Recollections 2 - First Day Away

3rd March 2007

on the plane, half asleep...

BREAKFAST!! is the second meal. Omelettes! ...i forgot to take a short of the supper. was chicken noodles i think. all taste great. SQ is fantastic! the inflight entertainment, ahah, nothing to say liao. watched Babel and Stranger than fiction. Leaving Night at the Museum to watch with GR! also got games and tv on the plane. shiok!

This is gan, and me. we got out of the airport and were at Malpensa train station trying to figure our way to get to Saronno. which platform to take the train, when does it come, where do we validate our tickets, etc etc. Tickets cost us 6euros. ex. tsk tsk. we were lunging our luggage around and all wrapped up in the thick clothes.

Yeah, this is Gan inside the train. the train is REALLY weird. you have to press on the train door button and open it yourself. then it will automatcally shut and you have to open it yourself too from the inside. The inside is super hot. we eventually started to take out our external clothes cuz we were sweating underneath it! i took this photo from the outside cuz the train stopped there for a while. think it was too early, maybe only 7am, so nobody was on the train. the lights were also dim. we almost thought we were on the wrong train. THEN, luckily i got back into the train quite fast. cuz the train suddenly just started moving without any warning! we were chatting halfway and the objects outside the window started to shift. hmmmm. we realise that they are very punctual when it comes to train timings. they will write when the train arrives and when it will leave. then no warning, just move at the stated time. whew~ never get 失散.

we finally met Yian Ling and Meihua at Saronno after a 14min ride and transferred to the next train to Novate Milanese, the place where we're all staying. There's a central yard surrounding by the different rental rooms of the owners or ppl staying here. the pink block is the landlord's house. heard that they are actually not very nice. never really seen them. so *shrugs.

Yian Ling, Meihua, Gan and I actually live inside the brown door. second one from the left, second level. will do a formal introduction of the house another day! been busy with the admin stuff. paid a lot of money too! tell u soon. wait for the next entries.

yeah, this is Yian Ling waving at me. She's on the narrow corridor that leads to our house. This place is quite international. next door there are some other students also studying at Polimi. but i think they are much older. one of them is doing masters already.

Meihua and Yian Ling. Pretty gals!

ooops. heh, this is Gan and my room. messy messy messy. i just took everything out and after a while, we decided to head for IKEA!

At the HUGE bus stop. large countries really can afford such huge bus stops even though there's not many people waiting for the bus there. we waited for our shuttle bus to take us to IKEA. as you can see, that orange moving object over there is the bus! basically you don't have to pay if you act like you have a bus card. there's nowhere to pay on the bus. you have to get a bus ticket at some newspaper stand or subway station machine before you board the bus. then you validate it on the bus. but it seems like you can don't pay cuz nobody checks. unless you sway meet conductor la... the same thing for train. only metro have to pay cuz there's a gate like our MRT station.

IKEA HOTDOG. mini-size bread, super long sausage. hmm. the plate is about the size of my hand. slightly smaller. so you can gauge the size of the hotdog. Ikea here in milan is pretty much the same as ikea anywhere else. it's a container block like the one in tampines, or so my friends say.

Meihua and I. were on our way to IPERCOOP. a supermarket near our house. we stock up on our food supplies then headed home to cook PASTA. yum...

the finished pasta. with cheese on top. good stuff. must try.

dinner scene. so nice. never had such a dinner at home before. i like the feeling. very cozy.

After dinner, gan and i were quite tired liao. we watch a bit of tv then cannot liao. thk only 10pm time in Milan but we K.O. really needa sleep. haha. yep. so that was the first day in Milan.

WATCH OUT FOR THE NEXT EPISODE ON www.ciaodamilano.blogspot.com haha.