Longevity-peach buns

A very delicious birthday 'present' from Ching Yu ---- Longevity-peach buns! thanks a lot!



I couldn't seem to find any information about this bun, but well, it bears the meaning of longevity; well, i do hope that i can live longer WITHOUT any physical or mental problems , haha. Well, as the saying goes, " It's not about HOW LONG you have lived, but HOW you have lived."

May everyone's wishes become true.

MC vs WC

Some of you may have came across 'WC' rather than 'toilet'....well, WC is not Russian nor German nor French or whatsoever, it's English, and it stands for 'water closet'.

Well, i went to Kremlin Performance Hall the other day, in Kremlin (obviously) , Moscow. I saw this sign outside: MC......erm..........MC MC...... Malaysian closet?

22nd birthday

Had a small celebration with my blockmates and friends. Photo taken in our kitchen :P

far left: Eric, Yuan Hao, Per Ru, Edwin, Jie Ling (yellow shirt, girl), Ben (yellow shirt, boy) , Shaun, yap (pink), Khai Cherng (white).

Thanks for everything!


Yummy yummy cheese cake. Thanks to the Ng couple :P

Sarah Chang

Was surfing net the other day, and i found her --- Sarah Chang, a genius violinist! I have been watching heaps of video clips of her performances on youtube...This clip below is "meditation from Thais" composed by Massenet:



Sarah Chang is a American-born Korean, her dad is a violinist and her mum is a music composer. Sarah recorded her first album when she was 9 y/o.

I wish i could play like her....She's just absolutely amazing!

She performed this when she was 10......Salut D'amor (Elgar)


And finally, my favourite music piece: Zigeunerwiesen, esp. the last part! marvellous technique and fingering! Totally impressed!

Döner!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

unfortunately i forgot to take photos of the doners i ate in Berlin....Well, i had falofel-doners instead of the meat doners; my friends teased me that the tastiness of doners, is the MEAT!!!

Doner-kebab is a Turkish cuisine, but it was modified by Turkish immigrants in Berlin about 30 years ago, to suit the Germans' taste buds. After that, doner-kebab became a popular fast food in many countries, including UK, the States, Denmark, New Zealand....and recently, in Russia Federation!!!!!!!!!


(image from wikipedia) Berlin doner!!!!! It seems to me this doner is with falofels...Yummy. i really like it.


Guess what, i found this near the metro station today.........

doner-kebab! with veal, 60 roubles (about 1.66 euro). It costs averagely 2-2.50 euro in Berlin, i heard you can even get a doner for 1.50 euro.

This reminds me of a Turk in Hesse,Germany, who said if he ever becomes a politician, one of his policies is to unify the prices of doner-kebab to 2 euro, so that poor people can afford to eat them too =.=lll ; and one more thing, apparently he suggested we should eat human flesh because it's cleaner compared with other animals who eat other animals...(excuse me, don't human eat other animals as well? we're not clean then!!!) ...And this guy said he wasn't sure how does human flesh taste like, but he presumed it's delicious......crazy =.= lll

edison chen.....

I don't usually read entertainment news, and in fact, i don't even bother to know...But this Edison chen incident has been such a hot topic nowadays, so....the news just crept into my ears....

here's a video clip of Edison Chen's / EDC's apologies in pressed release on 4th Feb 2008:




and this is the link to Edison Chen's blog: http://www.clotinc.com/blogs/public/edc/

Berlin!!!!!!!!!!

Well, don't really have the time and mood to write about my Berlin trip, though i miss berlin and Berliners (not the doughnuts!!!) a lot. Will update the my travel log when i'm free.



Berlin TV tower




World famous Pergammon Museum (listed in UNESCO world heritage list, together with 4 more world-class museums. 5 of them, they form "museum-island", as they're just next to one another.



Residence of German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. You can see at the bottom left of the photo , there were two guards. Well, it's right opposite Pergammon museum.



Reichstag, German parliament.



Jewish memorial.



Adolf Hitler's bunker, somewhere beneath here. Exact location unknown.


Unten Den Linden at night



Berlin main railway station, Haupbahnhof.



Kaiser Wilhelm church, it was bombed in WW2. Authorities are asking for donation to renovate and reconstruct the church before it collapses.

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Around Potsdamer Platz


Philharmonic Hall and Sony centre, in Potsdamer Platz.









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One of the millions of graffitis in Berlin.





Checkpoint Charlie, the only gate where East/west Germans could go to the opposite sides.



Sex education during DDR/ GDR period. DDR stands for Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or German Democratic Republic, the full name of former East Germany.

I'm totally impressed with the DDR Ministry of state security , better known as Stasi. For those who are interested to know more, please watch two of my favourite movies: "The lives of others" , and "Good bye Lenin." They provide you a glimpse of East Germany in the old times.




Berlin City Hall, where Mayor Klaus Wowereit works.



Klaus Wowereit. His famous quote,"Ich bin schwul, und das ist auch gut so." (I'm gay, and it's ok that way.)



Art :D . Photo taken in New National Art Gallery. I prefer this one with 5 visitors imitating the guy in the photos (original)



Jewish museum.



"Fallen leaves", an exhibition in Jewish museum. Victims were like the fallen leaves, fell from the trees onto the ground, and stepped by people who walked pass them....

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Workers of BVG striked on Friday and Saturday(half day, till 3pm), just two days before i left for Moscow. It was a rather difficult day for me to get around without public transportation except S-bahn.

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I flew at 930am on 3 Feb, Sunday. It was a very sunny day, probably the sunniest day ever during my 9-day stay in Berlin. Too bright, couldn't really take photos from the plane, but i managed to take this : Greenish+blueish Berlin! Pretty aye



I love Air Berlin!!! Cheap flight with great service! No wonder it was rated as 5 stars by customers on skytrax.com. Well, budget flights usually don't serve free food, but Air Berlin does! and they have either ham sandwiches or cheese sandwiches, latter is suitable for most vegetarians (except those super strict vegetarians who don't take dairy products.)

Dresden

25 Jan 2008 -- Dresden

The first time i "hitch-hiked", in fact, it's better known as 'share transport'. The driver was Benny, and there were 2 other passengers travelling to Dresden on a lovely Friday morning too.

On the way to Dresden, we passed by "Tropical Island", a 'tropical-themed' park. It's a park with artificial tropical rain forest, beaches, etc. For further information please visit : http://www.tropical-islands.de/en/visitors.html

Benny dropped me off at the Old Market (Altstadt). It was really great to see the famous Semper Opera House, unfortunately I didn't manage to take good photos :S


Semper Opera House: The only German theater that bear the name of its architect, Gottfried Semper. It was completely destroyed in 1945 and reopened in 1985 after extensive reconstruction.

Next to Semper Opera was the Zwinger Palace, which houses 4 different museums. There was a information centre at the first floor. Glad to find out more about Dresden, so that i could plan my trip well.


Zwinger, Dresden's most famous architectural structure. The word "Zwinger" means outer bailey- to its location on the former city fortifications.


There're few types of tourist cards, such as 48 hours, including or excluding free and unlimited transportation to adjacent regions. However, for those who are going to spend only a day in Dresden, they can get a day-card, which costs 6.90 euro, and it offers free unlimited transportation (trams, buses, small ferries across the Elbe river), valid from the time you validate it from the machine till 4am of the next day.


some buildings around Church of Our lady (Neumarkt).



Church of Our Lady


Eric vs. Martin Lurther











*School started on 7 Feb, am supposed to get busy with studies...trying my best to adapt my holiday mood back to study mood....

Anyway, will be posting photos first; will update my blog later, with more photos and more stories!!

winter trip 2008 -- Copenhagen

Finally i'm back to Moscow, unwillingly of course :D

A brief itinerary of my trip:

20-24 jan : Copenhagen
25 jan : Dresden
26 jan : Leipzig
27 Jan -- 3 Feb : Berlin

Wonderful Copenhagen

20 Jan 2008


Welcome to wonderful Copenhagen!!!! Arrived Copenhagen airport at 8.30pm. Jacob and Lisa picked me up soon after.



Copenhagen Airport (Terminal 2). Copenhagen airport is the busiest airport in Scandinavia, it serves nearly 60,000 passengers per day; 21.4 million passengers passed through the facility in 2007 (data from Wikipedia.)



I was drunk for the first night (I'm so not used to alcohol at all), had two bottles Tuborg and few glasses of water (in case i got hang over the next day), Jacob made me White Russian (brown Russian to be exact)....Luckily i didn't have hang over...

So stayed in Ama for a night.

"Behind the scene"
--Was a bit worried i couldn't reach Copenhagen 'smoothly'. Before my trip, there were some bad incidents happened, such as friends were refused to enter Norway. I didn't know what exactly happened, but heard that either Russian custom or Norwegian custom/police thought that Malaysians need visa to enter EU countries...My friends missed the flight, and also the connecting flight....

--Another bad news was 24 Malaysian students were locked up in prison/jail (????) somewhere in Latvia for day(s) to wait for the verification of their Malaysian passports. What???? Malaysian passports have chips in it, wonder how people managed to fake them...Some rumours said lots of Asians fake Malaysian passports to enter European countries illegally, and some rumours also said two Malaysian students are waiting for penalty because someone sponsored their europe trip in condition that they helped that someone to smuggle drugs :S ......

--Whatever the rumour or cases...This year is just not a lucky year for travelling....Some many victims, and who is going to compensate them for the missed flights, hotels, etc????

--5 of us , when we passed through the Russian custom, we had a bit of problems too. We were told to wait (for what??)....The custom lady asked us questions like, "why do you go to Oslo?" (we were taking Norwegian air and we were going to transit in Oslo Gardemon airport just for few hours!!!) , "Are you coming back to Moscow after that?" .....Do we look so much like terrorists or illegal immigrants?! Well, i do understand they're doing their jobs, whatever.

21 Jan 2008 (Mon.)
Yes, officially started my Copenhagen trip!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Been longing to visit Copenhagen for a long time....Apparently it's a wonderful city, according to several surveys, it was rated as the best Nordic city to live in, city with very 2nd low crime rate in Europe (after Edinburgh/Glasgow), top 10 city in the world with best quality of living, etc....Further details can refer:

http://www.meetincopenhagen.com/content/professional/congresses_and_conventions/why_copenhagen/reasons_why/copenhagen_-_one_of_the_best_cities_in_the_world

So i started off my journey by walking along Stroget street, the longest European pedestrian street --> Kongens Nytorv/King's Square --> Nyhavn --> Amalienborg castle --> Little mermaid statue --> take a train back from ostreport back to Central Station. then, --> Christiansborg castle --> walked passed Black Diamond royal library --> walked to Christiania --> bus to Central station to meet Adrian.

Met Adrian's norwegian friends, blockmates....Nice people.


Fountain along Stroget street



Side street from Stroget



Kongens Nytorv/ King's Square



Nyhavn



Nyhavn

The scene in Nyhavn looks a bit like in Amsterdam, this is due to the influence of the Dutch when they occupied part of Denmark last time.


Hans Christian Anderson used to live here (1846-1864) , in Nyhavn.



Danish Royal Opera House



Dog, " I snoore, do you?"



Frederick church


Amalienborg Palace, the winter home of Danish royal family. (photo from wikipedia.)



Statue of Frederick V in Amalienborg palace, he was the founder of Amalienborg palace.



Harbour



A church somewhere near Kastellet



Little mermaid and I



Kastellet fortification , it celebrated its 344 years old birthday this year,2008.



Tivoli!!!! Ti-vol-i = I lov it!!!!! Tivoli gardens is one of the oldest amusement park in the world, dated back to 1843 ( 165 years of history now.) (the oldest one which survived INTACT till now.) It was founded to distract people's attention from politics to amusement :D


City Hall. The observation tower is only open at 12pm sharp, and people are only allowed to go when there're a minimum of 4 visitors. So, try your luck (I'm sure there'll be much more people visiting Copenhagen in summer). For my case, i 'sacrificed' my trip to see the changing of the guard (i went there yesterday, but today, the Queen Margaret II was back, so there would be a marching band accompanying the changing guards. I rushed to City Hall, hoping to get up there and take photos of Copenhagen, but unfortunately , there were only 2 of us, and by the time we got another 2 visitors, it was 1215pm and we weren't allowed to go upstairs anymore....


inside the city hall:
-people get married here too :)


Christiansborg palace is the home of Denmark's three supreme powers: the executive power, the legislative power, and the judicial power. It is the only building in the world which is the home of all a nation's three supreme powers.


the Danish parliament -- You can only get in via guided tour, which is held every Sunday. (i forgot what time, so, please check it out on the website.)



Borsen , the old stock exchange house, famous of its spiral spike.



The black diamond (on your left side)-- the new royal Danish library


22 January 2008 (Tues.)
Royal Art Gallery --> Rosenborg castle --> city hall --> Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek/New Carlsberg Art gallery --> Danish National Museum --> Round tower --> shopping :D --> went back to Adrian's place to have dinner and packed my stuff --> met Rasmus and Ulrik at central station and 1015pm and off we went to Roskilde.



The national art gallery. The first museum/ art gallery i visited in Copenhagen. Well, the security guard told me to put my bag and jacket in the cloakroom. I was very shocked when she told me i needed to deposit my bag in the locker, which costs 20 danish krone (about RM12)....That was so so so expensive!!! rm12 just for a locker for that few hours in art gallery??!!!

so, guess what, i tried my best to squeeze everything into my jacket, including my sandwiches, water bottle and my day bagpack :S I tried so hard, and eventually, i gave up. So I 'sneaked' into another gallery where i hid my bag under a chair.... =.=llll ....And guess what happened next, i realised that lots of people just hung their bags together with their jackets without extra charges...and if i did put them into the locker, I could get my money bag after that, the money was just deposit, not service charge....Damn, i should have found out that earlier, pity my jacket which i tried to squeeze everything into the pockets.

One more thing that 'impressed' me, was the cloakroom was actually 'self-service', and i needed not to have the number/tag. Didn't people scare their jackets will be stolen or what? Ok, i guess living in a low-crime rate city, people trust the one another. Great!!!


A new building/wing was built at the backyard of the old art gallery, and they were connected by a few bridges. It seems like the old building is covered by a new glass house (the new building).


Rosenborg slot/castle, another example of Christian IV's project. I heard that he was a king who had a great interest in architecture. Wherever he went, he would bring a ruler/ measuring tape with him; and when he saw carpenters or workers working on the construction site, he would measure the wood/ pillars, etc, just to make sure the workers follow the accurate measurement.


Rosenborg Have/ Castle Garden: Denmark's oldest royal garden and was embellished in the Renaissance style by Christian IV shortly before the construction of the main castle. Today, the gardens are a popular retreat in the centre of Copenhagen, and attract an estimated 2.5 million visitors every year.


Rosenborg Castle Garden



Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (outside)



Inside Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

This art gallery is a good example of money from beer company put into good useful, good contribution to the society. I like the 'tropical' design a lot.

Like the National Art Gallery I have visited few hours ago, this art gallery was fulled of school kids too. My friends told me when they were young, they were 'forced' to go to these art galleries, lol. But i was impressed how Danish kids are educated, they are exposed to art since they are young...

Oops, forgot to take a photo of the Danish National Museum. Well, i saw heaps of school kids there too, some of them were very friendly, they said 'hej' to me, haha.

It's good to learn the language of the country you are going to visit. Well, i did learn some simple basic Danish words and expressions.

While leaving the museum, i saw a group of school kids were lining up to enter the museum. The teacher said something in Danish which i couldn't understand, but soon after, a kid said, "jeg thirsty!" and followed by lots of 'jeg thirsty' yelled by other kids....haha. i know, i learned this one too: I'm thirsty!


round tower: there're 7.5 turns, the distance from the street to platform is 34.8m, and the total height of this tower is 41.8m (34.8m-tower + 7m-observatory = 41.8m; excluding the antenna? stick? flag pole)



Round tower: Tsar Peter the Great was the only one who went up this tower by riding a horse carriage.






views from roundtower : How could i not falling in love with such a lovely pretty cute little city?

23 Jan 2008 (Wed)
To Frederiksborg --> Elsinore --> Helsingborg (Sweden) --> Louisiana museum --> meet Lisa and her friend,Frederikke in Lygnby station --> back to Roskilde.


Frederiksborg castle


a hall in the castle


Kronborg castle (in Elsinore) -- a setting in Shakespeare's play "Hamlet".


I took Scandlines from Elsinore/helsingor to Helsingborg(sweden). Obviously not because that it is the most frequent ferry line, but because i got discounts from my Copenhagen card :D



Guess what's inside the luggage? yes, beers. Apparently Swedes travel to Denmark to get beers, coz beers are just so much cheaper. See, the guy with the red luggage carried an extra tray of beers too (just had to try his best to get as much beers as possible, haha.)



Helsingborg


helsingborg


Helsingborg

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I then rushed to visit Louisiana museum, then to Lyngby to meet my "old" friend, Lisa. Lisa and I were hosted in New Zealand under AFS in 2004/05, in south island. We went to trips together, such as to Stewart island, and also to north island. It's so great to meet back Lisa, apparently we both haven't changed much, Lisa is still adorable, and she grows taller too!!! (erm...a bit embarrass to say, she's taller than I am...)


Lisa and I


Lisa's friend, Frederikke and I

Lisa shouted me a cup of nice coffee. I went to Roskilde after that, and found out Rasmus had his guests around because it was Thomas's birthday that day.

24 Jan 2008 (Thurs)
Cycled around Roskilde with Rasmus, went to Roskilde church, Rasmus's high school and we met his history teacher --> Roskilde viking ship museum + viking ship work shop --> went home and made sushi, later had a nice dinner with Rasmus's blockmates and rushed to the Copenhagen airport to continue my journey.



Roskilde railway station


Roskilde Domkirke



Viking ship workshop. We wanted to visit the Viking ship museum, but we found out that I had not discount/free entrance with my Copenhagen card, and neither did Rasmus with his student card. Rasmus told me that a friend of his used to work there , as a carpenter/ship maker....and we found this workshop and had a free tour, lol.

some fun facts:
1. It takes 2-3 months for carpenter to make a viking ship.
2. A viking ship ( a ready set sail one) costs 200,000 dkk. (??) (can't remember the exact price now....it was two weeks ago when the carpenter told me about it.)





Rasmus and I



Rasmus's blockmates. We had a 'fish' dinner. I made sushi for them, and I was glad that some of them liked it. (well, i know Mr. Volkov loves my sushi a lot, wahahaha.....)