Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Chapter 284 - Dating Tips
Need some tips to get that date on Valentine's Day? Well, I have the perfect solution for you! Check out these videos man... damn funny, especially the 3rd one - it's a culmination of volume 1 and 2... ;p

The Japanese Tradition - Dating (Vol 1)


The Japanese Tradition - Dating (Vol 2)


The Japanese Tradition - Dating (Vol 3)


PS: And the girl is Vol 3 is totemo kawaii desu-ne! (mikako ichikawa)

The Japanese Tradition - Dating (Vol 4 - FINAL)
Moral of the story: Nice guys don't always finish last... hahaha... this is a damn good late-night entertainment....
Posted by yellowlemonie at 10:44 PM | 2 comments
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Chapter 283 - Quiz me!
Talk about renewable resources.... ;p

245 WATTS Body Battery Calculator - Find Out How Much Electricity Your Body is Producing -

This is 2% LESS wattage than the average person
You could light up 2 light bulbs
You could power 61 iPods
You could power 1 Xbox 360
4 of you would be needed to keep a refrigerator running

-------------------------
And more interestingly: (i heard this on BBC Radio 1)

This short survey will tell you approximately how many five year old children you could fight at once. Results are based on physical prowess, training, swarm-combatting experience, and the flexibility of your moral compass. Here are the ground rules:
-You are in an enclosed area roughly the size of a basketball court
-There are no weapons or foreign objects
-Everyone is wearing a cup (so no kicks to the groin)
-The children are merciless and will show no fear
-If a child is knocked unconscious, he is "out." The same goes for you.

20


Of which, one of the questions were:
"During the fight, would you feel morally comfortable picking up a child and using him/her as a weapon to throw at other children?" muahaha...

So how many five year olds can you take on? Let me know! ;p
Posted by yellowlemonie at 6:26 PM | 0 comments
Chapter 282 - London(ers) come to Cambridge
So over the last couple of days, I had John, Zhongyi & Jolyn visit me in Cambridge. Fitting 4 people into my room (sleeping-wise) was somewhat a slight challenge, though it turned out quite alright - you can make out Jolyn lying on the inflatable mattress, John on the right on the laptop, and Zhongyi on the left.

Good thing the weather was pretty good in the morning the next day. After rousing to a sunny and lazy Saturday morning, we set off to tour the sights of Cambridge, starting at King's College & its Chapel.
Jolyn & Zhongyi walking towards King's Chapel.

Unfortunately, the lady at King's Chapel was SUCH A B*TCH! Well, you see, the thing is that visitors normally have to pay to enter the Chapel - £5 for adults. But for University students, you're allowed to bring 2 guests in for free. So I had 3 guests right? And I tried to "negotiate" if I could bring 3 in, because it wasn't like I was the only person they knew at the University. And she insisted that 1 of them had to pay anyway. I refused to let my friends pay for entry (why the hell will you get your friends to pay to visit a place like your school?!?!), so we came back later in the afternoon after lunch, where we had Huixin & Kezheng join us as well.

Only then, the b*tch was still there, and she was still a b*tch. After scrutinising our University cards from every angle (as proof of being a student here), she finally let us in. And then Kezheng went to get 3 brochures for J, ZY & Jo, which contained some information about the Chapel. Then Huixin wanted one as well, so Kezheng went back to get 1 more, and apparently he was stopped by the b*tch, who claimed that we had enough brochures already! wtf. I think Kezheng was quite pissed and told the lady off or something like that. And in the end, after the visit, we returned ALL of our brochures back to her as a sign of our defiance.

Anyhow, after leaving King's Chapel, we went to the other "main" colleges (not to say that some others are more "main" than others though... ;p) and then because we still had time before we were due to meet Huixin & Kezheng for lunch, we went punting! (another quintessential touristic activity in Cambridge.
Here we have John seemingly enjoying himself on the punt, and Jolyn paddling us along - though I think we were perpendicular to the river at this point.. haha.. =)

Although you can say that's so as to get a better view of the chapel...

In any case, we went for lunch at Jinling's after punting, where everyone got to catch up with everyone else.
Rafflesians Unite outside Jinling.

After lunch and the horrible experience at King's Chapel, we visited Caius (where Hawking is at), and then headed back to my room, where we prepared and ate yummy steamboat for dinner - though because J, ZY & Jo had to catch the bus back at 8.35pm, it was a slightly hurried affair, but very enjoyable nonetheless.

So that's my story of the last two days, albeit a bit terse i must admit. :)

PS: the rest of the photos taken can be found HERE.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008
Chapter 281 - How cool?
I'm working on this Physics experiment right now.. And it's damn cool! Literally that is. How cool exactly? 4.2K to be exact. That's 4.2 Kelvin - which for your information is 4.2 degrees above absolute zero, about 270 degrees colder than ice. It's otherwise not a very exciting experiment, though we get to play with liquid helium (4.2K) and liquid nitrogen (~70K) like they're water.. It'll be another week of staying in the lab before I start to churn out my lab report though. :(

(ps. i'll try and take photos of the experimental set up tomorrow... ;p)

I seem to have neglected my travelogues for quite some time though, so I shall continue from where I left off, which was the end of our first day in Goreme.

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Day 5 - 5 Dec 07 - Goreme

We decided to pay YTL 50 for a tour which they called the "Red Tour" (although it was a japanese lady at the hostel telling us about it, and we all know the japanese language doesn't have an R sound, so it was more like the "Led Tour" ;p), cos it'd actually cost us more to hire transport to go to all these places.

Our first stop was the underground city - Yaralti Sehri, which was quite interesting I guess, a 8-storey deep underground city, which is presumably linked by some secret tunnels to the other (underground) cities in the area. It didn't appeal to me personally though, cos I guess I'm more a sucker for natural beauty.... =)

Inside the underground city.. There was some tunnels which was quite small and required us to bend over to get through - being short has its advantages...

After that was a track through Ihlara Valley, which I'd described in my little black book as my idea of the Grand Canyon, with more greenery... It was really pretty though, the valley flanked by sheer cliffs on both sides with a river running through it.

Kenny on The Rocks.

The river that runs through the valley.

After a 2-km trek through the valley, we were rewarded with delicious lunch waiting for us, though we paid to pay for our own VERY EXPENSIVE pepsi (YTL 3!!) - what a rip-off.

Our last major stop of the day was at Selime Cathedral, which we arrived after driving through what was known as the "Star Wars" terrain, rumoured to be very similar to that you saw in Star Wars (though of course, it's probably all CGI in Star Wars).



I guess the most interesting thing about the tour was actually the random mix of nationalities we had, but predominantly Asian though - we had 2 taiwanese, 2 japanese, 2 koreans (the 2 koreans & japanese actually didn't know each other before the trip), 2 singaporeans (us), 1 kiwi and 3 turks I think. It was really nice and friendly cos we had the opportunity to interact with each other on the minibus, during the trek, and during lunch.

That pretty much sums up our tour of Cappadocia and stay tuned for our adventures in Malatya!

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Posted by yellowlemonie at 11:31 PM | 0 comments
Monday, January 21, 2008
Chapter 280 - Four Play
I'm on the topic of Word Play this time, hence the title Four Play (hur hur). Cos I was thinking up domain names - it's a real pain to come up with one. At the moment, I own www.thebluesock.com (not very inspirational I must say), and now I'm getting a new one (babygiant.com?). Any suggestions are welcome.

So I was looking through the list of Oxymorons (http://www.oxymoronlist.com) for some inspiration and there were a couple which I found fairly amusing... Like did you know HOMEWORK is an oxymoron? Since home isn't usually associated with work! And the other one which I thought was really funny was Mild PMS. I was sure it was a guy who added that to the list... haha. =)

And I was also looking at the Facebook group "When I was your age, Pluto was a planet" (very amusing too I must say), and I came across this t-shirt selling site, which had some pretty funny "pick-up lines" on T-shirts, of which one was:



For now, I'm gonna go pack up and head to bed. Early night!
Posted by yellowlemonie at 11:33 PM | 0 comments
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Chapter 279 - Saturday Night Fever
I wonder what got into me, but I seem to be working quite hard tonight... for once... =X And there was a fly in my room earlier. These annoying things like to fly into my room, and then don't know how to go out, so they just buzz left and buzz right. And all I can hear when I was doing my work was this buzzing. In the end, the solution was to open my door, since it was much bigger than my window, and also in its "flight path". Phew.

I managed to do quite a few things today in fact, like doing my good deed of the day, by helping this old Chinese lady at the post office to (try and) renew her travelcard, though it turns out they no longer do it at the post office, and she was referred to the City Council. I wonder how she'd have coped if I didn't happen to be there, because she speaks not a word of english, and she's apparently 80 years old (though very fit still).

I also coxed a race this morning (Cambridge Winter Head-to-Head), as well as playing Ultimate Frisbee for college (we beat Johns 13-0... muahahaha. though they were a pretty novice-ish team, so no kick lah). It's been a while since I played Ultimate for college, though i attend their training sessions every once in a while.

[edit] Getting stung by nettles is not fun. My pinkie still hurts from getting stung this morning. If you've not been stung by nettles/thistles/etc, I suggest you try it at least once... It's an experience.. :) [/edit]

And to procrastinate to express myself creatively, I took some photos of the stuff in my room. A little blurred cos my room is relatively dark...

My faithful Stitch.. who's been "hanging on" forever...

My springy pirate ship. I bought this in Czech (in Pilsen) last Easter... very nice.. I like... ;p

And finally, my guardian angel. I bought this in Singapore before I came to the UK. It's hand-painted in Germany apparently. Cost me something like S$50 then, though it's tiny, but i really like it....

It's time for some bedtime anime now. I'm pretty exhausted actually. And the wind is STILL howling outside...

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Friday, January 18, 2008
Chapter 278 - Back with a Vengeance
(this is from Hayate no Gotoku... very nice... Got so many anime episodes to catch up on!!!)

Well, I guess I really should carry on with my adventures in Turkey, now that i've gotten over the first hurdle of the term (handed in my computing project~!).
------------------------------------------
Days 4-5 (4-5 Dec 07) - Goreme, Cappadocia, Turkey

We arrived in Goreme in Cappadocia after a TWELVE-hour bus ride from Istanbul to a somewhat cold morning. After checking into our hostel (Traveller's Cave Pension), we had a little wander around the area. Our initial plan was to see the Goreme Open Air Museum, though we ended up being distracted by some other stuff (read on...).

The landscape around Cappadocia is fairly unique in the sense that it is mostly volcanic tuff that has been shaped by weathering (both wind & water) over the years, to become what it is today. There are many houses that have been carved into the stone, and because they used to light candles at night, the houses were also known as "Fairy Chimneys". I imagine it must have been quite cool then to see the houses at night....

One of the "houses". There were lots of these in the valley we went through, and you could just climb into them as you like.

I guess the highlight of the morning was the Love Valley. It's not hard to see why they called it the "Love Valley" if you were to see the photo below..... ;p

One of the PHALLIC "love" structures in the valley... Don't let your imagination run TOO WILD... ;p

And no, these weren't sculpted by hand (I think.. correct me if I'm wrong). Though they are REALLY HUGE... They are at least 20m high (at least)...

After lunch (Kebabs!), we decided to rent a scooter to explore the area around Goreme, since it was starting to get cloudy, plus we were a little tired of walking. And because Keng Rui isn't too confident on the motorbike, in fact, hasn't ridden one before, we rented just ONE scooter and I had to pillion KR. And nope, I don't have a scooter license.. haha.. But we were only scooting away at about 40-60kph anyway... ;p
See the camel-like rock in the background? This place somewhat reminds me of shi2 lin2 (literally translated to Rock Forest) in Yunnan, China actually...

After returning the scooter, and listening to Osman (from Silk Road Travel), share his woes about his Taiwanese girlfriend (i thought it was quite an interesting story really), we went for dinner at the neighbouring restaurant, where I tried Testi Kebab (don't misread the first word!). It's basically a pottery kebab, where they cook the meat and vegetable in an earthern pot and then you have to hammer it open to eat it. Very cool.

I shall write about Day 5 tomorrow, otherwise it's a bit of an overkill I think... :)

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Posted by yellowlemonie at 10:56 PM | 2 comments
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Chapter 277 - Thin is good....

Have you seen the latest Macbook? It's not just chio - it's damn super ultra chio! They say thin is good - I have to agree with that man... ;p The Macbook Air is to die for!!! And check out the ad while you're at it...

---------------------------

I just realised yesterday that this coming lunar year is the Year of the Rat! MY YEAR! Wah lau, it means I'm 24 years old liaoz... I feel like I've been around forever... To think I was looking forward to the Year of the Rat when I was turning 12, and now it's gone a full cycle again! And John commented on the phone that the significant milestones in our lives have also gone by - O levels, A levels, NS and now Uni... Time really does creep up on you eh?

And shit. I need to finish work now. =(

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Posted by yellowlemonie at 10:43 PM | 1 comments
Monday, January 14, 2008
Chapter 276 - Pre-School Days
Well, term hasn't officially started yet, though I'm already slogging my ass off. My project (~80% complete!), assignments to complete, (lots of) meetings to attend.

Went for a run earlier on, and it's been a while since I've been so breathless - must have had too many fags in the middle east. And plus, it was so cold with the win. It's a strange sensation I get in my arms when I return from each time. Because it's cold out there, plus I'm normally just in a t-shirt and shorts, my arms aren't quite as responsive... It's like there's a lag or something.

(DISCLAIMER: This stunt is only to be performed by professionals. Kids, please do not try this at home) If you want, I suppose you can try this at home. Try putting your arms in the fridge for about 30 mins, and try to do "Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars" (open & closing of your fists) for about 10 times.... ;p [though i really think you shouldn't try doing it, cos the fridge will get very stressed if you leave the door open for so long...]

[post edit] while googling for "do not attempt this", I found this site : http://www.donotattemptthis.com/. Take a look at the video.. It's quite cool... (though essentially a BMW ad... ;p [/post edit]

Just got up from a nap - 3 hours of sleep obviously wasn't enough, though for some reason I just couldn't get to sleep last night... Back to work for now! :(

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Posted by yellowlemonie at 8:33 PM | 0 comments
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Chapter 275 - Kebab Kingdom, Part II
I left off last time half way in Istanbul.....

.... so after walking a pretty long way and up a hill to try and visit Galata Tower, we found out that it cost YTL 10 to visit this tower, which you basically went in, took a lift to the top to take in the view. And no, we didn't go up the tower in the end, because we thought it wasn't worth the money... So here's the only shot I have of the tower...



We then walked around the city, where I saw the ONLY Starbucks coffee on the trip - though we didn't go in. Who needs coffee when we have all the hospitaliTEA in the world? ;p (i've lost count of the number of cups of tea I had in Turkey... and diabetic tea at that - ie. VERY sweet)

We also managed to get tickets to a football match in Turkey - Basiktas vs C.Rizespor. Initially, we were ATTACKED by touters on the street, who tried to sell us tickets. The initial offer was YTL50, but that soon came down to YTL30, and then YTL20 when they saw that we were gonna buy from the official ticket booth (we paid YTL30 for official tickets in the end). I don't think the tickets were fake though - I noticed the value on the ticket said it was complimentary....

The match security was CRAZY though. Being travellers, we were carrying our daypacks (ie. haversacks), which of course contained our essentials like water bottle, camera, books, writing materials, etc. When we first went in, we'd hidden our plastic bottles already, but guess what they had a problem with? My SLR camera. Bloody hell. And all the supervising police officer could mumble was "problem" (the searching officers referred me to him). And I was like, if you have a bloody locker, I'd put my bag in the locker. But of course he understood not a word of english (except problem), which left us quite frustrated. In the end, we had to go out, repack our bags so that my camera was well hidden, and then we went in by a different gate and got through this time, thankfully. It was quite an ordeal really. It wasn't like my camera was using a TELEPHOTO lens or something - I know they don't allow that in the English Premier League matches. I was using a WIDE ANGLE lens. I don't think the idiots knew the difference though.

The atmosphere in the stadium was incredibly awesome (and I'm not trying to be hyperbolical). The fans were practically cheering throughout the match, and they have such interesting cheers as well. You know in JC/Sec school, we had all these "reply" cheers, where the cheer leaders shout something and you reply right? They did that in the stadium, only that ONE ENTIRE SECTION shouts to another ENTIRE SECTION, on the adjoining side of the stadium. I was duly impressed. The match ended, to much disappointment, in a 1-1 draw though.

Unfortunately pictures are on my other camera, and I can't seem to get my card reader working yet, so I'll have to post them at another time. The pictures weren't great either. Instead, I shall show some photos from walking around Taksim Square and the main shopping area...

Yummy baklava and other sweet things. The turks really like sweet stuff man! Don't start drooling all over your keyboard!

One of the little streets leading away from the main shopping area near Taksim Square.

Day 3 was spent exploring the Grand Bazaar, which I managed to resist the temptation to buy too much stuff. In fact, I didn't buy anything for myself in the end! hehe... It was nice to just wander through the bazaar and visit every crook and corner though.

Very colourful bowls. I thought of buying one, but I figured one by itself would look quite plain and boring. And I didn't exactly want to buy an ENTIRE set....

I told myself if I ever went back to Istanbul, I'd buy one of these lamps. So colourful too! I wasn't sure if I wanted to fork out YTL30 for a standing lamp at that time, plus it was the start of the trip, I risk breaking it along the way if I carried it around.... so well...

We finally departed Istanbul on the night of 3rd December for Goreme, Cappadochia, which is one of the most visited sights in Turkey. You shall see why when I post pictures of Goreme.... stay tuned!

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Posted by yellowlemonie at 10:38 PM | 0 comments
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Chapter 274 - My Little Black Book
As I wrote in my previous post, I keep a travel journal, which is a A5 leather bound notebook, aka my Little Black Book. I was looking through my entries for my end-of-year trip last year to the US, and found this very interesting entry. It reads:

day 2 - 4 dec 06 - New Haven CT

Getting up early tis morning..........

.... Met up with the first person I was meeting on my trip - Pierre Andre Salim, who had dressed to the occasion to meet me in shorts & flip-flops in bloody winter, where we got my prepaid SIM card from T-mobile b4 heading back to his apartment.

This is the same pair of flip-flops that you see in the picture on this post....

Of course there are other interesting entries though, but I'll save it for another time.
Posted by yellowlemonie at 11:03 PM | 0 comments
Chapter 273 - The Reality Strikes
I'm currently listening to Class95 live broadcast over the internet... I must say Class95 really did save my life during my trip in the middle east. The podcasts that I had on my iPod provided respite on those enduring bus journeys - cos I'm one of those insomniacs (not maniacal bus drivers) who can't seem to fall asleep on the bus... unless it's an overnight journey of course.

Anyhow, I'm spending way too much time staring at my laptop screen lately. I've returned to Cambridge earlier so that I could complete the damned computing project, which is due in a week's time. :( Here's a screenshot of what it looks like that I'm doing - just dealing with boring numbers and alphabets and keeping my fingers crossed that a "syntax error" or associated errors will not pop up.



------------------------------

But I really should write about my Middle East adventures as well. I've uploaded my photos of Istanbul already, so I shall write about that first... :)

Istanbul, Turkey - 1-3 Dec 07
Istanbul was our first stop on the trip. And as I refer to my little black book, aka Kenny's travel journal, it reads that I had a HORRIBLE start to the trip. Well, reason being there was Boat Club Dinner the night before, and Kenny was kinda QUITE drunk, after a bottle of wine, a couple of glasses of Pimms, a glass of brandy and port, and proceeded to crash out on his bed right after the dinner, leaving the packing of his room undone. And those of you who have been to my room know how much stuff I have, so yes it wasn't good news. And somehow in my "sober-ness", I also managed to SMS Keng Rui to try and wake me up early the next morning, in case I oversleep and miss the flight.

I did however manage to wake myself up at 5am (!!!), and spent the next couple of hours chucking things away in boxes in my very hungover state. I somehow manage to complete all my packing, meet KR at the bus station and head to the airport. The only thing I remember from this point to Istanbul is that I bought a fruit juice at the airport to detox my body of all the alcohol swimming in me.

2 Dec 07
Our first stop the next morning, me having freshened up from a good night's sleep, was the famed Blue Mosque, aka Sultan Ahmet mosque - only that the mosque really isn't blue. Not anymore that is.

Sultan Ahmet Mosque... The rocket launchers pointy minarets are a feature of Turkish mosque's architecture. It's apparently quite different across the middle east - not just your usual onions. ;p

Inside the mosque. This is one of my favourite pictures of the trip. I think it embodies the essence of the interior of the mosque. Arabic writing, domed ceilings, and mosaic/tiled walls.

And it is also here that we meet our first and only Singapore tour group on the trip. For some reason, you can pick out a Singapore tour group from miles away, either from the Sing-grish they speak, or the way they photo-whore the sights.

Our next stop was the Aya Sofya (there are a million ways to spell it) - a mosque which was converted from a church and is now a museum. There's much restoration to be done to the interior, but very impressive nonetheless.

Aya Sofya - taken at sunset (not on the same day), but shows the brilliantly coloured exterior in the gentle rays of the sun.

The interior of Aya Sofya.

The Mimbar in the church, which serves the function of a pulpit in a church.

The beautiful stone tiles on the walls in the church. Notice that the patterns are symmetrical because they cut the stone and laid it out side by side.... Nice rocks!

3rd on our list of the Grand Tour of Istanbul was the Topkapi palace. By now, we were feeling a little conned, because ALL the sights in the Istanbul seemed to require a YTL 10 admission fee (that's about S$12 btw..) - the Aya Sofya, the Underground Cistern (which we didn't go in), the Topkapi Palace, the Harem in the Palace (which we didn't go in either), the audioguide. (ditto). It's just too expensive to visit all the sights......

The entrance to Topkapi Palace - I think it looks like the Disneyland Castle right?

Finally a shot of Kenny! At the summer part of the palace...

And the last photo of this post - I think it's a little bit of an information overload already (for me that is). This photo shows the number of anglers on a bridge in Istanbul. It's almost always this crowded! And they also sell some of the fish fresh, which you eat in a sandwich - it's called a Balik Ekmek (balik=fish, ekmek=bread). Yummmmmmmm!

Wah. I've only written about the first two days and it's so long already... Still got 34 days to write about leh....

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Posted by yellowlemonie at 10:21 PM | 0 comments
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Chapter 272 - Glad to be back
I'm glad to be back in Cambridge, after what has been a long but fulfilling trip, though there was always this nagging feeling of having to work gnawing away at the back of my head - the main reason why I shifted my flight 4 days earlier than was planned.

As usual, the business of unpacking my room in currently in progress. A few new decorations added to my room though, and a little rearrangement of furniture (very minor). My darned card reader(s) aren't working, so I'm not able to upload my photos yet. :( Might have to wait a little while more then.

Also started watching Honey & Clover II while on the trip - it has such a good storyline, and the developments in season II are even more exciting, and sad as well....
Every year, when the city is filled with the scent of this flower (fragrant olives), preparations for the school festival begin. Bathed in the orange glow of the school's lights, and surrounded by the scent of fragrant olives, I'd keep wandering the places I thought I might see the person I like so much. I wanted to catch just a glimpse of him. I wanted to hear his voice....

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Posted by yellowlemonie at 7:37 PM | 0 comments
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