Just one of those nights.

You know that episode of How I Met Your Mother, when Ted totally blacks out after taking one shot too many? And the next morning, he has to piece together what he did the entire night after that?



In other news - this blog is now officially alive again.

A lingering thought:

There are so many people on my MSN, my email address book, even my Facebook account, that I haven't talked to in a long time. And I want to talk to them, to catch up with their lives, to laugh over shared memories, to do what friends do. Yet I keep telling myself that I don't have the time, that I'll do it some other day, that the right moment will come.

And time passes.

Perhaps it'll take a climatic event to shock me out of this self-imposed apathy, where the only things that matter are in the here and now, the everyday things that loom at the forefront of my consciousness. Where the subconscious is suppressed and filed away in the self-deluding cabinet labelled "someday". Where I can't even bring myself to say a simple "hello" to a long-ago friend on MSN, because of self-consciousness or a lack of time or a host of other half-baked semi-excuses.

And time passes.

Or perhaps I could start rectifying this state of affairs today. Perhaps.

And time passes.

I wish...

I'd blogged about Germany, Russia, and Odense sooner. That's because my laptop's been infected with a worm, and I can't even get into my desktop. It's at the repair shop now, and I'm going to have to pay at least 1000 DKK to fix it. For that price, the guy better not lose any of my data.

It's a pretty darn horrible thing to happen, but I don't really want to think about it.

Anyways, since I'm blogging, I might as well give a quick status update. It's getting colder in Copenhagen right now - typical day temperatures hover around 10 degrees. Surprisingly, I can live with that temperature. What really gets on my nerves is how the sky begins to darken at 4pm. It's now a little past 4:30pm and it already looks like 7pm in Singapore.

Now I understand why depression sets in during the Winter months.

In other news, I need to start studying. Exams are coming, and a paper is due next week, so perhaps the lack of a laptop for the next few days is a good way to kick-start my studying routine.

That's all for now. Take care, y'all.

Germany...

Was brilliant. Simply amazing. But you'll have to live with just those words for now, because I don't have time to blog. I leave for Russia in 8 hours or so, and my packing's not done.

Will put up enormously long posts when I get back. Then again, it might take longer since I'm going for the Travis concert. We'll see.

How I live: a photo essay.

I live at Biens Allè 9, 2300 København S.

This is my house.

The entrance is the little door you can barely make out at the end of the white wall.

The living room...

And from another angle.

The kitchen.

Since we're talking about the kitchen, here's a stir-fry I made. A fairly typical meal.

Moving upstairs, this is my room.

My table is as messy as ever...

As is the rest of my room.

I live with three cats. This is Filip.

Daisy's curled up against the heater for the turtles. You'll get to see them in a moment.

This is Panther, but everyone calls him Pansy. Look carefully - he's drinking from the tap.

These are the turtles. One of them is the Million-Dollar-Turtle: I'll tell the story another day. And for all you perverts out there, no, they are not trying to mate!

There's also a rabbit in the house which is 11 years old, and gets a room to itself. Truly a welfare state. However, since I don't have a photo of the rabbit, I'll show you my bicycle instead. Again, there's a story behind this set of wheels. It'll come next time.

I was going to upload pictures of my housemates as well, but I don't have a single decent photo of them. So, that will come next time too.

Living independently is a challenge, but has its rewards. It's an enlivening experience to have to cook your own food, do your own grocery shopping, do your laundry, clean up after yourself, and perform all the other assorted chores that form the bedrock of our daily lives. In a way, it gives me a fresh respect for career housewives (and househusbands, if there is such a word), as well as domestic helpers. It's not an easy job, even with washing machines and vacuum cleaners.

My life has changed in other ways too. I cycle everywhere now. It's a bit more than 5.5km to the University, but on average, I cycle at least 15km a day thanks to trips to others' houses and assorted errands. It wasn't so bad when I first started out, but the autumn temperatures and winds are starting to make it heavy going.

Still, it's an experience, and it saves me money - a monthly bus pass would cost me 420 DKK, or about SGD$126. That buys me enough groceries for almost 3 weeks. I'm pretty much getting used to cycling almost 10km in the rain back to my place at 1:30am, at a temperature of 12°C but with the strong winds making it even colder. I have to; winter approaches, and it's going to get worse.

So, for those still back home in Singapore - move to Copenhagen if you're complaining about the heat. You'll get more than you bargained for.

Of lurking cats and busted bicycles.

I'm afraid that this isn't going to be a real post, after all. Things to do, places to see, people to meet, and not enough time to do all of that. As I'm frantically typing this snippet of a post, I'm glancing at the clock because I'm leaving for a weekend camp for international students in a bit more than an hour. And I have to go. Now. A real post will come soon.

Things are good, but...

It's just the small niggly problems that you can never predict until you're facing them.

The problem with saving money on food by buying groceries in cheap family packs:
you end with too much of the same thing. I am SO SICK OF CARROTS. Bought like 1kg of carrots, and now I'm clearing them by throwing a carrot or two in every time I cook. And I still have tons of them left. Just great.

The problem with saving money on food by loading up at cheap buffets (yes, there's a certain theme to all this):
You look for the buffet which has the most value for money. You eat there three times a week. And then you get really sick of the food there. I'm not going back to Samos for a week or two - it's tremendously good value, but I'm tremendously tired of eating the same fricking things.

The problem with meeting new people from all over the world:
It can be a little hard to understand everyone, with all the different accents and intonations. And don't get me started on having to remember so many names. Still, this is the once aspect of life here that I'm not gonna whine about too much - it's actually sort of fun.

The problem with escaping the heat in Singapore:
It's fricking cold here. Like, it's supposed to be summer still, but it was HAILING a few mornings ago. And I'm getting rashes, due to the dry air. It's getting a little annoying.

The problem with living in a nice cosmopolitan city like København:
It comes at nice cosmopolitan city prices. SGD$15 for a meal out (and it's just fast food or something similar). SGD$3.50 to get on the fricking bus for just 5 minutes. SGD$30 for a week's worth of phone bills. You get the idea.

The problem with being in København:
I'm missing friends, family, and a certain dear girl in particular.

Don't get me wrong - it's all been pretty good so far. Things are as well as can be expected. It's just these things that are sorta bugging me. Oh, that, and the fact that the wireless doesn't really work, so I have to go to the study every time I want to use the Internet. But other than these things, everything's more or less hunky dory.

Till next time.