♥; Simple Pleasures of Life.

Thursday, May 15, 2008 @Thursday, May 15, 2008

Enjoying life in the midst of studies

I realised that my days in copenhagen passes by really fast! Most of my friends here are leaving copenhagen these 2 weeks.. so sad. I am trying to catch up with them over dinner the next few days. Perhaps that is y i gained 4 kg over the past 4 months!! I have been seriously eating ALOT! .. sob my face is turning rounder:( Moreover, I will be travelling to belgium in june. The tempting chocolates and waffles..ahz.. im gonna be torn between feasting and maintaining my weight. I NEED TO JOG!! I have only jog twice since I returned back to copenhagen. I need to continue with my jogging regime these 3 wks before leaving for my travels.

Life is seriously good here. I think it is probably the life of exchange students that is the BEST. No matter where u r on exchange, I am sure u will enjoy your life to the MAX. It is the feeling of being able to appreciate life as it is, enjoying the slow pace of life, learning to observe the simple subtleties in life, being able to gain new survival skills that u would not learn back in spore, stepping out of your comfort zone, learning unconsciously and constantly.

My weekends are just packed everytime with gatherings and exploring copenhagen. Eliz, ruo, yl and i bought the season pass to Tivoli is a beautiful amusement park in the centre of copenhagen. Every friday evening there will be a rock concert and we will definitely try our best to catch it. Next friday, 23 may, is Mary J Blige concert! We are really excited about it and we will definitely make it down to tivoli to see her concert. I am even thinking of packing dinner down to Tivoli so that we could arrive there early and get a good spot to watch the concert.

9 may, amager beach

Edlyn was here in copenhagen from the 9 to the 18 may! She has come over to copenhagen to visit her exchange friends who are still around from the last semester. We had a great day out in the beach. Copenhagen was sunny and cloudless for the entire last week! Apparently when we ask the Danes, they said that this weather is strange in spring. Spring is supposed to be still cold and windy. Oh well, we exploited this good opportunity well by heading to the beach. Some people feel that Edlyn and i looked alike! Below is a close up shot of the 2 of us at the beach. I guess we do look alike at certain angles.. most people get confused when we introduced ourselves.. Edlyn and Adeline.. some can't tell the difference between these 2 names..hahaz. I guess I feel a sense of closeness towards her even though i have only gotten to know her better in copenhagen.. probably because she is a Christian.

10 may, Karneval

This is a big festival in Copenhagen from the 9 to 11 may, over white sunday. The participants are clad in brazilian dance costumes.. they had the parade from the main shopping street in Stroget down to the Fallenparken park at noon time. At fallenparken, it is like pasir malam style. Lotsa games stores and food stores. But more then these, there are about 5 to 6 tents where dancers will be dancing different music in each tents and people dancing in it. It feels like disco in the open. People will be lounging in the grass patches outside these tents with their beers.

11 may, Rosenblog slot, Kongens Nytorv park

This is another good opportunity that we have seized to enjoy the warm weather in copenhagen. We were having a picnic here in the park before Ubah leaves. Everyone brought along some food and we played frisbee there. There are lotsa Danes sitting on the grass patches too. In the 2nd top picture of the 2nd collage, we were standing in front of Rosenblog castle. It is suppose to be the castle that contains the royal jewels of Copenhagen. But I think it should be very expensive to enter. Well.. enjoying a nice picnic just outside the castle feels very ROYAL too:)

12 may, American dinner prepared by Ubah

Ubah prepared American styled dinner for us. This was the last dinner gathering we had together. It was carbo-content heavy- the fries, spanish rice (paella), cheeze macaroni. Ubah said that it is a MUST to have salad for all american crusines.. so here we have, a healthy salad dish to counter all the sinful fried stuff.

We love Ubah's flowers! They are soo pretty and she bought them from the Magasin florist at a reasonable price. This is a picture of us seating on Ubah's bed, posing with her lovely flowers.

13 may, studying in Kobenhavn University library

These photos were taken when i was studying in the library one day before my exam. I really like this harry-porterish library. It inspires me to read more.. this is where the essence of knowledge is. The rows of books stacking up to the ceiling with the wooden ladders hanging at the rail to climb up the shelves. Even the ladder to the second floor is a narrow wooden row of stairs that creeks! hmm..

16 may

Today we handed in our marketing report on Ben and Jerry's business and we decided to indulge in some B & J's ice cream near the campus. I just love the chunky B & J's ice cream.. my fav is still strawberry cheesecake. I tried baked alaska then and it tasted like hershey's white choc- really delicious:) Do u know that B & J is actually a community conscious organisation that is environmentally friendly and socially responsible? After doing a project on B & J, I will be more supportive towards B & J for all its efforts.

Yiling and I had a shopping spree on thursday to reward ourselves for completing the marketing report. We visited 2 shopping complexes and these are my harvest. Retail therapy really gives me endorphins! I'm really happy to find cheap deals here during their small sales sections. I spent S$70 in total that day. The 3 bags are the best deals i have seized that day. They were around S$6 each!! it was like 80% off? The sun glasses from accessorize was 70% off too and it was around S$17.

17 may

BBQ at amager beach

Saturday was a cold day for BBQ. It was windy and there was no sun!! We all unanimously believe that it MUST be kian fong's fault because he arrived back in copenhagen recently and the weather was getting worse ever since he returns. hahaz.. there is just bad weather everywhere he goes..lol. Nonethelesss, we all still came down and huddle around the BBQ grills. The 1st time at Ama beach on the 9 may has better weather. We were bbqing sausages and danish meatballs. It was not too bad.. just that the bread gets burnt most of the time.

Baking for dinner before watching the ballet, Onegin.

Markus decides to bake chocolate cheesecake for dinner and we prepared vegetable soup to go along with the cake. hahaz..Maria is just busy licking the remaining ingredients that did not manage to enter into the oven. The cake was not as well as expected but we had a fun time preparing it. It is the long baking process that was enjoyable. We have decided that we shall try a different wine every time we meet for dinner because wine in Europe is generally cheaper. That day, we had rose wine.. not too bad. It's rather fizzy and tasted milder than red wine.

Onegin- The ballet that I watched in the evening

Plot:

Eugene Onegin, a Russian dandy who is bored with life, inherits a country mansion from his uncle. When he moves to the country he strikes up an unlikely friendship with the minor poet Vladimir Lensky. One day Lensky takes Onegin to dine with the family of his fiancée Olga Larina. At this meeting Olga's bookish and countrified sister, Tatiana (Tanya), falls in love with Onegin. During the night Tatiana writes a letter to Onegin professing her love and sends it to him. While this is something a heroine in one of Tatiana's French novels would have done, Russian society would consider it inappropriate for a young, unmarried girl to take the initiative. Contrary to her expectations, Onegin does not reply by letter. The two meet on his next visit where he rejects her advances in a speech that has been described as tactful yet condescending.
Later Lensky nonchalantly invites Onegin to Tatiana's nameday celebration promising a small celebration with just Tatiana, her sister, and parents. At the celebration Onegin finds a grandiose ball reminiscent of the fast-paced world he has grown tired of. To exact revenge on Lensky, Onegin proceeds to flirt and dance with Olga. Lensky leaves in a rage and in the morning issues a challenge of a duel to Onegin. At the duel Onegin kills Lensky, then flees.

Tatiana visits Onegin's mansion where she reads through his books and the notes in the margins, and through this comes to believe that Onegin's character is merely a collage of different literary heroes and so there is no "real Onegin". Later Tanya is taken to Moscow and introduced to society. In this new environment Tanya matures to such an extent that when Onegin later meets her in St Petersburg, he fails to recognise her. When he realises who she is, he tries to win her affection despite the fact that she is now married, only to be ignored. He writes her several letters and receives no reply. The book ends when Onegin manages to see Tanya and is once more rejected in a speech admitting her love for Onegin while professing absolute loyalty to her husband. In echoing the speech he previously gave her, she also demonstrates her emotional and moral superiority to Onegin- wikipedia

Queen Margaret came to watch this ballet too! Probably because it is the closing ballet performance. The queen seats at the red box shown in the picture in the top right hand corner of the collage. It feels special to enjoy a ballet together with the queen. She is sitting alone at the red box. I wish I could be sitting beside her in any of the 2 empty seats. The view is definitely superb from there. I have paid only about S$10 to catch this ballet because it was a special deal but as expected, the seats were super far behind at the fourth storey. We changed our seats after the intermission and we moved to the empty seats in front. The costumes were elaborate and the dance moves were so smooth. Watching ballet really reminds me of pris.. i could understand her love for dancing now. After watching the ballet, I felt inspired to learn dancing but it's too late now. I'm really envious of people who could dance. It is a way of expressing themselves and perfecting their footwork - this is probably the spirit of dancing.

18 may

Brunch at the SMU people's place with the Singaporean christians.

This was the BEST brunch I have ever had.. because we never meet for lunch gatherings, only dinner gatherings.. hahaz. But david is seriously a good cook! He bakes the apple pie and I could still remember the taste of it. We all agree that he could open up a bakery store here in denmark now and charge the danes an exhorbitant price for the delicious cakes he baked. Elaine cooked bee hoon, which reminds me of home. The colour, texture and taste was just so right. The bee hoon i cooked just taste like mee sua. I shall try to perfect my skills and seek from professional advices like Elaine. We had crepes too- with chocolate, strawberry and banana. Jinny and Mi young prepared the Danish dream cake, which contains coconut fillings. It was not too bad, I thought that their culinary skills have reached a new level but I realised that they had actually bought the premixes for the cake! lol.. k, i shall give them credit for mixing well and baking at the right temperature and time.

With just one last marketing paper on the 2nd june, I actually feel as if my exams are over already. I guess I am just taking things more easily now and I will just study as it goes. I am gonna find my love for studying and how to enjoy studying w/o feeling the extra stress to do well.

Labels: living in Denmark