closing moments of 2008

year-end service has always been special. The closing moments of the year, spent in church, provides an excellent opportunity to reflect on the past year and think about the next year. It is also one of the few times in a year that the church truly feels like a big family- one that can share openly even about rather personal stuff, and the blessings and trials of the year. 

It is pitch dark outside, and the windows reflect clearly the faces of everyone seated inside.

I'm a little disappointed this year. the message was wayyy too long (and i still dun get where the 3 Cs fit in lehhhh... i asked jiahui a million times during the msg...) but anyway, there just wasn't a lot of time for testimony, which is usually the very heart-warming bit that makes this service so special. there was like a big rush to finish the whole service by 10pm sharp. the chinese service had about one eighth of the people and they ended much later. 

I wanted to share, but of cos i was a bit too scared and by the time i found the courage, after taking a short toilet break, there was no more time. there probably won't be a next time. not soon anyway. 

I honestly don't know when I'd be able to experience this again, but may I never forget this 'family' that He has provided in Him. I don't remember any other form of countdown my entire life, other than the kind sharing stupid jokes with the aunties like 'see you next year'.... :) 

Blessed new year!

Journey to the (North) East… Of Europe (III)

Days 3-5: Москва́ (Moscow) , Россия (Russia)
2-4 May 2008

by David Ho

kinda long, but really interesting, i promise...

The cabin was silent. Well, as silent as it could get at least. All that could be heard were the bumps as the train rolled across the small gaps in the tracks. The glare of the sun was coming in through the window, and the carriage was rocking gently from side to side. I sat up on my bed with the realization that today we were arriving in a place that was completely new, completely different, and most definitely unique. Today we arrived in Moscow.

I honestly can’t remember what the view outside looked like. Probably country-side-ish. I guess we were all preoccupied with getting ready for the day we had ahead of us. We arrived at the train station really early in the morning, and it was slowly coming to life. The shops were opening and more people were starting to walk about as we waited for the tour guide to come get us. Looking back on photographs really does not do justice to the way the station made me feel. In the photos the train station just looks like the interior of any other building, and I can’t help but wonder why it was that while I was there, I was really conscious of the fact that I was in a strange and foreign place. I just felt so cautious, and have no doubt that my sense of awareness was heightened. I remember us trying to draw lots of money because we were supposed to share with some of the others, but the ATMs had a pretty low cap, so we actually tried most of the ATMs in the station. Well, enough said about the first hour in Moscow, I think I’ve said too much!

The tour guide eventually came and led us onto our bus. This tour guide deserves a special mention. She was so boring! She just kept telling us what this building was, or what that building was, when they were built etc. There was very little mention about the history or the motivations behind the buildings, which is really the most fascinating part of travelling. I’m glad Carol and I share this view. Oh, and I’m really certain this tour guide got some of her facts wrong, in fact, some of the things I thought she said were completely absurd! For instance, she’d tell us that such and such building was “yay” high, and “yay” would be physically impossible.

Anyway, our first stop was Red Square! It is considered to be THE central square in Moscow and perhaps all of Russia. This square was used as a market place, for coronations, and parades. Parades are still held there, and at the time we were there, they were preparing for the Victory Day (day commemorating the defeat over Nazi Germany) parade which was to occur later that month (May). That parade was also to be the first one since the collapse of the USSR that military vehicles were paraded. The bus parked across a road on the far south eastern side of the square, and we had to walk a bit to get to the square itself. No one minded though, because all along the way we got to feast our eyes upon the intricately designed St.Basil’s Cathedral. I think it is almost a curse to view such marvelous buildings, because from then onwards, few buildings can measure up to awe and wonder that such buildings inspire. Legend (and Wikipedia) has it that Ivan the Terrible had the architect’s eyes put out to prevent him from building anything that would rival the cathedral’s beauty; However, I think the architect did design other structures after this one…

After walking around the cathedral (we didn’t get to go in) we arrived at the square itself, where our tour guide blabbered on about more things that might not have been very factual. Heh heh. We were also waiting to enter the G.U.M shopping mall (built by merchants) because it was that early in the morning. From where we stood we had a good view of the State Museum and the Kremlin Wall. When G.U.M finally opened its revolving doors there was another (Chinese?) tourist group waiting outside as well. I’ll always remember what happened next: People started rushing through the doors, which wasn’t very smart because each revolving partition could only take 3-4 people. It was probably bad judgment on this particular guy’s part, because he was like the 6^th person to squeeze into the partition and it looked like an unpleasant few moments for that group of people as they went through the doors…

After breakfast at G.U.M came the bus tour, in which made up “facts” and “figures” were forced down our throats. We did stop by here and there to take some photos of this and that though, including a bridge with metallic structures where newly-married couples lock padlocks onto them and throw away the key. A Japanese whirlwind tour (with made up facts) later, it was about lunch time and we headed down the main shopping street… Which shopping street was this? What did we find? Where else would we be going next? The day is only half done folks, there is much to write about, but I bet at this point you’re really bored… Till next time!

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After a long hiatus, this post continues. Even though, to all those who are reading this, it would seem as if it was all written at one go, in fact, this post has stretched over a couple of months, maybe slightly longer.

So anyway, where I left of, our brains had just received an (faulty) information overload, and we were deposited at the hotel (near Izmailovosky Park and Narodnyi Prospekt Metro Station). After checking in, we went to the nearby bazaar to shop for souvenirs and look around. They sold all the usual things a tourist would buy; Russian (matrioshka) dolls, Soviet-themed magnets, and fake branded goods. The shopkeepers were basically friendly and were open to the bargaining. When we took photos of their goods they’d joke about having to pay them a fee. After quite a bit of bargain hunting, we left with a few trinkets. Back at the hotel Carol and I arranged to meet with Yock Song and a couple of others later that evening in the main shopping area of Arbatskaja. There was another group (including Debbie, Jia Min and Anson) that went to watch Swan Lake, and though it was not at the Bolshoi, I’m sure it was an unforgettable once in a life-time thing. Then again, you can say that for the whole exchange.

Carol and I went there first in the hopes of having a typical Russian meal. We spent an hour or more walking almost the whole stretch of Old Arbat in search of “Mu Mu”, which was supposed to be a budget sort of place. We couldn’t find it and landed up eating Kebabs. We walked back to the station to meet Yock Song, Jen and Stephanie, as time was getting on. The metro stations are all quite beautifully decorated, with soviet themed statues, art, and tiled murals on the walls and ceilings, we felt as if we stepped back into the Soviet era. Taking the metro is an experience worth mentioning. First of all, it is dirt cheap. Anywhere you want to go along its 292.2km of route length, 12 lines and 177 stations will cost you approximately one Singapore dollar, or 17 rubles. Even then we still saw many people climbing over barriers to avoid paying. Second, all the station names are written with the Cyrillic alphabet, which, Assyia won’t let us forget, the Russians adopted from Bulgaria. The problem, as you would surmise, is that we didn’t read Cyrillic. We only got by thanks to some of us being a little bit clever, or having taken New Testament Greek. Third and probably most frustrating, is that very few of the locals speak much english. The ticket lady certainly didn’t. That’s when numbers become so beautiful and useful, because no matter what language you use, signalling for 10 tokens worth 150 rubles result in us getting 10 token by paying 150 rubles.

We all headed Eastwards back to the Red Square. We spent quite a bit of time taking photos of this and that, since we couldn’t really get into anything as it was early evening.

One of the nicest night shots we have is of the back-side of the State Museum. There were other fantastic night shots including one of Carol and I with the lighted St.Basil’s in the background, but it was taken with Yock Song’s camera, which was pick-pocketed from him in St.Petersburg a few days later…

Of great curiosity to me was the double headed eagle, which seems to pop up all over Europe. It’s actually the emblem of the Roman and Byzantine Empires, with the dual heads representing the Emperor’s sovereignty over both religious and secular matters. Of course I found this out much later, and only thanks to wikipedia. At that point of time I tried to smoke Yock Song with some fictitious reasoning and history but he didn’t buy it. Carol would’ve though. Starting out at the red square, we then walked the entire parameter of the Kremlin on the outside because somehow Carol thought it’d be nearer to the metro station. I thought it was a silly idea. Maybe she did too, but secretly wanted to see if she could make the walls of the Kremlin fall down. Well, she couldn’t. She only succeeded in making all of us tired and me crabby. Oh well, honest mistake.

By the time we got back to the hotel, some metro stops away, it was quite late, and we prepared to go to bed. I think we went back even later than the Swan Lake people. Anyway, after a quick discussion about what time to meet to go to the Kremlin, we turned in for the night.

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The Kremlin: Once the home of kings, this sprawling complex is now the current seat of the Russian Government and is also the resting place to many prominent figures of the Soviet Era. Steeped in history that spans a millennium, this, would be our first stop on our second day in Moscow.

The buffet breakfast was a little strange. The best way to describe it is as a Russian interpretation of a Continental Buffet. We theorized that everything was manufactured from nuclear power plants or derived from enriched uranium- Supposedly natural products didn’t taste very natural to us. We ate anyway, and took more food for lunch. Standard Operating Procedure… I guess we’d only start worrying if we started glowing in the dark. The thing that was pretty amusing to me was the food labels. Everything had the definitive article added to it! The labels would read “The Meatballs”, “The Sausages”, “The Pancakes” and so on. Heh. We didn’t reach the Kremlin early enough, and a long queue had formed outside. There were queues to buy tickets and to get in. The group of us split up to queue for both at the same time. Half an hour and an unpleasant episode with a local-tour-guide-queue-cutter later, we were on the other side of the wall.

Whenever I think of Russia and religion, I think of communism and get the impression that the country has always been largely atheist. The Kremlin proved me wrong. (The majority of the population is Orthodox Christian.) In the heart of the Kremlin lies 7 cathedrals (http://www.moscow.info/kremlin/churches/index.aspx), all distinctly Russian Orthodox with their gold-colored domes. I shan’t go into the details of what lies in the different cathedrals (nor can I really without relying on wikipedia), it would suffice to say that they have been turned into tourist attractions and were a little bit too crowded to spend time taking in the history, significance or iconostases of the various cathedrals. Sadly, we were caught up in a traveler’s greatest natural disaster, the Japanese Whirlwind.

Fortunately, we have our correspondents (us back in May) who can provide coverage live from the Kremlin:

Beside this square of cathedrals are the world’s largest cannon and the world’s largest bell, the Tsar Cannon, and the Tsar Bell. The Tsar Bell has a large crack in it due to a fire, and the subsequent rapid cooling when water was used to extinguish the fire. The bell is covered in relief work depicting Christ, Mary, John the Baptist and the Russian Rulers. I honestly don’t remember much of it, all I remember is that it was nearly impossible to get our picture taken with either attraction; there were just too many people! We somehow managed anyway. We had a nicer time walking around the rest of the grounds, because it wasn’t as crowded. The gardens were exceptionally beautiful with all the flowers in full bloom. We left the grounds soon after and had a little picnic just outside the walls.

I guess this is getting too long, we'll continue again soon!

turning 20 two with too many cakes (not tt i'm complaining)

for the last time in my life, i was a student on my birthday.
and, for the last time in my life, i took an exam on my birthday. whee!~

advanced financial accounting was from 1-4pm. it was a colossal disaster, enough said. luyi and i were still talking about it, into the toilet, out of it, hanging around the lobby waiting for the clowns so that we could go grab a snack. in the end i got lured into this obscure lift which i never knew existed, leading down to B2. of cos, we were still talking about the paper, and when the lift doors opened, i got the shock of my life (and so did luyi - shame on her since she was in the surprise as well...) the clowns were there: adrian was holding this super chocolatey cake, and stanley was holding this big box.

yum, check out the number of layers the cake had... it was also luyi's birthday not too long ago! which we also celebrated after an AFA quiz :

and then i did something really dumb. (what's new). because we were in an enclosed area, the echos were especially powerful, and when i was handed the box, i felt a lot of vibrations, and i thought whatever was inside was alive. so i took a long time opening it. and luyi, again, screamed when i opened the box slightly, compounding the effect. (sheesh she's SO bad at surprises :). anyway it turned out that there was nothing alive inside at all, and i totally stunned everyone with the vibrations. :

debbie was really sweet too, she appeared the in carpark, 15 mins before her exam! :) to think i was lured into going into the carpark, heh.

the big box, and... the carpark...

went home after devouring the cake (which had melted by then) because the MS exam the next morning demanded that i sit down and figure out what's been going on in class.

the terribly melted (but still delicious) cake after all the drama...



and it was very pretty too, complete with gold dust :p

very yummy too...!

i dunno why we didn't take a group shot but this is the closest we got to it. rachel, tiff and hilda were there too..
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david came over at 9pm+ with dinner, and a slice of cedele cake. no wonder he sounded so disappointed when i told him i had a chocolate cake in school... but it was the first time in the last 3 or 4 years that he actually spent a part of my birthday with me, so i guess it's quite a record.

a slice of our favourite, very very rich, cedele cake! :)


yeah this was what i was studying for - my last paper the next morning. but there's always time for distractions

and then, karen came back with another cake - not chocolate this time...

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when the terrible exams were done and over with....

surprise cake after 'savage-seven' at west coast park 2 days later.
thanks debs and jiams!

erms, i can't remember what the other side of the equation was... but i remember it was quite sweet...

besides that, all the facebook messages were very much appreciated. i got about 70+, which is slightly over 10% of facebook friends (i dunno how it all amassed). i spent some hours the next few days after exams replying them one by one, but i'm not complaining cos lots of these people i've not talked to in ages, so it was a great excuse to catch up! :)

not forgetting the smses too!

thanks also for the presents - the clown gang, ryan, david.

credit goes to auntie alen for the ingenius present for which i'm geuinely touched. it's hilarious.... but i haven't smelt it yet... i think it's more for display la huh.

and the dearest family, who got me and did the whole birthday song thing before mummy left for cyprus:

now i've gotta figure out how to work an iPod. and i know that sharon would love to borrow it every now and then :p

An English Summer

So here i am, as the year draws to a close, trying my bestest to create some written record of what the year has brought. This episode is the one spanning mid-June to late-Aug.

photos are at the end...

the musicals

i had an ambitious plan to watch as many musicals i could, but i achieved little. The first musical david and i watched was 'Wicked', with Amy and Adeline, though we didn't manage to sit together. It was fantastic, and set a high benchmark of musical standards for me. The 2nd was 'Les Miserables', which i loved but David didn't appreciate that much. and... sadly, that was all we watched together. The trouble was that student tickets only applied on weekdays, and I had to rush to Leicester Sq after work to try to get tickets. Unfortunately, i didn't get much further on my own either, though i did try to catch 'Mama Mia' and the 'Lion King' but was turned down because they were sold out by the time I got there. The only other thing i managed to catch was the world's longest running play, 'The MouseTrap' by Agatha Christie, an acclaimed 'Queen of Crime'. That was with Zhuang in a crummy tiny theatre with almost no ventilation. It was so old-fashioned and slow-moving that zhuang fell asleep. But i thought it was decent, if you appreciate a mystery.

the food (and drinks)

The work routine meant that the copenhagen lifestyle was broken. Breakfast was still mostly cereal and milk, or a 'reduced' pastry from Waitrose bought the evening before. I almost always had lunch at the office cafeteria (except sometimes when I wandered around Canary Wharf with some other pple, or once when I came home for instant noodles because I forgot to bring my passport to work). I got used to having 'the grill' for lunch (= a burger + sometimes chips), i also got used to being set back about S$10 every lunch.

Dinner was a homely affair, at least for the 1st half of my stint. Home-cooked food was the best and cheapest, and i was totally spoilt when David was around. He would cook most of the time. He even cooked me stew to last a few days before he left. and after that, it was downhill from there. Kelvin was still around for a couple of weeks, so sometimes he would offer to cook for me and vice versa, but after he left, i got rather lazy. my excuse is that Aug was when i had a lot of 'visitors' and I went out a lot to meet people for dinner. but other than that, I was also usually too lazy to cook even on weekends. I would skip lunch and dinner would be someting really simple. it's terrible cooking for 1 person. It was so much more fun in copenhagen.

drinking is another matter altoghether. it was almost a ritual for the English. Everyday after work, the place you head to is the pub. Well, at least it seemed that way for the interns. Also explains why I didn't make that many friends among the intern class. I just wasn't happening enough. too bad.

the house

Thank God for the provision of the apartment through Ling Li, my JC friend. The location was great, until the DLR station from which i could take the DLR to work closed for repairs till Spring 2009 a week after i moved in. Nonetheless, the 15 min walks to the next station was great exercise and going into the dodgy neighbourhood where the next station is was always interesting. (I refused to take the tube becuase of the horror stories I hear about the peak hour human squeeze). The location was also great because it was incredibly close to Sarah (David's sister) and James. It was also at the edge of Zone 1, which meant that going into the city wasn't a problem, and London Bridge was within a 15-min walking distance (a distance i found myself walking rather frequently to meet people)

More important than the location, my house-mate was great. Rather easy-going, very nice and helpful. We had some mutual friends so we always had things to talk about. His bizzare sleeping hours helped ensure I was never late for work (He wakes up at 5am, so I told him to bang on my door if i wasn't awake by 8am). Without him, I would have died getting to the airport to come home.

the church(es)

I attended about 3 churches while in London. The first of which was the Metropolitan Tabernacle, in which Charles Spurgeon preached to packed congregations in the 1800s. Today, Dr Peter Masters preaches to not-so-packed crowds, but the solemn style of worship was a welcome respite from church in Copenhagen, and closer to home. Also had a chance to attend some sessions of the 'school of theology' (similar to DVBS but for adults who come from all over the UK) and those trips proved to be rather scary considering that the church is situated in a not-too-good neighbourhood.

Also attended New Life BP Church twice. Saw some familiar faces like Josiah (tho i didn't recognise him immediately) and Nancy Too on the 2nd time. The congregation was really small (like 30 people) and mostly Singaporean. It was also very far away in the Northwest of London, far out in Zone 3, but i had to go check it out.

The last church i went to was an Anglican church, on my last Sunday before I left. Juline brought me (she was another highlight of my summer actually!). I was rather apprehensive, but after the denmark experience i thought it was not that bad. The preaching was sound and it was in the 'ok' part of the spectrum of the Anglican denomination, save the band. In fact, it didn't seem anglican at all, except for the building. There were no rituals that i always associate with the denomination. I told Juline that i thought that the church was quite decent and she said, 'of course la, that's why I attend it!'. haha.

Thank God for church, it kept me sane, and ensured that Sunday wasnt another day of lazing around like Saturday. It was also nice to meet up with Sarah and James and then go for lunch after. They very kindly picked me up when we went to Met Tab so i didn't have to tube. Also met James Seow's (from SMU/GLCC) brother and sis-in-law @ Met Tab towards the end of my stint and they were very friendly as well, shame time didn't allow more interaction- perhaps next time.

the work

work was sufficiently enjoyable. everything gets boring at times i guess. there were good days and bad days. towards the end I started feeling quite sian too. maybe work just isn't for me :p But the nature of the work was what I feel I've always wanted. Easy enough in the sense that you really just need a lot of common sense and none of the cheem theories you learn in school, but challenging enough in that you need to be resourceful and you need common sense - i.e. you need to be able to think.

the people were nice and helpful too. my team was quite huge, about 10 people in all and i'm glad that i managed to work with all of them for something or other. My direct report was a rather strict German lady but i managed to impress her sufficiently within the 1st week (only by His grace) so we managed to work on very good terms. My director was a jolly 'old' man who had a quirky habit of wearing a polka-dotted tie with striped pants, making him look like a clown (sans suspenders). Interestingly, for an British company, the British were in the minority. No one was really foreign because almost everyone was. My buddy was Kenyan, but Indian and studied at Warwick. She was extremely pleasant and good-natured and we had good fun sitting side by side at work. It was a good thing that we are the same age too (except that she has a 2 year headstart at working!)

I knew full well that at the objective at the end of the internship was to get a job. the whole 10 weeks i prayed really hard for God to show me clearly if it was His will for me to work there. He's brought me thus far, and it was definitely not by my own strength that so many doors opened for me to be there in the first place, so I left it up to Him to decide whether to open the last door, or to slam it into my face. I was really ok with the latter, because all it meant was that I would go home, which sounded quite good to me too (before the whole catastrophe in the markets). God is sovereign. He knew that i wouldn't be able to find anything else in Singapore because He knew how crappy the job market would turn immediately after i finish my internship, so He provided. I know it is His will because almost all the circumstances were against me. i didn't come from a branded English school, neither was I the most eloquent person, or the quickest learner, I knew almost nothing about the Europena markets (heck i didn't even know what the 5 largest banks in the UK were); but He enabled, and helped my superiors to see me in a light that I would never view myself, and He gave me the job. So i guess it's simple from there, i just follow, trust and obey. The peace in my heart prevailed throughout. I didn't have to stress myself about performing throughout the 10 weeks, or about the outcome at the end.

AD (after-david)

after david left for Singapore/Australia, weekends were a rather lonely affair. Surprisingly, i found the time spent alone rather refreshing and interesting, considering I have constantly been around people the past x years of my life, and in particular, the last 7 months with friends. I never truly felt alone for prolonged periods of time until mid-July. i slept in on saturdays and spent many hours on the phone, calling home, talking to bren and david, and other random pple i called because the time difference didn't allow me to do so during the week.

i went shopping alone (the way i like it) - took my time at some shops and sped through the rest. Actually, i went shopping A LOT. sometimes after work I would wander around the shops @ Canary Wharf because the 'further reductions' signs looked rather inviting. I went to Hyde park intending to play frisbee but chose a particularly cold and windy day when the team wasn't playing. So i ended up strolling through the park, freezing in a sleeveless top but enjoying the peace. I walked to the Christian bookshop quite far away to look at DVDs and stuff; went to Borough and Portobello markets; watched Shakespear's 'King Lear' @ the globe one day after work, but again choosing a wrong day when it rained and it was wet and freezing in the open-air theatre.

I even did some touristy stuff. Went to Greenwich after CIP (which i've blogged about), and also decided to visit the Tower of London because my tube station was closed for the day and i lived at Tower Hill (and again chose a rainy day, sigh). It was a different sort of enjoyment i guess.

But no, i don't think i'm a true-blue hermit. I wasn't alone for that long. Then again i wasn't totally alone, there was Kelvin my house-mate, Sarah and James, whom i met almost every week for church and for some other random meals, and other people who dropped by like Zhuang, the rest of the ops team from Singapore, and SMU people who were arriving for their exchange.

Man is a gregarious creature.

Carol is man (as in, part of the human race).

Hence, Carol is a gregarious creature.

(Great Analytical Skills at work. Prof Ta.n Y.oo Gu.an would be so proud of me, I remember my stuff from Year 1 Sem 1)

Conclusion

All praise and thanks be to God for allowing me such an incredible summer experience- one i never ever dreamed of in my entire life, and that was to change its course forever.

Soli Deo Gloria.

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click here to view a summer's worth of photos!

and here for a slice of british corporate life, but only the fun bits...

Italia Reflections: Rome (II)

Roma

Vatican City and the Like

The next day, we opted for all things religious, so we headed to Vatican City, the smallest sovereign state in the world with an area of less than 1km^2. We wanted to employ the same strategy of waking up early to beat the crowds wanting to get into St Peter’s Basilica but david only managed to get back to the campsite that morning after the metro stopped running at 10pm the night before. The queue for the basilica extended around one half of St Peter’s square, a massive 17th century gathering place for Christians designed by Bernini lined by 2 semicircular colonnades. The basilica was impressive. It was a notch above all the other basilicas I’ve seen around Europe, because of the many sculptures that adorn the interior. Many of them are of catholic saints and funerary monuments of popes but have been beautifully carved by the masters of that time. It is the 2nd largest basilica in the world, and took 150 years to complete. Michelangelo’s (yeah the orange one!) light-filled dome which made this basilica considerably brighter than all others was a highlight but we couldn’t afford the energy (or money) to scale all 119 meters to the top. No, we didn’t go down into the grottos to see the burial place of St Peter and the popes, and neither did we catch a glimpse of the current Pope. But we did test the efficiency of the Vatican post, but sending a postcard back to the other 2 at home – we’ll see how long that takes to get to Singapore. Heh. We didn’t get to use the Vatican currency too.

The other highlight of Vatican City is the Musei Vaticani which contains the Sistine Chapel. The former had an extensive collection of sculptures, sarcophagi, ancient Christian paintings, tapestry, and art pieces. But I liked the Map room best. It was a long hallway with huge painted maps on the walls. Among the many rooms boasting paintings by Raphael and his students, was a well-known masterpiece ‘La Scuola d’Atene’ (‘The School of Athens’), depicting Plato (a guise for Leonado da Vinci), Aristotle and philosophers and scholars around them, including some of the other Italian artists and a self-portrait of Raphael. But like most people, we only visited the Museum because we wanted to see the famous Sistine Chapel, where the papal conclave is locked in to elect the new pope. It is also home to the most famous pieces of art in the world. We had to go through a million rooms before we finally came to it. The chapel was originally built in 1484 for Pope Sixtus IV, hence the name, but it was Pope Julius II who commissioned Michelangelo to decorate it. He was reluctant but eventually spent 4 years lying down on the scaffolding under the windows, to complete the impressive frescoes on the ceiling, which depeicts 9 scenes from Genesis and some other prophets. He also painted one of the walls with a highly complicated piece called ‘The Last Judgment’. The rest of the walls were completed by other important Renaissance artists like Botticelli and Pinturicchio, and depicts scenes from the lives of Moses and Christ. The small chapel was packed with people, all controlled by a very fierce guard who forbad anyone from sitting down or talking too loudly. The result was many strained necks from trying to appreciate the paintings on the wall, and recognizing the scenes, as well as a headache from the myriad of colours and intricate details in the paintings. The last thing worth mentioning about the Vatican is that the guards are dressed in really cute outfits, one variant makes them look like clowns, but I’m sure they’re highly trained soldiers. Check them out in the pictures!

After 6 hours inside the walls of the Vatican, we thought we were done, but when we headed to San Giovani to check out the church where St Peter’s and St Paul’s heads are kept as relics, we were barred from entry because apparently the Pope was going there to give a speech. So, instead of seeing the interior of yet another church, which was the 1st Christian cathedral built in Rome, as well as the pope’s seat as bishop of Rome and supposedly very beautiful inside, we had to contend with groups of clergies and nuns literally running into the cathedral to get good seats after passing through strict security checks. People were gathering in the square outside the cathedral but we didn’t want to wait and followed our (empty) guts and went a-hunting for lunch/dinner instead. Side-tracked once again, we stopped by Scala Santa, the holy staircase in Pilate’s court in Jerusalem which Jesus was believed to have traversed a few times on the day of his condemnation. It was brought back to Rome by St Helena, the mother of Constantine. We didn’t get to the top of that staircase because you had to climb it on your knees, and the Pope’s private chapel at the top demanded an entry fee (hmmm, does he have to get up the same way too?)

We had kebabs that night, and great fun watching the Netherlands-Italy match on big screen back at the campsite. It was especially interesting to be in the midst of the Dutch, all decked out in orange shirts/jerseys, jumping up from their seats every time they scored; and Italians, waving flags and cheering their losing side on. There, we watched a football match in Italy afterall. :p

On the last day, everyone overslept, and we had to abandon plans to head to Florence early in the morning. First, we headed back to the Colosseum and tried to sell off our Roma Passes because it still had 1 more free sight visit left in it. Sharon and I sold it to a couple, but apparently it didn’t work because we had already used to pass once at the Colosseum. Sigh. In the end, David and I went outside the Capitoline Museum and sold off everything. Took a lot of courage there, standing right outside the ticket office and trying to stop people before they went in to buy their own tickets. Heh. All to salvage some of the value of the Roma Pass.... I would still recommend tourists to buy it though, i think it might still be cheaper.

Italia Reflections: Rome (I)

ROMA
7-10 June 2008

After finally arriving at our camping site at 11pm at night, we got some hot pasta from the restaurant and settled into our cosy little cabins. First thing the next morning, we headed to the legendary Colosseum for our first sight-seeing stop. The moment we stepped out of the metro, there it was, standing majestically exactly like in the pictures. Complete with people dressed up as roman soldiers, ready to pose for a picture with you for a fee, there was no mistaking the fact that we were right at the very capital of the ancient world, and it almost felt like we were stepping back into new testament times. The inside was impressive as well, and we learnt about the games involving the gladiators and thousands of animals which lasted up to 100 days; but I personally preferred the look on the outside, with one half taller than the other because it was dismantled from the top for the building of other buildings. The amphitheatre actually derived its name from the colossal statue of Nero that once stood nearby. Also, it could seat about 50,000 – 70,000 people, but wasn’t the largest amphitheatre in ancient Rome, the nearby Circa Maximo had a capacity of 200,000. I can’t quite believe people could actually enjoy such ‘games’ though, watching gleefully as people or animals get literally torn apart and meeting certain death.

We spent the rest of afternoon exploring the nearby ruins called the Roman Forums, a complex built by each successive emperor to be the religious, commercial and political centre of his kingdom. Among the ruins we found Julius Caesar’s remains, the supposed tomb of Romulus- the founder of Rome, innumerable temples, churches and basilicas, the rostrum from which Marc Antony in Shakespear’s Julius Caesar declared “Friends, Romans, Countrymen…”, the arc of Titus which was erected after his successful invasion of Jerusalem. We also climbed 2 hills in the same area – the Palentino, where there were more ruins of what used to be the palaces and official residences of the emperors, and Capitoline Hill, home to the world’s oldest public museum and a little church called Carcere Mamertino where Paul was said to have been imprisoned while in Rome.

Just a short walk away (darn, we wanted to take as many buses and metros as we could since we had already bought the Roma Pass which was valid for 3 days) was the Pantheon. It is supposed to be a great architectural achievement because of its perfect hemispherical shape, the internal diameter being exactly equal to the height of the dome. It is also the best preserved structure from 2000 years ago still standing, complete. Originally built as a temple to all (Pan) gods (theos), it is now a functioning church as well as the burial place of 2 Italian kings and the famous Italian artist Raphael (yeah the red ninja turtle). The weather was really weird, with alternating periods of extreme heat radiating off the ground, and drizzles of rain. We needed our gelato relief, and we found it at this shop which had at least 50 different flavours which made us so confused as to which to try. But it was so yummy even mummy liked it.

We then walked (again!) over to the Trevi Fountain, which wasn’t that great but crowded to the last inch. Visitors are supposed to throw 3 coins into the fountain to ensure a return to Rome in the future, but we weren’t about to part with a single cent. We left quickly, wondering whether the homeless people on the streets had some sort of system as to who gets to pick the coins at the end of each day. The Piazza Navona was our last stop for the day. David split up with us to meet his cousin for dinner, and he never made it back that night. We had barely read about the sights on the piazza from our trusty lonely planet when we heard unfriendly ramblings of thunder. We decided to quickly head back before the clouds released their watery bombs onto us. Alas, the terrible bus system left us drenched anyway. Our camping site was pretty far out from the city, so we decided to stay at the train station for a while to wait for the rain to subside. The cheap pasta was our only consolation that night.