good when your friends go 'wow, you've been to so many places'. anyways, that aside. i have this perpetual feeling that there is like a lot of things waiting for me to do.. especially like these 2 days of stoppage has disallowed me to like continue with things i am supposed to do..

a time of..

been ages since i last posted. as i said, good and bad. for me i'm not so sure. it can mean that i am really filled with activities, which is really the case. it can also mean i am not 'reflecting' on my experiences. which then again is also true. hm..

i kinida hav many thoughts every now and then. not that many eventually end up here simply because the effort of remembering a thought to trnasfer here is huge! i'm wondering whats the normal retaining rate of ideas of people. i should blog on my ipod but its so damn tough to do so.

see! i wanted to write some thin.. forgot. i must be old..

my travel plans seem overwhelming for many. probably. let me just list them down before i continue to explain:

in fact i have it on a excel file.

easter trip to Central/eastern europe:

13 mar: bratislava, Slovakia

14, 15 mar: Vienna, Austria

16, 17th: Budapest, Hungary

18,19th : Krakow, Poland

20th-23rd: Prague, Czech Republic

24th- 27th: St Gallens, Zurich and maybe Bern, Switzerland

Russia trip:

15th april: stockholm, sweden

16th: Talinn, Estonia

17th, 18th: St petersburg, Russia

19th, 20th: Moscow, Russia

21st: Helsinki, Finland

22nd: Stockholm

23rd: Cruise to Riga, Latvia

24th to 27th: Stockholm-amsterdam, Netherlands

28th to 1st may: Barcelona, Spain

2nd may to 5th: Lisbon, Portugal

6th: Barcelona

7th to 8th: Valencia

8th to 9th: Barcelona

june and beyond:

London

paris

italy?

ok.. up to this point. by the looks of it, it seems like a crazy schedule to me. i'm probably travelling a lot more than my peers but honestly it the schedule does not intend to overwhelm. and many think i will definitely bust my budget big big time. i guess i will. but i probably not much i can bust. if i run out, then i'd just ave to cut at somewhere i guess. i was kinda reluctant to post my travels because i didnt want people to think that i was spending a lot of money travelling. honestly, i am, but probably not as much as people would think. to me the additional cost of travelling is all about the air tickets and extra accomodation. because we'd have to eat whether we are in copenhagen or anywhere else, and we are all not used to accounting it this way because singaporeans rarely go away long enough to use this way of accounting for travelling expenditure. we normally just take into account the whole thing.

so this aside, ok. enough justification for my seemingly extravagent european trips.

today, i got my bike working! actually not my bike, more like someone else's bike. pretty resourceful considering the way i get the bike. its free of charge. kinda like accumulated good will turning into good opportunities kind. in short, a friend who had a bike that wasnt being used, i opened my mouth and asked and she happily obliged! the bike even has a 'shanghai XXXXX' on it coz apparently they need license plates for bicycles in shanghai.

i was so happy when i finally fixed it because it seemed so impossible that i would be able to use this bike because we tried for like an hour trying to fix in one of the paddles a few days back, but just couldnt get it in. seems like the grooves of the leg is spoilt, i even brought it to a bicycle shop to ask and the person said its the legs of the bike that was spoilt and to replace it including the labour fee would cost me more than 100 sgd. tough choice because it would almost be the amount i can spend on transport since i am not in cph most of the time anyway. long story short, i decided to give it one last shot today after church. i tried to fix up everything: the basket, the seat, everything. and i came to the peddles last. i tried again and it was the same. armed with a new set of tools from my beloved landlady (whom i got a scolding from the other night. leave the story til later) i tried to winge it in, but it still wouldnt go. i was desperate, sitting down alone along the cold pavements, trying to make use of whatever daylight there was left shining in. all i could do was to sit down and pray..

a brief moment went by and i asked myself: the grooves look gd, why is it that it cant go in? and it dawned upon me to try the other direction! it was definitely a desperate move, because everyone knows the universal tightening direction is clockwise. and it was clockwise for the other side.. but.... it went in!!!! smoothly! in an anticlockwise direction for this side! i was so so so happy. this thing would probably save me 200-300 sgd. just for a moment of brilliance.

seems like i have more money to travel now. haha.

and more importantly, many lessons here right? our muscle memory/ a lot of things embedded in our lives that are not questioned, are but people's decisions made on how some things should function.

i'm also reluctant to post pictures here since theres like 1000 picutres on facebook. even tho i rarely post anyting much up.

ok just a few snapshots of my ever wacky picture poses. i cant find a picture of myself normal enough when people ask me for a recent picture.