Ala-squad in Zurich

I finally have the opening ceremony for the cookpot tat flo bought for me in Zurich, the perfect place for hibernation... Lol...



The wonders a cookpot can do... Having porridge in my room in the foreign land... And it's freezing 4 degrees outside... Hot n steamy bowl of porridge is my kind of food at this time...



With some of my favorite can food... Tats a nice and feel like home meal...

This reminded me of my BFF - Jeslyn... We did that last year in the same place, too. Watching world cup finals and eating porridge in our room in Zurich... We had so much fun on that Zurich trip...

Ok... Time to nom my porridge... N crack my head to plan my graduation project later...


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Espana - Granada

Granada, south of Spain, Andalucia region, is one of the most ancient city, and was once occupied as an important town before Roman times, and the last city in Spain occupied by the Arab conquerors. Granada sits at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, which covers with snow during the cold winter, and provides a great place for winter sports.

The most famous of all in Granada, is its ancient old palace - The Alhambra Palace. The township was build surrounding this beautiful ancient palace, with a lot of small lanes and alleys that were being preserved as world's heritage.

Granada has welcomed our arrival with gloomy skies and cold wet weather with drizzles and rain throughout our stay, how sad was that. Still it didn't put us off the schedule to visit the beautiful palace - The Alhambra Palace.

It's told by Jeslyn's friend that Granada and The Alhambra was simply beautiful, and indeed it is. I love the ancient small town feel of Granada. It seems like i was living in the history of Spain, witnessing this town being taken by the Romans and the Arabs. The houses around the palace are unique and exoctic, with designs resembling the Arabs lifestyle and yet having Christian feel, and with the Holy Cross across most of the streets. Having being invaded and conquered by different leaders of different religions, from muslim to christians, and long before that, it was said that Granada was a Jewish quarter, that's how the town got its name. No matter which it is, all these have definitely enrich the town.

On the flight to Granada...

The beautiful Alhambra Palace & Generalife

It happened that in this small ancient town, there's a very famous restaurant, well-knowned for their Iberico ham!!

Look at the amount of ham hanging from the ceiling!! I'm drooling....

This is just making me so hungry... I love ham... especially parma ham...

The name of the restaurant

That's right - La Cueva

just right infront of Plaza Neuva. Muz try!

Small portion of the selection of their Iberico Ham... yummy!!!

The night of Granada is quiet and serene, and yet has it's own charactericrics. I didnt have a professional DSLR or so to capture the beautiful night, so i just made do with my compact camera...

I think i should really invest in a better camera, so i can take better night scenes...

We spent our night drinking and watching flamingo dance at the cold and wet Granada...

Our 4 flamingo dancers...

I cant understand what are they singing actually, but four of them are doing a fabulous dance... We only manage to spend a night at Granada as we need to proceed to our next stop - Seville...

Hopefully i'll have the chance to revisit Granada someday.

It's My Birthday

22 Feb, the day many years ago, my mum and dad waited anxiously for my arrival, the day that my mum suffered the unbearable pain to bring me into this world, the day which i first see and breath the world. It's a day that i must thank god, and my parents and my siblings, and all my lovely friends, for their love, care, patience, understanding, blessings, nuturing, teaching, that i'm who i'm today. Without either one of you, there will not be me.

It's my first time after many years, that am spending my birthday alone in a foreign land. Some said it's kind of lonesome and depress to be alone and far far away on this special day. I see it as a blessing, as i have ample time to myself, to think of what have i done and what and where i should be heading for.

Thank you so much to my bunch of lovely frens - my dearies back in jb, yin-ken-tomato-gary; my bffs in sg - flo-sher-jess-jazz; my lovely classmates - kaixin-angie-ben-hazim-roy-clare-reuben-geetha-sanjay; for all the effort made for the surprises, the lovely meals and beautiful cakes and gifts... I'm trully touched and grateful for all that all you lovely people have given to me. I'm bless to have all of you in my life, and all of you have made my life a better and colourful one!

Thank you once again... luv you all...

May god bless me and everyone i love

with good health, great wealth and best of luck,

always surrounded by happiness, bliss and laughters

throughout the whole 2011. 

Espana - Barcelona

Jeslyn and i have been wanting to go to Spain for a long time... and finally... after some last minute planning... we finally realised our dream to Spain!

First stop was Barcelona, we took our national carrier and traveled like 14 hours + 1 hour transit, so total like 15 hours to reach Barcelona. Seriously, sitting for so long is not fun at all!!! My back is sore and i cant really sleep well during the whole flight, too. If i have a little more money to travel in the comfortable business class or the luxurious first class.... hmmmzzz... ok, stop dreaming!

On the arrival morning, to the bright sunny and cooling Barcelona, both of us with our lugguages, alighted at the Plaza Espana station, trying to make our way to our hotel... Both of us didnt really rest well during the flight, it's not easy and uncomfy to sleep in the seat, so we crashed for a few hours after we checked into our hotel, and woke up few hours later to have our late lunch. It's not wise to bring this kinda trolley baggages to travel in metro in barcelona, because the stations are totally not friendly at all!!! Both of us struggled to drag our bags up and down numerous stairways to finally make it to the metro station nearest to our hotel!!! Just when you think all metro station around the world would have escalator, elevators and travelator just like Singapore do! You are so wrong, just like us. We should have settled with some backpacks... :S

After lunch at the cafe near to our hotel, we went to the world's famous cathedral, the proud of Barcelona and Spain -

Sagrada Familiar

 by the famous architect, Antoni Gaudi

We were totally fascinated by this enormous and exoctic building in front of us, i have never seen such a brilliant work before, Gaudi is really a genious at that time. Only manage to take some pictures outside because it's closed and we have to come another day. So we went to do some shopping at La Ramblas and have our dinner and called it a day.

We actually planned to go Madrid on our 2nd day, but realised that the train ticket was so expensive and we actually have about 6 days in Spain, so we skipped the expensive Madrid trip and decided to spend more time in Barcelona. it's a rainy second day, dunno why when we checked the forecast, it was supposed to be cold but not wet, and now it's became wet. Annoyed by the drizzle, still, we continue our exploration in Barcelona. We went to visit the other two famous architecture by Gaudi - Casa Mila & Casa Batllo.

Casa Batllo

everything is in curvey shapes and resembles the flow of water, and with all the windows and glasses, Gaudi designed his buildings in a way that lights can flow through the whole building.. brilliant thoughts at the early 19 century.

Casa Mila

Getting hungry after visiting the fabulous architecture, we hopped into a nice restaurant for Tapas... yumzz

Jes: this one got nice tapas food leh...

me: okok... let's go in...

Jes: the food all so nice leh....

me: yah.. all mei mei...

Jes: so many choices... which one u wan??

me: shall we order like 3 or 4 per person??

jes: okok...

me: which one u wan???

jes: i wan the foie gras one... yumzzz....

me: oh... i wan too... only 1.70 euro... unbelieveable... they got the caviar vinegratte one... omg....

Each pieces of nicely decorated tapas, comes in hot or cold, only cost u abt 1.70 - 2.10 euro... how affordable is tat?? and with foie gras and caviar... this absolutely fantastic!!!!

 The rain has stopped just in time for us to go to our last stop of the day

Park Guell

another architecture by Gaudi.

We climbed uphill just to see this beautiful park designed and built by Gaudi, and it was no joke walking up the gradient *sweat*. Actually i wasnt really fascinated by the park, in fact a little disappointed, as i used to saw Park Guell on some documentary program that it is very beautiful, but the only thing that is nice, to me is the mosaic tiles that was put together to form the drawings on the seats, and the curvage design of the balcony as well as the seats. It's a nice park though, spacious and high up on the hill, so you can see the city from the top at the balcony, and we ended our fruitful day 2 Spain trip in Barcelona as the sun set at Park Guell...

Day 3, we are heading to another city of Spain - Granada... will be updated on the next post :)