ANYWAY, LET ME TELL YOU ALL A SUPER ANNOYING STORY! There was this girl on the plane sitting in front of us. at first, we thought she was very cute cos she kept standing on her chair and looking back at us.. so we waved to her. a few hours later, little did we know.. OMG! she was whining and screaming and crying the WHOLE 12 hours and she just kept waking us up. she was making SO MUCH UNNECESSARY NOISE for the entire plane!

UGH! i was saying we should just shove her into some cupboard and joanne was saying she feels like stuffing her sock down the girl’s throat. she is THAT annoying. my goodness! so annoyed with her. and she still keep turning around periodically to look at us somemore.

on another note, we started perspiring the moment we stepped out of the plane at hongkong. this is not very good news. it was just 4 steps out and we felt the extreme heat alr. and for HK airport, isnt it supposed to be very cool, like always.. BUT WE FELT WARM AIR ONLY! ohnoo.. i hope singapore is better. haha..

SINGAPORE! TMR!

its 12.2 degrees here in UBC now and it rained at night..so the floor is now wet and the weather is super cool with a slight breeze.. ITS THE BEST WEATHER SO FAR IN THE PAST MONTH!!!

i LOVE it!

its the after-rain feeling that we’ll NEVER get in singapore.. even though it just rained, the floor is still very wet, the air is not humid.. and its cold in a not cold way. as in.. i feel the cold, but i dun feel cold… haha GET IT?

AHHHHH WHY DOESNT SINGAPORE EVER HAVE THIS KIND OF WEATHER. my window keeps slamming shut cos of the wind and i put a box there to support the window.. so i get the wind coming in to my room. i think joanne and lydia and the rest will soon start complaining and demand i close the window.. BUT I LOVE IT!!!!! im not even wearing a jacket.

urgh, im so gonna melt when i go back to singapore.

ok back to study.. not having lunch today cos we had YUMMY cinnamon buns for breakfast. which was very big and filling. so we’re taking this break to studyyyyy. by the way, we had our last International Business Management class just now. so sad! i really really like the course. and professor momo is good!

till next time.. nobody nobody but CHIEW~

THERE’S A FREAKING HOUSEFLY IN JOANNE’S ROOM THE SIZE OF A MONSTER AND IT GAVE BIRTH TO LIKE MAGGOTS AND LARVAE!!!!! OMG

some of it is just some random stuff i noticed. some are just “duh” stuff that probably is not very interesting.. but its still something i realised. haha.

1. seagulls are very big birds. actually all the animals here come in XXL size here.. the seagulls are like chickens.. the pigeons are FAT FAT FAT.. the dogs are all quite big, the squirrels are all quite fat also..

2. they sell alot of things in jumbo size here.  just a few examples:

      i. mayonnaise comes in 2litres. imagine your mayonnaise coming in those big 1.5 litre coke bottles.. its 2 litres here.

      ii. they have 1.5 kg jumbo pack cornflakes.. see the picture, its as big as my backpack…

3. Moving on to people, the people here are EXTREMELY friendly.. shop owners can just chat with you like we’re friends for a long time.. and its super fun talking to all of them.. at whistler, we went to a restaurant and the waitress just came and chat with me and geraldine while we were sitting there waiting for the rest to get their food.. she said she’s been to singapore 5 yrs ago and we learnt that in winter, it gets down to -30 degrees.. another waitress told us that that night was one of the warmest nights they’ve experienced and they were like sweating the night before, WHILE WE WERE FREEZING!!! no kidding.. our teeth were like chattering as we walked in the cold wind. APPARENTLY, its one of their warmest summers. PFFT! which brings me to my next point…

4. Canadians’ skins are very thick.. literally. HOW CAN THEY JUST WEAR SHORTS AND A TANK TOP AND WALK ARD WHEN WE ARE WEARING JACKETS??? but anyway, i think we’re getting too used to the weather that we’ll probably melt when we return home.

5. There are ALLLOOTTT of koreans here. much more than HK ppl.. i never knew that. seriously, the 2nd day i was here, we went to metrotown and every shop, there is at least one korean.. this is no exaggeration!! then when we sat down to take a rest, in just one minute, i counted 30 koreans walking pass.. i know they are confirm koreans cos most of them were speaking korean to their friends and they look/dress like koreans also.. this is like paradise for me! haha its so nice having so many koreans around!! SERIOUSLY, there’s ALOT! not only metrotown, in downtown vancouver too.. EVERYWHERE!

and all along i thought there were more HK ppl here.. there’s some, but not as many as koreans.

6. Bus drivers here are mostly very young and very friendly.. they greet you everytime you get on the bus. we took a photo of a busdriver who was very nice to us.. he was so funny. when our friend asked if we could take a photo of him, he kindly obliged and when my friend said “1….”, the busdriver counted himself “2..3…”.. and when my fren showed him the photo, he asked to take it again cos the 1st photo wasnt that nice! HAHA! but anyway, there was another busdriver that was SUPER good looking.. he’s got model good looks. and about 20plus years old only..

oh and bus drivers here wear shorts. when its so cold.

7. Japanese food here is extremely cheap, relative to Singapore. there’s alot of jap restaurants around, probably one in every 2 streets. THATS HOW MANY THERE IS! and we went into one which looks nice and their bento box includes: meat (salmon/teriyaki chicken or beef) with rice, tempura, fruits and salad and SIX california rolls.. and it only costs about S$8. its a very big portion that all 6 of us couldnt finish our own box. and the food is really good. there’s this All-you-can-eat-buffet in downtown also, for S$13.. HOW CAN YOU GET THAT KINDA PRICE IN A SINGAPORE JAP RESTAURANT?? and it tastes better than singapore jap food too.

compare the size of the bento box to the cups behind.

8. it never rains here.

9. vancouver is smaller than i thought it was. i always grew up thinking that vancouver is super big but its actually smaller than singapore you know! UBC is west vancouver, and i can reach Burnaby (another state east of vancouver) in just 50 mins.. that was when we took a train then bus.. but i think the straight bus is prob even faster (that service wasnt operating that day cos its a weekend).

its cos i always here about vancouver here vancouver there, but how many of you all have actually heard of the other cities in Canada like Burnaby, West Minster blahblah.. even Vancouver is more popular than the capital, Ottawa. WHY AH? why we always here about vancouver? is it cos alot of asians live in vancouver?

10. i want to sleep already so i shall just write one more point even though i have alot more..

their 菜饭 here is S$10 and their bubble tea costs like S$5.. bleah. im never gonna buy it man!! waste money. especially since im going back in 2 weeks alr.

ALL RIGHT! its 1AM, im gonna go sleep le. NIGHTS!!!!!!!! God bless all of you!

After dinner, we set off to lighthouse park to catch the sunset! And this is where our great adventure begins. hahha. so we took bus 250 down to horseshoe bay and asked for directions to lighthouse park. We had to walk though this jungle/forest area(which was actually really scenic) and we were stopping to take photos every few minutes. Three quaters through the forest area, we ran into two other smu ppl, and they offererd to take us to the peak whr we could have the best view of vancouver. we had to climb up some rocks, and at the very top we could see the lighthouse as well as walter gage residence(that’s whr we’re living)!  It was a pity that we couldn’t stay for the sunset cos we figured that it would get really dark after the sun set and we would be walking through the forest area in total darkness. And did i mention that there was a sign at the entrance telling you to beware of bears? They had instructions to teach one what to do if one runs into a bear. So anyway, it was already starting to get dark when we walked back to the bus stop. We took bus 250 back to downtown at about 930pm, and switched to bus 17 back to UBC.

If you thought that’s the end of our great adventure, you’re absolutely wrong. hahaha. BUS 17 STOPPED very suddenly, and the bus driver(who chiew thinks is extremely goodlooking) said there was an accident upfront and the poles/lines connecting the buses were damaged. All the buses couldnt move and we were just like waiting aimlessly in the bus until the bus driver suggested that we walk to the bridge, go across it and then hop on to another bus. There was this elderly lady(who had a nice British accent) who wanted to walk with us because she was walking alone. SO WE WALKED. Crossing the bridge would probably have taken us really really long, and we were about to cross the bridge when we saw bus 17 coming from behind !! So they managed to fix the lines really quickly but we were nowhr near the bus stop. All of us were panicking(and laughing), and Saratri was standing at the side of the road waving frantically at the bus driver. AND THE BUS STOPPED. YAY. In Vancouver, buses generally do not stop anywhr apart from the bus stops so we were really really lucky to have the bus driver pulling up and letting us get on. So that marks the end of our great adventure! ((:

Geraldine, Saratri, and Christiana alighted a few stops before us on the pretext that they had to get some stuffs from Safeway(thats the supermarket). They were actually buying Jo’s bday cake while the 3 of us continued back to UBC. And then while jo was bathing, we were busy writing bday messages and lighting up the strawberry cake outside. And then at 12 midnight, we started singing HAPPY BRITHDAYYY TO YOU (really loudly cos the people 12 floors down could hear us).

PHOTOS TO BE UPLOADED SOON (:

Day 06 was merely lessons the entire day. Prof Momo taught in the morning followed by Prof Woo ( Melissa Woo’s relative haha) E- business is very technical and in my opinion, is very much a male topic International business is still as interesting, probably because it is so econs-related and we are econs students! We came back to cook dinner after lessons and then had a futile attempt to do our readings. We had fried sausage rice with spinach, which was pretty decent, other than the fact the spinach shrank significantly after cooking.

Day 07 was very superbly fun! We went to the ice skating rink at Richmond which is going to be used for the Winter Olympics to ice skate.The journey there was extremely long and the weather was just crazy hot. This was most probably when we are got tanner since the sun was insanely bright, even at 6pm. The ice skating rink was HUGE! ( except that I cannot really compare since I have never been to one before this). We spent 2 hours skating there and we had so much fun. Chiew and Lydia spent most of the time trying to teach me how to skate:)

Our journey back was when our efforts to minimise risk of getting swine were all gone. Because the Mexicans were very friendly and nice, they started conversing with us and we had a fun cultural exchange session on the bus. We taught them abit of Chinese and they taught us Spanish in return. We learnt ‘ Nor-e- tia-do ni ma dres’ which means I dont understand shit haha. And ‘ ti- kea- ro’ which means ‘ I like you’ and ‘ Kepadoway‘ which means ‘ what’s up’.  We were all abit skeptical when they first started talking to us, again because of swine  but they were so friendly and nice! And unlike us, they all have passes with their photos on top so we assumed they were here for quite long already. But then came this very innocent question. We asked how long have they been in Canada and this guy was like ‘ Ohh 3 days!’ Hahaha there was a momentary awkward silence before we started acknowledging his reply. It was really very hilarious. To think we were all avoiding them when we first met them. We seriously just started flowing away the moment we heard Mexico! Haha! But after that, we all started praying and affirming that they are healthy and so are we, in Jesus’s name and so we are pretty much fine.

Day 07 pictures will be uploaded later cos it’s with our Canadian friend Dave. We weren’t pro enough to carry cameras while ice skating.

Going grocery shopping soon! Eating the same cheap jap food for dinner!:)

-Joanne

Added by Chiewyong: We also had the super yummylicious burgers for lunch that day.. and sat on grass.. The ice skating rink is really huge compared to singapore.. kallang’s one is less than one quarter of this. this is the same size as the normal track and field 400m track size.. so imagine the sheer massiveness of the rink!! and we went at night, so only the smu ppl were on the rink, which makes it even bigger. I FEEL LIKE GOING AGAIN!

and because we left for the rink at 5.30pm and only reached home near midnight, we didnt have dinner so geraldine, christiana and saratri bought macs; me and lydia cooked noodles and joanne just went to sleep.  (there’s one photo of my noodles, i ate it straight from the pot in front of my laptop)

photos of our mexican friends are below. should be seeing them soon again. shall learn more spanish. haha! ok wait for our next post!! ITS SUPER COLD AND WINDY NOW! brrrrr……..