Happening days

Today was our last day at RR, of course I have things to share on that, but I shall clear this backlog first.
 
A few weeks back my mum asked me if I'd ever seen an apple tree. I thought, yea I've been eating the fruit all my life - should have right? ... Actually, err... No. Epitome of a mark of a suaku. But I guess everyone is a suaku at some point, the world how big please. I didn't choose to be born on an island without apple trees, but then that leads to the best experience when I get to travel: so many things new and exciting! I'm not the only suaku around anyway, they don't even know what a mangosteen is. xD

Diary-mode is on for this post. Friends, it's gonna be irrelevant and long, but I think I'll appreciate writing this in the years to come.

September's been slow for blogging huh. Not that I've been doing nothing and hence have nothing to post on... Quite the opposite in fact. So much so that I'm still seemingly struggling to recover from lack of sleep (from last week) i.e. sleeping earlier and earlier these days but still waking up like a frightened zombie. I'm not complaining though. I wouldn't turn down a chance to hang out/do something new after work (even if I had a presentation the next day and my slides were 20% complete), simply coz: JUST GO ONLY.

We didn't have friends in Derby. Now (outside of work) I suppose we can count some supervisors/colleagues as awesome buddies. The happening times are all thanks to them too! You can have a lot of fun around a sleepy place like Derby as long as you bother to know people well enough for them to invite you into their happening lives.

[Sorry for the lack of photos. Sometimes I just like to live in the moment.]

(8th Sept, Mon) Church bell ringing.

Most of us have probably heard them, but this time we got a chance to see the ringing. The action goes on in the tower above the main church, so first imagine a large cylindrical room with 6 (the number of bells) ropes hanging through holes in the ceiling. This is the ringing chamber and the ropes lead up to the bells in the space above. Not everyone gets access to this space - you must either be a bell-ringer, or know a bell-ringer.

In this case, the bell-ringer was J's sup (whom you must've realised by now contributes a lot to our happening lives). We also had the chance to go up and see the actual bells, and had one of them ring while we were in that space = eardrum shock 到. Bells are pretty low maintenance and some of the 6 bells dated to 400 years ago. Not exactly a v lucrative business. And we all had a go at ringing a bell, which involves a pretty precise calibration of strength. If not, the coiling rope would either slap us over the face, or slap J's sup in his face while stood in front of us coaching.

It was also Mid-Autumn night. 月亮在外地会不会比较圆？ I guess so. Kinda ironic that we want to embrace our culture even more now. I also realised that I haven't properly celebrated MA in years now, other than just eating mooncakes. Or maybe it's just fun to each tell our mangled versions of the Chang'e legend, and the various different gory misfortunes that will befall you if you point at the moon.

D: Tongue gets cut off (??)
J: Fingers get cut off (??)
Me: Bleed from the ears + go mute

[Was legit-ly too tired to do my presentation on this night.]

(9th Sept, Tues) Garden introduction.

My sup is vegetarian and he has his own allotment. It's a British thing: plots of land issued by the government or private owners for residents to grow their veg patches. It's basically a 7x50m garden plot within a larger plot of land along with other peoples' plots. He brought us around and quizzed us on some of his plants (think he must've got over 20 varieties in there?). Safe to say we weren't v successful in guessing - go Google what a young asparagus plant looks like.

Also, something that I predicted had a high chance of happening - he gave us quite a lot of veg. Butternut squash, purple cabbage, gherkins, and around 10 apples. That wasn't the intention of visiting though. After years of reading about them in ang moh books, I just wanted to see what a real veg patch looks like. My sup and his wife were really really generous, which is smth I've come to associate with many people here. It's much easier to live in a foreign place where the people are so warm, it makes the weather feel a little less cold.

[Side note: we brought mooncakes to work that day. The Asian supermarket stocks limited flavours (don't expect 冰皮 or durian) and we got the 双黄 and the 五仁 ones. We were worried that the ang mohs wouldn't like them, esp the 五仁 (I used to avoid it, but I think it's grown on me) and there was no plain lotus paste.

They LOVED the 五仁 flavour. My guess is that it tastes like fruit cake to them. For those who haven't tried, here's a short intro. I've had a few people tell me they kept taking slices, and my sup esp kept coming back for more. He made a face on tasting the salted egg yolk though, and I don't blame him hahahaha!]


[Lots of procrastination from then till Fri]

(11th Sept, Thurs) A special dinner.

Now, it was one day till my end-of-attachment presentation and I still hadn't finished my slides and scripted them. Details are vague now, but I rmb waking at 4.30am on this day to get a head start (if you could still call it so). The thing was that I had alr had two long workdays out at a research centre so I wasn't in the best mental shape to think out a presentation.

But I wouldn't have considered missing a dinner out anyway. That night we went to J's sup's house and cooked a Singaporean meal for him and his wife. I didn't have it in mind, but at the end I realized we actually cooked a 三菜一汤 (3-dishes-1-soup) meal for them - the usual Chinese family meal configuration. On the menu: oyster sauce veg, steamed egg, black sauce sesame oil chicken, and pork rib corn soup. Typical fare right?! I myself was happy with the meal (and not forgetting I can claim credit for most part of the chicken and egg ^^). But it was good to eat like this. Even though this is a normal meal in Sg, we eat simpler here (one meat one veg with rice) coz there's only three of us. So I guess it's become kind of a luxury...

After dinner, we sat and talked and talked... Then with a promise of going back to visit (definitely without question!) we left and reached home almost at midnight. I was up till 3.30am in the next morning.

(12th Sept, Fri) Presentation day.

I had 3 hours of sleep that night, but I was able to pull together the remaining bits of my presentations with relative leisure in the office. I did fine in the end, wasn't as nervous as a previous time.

A point to note is that the people here are way more generous with their praises than we are used to. So much so that we sometimes thought that they had pretty low expectations of us haha. To be fair, you wouldn't know what to expect from some random student coming from halfway across the world. It's really nice to be showered in praise for doing my best. They sure know how to make interns feel appreciated.

But even though the Asian approach to praising is more reserved, it's still sweet. I rmb receiving rare smiley faces from my GP teacher in the JC days - those really made me happy.

Belgium 2014

All things fascinating to my fresh pair of eyes.

Our Belgium trip in down-to-earth nutshells (or melon shells maybe)! It's taken a while to write, coz things have been really happening at work and none of the photos are edited. It's a pretty long post! Best read as chapters in free time coz I dun wanna split the post (if you're interested hahaha :)).

The Experience

The miscellaneous section in which I summarise everything.

Nice view of Brussels

This was my first trip to Europe! A whole new set of sights, culture and food to keep me occupied and happy. I went without knowing what to expect (except knowing that I had to try all the Belgian waffles, fries, mussels... detailed below), and it was really an eye-opener.

Not forgetting that travelling with friends is awesome, and we met up with good friends we hadn't seen (physically) in a long while. Belgium was the chosen meeting point because it's geographically the midpoint of the UK, France and Germany. Sounded epic when we first came up with the idea, and actually carrying it out was even more epic!

It rained much of the time we were there, which meant we were walking a lot in the rain. Inevitably, it was cold most of the time.

Lastly, I turned 21 in Bruges. Nth special really, I don't feel any wiser xD But it was lovely to read the whatsapp messages pouring in over breakfast, despite much confusion over the time difference. I never had a chalet/party (not my style actually), but how many ppl get the chance to spend their 21st overseas? I'm really fortunate.

The Place

We split our 3.5-ish days in Belgium between two of it's well-known cities: Brussels (21 and 24/8) and Bruges (22-23/8).

Brussels and Bruges are both full of beautiful architecture. Tall, old buildings with religious history naturally have a majestic air about them and there are plenty in Belgium. We, like the usual tourists, visited the central squares of these places - the Grand Place in Brussels and the Markt in Bruges.

The Grand-Place under cloud cover

The Markt

My first time visiting this sort of European central square. Imagine an enormous area surrounded by olden day skyscrapers - wow-factor damn high. More than simply appreciating the beauty of these buildings, I've got a huge amount of respect for the people who built them. The intricacy of the facade plus the sheer scale couldn't have been easy to accomplish back then.

The Town Hall - extremely difficult to get a pic of coz of its height

Makes one wonder how they did it, it'd have been a feat even for modern times: look at the top of the Town Hall - what crane could reach that height? Let alone placing a gold-leafed statue there (oops you can't really see it). Even on the saner heights of the building, each statue is different from the next. I suppose there is meaning behind all this (which we didn't find out), but to the layperson it's a representation of the amount of heart put into construction.

These places were even more majestic at night.

The Belfry of Bruges

We stayed in youth hostels (normally 30 mins walk out of city centre). Much of our time was spent walking into the cities, going in museums, and walking to find food. We visited a diamond museum and a chocolate museum in Bruges and the comics museum in Brussels - all really detailed and interesting. Sweep away the common perception of museums as dusty places full of boring or dead things. Ok la, maybe depends on what kind of museum. But if a museum visit is in the plans, allocate at least an hour to browse. Only thing is, in the comics museum, not all the exhibits have English translations.

I esp enjoyed the chocolate museum, and it didn't hurt that there were 3 free samples (including one praline from a live demo!) :P [we bought 1kg worth of dark choc buttons to bring back to the office. everything was cleared within one workday and many ppl came up to rave about them ^^] Was supposed to visit the beer museum as well, but we felt €11 and 3 samples (I can't rmb how much exactly but my guess is smth like 3 pints) was too much.

The demonstration counter behind a barrier

I guess the last "place" of interest would be the canals. On boats! We went on a canal boat tour in Bruges, which is a super tourist thing to do, which means we had to go for it. Their canals are not like our longkangs if that's what you're thinking xD More like mini rivers with overhanging trees and cute bridges running over them. Some of the bridges are so low you have to duck to avoid getting scalped while passing under them. We sat in a motorised boat and meandered the canal network throughout the city, with the driver/tour guide doing the narration. 

 

 

Another thing that amazes me about Belgium is the multilingualism. The driver displayed this by doing the narration in 3 (or 4) languages - French, German/Dutch (or both, I can't tell), and English. Same with the demonstrator at the chocolate museum and any service staff we met, and they are all fluent.

[food for thought: see ah, we can boast that we have 4 national languages but how many of us can speak all (or even 3 or 2) of them fluently? no, singlish doesn't count.]

Gave the other tourist attraction a miss and used our own feet

The only (BIG) complaint I have is the cobblestone pavements (see below). My right ankle might be fully functional now but that doesn't stop it from throwing tantrums, esp on cold days. Every morning esp I'd be hobbling for a bit like an old person.

Sorry Carina - you just happen to be in the clearest photo I have of the ground xD

The Food

Our first proper meal in Belgium: sushi buffet. Yes, we missed Japanese food so much we pounced at the relatively-affordable sushi after touching down in Europe. Well, it was all-you-can-eat for €16 (not exactly cheap), but to put things into perspective, a plate of sushi (2 pieces) in Derby can cost up to £8. I ate as much as I could - good for the cold weather.

The dishes came on toy trains as opposed to the usual belts.

Now on to the Belgian fare.

So everyone's told me of Belgian waffles, chocolate, fries and mussels. Here's the thought: the more you hear, the higher the expectation. You'd expect the best from the place named in the famous food. So did I "fly to heaven" (or smth similar) when I had my first taste of chocolate-banana covered waffles, or mussels in white wine? Ehhh, no. Like i said, down-to-earth, and I suspect the pre-trip food hype should shoulder much of the blame for this anti-climax. Not to say the food wasn't good! We had really nice food throughout our stay, just that there wasn't any urge to squeal about it anymore.

We mostly followed this map: http://www.use-it.travel/cities/detail/bruges/ to find the cheap and good (i.e. student-friendly) waffles (21) and fries (28). Verdict on waffles: pretty overrated to me, I think I can find greater happiness eating waffles from can 11. Most of the "goodness" comes from the generous amounts of chocolate sauce (no complains there), but then again that's nth special. I dun like whipped cream.

Verdict on fries: ok, but better not to order with sauce. There was just the once when we bought fries (on its own, not as part of a dish). We shared a large order, and got the "Samurai" sauce as a topping, which came in copious amounts and was pretty spicy and creamy. 4 of us were sharing but even then I was quite full. [cannot imagine one person eat one large serving, lagi jelat sia] Most of our meals there actually came with fries as a side - which means I was spamming water a lot.

We had a total of 3 dinners in Belgium. The first was nth to shout about, but the other two are experiences to share.

On the second night in Bruges, we ate at one of the restaurants in the fish market area. It was a big meal and cost €30 in total. But here's why it was a good meal: there was a great variety of food and we came away feeling really full with no wastage. Cui paranoma skills aside, here's a glimpse at the spread, (but doesn't look as good as it actually was on that day).

As I can rmb it, we had mussels in white wine, rabbit stew, melon wrapped with smoked smth (I can't rmb what meat), and two stone grills: mixed fish and mixed meat. Oh not forgetting: garlic bread and 1.5L of beer to share among 6 of us.

The stone grill was amazing, sorry amusing - you have to salt it to prevent the food from sticking (and also to flavour a bit). And as usual with ambiguous instructions, there were funny results (see the salt-covered stone in the photo). Food was awesome, really largely thanks to the huge variety - all the different tastes. The rabbit was in a dark stew (which I think contained some alcohol) and was sweet and tender, and I kept eating the applesauce that was sitting in front of me. At last only the huge pot of mussels was left (we ordered 1kg). As Jerald said, every time we looked inside there was still some more, even after the 7th/8th helping. People do eat the dish as a meal though, all 1kg of mussels.

And oh, it was my bday that day! The others went to order a chocolate dessert for me (which we all shared) without my knowing, and they asked for a candle. It came with a firecracker xD

Choc mousse in place of cake

For those who do not yet know, I like dark chocolate (just chocolate, no fruity bits, but nuts are ok). I didn't buy any choc for myself, although I did contribute to the swift disappearance of the choc buttons in the office ;)

We'd alr drank 1.5L of beer between us at dinner, and then we went to buy some more. These are fruit beers: peach-, cherry-, and fruit punch-flavoured. The others had their preferences and verdicts, but to me, one was good, one was cough syrup and the last one I'd totally avoid. Someone thought one of these tasted like puke xD

 The final night's dinner (in Brussels) was memorable, but not just for the food. We'd gone to a tourist district where practically every restaurant was serving the same things i.e. mussels and fries and other common European dishes. The first time we were there on Fri before lunch, things were quiet and sane, but dinner time on Sun was crazy.

The street lined by restaurants on both sides - a tourist trap

The interesting thing is that even though all the restaurants are serving the same thing right next to each other, their prices differ (normally €11 to €14) - so slowly walk and look. And we were a bunch of 6 Asians - bright shiny targets for touts waiting at their restaurant entrances. All I can say is that there are right and wrong ways to attract customers like us.

Bad example 1: Blocking our way down the narrow street even when we politely decline.

Bad example 2: Trying to speak mandarin to us - I'm not sure you know what 我爱你妈妈 means if you're trying to use that to attract customers.

Good example: Offering a €10 meal, inclusive of a drink (whatever you want, beer, wine...), dessert and free wifi. 

We took the €10 offer, and the food was not bad (not that we had much to compare against). I'm saying that even though my medium steak was kinda rare in the middle. The tout held to his promises too, so we had beer/wine and a supermarket-bought sugar waffle and I could whatsapp my sis at once about it! 

To me, food always tastes better when shared. Which leads me to the next bit...

The Friends

How long it's been since the days in the RPR [in common time, not v long but humour me]. Suddenly we were all separated and sent to different corners of the world. Ok la, for me there's always D and J but it's obviously different from having the rest of the class around. Hahaha things are basically a lot more fun with ppl you know you can click with around you. I like my own time and space but I dun see myself as a solo traveler. With friends, you get to share and try more types of food, and you get to make all the funny comments about random things to ppl who'll listen and laugh along.

Things dun change. We might have been in Europe, but that didn't stop us from gathering in C's room and chatting till it started raining, then chatting some more to wait it out, before finally heading back to our hostel in a cold drizzle at midnight.

Great to see you all! Waiting for the day we meet again in London :)