Day One in Holland!!!! (With Photos :) )

Here are the photos! Let's begin with Day Zero, at the airport!! Sis, Jiefu & baby Ashton plus Dad & Mum were at the airport to see me off. But the only photo in my camera I have is with my mum! So here:

never realized i'm that much taller than mum!

I took a KLM flight, so there were mostly Caucasian passengers onboard. I was sitting in the middle seat, with a motherly blonde lady on my left & a Mr Bean-lookalike on my right! 12 hours on the plane was quite a torture, my butt still hurts a little now!

I arrived early, at 5am & waited for Maggie to come! We then boarded the train from Schipol Airport to Groningen city.

train station beneath the airport, very convenient!

on the train, all bright and sunny but about 23 degrees :)

Arrived at Groningen at about 11am where Prof Uges picked us up and drove us to his beautiful home!

no kidding when i say "beautiful"!

see the smiles of the urban child :)

complete with butterflies!

me in a dreamy state!

Prof Uges & Maggie with a wheelbarrow of flowers!

Scroll on to the next post to read more! :)

It was a day of enjoyment & comfort! First up, we had ice-cream puffs with hot chocolate in the garden! After that was done, we had lunch which was well, refreshing!

Prof Uges with lunch!

not a typical kind of lunch in Singapore...

Attempted to take a nap in the open after lunch on these chairs!

falling asleep soon.....

Unsuccessful attempt at napping! When the clouds moved away, it was just way too sunny to fall asleep. So we got up for a walk!

We went to sort of a nature reserve near the Prof's house. It was very nice and cooling!

on the tracks leading to the reserve!

sunny & cool at the same time, no need for jackets!

some scenery...

stopped by this cafe by the lake for some afternoon tea!

see the table? we're just at the edge of the lake!

After which, we walked back home for ...... some food! Whooopeee :)

everything in the open of course!

toast & wine :)

After tea is dinner of course! Prof Uges drove us to the Golf Club near his place where we had dinner! Dinner was pasta with salad! The whole day's expenses were paid for by Prof & we are so amazed at his generosity & hospitality!

Ok! That's it for Day ONE (after so long!) More about Tessa's place & work next time!

Some old pictures!

Some pictures taken awhile ago! Outings with TKGS (high school equivalent) old girls from a week to two weeks back :) Heehee!

@ NYDC outside the heerens after a long day's work

claudia & i @ sushi tei, paragon

claudia's leaving for shanghai on the NOC (NUS Overseas Colleges) Program for one year! this outing was the last we'd be having together for at least a year because she's flying on the 18th of July!

Yilynn & i @ a toilet, somewhere

It's been very nice to see these pictures in my inbox when I'm so far away from home! Thank you Yilynn for sending them :)

Will post the Holland pics when I bring the cables to work :) Cheers all!

We're Here!!!


Hello all, we're here! Maggie and I are doing very, very fine here so please don't worry for us. In fact, we're enjoying it very much and living it up!


It's only been Day 3 in the Netherlands & Day 2 at the hospital but we're feeling very much at home! Everyone here has been extremely hospitable & we feel warm, safe & happy :)


I've got very pretty pictures in my camera but we're in the hospital right now so I can't upload them! It's a pity, I would love to show them to all of you ASAP!


We haven't even been to any tourist-y places but we've been fascinated all the same! It's just the way of life here that's so different, so pretty :) It's a small city here & we really see things like those in the movies!


Quiet, small neighbourhoods, lush green grass, pretty flowers (and bees!). What we call a "picnic" in the garden (not a public garden, a real garden behind a house!!!) under the sun with some wine and toast is what we had at the Professor's house which had a gorgeous garden! Pictures will be posted later :)


The weather's been mostly great, sunny but cooling (about 20 degrees)! It's been raining sometimes tho, but mostly it's been great!


Well, probably the only 2 bad things I can think of that has happened so far is that I sort of fell from a bike the first day cos the Dutch bikes are SO tall and solid heavy! I'm fine, just a scraped knee. Most people get around the city on bikes so we're trying to do the same but well....



Fortunately we were practising in the garden only but unfortunately, we were pretty bad at it. So we've been taking the bus :( We're going back to practise again today.


The 2nd thing was that we got lost yesterday for about an hour in the RAIN! Yeah, it was cold and we were kind of miserable & scared. BUT, the Dutch people are really helpful so it all went well and we're glad we got the chance to see for ourselves the friendliness of the Dutch people! I guess it's kindda a good thing because we were forced to open our mouths to ASK for help. We'd be too shy otherwise.


And if even the Dutch strangers are so helpful, even more so our friends over here! Professor Uges has been a GREAT host, really going out of his way to make us comfortable. And he's even paying for almost everything here - our food, accomodation and buscards! We're extremely touched by his hospitality and generosity and we're sad we can't reciprocate much at all :(


The house we're staying at is beautiful & so is its owner (winks at Tessa: I know you'll be reading this :) ) & so it its co-owner (Svea, Tessa's Labrador) . Our room is beautiful and we're very well taken care of by Tessa too! It's been great really, we feel totally at home (it's our 3rd day!)


Okay, that's it! I could go on for hours but I'll let the pictures paint their thousand words. More later :) Take care all!

Last post from Singapore!!!

Dear all,


I have decided not to bring my laptop because you heartless people............ have refused to comment on my site! (Sorry Eu, I deleted the post that you commented on. Hehehe.) I don't want to blog already!!! +stomp stomp+


No lah, my haversack's too heavy already, I don't wanna put another 2kg stone in with a $2000 risk. So... I may not be able to blog as regulary as I was intending to (I'm sure there'll still be computers though) .


Flying in 12 hours time, now I'm more or less packed. Just need to go for my haircut at noon, get some Clarinase, Ventolin, Vit C and I'm ready to go.


Didn't really sleep well last night, I guess it's the pre-trip blues as usual. My constant worries about not packing enough disposable underwear and just the prospect of missing home. Thank God mum helped me squeeze all the stuff into my luggage too.


People, I will miss you. Yah lah, I know it's only 6 weeks but STILL!!!!! Some special shoutouts:



HAMLET: I will be back soon and we shall have our KTV!!! Arghhh. (P.S. Liyun & Ting: You were the heartless people I was refering to just now. You were supposed to say you'll miss me in my blog!)

Claudia: God bless you, I wish you success and much much more importantly, happiness, in Shanghai.

Fadhly: God bless you too, I wish you fulfilment & that you'll finally find what you love to do (and that HOT BABE to boot!!!!!!!!) Take care in Sydney!

FAMILY: Well, actually I haven't told you all about the blog address yet :P . Will do so later. Take care and I'll miss you all and home-cooked food!!!

Sarah: Thanks darling for helping me with the nerdy stuff. Who else could I trust more.

New-found friends at Janssen: Work hard for your presentations and have fun!!! I definitely miss spending time with you guys at work!



Aye... that's about it. The next time I'll be posting, I'll be truly HOLLERS from HOLLAND :)

The Pre-Departure Frenzy

I've checked in for my flight! Internet check-in of course, it's still 28 hours to my flight. I kinnda like the KLM internet check-in feature, except for that I had troubles printing my boarding pass both from my laptop & desktop, so that's left for tomorrow.

I had this minor panic attack yesterday when Maggie said, "Do you realize the next time I'm seeing you, we'll be in Holland already?"

Gosh, I definitely didn't realize. I am unsettled about taking such a long flight on my own, I've never done it before. Then again, foget the long-flight-part, I've never even flown alone before. Oh shit.

To further add to that, I finally emerged from that state of denial that "I HAVE ALOT OF TIME LEFT TO PACK" yesterday afternoon. I wanted to start packing on Tuesday but my family got hit by the idiotic stomach flu bug, all I did on Tues and Weds was puke, sleep & watch tv while waiting for the next puke urge.

When I next woke up, it was already Thursday and I hadn't packed at all.

and ....

Thank goodness for OUTSOURCING!

When I was buying travel insurance online last night I saw that my debit card expires 08/07! It was yet another "oh shit" discovery. I'd booked a couple of hostels for August with that card --- If it expires 31 Aug, fine... if it's 1st Aug--- DIE no place to stay already. Hahaha.

Yeah, so it was 10pm or so and luckily the DBS website says customer service is 24 hrs so I called & +phew+ it's 31Aug :)

And this morning I woke up (almost with a jolt) and remembered that I hadn't activated my roaming service! It was 7am. But having great faith in outsourcing and that my call would probably be answered by someone miles away where it was working hours (or maybe not but who cares) , I just called 1626 anyway. And it worked! Got it activated :)

So there, outsourcing is cheap and it makes me happy too :) (btw, the operators had nice funny accents, Filipino or something? I quite liked them!)

Thank goodness for Maggie

Thank you so much for buying all the ESSENTIALS that we need, raincoat and all!

And this pouch!

Maggie bought this cos Europe isn't really safe especially at the railstations but I started using it early in Singapore! I didn't have the time (and was too lazy) to make 2 trips so I went to the money changer with 3000 SGD, had it changed, and then went last-minute shopping.

It felt really safe! I definitely wouldn't have done any shopping without it and gone straight home. I was carrying this huge watsons bag of pads & disposable underwear & toiletries, plus takeaway lunch for my brother and me, plus an umbrella in the hot sun I would so totally have been robbed (not in Singapore actually) hehehe.

Alright I have to go, more things to do!!!!!

So many things to do!!!

I have so many things to do before I fly! I am SO glad that my internship ended earlier or I'll be so short of time.

I realize how tired I've been. I've had no problems sleeping for 11 hours and then napping for 3,4 hours in the day these two days.

This is me when I just wake up:

Well anyway, I bought a medium-sized haversack on Saturday. I figured there was no way I'm gonna be able to lift my monster suitcase to the overhead compartments on the trains. I'm gonna split my load into this havesack and a medium-sized suitcase instead.

patho textbook to show relative size!

The last time i brought my sis's 60L macpac haversack to Laos I nearly died. It's just way too heavy for me, I could barely walk the length of a soccer field. The large trolley luggage is nice to pull along but a total nightmare where stairs were concerned.

Well, I guess this will come in handy for our weekend trips to Amsterdam and Belgium too! Oh and it's water-proof! Important because Tessa says it's been raining 60% of the time in Groningen!

I've been good today!! I packed my room, cleaned the cupboards and tables (with Dettol too!!) and sniffed like a leaky tap thanks to the piles of dust. +pfffft+ I've also FINISHED the 2000-word preceptorship report. I almost feel saintly : ) +beams+

P.S. I'll be turning on the comments soon so feel free to tag!