WASEDA SILS FALL EXCHANGE TRIP TO JAPAN 2009

10th-17th December

Still at changi airport, waiting to board plane. The ghostbuster cone.

Boarded the plane at 10:51pm! And horrible food. I watched mamamia on the plane. Snippets from my journal:
1:30am - They are serving drinks and cute tissue!
5:29am - Serving breakfast soon... no sleep! Feel drowsy... nose keeps running as usual. Will probably clear up after landing. The mystery of it all.


On the bus after touching down at Tokyo! 630+am.

7:05am - Cold walk from airport to bus! It's 9 degrees celcius.. waiting in bus now...


First we put our luggage in a hotel room then off to the university for the opening ceremony.

Waseda cheerleading squad does fancy cheer. They are very enthu about it all.

After this was a model lecture through which i slept cuz so tired from the night flight where my nose kept running and i couldnt sleep at all!

1:57pm - The uni has an awesome toilet! Looks cool and simple. Going to MOFA now. Yan Hui's gonna talk! Yay.

Horrible horrible lunch at the uni cafeteria Okuma garden! The thingy in the small bowl is like gooey sticky kimchi and tasteless tofu and together it makes the perfect vomitting tool. Then there's the hard spaghetti. But the pork and fish were nice. And the proportions of rice are like gargantuas so of course i couldnt finish it.

12:03pm - It's not so cold now but its icy, my lips are cracking. Ow.

5: 28pm - MOFA was alright. People giving speeches in japanese, taking turns to show off. The minister not really answering any questions. We are going to eat now i believe. Its REALLY COLD. bRRR!

Black Char Siew Ramen! We were given a choice of ramens to eat and we randomly picked this one. It was salty! But initially tasted nice. Oily! Oh this is where i got the capybara pouchy, and the baby monkey! Cutest thing ever!

Cigarette vending machine!

8:03pm - Just left the Ramen place. Bought nice stuffs!

Then we retired to our hotel rooms at Rihga Royal Hotel which we were gonna see for the first time! Hotel pics will come later though, when its farewell to the nicest hotel of the trip!

The convenience store near our hotel where i bought the winter pokky from. It's the only place i ever saw it.

Breakfast from the hotel, the best tasting meal of the day.

7:33am - Wakey wakey! FREEZING when i woke up... Going to eat breakfast buffet soon! hungry... then off to kamakura highschool. I love heatpacks! They save my life! Im wearing 4 layers on top now. Too bad for my legs. They dont have the same comfort.

8:51am - Had breakfast! best meal so far! Cute and juicy and perfectly round cherry tomatoes, strawberry spread and toast, bacon and eggs, hot tea, can fruit cocktail and sugar packets and tissue!

Taken on the bus ride to kamakura.

katana shop

ferris wheel pic out of nowhere. It's 100m across.

The cloud maker!

10:14am - Tired of twisting my waist and stretching to great lengths for photos. I didnt get the window seat this time and it's so hard! Everyone's sleeping. I should stop my trigger happy or my batt's gonna die real soon.

It's a LONG ride to kamakura but we made it! Around 2hours later...

Kamakura highschool

Classroom interaction. Split into groups and let the japanese people ask us questions in english! Gasp. I could hardly understand them...

Bento for lunch. Onigiris too saLTY No time to even finish eating and we had to go -.- What lousy organization!

Then outing with kamakura students. They take us on the train. These are cute little elementary students.

They take us to see the giant buddha first. There's nice scenery around.

We also go inside the buddha but its just a hollow with a hole at the top. The metal is warm though, or whatever material its made of.

My outing group.

And then off to the shopping town which is like a whole street of shops. For us to waste money yay.
Hyperventilates* A totoro shop!!! But we were eating ice cream cant go in!!! Had to move on.. SADNESS.

The cakes at the ice cream shop are so unreal! I only have plastic versions of them!

They even make noodle cake.

More wonderful unreal cakes.

ice cream with weird names? But the students chose the flavours for us since we were taking so long. And we ate caramel, cookies and cream, green tea and strawberry? i think. I actually wanted the vampire one -.-

So after walking the whole shopping town, it was to the meeting place, this shrine.

Fortune telling is so advanced now! Fortune slips come out from vending machines!

Since we were early we went to look around in a clog shop.Many many pretty colourful clogs. Small and big, fat and thin, square and round. The students went and used the remaining money given to us to buy us a little gift, which was a wood dragon head handphone charm. At least thats what i got.

Back to the hotel after another 2h! I bought this from LAWSON. sPICY noodles!! And they are so considerate they gave me cute tissue! Bought the chicken thing too cuz it was so cold and the chicken thing was a hot snack. Unfortunately it was too salty and not to my liking so i didnt inish it, once again.

Too hot and spicy, also cannot finish :C

Our room number.

Thank you note to housekeeping person!

The light above my bed

My bed! It's a separate compartment from the other two beds. My room had 3 people. Whee. Me being solitary and all.

The awesome bathroom. With a bathtub to lie in. How nice.

Well on the 4th day we had a japanese class. Mine was the moderately know japanese class so we just learnt how to introduce ourselves and state our future dream and what we like to eat and so on. My group consisted of these people shown above. The guy on the rightest was the japanese fellow helping my group.

The whole class.

We then went for a campus tour of Waseda university. Here is the inside of the clock tower.

The nice forbidden room. Looks like something out of a movie to film dramatic romantic scenes.

Performance theatre.

In honour of this fellow, who translated shakespeare into japanese.

The library in which we couldnt take pictures but evil people did.

Lunch at Okuma street! A blinds for a shop that i saw.

we had lunch here.

Yanhui's hamburg. Sizzling on a hot pan.

My omuraisu. It could have been nicer. My first taste of it was awe and wonder, but then i got sick of it and the sauce was really salty!

After this we had a model lecture on Pop culture, and we learnt about Mickey and i didnt know he was such a pervert eep. And i didnt know he had an enemy black pete the cat!

Off to nagano!

8:03pm - On the way to nagano now.. since like 1.5h ago... the cold is seeping in through the window. Think im getting a sorethroat. Dam. Stupid lady call wrong number just now and keep talking in indian and refuse to acknowledge that she call the wrong number. Idiot Waste my phone bill.

Stopped for dinner! Rice with lots of pickled stuff.

The placemat

There's apricot, sweet potato, mushroom, quail egg, and 1 ton of rice.

Finally got to the ski resort! This is our wondercrump room.

tatami mat room! We were quite lucky. The other groups some of them got just plain double decker beds. How boring!

Just nice for us four with poofy blankets!

The onsen. Public bath! Oh my god.

It snowed on the night we arrived. Was about to go bathe when it started snowing! Little white flakes falling on my face...

8:42pm - I didnt take photo of my dinner today cuz lazy to bring down cam. I had fish. ONE WHOLE FISH, while everyone else had beef. There was also rice, chicken soup that tasted strange, chicken in tomato soup. I ate quickly then took my yoghurt pudding and disappeared to yan hui! Then talk awhile and went back to my room and deliberated how to pack my bag...

The onsen bath was totally crap! I was trying very very hard to keep myself covered with the pathetic towel they provided. Then soak in the sauna pool...

Anyway i only have the picture of lunch at prince karuizawa shopping center. It was mainly just letting us buy things for that whole day and nothing else! That's a whole egg in the burger btw.

Breakfast the next morning! Had rice, fish, and other dishes but i only ate the salad and the yucky yoghurt drink cuz no appetite cuz of my darned sorethroat.

It's skiiing day but i didnt take any ski photos cuz i scared the camera spoil Anyway i love skiing! It's so fun and satisfying. And i could ski quite well! The instructor asked me whether it was my first time and i said yea and she was like honto! Yay. I am not so failure.

Anyway it was the last day at the seminar house! There was GOOD gargantuas chicken thigh for dinner, strange soup again, a morsel of rice that i scooped and vanilla yoghurt! It was a nice dinner.

Then the farewell party! We Owned man, totally! We practised real hard and it went really smoothly and ours was the best best presentation! The rest were like song and dance but ours was a skit with song and cheer! And becuz it went so smoothly it was so awesome yay.

Then there was the bingo game! 6 people from nj won and i also won something! Miss Kavita called my winning number and i got a waseda thick long sleeve thingy. So nice, using it for shooting now! I was feeling really sick though, *cough wheeze dies*

Dian Feng was the first to win a prize, and he got like a 50 000 yen travelling voucher! Cool man...

Then aafter the whole thing i went back, packed, ate panadol cold and slept.

The next morning there was yucky stew that looked deceivingly nice, nice bread with strawberry and margarine and mixed veg and fruit juice which contained asparagus, dou ya, apple, carrot, lemon, capsicum etc etc. A funky tasty blend.

Ele sleeping in tatami blanket.

Oh there was a table tennis match on the last day too, with Kah Han representing Nj! He played until the top then lost by 1 point arhhh [to the stupid teacher that crashed into me while skiiing@]

We are now leaving the snowy place!! so saddd

Oh pop out of nowhere, the lunch i had on the skiing day.

My snow-covered shoes.

Went sightseeing at zenkouji temple!

monkey you cant run from me!

I took this pink car especially for huiwei.

Soba making!

this is our dull soba. But it tastes nice! A bit tough though...

By the masters! Shiny soba! Awesomely nice!

The worst dinner ever! Oh wait. What dinner? Well i didnt eat it. I had to dine fine with 3 teachers[cuz i couldnt eat beef and neither could they] who were snatching the cooking thingy from me all the time, how nasty. Like they were any better at doing it, really. They were really confused and left the seafood on the hotplate to get burnt. It was horrible, the omelette wasnt cooked properly, it was raw and gooey and i tried to eat it but it made me wanna puke. So i didnt eat dinner that night. Arg.

Tokyo tower! Only stayed there 30min or so? So rushed!!! Didnt even get to go imperial palace when we were supposed to!!

The rainbow bridge brings us to narita excel hotel, our last stop for the trip.

my nice bed.

the other two beds. I just happened to go up to the rooms first thus took the bed right inside. But i didnt even sleep there in the end. Went to sleep in the other room where everybody was enjoying their last day of chattering.

Clocks of many countries.

And the scenery outside the hotel marks the end of the trip! Off to the airport and home sweet home!!! I slept on almost the whole of the plane ride, every now and then waking to see food appear and disappear before me. There was hagen daaz ice cream too. So glad to be home!! Thanks to huiwei and fuddy and ele and mom and sis and dad for fetching me at the airport whee!

Seniors Farewell 2008 @ HomeTeam NS Pasir Ris Chalets! 2-4 Dec

The house

such ghostly swings!

walking to the beach on the first day..

cycling on the first night

Sitting with Nicole at the breakwaters at 2-3am looking at starry sky C:

Next day playground!

Then slacking by the beach

Spent most of my time with Nicole for this chalet C: After arriving the chalet, some of the ARG went to play with seawater but Nicole and I didnt wanna spoil our shoes so we just sat on the grass. Then we went back and Jo disappeared and the rest of us played bridge while Nicole went to look for her. She walked until TAMPINES! gasp! She came back quite long later and we slacked around playing more cards... Truth Bridge omg... Then there was the bbq. The food was all finished, which was good. Stupid boys were complaining about cooking for everyone. Like they didnt think of the fact that pistol girls helped to carry all the food back in the rain, and if they dont wanna cook they can just go away and we would take over -.- omg they were like shouting so loudly and so unbashedly about how self-sacrificial they were being and laughing like it was all worth the laugh. I could have thrown coal in their faces.

Anyway rifle girls cleaned up everything after the bbq, burning stupid ants. See we all did our fair share Hello.

Then rifle girls and pistol girls went to get bikes and then slacked somemore and we all went cycling. Just cycled around the park. Different from last year where we cycled from the night to the next morning. I wanted to find food though, so Nicole, Jolene and I went cycling far and wide to find food, and we came across a 7-11! Then we cycled back. Then Nicole and i decided to go to the beach to sit and stare. The stars were nice! But it got cold so about 330am we went back. Wanted to wake up for sunrise but too tired.

Next day was playground day! With Shermain too. Just played and played... then slacked at the beach. Then we went to find Peixin at the interchange and had lunch with her. Then we all went home though Shermain went a lil mad over mahjong.

yesterday i went to find my lit book and it was OUT OF STOCK!! ahhhh. shall wait for school to reopen and in the meantime read Yan Hui's kindly lent copy > <

I watched skycrawlers. It is a creepy movie. The storyline is cool, but the movie is slow moving.. a bit boring if youre the action-y type.

I watched Bolt too. [wow! i watched a 3D animated movie, something that i totally totally abhore!] But it turned out to be nice. Bolt is extremely cute, apart from when he talks. If you would like to have a spoiler of the movie, do continue reading. If not, please stop here C:

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okk, you had your chance, here goes:

The movie begins with cute little bolt as a puppy in the store, the girl[voiced by Miley cyrus] goes in and buys him cuz he's the odd one out [typical typical] But he is extremely cute as a puppy, so a pity the scene only lasts 5minutes or so.

Then its 5 years later. The girl's dad calls home telling her something cropped up at work and that he wont be able to go home, but he has altered Bolt[high-tech looking images of lightning bolts going through Bolt's veins to appear like he is being altered] so he can take care of her. She however, goes to save her dad, together with Bolt. So they fly through the streets with Bolt's amazing super speed and attack the villians with its super laser eyes and then finally, when they get cornered, Bolt released the ultimatum...

the SUPERBARK.

And everyone flys away. At this point you would be thinking that's way too overboard. But well, its a movie. And it WAS a movie. You see, the girl was filming a movie, starring her and her dog. But the dog didnt know! He thought everything was real. Poor doggy.

In the next filming session, the girl, Penny, was taken away! Bolt was then caged up when the filming was done, and returned to his caravan home by himself, without Penny. She had to pretend she was really kidnapped cuz as quoted by the stupid director character " if the dog believes it, the audience believes it." So Bolt was really angry and when two cats from the movie came and irritated him, he flew out of his caravan and ran away.

While he was searching for Penny though, he fell into a box of packing peanuts and got shipped away somewhere in America. Being the unfortunate thing that it was, he didnt know he didnt really have superpowers so he went running into fences and staring at things while nothing happened. He came to believe that packing peanuts were the cause of his weakening. He also met 3 stupid pigeons who led him to a cat which they wanted to punish, but Bolt thought it was the evil cat of the Green eyed man who kidnapped Penny from the movie. So he tried to attack the cat and tied her to him on a leash that he acquired when someone thought he was a lost dog. The cat thought he was mad, but played along because she wanted him to let her go. She saw his tag and it read Hollywood. So she decided to try get him there. They hitched a ride on a truck which had packing peanuts in it, and Bolt got scared so he flew them both out of the truck.

Halfway they got hungry and Bolt had never got hungry before so he thought the Cat poisoned him. She told him that to get the antidote he had to act cute so she taught him to act cute, which was quite a cute scene. So he went acting cute to all the people in the caravans and got the antidote. There they also met a stupid crazy hamster which is ugly and noisy. The hamster also believed Bolt was super cuz he only watched tv all day long, so he wanted to follow on the journey to help Bolt.

So lalala then at one point the cat sat on a tree and refused to get down while trying to make Bolt come to the realisation that he wasnt a superdog. He tried his superbark on her but nothing happened. So he kept barking and barking until a pound truck came and took them both away. Meanwhile the hamster who was trying to get a ladder saw the pound truck and went rolling after it.

He launched himself onto the truck and opened the door of the contained that Bolt was in. Bolt thought he had used his superstrength to open the door until the hamster, Rhino, told him that he opened the door. Sad lil Bolt. So they went into the pound to help Mittens the cat. And of course they managed to save her, i shall not elaborate on the details, except that stupid hamster thought he saw a superbark for real when it was actually some air or whatever.

So they went on their way and in the meantime cat taught Bolt how to be a real dog. And finally, they reached Hollywood. Bolt went into the old caravan he used to stay and found his favourite carrot toy. Then he heard Penny's voice calling Bolt and went out to find her. He saw her running towards him and calling his name, so he ran towards her. But it turned out that she was running to another dog. Another Bolt. But it turned out that she was actually filming, and in the behind the scenes, said she missed Bolt.

But Bolt didnt see that. Sad and dejected, he walked out of the studio, where cat found him. Cat told him that she saw Penny being sad after he left and told him that he had to go back. Meanwhile, Penny was filming a scene where she was tied up in this egyptian place. There were fire stuff around. The evil guys were pretending to be evil and then the door opened and in came Bolt! But this little new bolt was scared. He whimpered and ran away, knocking down things. The place caught on fire. Of course everyone ran out and Penny was left inside for Bolt to save.

Seeing the place filled with smoke, real Bolt ran in and found Penny and saved her by using SUPERBARK! [barking through an echo-y air vent] so that people knew where they were. And thus, Bolt saved the day. Penny quit her acting career and Bolt and cat and Hammie became the best of friends.

The end.

this morning i had a dream about vampires. i keep dreaming about vampires nowadays. I dreamt about vampires yesterday too. So here is how it went...

I had to go kill the head vampire, since it turned out that everyone had become vampires. I got another vampire to help me enter the vampire's house. There were vampire guards outside the house so the vampire distracted those guards so that i could enter. I knocked and then ran and hid in a room where i locked the door to the outside and had this sudden realisation that the room had windows all over and it would be obvious that i was inside. So i had to act instead. I pretended to want to meet the head vampire, saying i left a note the day before but it wasnt answered. I also showed my hands to prove i had no weapons on me. The vampire believed me. But then he wanted to inject me with some purple gel thingy. So i was resisting while the other vampires were holding me down. The needle was really close to my neck. I said, "do you have a problem with needles?? I do." And i kept imagining the feeling when the needle would enter and pierce my skin and go deeper and deeper until it was retracted like the claws of a cat, pulling my skin outwards along with it. I kept resisting but the vampires won and the needle first pierced through a thread of my protecting finger before entering my neck. I didnt feel a thing. Then i fainted.

I think i woke up at this point. There's construction going on around my house. It's noisy and i get woken up more easily. I will write about shooting chalet another time. Maybe tmr.

lemmings really look like dwarf hamsters. Really! And people in other countries actually keep them just like hamsters! Awww man....

lalala

Shooting camp was wrapped up last week. It was pretty slack, just training everyday~ Sometimes there were long moments of emptiness so it didnt feel like really cramped up and tiring. It was tiring, but not tiring to make you hate it? Ok, i hope you understand...
It was nice cuz rifle girls bonded a lot too! We talked a lot and played a lot of bridge. It was really fun. Fun training camp, yet we all learnt things too. Movie reflection was done in the middle of the field, pistol girls combined with rifle girls. So we were satellite-gazing. The movie was "invincible" by the way. The mental trainings prepared by xin hang were interesting too~ like the visualisation one where we had to look at the path then imagine it while our eyes were closed and walk it without touching the papertape borders.
On the last day rifle girls went to eat ice cream at island creamery yay. Nice end to it all.

Shooting chalet is tomorrow. And im supposed to have finished my homework today. Unfortunately urm... need i elaborate? I'm totally stuck on chem. :C so sad so sad.

List of homework:
1. Lit compare and contrast
2. Chem holiday assignments
3. Math revision package
4. Bio test paper
5. Bio spot the mistakes
6. Finish reading great expectations
7. Read duchess of Malfy
8. KI IS proposal draft

As you can see, none of these are crossed out. Omicron....

shall post quickly.

today first day of day camp. reached home 15min ago. It was a nice day, with shermain, cheryl, yan hui, wenying, nicole and a brief joannah. Nice to see everyone happy and laughing and smiling faces. We talked quite a bit and also trained quite a bit. Played bridge while waiting for movie. I was on a winning spree C: didnt lose any game.
Watched inspiring movie, then went to middle of field to reflect. Pistol girls and rifle girls together. Gaze at "stars" and clouds. Then finally bridge in the dark with xinhang, cheryl and shermain. Win win win C:

Then go home. sian.

ah there's a lot of things i should update on.. and here they are:
1. Cycling with xiu rong and minlu [last sunday]
2. Death of my favourite author MICHAEL CRICHTON [i have no more books to read what a tragedy!!!]
3. Rifle Girls Outing!
4. Cutting hair till there is hardly any left [im not sure about my feelings on this, sometimes i feel regretful of it, sometimes i dont]
5. Playing mario songs non-stop

Since i am using my desktop and do not have the pictures here i shall not write about cycling but will try my best to write about the rest.
Firstly, the death of my favourite author. By the way he is the creater of JURASSIC PARK and ER [he molded our childhood! ok for those who liked dinosaurs...]I bought another one of his books in honour of him, just anyone book written by him that i happened to see at Popular, and in this case i saw A CASE OF NEED. Anyway i just finished reading it, it's like a mystery-medical novel, sorta. About moral issues regarding abortion and the likes. Interesting and very technical. And i havent even finished Great Expectations. Hohahu. I suppose that is expected from me. I read REAL slow... but i will finish it! i will!

Rifle Girl's outing! Was some sorta a success i guess. For once we had a reasonable number of people... SIX. YES. The strongest in all our outings ever. But our team doesnt have many people to begin with. Im glad that those who could come, did come and those who did not come, had very reasonable reasons not to [such as being out of country and having A lvls]. Anyway it was good, even though we just watched a movie cuz everyone was tired after PT and lazy to move even their arms to play bowling. We watched QUANTUM oF SOLACE and i missed the point. They really shouldnt keep mumbling. There's only a certain volume the speakers can go. And then when the special effects make cars go BOOM, they try to blast your ears out. Come on, i need to hear the dialogue too...
Anyway we had two successful study sessions so far too! That is pretty impressive considering the two were held right after the OP week and havent had any interruptions so far. Thank goodness for study sessions or i would be nowhere near touching homework.

Ok about cutting hair... seriously its DAM short now!! Because i guess i told the auntie it was okay if i couldnt tie it.. so she happily went and snipped away EVERYTHING. Ok not everything but she kept going shorter and shorter and shorter until... She reached the top of my head and because my hair is so thick she had to layer it a lot so by the time it reached the top the strands were only around 6cm long! Omicron! Ahhhhh its been a long time since i had hair THAT short and its scary!! And its all curly and different! I shall not elaborate further.. you guys can see when the time comes... [Im glad there are still quite a few weeks to go before school starts again]

Playing mario songs! Now i keep playing mario songs [on the piano] and its very very addictive. I keep playing till my hands and arms are gonna cramp but i dont wanna stop. Well, they are pretty easy to play, its just that you have to play it quite quickly, which is why it becomes hard, especially when i cant really stretch far with my fingers so i fail to play the underworld theme properly. But the main theme, overworld theme, star theme and ending theme works well. And its really fun. Go try it.

Im done here, goodbye C:

the stupid insect sting is making my whole arm feel itchy but touching the other parts of my arm doesnt really help. And its making my elbow fat. ITS SO ITCHY I WANNA SCRATCH IT BUT I CANT! i dont wanna rip my elbow apart -.-

ARG!

i watched bridge to terabithia again. cuz its nice and emo yay. its so nice.

ok i realised there is quite a lot of holiday homework and ive only done a teeny little bit. Today. Yay. I need to get moving... but homework is so boring :C but i will do it.

i havent eaten kinder bueno for a long time now. I cant remember when was the last time i ate it. Probably july.

*added cage pics to zoo post
i hate pt man. i even wrote a poem about it on the bus yesterday. How retarded right?

The PT Poem
We started off with stretching,
first arms then head then legs
Then off to do some running,
3 rounds but not yet dead
80 jumping jacks, cant they just relax?
Oblique crunches left and right,
dont give up lets use our might
Five and twenty push-ups,
let's just take our time
Another 2 more rounds,
we're still fine, we're still fine
Back raisers and side planks
left and right, left and right
Finally jumping cross the court,
we have won the fight!

Ok. There it is, the retarded poem. And today while waiting for the bus with xiu rong i got stung by a mystery insect. I felt something at my arm so i just swiped like anybody else would, just that i felt a big insect-like thing touch my hand and it was as if i felt 2 body parts. Anyway it stung me and it was awfully painful so i was standing there saying ow ow ow ow ow while xiu rong looked shocked. I must have ow-ed a good 80 times and we were inspecting my arm trying to see where it was that was painful. Then we saw this pinkish spot and established that that was it. Anyway xiu rong's bus came so i said bye bye and continued looking for the sting spot. I squeezed the pinkish area and it started to bleed haha. Then it swelled a little, became like a mosquito bite with a pink center. And i could feel it hurting while i smsed xiu rong. Anyway i got onto 67 and decided to sleep so i slept and when i woke up at bedok it was fine again. Now its itchy though. Its just like a mosquito bite. But im sure it must have been a monster mosquito if it really was a mosquito bite cuz man, the size of that sting to poke a hole that is visible must be quite mighty.

ok i just woke up from my deep sleep which lasted around 4 hours. Dreamt of a horse following me around everywhere i went.

ok bye bye.

quick sketch of signs of irritation