the little pot that could

after depositing my newly acquired possession in my room, i set off on a mission to open a bank account. i've heard many things from many people about bank accounts. exchange students don't open bank accounts (j the predecessor), whether you're allowed to open one depends on the bank clerk dealing with you (international exchange student coordinator), you need a swedish social security number to open one (friendly prc guy i met in my kitchen), exchange students can open accounts but aren't given ATM cards so there's no point (j on exchange with me now). that said, i was determined to open a bank account because it's tiring to sleep with your cash under your pillow. i felt like silas marner, living in perpetual fear that my gold (haha) might inexplicably disappear one day.

i remembered seeing some banks at odenplan and thought it'd be as good a place as any to start. in stockholm, queuing by number is almost a national past-time but because i'm too shy to ask, i usually take a number for the wrong queue. today was no exception. but when i finally did get to sit down with the account opening clerk, she was agreeable! all of a sudden i'd a swedish bank account and i could deposit the money and i can sleep in peace now.

still jubilant at my tiny victory over the system i went to the asian grocer's to buy some bee hoon. funnily enough, i'm speaking chinese with the prcs, french with my french housemate and a smattering of arabic (leftover from last summer in morocco) with the bangladeshi chap on the ground floor. my english is going to get rusty at this rate. and according to the prc, i've a cantonese accent that made him mistake me for a hongkong-er initially. this perplexes me because i don't speak a word of cantonese so it's mighty odd that i've a cantonese accent, of all things. stepping foot in the asian grocer's made my heart race for all the right reasons. surrounded by shelves and shelves of the familiar, i spent more time than i probably should have lingering in the aisles and touching the goods as if they were talismans. popped by the shop for cheap toiletries that W and C recommended and wasn't disappointed! as C described it, "it's like those toa payoh shops selling toiletries much cheaper than the supermarket". think i accidentally bought a year's supply of soap, shampoo and moisturiser for my five months here! and as if that wasn't enough weight, i went to the cheap supermarket to buy food for the week. spent a better part of the day deep in thought engaging in mental acrobatics and wondering how much i should buy and how i was going to use it etc. ended up only with root vegetables and frozen chicken though. as you might be able to tell, the repertoire is as yet limited.

and i'd a little run in with the first rude swede i've met. the lady in front of me at the check-out line was so irate that i'd placed my stuff on the belt after her that she shoved it repeatedly and knocked some of it off the belt. was tempted to verbally abuse her but decided against it so instead i gave her an "omg you've gotta be kidding me...." face. but seriously, just because you shop at a cheap supermarket doesn't mean you need to be a tacky person too!

brought everything back home and had the fun of chopping up some of the root veggies and thawing my frozen chicken. the cheapest option was 3xfrozen thighs and i had no idea hot to fit the thigh into my little pop. thank goodness for nice indian man who showed me how to skin and then debone and chop up the chicken leg into malleable proportions. but i was supposed to learn and i'm afraid i can't remember how it's done now!

he was stupended by my lucky brand mini-crock and it's snail's pace cooking. i guess waiting 10h for a meal is unfathomable to many but i think i might've convinced him that the plan was to wake to a hot meal. so i turn the mini crock on and let it work away as i sleep and ideally i'll awake to the gentle wafts of chicken soup. ideally.

and self-sufficiency is overrated. after (almost) single-handedly doing all the necessary things, i don't feel empowered, just exhausted :(

thanks j!

finally picked up my stuff (inherited from j) from d, his nice swedish friend. when j told me to have someone help me carry everything back to where i'm staying, i scoffed and told him off for doubting my capabilities. looks like i'd to eat my words when i couldn't even manage lifting aforementioned stuff from the storage cage to the storeroom door! and then came the most embarrassing part of distributing the weight between the hideous ikea bag and my backpack. so i sat morosely in the empty parking lot looking very much like a jilted (and evicted!) lover who was sent packing with only the clothes on her back and whatever she could fill the bag with in his hurry to turf her out. talk about attracting strange stares from the other residents who were none too pleased to find a suspicious character sorting through a mountain of barang and obstructing their path to the subway.

but i finally made it back to home base, despite taking a wrong turn on the subway and ending up somewhere even more ulu than i'm already staying. oops.

disgruntled sherpa-esque rant aside though, i'm looking this little gem! it's a fan that blows hot hair. a bit like a standing hairdryer. keeps me nice and toasty in the summer chill. don't you foresee my fan and i becoming bosom buddies through winter? apparently this isn't even close to cold yet...

intrepid explorer

once upon a time, this was actually a useful sign!

plotted my way from the hotel to the university (ok it wasn't all that far) but because it required me walking around this mega round-about, you can imagine my glee when i saw the universitet sign and the uninspiring buildings. and i got lost inside the building and had to trouble these important looking people for directions. but they were sweet and obliging, rising from their desks and practically walking the directionally-challenged lost sheep to the international housing office. and that's where i met V, and bumped into C and J and the adventures of yesterday began.

i forgot to mention that the highlight of my day was changing my own lightbulb! remember those jokes about how many (insert ridiculed group) does it take to change a lightbulb? well in this case, just one! the first thing i noticed was that my bathroom light was not working and for a moment i was afraid the electricity for my room hadn't been switched on. but thankfully the other lights were working and it was just that lone blown bulb that the previous tenant, who thought to leave me his/her junk, lacked the courtesy to replace. grr. have never bought a lightbulb before and i was terrified of getting an electric shock in the replacement process. but i bravely unscrewed the bulb, brought it to the shop to get something similar, brought the new bulb back and i now need not shower in the dark! all by my very own self :)

home sweet home

The housing area was built in the mid sixties.In (the) centrum there are some shops and a supermarket. The rooms are single rooms organized in corridors where Swedish and international students share a kitchen and a living room. All single rooms are equipped with shower and WC and are fully furnished. Children and animals are not allowed. -description in the welcome packet.

the front door where i met M

(from my cousin, C's, email PS- try to avoid doing laundry at night- can be dangerous. (where i'm staying) was the estate with some pranksters/lunatics who poured rat or cat blood (couldn't ascertain which one) into people's laundry machines via the detergent hole.)

note to self: do laundry during the day

breakfast

i need blackout curtains. but the audacity of blackout curtains here in the land of the vitamin D deficient means they are no where to be found. so i woke at 4am with the sun, and again at 6am and then 7am before i finally gave up and woke proper. breakfast looks good doesn't it though? finally no more stale ham and cheese sandwiches which regress to plain cheese sandwiches when the sandwich maker gets sadistic. bought the muesli yesterday and picked the most photogenic fruit from my basket to pose for this little number. wish there were more farmers markets and places to buy fresh produce from. i do not like the supermarket nonsense. if i'm going to pay an arm and a leg for fruit, it better be pretentiously organic and in support of cottage industry of some sort.

room sweet room

the hall

the loo

bed before

desk before

desk after

shelf before

shelf after + reading corner

bed before

bed after

(note girly sheets!)

turns out i do have wireless in the room! albeit not mine :) it's relatively spacious by university housing standards. it even has a hall! and plenty of storage space. whew! and my fears of having to cart mattress, duvet and pillow back to room went unfounded because while the inventory was only bedframe, desk, shelf and chair, the previous tenant left the bedding too! just needed to buy sheets for oh hallowed shopping mecca and tada! good to go (to sleep). made the pilgrimage to ikea as planned with lovely danish girl in tow.

had fun scouring the many many floors of ikea for solutions for better living and managed to more or less get everything i needed. went on a rampage and bought 3 pots, 2 plates, 2 bowls, 2 drinking tumblers, 2 coffee mugs, 2 forkspoonknifeteaspoon sets, floormat, sheets, toilet brush. and to reward ourselves at the end of the ordeal, there were kr.5 hot dogs! yummy :) i also finally succumbed and bought a 30day transport pass. for the longest time i'd been holding out and walking everywhere but having moved out of the hotel (central) to the room (ulu) there's a limit to how far my little legs can carry me now.

and i made new friends today! met a greek girl, V, from athens, at the housing office and M from copenhagen just outside our building. she very kindly let me in and we spent the next five minutes discussing which key was for what and she joined us at ikea and then lidl (cheap supermarket) and coop konsum (expensive supermarket). i bought detergent but to our horror there are no washing mashines in the building! we've to lug our laundry and washing stuff to another block. but use of the machines are included in our rent so thank goodness no additional charge there.

nothing particularly exciting happened today, save ikea. settling in is good though! need to stock up on groceries next, not had the chance to yet so i've yet to cook for myself. can't wait to break in my new pots :)

more photos when the patchy not-mine wireless cooperates!

moving!

hello hello last post till friday or later because i'm finally moving to my permanent accommodation no more pokey hotel yaY! the only problem is i'll only get internet in my room on friday at earliest so i won't be able to update fo awhile. met the other two singaporean girls at the housing office this morning turns out we're all staying at the sam place, albeit in different blocks. M, our male counterpart too but he's too cool for school and only arriving next week. in the meanwhile though i do have his keys and have half a mind to sublet his room to renumerate myself for my key-collecting services (M! i hope you're reading this!!!). but i kid :) and while i largely disagree with racial stereotypes, the three girls are doing the most singaporean thing possible later. once we've cleaned our respective rooms, we're meeting up to go to ikea to indulge in perfect solutions for living or solutions for perfect living i forget which but is fun to mock them swedes and their odd slogans.

and i found the university! huff puff huff puff 30min brisk walk from the hotel with my trusty googlemap annd then brisk walk back after collecting my keys. going to call a cab then head to my new home soon! foresee it being a busy few days settling in buying groceries and detergents etc. how exciting i get to play house :)

bye for now!

the dutch guys

with S and T on their last night

(T is actually 6"9 but was trying to make me feel like less of a dwarf in comparison)

have mentioned them a fair bit in the more recent posts and figured i'd post a photo of the dutch guys i met in the hotel! but for S, i woudn't have known that there was an unsecured wireless network within reach (gasps!) and but for T, i wouldn't know that kids receive a very holistic education in the netherlands. but more than that, they were my first spontaneous friends in stockholm and we spent a lot of time chatting over breakfast on the sundeck and later while they were sexiled (hehe) engaging in improvisional theatre in the hotel lobby. it sounds crazy but we were hamming it up so bad with T as the sofa iron-er and me as the job interviewer, much to S' chargrin that we were acting like such kids.

S works at a gas station in a red light district in the netherlands and i was in stitches as he regaled us with tales of his regular clientel. i was very interested to hear of him time in the congo, first as a child and later when he revisited his childhood home two years ago. he was telling me about a precious ore that is refined for use in electronics by the chinese and how the chinese build infrastructure in the congo in exchange for this ore that is surreptiously removed by the plane-load to evade the wanderig warlords. he was surprised to hear of compulsory national service and the annual dreaded ippt. then he said that it must be harder for singaporean men to run 2.4km in whatever the stipulated timing than he because they've shorter legs.HAHA. S also chided me for reading LP (a first!) because it robbed me of the joy of independent discovery. i've never thought of it that way but the context of this admonition is my aghast exclamation that there are (supposedly) only three acceptable colours in stocks every season, in addition to black. and then i foolishly lamented that i was probably not decked in any of the 'right' colours. to which S scoffed me to my face and told me not to be so conscious of what people wear. this was right after his opening line, 'the dutch aren't nice people. they're too direct.' truer words... and after thinking about it, he's absolutely right. project: assimilation is all well and good if i was in a jungle and required camouflage to ensure survival. but i'm not in a jungle and i'm not prey of any sort. so looking different isn't necessarily a bad thing. lesson learnt and i've thrown my meagre fashion sense to the wind and am determined to wear whatever i want :) time to break out the boho patchwork pants lurking in the deep recesses of my suitcase!

T is waiting to go into university and he very kindly explained the different academic paths available to students in the netherlands. i was impressed by how there's a suitable route for everyone regardless of academic ability. personally feel in singers the very bright and the not-so-bright are well catered for but the middle is somewhat marginalised and not given the same opportunities the other two demographs are. not so in the netherlands! and there are cross-over opportunities from one stream to the next so late developers are not condemned to a life of serfdom. T knew an awful lot about singers and it turns out that he'd watched a video of her history during economics class. wow! i never knew we were interesting enough to make it to the small screen. he definitely knew more about singers than i know about the netherlands and it made me both proud and mildly ashamed at the same time. here i am, smug in my little world thinking that i'm well-traveled and well-read but here is this lovely dutch boy who knows more about my country than i do about his. and i've been to amsterdam twice while he's yet to visit singapore!

T posed an unusual question. he asked if singaporeans had 'hobbies' and i found myself struggling to answer that. i, for one, don't have a hobby per se. i used to swim competitively, not because i like the sport but because it got me where i wanted to go (i.e it boosted my c.v.) similarly, i don't know whether many singaporean students like what they're doing for co-curricular activity or are in for similarly practical purposes. we were talking about part time jobs and T used to work in the back of a supermarket packaging the produce. when i told him that i gave tuition for some pocket money, he couldn't grasp the concept of parents sending their kids for extra class. and to think it's de rigeur back home :)

definitely an eye-opener and mind-broadener and i'm really glad to have met S and T, albeit briefly. chances are we might not meet again but that's the beauty of travel. to establish fleeting connections when your orbits overlap temporarily and leave the better for it.

hotel discoveries

took me four (!!!) days to realise that the hotel has a lovely roof garden with seats. i knew it had a disused pool (the dutch guys told me) but i didn't know that i could sit on the roof top and enjoy the sunset with a book in hand and steaming hot coffee in the other :( but better late than never.

sunday brunch

finally had my first hot meal since lunch soon after i landed in stocks! it was a sunny sunny sunday and as i meandered aimlessly around town my hunger got the better of me and i decided to look for a quaint brunch place. found this little gem just off my street and relatively reasonably priced too! sat on a cushioned bench against the glass window on the side walk and watched the world go by as i nibbled my brunch. it might not look like much but by the time i was 2/3 through i was stuffed and it was glorious washing everything down with cold, sweet freshly squeezed oj (i watched the proprietor push the orlengs through the press!) and then hot black coffee. mhmmmm :)

water

my bottle collection thus far! every plastic bottle recycled is money! then again, i think i'm going to look for a hobo later and give my bottles to him. but speaking of bottles, i'm most upset that i've not managed to buy still water yet. and i'm too shy to ask at the store so i just grab the cheapest bottle(s) and so far they've all been sparkling. plus these babies are not just sparkling but also flavoured. the green label is pear and the purple one grape. what does a girl have to do to score some regular, still water?! and while i enjoy sparkling with a meal, it's not the most pleasant of things to put sparkling into a dry morning mouth. or into hot drinks to cool them.

so what i've taken to doing is pouring the sparkling into my tumbler and leaving it to flatten over night. and in the morning, tada! still water :) is pleased with show of creativity. see? not a bubble in sight! as for the flavour, i made do by using the grape flavoured water to cool the berry tea (there is an extensive tea selection at breakfast) and the pear flavoured for regular day-time drinking.

ok. sorry for boring you with the mundane. i will post more intelligently after i get out more.

sandwich stealer

edit: the early bird does not get the worm! the sandwich on the left obviously has more cheese! and that's the 9am sandwich!

i've not had a hot meal since lunch on the first day with my lone swedish friend. and according to my grandmother, this lack of hot food borders on self-harm. there's a method to the madness though. the hotel provides breakfast. i am already paying an inordinate amount of money to stay in the hotel. food is generally extremely expensive. try sgd30 for a simple main (something basic like fried minced meats with pickles. eww) . and that's without sides! so obviously i'm not about to spring that sort of money every day for lunch and even more for dinner. the breakfast the hotel provides is really nothing to scream about either. it's cling wrapped sandwiches in a bowl and i'm really too paiseh to grab too many at a time, ostensibly for eating through the day. so in a face-saving attempt, i take two bright and early at 7am from the night guy and then another two at 9am from the morning girl. because the sandwiches are sitting pretty in a bowl on the reception counter top. and unless they can be bothered to discuss the lone asian girl who plods around in her pjs, nobody's none the wiser that i'm a sandwich thief! (yes, there probably are cheap eats that i've yet to stumble upon but i'm refusing to eat fast food so that too limits my cheap choices.)

can't wait till i move to the university accommodation and have access to a kitchen. not like i'm a culinary genius within the furthest stretch of imagination but i've my hot pot whose manual i've read (and therefore should know how to cook with!). and i've a mountain of prima food mixes that i'm excited to break into. so just two more days of dry brown bread with ham and cheese and i'm off to the gastronomic promised land.

be still my stomach

note to self: when you've not had a hot meal in four days, do not 'accidentally' look at photos of food in singers.

crab cakes

just in case you couldn't see their crispy yet juicy goodness from the outside

bratwurst

tenderloin

sauteed mushrooms

my favourite fly lice

sigh.

daddy's girl

really like this photo i took of a father and daugther at the zebra crossing on my street. it was a thursday morning and i was wondering why i saw a disproportionate number of fathers with their children. i later found out that fathers have to spend three months with their children during the first few years of its (ok, his or her) life before the company pays for the mothers' maternity leave. that, combined with the supreme level of gender equality, sees many fathers ending up the primary care-giver. it's an interesting phenomenom but social policy and high-minded ideas of equality aside, it was just heart-warming to watch these two enjoy their morning stroll.

grinda

(the following photos are unedited. the sky is really that blue. my camera was not on vivid mode. in fact, it does not have a vivid mode. the sky is really just that blue.)

after spending the first few days exploring the city centre, i figured it was high to do what i'd come to stockholm early to do. i.e visit the archipelago. my initial plan was to arrive a fortnight early and spend some time at the islands as a mini retreat of sorts. but i got my act together too late and the hostels on every island were fully booked. so i settled for five nights in the city centre and in retrospect, it's a good thing i didn't stay the few days at the islands like i wanted to!

there are countless islands in the archipelago but being the student on a budget, i chose the island that was the best 'value'. that happened to be grinda because it's a 90min ferry ride away (so it's not accessible by bus like vaxholm, the closest island) but not too far for a day trip. but grinda is so small and uninteresting that it did not qualify for inclusion in LP stockholm haha.

that said, it was just as i'd imagined it to be. before leaving for stockholm and before my island life plans were foiled, i'd entertained visions of myself sitting on a rocky outcrop plugged into my ipod and journal-ing furiously. i quickly found said rocky perch about thirty minutes after first setting foot on the island and happily camped there for a few hours overlooking the harbour. it was beautiful. the sea calm, the sky a brilliant blue and the neighbouring smaller islands like emerald drops in the sea. the seaside cafe was playing summer hits and i felt like queen of the hill atop my little rock. after the sun moved and started shining in my face, i too migrated to (literally) greener pastures. walked around the island a little more and discovered the south jetty and next to the south jetty was a big green field. i sprawled onto an unused picnic table (very glamorous, i know) and watched the sea breeze blow the clouds across the sky. the afternoon passed so fast and before i knew it i'd to catch the second last ferry back.

had a lovely day on the island but think i'm just about island-ed out now. beautiful as it is, i'm quite happy back in the city smack in the middle of all my creature comforts. but i enjoyed being alone on the rock and later in the field, at peace with the world and loving life.