Changi to Eindhoven

My flight, KLM dutch airlines KL0836 was delays by ~45 mins, if I'm not wrong...It's supposed to take off at 1:25am. Anyway, we reached our destination only 10 minutes late. guess they put in a lot of buffer time.And.. it's time for pictures again!

I would say that KLM's entertainment center, as I experienced that day wasn't as good as S'pore airlines. KLM's SMS and e-mailling systems weren't working. And the movies weren't recent ones either. I had trouble finding songs that fitted my taste. Soon, I resorted to my mac and ipod touch for entertainment. But the games on KLM's system were good though! I enjoyed them, especially the caveman one :D

And here are the pics with ppl on the plane:

above is me and Johnny! he had 2 empty seats beside him, with him at the window seat! Same case as me :)

And this is me, KH and FC! KH was a rows infront of FC and I, FC was a row infront of me. And FC and I encountered this woman who didn't want to sit with us. I think she was originally supposed to sit with FC but she moved to the row behind her. And when she found out that I was in that row, she moved to the row infront of FC which had 2 other people in it. Well, at least I tried to be nice to her by helping her to close the hand luggage compartment :) btw, Mingyi was also on board, but he was far infront, I realise i didn't take a pic with him :(

And now, onto the meals!! As you guys know, I'm a vegetarian. So, I had ordered Asian Vegetarian meals on board. So, when the meals actually came, I realised that they were Indian food!

above was the dinner after take off! And I got the food first before others. There was this man on the girls' row who kept staring at me eating! haha! too bad! After this, I tried to sleep and managed to get a few hours rest. And just as we passed over Russia, there were cup noodles and ice-cream. the noodles were non-vege, and so i had to go with the ice-cream. And we were given breakfast before landing:

And I took some shots of the flight info screen as well:

And below is a video of flying over amsterdam:
<video to be uploaded soon>

And below is video of landing on the amsterdam's airport:
<video to be uploaded soon>

Sabarish had been staying overnight at the airport, waiting for us. Azri arrived ~2hrs arlier in s'pore airlines and we all met up at Amsterdam's schiphol airport. and here's a pic of our baggage:

And by azri's and saba's recommendations, we went out to feel the temperature! And it started to snow rain ice!

Mingyi decided to wait for qingqing who will be arriving in the evening to accompany her to eindhoven and so, we decided to join him till 1pm. I guess it helped cos we took turns to look after the baggage while he got several hours of beauty sleep on one of the airport chairs :P
I got some bread for myself there too! The croissants there were really big! And at about 1pm, we left to Eindhoven in a train. Johnny got discounted tics for us and it happened that the card that allows us to have discounts was expired :( Luckily, the conductor was nice. Cos, firstly the student card or whatever that was belonged to his fren! Looks like all asian faces look the same to dutch people! hahah! Secondly, he told us that strictly speaking, he should get us new tickets worth 18.63 euros each and a fine of 35 euros each! But he just let us travel with the discount! yay! we saved ~8 euros! The train ride was 1.5 hrs and we saw little snow along the way :( I thought all the snow had melted!

And the toilet on train was interesting! When the flush button is pressed, the cover opens and all the dirty stuff falls onto the track below! Of course, there is also some water to clean the toilet bowl...After we arrived in eindhoven, we lugged our luggages down a long staircase and waited for azri and kai hee. Actually, their train had some problem and started moving backwards at quarter speed half way there. And so, they had to drop off at an earlier station and change trains. So, they met their landlord later than expected. They then checked into their homes with the landlord, who showed them around the place too. After that, they came over to meet us at the station. We then went to eat our lunch in a chinese wok restaurant nearby since it was affordable and had vege food for me. I got myself a hot cup of veges+rice:

It tasted great! and the portion was HUGE!! enough for 2 ppl! Some of us couldn't finish it and brought the left-over back. I managed to finish it, but was bloated in the end! and thanks to me, azri got to see how an empty cup looks like! :P
After that, Johnny and Saba went to a hotel. Johnny decided to join Saba in his room, but had to pay in the end :( Their room looked decent, nice and cosy, with TV! Costed them 80 euros in total, per night! Azri and Kai Hee then accompanied FC and I to their room and helped us to carry our luggage :) It was ~20 min walk and I would like to apologise to the residents for all the noise that dragging our luggages made :(
And.. we took a few pics along the way:

and kaihee had a rooftop just outside her room!! The view wasn't wonderful but there was a pull-up bar for her to work out with every morning! I want that tooo!

okays... here you can see that pull-up bar at the corner! After dressing down, we managed to get saba and johnny on msn video chat to let them see azri's house. And after that, we showered and went to sleep! end of day 1 in Eindhoven!

Away from Changi

The journey really started at home when my parents and I brought my luggages down to take a taxi. We didn't have to wait for long before one pulled up for us. We then went down to terminal 2 so that I can go off and meet my friends while my parents toured around the airport terminals. haha! Thanks to the S9D peeps for coming down :D And I was surprised when elaine came down as well! Thank you! We met at Swensons. I wasn't hungry as I had just taken dinner at home. So I didn't eat anything. We got the Swensons staff to take a couple of group pic for us:

Us at the table

Us outside the swensons with my baggage!

And here are the parting gifts from them:

On my right hand is a wonderfully made book filled with pictures of me and my dear class on our class gatherings! Thank you to everyone who wrote notes inside :) they were thoughtful and memorable. As py said, I can always flip through it when feeling homesick :) And thanks to qh who (i suspect) made it! It's really nice! my parents wanted to see it too, but i denied access, they'll have to wait till i come back!
And below my left hand is a USB adaptor which I need for my mac, since it has only 2 usb ports! A thoughtful gift! yay! I'll open it when i get back into my student room!
And on my left hand is a packet of smiley sweets for my travels! py even put in a scotchtape and rubberband so that i can seal it and keep it! :) And after 2 more pictures at the skytrain station (for those who missed the outing, this station was in the sky! too bad you missed it! HAHA!)

After this, I went off to meet up my parents, who insisted that i eat something. Since I had loads of time before even the check-in counters open, my parents brought me to a restaurant to grab a bite. After that, we went back to do the check-in. k
By that time, my travel mates had already done checking! Knowing that my luggage was far overweight, I went to check in and of course, the lady told me that they were overweight. And my parents then helped me repack the stuff, by squeezing some of the stuff into the hand luggage and taking out some of the stuff. After that was settled, I managed to send in 23 kg of luggage.and my hand luggage was 16.6kg! i found a friend of mine whose Hand luggage was 20kg! and the weight of these were not checked at all! :P I had to throw away a Ponds moisturizer and a bottle of lotion though, cos of the liquids regulation.

5 of us were traveling together on that flight: With that, it's time to end off this post with a few pictures!

And all 5 of us were from different countries: me from India, Mingyi from china, John from Indonesia, FC from malaysia and KH from s'pore!

Pre-Departure stuff

Well, I applied for this about a year ago and I told myself that i would be happy to go to any of my 6 choices. It turned out that I got my last choice since I applied for unis with low vacancies and high demand, like waterloo! And I got my last choice! I remember tt when I saw the name 'Techniche Universitiet Eindhoven', I was like 'Am I really gonna go there?' But well, the admin stuff came in after that. Just to note: The screen in front of me says:
ground speed:796Km/h
Km left to travel: 2093km
Altitude: 10972m
Outside temp: -58deg celcius
Firstly, I had to go to the uni's website and fill in a host of applications for the department I am going to and give that in to NUS (Ms Dawn) for them to send it over. And then the nus admin peeps started asking me for module mappings. Actually, I had to give in a list of modules I plan to do there at the point of application. But of course, changes can be made to this list. As for the module mapping, the website to refer to will be the TU/e's owinfo website. I think it is: http://owinfo.tue.nl go to subject information, and search away! I managed to map 12 modules successfully so far. and only about 3 of them clash with each other. And TU/e's semester is split into 2, so they call it quarters over here. I'll be going in for the 3rd and 4th quarters. And the third quarter has a LOT of holidays! I'll show you guys the schedule later..

And then, I got my visa done. Do this ASAP. I had to send over copies of some stuff over to TU/e. One of them is proof of financial support. For this, do remember that the account that is shown has to be the student's account (you can't show your parent's and give a letter of support from them) and it has to state that the $ is freely available. DBS doesn't give this kind of bank statements in one go, so you'll have to pester them, if you have a DBS account. I'll post the wordings later on. And do mail TU/e a scanned copy of your docs to confirm if they are okay. And lastly, dun forget to buy that airticket! And DO take into account the date on which you can move into your student room when you book your airticket. If not, you'll end up homeless for a night or more, like a couple of us now. I'll be bunking in with my friend for the first night (since I'm roomless for that night) and I'll be moving into a hotel for the next 3 nights, since my student accommodation only starts then! If any of you going on exchange find yourself having to be roomless, you can consider sleeping over at the airport or couchsurfing

And as for my packing, I finished 95% of packing ~2 days before and the weight was just nice! 20 kg for check-in and 12 kg for hand luggage. And my mom was worried that I might need some food for me to survive since I'm a vegetarian. And after putting in my laptop and stuff and rearranging, the check-in was 26kg! And my hand luggage's weight was 13kg. oh ya, I packed in a rice cooker too! and a sleeping bag! And of course, they didn't allow me to carry all that, so my parents helped me with taking out some stuff and stuffing some more stuff into the hand luggage. and that's how I managed to get it! haha! I thought I carried the heaviest hand luggage, at 16.6kg, but I was wrong! I had a fren carrying 20kg of hand luggage with him! cool! I shall try that when I get back :P I guess that's all for pre-departure stuff.

Introduction

Nope, this isn't another intro to my blog :P It's the intro for the posts that will be coming up for the next 6 months. For those not-so-updated souls, I'll be on exchange to TU/e Eindhoven, Netherlands during this period :D I'm hoping to use these upcoming posts for several reasons:
1. To help NUS engin ppl who will be going over to TU/e in the future
2.Keep in touch with my friends
3.Entertain myself! :P
4. and sorta keep ppl informed of places i travel to
5 record down memories of adventures!

yup! so my perspective of presenting information may vary within a post. That's all for now! :D

Blogo Test

I just installed this software called blogo to help me blog. Just testing it out with a picture and some text!