A random day in school

a crowded panifficio. a chinese food stall. the school compound.

***
i'm glad we finally found some modules we can take :)

Last week...

13th March 2007 (tues)

welcome day at politecnico in the afternoon. received a few stacks of paper with instructions of how to register for modules, timetable of modules, application forms, x, x, x ,x... eramus presentation in good english. sth sounds like fun. hmmm... make or dun make mensa card?

14th March 2007

didn't go to sch. woke up too late... ended up in chinatown at Paolo Sarpi with yian while Gan&MH went to get groceries at COOP. found only 3 provision shops there. got ourselves red beans(!!), condensed milk and glutinuous flour... yeah. also some other foodstuff... chinatown... full of clothing shops... why.

15th March 2007

went to school finally to sit in for lessons so that we could choose our modules. yr2 studio that day was a specialised ergonomics class and they were going to design backpacks, sleeping bags or tents for a company called CAMP. also went for a eco-sustainability class called ambiente e cultura (...??) misleading.

(their studio or lab lesson. this room is quite big. got some other smaller LTs or CTs also...)

(ciclo di vita! life cycle! beardy guy is the lecturer. )

///in the night, we went to neighbour's house for PAARRTY!!!!!!!! (secret thought: they can really drink!) the food was great. we contributed chicken rice. camila, hoolien, paulina, lucas, carmeletta, hetter, aisah, marta! so many people! was given a geography lesson on what are the countries surrounding poland. haha...

16th March 2007

SLACK AT HOME. gan went ipercoop area alone to shop cuz cannot stay at home! MH, Yian and I went jogging and to search for legendary AMICO (friend) supermarket. nice jog! redeemed a little of those sinful food we keep eating...

17th March 2007

weeeekeendd! went to duomo area. ufficio postale was closed. yian couldn't post stuff. the duomo piazza was rowdy and roaring with cheers.

they were broadcasting ruby match. italy vs ireland. world cup? atmosphere: spirited.

as we walked across the piazza to look for the tourist office (so that we can get some milan maps), lotsa pigeons kept flying overhead us. prob cuz this girl was feeding them. some flew low. quite scary....
after maps, we checked out Luini at S.Radegonda 16. supposed to have great panzerotti or mini deep fried calzone. i like it. it's good! lotsa of people queuing for the food there. it has a 150year old history selling the stuff.

good!

then went zara and H&M. the shops are so far apart that after only a while, conquering only the two shops, we were tired liao...

headed home sweet home.



18th March 2007

MH and Yian went church. Gan saw free admission for castello sforzello museum. we were therefore split into 2 grps. the castle overwhelms. arggh. but museum turned out not free....


and so... we decided to check out the beautiful garden park behind the castle: the fun fair(will be blogged soon...........) from 2 weeks ago was still there... went beyond park to after the Arco della Pace in search of recommended apertivo bar Blangra(?????)bar (honest. that's the name) found a....erm.......... woman lying next to the shop window? dare not go any closer... and immediately assume shop is closed in my head...


(Nice structure. decorated with umm... not so nice grafitti...)


after that, we took tram back to train station and passed by "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (must look at next entry for the answer!) gan and i were very excited! ha! now i know how to make gan happy! maybe i'll compile a book called 'living with gan'. ha!


on the way home. met Yian and MH at the home train station. turned out we were on the same train and they were also visiting museums. and theirs is free!!!!!!!! i want to go! ... ok. next time.




*****

yep. one week. so fast.

Arrivederci Torino

12 March 2007

finally, it's time to return the rental skiis and head back home to milano. after a hearty breakfast, we carry all our barang barang and arrive at jolly sport.............................. to find that it is C.L.O.S.E.D. on monday mornings! why like that? we kept asking the cleaning lady to let us put our skis inside and we come back later but she kept insisting that it is not possible. in the end, we just went to the backyard to put down our things first. as we were discussing, the lady keep coming out to tell us she is not responsible for our skis... there seemed to be no solution and some of us decided to go eat gelato instead to cheer ourselves up. but to our horror, they found that the gate we entered was locked!! horror of all horrors! they were sort of panicking i think. but sixiu and i were too busy playing nintendo DS and PSP respectively. haha.. by the time i got up, they already managed to get a resident to open the gate for us.... erm ya... and so... we proceeded with plan to eat gelato.

then, sixiu and cindy walked us back to the station for our ride home... they would later go back and return the skis (and the skis would already have been brought into the shop before they even reached it...)

(yian on train)

and.... we were glad to be home again in familar and safer milano. torino in my opinion is more dangerous. there are always random ppl talking to you or forming groups just sitting around... must be careful if you go.

ski day!

11th March 2007 (day 2)

the next day, we woke up as early as 4am to catch the bus to france for our ski trip. BUT. we missed the bus because we were late. so how? we couldn't take 'no skiing' for an answer cuz we already carried the f**king skiis so far and we're gg home the next day. SO, yep we decided to explore the snow mountain in torino by ourselves instead! another adventure~ !

the train passed by many beautiful, majestic mountains and peaceful villages...

we were hungry when we arrived. so we had brunch at one of the cosy restaurants in the village town. there were cheese-filled burgers and power coffee with chocolate. what's it called again? macchiato??ah. classic photo of the day: sixiu, the ski rack! we conveniently followed yian's example on leaning the skis on sixiu. haha...

and we're set to ski! (finally. after getting our student card, ski pass and putting on our boots.)

at this time of the year, the snow is actually melting already... we were REALLY LUCKY to still be able to ski. anw, the skiing place is full of pro kids who look as young as 5 years old! they ski down the steep slopes like nobody's business lor...

us in action! if you ever go to europe during winter, you die die also must try skiing!!!!!!!!!!! it's so cool! feel the wind in your face and the adrenaline rush as you ski down the slope. then when you fall, it's not painful at all! cuz all the snow cushions you. super super super 赞! anw, check it out. we even came up with innovative use of skis! just sit and slide. got more control like that. ha!

of course, we didn't forget to take a break from all that skiing so that we can take happy photos :) (see our snow man there? looks quite big but actually hor... is only like a palm's height...)

had a great time there! this is the man at the ski lift. my card was faulty and he gave me a new card. but dunno why still cannot. he was very kind to keep opening the gate for me. i give him thumbs up! last bus? ok hurry hurry! (even if it means packing right in front of the shop with people walking by...)waiting at the bus stop... look at sixiu ah... hands stained green cuz of lak sek gloves...

and, back at the station, we waited for the train back to torino... totally shagged out man.

that night, we quickly cooked and ate pasta b4 gg to bed. really buay dong liao...
....but it was fun :)

To Torino: DAY 1

ciao! long time no updates liao. here's our torino trip day 1. (finally got down to writing and uploading all the wonderful pictures..)

10th March 2007

the day started out REEALLY early at 530am in the morning as we prepared for our trip. all of us except gan didn't have a sleeping bag. so... we decided to bring our blankets over. sweet. check out the step-by-step demonstration below on how to pack blankets:
it was really hilarious watching the two of them wrestling with their blankets before finally strapping them to their already chunky bags. even though we were going away, our food, as usual, is good and sumptuous ;)

finally we're on our way to the train station. look at the sizes of our bags! Gan had a little problem getting out of our tiny door haha.
and so we went to the centrale station, i was awed by the size and grandeur of the place. i really felt tiny in there. it was fairly bustling there and we bought from the electronic ticket machine.
a group photo before departure.

on the train:
haiyo. turned up all the people at the platform were waiting for the same train. when the signal board showed the train platform, everyone rushed onto the train. REALLY EVERYONE. suddenly that binario was empty. gan and i waited for mh and yian to come back from their scouting session. by the time they came back, we had no seats liao. ha. but lucky we got our big bags! so we just sat on it. the morning sun shot bright warm rays through the windows giving strong highlights on our faces and casted long shadows on the ground. there was chatting but we spent most of the time making ways for the people who wanted to get on or off the train! haha... we were in their way :( finally finally, we arrived at Torino Porta Nuova! sixiu and cindy were late in picking us up because of a miscommunication and we ended up loitering around unfamilar torino station. we were greated by bald scary trees and network of cables closing down on the place. gan and i also couldn't help but notice how FAT the pigeons here were as compared to singapore. round and puffed up. cute.

after we put down our bags, we went to the ciocolato fair at piazza vittoria, the largest piazza in europe=) we sampled free chocolate and some of us even had chocolate icecream! ha! jealous right! i especially like the chocolate with orange ice-cream that cindy got. yumyum~ i got separated from the rest of the group in the queue as i enter the free chocolate sample tent with the earlier batch. shot a photo of them outside still queueing.haha.

next we went down to the 'no matter how you take also beautiful' river next to the piazza. haha. crazy shooting session. and really stunning view.

then we went to the ski shop to rent the ski or sci (shh-i). sixiu and cindy decided we should take a long route to view the town and so we did.
aiyo. really har... bring 6 girls out, 6 different cameras in the same place. you do the multiplication yourself la hur. when we compiled our pictures, its like 'millions' of photos of the same thing over and over again. quite funny la hur. yeah. this is our 'favourite tree'. got all the different angles. with lamp post or with building or with people. can choose from the collection liao. give you guys a sample here. look at us shooting away. haha. i shot a lot too... the italians must be thinking where these girls come from. nv see flower tree before issit? haha...

in the same park, there's also this tree that we all agree need some hair conditioner.

at jolly sport (the ski rental place):

dunno take how long there la... try and try. the people there are friendly tho. we had to carry everything and walk a few streets to the bus stop to take bus back sixiu&cindy's place. walk to bus stop already damn tired... yeah. tired faces.

but we didn't stay at home for the night la. went out to have aperitivo.

on the tram ride to the place, the milan gang demonstrated our train ride formation. haha... i will grab the train poles on top and everyone grab the next person beside. tsk. these ang mohs.. nv take into consideration their asian counterparts one leh....


yeah. and this is aperitivo in torino. the drinks are super colourful. taste good too. then the food here also more healthy than the one we went. cheers!

Neighbourhood supermarket discovery

9th March 2007

today, Yian and Meihua brought us to the neighbourhood supermarket, on the way, the trees were beautiful and the weather was good. spring is here and the flowers are already blooming :)

Adventure Aperitivo Trip on Women's Day

8th March

Today, we went out to Naviglie to check out the Aperitivo or Cocktail hour buffet there. Just by getting ourselves a drink, we could eat free flow of food in the pub buffet table!

(Note the transportation) We took a bus to Bovisa, changed to train to go Cadorna, then metro to Porta Genova station and on our way there, we saw many women carrying these yellow flowers. And we were like ‘hmm…??’ , dunno what was the occasion. So we quickly grab the tabloid papers that ppl were always distributing and realised that today is 三八妇女节!

Yep. And so meihua bought a bouquet of those tiny buds of yellow flowers to celebrate also. Cost us 1euro. Happy Women’s Day to all women out there. Haha.

After that, we carried on our aperitivo search. this is the neighbour around the Blue Canal Pub where we eventually settled down and ordered our drinks.

The place is great. I got myself a Margarita strawberry; Gan got some mint thing; Meihua Tequila sour, Yian some B******************** -dunno-wad. Good food + live band = linger till quite late. it was really enjoyable sitting there chatting. thk my drink was a bit strong and after 3/4 glass i was quite 'loosen up' already. haha. but still sober la... We found ourselves leaving at 10+pm and almost wanted to stay a while longer cuz at the door, we saw a newly put up sign that says ‘streape tease 2300’(??!)

But ah well, we didn’t. We tried to head back home. And…(ta-dah!) our adventure began!!

first, we missed the Cadorna stop and alighted at Lanza instead. We had to cross over and take the opposite side back to Cadorna. When we got back to Cadorna to changed back to train, we realized that train service had stopped! HAHA. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Haha! So funny. SHIT. No choice liao. Needa find straight bus home. At the place we live, there is only bus82 and there are two types of bus 82. one that stops only at Bovisaca and another that really goes all the way to where we stay (Novate Milanese)We asked the policeman at the train station where we could find a bus82(novate Milanese) bus stop. He gave us some directions but ho-ho. We overshot the bus stop and walked very far. When we came back to the bus stop, we realized: oops, wrong bus’ bus stop. So we decided to take the metro to another metro station that has our bus’ bus stop. At first we wanted to go centrale because that is the terminal of the bus. But cuz we consulted the man in the metro control station, he told us we can go Maciachini. So we went all the way to Maciachini station and found the bus stop. BUT! Erm… The bus home stopped service at 8pm. Great! We had no choice but to take bus82(bovisaca) that doesn’t go home but somewhere near...

still, we weren’t sure of where to stop and also decided to try changing to bus41 to get somewhere nearer home. It was really ridiculous because after we changed bus, we realized that we were actually going about a loop and ended up alighting at a stop we passed by on the first bus. Haiyo. It was really cold at night: 13 degrees Celsius. I was only in a t-shirt and white sweater. Frreezing man.

Gan and Meihua checked out the map at the bus stop. The scene was quite comical cuz the map only showed the vicinity of the bus stop and the map was really high up. The two of them like hopped on and stood on the seats before they could see the map. It was really dark and Gan used her handphone to light up the map. We realized that home was out of the range of the map and we don’t really know how to go home! Nonetheless, they copied the map on the tabloid papers we got earlier and we tried to walk home.

although we meet with the unexpected, it’s really weird how things work out at the end if we just stay calm and positive. somehow, either there's something called luck, or there's God cuz luckily before today, we knew there were two types of 82. If not we would have died when the bus looped back and we don’t know what happened. Then it was also lucky that we took the tabloid papers just now because if we didn’t we have no paper to copy down the map! And tonight, the sky was clear and we could see stars. For me, this is the first night that stars could be seen. Nice! The other days when I did look at the night sky, I could only see the usual bright satellite. Even though we didn’t have a complete map home, we manage to find our way by cooperation and combination our knowledge of what we saw on our bus route. We identified the landmarks and eventually found our way :) It was quite fun! (If you minus the cold wind and the fact that Yian is wearing heels…) The company was great and everyone was very positive. We were still laughing when we finally got home, safe and sound and happy. Haha. What an adventure. (And something to blog about. Yeyy…! But I don’t think I want to try that again. haha! ;~)

(home after 37minutes of walk and 2 hours of being lost.)

Friendly Neighbourhood + Home Introduction

8th March 2007

CHAPTER NEIGHBOURHOOD

just now we went to our friendly neighbourhood gelato shop to get ourselves an ice-cream. this is the second ice-cream i have here at Milan and they are terrific! i got myself a hazelnut+chocolate and vanilla sugar with chocolate strip one. the other time was zuppa inglese and limone. shiok man. go home dun appreciate the NTUC ice-cream liao. Look at our 幸福 faces :) esp meihua. so contented. haha.

look at our attire. neighbourhood walk calls for neighbourhood attire. cool~

and this, is our friendly neighbourhood. it's lined with many shophouses.

as we were walking back, we were attracted by the aroma of bread. neh, this is the shop. it makes you salivate just smelling the food! then, even more when you LOOK at the food. see for yourself. wa-ah. so many varieties and all look delicious.

this is the street which we live on: via repubblica (read as vi-ah re-pu-bbl-i-ca) check out the stop sign. modified and improved leh.

CHAPTER HOME

this is our home. Yian is opening the door and gan is walking towards it. then evil evil Yian locks meihua and I out. hmphf!

we live in one of the many flats inside: Begonia.

there are two layers of door and inside is our cosy home. it's really small and once you step in, you can see the kitchen cum living room cum bedroom for Yian and Meihua. see Meihua there? Gan and my room is right in front of the main door, on the right of the photo. you can't see much from the photo cuz it's blocked. opposite the kitchen is the toilet. 麻雀虽小, 五脏具全. we've got everything we need in our little home.

Living room cum kitchen cum bedroom:

this is the place where we will have our dinner and watch 金枝欲孽 together, our favourite entertainment at night. those women are really cunning and everyone likes everyone else. haha. italian tv ain't too bad either. can watch MTV channel.

view out of the window.

Plenty of food:

in the land of pasta, of course have to stock up on the variety of pasta. how can go italy and never eat pasta??! ha-ah.

then this is the biscuit that all four of us enjoy. is quite cheap at only 1+euros. has olive old extract and rosemary in it. so it tastes super fragrant.

Garbage disposal:

here in europe, you have to separate the garbage into paper, plastic, glass, food stuff and others. so we obediently 入乡随俗.

next, toilet:

really really really small. esp the W.C area. just enough to sit in. oh, and they have bidet here but we don't use it. i think yian use it to wash her leg though. not sure. it's really cold when you take off all your clothes to shower. so usually all of us will steam up the place first. the shower heater is a bit coo-coo one. suddenly very hot, suddenly ver cold. space inside is quite small also. i find it difficult to squat or bend down inside. only can stand straight.

and this is Gan and my room:

see my bed with my socks etc. gan's beside mine. i packed up a bit liao lah. utilised the drawer. see gan on the bed? yah, usually i'll sit on the bed to use my laptop too.

view out of window in room:

garbage truck usually come at around 6am to collect the rubbish i think. i saw once, lights flashing and noisy but normally i sleep through that.

this is gan trying to take a photo of her levis jeans. she wants to see what difference will there be after 6months when she go home. hmmm. haha.

yep. and that is all for today's tour. look out for the next episode on the more fun and glamourous part of milan city! ciao~

(hmm, very troublesome to load one by one. i shall have to think of a better way to show you the photos... how how?)