EUROPE HERE WE GO!!!

Finished with all my lessons and READY for Easter Holidays!

OUR PLANS:

ABERDEEN
|
LONDON
|
AMSTERDAM
|
PARIS
|
ROME
|
VENICE
|
INNSBRUCK
|
MUNICH
|
FRANKFURT
|
COLOGNE
|
DUSSELDORF
|
EDINBURGH
|
ABERDEEN

Booked all the hostels and majority of the train/bus/plane tickets
Gonna have so much fun!!!!
WEEEEE!!!

Despite the snow, ITS A BEAUTIFUL DAY!

I'm such a stud! HEHE

Its always a joy to go for skiing lessons with these beautiful ladies hehe! But more on that later!

Despite the snow and wind which threatened to ruin our field trip to Stonehaven and postponed our Moray Firth field trip, we still had some fun over there, fighting the weather, learning about safety stuff and doing a short field survey. Hopefully the weather become better when we get back!

Stonehaven field trip!

So cold the photo turned blue!

Field trip leader Professor McDonald

Explaining the rock formations!

Field Surveys!

Today was our last skiing lesson :( I really love skiing. It is one of the most fun sports I have ever done! No wonder it is so popular! Why can't there be snow in Singapore!!! Anyway we finished learning how to do some basic turns and it was time to try the ultimate slope!!! Did my first jump today!!!! It was a really short jump about 1 second in the air but the exhilaration was immense!!!! WOOOOOOO!!!!

Where we ski! Without snow!

Haha here is the real picture! Photoshop magic! :P

 One more physics test and full day petroleum geology course and its time for EASTER HOLIDAYS!!!!

St Patrick's Day

Its Saint Patrick Day!

Long story short, its to celebrate the patron saint of Ireland and celebrated all over the world by people who are of Irish descent (estimated at 100 million which is 15 times the population of Ireland itself)

A brief history of St Patrick is that he was born in GB and was kidnapped and brought to Ireland as a slave. One day in his sleep he had a dream where god told him to get to the shore where he would be rescued by a ship and brought back home. After returning, he became a priest and later went back to Ireland to spread Christianity (apparently with the shamrock as seen above to explain the Holy Trinity)

And to celebrate today, its time to go to another ceilidh! St Patrick Day theme! (which means you have to wear green!)

House Party. I like!

I went over to my aberdeen classmate Siguang's house party last night and I enjoyed myself more than any other drinking event over here. Its probably because I knew or at least met most of the people over here, and the conversation was much better! Or maybe because there were more chinese over here too, though all were PRC. (I could finally use my HCL to good use haha.)

But probably the reason why I like it is because of the unending amount of good food!

HOUSE PARTY FTW!

Ain't no party animal

Gonna stay and do my 3000 word assignment this weekend even though its St Patrick's Day...

The beer to drink on St Patrick's day!

Irish night was not very exciting, too little people and boring things to do...
Only remember one Gaelic word: Póg mo thóin (kiss my ***)
Didn't really like the Pub Crawl...i guess i wasn't in the mood...and left after the 2nd pub

Went back to a rowdy crowd at my laundry (yes my laundry!) where I knew a little more people...but I just didn't enjoy myself that much...I really think its the 3000 word assignment that I am constantly thinking about.

Laundry Party!!! (I dun know this guy)

There is one more party this night organized by chinese friend! Maybe it will be better!
One more chance to reveal the party animal in me!

Herding Calls!!!

This week pass rather peacefully by exchange terms...

Skiing lesson went exceptionally well! I am progressing to the higher slope now and able to edge better.
We had a new teacher this week. And he was really great with his instruction!
I can totally see some of the ICP qualities in his teaching. The praising, using the analogy of wanting to clamp someone's hand on the tongue of the boot to showcase the kinestatic part of learning, the touching foot technique, thumper technique, followed by the proper technique explanation, and the last part of playing a game by asking us to follow his action! Together with his praising to reward us, giving us an extra run, correction of technique, assessment of our individual skills, he makes another model for me to aspire to be a better coach!

Whisky tasting was good to me as well!!! Won a rocking glass that will never falls at whisky tasting! First time lucky!

Went to many talks this week as well. There was the ExploHub talk about this place for the masters level student to engage in real life simulation of exploring for oil and gas reserves, the Arctic drilling talk about how its so much rubbish, a talk by a wildlife TV show presenter about her experience diving around UK region. They were all really insightful and showed how vibrant Aberdeen is despite the small town that it is.

Nice place for the sharing session with wildlife expert! With mic for everyone!

I also went for this Scandinavian Singing Workshop that was SUPERB. We played many fun singing games that could be very good orientation games and it also stretches my vocal cords alot!!!!
Eg. Singing a pitch to the person next to you and passing it on,
Shouting the person's name in a loud manner and emphasizing on the syllable to transmit the word 20 miles!
Dancing while singing while twirling around!

Unbelievable fun! I never imagine that with my lousy voice I could do all this in a singing workshop. Totally dispelled whatever notion I had about my singing voice!


I also heard kulning from our teacher! It is simply out of the world. Basically it is the old way of herding live stock (in the middle of north Sweden) and of communication between herding women on mountains and between them and the home places down in the valley. This was a way of for instance crying for help, telling the family that a sheep had gone missing or crying for the hearding women to come home.

Hearing it live is 100000 times more mindblowing!

One of the songs that i learnt!

Love the room at King's College where we had the workshop!

This weekend is St Patrick's Day! Should be quite rowdy everywhere! Shall try to study a bit and do my assignment also!

Ciao!

Assassins, Beavers, and lots of eating!

Weekend beckons....

It has been a very cultural week and it was the same on Friday when me, Edwin, Remy and Isaac decided to watch the musical Assassins at the last minute! It was a very unique musical in both the way it was presented and also the content.

Firstly, it was a very small theatre where there were like only 150 seats and they were performing like a metre in front of us. There was NO stage! The stage was the floor and it was a really up close performance where you could see every inch of the actors' faces! And when they point their gun which really shoot blanks, you could really feel the fear and power of the gun! Which was really intimate and awesome!

Secondly, they were talking about the stories about the assassins of several presidents of USA. We had quite a discussion about it afterwards at a nice bar call Archibald Simpson's and all agreed about how the musical prompts us to look at the reasons behind the attempts to kill the president which were all different in motives and period of times but still connected in their wish for a better world, a wish to be closer to their American Dream. Really insightful musical!

Here is a taste of the Broadway version which was on a stage, so just imagine they are just standing in front of you!

On Saturday, Me and Edwin join the conservation society for a trip to Aigas Field Centre to learn about the conservation efforts of the beaver and scottish wildcat. The scottish wildcat are an endangered species due to road kill, hybridisation and the decreasing natural habitats. Hence they are trying to mate the pure species and set up a breeding program. So far they had a kitten and they were mating at the time we went, so we couldn't see them as we would disturb them.

We didn't see any beavers either as they were nocturnal but we learnt about their capabilities to build dams, lodges and their tree eating teeth! Really amaze me!

Bieber fur! I mean beaver!

On site learning

Beaver Works!

Beavers love to bite until there is left only a little bit left of the tree and let nature fall the tree as they prob may kill themselves if they bite all the way through. SMART!

On Sunday, we woke up to the snow like I mentioned in the previous post, and then later in the evening it was time to cook up a storm in the kitchen of my new friend from Singapore, Jianyao, who is studying full time mech engineering here. We are representing Singapore in an international cooking competition held by the International Society in our university.

CHICKEN RICE complete with chilli sauce and grass jelly with lychee here we go!!!

Chicken rice Cooking Time!

The most crucial factor!

Ready to be brought to the competition arena!

German food which won first!

Always No. 1 in my heart and I hear from others also theirs.

Made by my Italian friends!

Fried mars bars and the red wine berry salad from Scotland!

The chicken cake (made of chicken) from Bulgaria is really cute!

Food to be eaten with beer!

Lots of stuff from BRAZIL which got second!

One of the most popular from INDIA!!! The kebab finished so fast that I didn't get to try any :(

The aftermath: cleared all food and filled many extremely satisfied stomachs

The event capped a really awesome week that felt more like a holiday everyday than a school week. Well only 2 more weeks to our next awesome event: EASTER TRIP so its time to mug a bit to catch up on school work haha! Ciao! Salut!

Spring Snow!

The last thing I was expecting on a Sunday was SNOW!
Especially so late into the winter when it is getting so much warmer than when I just arrived in Aberdeen.

Shocked when I looked out in the morning!

Miss you guys!

My very own snow angel!

Our very own viking snowman creation!

Guarding my window loyally

Zombie Apocalypse!!! Life in a student festival week...

My Skiing video in which i fell twice is out! Have a look!!! HAHA



This week is apparently the student festival week where there were plenty of events from tuesday to thursday.

On tuesday, I went to the International Foooood Festival to have free food but I was 45 minutes late as I was in a Society of Petroleum Engineering talk and it ran late. NOOO MOREEE FOOOODDD! I was soooo saaadddddd.........:( Only some popcorn to take to the next event at MacRobert Building for a movie screening of DRIVE by Ryan Gosling who was so good! Now I know why the gals dig him! The movie was excellent and simple. Didn't watch the next movie (Pan's Labyrinth) as I didn't want to stay too late.

On wednesday, my class was cancelled so the first event of the day was ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!!! As a survivor, I was given checkpoints and had to run there without getting attacked by a zombie. If I was infected I would become one myself. I'm gonna bring this game to Singapore for Halloween!!!

THE ORIGINAL ZOMBIES!

I became one too!!!

The aftermath: 90% zombies 10% cheaters

Act sei only haha!

In the end I was caught at before every checkpoint LOL. I am gonna die in a real zombie attack. Became a zombie in the 3rd round. By that time there were zombies EVERYWHERE in school. DAMN FUN!

In the evening, I went to the Jazz and Swing Dance performance at Butchart Centre and sat around to chat with some friends from our neighbour Malaysia and to watch the Jazz band perform with my friend Isaac Swing dancing with his other friends. Swing dancing is quite cool. I used to think that they are very obiang, but its not! Wished I didn't have 2 left feet haha.

Swing Dance + Jazz = (Y)

Jazz + Mugger = Chao Mugger!

Me and edwin left halfway to go to the Performing Arts Variety Show at Tiger Tiger, one of the clubs in Aberdeen. and IT WAS FANTASTIC. For 3 pounds only, we watched a capella, stand up comedy, improvised theatre, improvised dance (my favourite!), monologues, hip hop dance for 3 hours. It was all really good!!! And we sat in the front row lol. Apparently very few people other than the performers and some of their close friends turn up, so we 赚到！

MEOW!

We were early and chope the first row!

Here's another video of some idea of the show!