I went to visit the Botaniska Trädgården (Botanical Garden) today, since there is an one-hour lunch break in between my lecture in the morning n lab in the afternoon.
As I stepped into the garden, I was welcomed by the blooming flowers, and occasionally the hooting owl. I had my pack lunch (just some pitiful sandwich) by the pond, looking at old couples 细细轻语, and teenagers sunbathing... Looking at myself still wearing 3 layers of clothes (a T-shirt, a pullover, and my KE windbreaker), I really 佩服 those swedes, esp the girls who can wear tight mini skirt outdoor...
After lunch, I took some pictures of the flowers as I roam around the park and the University Building. Here they are:
迎向朝阳
小蜜蜂…嗡嗡嗡…
The University Building
------------------------------------------------------------- 春天终于来了… 冬天时三点多就天暗… 现在凌晨五六点就天亮,晚上八九点的天空,却还有一道晚霞挂在那遥远的西方… 常听说晚霞是稍纵即逝的。在这里这句话好象不怎么成立… 因为西落的夕阳会由黄慢慢变橙,再慢慢变暗红色… 这形成了一副画:暗蓝色的天空,点缀着灯光的陆地,还有一道紫中带红的光,劈开这片天地… 一副好象只有在中国大制作武侠电影才会出现的情景… 最后…夕阳才慢慢带走最后一道光,把天空让给温柔的月亮… 整个过程大概一小时… 想起之前夜长日短的日子,现在的日子真的好多了… 原来…我的心情也这么容易被季节左右… ------------------------------------------------------------- More photos at http://watergan.multiply.com/photos/album/50/Botanical_Garden_in_Spring
I have received many e-mails of hot air balloons of different colours, shapes and sizes... I have seen quite a number of romantic scenes of the guy proposing to the gal in the movies... Finally... I saw one real hot air balloon flying across my window yesterday. *Well... Maybe not the 1st time I see a hot air balloon, if you consider the "forever secured to the ground" DHL Balloon Ride in Singapore. ----------------------------------------------------------------- TADAA! The Hot Air Balloon taken from my window. A close-up view of the Hot Air Balloon Being in the clear blue sky, looking down at the budding trees, lush green lawn... Sure is a great way to enjoy life... --------------------------------------------------------------- -- 突然好像飞…
I have a rather sarcastic prof for my Pharmacology course, this half of the semester. We have to submit a compulsory Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for a lab on Catheterisaion of Carotid Artery of Mouse. And this is a reply from my prof after sorting out our e-mail submission.<-------------------------------------------------- Bodil Sjögreen 22 Apr Dear all on BIOR14 (pharmacology),
I am, eventually, working my way through your SOPs and they are, in general very good!
But, just a little something about submitting files; I know that I have been exceptionally slow at confirming any received material and I do apologize for that. However, sending an attachment labelled “SOP” or “Catheterization…” is ok if you were only one person – now, I get twenty something files to distinguish between. Some brave individuals do not even put their name on the document (not even in it…). I hate to tell you, but my organization skills are better needed elsewhere (and my imagination not always that vivid) so PLEASE, label your document in a clever way, e.g. “SOP Eng Seng” (who actually did that, thank you!). I can assure you, not only will the receiving teacher be forever grateful but all your forthcoming colleagues as well!
Bodil --------------------------------------------------> 'some brave individuals...', 'my organization skills are better needed elsewhere...' haha. can tell she is rather pissed at our work. And looks like my habit of archiving electronically has paid off. But why use me as an example... I wanna keep a low profile... -_-||| --------------------------------------------------------- ----------------- 我要逃避不必要的眼光… 在这里我只想做个平平凡凡的学生… 但也许在一群白人当中,我的肤色已给了我先天性不平凡的条件…
Can you believe it!!! I actually have LAKSA in Sweden!!!
Thanks, Jimmy! I miss laksa so much.
Although the 'Prima Taste’s Ready-to-Cook Meal Kit for Laksa' din taste as rich as I expected, who is there to blame but us?
"SERVES 2~3"
We kinda top up the gravy with milk to serve 6... The outcome... it became diluted... -_-||| Oh well... at least it satisties my crave for Laksa. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ No offense to anyone, but I still think Kuching Laksa is the best!!!
For those who have not tried Kuching Laksa, it consists of Bee Hoon (rice vermicelli), Taugeh (bean sprouts), omelette strips, peeled prawns, chicken strips. Its gravy is very different from curry laksa or assam laksa, cos it is mainly made out of sambal balaccan, topped with optional lime. Its taste? slightly spicy, slightly sour, with a unique fragrant of the sambal and the other ingredient.
I shall not explain further... this is making me miss all the food in Kuching.. Kolo Mee, and Laksa, and Tomato Kueh Tiaw, and Cha Kueh, and Kueh Chap, and Satay, and all the Ais Kacang in Hui Sing, and Fang Yuen Chicken Rice, and ... and ... and ....
Tonight I shall have a good dream of Kuching food....
I've been using Windows Vista for the past 5 months.
My experience: 1. Running a Vista on a 1GB RAM laptop is like running a XP on 256MB. All the useless animation is hogging up the RAM... 2. Software incompatibility. Need I say more... 3. System hang and crash. Dunno why my Microsoft Office 2003 dun run as stably as XP, esp MS Excel, which always crashes whenever I wanna save..
This describe my feeling when I'm using Vista.
This is when I was using Vista for the 1st time. Some stupid alert box keep popping up asking me to cancel OR allow. I turn it off after two days... Thanks Microsoft for putting in such useless stuff..
Sorry Microsoft.. I am 'downgrading' myself to Windows XP when I'm back...
Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2008, the largest trade-show for consumer technology, held every year at Las Vegas, Nevada.
I was checking out what are the new cool gadgets coming up this year on youtube, and found some quite cool stuff for guitars!
#1. Gibson Robot Guitar The first one is Cool!! Every electric guitar player should know Gibson Les Paul. Now the guitar just got better with robotics tuning your guitar automatically.
No more hassle of tuning the guitar. No more embarassment of strumming an out-of-tune guitar on stage.
#2. Guitar Wizard The second one is Crap... Basically it is like playing Dance Mat on your guitar, with coloured frets and lines marked with different shapes.
Kinda cool for some one who wanna try playing Dance Mat genre games on a different instrument. But I think it is crap because you can't learn guitar like that.. you have to learn where each note is, and not just learning the songs by heart..
#3. Guitar Hero- Air Guitar Rocker The third one is Crappily COOL!!! You have seen ppl swinging his hand around his crotch, acting as if he is slamming on his 'air' guitar. Well, it is a dream come true for them. with this device, you just have to strum with the magnetic pick above the belt buckle, and it will transmit signal to the amplifier to play the chord.
Pretty idiot-proof cos u dun even need to know the notes nor the chord to play a song on the guitar. But pretty crappy as well.. if u get wat i mean... --------------------------------------------------------------- --------------- 现在这些给大小孩玩的玩具真的是越变越夸张。 只要是你想得到的就会有人做得出给你。 像Nintendo Wii, 或上面的Air Guitar Rocker... 绝对不是80's 年代的小孩能想象的… 但不懂为什么当年的我们玩着任天堂Nintendo的'魂斗罗Contra', '超级玛丽Super Mario'就可以这样开心的玩上整个下午… 现在…每天只会嫌电脑慢…Graphic Card不够support新的game... 哎…想念当年的日子…天真…无知…单纯…
8Apr (Monday):London A good day begins with a good breakfast. And that is what we had in London. We had cereal breakfast at the kitchen in our hostel-Astor Victoria.
Then this notice in the kitchen sink interest me: Your Mother Is Not Here So...YOU Wash your Dishes Be Civilized, Be Independent
We should definitely tell the kids nowadays this. --------------------------------------------------------------- After tat, we set off to explore London.
This palace sure din disappoint me. It is SOOOO BIGGGG!!! Check out the ratio of the guards and the Palace...
Then look at the gates... really够气派...
In front of the Buckingham Palace there is a fountain. with green bronze statue around and a golden statue on top.
Trixie! I found you!
We reached there early, but too bad we dun really have the time to wait and see the changing of guards.. oh well.. --------------------------------------------------------------- Next stop: the Westminster Cathedral.
Here we took the lift up the tower, to have a bird's eye view of the Metropolis of London.
Views taken from the Campanile Tower of Westminster Cathedral in all 4 directions....
--------------------------------------------------------------- Enjoying enough of the cool breeze on the tower and the view of London, we continue our way down Victoria Street to the Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament with the Big Ben. It looks very near in the tourist map we got, but took us longer than we thought.. the metropolis of London really is big.. Just within the boundaries of Greater London, there is already a population of 7million...
Okay.. back to Westminster Abbey.
The Great West Door and towers of the Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, which is almost always referred to by its original name of Westminster Abbey
There is a reason why it is regarded as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.. This Gothic church is magnificent! The carvings, the designs...
On the facade of the North Entrance, we can see the heavy Gothic elements of pointed arch, and flying buttress... a different feel compared to the West Door, which if shown separated, I might tot there were 2 different buildings..
Next to the Westminster Abbey lies the Church of St. Margaret.
After walking for the whole morning, we went in to have a short break, and immersed ourselves in that simple moment of peace. --------------------------------------------------------------- Rejuvenated from the rest, we continue our walk towards the River Thames, where we can visit the Palace of Westminster (also known as Houses of Parliament), the Big Ben, and the London Eye.
From afar we can see the clock tower of the Big Ben.
As we walked nearer, we were greeted with the Cambridge Chimes.
Then, further down, the Palace of Westminster, also known as the Houses of Parliament is where the two Houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (the House of Lords and the House of Commons) meet to conduct their business. The palace is one of the largest parliament buildings in the world.
After this last building of the ensemble of UNESCO World Heritage Site, together with St Margaret's, and Westminster Abbey. We walk down River Thames to the London Eye.
The big bicycle wheel... The London Eye... Standing at the height of 135m on the South Bank of River Thames, it was the tallest Ferris Wheel. Well.. it WAS the tallest.. until it got surpassed by the The Star of Nanchang (160m) in May 2006, and then the Singapore Flyer (165m) on February 11, 2008...
But it still attracts millions of ppl every year. and btw, this is the wheel the Fantastic 4 were saving in the Rise of the Silver Surfer. --------------------------------------------------------------- After that, we took the Tube to London Bridge.
London Bridge is falling down.. falling down.. falling down.. London Bridge is falling down.. My fair lady..
And all this while I thought London Bridge is the one with the 2 towers... But I was wrong... This is London Bridge!!!
And THIS my friends, is Tower Bridge!!! my childhood 'London Bridge'
I wonder which idiot drew the Tower Bridge on the page together with the nursery rhyme 'London Bridge is Falling Down', giving me this wrong impression of the bridges over these years..
View of River Thames on the Tower Bridge
--------------------------------------------------------------- 221b Baker Street is our next destination. why particularly mention this address? you may ask... This is the address of Sherlock Holmes, the famous fictional detective, created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He is so famous that people went to this address to look for him.
If Japanese mange freaks find this name familiar, you guys are right. This is the name used by 工藤 新一 (Kudo Shinichi) in 名侦探柯南 (Detective Conan). Kudo used the alias Conan, honoring Conan Doyle, in order to protect his real identity. --------------------------------------------------------------- Last attraction for our London Trip: Madame Tussauds.
Madame Tussauds is a famous wax museum in London with branches in a number of major cities. It was set up by wax sculptor Marie Tussaud.
I have always heard of how real this wax figures were... and Seeing is believing... This place is a true memory space killer for our camera. I shot almost half of the photos of London, in just 3 hours here.
We took photos with...
Celebrities
Cartoon Characters
Sports Star
Royal Families
Renowned Scientists
Famous Artists
Legends
Religious Leaders
Political Leaders
We also took a ride in the cart through the Chamber of History of London. through the building of London, the Great Plague, the Great Fire of London, to the Rise of Modern London...
--------------------------------------------------------------- After dinner, we went to Oxford Street, for some shopping. We went to Primark to shop for clothes, and this is what I got
2 shirts, 1 short pants and 1 jeans. all for only GBP17. The jeans cost only GBP4. SUPER CHEAP!! Din know guy can be this high when go shopping for clothes. haha. --------------------------------------------------------------- To end our day, we went around the London Eye, the London Bridge and Tower Bridge again to see its night view.. before heading back to our hostel at Victoria. ---------------------------------------------------------------
9Apr (Tuesday):London->Svasta(Stockholm)->Nyköpping->Lund The next morning we woke up at 4am, to catch the bus at 5am for the 1h30m ride to Stansted Airport. We then fly by Ryanair back to Svasta (Stockholm). This is where Hiong n I say good bye to Kane since he is going back to Stockholm. We took a bus to Nyköpping, and stone there watching movie til 5pm, to catch our train back to Lund.. ---------------------------------------------------------------
All in all, this UK trip is very very very short considering the places we have to cover.. But I'm quite proud we manage to cover quite a lot of places. Given the $$ and time, I would definitely wanna visit London and Edinburgh again. --------------------------------------------------------------- More photos at http://watergan.multiply.com/photos/album/49#