a day of homesickness

this morning, i woke up homesick. i had a really strange dream about my family, where joel was actually 5 years old, and i hadn't been home for 4 years or something. the rest of the family was intact, except that joel wasn't really joel, he/she was joelle, and she was a 5 year old genius. i remember she came crawling (i dun know why she's still crawling at 5!) to me, but spoke in perfect english, asking if i was carol jie-jie. i was really surprised that she knew i even existed was quite affectionate. in reality, i really dun think joel (who's about 1.5 years) will have any idea as to who i am and he'll prob cry (or cen prob run away now) if i try to get too close. i think it's time to go home, because people grow up/older and things change.

i try not to feel homesick and head to work. i dunno how the week has passed and it's friday again. the office is exceptionally quiet - lots of pple are on summer holiday this week. met ben koh for lunch and talked about singapore again, and school and the usual. it's been a long time since i've thought about smu, and i'm not sure if i'll be able to cope next term.

the highlight of my day was my mid-term appraisal. again, i can't believe 5 weeks has eclipsed and i'm halfway through my stint. it was a good appraisal, which went much better than i had anticipated, and left me realising that things could turn out in the next few months that would take me away from home again in the not so distant future. i ponder a bit about this prospect but i really have to seek God's will because i had never planned for any of this to happen.

the appraisal also gave me a sense of finality, and i felt that my time left here is quite short, so i went shopping after work. by the way most people left by 6pm, it was nearly a ghost-town. got to my favourite store at knightsbridge and bought stuff for the pple at work. the kind to give pple in appreciation of their kindness on my last day kinda thing, you know. i felt almost as if i was leaving next week.

came back to have 'lak cheong and egg' cooked by my housemate, and i thought of my ah gong, cos he's almost the only person i remember who cooks 'lak cheong'. i wonder how he's doing now? chatted for quite a bit about the singaporean education system and whole bias towards overseas grads thing. who knows, our conversation might get featured in the papers back home.

when i stepped into my room, there was a postcard sitting on my table - all the way from good ol' singapore, sent by good ol' luyi. (thanks so much babe! yup it's super cute but i dun get that spanish connection at all! anyway, please take a rest after all that crazy euro-tripping and help me with school prep etc! hee hee :p)

i almost felt like taking out my luggage to start packing, but that will be a little too early, ain't it?
i think i shall just go to sleep and try and dream about home more. but wake up tomorrow and head to cambridge instead. i need to start touristing around UK, because i'm heading home soon...

singapore-style discrimination

i can't stand people, singaporeans, who think they are better off than their fellow countrymen.

ok, let me first explain that this is in the context of singaporean students studying abroad. just happened to bump into some of them during my time in london.

after a quick round of introductions, and the usual 'are you malaysian/singaporean' question that will inevitably follow whenever fellow singaporeans recognise each other's unmistakable accent, the succession of questions would revolve around which school one goes to. i've never had any problem introducing myself to anyone from anywhere else - when i say i study in singapore, people appreciate the diversity, at least, they are polite and don't seem to start looking down on you just cos you don't study in the united kingdom or in europe. even the malaysian and bruneian students talked to you like you were on the same level with them.

not with singaporeans though.

they will give a really shocked look, and after a few seconds of recovery, they will either 1) try to cover up their surprise by saying something pretentious in a mocking tone, like 'wow, that's really impressive', or 2) give it to you straight in the face that you must be a lot worse off than them. one of them even went as far as to say, in an attempt to hide the fact that he has committed the crime of discrimination, 'well, you know the discrimination between local and overseas degrees right?' (or something to that effect, qing, can you remember what were the exact words?) and then, they proceed to talk down to you and dish out 'advice' about living and working in london.

of course, not all singaporeans are like that- i've a singaporean colleague at work and she's very nice and geuinely amazed that i managed to put the logistics together, and loads of friends who study overseas who haven't shown themselves to be like that. but meeting those few black sheep is disgusting enough.

but for those i've met in the banking world recently, i would love to give them the benefit of doubt- that they were not implying anything with their reactions. but i don't really want to meet them a second time to find out...

Buda, Pest and the blue Danube

Really sorry for the long break I took from posting my travel chronicles. This entry on follows the on from Poland, and starts from the overnight train we took from Krakow to Budapest.

Budapest, Hungary
24-25 May 2008

Hungary is another country with a long history. Just to give a brief overview from my limited knowledge: the Huns (yes that's how they got their name!) settled in Budapest in the 5th century. However, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late 9th Century by the Magyar chieftain Árpád, whose great grandson István (Stephen) ascended to the throne with a crown sent from Rome in 1000. The Kingdom of Hungary existed with minor interruptions for more than 900 years, and at various points was regarded as one of the cultural centers of the Western world. It was succeeded by a Communist era (1947-1989) during which Hungary gained widespread international attention regarding the Revolution of 1956 and the seminal move of opening its border with Austria in 1989, thus accelerating the collapse of the Eastern Bloc.(thanks again to wikipedia.org for most of above)

will post the rest of the words soon. for now, enjoy the pics! :)

the world's most famous dept store

UH-OH

i just went crazy at harrod's! and since I am a cheap-skate who only buys things when they are being offered at a substantial discount, you can thus safely conclude that the things there must be really quite cheap. which is something i never expected since it's supposed to be so atas and expensive.

only managed to get out of the house at 3pm after finally getting to sleep in (that's a reason why weekends are worth living for!), and kinda got side-tracked by some other dept store on the way to Mo.ha.mmed Al Fay.ed's famous empire, which was somewhat like John Little, haha. the pple who shop there belong to the older generation, so when i queued up for the fitting room i had to wait FOREVER. anyhow i managed to get a pencil skirt for work, yay. long way to go tho, i have hardly anything to wear to work, argh, and i need to buy clothes that requite minimal ironing, because ironing on sunday nights is such a pain.

ok back to harrod's. i found myself in the food hall upon entering, and it was packed. all the nice looking biscuits and tea boxes were '3 for 2', and i was so tempted to get some to give the folk (yes there's no plural to that word) back home, but the packing scene at copenhagen flashed before my eyes and i changed my mind. i decided that all the souvenirs had to be non-bulky/heavy. heh.

obviously this wasn't taken today. that was my 1st time @ Harrod's when mum was here.

somehow, i managed to bump into sabrina and melvin. quite a pleasant surprise (tho i alr knew before hand tt she would be there cos i spied on her blog... haha) considering how mega-big the stall is there are so many guards just helping lost people to find their way. on top of that, everytime you pay, the last qn the cashier will ask is 'can i point you to where you want to go next?'. i found that quite cute. and since i bought quite a lot of things and had to pay for them before leaving each section, i heard that question quite a lot.

fragrances and cosmetics were all going at 50%, so i managed to buy lipstick for mummy, a cheap scent (not EDT or EDP haha, i was tempted tho!) for myself and some other random things (sharon i really wanted to call to ask if you wanted benefit stuff! foundation at 9 quid, cheaper than l'oreal back home lor!). bought yinglu a present for her birthday too (: [or it could be part of your present i guess, if the rest alr have something up their sleeves]. got typical harrod's souvenirs for the cousins (except sean, so if you've reading this please tell me what you want!) and nearly got tempted into buying a bear for myself cos it was half-price but decided that it was stupid to buy for myself. *hint* bought running shorts cos we have a sever lack of them at home, and a ferrari frangrance for david, haha. oh yeah, before i left, i saw the wimbledon memorabilia and couldn't resist getting a cap, i think i shall give that to wee siang, since he did try to help me improve my tennis last time.

anyway, the reason why i wanted to blog in the first place wasn't cos the store is quite amazing. the toilets had signs leading to them called 'luxurious restrooms'. hahaha. but it was really quite luxurious, since there was a water cooler (the kind with gold rims) with plastic cups by the side, and a janitor went into the cubicle to clean up a bit in between every usage (which also explained the long queues). there was also a range to sprays and hand lotion for you to liberally utilise at the sink. reminded me of saks 5th avenue, when debbie and i, as wide-eyed 19 year olds, couldn't believe our eyes when we went to the toilet we took a whole video of it. haha!

other than the restroom, i steered clear of the 'wedding dress boutique', 'designer studio', 'luxury collections', but couldn't help but wander into the shoe collection section. i was in there for a grand total of 10 seconds because i felt too out of place. and i still haven't bought a pair of flats so that i can walk to the train station in the mornings. i should stop wearing my suit and birks haha. it's quite a funny sight.

there was also a memorial to dodi and diana, and it was quite a tourist attraction. so i decided to be a tourist too and jostled my way in to get a picture. haha.

oh, best of all, i had an additional 10% off cos they have some special harrod's reward card thing. maybe i should drag david along and go again tomorrow, and maybe i can get my teddy bear this time.... haha.

i'll settle for a smaller version of that, thankyouverymuch (: (only 7.95!)

Back to Work

Just a quick post to keep track of things. The past 2 weeks have been nothing short of hectic. After coming back from the eastern europe trip (which i haven't even finished blogging about) and returning to the home we had in copenhagen, it was a mad 5 days of trying to sightsee around the beautiful city i was gonna leave. saying goodbye was hard, and it warrants another post altogether - a reflection of the last 5 months. streets and places were just becoming all too familiar, and new friendships were just being cemented, but time whisks us all away. the sense of reluctance was eased by the rush of packing up and trying to squeeze my danish life into 40kg, and then move to the uk and turn into a londoner for the next 2.5 months. packing was a nightmare, and getting them to the cph airport, past the baggage check-in, out of gawick airport, onto the super-backward-tube-with-neverending-flights-of-stairs-with-no-escalators-or-lifts was nothing short of a miracle, which i will probably never find the time to record down in writing.

jetted off to italy for a week and a day with mummy, sharon and david, and then came another round of goodbyes and another luggage-packing and airport-going fiasco. had a day and a half to settle into my new place, and before i knew it, i was thrown into the cycle of waking up early in the morning and getting to work.

today was my 4th day of work. today i managed to get to work in 20 minutes, but i wasn't so fortunate on the 1st day. i woke up extra early to get ready and aimed to be at canary wharf early. it was good thing, because i got so lost in the sea of tall buildings (relative to copenhagen, every building is tall). the map i had consulted before i left the house clearly marked out the building very close to the DLR (Docklands Light Railway - think LRT). Instead, i walked halfway across canary wharf (think raffles place) and landed up at the doorstep of morgan stanley. oops, wrong bank, and the security guy pointed me in the wrong direction too... grrr. it was a bad start, but things picked up after that after i made it there on time, went through the registration process feeling so foreign and attended the induction, which made me feel a lot more comfortable because everything seemed vaguely familiar.

met my bosses, who both seemed very nice, but it was another familiar person that made me feel the most welcome. one of the directors who was at the assessment centre in february, who also happened to be the same one who had called me up, recognised me instantly, and was so unbelievably friendly and helpful. He even emailed me to check if i was ok, and if i needed help, and if i knew anyone else in London. All those emails really made the 1st day a lot less scary. He also brought me around to meet some people and allowed me to sit in for a briefing he was giving another junior guy about an overview of the whole department. It also helped that the people sitting around me are really friendly as well. E, an Australian chinese showed me the staff restaurant and even offered to let me use her card to buy food since I didn't have one yet. Also met my buddy, Amee, a Kenyan Indian, for lunch, and she was really nice too. Thank God for such a great start in terms of fitting in.

Work-wise, well, i've not been using my brain much the last semester, in the financial sense, and so i'm pretty rusty about all these company analysis things. Been trying to catch up but reading up but i've a long long way to go in terms of things to do. started a bit on real work, so i'm glad for that. but you know what's the most awesome thing? i got to leave at like 5 plus for most of the days except today. they are really flexible with time i think, my boss comes in at 740 and leaves at 5pm. her boss keeps coming round and telling Amee and me to go home early since we just started. yay, i hope that if i'm efficient enough i won't have to stay at office till too late everyday...!

time flies, as usual. tomorrow's friday! besides having to meet my boss at 8.30am tomm, i've a whole week of training next week to look forward to, and meeting other people my age. there are like 200 interns, it's madness. and i really hope i don't come across as too stupid or something, if not i'm gonna leave people thinking that singaporeans are really silly. heh... or at least the only one from a singapore university. it's quite paiseh when i look at the directory of names in the intern handbook... amidst all the branded UK and european schools, there's a single 'Sin.ga.pore Mg.mt Uni.ver.si.ty'. maybe they'll despise me. we'll see... for now, i just have to worry about what i'm gonna do over the weekend. David's camping somewhere up north in the country - lake district. he's still on holiday and travelling, i'm jealous already! i really dunno how the past 5 months just evaporated... i need to do a channelnewsasia-style 'reporting' of my activities, just to make sure that at the end of it i know where all the time went.

ambitions, ambitions.

this is carol, news on the move, london.