HELLO, MY NAME IS ELDER PRICE

I had to go to London because my permit expired before my flight back to Singapore, and I’d risk getting detained by the Swedish customs on the way back if I didn’t leave the Schengen region. Even though it was a day, it was an epic trip, and I could not ask for a better way to end my Euro tour.

Turns out that I almost got detained at the customs in London. The London customs tend to ask a lot of questions to get a sense of who you are bla bla bla. The officer at the counter asked a lot more questions than usual, and he felt that he wasn’t convinced that he should let me into London. I can’t really type the full conversation here, but it was quite an annoying experience. After which, he confiscated my passport and permit and in my head it was like “Walao, in trying to avoid getting detained in Stockholm, I get detained in London”.

Well, his officer cleared me in the end J Thank you boss.

I stayed with Becky, who was my classmate and CCA-mate back in secondary school. It has been many years since we’ve last met and LOL we meet in London. It’s really nice how she crammed in supper and breakfast with me, despite having some rather intense 14 hours/day summer program in school.

After breakfast with Becky, I decided to try queuing for the ridiculously cheap £5(~S$10) Matilda tickets. They sell 16 of these tickets each day and I bought the 15^th ticket!! Here’s a success selfie with the person who bought the 14^th ticket!

We were really lucky because we had only queued for half an hour. In fact, we were probably the 18^th and 19^th in line, but a Korean band of 4 decided to leave because they couldn’t get 4 in a row so YAY for us!

Went to Regent’s Park after a short nap, to chill with a honey cake and a book. I’m definitely going to miss the vast-open-area-park concept! Parks like these are slowly dwindling in Singapore, or at the very least they aren’t as vast.

Given that I had managed to buy the 15^th ticket while queuing for only half an hour, I thought I was feeling really lucky with tickets that day. So I thought “Hey let’s try my luck for the Book of Mormon lottery!”. I formed an alliance with a Brit who had come alone, and Siying & her bf came down to help me ballot as well haha, giving me 4 chances to win.

When 19 tickets had already been given, and they drew the next slip (which didn’t look like mine given the way it was folded), I thought my chances were over. Wasn’t that bad, at the very least, I had Matilda to catch! Turns out that that funny looking slip only requested for ONE ticket, which meant that there was ONE more left.

When the guy drew the next slip, he stared right at me with a wide smile (and it my head it was like “Mai kp la, you mocking me?”)

“This is a ‘ditch’ ticket! OHHH. I’m looking right at you because I remember your name! JIA HUI YAM!!” (He remembered because he was trying to tell my alliance to look out for my name and it just left him confused)

-STUNNED STUNNED STUNNED- -JUST DIED- -WHATJUSTHAPPENED- -AAAAAAAHHHHHHH- -SURREAL- -INCREDIBLE LUCK-

(And one slip was actually disqualified because they only wrote their first name)

So I ditched my alliance, and because we were strangers no hard feelings at all.

OMG I FELT LIKE THE LUCKIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD. THE MUSICAL THAT I WANTED TO WATCH THE MOST IN EXCHANGE IS NOW MINEEEEEEE. HAVEN’T FELT SO SURREAL IN SUCH A LONG TIME HAHAHAHA.

And I ditched my Matilda ticket, selling it to some Asian girl I met at a dodgy ticket office holding a Matilda pamphlet. Think I made her feel extremely lucky, because she was in disbelief that I actually had a ticket to sell, and we were cutting the deal in the middle of the streets. Furthermore, I sold it for only £5, the price I had bought it for.

There couldn’t have been a better way to end exchange than watching the Book of Mormon, partly due to the anticipation, and front row seats for £20. The musical was extremely hilarious, to say the least, though at times the jokes were a little too insulting and crude. But still, very very enjoyable, exceeded exceeding my expectations, even after watching Youtube videos and listening to the soundtrack. (Not enough ways to explain how I was blown away)

The best part of the musical? THIS GORGEOUS HUMAN BEING, AKA GAVIN CREEL. (Top left corner)

Appropriately buff, and dimples. Couldn’t help but swoon at his lovely voice when he was only 10 metres away from me. From then on, I left my heart in London.

Also, while watching the musical, I realised that I had actually met one of the performers. I was wondering why he had look SOOOO FAMILIAR. In the last lottery I went for in May, there was a Brit that kept talking nonsense “Show’s cancelled, no lottery” “I know exactly how and when to put a winning slip in”. He came with a HUGE group of 20 people who kept squeezing with me and JX, so that’s why they were memorable. ANDD he was holding a Starbucks cup with his name on it. Searched for the cast online after that and YES IT WAS HIM – EVAN JAMES. He winked at me during the show, and I’m not sure if it was intentional or not (doubt it heh).

There are always happy endings, it just depends on where you choose to end it. My Euro tour (and well, in a way exchange as well) ended on that night ^^.

Rome and all it's epicness

Rome was a place in which my resourcefulness and street-smartness was put to the test like never before.

It's messy
It's dodgy
It's crowded
AND many things don't work!

Here is a list of things that weren't working in my short 4 days in Rome:
The train
An ENTIRE telephone network (Imagine starhub breaking down for a day)
Trevi Fountain (Just about one of the most famous landmarks)
Traffic lights

On the day that I arrived in Rome, I was supposed to find XY, and we would go to the host's home. But her flight got delayed for an hour, and I didn't stick to the meeting point thinking that we had to meet the host by a certain time. Well... she missed out the part where we would call the host first before meeting her so I went over to the bus stop first. And I didn't have the address either.

There was no one at the bus stop waiting... And I just thought "GG HONGS HONGS HONGS". It was a time of desparate praying for journey mercies then.

Thankfully there was a cafe at the bus stop operated by a Chinese national, so I asked for wifi access. But the wifi was down that day -.- (#hongs). Thankfully the lady told me that there was a computer/internet/international calls shop further down the street. So I booked myself a hostel, and just as I was about to log out, XY responded to my FB message. WAO

The Last of Stockholm

These photos were taken in early June, the last few weeks left in Stocholm (after which it would be my last trip). I'm now back in Singapore, but I remember being bipolar then - wishing that I was already home, yet wishing not wanting exchange to end. But all these only goes to show how blessed I am to have had so many enjoyable things in my life that I hold so dear to me, whether it's exchange or Singapore.

This was taken close to 11pm. The sun doesn't really go down, it just gets dim. Kinda reminds me of how my life is, that the sun doesn't really go down on me, not entirely.

Princess cake! The Swedish food that I enjoy the most (or rather the only thing I'd miss heh).
Sponge cake, rasperry jam, vanilla cream, whipped cream, and a fondant layer!

The back of my hostel, Idun

Food festival at Kungstragarden, with tons of stalls of different types of cuisines. We were really excited about it, but if you think about it, our hawker centres are just like this!

Biker gang polaroids ^^

Random atas neighbourhood

Double rainbow ^^

Went to the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, which is essentially a museum on a war ship that sank 15 mins after setting sail... It's supposedly the most interesting museum in Stockholm. Okay it was pretty cool, but I'm not really a museum type of person tbh.

The diving bell had wifi

 

The last of my biking days! SY, Kenelm and I went to Hagaparken to cycle and roll around and clown around. We even filmed ourselves singing 'Obviously', being pretentious YouTubers, calling ourselves the Stockholm Squirrels... (I blame SY)

This is Xiaoming, one of my neighbours along the corridor. It's funny how I'm the first person that she meets when we moved in, and I'm the last person she sees in Idun before she leaves.

When Nigel & Chunhan both left, and Idun was so quiet. I thought that the day after that would have been a long day, but there were little perks that helped brighten my day. Went out for fika with Kenelm, skyped with JW, and got this in the mail from Lydia!! :D

Barcelona Day 3 - A Very Powerful

Sagrada Familia is about the most spectacular religious building I've been to in Europe, even though it has not been completed. In Europe, there are tons and tons of religious buildings - churches, synagogues, temples, basilicas etc, but hands down this one actually MEANT SOMETHING.

If you do go there, please get an audio guide to better appreciate this building. As a Christian, the building was really quite powerful (as Yip had told me earlier), because of all the symbolism behind them. And you can see that the symbolism isn't easy to create, and there was massive detail in the sculptures and different art forms. The building hasn't been completed, so there's so much more that I haven't even seen (ie the Glory facade, and the 'roof') and I've already been blown away.

The pillars were designed in the shape of trees, to represent community 

The Nativity Facade, depicting Jesus's birth/childhood

The Passion Facade, representing the events leading to the crucifiction of Christ

It has been 200 years since construction began, and there's about 20++ more years to go. I hope to be able to see the completed building someday!

Barcelona Day 2 - Montserrat

Heeding the advice of Louis from cell, we took a daytrip to Montserrat to enjoy some scenery! Montserrat's a mountainous region, and mountains look just like gigantic fingers! 

It was a morning of breathtaking views, and enjoying creation :) It took us a bit of a hike (on top of spending quite a bit on trains and funiculars) to get to a good viewing point. But it was extremely rewarding - the view, the quietness, the breezes and sunshine. Enjoy the photos!

Throwing rocks down the mountains. I made sure no one was below, but I killed a deer. KIDDING

Part of the route in Montserrat has a series of sculptures of Jesus's life, which was really interesting. Though towards the end, there was stuff on Santa Maria (Mary), because this is actually part of the Catholic pilgrimage to begin with.

Monastery in Montserrat!

Barcelona Day 1 - Parc Guell

Alright, so on the first day of exploring Barcelona we kept getting lost trying to find this place 'Parc Guell'. As such, it was the only place we had gone to that day... :( Made the mistake of walking instead of taking the bus directly from our hostel. In the end, we were so sick of being lost that we took the bus instead.

With Xinying, whom I met in my internship last summer. She was an intern too!

Parc Guell was like a life-size candy house from Hansel & Gretel, with all the brightly-coloured tile fragments and brown bricks. It was constructed by Gaudi, who also made the plans for Sagrada Familia. He's really one creative soul, that man. After being to so many buildings, I would say that I've never seen anything quite like this.

Btw, all the colourful portions in the whole place were made by tiny pieces of broken coloured tiles. The house was probably the size of few landed properties in Caldecott Hill. The effort in constructing this building is just craaaayyyyy.

Madrid Day 2 - Ignorance is bliss

This is really long overdue. But so much has happened over the past few weeks (exams, moving out, trips). Hopefully I'll be able to update the events properly.

The morning and afternoon of the second day in Madrid was pretty boring, just going around to take pictures and all.

Temple

Aerial view of Madrid from Temple

The evening, on the other hand, kept us very excited (more of anxious really), because we bought tickets to catch bullfighting! Well, we didn't know what bullfighting REALLY was, we thought it was just a bull charging at red flags. So when SY told me bullfighting was cruel, I Googled it and the two of us were like

WHATTTTTTHHEEE?FLJDFLG./?

Google if you don't understand why the commotion.

To make matters worse, this was the first article that appeared when I Googled "San Isidro, bullfighting". 3 matadors injured the night before.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/21/spain-san-isidro-bullfighting-festival-suspended-matadors-injured

The audience would wave something white (handkerchief, scarf, hat, shirt, cloth) if they wanted to pardon the bull for 'outstanding behaviour'. But... I'm pretty sure the bull died so I have no idea what that was for lol, maybe to recognise its efforts

Look at how near the matador positioned himself! Crazy and tense atmosphere

Matador strutting around like a hero after finishing that bull. After that they lifted him and paraded him around, gave him a press conference in the ring, and lifted him into a van which drove off. They're treated like superstars.

After the game XY and I were stopped by 2 Spanish men while we were trying to take pictures. One of them kept gesturing to my camera and tried to take it from me to help us take a picture. For a moment there, I was wondering what elaborate pickpocketing-camera-stealing ploy it was lol. Turns out that they're just really really friendly people who were rather intrigued by 2 small Asian girls going to watch a bullfight.

We tried to have a conversation and it was challenging because they barely spoke English and we hardly knew any Spanish words. We did understand enough to know that they wanted to give us a cheek-to-cheek Spanish greeting hehehe.

These are my friends

Typed on 11 April 2014

I'm lying in siying's room right now. We are having a sleepover last night of milo and face masks. Reminds me of that time with jx in the study when I forced her to take a selfie when we had our masks in haha.

Exchange feels like gaining a lot more siblings. Siying and I do a lot of crazy shizz like fight and sing stupid songs, like what jx and I do in the evenings. Nigel and Chunhan are like 2 brothers annoying me whenever I see them haha. Most notably getting poked and shoved and being told "shut up la" by Nigel. Chunhan laughs and doesn't help me when I get bullied. And I don't get how he can laugh at his own jokes hahaha.

I'm still getting my worth of being bullied. Things here aren't that different from SG I guess...        

6 June 2014

The countdown begins and people start dropping like flies. Okay that was overly dramatic. Tomorrow, Chunhan will be leaving for his trip. And the next time the Biker Gang gathers will be in Singapore.

It feels immensely surreal, that exchange is actually ending. To think that I dreaded exchange at the start, because it would mean being away from community I have in SG.

At some food festival in Kungstragarden

Because losing everything

Feels like

The sun going down on me...

Indomee for the last supper as we watched Grand Hotel Budapest

11 June 2014

People dropping like flies part 2 as Nigel also leaves. Idun seems uncomfortably quiet now, not because my room mate isn't around, but there's no room to go to to hang and talk nonsense. I didn't think 5 months would have made the waterworks turn on, much less when I was walking back in the evening. Thankfully I had my sunglasses heh.
         

Siying and I chasing after the bus that Nigel got on, for like 10metres.

On to more light-hearted news, today, the Stockholm Squirrels filmed their debut! HAHA

Basically we were filming us singing songs in Hagaparken, and the original video was so funny because of the ridiculous NGs we had. For preserving whatever reputation we each have left, we're definitely not posting the video :P