Pictures at Last

So much has happened over the past week that i dont know which day/ event to start blogging from. There was our rather dramatic departure at the airport (think the excess baggage fiasco), our nice arrival in Stockholm's Arlanda Airport which was marred by the tortuous dragging of our luggage around before finally settling in to our hostel nearly 4 hrs after we touched down, our first trip to the city centre, my short backpacking trip to Paris where my friend and i met a flasher and many overzealous singing couples (i'll save that for another day), getting approached by a couple of drunks on my way back to the hostel from Stockholm Airport, settling my banking, Swedish phoneline, the exchange students potluck party along my corridor where we contributed chicken curry, as well as our (near) daily trips to the supermarket (don't laugh!). The funny thing is, we haven't explored Stockholm as thoroughly as I would like, but i think we've pretty much covered one outlet of each of the chain supermarkets here! There's Netto, PrisXtra, Lidl, Willy:s, Hempkop, as well as our beloved friendly Asian supermarket- Hong Kong Trading.

Then there's the food- save for the 19kroners kebab near T Centralen, eating out here is depressingly expensive. Meals at IKEA cost more than in Singapore (59 kroners for the 15 meatballs platter), fast food meals go for btwn 12-15 sgd without upsizing, and cafes sell sandwiches for about 10 sgd at the least. So its not surprising that we've been cooking dinner nearly everyday so far. Even then, cooking a meal is costing us abt 5 sgd per person on average, since groceries aren't cheap here. Ok maybe i should rephrase- in short, nothing is cheap here, except maybe pasta (but not pasta sauces) and toilet paper (we managed to get a pack of 8 rolls for 8.90 kroners- does anyone know if that's cheaper than in Singapore?) Our monthly travel pass costs 600 SEK per person, and my 250ml bottle of contact lens solution cost 70 kroners (so i'd advise all exchange-bound folks to pack more of that if your luggage allowance permits, haha).

The weather here has been great so far! There's strong sunlight in the afternoons but that's tempered with nice cool breezes (though it gets chilly at night). My only gripe is that the sun rises early (by 630am) and sets really late (like at 930pm), and my room gets direct sunlight. Coupled with the ultra-thin curtains provided, this means that my sleep gets disrupted early in the morning and im up by 10am even when i dont have lessons till 5pm in the evening.

Anyway, after much prompting from friends and family, i've finally gotten my lazy ass down to posting some photos! These are just some introductory pics of the airport, campus and our initial dinners. Pics of Paris, my corridor potluck as well as shots of Stockholm city later cuz most of the latter two are with Jo and JM! :)















Arrival at Stockholm's Arlanda International Airport















What greets us when we step out of the Universitet station along the T-Bana. The T-Bana is the Swedish equivalent of the MRT. Yup, the university has its own train station, so it's only a 10min ride to town! :)















One of the things i like most about our campus is that although its actually situated just 10 mins away from the bustling city centre, it has lots of greenery, trees, flowers etc. There's even a lake and a park within campus grounds!


































Lappis, the student residence area which houses students from Stockholm University, KTH, Stockholm School of Economics and i dunno where else.















There's 12 students living along my corridor- so far only 9 have moved in. There're 2 Swedish girls, 1 Belgian guy, 1 German bloke, 1 Turkish guy, 1 more guy from i dunno where, 1 Filipino girl, 1 Spanish girl, and myself. My corridor's made up of mainly exchange students so its friendlier and rowdier; Jo and JM's corridors have more Swedes and are thus quieter but their kitchens are much cleaner...fair trade-off, i guess!















View of the aforementioned lake, which is within university grounds, and just a short walk from our hostel. Perfect for lazy afternoons and picnics!





























Really picture-perfect huh..



















Random shot on the T-Bana



















Our first dinner in Stockholm- the cheapest thing we could find: 19 kroners kebabs (provide your own water)














Our subsequent dinners so far look pretty much like this: pasta, a veg (maybe broccoli or beans and potatoes), and sausages/ meatballs/ chicken/ fish fingers.






































With our bottle of oyster sauce, which we bought for 19 kroners. I can't describe how happy i was to find bottled minced garlic at the Asian supermarket! Though it cost us 26 kroners, it was well worth it imo. Garlic really makes all the difference in the world! :)


Oh and lastly, may i add that the Swedes drink alot. Alcohol, of course. Waaaayyy more than i thought they did, and way more than we do in Singapore. They drink as if its cheaper than tap water. More on that another time! :)

Back safe and sound!

Hello everyone!

It's abt 1215am here and im dead beat from backpacking in Paris, so this is gonna be an ultra-short post, just to let those concerned know that im back safe and sound in Stockholm. Sorry if i havent been replying your smses and emails- i didnt have internet access in Paris, i didn't bring my Starhub SIM card, and in any case, my hp went flat by the 3rd day. eugh.

Anyway, Paris was a great way to kickstart my one year on exchange! Will blog more about it later, with photos and all (i realise Jo hasn't posted any photos at all. HMMM...).
In the meantime, its time for a bath and much needed sleep- i got back arnd 8pm, we cooked dinner (pasta with sausages) at 9pm, and chatted till now! Thanks Jo and JM for filling me in on what happened over the past few days. And mum, sorry for making you guys worry. Love you and dad and sis lots! :)

Goodnight guys!

Hej hej!

I've been busy settling in the past 2 days, buying groceries, going IKEA and setting up my bank account. And today, because it was raining (we had originally planned to go take a walk about campus in the morning), we (me and junming) decided to stay in to really pack up our rooms and quit living from our luggage.
And I'm proud to say that everything's finally unpacked and in it's place. :) All that needs to be done is to mop the floor, which is really quite dirty. It's another headache, but a problem for another time. I've accomplished enough today. haha. Will post up photos of the before and after state of my room soon. heh.

Just 3 days here and I've realized something - that if I had bothered to do everything myself (from cleaning to buying groceries to settling admin stuff) in Singapore, I would never complain of being sian and having nothing to do. There's always something to do every minute here, only problem is whether I'm diligent enough to do it. But I have no choice, because there's no one here who can help me and I've got to do everything myself. So lazy or not, things have got to be done sooner or later.

The people here are really good looking. There's plenty of eye candy around (there were so many times where I was so tempted to whip out my camera just to snap him/her). -.-
Everywhere we go, there's bound to be someone to look at. Really, the guys are very good looking (and so many varieties somemore! haha. Got the rugged type, model type, gangster type etc etc...) and their dressing is really good. The girls are also damn hot (not all, but we've seen quite a number!), model material.

The weather here is erratic. The 2nd day we were here - the sky was overcast and it kept drizzling on and off. It was gloomy and depressing and didn't do much to cheer us up. But yesterday, the sun was out and the whole place was so much brighter and cheery. I'm really dreading winter time.

We haven't made any exchange friends yet, partly because the orientation programme here wasn't planned to make it such that interaction between each other is compulsory, and also because the orientation was a general one for all exchange students, and not only for law students. So it was pretty difficult to mix around and talk to people.

Me, Shu and JM were lucky to be housed in the same building on the same campus, albeit on different floors. Me and Shu stay on the same floor, but different corridors (there're 2 per floor); whilst JM lives one floor below.
In my corridor, there're only 4 students (incl. me) who've moved in (there are 10 rooms here). So it's really quite quiet on my corridor. But Shu's corridor's gonna have a welcome dinner tomorrow (I'm envious) whilst most people in JM's corridor have moved in.

Food here is really quite expensive and it's so much more economical to cook. As Shu has been away for the past 2 days, me and JM have been cooking dinner for ourselves. Well, to be fair, HE has been doing most of the cooking. haha. :) The meatballs here are really good though.
The cheapest (outside) food we've found is kebabs at the kebab house in the city centre, and that costs 19SEK (roughly about S$4?)

Alright, I think I've pretty much talked about life here so far. It's pretty boring lah, but what to do. We haven't really explored Stockholm yet (we've only been to the city centre not even to Gamla Stan - Stockholm's Old Town) because we're pretty much starting life from scratch. So got to settle down first before talking about exploring and travelling.
Oh, but we went to IKEA yesterday (no choice, had to get necessities). The IKEA here is REALLY huge - easily twice or thrice the size of IKEA in Singapore. The stuff in IKEA isn't say cheaper than in Singapore; it's roughly around the same price - which is good enough for us because if it's the same price as back in Singapore, then it's considered CHEAP here.
To get to IKEA, we had to take the free shuttle bus from town because it's about half an hour away from town. As we were new here, we walked up and down the street where the bus-stop was supposed to be located at, TWICE (and it's quite a long street) and we never saw it. Until we asked someone and she told us that she's very sure its somewhere down that street. So the third time we walked, we walked real slow and finally JM saw it. It was just a SMALL sign stuck onto the post of the bus-stop (will post a photo of it later). We spent 1 hr finding that sign. !!!


On another note, Shu's gonna be back in 6 hrs and I really can't wait for her to get back. Haha.

Greetings from Stockholm!
Me and Shu have arrived and settled down in Stockholm, although alot of things are not in order yet. Our rooms are still in a mess and we desperately need to find supermarkets and IKEA to do up our rooms.
And also advice to those who are going on exchange but haven't left Singapore yet: it's great if you have a great amount of baggage allowance, but do take note (especially if there's no one who's going to pick you up from the airport or if you have to travel alone to the university town yourself) not to pack too much stuff. Me, Shu and Junming had approx 35kg of luggage each (extremely heavy) and we had to lug it here and there because we had to collect our hostel keys and find our hostel. We arrived at the university at 8.40am and only managed to arrive at our hostel at 12.40pm. I think exhausted doesn't even come close to describing how tired we were.

Alright, that's all for the time being...photos will come up soon. We haven't really explored Stockholm but we're gonna be attending orientation for the next couple of days. Shu's currently in Paris now till Friday, so more about Paris from her soon!

Just dropping a note to thank everyone for the well wishes. I'll be fine and I will enjoy myself. :)
Y'all take care too and enjoy school, wherever you are.

Hello everyone and welcome to our blog.

To add on to Shu's first post, packing is really a pain in the ass. It's tiring and gives me a headache because I had to think of ways to "cheat" so as to bring more stuff over there without exceeding the allowance.
But I guess I'll just plead with the airline authorities to cut me some slack since I packed stuff to last me a freaking year. And I managed to keep it below 35 kg.

It's been an eventful past few weeks and I'm glad I managed to spend time with close friends and family. I'm certainly looking forward to life in Stockholm.

Take care everyone and see you guys in a year's time! :)

A Welcome Note

Hello all!!

Inspired by Zhu, Sam, Jiax, Jess, Terri and Xiuying's exchange blogs (and i'm sure there'll be many more soon), Jo and I have set this up, aside from our private blogs, to chronicle our year on exchange in Stockholm, Sweden (monkey see monkey do, right?).
We decided to have a shared blog cuz we're on exchange in the same country, same university, same course, and even same hall- so there's no point making you guys sift through the same photos and descriptions, or competing for readership... Haha.

Moving on. Work ended a week ago for me, and about 4 weeks ago for Jo. Since then, we've been busy packing, settling our visas and air tickets, packing, booking hostels and airfare to Germany (we're heading there for Oktoberfest), packing, spending time with our families, packing, meeting up with friends over lunch, dinner, drinks and suppers, packing, settling our modules, packing, eating our fill of local food, packing, packing, and oh, have i mentioned packing?

Packing is really a hugess bitch. I truly madly deeply hope i don't exceed my baggage allowance. Otherwise. i. die.
Arghh!!!


What a sweet way to end my very first post.

Packing is driving me almonds, hazels, cashews and pistachios.