Day 20 – The last week

December 8th, 2009 • Others • No comments

This week would be the last week of me being in Ireland. Time really fled by when I am here.

We would be travelling to kikenny with Dave, our in charge at the institue of technology. Just for the day, to sight see tomorrow. We are now on the way back to Carlow from Galway, the train ride back to there is 4 hours.

It’s 5pm now and the sky is dark like 7pm in Singapore. Looking out the carriage window sets me thinking, have I bought enough present? have I enjoyed myself? was it really worth paying about 3k coming here? lots of question asking myself while looking out the window. Most of the question are quite simple and to be frank, this once in a lifetime experience is worth every cent I’ve spent here.

I still miss home and friends though. The weather here is totally different from Singapore humid weather, that’s definately one of the things I would miss greatly beside the people and culture here.

Day 17 + 18 + 19

December 7th, 2009 • Others • 1 comment

So, some of you should had already known that my Paris trip was cancelled because of cost and time constraint. Major but we decided to travel within Ireland and go some sightseeing.

Caroline and many other recommended Galway or cork but Galway was a better choice, so the night before, Galway trip booking and checking!

Now I am in a pub called monroes in Galway. Just had a heninken and is now chit chatting and socializing with the others.

The trip here to Galway is quite fruitful I must say. Not much shopping because things are expensive everywhere in Europe! The pub here is delightful though. Great atmosphere with very friendly people and nice music here and there, totally different from those uncle pub in Singapore where they would have stupid karaoke or those high end pub which is serving overly priced alcohol. Here is just a plain o pub with lots of noise and lots of people, everyone is enjoying themselves and having a drink in their hand.

Food here is also great because Galway is just beside the ocean. Tonight we had fish and chips! Traditional fish and chips with salt and vinegar. Totally different from all the crap which Singapore have to offer.

We went to a tour which goes around Galway and it’s region. Very educational and interesting! The whole trip was about 8 hours? We left from our hostel at 9.40am, returned back at 5.30pm. Totally worth the 20€ we paid.

I know I haven’t been uploading photo and stuff because I wasn’t really in the mood to. Have to resize and draft out the post while I don’t really have much time because of school, kinda puts me off.

So I will try my best to upload and update those picture which are long overdue! or so I say :p

Day 16 : Horse riding

December 5th, 2009 • Others • No comments

Today was quite a normal day, went to school, did my work but at the end of the day, I went for horse riding!

It was quite an experience I must say. It wasn’t those kind where they will pull the horse and you would just sit on the horse but they will teach you how to steer, how to stop and how to ride the horse, by yourself. It was a VERY VERY nice experience. Its indoor btw but it kinda stink though.

Altogether there are about 3 – 4 trainer and they are all quite fierce. I mean, they give very confident and strong command on what you should do, what you need to do and what you should obey. Very strong woman I must say. Oh ya, thinking back now, its all female trainer… Hmm.. Wow…

The trip to the stable house was about 20 minute and it cost 10euro because it was part of school activity. I wish we could go next week as well but from what we know, it is school break for them? So there might not be any school activity.

One more week and we will be back. Just to update you folks, we are not heading to paris anymore… Yes, sad to say because of time and cost, we cancelled our trip and is heading for galway instead this weekend. Hopefully it would be worth the trip!

Day 15 : Bday

December 2nd, 2009 • OSIP • No comments

Yup, it’s my birthday. Happy birthday to myself. Nothing really exciting today, Home -> School -> Home -> Sleep.

So, for the day, I don’t really have much to update about.

Day 14 : Apple sucky day

December 1st, 2009 • Others • No comments

Today was quite okay. Having some blues, nothing much happened. Was staring into the screen and suddenly I remembered that my iPhone was kinda buggy because sometime it won’t read the sims card and require me to restart the phone.

So I thought, why not I see if apple have any warranty servicing store around and yes, they do. It’s a retail store called 3G and yay, I was happy. Headed down after school and freaking bloody hell, when we entered the store, straight away I knew something was wrong. This is how the conversation went,

Me : ” Hi, I checked online at the apple website and they listed you as one of the official service store, can you help me check my iPhone and see if my warranty allows an exchange? ”

Sales person : ” Oh, we no longer do apple, maybe after christmas but not now. So you might have to call apple about this. ”

Me : ” Erm… What you mean no longer do apple? (WTF EXPRESSION) ”

Sales person : ” Well, we just no longer do apple. ”

Me : ” Ermmm… Okay? (Walks off pissed) ”

So, moral of the story. Never believe website information and double check before heading down to stores.

After this little side story, Shavonne wanted macdonald fries. We actually thought about eating mac, can you believe it? All their fries here (excluding macdonald) are very thick and fat, so shavonne missed those slim fries. After looking at the menu, we just stood there and looked at shavonne buy the fries. Why? 7.55EURO for a chicken macnugget meal. Would u have eaten? Definitely not us.

So we went to a pizza place nearby, took away pizza and bought drinks, headed back home. Another thing to note, we drink a lot here. We basically have to buy drinks every day! Mind you, the drinks here are big. 2 Litre – 3 Litre per bottle, not your standard 1.5 litre in singapore. We buy 2 bottle almost everyday!

So ya, that ended our day and the thought of us being here 2 weeks already set in really fast. It’s kinda giving me the bluez because I would be going home soon and I definitely would miss this place.

Day 13 – Pei sheng is disgusting

November 30th, 2009 • Others • No comments

Sunday was rest day. We rotted at home. Never go out, just rotted at home.

Had dinner, cooked instant food. Pecking roast duck and Steak pie with onion. It tasted okay.

The perking roast duck came with sauce and the rice wrapper (I don’t really know what its called but its the popiah skin). Just need to microwave the sauce, the wrapper and oven bake the duck.

So, why pei sheng is disgusting? He wanted to microwave the duck. Ok, we thought he was crazy but he showed us that he was dumb. Nevermind. We will always forgive you pei sheng

That wasn’t very disgusting right? He did something more disgusting later that night.

So, as we had established, he wasn’t very smart. He placed the rice wrapper on top of his cup to put the filling. We kept saying that if the things fall inside, it would look gross. He didn’t cared. We finally finished our dinner and there was still some corn left with one wrapper. He took the wrapper, placed it on top of his cup, poured the corn on top. A corn suddenly dropped into his cup. Suddenly, a batch of them dropped into the cup. It was gross. It’s Fanta Exotic (Bright pink in color) with a lot of yellow corn sizzling. They keep going down and up, down and up. I didn’t take a picture because I was grossed out and I won’t want to gross you all out.

So I dedicate this blog post to Koh Pei Sheng Issac. You are always our crazy idiot. Listen to Caroline, you need counseling.

Day 12 – Farmer’s Market

November 30th, 2009 • Others • No comments

Well, today we decided to just walk around carlow and maybe visit some interesting place. BAD IDEA. Carlow is too small, its like 30k residence and most of them are farmers.

We know there’s a farmers market on saturday from 9am – 2pm. We decided to take a look, maybe it would be big and maybe it would take half of our day away. BAD IDEA. It was pathetically small.

After walking the pathetically small farmers market (Which, their things are more expensive than the supermarket because it is “fresh”), we went to a nearby shopping mall. It is also small but the supermarket is quite big though.

Something caught my attention and I believe if I show this to Qiyang, Michelle or Ivan, they would go crazy.

Yes, you didn’t see wrongly. Its a UFO machine with doll tied up with 20EURO. Each play is 1 Euro. Hmmmm……. WOW? WHY THEY DON’T HAVE THIS IN SINGAPORE!

Anyway, we ended our day by being at home and cooking some steak which we bought for 10euro for 4 pieces.

Day 11 – Food

November 28th, 2009 • Others • No comments

After living here for more than a week, we learnt how to cook ourselves because of the price here. A meal can set you back from 10 euro to anything up to 30 euro depending on what and where you eat it. A fair comparison would be the kfc. We had family fest for lunch today, it cost us 18.99 euro. In singapore, its $18sgd? Well, its technically the same price but different currency

So, most of the time we would look up recipe online and buy ingredient to cook. Its not hard at all because the washing up is by dish cleaner and most of the time, things which we cook are fairly easy to cook. Every utensils we need are available at the house, so we don’t really need to get any. I usually supervise the cooking because I guess watching discovery Home and Travel helps? All the jamie oliver, Nigella cooking shows kinda help a bit here and there.

Until now, we haven’t really screw up any of our dinner yet. So, thank goodness!

Our first night cooking dinner was quite an experience. Shavonne did a stuffed pepper with rice, roast chicken with stuffed vegetable and asparagus with garlic. Ya, it was quite a spread. We also had lemon cheesecake as dessert which we bought from the supermarket. I know, it’s a lot of food but we cleared it all nevertheless with no left overs

After cooking for the first night, Caroline decided to cook dinner for us. It was SUPERB! I must say, she’s one hell of a cook. There was meatball, vegetable rice, potato with white sauce, garlic bread and salad. I must say, compared to our cooking, hers are restaurant standard while ours are more like… TV dinner

We also had a very pathetic dinner. Scrambled egg with mee goreng maggi mee? That wasn’t filling at all.

Thomas, the intern which caroline had for one month also cooked a german dinner for us before he left. It was very meaty and filling, I guess germans eat a lot of meat? Hmm..

So, that would sum up how our eating habit is over here. Lots of meat and no rice or noodle which I am glad. Might be cooking Nasi lemak or Chicken rice for Caroline if we can find an easy enough recipe online.

Day 10 – Hmm

November 27th, 2009 • Life • 1 comment

Life had become a routine since the week started. It is school, home, dinner, relax, sleep and the loop goes on. I have nothing really exciting to write about so I am gonna write about their culture and people here.

So far, i’ve been here for more than a week already. Met and was introduced to about 10 over people. All of them are very friendly, they like to interact and talk about life and stuff unlike Singapore where people are always treating each other as stranger and always afraid to make conversation because their mum taught them that when they are young not to talk to stranger or they will get aducted. I am very sure your mum told u that before but the point is, people are nice here.

For example, last week when shopping for dinner ingredient, we were at the cake section choosing a cake as dessert. We were contemplating lemon cheesecake, strawberry trifle or some other cake. While we were in the midst of looking through the choices, this kind and sweet old lady, just came up to us and told us that the fruit cake is not bad. Said she tried it before and it was quite good. And she just smiled at us and left without buying anything from the cake section. We thanked her off course but we didn’t buy the fruit cake. That’s not the point, the point is that people here are friendly and nice.

Another example which reflect this kind and friendly attitude would be the driver here, it is totally different from Singapore. In Carlow, there’s only 30k people living here, so the land is quite big and traffic light are quite rare to see let alone zebra crossing. So when crossing the road, most of the time we have to jay walk and in Singapore, if u do that, most likely u would get horned at or you just have to wait a while because in Singapore, traffic light is everywhere and sooner or later, cars will stop.

Here, as long as you look like you want to cross the road, the car would automatically slow down and stop for you to cross the road. No honking, no middle finger, just a friendly hand sign for u to cross and you just return a thank you hand sign back. We tried that about 10 over times and it is always the same.

The culture difference makes me wonder, is Singaporean really selfish or are the people here just too friendly? Hmmm.. Something to ponder about.

Time for bed! I will dedicate tmr post for food which we cooked over the week and pictures of it

Day 9 – School

November 26th, 2009 • Others • No comments

Back to school to continue on my project of Lua and Irrlicht. Whole day was spent trying to mix these 2 together with totally no experience and only online tutorial which is crap or you don’t understand what the hell they are explaining about.

I guess today, the only comfort I had was the morning scene when I woke up to…

I miss my friends, I miss singapore, I miss home, I miss scolding wee kiat in real life, I miss playing poker with Ivan, Michelle, Nelson, Yong yi, Mason and winning their money. I miss those good times which I just hang out at clubroom and picking on people/subcomm. I miss going to movie with my friends even though we are seated right in front.

2 more weeks and I will be back home.