I'm gonna start blogging again cos there is a reason to. Chris is leaving for Kuwait in Jan 09.

I'll miss trying new food places with him=)

Departure

Finally got my SD card through the mail and decided to get cracking on blogging about my europe trip...hehe.. Here's the first post of many many many..damn i feel tired already.

Departure for Europe on KLM, the royal dutch carrier

I wasnt quite looking forward to the long 13 hours flight to amsterdam. Luckily my blood sister Anika was there to send me off, even though she just did a long china flight. I went over to T2 transit and we had pizza before my flight.

I took 1/2 an hr to check in early and book my seat the night before my flight to ensure i'll have a nice window seat. It could have been a great, if not for the fact that the seat beside me was empty, and the stewardess asked if i could change seats so that a couple seated several rows apart could sit together during the flight. I got an aisle seat in the middle block in the end. The half hour spent "chopping" the seat online was in vain and i spent the next 13 hours trying to get some sleep. It was horrible. I was perpetually woken up by people queuing up for the toilet 2 rows in front of me, not to mention that the smell, sound and light from the toilet kept me up as well. Talk about a multi-sensory flight experience huh. In-flight entertainment was good though and i spent many hours watching movies and playing games on the console.

KLM's service standard wasnt too bad, but its certainly nowhere near SQ or MI. I love the creative packaging of their food though. Each meal was a surprise. The meals usually come with descriptions of the food, quotes and inspirational phrases, history of the dish, as well as sudoku puzzles printed on the box to keep u entertained during meals. Certainly nothing like the boring meal trays that SQ and MI serve.

I touched down at around 5am at Amsterdam Schipol Airport and had 4 hours to kill before my domestic flight to Maastricht, so i walked around the airport with my bulging eyebags and weary jet-lagged body. Schipol was one of the best airport in the world, 10 years ago, and the people there kinda think they still are. It was a difficult airport to navigate and it took me quite a while to get to the gates.

Luckily i had 4 hours to while away (unlike on my return trip, when i had 1hr 20 mins between flights, and it was a race against time to claim 130 euros worth of tax rebates AND get to the gate on time) , and thus was able to grab a coffee and sit down at the waiting area to enjoy my first sunrise in europe.

Europe here I come~!

Maastricht isnt far from Amsterdam and flight time was only around 35mins. Due to the short distance, the plane was flying at a low altitude. i was thus able to enjoy an aerial tour of the surrounding regions of amsterdam.

That is the fokker 50 aircraft i arrived in. It carries around 50 pax. The overhead compartments are so small that there is only sufficient space for handbags. Pax with standard cabin size hand-carry trolley bags, like moi, have to put their hand-carry luggage at the foot of the aircraft, to be stowed in the cargo hold.

Chris was at the airport waiting for me when I got there. He looked like he's lost some weight, whereas i looked like a dumpling in my winter clothes. Nevertheless, we were elated to see each other. =)

Chris was excited to show me the shopping district in Maastricht, and thus we spent my first night in Europe in a nice cosy hotel which is very well located. Its right on the town square itself and a 1 min walk to the nearest Macdonald and supermarket .

Unfortunately, the window opens to a wall.

Nevertheless, i was really happy to be finally there after a long tiring flight. We took a nice walk around town, where i sampled a yummylicious sugar waffle, and met up with chris's friends who cycled to town to have dinner with us. It was nice to be with Chris again and we spent the rest of the evening talking, getting bored watching cnn reports on the californian fires ( with re-runs of interviews with Mayor Arnold), and stuffing ourselves silly with chips, supermarket food, nice carbonated lemon tea and KFC chicken~!!! haha~i have a strange tendency to eat alot when i'm eating with chris.

The next morning, i got up early to walk around town again and had a nice fillet-o-fish burger for breakfast. It was ten times better than the ones in Singapore!

Fastfood in Europe, be it KFC, Burger King or Mac, tastes so good that it kinda justifies paying 6 plus euros (13 sgd) for a macdonalds meal. This is a fact that I'll find myself encountering over and over again in europe during my 3 weeks' stay.

We checked out of the hotel and headed for chris's guesthouse, which is around 5 bus stops away.

The dirt path which we all take to go anywhere, be it to town, school, or train station.
I spent the day unpacking my bags and messing up chris's meticulous room.

Hurricane qinlei unleashed.

Damn happy amidst the mess. heh.

back

watzzup people~!!!
haha~i'm back...its been barely a week and already i'm thick in the midst of OT-ing. Haha~ but i'm loving it. Regular office hours~! woohoo~!! I love waking up at 7 am every weekday, leaving the house at 8, reaching office at 9 and eating breakfast till 9.15am while i grab a cuppa and chat with hana at the pantry..looking forward to my first regular wkend in 14months~!

In case u're wondering y i havent blogged about europe, i'll have u know that silly kuku me took Chris's sd card instead of mine back to SG so i'm still waiting for it to arrive in the mail. Haha~ seem like there's some stewardess blood in me left..wahaha~

Meantime u can all drop by chris's blog http://aveolution.wordpress.com/ to look at the photos we took with our cameras.
Gotta sleep. Its already 2am. Long day ahead.
Weekend is coming~!!!yay~! =)

Just got back to Maastricht from brussels today. Woah i've been in europe for 2 weeks already..i only have another 1 and a half weeks left here..sobs

Europe is great but travelling has been rather tiring. I've visited so many museums, churches and palaces, i'm starting to develop an allergy to it...haha.

Been to Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, Krakow, Cologne, Brugges, Brussels and of course Maastricht in the short 2 weeks i've been here...too many places squeezed into such a tight time frame that i'm feeling a travel overkill.

Been unpacking, doing laundry and packing again constantly. Wish i had more time in Maastricht to enjoy a stroll along the river Maas, or more time to do shopping in H & M.

Speaking of shopping, I LOvE the H and M stores here in europe~!

They have really nice top-shop/mango-y clothes and since its winter now, alot of the clothes are going for 20 euros and below. I managed to score some great buys at under 5 euros per piece. Haha~The sugar waffles here in Maastricht are great too. I've tasted the one in belgium but they are nothing really compared to the ones here in Maastricht.

Gonna go explore maastricht tmr since its one of my rare free days here. I'll be going to Amsterdam the day after tmr on 7th nov and to Paris on 10th nov. Super excited about Paris. Chris's friends just came back from there today and they said its the best city in europe! Haha I'm pretty looking forward to the 5-storeys LV 'castle' and the ultra big Longchamp outlet they have on Champs Elysee...but i'm looking forward to touring the louvre and Musee d orsay, as well as the Arc de triomphe, Notre dame and Eiffel tower more of course...hehe.

I just realised that in the midst of all this touring, I forgot to wish my brother happy birthday. hehe..

Time to do laundry. Bonne nuit~!

A few photos out of the 1000 plus i took so far.Magical Prague

Picturesque Salzburg Old and new in SalzburgSchonbrunn palace garden, ViennaHofburg palace in ViennaFields near Krakow.

# 26

Been re-watching some of my fav jap dramas from long ago.
Brings back lots of good memories.
I personally believe the moving theme songs and ost are the things that make jap drama more successful than k-drama.
i'm a sucker for emo things like that. =)
For all of u out there who used to stay up late into the night watching j-drama, and thus turning up at sch with eyes swollen from crying too much, here's a trip down memory lane.

My fav jap drama theme songs.

101 proposal


long vacation


tokyo cinderella story aka my sister


Our house aka under one roof


love generation


overtime


first love

# 25

The two gawgeous gals on my left are my airline besties aka as my darlings.

Bitching and gossiping with them about people in the airline and our flights are the only things i'm gonna miss when i leave...and i'm gonna miss that sooo much.

Knowing these 2 crazy, fun, pretty and wonderful gals is the singular best thing that happened to me in the airline.

I only wish i've known them sooner.

Its official! My last day will be on the 14th Oct 2007.

Suuuuuper looking forward to a life with:

~ wkends

~ peak hour mrt squeeze

~ datelines, endless talk about architecture and how u can never make big money from it

~ 3d max and vray (yes!)

~ shopping for heels

~ buying clothes and bags after work to relieve work stress

~ public holidays!!! Woooohooo~!

I 'heart' xmas, new year and chi new year and cant wait to celebrate them this hear, after having to work thru them last year. Can u believe i was working all 3 of these holidays?! woohooo~!!

Hey ARCHITECTURE~! Watch out for my return!

Bye to:

~ standby callups

~ rude crew shed

~ yaya-papaya CICs

~ mood-swing monsters

~ kanchiong spider seniors

~ waking up at 3.30am for flights

~ serving masala chicken at 3.30am in the morn

~ uncooperative pax

~ counting of meals and trays

~ live safety demo on mondays

~ cleaning up the toilet esp after someone having a bad stomach comes out

~ cleaning up the toilet after some idiot choked the washbasin with his puke

~ matching 30 special meals to 30 passengers who placed an order for it and not being able to locate them because they are travelling in a tour group, and thus is not sitting as per seat plan

~ people incessantly shouting "mee fan mee fan~!", "pu ke pai~!", "whey xiaojie! wo yao mian bao!"

~ people who are in business class even though they didnt buy a business class seat, purely because it is a chartered mono-class flight,which means the whole flight is economy class. They then proceed to think they've been upgraded and act like big shots. The yaya papayas.

~ the tai tais who think everyone is trying to steal their branded bags and refused to put it up in the compartments

~ the tai tais who think their branded bags should be put in a plastic bag before having contact with the cabin floor

oh the list goes on...think i can go on with this the whole day.

As u can see, its alot of crap, but no doubt an interesting job.

Just wish i've started out in other airlines.

Ps. oh yah and that part of janice is REALLI awesome. wahaha

# 24

I miss us playing monopoly and texas holdem, trying to call each other's bluff.

I miss someone to share my food with.

I miss entering bookstores together. You'd head for the non-fiction corner. I'll wander in the fiction books area.

I miss reading the papers together.

I miss leaving my half-drank ribena cups on your desk.

I miss sharing a can of bird nest's drink.

I miss Ikea.

I miss watching a movie.

I miss talking to you.

Do i have to fall asleep with roses in my hands...

would you get them if i did?