Laskiainen 2006!

Laskiainen 2006. The day of Finnish culture. Suomi Flags are flown on buildings, standing proud in the wintry air. 28 Feb 2006. Kalevala Day - Finnish national epic Day.

As i groggily woke up on my free day Tuesday, Marika suddenly messaged me and asked me whether i was going to Laskiainen. I wanted to go but given 'all the 2001 homework', i decided to give it a miss but upon further coaxing and the added incentive that she was driving :) (thx a lot btw) , i decided why not.. i jioed the other sg pple but they all muggers so i asked bob to come along too..

The place was near yenleng's house in Helsinki. It was the Kaivopuisto Park
You can see hordes of students from the whole Helsinki in their coloured overalls ( representing their sch and dept) all armed with sledges and funny structures to slide down the slope.














I came out of this unscathed but the next slide i went over a hump and got a sore butt.

Look at the different contraceptions used to go down. There was this competition judging the most creative but we missed it. There were also games like go round the stick 10 times and run to drink a beer.. We had a bun(with jam) break and some hot juice ( the lifesaver cos when u sledge ur jeans all wet lor) We met Aya, the Dutch gal who 'picked me up' at the sauna, Olli, Heikki, Nano n his spaniards there too.


Anyway here are the pics from the mexican dinner we had. On sat, we were supposed to do our assignment then once dinner time came, roberto asked us to go his place for dinner. So he took out dry meat.. pork floss with no taste and mixed wif 9 eggs and tomatos. i also brought my soya bean(from asian market) for them to try.. As opposed to Xavier who tried our pork floss and said ITS TOO SWEET... anyway the meal is called huevos machacados , scrambled eggs mixed with dry, shredded beef. After that, instead of completing our work, he went to watch munich instead!! in xavier's words, ' these crazy mexicans'

grumble grumble

got to go for my exam soon..so bored.. going for an exam that i have no confidence in..well done.. come back still have to do DC assignment and 2001 research.. and we just finished DSP assignment and Comm Network project.. we damn spoil market, put a TKK logo cover page like nus.. and my finnish is finished lar.. no need sleep again.. just like nus.. shall update on the mexican dinner we had yday and his candy, his food and his music. Lapland beckons soon.. hope to see aurora!

..sep.. super exams period!! =(

Estonia, Tallinn Day 1

The Danish Delights Yh n SY arrived on thurs night to helsinki, finland. Upon arrival, we took a picture with this lovely girl who had a cat on her head and a dog on the leash..

then we started walking around Helsinki. We only made it to the Tuomiokirkko [the Lutheran Cathedral] before we were overcome by hunger and cold. Of course, the DDs could not take the cold as compared to the strong Finnish Fantasies. Compare the night shots with the day 3 shots of the same church.

After a Macdonald meal AND a HEsburger Meal, KSY finally called it a day and went back to room 301 to loot my snacks and chicken. B4 that, We went over to JF's room to have an intellectual discussion on SY's master thesis and review up some Nanyang Poly's assignment before we moved the sofa into my room. After a couple of X-japan songs and some 'heart-to heart' talk til 6 .. AZURECHIM!, we only slept 3 hrs before being woken up to miss the bus and catch the 2nd bus..then we 'ran' to the railway station n ate bread on the way! It was akin to amazing race... we had to run so far to Viking line, then have to queue up for tickets then go thru customs still need to queue... I was so afraid that we would miss the ferry cos' when we started queuing for tix, the ferry was scheduled to leave in 10 mins.. well the ferry left 20 mins late and Swaykia 'rds' of the trip Yh (who lost a FX8 in the trip) was the last one to board! We went on board the Viking line ship called Rosella. It was very crowded and there were no places to sit so we took a couple of pictures of the scenery b4 finding a place to lie around and interact with our newfound frens from tampere. Sabri, Ah Soon, Juan, Lisa, Jenny, Amy, Eliz, Nathan.. a mix of msian n HK n sg..



After disembarking DDFF went to collect the keys from keytravel, dirtying the floor in the process while the others went to look for the hostel itself.. Despite making an extra one hr trip to get the keys, we were still earlier than the other group who lost their way.. We were told it was room 21 but when we tried the key we could not open the door.. it was damn funny scenario.. imagine in spore, some bangladeshi worker try to open ur door wif some key and cant but 5 mins later his fren also tries the same thing.. hence the old lady at home shouted at us.. i bet she was scared stiff and prob armed herself wif a shotgun or something.. We called up the travel agency and was told it was room 22 instead.. The place was very nice and our beds look so so homely and it was only 10 euro per nite.. therefore we put down our stuff and went out to look for the rest. We spotted them in the streets and then brought them to eat at Hesburger where we met our 1st (and ONLY) frenly Estonian guy Jeremy who was at the counter talking to his ex gf and it was his bday.. He was going for some drinks and then to this men's party.. We talk until like his brother/comrade cos his english was very good. After that, we went to the nearby shopping centre ViruKeskus where we exp our 1st taste of hostility. It was very odd because we were such a big asian group and there were not many ( or rather NO other asian pple ard).. there were these 2 gals who blatantly shrieked 'china' as they walked past, not to mention the 2 guys who approached us wif chopsticks and started asking qns.. We bought groceries and left asap, cos the place was sort of a hangout for young punks. it is better to be safe than sorry.. i also went to my 1st mixed toilet.. we evacuated the place and headed home and played stupid games in the safety of our BAltic Apartments.. i think we were pretty rowdy.. poor jon had to watch tv until we were tired and went to bed at abt 12 plus.. And some preview of the nxt day!!

Estonia, Tallinn Day 2

Despite agreeing to wake up early to cover more areas, we nuaed until 930 am before everyone finally set off for the Kadriog Palace. The beautiful pink baroque Kadriorg Palace was the summer residence of Russian Tsar, Peter 1.


The Palace today houses the Estonian Art Museum's foreign collection, featuring thousands of western European and Russian works from the 16th to 20th centuries. We also took a few pics IN the lake and in the park too

After the pic wif the cute baby, we took some fotos wif the statues..

Kadrioig Park -> Seaside -> Angel holding cross -> cute swans and ducks -> death of Fx-8 -> lunch ->

We then made our way back to city centre where we took foto wif some statue and

moved on to Old town after a lunch break.

Fat MArgarat's Tower(we actually exited from this instd of entering).

St Nicholas Church. Medieval altarpieces, wooden sculptures, church art, had services until 1944 until it was bombed and rebuilt. We sneaked a couple of pics.

We then went to the town square, with the town hall pharmacy situated just in the middle of it. Other places were the St olav church and us sneakily going up long leg.. where only those wif the long 'leg' can traverse.

View from the top and some pink builiding next to the DAnish King's Garden and the Toompea Castle









A 'kind' man brought us to the place for scenic view before he tried to sell us CDs. After that we went for dinner at HEs burger and after a couple of pai kias grouped outside the fast food place, we decided to head back home for safety reasons.. At night we went to the TV tower, i m too lazy to post pics alr. We were approached by this drunkard Evo on the bus too.. but tatoo managed to quell the threat by being so gum wif him.. he still yell 'christian khristana ' to us and mistakenly brought us to coca cola tower instd.. we arrived back safely to our home.. tv tower nothing much.. see cobweb and free performance.

Tallinn, Estonia and Helsinki Day 3

After coming back from the Tv tower, shit, bathe and watch a madonna show, we went to amy's room to play games. We taught them the standard coin throwing game and played zhong ji mi ma too.. Forfeit was to eat my legendary over ripe bananas and to drink the cider tat we could not finish. Lian Wei Wen made his appearance then too! A in everything!








Play until damn noisy until jonathon wake up and ask 'is it time to leave yet?' cos we were supposed to leave at 630 am the nxt day. We played until 3 am thereabouts, then dropped the key off and went to the ferry terminal where we made our way back and took a final group pic at the Helsinki Harbour.













We then pushed off to the railway station to check the timings back to Tampere and then to the Lutheran Cathedral (symbol of Helsinki aka the white church). As usual, everyone took fotos while me n nathan went into the church to explore.. a few pics below were taken on the 1st day when DD came to visit at nite.

Statue of Alexander II, Russian Tsar and grand duke of Finland. Smaller statues are symbols of law, light, peace and work(from leekz blog if wrong scold him)

After that, we went to Hakaniemi but sadly it was closed so the others went back while the 2 hyper people went to me n xz's room to eat lunch, check out our place and then take the 9 pm flight back. All in all, the trip was pretty fun... cos SY EQ DAMN UP Ah... so many codewords n scandals too.. lisa calling sy chubby, some pple called kawaii, declaration of white love for kxz, harry potter and his common interests, actually, chinchao's bro binchao, and his last hope of catching the ferry were juz a few keywords.