Sunday, October 30 | 7:15 pm

welcome to guys' campus, king's college london, university of london..

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| 7:11 pm


guys' campus entrance~*

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| 7:10 pm


the gate~*

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| 7:10 pm


come on in!

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| 7:09 pm


the 3 front buildings border the carpark..

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| 7:08 pm


as we walk into the carpark, guy's chapel is on our right.

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| 7:08 pm


boland house to the left, houses the student's union shop and the spit, where students sit around and hang out, have coffee, slump over in big comfy armchairs..

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| 7:05 pm


the front porch.. here we go!

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| 7:05 pm


this is the hallway into the compound!

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| 7:04 pm


as we walk down the hallway, to the left, is a nice small area, where students sometimes sit around to eat, talk, chill. the dark patch of soil all around was where flower bushes used to be! before fall came along. :P

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| 7:03 pm


and to the right, is another nice small enclosed square, with a statue of St. Thomas(?), i'm not too sure. same thing, there used to be pretty red flowers bordering the lawn!

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| 7:02 pm


we see new hunt's house coming up on our left. it's the main bulding, the bigger lecture theatres, computer labs and experimental labs are located in this building.

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| 7:01 pm


and that's shepherd's house, just up front, to our right.

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| 7:00 pm


ok so we walk right out onto the steps of new hunt's house, and we are directly opposite the shepherd's house.

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| 6:53 pm


further down next to the shepherd's house, we have the henriette raphael building. :)

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| 6:51 pm


hodgkin building. check out the ivy(?) growing all over the building. SO old school/haunted house. haha.

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| 6:49 pm


the arch in the campus courtyard.. (i never bothered to find out what it's for.. but i think it says St. Thomas on the top or something.. i THINK.)

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| 6:48 pm


that's the front building we came in thru..

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| 6:48 pm


back out the same hallway..

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| 6:47 pm


bye school!

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Friday, October 28 | 11:19 pm

i am in the school lab, waiting for my partner for a Cell Biology project. we were assigned partners by the professor, and he so smartly put the exchange students together.

my partner is puerto rican. how cool is that?? like sounds exotic, don't you think? hmm i wonder if people think Singapore sounds exotic..

my landlady is kenyan.

my friends at school are from turkey, bangladesh, india/pakistan/sri lanka.

my exchange friends are mainly from the states, california and indiana. and amelia and matt from singapore.

i've met an iraqi and a south african on the tube. speaking of which, the first time a guy gave the salam to me on the tube, he asked for my number. the next time, the guy asked for my money (he claimed to have lost all his £2300 that morning, he's the south african and is a doctor). i bet the next guy who gives me the salam on the tube will want my kidney.

for the six weeks i have been in london, i've met a grand total of 2 english. a guy on the tube, and a girl in class.

you step into the tube and you hear italian, french, all sorts of languages, hell even greek! (i don't know if it really was greek, but it sure sounded like greek to me.)

london isn't english. london is international.

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| 5:50 am

i miss linking arms with a girlfren just because we like physical contact and closure. just because we wanna feel safe. just because we love each other. just because we feel like. just because we want to. just because.

i miss my girlfriends. i miss seeing them, being around them, being with them, talking to them, hugging them, telling them i love them, telling them to take care and that it'll be okay soon, asking them when we would be meeting next right before we say goodbye after hanging out, taking forever to say our byes because we'd say oh-i-have-to-go and then we'd remember something else we have to tell each other and that will take another twenty minutes, squealing and jumping with joy when we tell or hear something exciting, saying oh-my-god excitedly, giggling non-stop over nothing, i miss everything.

i was on friendster, yeah one of those i'm-really-bored-i-should-be-studying-but-i-don't-really-wanna times, and reading old testimonials. memories just come flooding..

rgs, 2/8, mars, rozzie, sya, sistas, how we became close, how close we've become, orchard&wisma&taka, farah, aisyah, 4/8 girls, rozzie's pool, mars' house, mars' self-invites to rozzie's, mars & sya getting lost, sya always getting lost, netball carnival, horridly loud pink class tshirts, rjc, nydia, nydia, nydia ;) crappy jc days, cramps, i-won't-get-S-papers tears and frustration, tarian, stress&suicide, i-hate-my-tutor, green skirts and oversized untucked white blouses, calling farah at break at 1pm and she's at home and has just woken up, sha-just being sha, 3j, bbq&chalet, kl trip with elly, farah, aisyah, sya, mars, rozzie, nus, science fac, hanging around school with sya, sya, sya, sya, working to get As, telling sya she can and she will work to get her As, lectures, zat-su-syahirah-marlini, aisyah-just being aisyah, being a nuisance in lecture with my ever-beeping phone and constant chatter, tormenting marlini and syahirah, the-world-revolves-around-us suhaila-and-me, taking pictures, yep, vietnam with sya and zati, rooming, packing and unpacking, comparing viet purchases, discovering zati turns psycho past 2am, pgp, sya at my room, early-morning snack-hunting, room-check scare, sya falling off the bed and wanting to roll under it, a girlfriend lost yet many memories i would still like to cherish and sometimes i wonder what happened while other times wishing it didn't, syahirah&zati pgp, late nights central library & desperate housewives, hiking back on the cool breezy slopes of kent ridge, syahirah&zati always being there for me, nights at my room, at zati's, cooking random stuff, telling sya she should try for exchange as well, taking pictures, charles&keith with mars & nydia, zoo and ben&jerry's, kite-flying just for the heck of it, taking pictures, starbucks frappe, taking pictures, late night dinners/suppers/dessert with oh-so-chivalrous driver(s), taking pictures, kl with sya & nydia, taking pictures, farewell bbq, the beach with tents and intellectual mind-boggling detective games..

that about sums up my life these past six years or so.. but of course, i am only human and my memory is limited. just some things off the top of my head.. :) (if you're up to it, look for yourself in there!)

of course that's not all of my life. that's just one aspect of my life. my girlfriends. :)
a part so huge it overwhelms and engulfs me, but i like it and i let it.

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| 12:11 am

london has been surprisingly sunny past few days, past week in fact! *cheers*

it was so hot last night i couldn't sleep, until i took off my sweater. (my landlady doesn't wanna switch on the heating yet. yes, want to save money. *shrugs*)

the sky is like perfectly CLEAR today. and i'm not exaggerating. there isn't a CLOUD in the sky. it's just simply bluuuueee. :)

i wore a coat out today (don't wanna act hero, and mars and nydia say "next time must wear jacket" and "later coldcold hypothermia, you fall sick." didn't wanna take any chances. never underestimate english weather. i HAVE been cheated. morning damn sunny, come back afternoon raining can.) but it was seriously WARM that i wore my coat for all of three minutes today!

and it's still sunny!

i was hoping some people would be online, so i can webcam them, then they can see sunny london out my bedroom window, see trees with red&yellow leaves and botak trees (as promised. haha.) next time then, wasted.

and when we finished class today, meredith went "it's such a nice day today, i think i'll walk back the long route by the river, instead of the shorter way." and i said "yay, i get to take the ugly tube back."

and then i thought. have i EVER, in singapore, thought "waah what a beautiful sunny day, let's walk hereorthere!"? in fact, it's always been "haaaa must walk?? but it's so hooottt..*whine*"

i'm beginning to appreciate the sun and sunshine, being out here. :)

ah, the lessons we learn~*

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Thursday, October 27 | 11:28 pm


we took ferry from port of dover to cross the english channel.. and the whole time(90min) we were on the ferry, amelia kept lamenting "man how do people swim across this thing??" and she's right. not only is it looong, it's fricking COLD just standing on the deck.

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| 11:26 pm


that's my tripmates! amelia and matt~*

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| 11:26 pm


me & port of dover..

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| 11:25 pm


can you see the cliffs of dover? english coast, haha.

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| 11:24 pm


amelia&i! she's really nice to talk to and to be around, i'm going spain with her, can't wait!

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| 11:23 pm


can you see the moon?

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| 11:23 pm


we're here!

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Wednesday, October 26 | 8:46 am

horse&tram.

yes, the people i travel with. haha.



welcome to amsterdam~* :)


trams outside centraal station.


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| 8:38 am

we took a canal ride! :) and that's me pretending it's MY boat. haha.

amsterdam's canals by night. :) top left: if you look really hard, you can see a whole tunnel dotted by lights, that's all the bridges across the canal and the lights mark out the archs under which the boats pass. bottom right: that's their science museum, nemo! haha

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| 8:29 am



help.. so gorgeous.. *pengsan* hehe the last one has the houseboats. people actually live in houseboats here, they have piped gas and water and electricity running to their houseboats. how cool how cool.

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| 8:16 am

if i wore clogs, mine would look like this! pink and flowery! but not so huge lah, my feet are big i know, but they ain't THAT big. haha.

i'm sitting in a clog!

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| 8:10 am


this was at van gogh museum. (great artist, but i don't really like the way he started out. he just decided to be a painter, like how unromantic and unpassion-y is that. heh.) but i thought the one in malay sounds sooooo.. advice-y. right? like sebaiknya kamu... hehe

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| 8:07 am

our first morning there~* :)

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| 8:03 am

top: royal palace, front and back. bottom: centraal station, so irritatingly blocked by cement towers for construction works, ergh spoil my picture only! :( and a pretty building i forgot what. hmm. heh.

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| 6:59 am

there was a major fair!! it was in front of their royal palace. strangely. hmm. doesn't that kinda devalue the palace? nobody was paying attentiong to the palace OR the national monument across from the palace. haha. including us. anyway! top left, the major attractions. i love the giant-ness of the ferris wheel, so big, so bright, so happy! and there's the 360, TALL ride - BOOSTER too. i don't have the guts for that yet. we took the ride on the top right. gerek!! (a girl fainted on it, we had to scream STOPSTOP, and the girl's boyfriend was like shaking her hand (they were holding hands on the ride) and like yelling her name over and over. when the ride stopped she was basically unconscious, they had to carry her off.) and bottom left, that's us in front of the ride, which is the fuzzy thing next to my head. hehe. bottom right, trying to catch all three rides in action. :)
the stall which sold GIAAAANT cotton candy!! check out the size! you can't see the boy's head, it's hidden behind his candy!

queen sweet-toothed HAD to get it, of course! and no one would believe me if i told them i had cotton candy which ran from the top of my head to my torso in length. so there! haha! boy, was i in heaven! oOooohh!


the fair at night. bright lights, happy night. :) in the background is the royal palace. and the fair is on the Dam Square.

the fair in the day. and i'm trying to capture the BOOSTER ride in action. hehe.


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| 6:35 am

we went to clog-making museum! do you know why the dutch wear clogs? it's for when they step out onto their gardens or pastures, cause the netherlands is basically one giant swamp, wildly reclaimed. so when it gets wet, their ground gets REALLY wet. yup. :) hehe

i found a pair in my size! how quaint!


n we also found some NOT in our sizes!


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