yesterday my jap teacher was very cute. she was demonstrating that 'ka' means mosquito. she picked up the card that says 'ka' and moved it randomly in the air, while going 'eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee'. okay u get the idea, and the teaching assistant went around pretending to slap the mosquito and she finally got 'bitten' by the mosquito o_O haha. ok but it was fun.

yesterday night, xin was scared stiff. just as she was sleeping, she saw a flash of blue light in the mirror and her laptop startup music began, but in a distorted manner. she nervously got up to check her laptop and err it switched on itself. so xin switched it off again and unplugged the outlet power o_O and hurriedly went back to slp. HAHA.

xin is considering going to japan for an exchange due to much prompting from her jap friend, megumi =) she promises to teach me jap and speak jap with me during dinners at pollock. xin is excited but wonders if stb will let me =( no harm brushing up my jap though =P

today was a waste of time.
attended jap from 12 - 1pm. covered hiragana which i'm really really quite familiar with. but they played bingo using hiragana. it was quite fun =) haha and i won! but the teacher ran out of prizes o_O
then the long FOUR hrs break. went to the gym and ran more than FOUR km! haha. then went to the library to do my readingg o_O i feel like a mugger. haha but the reading was really interesting. it was on... globalization. the only topic i mugged for GP during As.
then it was logic. actually i'm quite interested in maths, okay don't laugh, and logic is potentially interesting (logic is the science of reasoningg that proposes a precise mathematical theory of the validity of arguments or something liddat). but the lecturer (the temporary lecturer) is very boring. he drones on and on, and when the students raise their hands, he ignores them for the whole lecture. haha. besides everything is in the lecture notes (they gaf us the whole semester's lect notes all in one go) and i can understand the notes PERFECTLY fine by myself o_O haha.

but today was a nice sunny day.
i love to see the sunlight streaming in through my window in the morning =)

and xin was helpful today.
she helped a shaky old lady cross the road.
the lady had a scottish accent.
xin is happy.

okie i feel silly posting twice a day but... here goes.

today is band prac day =(

there're people of all shapes and sizes, carry french horns, clarinets, trombones... off to practice even in the rain. wish i could join band but i have no instrument and i'm not about to spend 500 pounds on a lousy instrument. i miss the music but i think it's the people i miss the most, the eccentric band people. i guess it's cos i miss u guyss, my beloved rgssb'03 batch, that i feel so sad when i see these band ppl trooping off to band prac.

don't think we'll ever come together again to play. by the time i return to singapore, i probably can't play anymore =(

people playing for alumni, cherish it kk. i miss my instrument =(

on fri night, xin ate chinese food. cos the buddhist society (not that i'm buddhist of cos) had a dinnery thingy so a few of us went to eat =) it was so nice, i missed char kuay teoww =) yum. and we had ikan bilis and curry chicken. yummy. everything was so yummy. i think i got to know quite a few people! at least their names la. i should go for this kind of things more. u get to eat and u get to know more ppl *smiles* okay, but i should stop eating so much cos someone says i'm getting fatter. haha.

xin realises belatedly on fri night that she promised her newfound jap friend that she'll go through the sociology lecture tgt wif her fren at 8pm but we left the place at like TENpm. so she had to postpone the meeting till tmr morning. xin feels guilty. the walk home was so amusing cos julian was there. and we kept bumping into sexily clad girls going 'heyy julian' and then we'll have to stand there (in the cold night) and talk to the people. haha. and julian was stinky cos he played badminton the whole afternoon and din bathe and he kept trying to rub off his stink on us gals. ew. and xin bathed before coming out.

on sat morning, xin had a jap breakfast wif her jap friend, megumi, who has jap snacks =) we went thru the lect together and xin prays fervently she has explained everything correctly. xin is happy to make a new friend =) and hopes to be able to converse to her in jap one day =)

on sat afternoon, xin ate a chinese buffet. it's quite expensive but decent for uk food, it's like 6.99pounds. i ate so much my friends were err shocked. HAHA. yeah. i guess they didn't realise xin can have such a huge appetite. *grinz* i love the jellies. and i ate ice cream. finally. i miss eating ice cream. the jellies came in like 7 colours or something, and i took all of them. okay, i shared them with a friend, but it's so nice, cos they all have different flavours =) xin went shopping after. not really shopping because we walked around and didn't get anything because some people wanted to get phoness and xin was highly bored.

on sat night, xin was so excited because her skype and webcam works. xin wishes that she can view other people's webcams though =( xin slept at 4am. o_O

on sun, xin woke at 11am and was shocked. because she had to rushhh off to a bbq. it was a rainy, dreary, drizzly, misty, scary (u get the idea) day. it was raining but xin was lazy to take out her umbrella so xin looked like she bathed by the time she got to the place. xin ate a lot, as usual, mainly meatt. xin decides she LOVES sambal fish. yumm. i ate quite a lot. SHH dun tell the people okk, no wonder the fish disappeared so fast. then we went to crash a fren's place, and i ate cookies and chocolate. erps. and then i went back to have a HUGE dinner and tried rice pudding, which is quite gross, cos it's like rice, it tastes nice i guess, but the thought that it's actually mashed up rice plus cream and who knows what makes me grossed out so i din eat the pudding, but i ate the peaches on top =P

xin loves eating. yum.
xin has to go to the gym tomorrow o_O

Sociology is really interesting and i'm quite sad that i have to drop it in favour of philosophy. it's a major screw-up on the admin side and now i attended one wk of lectures on sociology instead of philosophy and i dunno how to register for my tutorials for philosophy. sigh. and after today's lecture, i really want to take sociology.

Hobbes said that all humans are innately selfish, in his words, 'nasty' and 'brutish'. Yet, my lecturer proclaimed otherwise today. Apparently, sociological research has shown that even in the face of adverse circumstances, social order remains. She showed us this photo of men queueing up with containers in their hands. It was taken right after the 2006 tsunami, and these people were fishermen queueing up for petrol for their motorboats so they could go fishing and not starve to death. They knew that there wasn't enough petrol to go around, and they knew that if they were the unlucky few who couldn't get petrol, not only they, but their families would starve as well. YET there were no fights, only patient queueing. Amazing, isn't it?

My lecturer said a lot more. That was a rather superficial and isolated example of the issue she expounded on today but it's enough to make me think.

I felt a bit -idunno- insufficient? trivial? frivolous? to think about all these.

Edinburgh is a really nice place =) Here's the hill behind my accommodation.

Yeah it's just a hill. My room is really pretty decent but there are better ones, like the one which is so modern they have motion-sensored corridor lights and card keys. The food's pretty much okay now but guess I'll be sick after a year of the same food =) So now, I'm taking advantage of all the Fresher's week's events and getting free meals. HAHA. Yeah. The alcohol here is really dirt cheap, no wonder people get wasted like everyday here. It's not so bad now that school has started, and the poor medics have classes everday 9am to 5pm.

Went to climb the hill the other day. It's called Arthur's Seat and it has a gorgeous view. Climbing was rather freaky cos we went up the (wrong) narrow path and ended up at a cliff and had to climb the rock wall o_O and we did that more than once. Haha. I'm glad my fellow climbers were nice and gave me a hand. I gotta practise climbing more often then when anyone comes to visit me I'll be pro =P

The people here are nice, they always say hello even if they don't really recognize you cos apparently all Asians look the same here o_O But it's cool cos I got to know so many people from so many countries, Palestinians, Dutch, Americans, Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Hong Kong people, Taiwanese, Pakistanis, Germans, Italians. Okay but I don't really remmeber everyone. I just hope I do and if I don't, I wave and smile anyhow. HAHA.

School began on Tuesday. I was really looking forward to beginnign my courses! Haha, Japanese is pretty boring cos I've done everything before and I'm doing it just so I can slack a bit and concentrate on the others but it's really nice. I'm thinking of running for the student rep for my Jap class. Sociology and Political Science is really funky. I'm starting Sociology proper tomorrow and it's quite freaky cos I've to prepare so much for lecture. I've done the readings but I still can't really answer the 'essential questions' on the lecture description they gave us. SIgh. I hope I'll survive.

Oh and I've joined the gym! Which is so posh (to me). They have LCD screens on all their treadmills that have TV shows on them and they have so many rooms, circuit gym, performance gym, olympic gym, a pool and so much. I think I want to go for aerobics class or something. Haha. Today this guy was showing me how to use the weights machine. Erps. I feel a bit ignorant. and worse still, when I was doing the bicep curl and tricep extension, which I used to do in Singapore, I couldn't even lift the lightest weight. Like wth. My muscles must have really deteriorated!! Either that, or the 9kg is actually like 18kg or something. HAHA. I vaguely recall I used to do 14kg o_O

And from tomorrow on, xin will write proper detailed entries cos now xin can't exactly remember what happened the past two weeks.

xin misses everyone.

cambridge is a really pretty place. alright i'm not going to describe every single thing that happened cos honestly i can't quite remember =) it's a quaint old town (to me, who's used to skyscrapers and tall buildings) but perhaps that's cos we lived in the suburbans (according to rui's dad) i remember our first dinner was atrocious. it was fish and chips, terrible fish and chips. i still remember when my fork first pierced the batter, oil gushed out. i don't think i'm exaggerating. rui and i think that it's because the shop is a kebab shop, rather than a fish and chip shop o_O i miss eating strawberries there! they're really cute and small and sweet =) and the colleges were just so beautiful (i think my school building pales in comparison) - the large expanses of trim, green lawns, the vibrantly colored flowers brightening the landscape, the cool fresh air, the majestic buildings rising over everything else. i wish i were a better writer, so i can give full credit to the wonderful scenes we saw. but i guess u all can see the photos for urself when i finally upload them =)

i love the sun at cambridge
and xin left cambridge for edinburgh...

landing was gorgeous. the plane dipped and suddenly the whole continent comes into view, filled with the random sparkles of orange sodium lamps lining the motorways, crisscrossing the city. it was a maze of patterns that overlapped and formed new patterns, so different from the view i had when we left singapore. and as if a finale, as the plane touched down, an enormous full moon came into view. it hung low over the horizon, beaming to us as we arrived. it seemed so close i could touch it.

and xin arrived in london =)

hello everyone i have finally set up a blog, much to everyone's anticipation. anw i really miss all of you =( haha but i'm quite bored of emailing everyone the same story over and over again so here's the tale of xinyi in uk...