Off to London

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Was planning to finish the first draft of my seminar paper, review German lessons and go through the materials for the network class during the Christmas break but I failed badly. I've only managed to finish three quarter of the paper, reviewed German lesson once, and not even have a glance at the network stuff. I did have a lot of time during the long Christmas weekend but somehow I wasted a lot of time being lazy. Sigh! Now, I need to continue to work on my paper in London. Still, I look forward to having a good time during the one week vacation. :D

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year!! May 2007 be a better year for all.

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Christmas goodies

Tuesday, December 26, 2006


The Christmas atmosphere here is awesome! At the Weihnachtsmarkts (Christmas markets) , one can find all sorts of things for sale. All pretty pretty things. As for food, one can find a variety of meat, potatoes, pastries, candies, roasted nuts, etc etc. They're all tasty! The famous drink is Glühwein, which is warm red wine with cinnamon and some other spices. Throughout the day and night, people would stand around small tables with a drink and chat. It can be cold sometimes but we still do it. It's all the fun with shopping and eating and drinking.


Some of my personal goodies include Christ-stollen, dominosteine, half a bag of chocs from France, and a souvenier mug from Christmas market in Bonn. The stollen a traditional christmas cake in Germany. I guess it's like the English fruit cake but the taste is different all together. It has sugar dusted on top and the one I bought had marzipan filling. Yummy! There are other variety of stollen too; some contains almonds, some has rum. Dominosteine are small layers of gingerbread with jam and marzipan covered with chocolate. I think these are the best choc fillings. Hehe. And the choc pralines are so smooth and it just doesn't feel like choc at all. I could have finish the bag in a day. Also, there's all sorts of Lebkuchen. I've never really liked gingerbread but the ones here are really nice. :D

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Cooking chicken-katsu don

Monday, December 25, 2006


It's Christmas eve and I felt like having something nice. Since it's too difficult to make the typical Christmas food for one portion, I didn't really know what to have. Then I thought about the ingredients I have in my kitchen and it struck me. Katsu don! The egg yolks here are just too yellow. I have already took half the yolk out and it's still so yellow! Nonetheless, one satisfying meal for the eve. Guten Appetit! :D

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Tis the season to be jolly

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Wishing everyone a blessed Christmas and may the new year bring you much joy and love. Happy holidays!

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My dear iPod

Thursday, December 21, 2006

My iPod has been a wonderful companion especially on days which I have long commute. Most of the time, I don't know exactly what songs are in it. The other day I discovered Home by Michael Buble on my iPod. I think it's a simple and beautiful song . It kinda made me reflect on my personal experiences. Anyway, when I found a nice "new" song, I usually listen to it over and over again. So, the next day I was eager to listen to the song on my iPod again. But when I turned it on, it wouldn't play. It was blinking green and orange. I was worried that my iPod was sick and I thought maybe it's too cold. It still wouldn't play after I warm it up with my hands. Came home, looked it up on the net. Then connect it to iTunes and found that the playlist has disappeared! I had to reset the iPod and load all the songs again. It was such a relief when it worked after the reset. Maybe it's getting close to its shelf life. So, should I get a new iPod? If wanna buy one, I should buy it this year coz VAT is going from 16% up to 19% next year.


Michael Buble - Home

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Alcohol in class at 11am!

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Some of my classmates in german class have the idea of sharing alcoholic drinks from their home country. Two Saturdays ago, one of the Japanese gal brought sake and some riceballs to class. We all had some after class. Then, this past Saturday, a few others brought theirs to share. This time we had it during the class break since some had to leave immediately after class. The turkish couple brought Raki, a traditional alcoholic drink with whopping 40% alcohol and feta cheese and chic peas to go with it. You add a bit of water to the clear liquid to make it a bit milky. It smells very nice and I like it though you can feel your throat burning after you swallow it. Then, the French guy from the champagne region who went home a week earlier, arrived with 2 bottles of champagnes and chocolates :D Of course everyone was waiting for the champagne so we opened a bottle. Oooh, it's so good! Later, the Russian arrived with a bottle of spicy vodka. You can actually see pepper inside the bottle. We decided it was too much alcohol in the morning and we still have another half session of class so we kept the vodka for later. We offered some to the teacher too and she seems cool about it.

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Cooking rice stew

Saturday, December 16, 2006

With broccoli bits, carrots, mushrooms, crab meat chunks and shrimp

It just occured to me that there are other ways to make use of leftover cold rice besides making fried rice. Rice stew! Just need to make the soup base first then throw in all the ingredients and the cold rice and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. A hot, hearty meal for the winter. It's even easier than frying rice and also less cleaning in the kitchen. :D

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Ice Skating

Thursday, December 14, 2006

At Bonn Ice

Finally went ice skating last week. The atmosphere was very nice with colorful lightings and music. It cost 4.50€ to rent the skates and it was only for two hours. I'm not sure if they impose the time limit due to high demand. There were lots of people and the ice was melting and puddles of water everywhere. I was anxious to know whether I can still skate. I had expected the worse but it turned out that I didn't entirely loose my skill. I started skating quite clumsily and tried my best not to fall. One would be very wet if one fell onto the ice. My friend's jacket and pants were soaked and the water was also dirty. By the end of the 2 hours, I was getting better though still not skating as smoothly as I did before. Still, it's quite nice :D

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Cooking Risotto

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Risotto with broccoli, mushroom and shrimp

Have always loved risotto but had never attempted to cook, until recently. Read the recipes and seemed like it's easy to make so I gave a try last month. Was surprised it turned out being edible! Haha. I had already made risotto twice for dinner but the lighting in my room was just too terrible to take pictures. So, today I made it for lunch. I doubt it's something I'll cook often as it takes longer time in the kitchen. Can't multi-task either. Frying rice is a lot faster and I still like fried rice.

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Silbermond - Das Beste

Friday, December 08, 2006

Ich liebe das Lied :D

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aufstehen

Tuesday, December 05, 2006


Been having a tough time getting out of bed lately. When I wake up, I look out of the window from my bed and it's usually either dark (4-7am) or gloomy (8am). Without some sunshine, it just didn't feel like the day has started. I think I spent at least half an hour more in bed trying to make myself to get up. The sky only starts to get bright around 8:30am. Then there's those gloomy rainy days, which is quite frequent here, which makes you just wanna cuddle up in bed.

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Reading & Writing

Friday, December 01, 2006

At first I was quite pleased that most of the courses here doesn't require writing programs. I wasn't sure if I could still write anything in C++/Java. However, having experienced the tedious process of writing papers, I'd rather write programs now. You can just start writing the program and it either work or it doesn't. So you know whether you are doing it right. But with papers, you gotta read tons of materials written by other people first and then decide which of these papers are useful for your paper. Still, you can't be sure whether you're on the right track especially when you're not sure what exactly needs to be written. I'm in that situation with my seminar paper now. It took me days to write the "table of contents", basically a detailed outline of my paper. Furthermore, over the weekend, we had a writing assignment in pairs to write about Douglas Engelbart, the person who "invented" the computer/web as we know it today. It's already difficult to write in pairs and yet we are also graded for writing style! I forgot most of what I learnt in English 101 and 102.

If you're interested in Engelbart's work, check this out. You'll be amazed what he had built in 1968 and some of the nice features in his system are still not available in ours today.
Video:The Mother of All Demos
Article:Engelbart talks about his demo

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Overslept in train

Been having lack of sleepy lately due to a huge amount of assignments. I myself was surprised I could wake up at 4am to go for German class yesterday. I usually sleep in the train but yesterday I overslept and ended up one station further than the Cologne Hbf (central train/bus station). Luckily, that train's last stop is just one station away so I went to another platform to catch another train back to Cologne and make it back in time for my usual train to Aachen. Phew! Otherwise I need to wait for another 30-45 minutes for the next train to Aachen and will be 15 minutes late for class.

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Shopping day

Sunday, November 26, 2006

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Difficult door lock

Friday, November 24, 2006

The door locks in my dorm are very difficult to use. You can turn the key around and around and when it reaches the end, your key is not in a vertical position that can be taken out and the door cannot be opened. So, you turn it back to a vertical position, try pushing the door but it wouldn't budge. So you turn back another half circle and try again and if it still doesn't work, turn it back another half circle and repeat until you get it to open or you reach the other end. When you reach the other end, turn back and try again and eventually you'll hear a click and the door can be opened. After fumbling with the door for a few times, I realised that if I turn the key half a cirle anti-clockwise first, I will hear a click immediately and the door can be opened. So, I made myself to remember to turn anti-clockwise every time I enter the room. The door is automatically locked when it's shut.

I don't really know how the lock works but I think there are other ways to turn the key to open the door. I know this coz whenever someone has entered my room, I couldn't get the door to open by simply turning the key half circle anti clockwise like I usually do. I kinda had to "reset" it to my style and the next time, it can be opened using my method.

And I was pretty distracted that someone entered my room that I left my keys outside the door the entire night. I didn't realised my keys were missing until I went out this morning and saw it hanging at the door.

Oh, and for the entrace door to the dorm, you had to turn the key half circle clock-wise, stop there, pull open the door, and turn the key back to vertical position to get your key out. At first, I turned the key all the way round and I couldn't get the door to open.

I really don't understand why they design door locks that have so much room to turn and it only works when it's turned half way or something.

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Winter is here

Monday, November 20, 2006

It's only mid November and the temperature is hovering between -5C and 5C. It's not that cold for me yet since this is typical Chicago fall weather and I rarely need to wear gloves. However, I wished the fall weather of 13-18C could lasts longer.
What I dislike is the wet gloomy weather for the past 2 weeks. There are a few days in between where it was back to nice fall weather. The locals said that the winter came early this year just like how summer sprang on them. So they only have summer or winter. Hehe.


The leaves on the trees are almost gone.

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Favourite day of the week

Sunday, November 19, 2006

S A T U R D A Y

I'm starting to like my Saturdays eventhough I have to be up at 5 in the morning to catch a train to Aachen for German class. Perhaps the informal teaching style makes it a fun class to attend. It feels like a bunch of friends hanging out together just chatting. And when we need words, the teacher will help. For the first half of today's class, we talked about what we do during weekends. During the second half, we talked about food and drinks.

Some of use went for lunch together after class today; a Spanish, a French, a Nigerian, a Japanese and a Malaysian. It's just fascinating to learn about other cultures. Found out that in Spain, Santa Claus is called Papa Noel but he's not famous. They have their own "Santa"s which they call the Three Kings. They leave food in the window for the camels to eat and when the camels stop for food, the Three Kings will leave a present or three for you. Interesting! I'm amazed that the French guy have not even heard of the words "Santa Claus". I guess they really don't get much chance to learn things not French. Then, there's the Genghis Khan story which explains Mongolian descendants in Spain!

Oh! And I got to know a North Korean in class last week. All these while we thought he's from South Korea. Hehe. Well, we didn't think North Korean get to travel out of the country.

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Buy me an iPod

Thursday, November 16, 2006

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Rigid Masters programme

I found out that not only does the German uni has compulsory courses, the Italian uni has compulsory courses too. And we have to satisfy the requirements of both unis. These are the requirements for the standard students enrolled in each uni and somehow it applies to us as well; which makes life super difficult for us since some courses are only offered during a particular semester. So, we'll end up with a lot more than the required 90 credits of course work. These courses are mostly intermediate level general courses which I have no interest in whatsoever. Luckily I managed to get exempted for 2 mandatory courses since I have taken in undergrad. But I'm still only left with 2-3 courses which I can choose for myself.

Besides compulsory courses, the uni in Germany also group courses in categories and we have to satisy a certain amount of credits in each category. Which means I need to check which category the courses I want to take is in. And these courses will be taken in Italy so have to make sure it satisfy the German uni as well.

I think this is the third year the programme is running and things are still unclear. Plus, the school break is also not in sync. Classes in Italy will start mid February when we're still having final exams in Germany. No school break for us and we'll miss 1-2 weeks of classes.

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Week full of sugar

Monday, November 13, 2006

I kinda like to eat when I'm reading and I have tons of materials to read. So, I finally decided during my grocery shopping to buy 2 packets of gummy bears thinking it would last me 2 weeks. I also bought 3 cans of 0.33L coke. Two days ago, I bought a packet of raisins as well. Suprisingly, I finished everything in a week. Once I opened a packet, I pretty much can't stop eating. If I put it back into the fridge, maybe an hour or two later, I would start thinking about it and I'll get distracted. Eventually, I'll go and get the remaining packet. The thing is I'll fall asleep easily if I don't chew something while I read. As for the coke, it's just tempting when I see it everytime I open the fridge to get something. On the otherhand, I took over 2 weeks to finish a tub of ice cream which is hidden in the freezer. Now, I'm thinking whether I should re-stock my sugar supply for next week.

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Uni facilities

Monday, November 06, 2006

In relation to the previous post, it seem to me that it's expected of us to also study or do our assignments or research in the weekends. However, the libraries and computer labs are closed on weekends! I know Germans don't work on weekends and everything is closed on Sunday but I didn't think that university facilities would be closed as well. So, they expect us to do so much stuff but they don't provide the environment for us to do so.
Furthermore, you would think that if the CS departments have their own little libraries, they would have quite a collection of books. Wrong! They only have 5-7 shelves of reference books; mostly in German. Though there are quite a number of shelves holding journals from ACM, IEEE, etc. I have yet to check out the main library in Aachen but I do hope they have more books. Othwerwise I would have a tough time writing my technical paper with only a few references.

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Lots of work

Friday, November 03, 2006

I'm glad classes are over for this week. Well, except for German class. I had no idea that these classes requires so much work outside of lecture. Most classes here comes in 2 parts; lecture and lab. Lecture session is only once a week so it could last 3 straight hours. After each lecture, there's usually an assignment and you'll need to submit the assignment before the lab session in the following week. During the lab, the answers to the assignment will be discussed. On top of it, there's reading assignments!

A professor told us that each credit for a course is equivalent to 30 hours of work. And we are expected to spend the same amount of time we spend in class at home doing the assignments/reading books/reviewing materials. One of my class has 8 credits so I'll be spending 8x30=240 hours for this class over 14 weeks in which 3 weeks are holiday. I have 22 credits this semester, excluding German class and technical writing. After calculation, it comes out to about 50 hours a week. It's already worse than working and I haven't add in the hours that I'm putting in for work.

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Photos

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

I'll be adding new photos occasionally as I take them. Just click on the Flickr box on the right when you feel like looking at pictures. Went to a huge park yesterday; walked for about 2 hours. The weather was quite nice albeit too windy sometimes. Lots of people flying kites there. The sky wasn't exactly sunny yesterday so the colors on some of the pictures are pretty dull :(

Kite
This is my favourite from yesterday's set.


Office
And, I wanna work in an office like this. Great view!

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Movenpick

Monday, October 30, 2006

Movenpick in a tub! Bought it from the supermarket for 2.99€. Decided to give myself a treat for the effort in learning German. Hehe. It was a fun class on Sat and despite the dreadfully long journey, I look forward to go again. Hopefully the weather is more permitting for photographs. And thank goodness I got an extra hour of sleep from daylight savings (but only once!)


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Long long commute

Saturday, October 28, 2006

It started on Wednesday to attend German class in Aachen. I took the earliest bus out from my place to the train station at 5:37am, took a train to Cologne (30 minutes), switch train to Aachen (1 hour), and took the bus to the lecture hall. Travel time is about 2+ hours one way. I did the same today and I was late for class! It turns out that the train that I took on Wed was late so I was able to catch it when I arrived at the train station. Came home, checked the schedule and found that I could take the tram at 5:01am to the train station and will be able to catch the 5:31am train to Cologne. So, I don't have to be late =) But, I have to be up at 4am! The german class is 3 times a week, Wed & Friday for one and a half hours each and Sat(review) for 3 hours. I'm not sure how long I can keep up with this but hopefully long enough until I master the basic stuff. There's no other alternatives except for learning on my own which wouldn't work coz I'll be lazy.

Saw this McD in Aachen today. Found it funny that there's animals on top. Hehe.

McD in Aachen

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Miss my ex-roommates

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

I never realised how much roommates meant to me until I started living alone. Chatting, cooking, having a meal, watching tv, cleaning; everything is just more enjoyable when you're doing it with someone. Most importantly, there's people to talk to or disturb. Hehe. I mean, really talk to; not online. Having people around also makes the place livelier. And then, there's the convenience of having "proper" meat dishes at home. I never bothered to cook them as I only eat them because I need to. Can Subway substitute them? Look at my kitchen. That's all to it. There's no kitchen counter. Behind it is the wardrobe and the entry/exit door is in green. It's a tad small but still managable.

On the first night, the quietness and stillness of the room makes it a little scary. There was no sound at all! But I did finally fell asleep due to tiredness from a long crazy week.


Been over a week now and I'm slowly getting used to this change of environment; being alone in a super quiet room. The internet is my only source of entertainment in my room and it has served me very well.Thanks to everyone who chats with me online. I really appreciate it. :)

In case you're wondering why I'm not out and about, public transportation is expensive here and I'm low on funds. I'm waiting for my student travel card from school and then I can go out!

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Speaking German

Sunday, October 22, 2006

People had been asking me "So how's your German so far?" in the 2 weeks prior to my departure. I had been staying up late into the night, almost every night to learn as much German as I could. And, I didn't get far so I was quite worried.
Still, with limited German I managed to get on the bus from the airport in Cologne to Bonn. I know how to ask "Where is the bus stop?" and to understand the answer, it's a combination of the keywords:left, right, straight ahead, turn together with the directions they are making with their hands.
Everytime I want to speak German, I have to think of what words to use and how to structure it correctly and my vocabulary is very limited. There was once that I managed to say something without thinking first. I was standing in front of the Pizza Hut Express Counter just looking at the pizzas and a lady came to counter with a box. I smiled and said "Nein danke" (No thanks) and walked away feeling surprised. Normally, I would smile and wave my hand to indicate no.

I bought my first meal at McD. I figured that's the safest option since most young people here speak English :)

Most frequently used words so far:
Danke -Thanks
Vielen Dank - Thanks a lot
Guten Morgen -Good morning
Guten Tag -Good day/Hello
Enschuldigung - Excuse me/Sorry
Tschüss - Bye!

I have been lazy to continue my german lessons since I got here as I still managed to get by. Hehe.

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First weekend in Bonn

Friday, October 20, 2006

Was lucky I managed to catch a flight to arrive here on a Friday so that I can get the keys to my room. My room has a little kitchen, a tiny bathroom, and a shared living/working/bedroom area. The best things about my room are the huge window and the mini fridge! My only complains are the super tiny shower space and the super hard bed. I do wish the floor is carpeted though. There's a small wardrobe to hang my clothes and there's plenty of shelves to put stuff.

The picture on the left is what I see when I look down from my window. The pictures below are views from my window from left to right.







Equipped with a visitor pass, I went to check out the museums. The Guggenheim Collection is awesome! It showcases feature pieces from Guggenheim musuems across the globe. There's also the Guggenheim Architecture where you see the models and design plans of Guggenheim museums which is pretty amazing. I took about 4 hours to finish them so image the floor space.
I also checked out the Kunst Museum next door which feature collections of August Macke; famous artist in the region.

Musuem Compound

By the time I finish both museums, it was already about 4:30pm and my legs were so tired! Still, I walked over to the other musuem that showcases the history of Germany. The descriptions are in German but they do have a guide book in English. I took a quick walk around the ground floor and found the setup creative and interesting. I shall go back there one of these days.

Took the train back to town and decided to visit Beethoven's house. Bonn is afterall Beethoven's hometown. Saw the original piano, the viola, original manuscripts and letters. The floor is very squeaky that I feel like it's gonna fall apart anytime. There's also the garden which is famous during spring when the flowers bloom.

The picture on the left is the alley between the house(R) and the garden(L).

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Deutschland: the Prologue

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Sometime in the fall of 2005, I took a few days off work mostly just to get away from everything. It was during then that I started going through the scholarship applications that mom has compiled for me. Utmost thanks to a kind friend for the usage of his peaceful place. After that, it's just preparing the materials and mailing them out without any expectations.

About six months later, I received an email that I got admitted to the programme BUT without scholarship. Oh well, at least I'm still one of the lucky 60 persons who got admitted. Was super busy with work so I didn't give it much thought.

Another six months down the road, on that fateful day which I checked my gmail, I saw THE email with the scholarship offer. And since then, it has been a crazy crazy six weeks.

And now, I've finally settled down in my new home in Germany. =)

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