Amsterdam

I'm back in Zurich with the family! Feels good to be back to the familiarity (somewhat) of having dishes to wash, meals to cook and baby to sit. We came home to an awesome Bak Kut Teh meal filled not only with pork ribs but fish balls, wantons and dumplings. BAsically it was a very nice, processed meat meal which served as a good end to the holiday in Benelux!

According to the mother, Benelux refers to the country combination of Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. I'll start with Netherlands, also known as Holland, also known as the underdog team that made it to the World Cup finals last year (WOOHOO). The only thing I actually remembered about them was that they had the awesomest colour combination.

Anyhows, what does a better job than pictures right? 

On the Mercedes Benz taxi from the airport to hotel. I love it that all the cabs are either BMWs or Mercs, makes me feel so rich when I'm not, haha...

 We spent the first 2 nights at Hilton (as provided by the tour), which was pretty fantastic apart from the fact that they always charge you 22 Euros for a day of internet (Retarded shits..), so I had very limited internet throughout because the tour company appears to have plenty of ties with Hilton (Darn!)

But look what they had! A PILLOW MENU!

FLUFFY!! I didn't bother to try though

 And many of you would know the association Amsterdam has with liberal laws regarding weed and prostitution. Here's a cute write up I found in the guide book provided by the hotel. Zoom in and have a read!

 The entire area outside the hotel was surrounded by sculptures and displays, here're just a few I took

The beautiful sunny sky!

 The streets of Amsterdam are really easy to maneouver around, and almost everyone has a bicycle. You'll see in the pictures below on the crazy amount of bicycles in the city!

One of the random areas next to a park where people parked their bikes. It was like that the whole stretch

And the very economical looking car! Looks like a very very old version of the smart cars we have in Australia.

 Amsterdam is pretty much like Venice, a city surrounded by water, possibly sinking and structured around canals. The -dam in Amsterdam actually does refer to the dam that is in the area (as do many of the other cities in Holland such as Rotterdam). So of course a canal cruise was part of the tour (yawn) it was pretty cool though, cos we got to see a lot of the boat houses. I can't imagine living in a boat house for your entire life!

And guess what I had for brekkie the next day? ? RAMBUTANS!

Random shot of the grass/clouds/electrical wires as we went out to the country side

 What else is Holland famous for besides weed, prostitutes, dams and tulips? Cheese and wooden clogs of course. Typical tourist fare...

Mummy mummy look at my giant feet!!

 And this shot was hilarious! A bunch of girls walked into Maccas with heads full of curlers! Brilliant aint' it? hahahha.. I sneaked a shot.

And what's a visit to Amsterdam without going through the red light district? It truly was eye opening, not many photos of the place though, cos it's not very ncie to take pictures of the ladies at work. They basically sit in windows and do their own thing, whether it's texting, or talking on the phone etc. You really get to see all shapes and sizes and ages though.

Goods they sell

The bicycle multi-story 'carpark'!

 What did I tell you about the amount of bikes??

A nice random arty farty picture of a building 

 To be honest, I wasn't listening much to the tourguide. She had the amazing ability to lull me to sleep anytime of the day.

And that's only Day 1 of Amsterdam! Don't worry, I won't be boring you with daily summaries, just the key points in each area. blog more about the diamonds tomorrow! They were pretty amazing, and I never saw a rock so upclose before, haha..

Adios!

Waiting for my Jet Plane!

We're here at the Amsterdam Schipole (Airport) 6 hours before our 1.5 hour flight to Zurich because the tourbus could only drop us off at this time.

Oh wait, yes, I've been MIA because my mum and I have spent the last 10 days in Be-ne-lux, which apparently stands for Belgium-Netherlands-Luxembourg.

I think my ultimate favourite was Netherlands without a doubt. It's small, modern, full of weed and prostitution... Nah I'm kidding, that's not why I liked it (but weed and prostitutes were pretty obvious only in the red light districts). It's such an accessible town, small and compact. With awesome road plans. Everyone got around on bikes, I even saw people dating on bikes. Some girls were so dolled up (I suppose they were going clubbing), and they rode bikes! How cool is that?

More updates soon once I get back to my sister's place where I can sit down and enjoy uploading posts, blogging, reading journal articles... (as if).

For now, I only have 10 minutes of internet left before the airport decides to charge me 10euros per half an hour. They sure know how to make money.

As our tourguide said, the Dutch are famous for doing one thing: Making money.

"We sell sand to the people in Egypt, and ice to the people in Iceland" - my tourguide

~Adios!

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

 Once again I will be relocating in the month of July, which brings about a huge array of feelings; excitement of getting a new place to call home once again, yet the sadness of leaving a place I've already settled in and a housemate whom I've lived with for longer than anyone (apart from family) and gone through many nights of nonsense talk, heart to heart talks, baking binges, exploratory cooking sessions, and sometimes, mindless chasing around the house on wheely chairs (we never grow up).


I've always loved the book 'The Five People You Meet in Heaven' by Mitch Albom. It's one of my all time favourite books because it allows you to think back and reflect upon the people in your life without actually explicitly asking you to do so.


Here's a brief summary of the book for the people who don't know it: This guy dies right, and when he's in heaven , he meets someone who he thinks is a complete stranger. But then soon realises that this particular character and him have once crossed paths long ago, and something simple that the character had done had actually had a huge impact on his life even though he didn't realise it. And so he goes on toe meet 4 other people who have unknown to the man, actually had great influence on his life.


This makes me think, who would the 5 people I meet in heaven be? (If I would in the first place, of course).


I think Siyi (my current hosuemate) would be one of them. For one, because of her, my entire family now knows the joys of eating leek, which is something none of us ever dreamt of buying! And I now put potato chips in the fridge sometimes because they taste better chilled (go and try if you haven't, they actually do taste way better!).

We unknowingly pick up a lot of habits and views from the people around us, absorbing this like a sponge. I'm sure many of us know how advertisers prey on the accessibility of the human mind using all their subliminal messages to get what they want from consumers who so willingly fall into their trap. And I suppose sometimes it's this malleability and adaptability which allows us all to survive in the social world. Some may call it giving in to peer pressure, others may call it the 'herd mentality' when they're trying to prove that they're all different and unique from the rest of the world. But really, I call it subconscious survival.  

Tuesday's Paper

I realised something slightly funny on my Stats paper on Tuesday. This was the exam that provided quite a number of 'firsts' for me.

1) This was the first paper since JC that I've actually had to bring in a calculator and use it for something other than simple mathematics (i.e. I had many many decimal places, but that's it)

2) I sat behind a big, hulking guy (who hadn't taken a shower I presume, since it was a cold 8am paper). Which is quite funny, because when he sat down, I suddenly realised that I've never ever sat behind a guy during an exam before.

As many of you would now, my course now proudly has 74 females and 1 male. (And I'm proud to say he's Singaporean and has surviveed!!) haha. Sometimes, I do wonder if Speech Pathology is a sexist occupation. You know how women are constantly complaining about making their way into the corporate world and how it's such a sexist world yadah yadah yadah, well, one day, I think guys are gonna speak up and complain about how Speech pathology is a sexist field and that how it's insanely difficult for them to get it.. Haha....

Yeah right.. one  day.

That'll be the day that bananas are given the status of abalone. Did you know that bananas are $12/kg here in Brisbane now due to the floods/cyclones in December and early this year? Let me put that into context, that price basically means that a single average sized banana is gonna cost you $2. $2 for a bananana????

Which is why my banana craving has never been stronger and I'm therefore asking my mum to bring in 3 or 4 bananas into the airport when I stopover in Singapore while waiting for her to join me in the airport to fly to Zurich. And I'm already dreaming about the banana kueh from Bengewang Solo...

Oooooo... nanaa,.....

Sometimes I look at the bananas the kids at the kindy have and can't help but just stare longingly at them... WAhhhh... And some of them don't even like bananas, what a waste of $2 on them! (Darn, should've grown my own bananna tree somewhere last year!)

1cm x 1cm Origami Crane

 After having spent most of Swotvac web surfing, blog surfing and peeping at the lives of others, I came to one realisation. 

I have no niche to talk about, show off or share with the world.

Sure I can play decent guitar without killing a cat, I think I can play a tune on the cello (but possibly break glass), I can write coherently and grammatically with somewhat complexly embedded sentences which require slightly higher level parsing sometimes at times, I can bake things that aren't going to kill people by hitting them, and I might be able to draw some cute cartoon-ish things on cue, I might be able to draw stupid designs on nails every once in a while

BUT...

I'm not insanely good at any of those items! 

Well, at least not insanely good enough such that it surpassess (in my opinion), 1.5 standard deviations from the mean! In other words, 

I AM AVERAGE AT EVERYTHING

So, I thought to myself. People have baking blogs with perfect little muffins, and drawing blogs (such as my secondary school friend Esther, which you have to check out), and people have blogs just about ANYTHING. So I thought maybe, just maybe, I could find such an obscure skill that no one has yet discovered... And immediately I thought..

Mini Origami!

I treasure the nimbleness of my fingers (hey, they maybe fat, but they're dexterious!) And recalled how I used to love making mini everythings when I was a kid. Mini plasticine models, tiny cows made of blu-tack, little drawings (kind of), and of course, mini origami. (well, just a couple of times). And here's the result from last night: 

Hello! So I embarked on my quest of folding an origami paper crane by a 1cm x 1cm paper. (After an afternoon dwadle preparing with the stats paper the next day). I took the liberty of

The final crane about the size of half my nail.

There it is in my by-then-sweaty palms

The process starts off easy of course, with simply quatering the size of the paper. And it's not yet so thick. This slowly gets harder (obviously) as the paper gets folded over and over and over and over.

This is probably the hardest step to get to, folding in the tiny corners to get the perfect little wings.

The end product! I think I had a harder time balancing it on my nail and actually capturing a proper macro shot of it. Days I wish I had a proper DSLR!!

So ended the 15minute fight with the paper and camera.

Adios!

Decoding Women

 As much as I'd sometimes like to think of myself as an atypical female, I'm still very much guilty of many of the 'stereotypical utterances' of a woman which are never what they seem. (And I'm sure that Mark can vouch for that too).

1) Fine: This is the word women use to end an argument when they're right & you'll need to shut up. This one I use quite a bit, but my version would be 'ok la, anything la'

2) Five Minutes: If she is getting dressed, this'll mean half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the football before helping around the house.

3) Go Ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Don’t do it!

4) A Loud Sigh: This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you're an idiot & she wonders why she is wasting her time standing here arguing with you about nothing. (Refer quickly to No 9 for the meaning of nothing.)
Well I wouldn't exactly say it meant you're an idiot (well for some people it might)

5) That’s Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. It means she wants to think long & hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

6) Thanks: A woman is thanking you, do not question, or faint. Just say you’re welcome. I want to add a clause here - This is true, unless she says ‘Thanks a lot’, which is PURE sarcasm and she is not thanking you at all. (Do not say ‘you’re welcome’ - that will bring on No. 7).

7) Whatever: A woman’s way of saying; “F*** You!”

8) Dont worry, I've got it: Another dangerous statement. This'll be something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is doing it herself now. This will later result in a man asking ‘What’s wrong?’ For the woman’s response, refer to No. 4.

9) Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. It means something & you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with 'nothing' usually end in “Fine”.

The Inate Singaporean in Me...

 So let me first begin this post by saying that I know that in this face-paced age where almost everything is either instant or immediate (e.g. internet banking, online deliveries, super duper fast MRTs etc.), I understand how everyone is very much driven by convenience (and the seeing the immediate effect of things). Therefore, if you would like to comment on anything but can't be bothered because of the tedious detail-filling-on format of Blogger, I do  have a Chatter box!

So do please comment to make me feel lurved and as if there are people reading whatever nonsense I write on whatever random topics I decide to =)

Back to what I was supposed to talk about, this post is about how fantastic it feels getting free samples and what not from amazing websites such as this. 

Let's face it, what else can turn a crappy day into a less-crappy one except trudging home to open your mailbox to find....

Free samples!!

^v^

As some prominent female bloggers would say,"Free samples is loves!'' (Don't ask me how that is in anyway grammatical or sensible, they have a gazillion readers and therefore can come up with whatever taglines they want and still be popular... so there!)

 That's just some of the many items I've gotten from Ozbargain this year, ranging from gourmet tea samples, diapers and baby cereal to lipbalm, jewellary and various hair products. Last year my collection mainly comprised of detergent and clothing disinfectant (stuff you put into the washing machine along with dtergent so that you get rid of other yucky stuff apparently), so this year's grabs have been pretty fantastic considering utility level and variety! 

The stuff on the right is what I'll be bringing down to Zurich for my sister/Gaby, mainly diapers, cereal and yes, materity lingerie (HAHA to my sister!)

This piece came in a couple weeks ago and is my ultimate favourite, it came from stylecloset that gives a piece to anyone who 'likes' their Facebook wall or registers. I don't care if 45,395 other girls have the same necklace and know I got it for free, It's PREETTTYYYY

And it came in that lovely pink chiffon-esqe bag too! So much for a free gift right??

 And you would be surprised at how cheapo and kiasu the Aussies are too!  (Aww, we Singaporeans aren't that special after all!). Many actually come up with computer programmes to autofill websites to get shitloads of free stuff. Basically, the more tech-savvy ones have programmes which automatically fill in fake data into the sites to get 100 free samples delivered to their address under different fake email addresses. 

Speaking of tech-savvy people, I actually managed to make my blog look nicer! This paragraph initially consisted of me asking someone to help me, but I went off and attempted on my own and managed to change it thanks to Blogger's very very idiot-proof template changer! =)

Asking me to manipulate html is akin to asking a dyslexic to manipulate sounds in a word (haha, Speechie joke.. ok geek moment).

Adios!

If I Quit school now....

My favourite penguins!

 I'd want to become a nail artist and come up with the silliest, stupidiest nails.

Working on miniature objects, whether it's building one, drawing one or folding one (I once folded a crane with a 1cmx1cm paper) ((Which now gives me a new idea to distract myself from study)).

Here's the 2011 collection of silly/not-so-silly nails I've done here in Brisbane! They aren't much actually, which is quite a pity, I wish I'd done more, just so that I can build up my portfoilio in case I fail and drop out of uni at any one time.

Either that, or by the time I get to start my own speech therapy clinic I'd already have the option of providing 'additional' services while mums wait for their kids in therapy (and then I'll hire a therapist to actually give the therapy while I paint Mum's nails)

After one penguin got chipped in half, I replaced him with a fishy...

And embarked on drawing him more fishy friends! (The last one's a seahorse)

 

Which I added a crab to this morning after the final penguin decided to have it's head chipped off.

 And here are some of the earlier 'classier' looking ones I had during the semester when I had to go for weekly clinics (and therefore keep my nails tame).

And of course, Minions!

And the ultimate favourite ladybugs (or as the kid at the kindy says, 'Baibeebug')

These bumblebees were probably the ugliest ever, haha.. it was one of the first few attempts in the year

Which concludes my nail-picture post =)

I'm gonna see Gaby in 2 weeks!! :D:D

What drives you?

I'm someone who needs to know what the general direction of purpose something has before embarking on something with a peace of mind. For instance, I find it thoroughly unsettling to drive following solely the directions of a GPS without first (and frequently) looking at the overall route the GPS is taking me. Perhaps it is my lack of faith and trust in all things technological in particular, but I simply HAVE to know which highway or which route the GPS is taking me so that I can anticipate turns or what nots. 

But I think it's not just a matter of knowing what route it is so that I don't get lost or so that I know I'm not wasting petrol, I feel that I carry this general attitude of having to know what the general direction or end goal is for anything I do, whether it be courses I study in school, or even my religious development (ie. how church or bible studies might be guiding my walk with God).

Yesterday's bible study session with the wife of the pastor gave me one of those 'nirvana' moments which I often use (quite loosely actually) when describing any moment of sudden enlightment I achieve when I'm doing something or studying (sometimes known to be the 'Aha! Moment')

Something that has always bothered me as a Christian was how vastly different the practices, principles, emphases, worship styles or even preaching methods are amongst the different denominations. How can one religion which supposes the worship of 1 God have so many vastly different ways of doing things? And as much as I could draw the obvious differences between the charismatic and non-charasmatic churches (such as mine), I could never quite lay a finger on what my current church was aiming for it's members to 'learn'. 

Last night, Faith (the Wife-of Pastor) told us that as much as many churches emphasise what we should be doing/behaving as chrisitians, this church actually emphasizes what God has already done for us, and all that fantastic fancy-shmansy stuff He's done eons ago that we're enjoying now. And by doing this, they're actually attempting to instill such a attitude of thanksgiving in the people such that they naturally want to change their behaviour out of an attitude of gratefulness etc. 

When I heard this, I couldn't help but go 'OHHHhhhhhhh.. that makes SO much sense now!'

And what made this 'Aha!' moment so 'aha-ish' was that it linked in so beautifully with what I'd been learning in school about general cognitive processes used by people. (I love it when I can actually apply what I'm learning in school to outside the classroom, come on, I'm not jsut paying $30K a year to take an exam and throw what I've learnt away!)

As what we often encounter with various Speech and language interventions, they often either adopt a 'top-down' or 'bottom-up' approach. The method of teaching which the church has in this case, would thus be a bottom-up process in my opinion, aiming to change our attitudes and underlying principles, in order to generate a desired behaviour. 

Which I thought was way way more brilliant than any scare-tactics, guilt-tactics or salesman-tactics some churches might actually be using. 

Well, at least I feel that it would most probably result in the longest lasting effects (In therapy terms now, =)

=))