a taste of nostalgia

The day before, i went to luvena's house for a nice cosy dinner consisting of really, really good chinese food. I ate sooo much yesterday! There was nasi lemak, pao chai, herbal chicken, beef rendang, fu jian dan, hard boiled eggs with sambal, sambal prawns...it was pure heaven

very nice hor??!! machiam restaurant food!

Seriously, it's better than the chinese restaurants here, the food in Fredericton is H.O.R.R.I.B.L.E! I'm sooo satisfied now, can you imagine this is like my first chinese meal since....chinese new year!!! Oh gosh, soooo long ago! Luvena made arabian tea also, which she learnt online, it tasted very...ermm...unique, lolx, she added alot of things inside such as ginger, milk, sugar...

Group shot! (Extreme left: Bee, Ya-wen(Taiwan), Steven(Ya-wen's bf), Me(sitting down), luvena, Bilal(luvena's bf from saudi arabia) & not seen is bilal's brother, who was taking the photo shot

We smoked abit of sheeshaw too, this time it was grape flavoured with tobacco. There was a sorta exhilaration at trying out the sheeshaw this time round cause the water-pipe contained tobacco this time, meaning it was equivalent to smoking, which i've never tried before. And i guess it's the sorta feeling you get when you want to do something that you knwo you shouldn't be doing. It's the same feeling i got when me and my friends climbed over the school fence in SAJC in order to escape from school and the time when me, jess and sok walked out of class while Mdm Choo was teaching and also, the time when my JC mates and I covered ourselves in garbage bags and ran past the security guards who were standing guard at the school gate....lolx, now that i think about it, it seems like there were plenty of times i played truant.

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Anyway, time for picture post, i just remembered i haven't uploaded the pictures in montreal!

the legislative centre in montreal

the basilique notre-dame (a basilique is a church that has been accorded certain priviledges by the pope, such as being a landmark where the history of the architectural style are recorded)

guess how many pipes there are in this organ(aka The Casavant-Frères organ)?

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no prizes for guessing

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it's an astonishing...7,000!!!!!!! (my jaws literally dropped to the ground after the tour guide told us)

I can totally imgaine the organist having like 8 arms to play the friggin huge organ, he's gotta be an octopus, i'm 90% sure of it, if not how the hell would a human be able to play an organ with 4 keyboards, 97 stops and 7000 pipes??! That's why they place the organ at the back of the church on the second level! Because the organist would have caused too much of a distraction! He could be an attraction by himself, the church could probably charge an extra $2 per person in addition to the $4 church entrance fee just to see the organist and his amazing 8 arms!

this is the more intimate chapel behind the church, it's called the Chapelle du Sacré-Coeur (Chapel of the Sacred Heart), where they conduct baptisim, marriages and other more intimate events. the huge bronze carving on the wall is a depiction of the journey to eternal life and the heavenly goal. People at the bottom of the carving are seen going through 3 gates, each depicting a certain period of life, birth, life & death. And on the top is a dove & the hand of God, which is the ultimate goal.

Interesting fact: Celine Dion's 1994 wedding to René Angélil in the Basilique Notre-Dame.

dreaming of meadows

I'm studying for mid-terms on monday, and i'm so incredibly bored...can't wait to go to the Farmer's Market on saturday and eat nasi lemak, herbal chicken and vegetables with oyster sauce on saturday night. My lovely friend, Luvena is cooking for us! Okay...back to studying now...oh, i'm gonna rip my head apart if i hafta face that boring book again...i just want to lie in the grass meadows with the tips of my toes facing the dazzling sunlight...that would be sooo nice...

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UPDATES:

1. I'll be skipping school next week to go on my mini Moncton & Halifax Trip! I'll be gone from the 19th-22nd of March. Just in time for Alev's birthday!

2. We've bought our tickets from buffalo to New York, and we're probably staying at Catherine's house in Toronto, Markham, yay! Free lodging! Love her to bits! Time to research on what to do in toronto & the big apple! Can't wait! *Let's get out of the country! - Camera Obscura*

I love the piano piece in this amv. By the way, it's from the anime "5 centimeters per second". I have no idea what the anime is about though, but it looks horribly sad.

skating under the stars

March 2, 2008

I went ice-skating under the stars on the last night of quebec city trip. We rented skates for 6bucks and wheezed through the chilly winds of the march night sky. The skates were of terribly inferior quality, but for 6 bucks i guess we couldn't expect much. Beside the ice-skating rink, they were also selling snow and maple syrup(famous in canada). How do you eat it?? It's pretty gross actually... the shop owner basically pours hot maple syrup over a wooden box of snow, and you just wait till it solidifies and then you take one of the sticks provided to roll the maply syrup up into a twirl and there you go! People like to eat it with the snow :S (i accidentally placed my skates onto the same box of snow cause incidentally the shop also rents skates, so you can just imgaine how dirty the snow is, people just ASSUME that if it's white, it's clean...) The maple syrup sweet is similar to the "bang bang tang" we have in singapore, you know the ones they sell at pasar malaams?

and that's the shop! they have cones with maple syrup & maple butter in it. don't know who it taste like though, they're probably really really sweet :S probably get a few cavities after that.

March 3, 2008

the next day we walked around place royale, a street full of artsy shophouses and diners. we also visited the musuem of civilisation, don't have pictures of the latter though...well, not except for this...

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haha, and you were expecting some decent pictures...

streets of place royale

look at the vines, creepy but really nice in a surreal way


BEWARE!! CANONS!!

NOT TO WORRYYY!! GUTSY ALEV TO THE RESCUE!!! (oh gosh, what the heck was she thinking??!!)

Nice lil' group shot at the museum...(ahem, i'm posting this pic only cause it's time for some pictures with me, lolx)

And then we headed off to montreal!!

Our hotel, Glamour Hotel & Suites was really pretty, it's marketed as a boutique hotel. It's small though but the theme colour of the hotel is red. Alev was estatic when she saw the room cause she luurves red with a vengence. Lolx, and so we went crazy taking pictures of our room.

For dinner, we had the most delicious mexican food i've ever tasted at 3 amigos on St. Denis Street. But then again, this is probably the first time i'm eating at a mexican restaurant so i'm not exactly the food connoisseur here.

You see the huge glass cups?? It's pina colada, gosh, they're the most tasty beverages ever, EVER. mine was banana and strawberry flavoured with cherry and a orange on the side. *licks lips* and i had a taco with mexican rice, MAGNIFICIEEOOOUUNT!!

Okay, i'm getting a bit toooo detailed, lolx, i can't believe i'm actually describing the food i'm eating!! Lolx, i MUST be boreddd. But it really was super-duper yummy, please do give it a try if you're anywhere near montreal! After dinner, we went to a sheeshaw bar, it felt like an arabian brothel, haha. It had red curtains draping over the seats and wooden tables and chairs laid around and a small bar counter at the side. In case you were wondering what exactly is a sheeshaw, it's actually a water pipe. Look below...

There's a tube connecting to the thing and all you have to do is inhale. It's not like smoking cause it doesn't contain tobacco or the 100000 other toxic chemicals inside a cigarette. Well, not unless you request for the tobacco flavoured...but we took double,double apple as well as peach flavoured. It's more like a herb in the form of smoke. Drink it with tea and you'll find that the flavour of the smoke in your mouth mixes with the bland tea so you'll get peach/apple tea or whatever flavour sheeshaw you're smoking.

Look at all the smoke!! Alev taking the first smoke, apparantly it's harder to inhale at first, she can make smoke that is shaped in a loop!

Me trying out sheeshaw for the first time! Amateur, lolx.

Cosy eh? Very arabian...

i've been to ice and back

2nd March

-we headed off for the ice hotel (Hotel De Glace) in the morning, paid 130bucks for a roundtrip there. the ice hotel is apporximately 45mins from quebec city, so meaning it cost around 90 bucks sgd to travel 45mins. wth. it's like paying that amount to travel from jurong to changi. friggin money rippers. if only singapore's taxi drivers earned that much. i'd immediately drop my education, get a taxi licence and hit the roads.

- the ice hotel is so pretty but small :( the were 36 suites in total, with a chapel (in case any of you are looking for some wacky suggestions for wedding locations), there were igloos outside, a ice garden, a slide, ice sculptures and an ice bar with cocktails served in friggin cool ice glasses! Look!

us lying on the ice bed in one of the 36 ice suites (wth! i didn't realise the stupid man's hand was blocking the pic, does he even know how to take a freaking photo?!! @#!^*)

us in the snow garden!

ice sculpture of an eagle (gorgeous eh?)

Next, we headed down to the choco musee ( aka the chocolate musuem). I was all excited to visit this one attraction because 1) it's chocolate 2) there's free sampling of chocolate 3) chocolate's my best friend 4) i saw a friggin' cool chocolate train on their website!!

But to my disappointment, it was more of a chocolate shop, grrr! Feel my fury! what the hell, if it's a chocolate shop, say it's a f***ing chocolate shop, do they even know what a museummm is??!! It was sooo tiny, probably the size of my room! *faints*

AT LEeeaast, I gt to try some samples of chocolates there, it wasn't that incredible though. But there were some interesting chocolates shaped in guitars, piano, etc. Don't even think about buying the chocolates on display though cause they're so expensive, they'll burn a hole down your pockets, 3-4bucks sgd for a piece! And the most embarrassing thing happened in the shop, i tried to steal some more samples and i got caught by the shop assistant who quickly came over and said "no, no mam, you cannot take this". OMG...i felt like an ah tiong at that moment, my face literally went tomato red. apparantly, i could only take the samples when she was giving them out but not when they're placed at the table! harlow?? does that make sense? it's STILL samples right??

And so we went on strolling along the streets of quebec after getting our dose of hot chocolate and chocolate cake...the city was beautiful...but it was a pain in the ass to walk in the freezzing cold...






Lovely no? Look at the clear blue skies!! OMG, i didn't even realise they were so blue until i saw the pictures! We then ate at a turkish restaurant cause most of the diners were closed, such nonsense seriously, it was a sunday afternoon and which stupid entrepreneur would close their cafes, diners, whatever shop they have on a sunday afternoon?!! It's retarded i tell you.

Alev drinking her black tea

the land of the ol' -- QB

29th Feb

- Head off for Quebec city at 2.15pm

- Took the Acadian bus down to Rivere Du Loop and transferred to Orleans Express to Quebec City

- Keaw, my hippie thai gf, made friends with a Canadian girl and a French man while smoking (i'm convinced now that smoking really is a social thing, there's like some connection between smokers i think, not that i actually wana try it, but it's just amazing...)

Alev(the elephant lady with the incredible appettite)(left) & Meric(right)!

Keaw(left), Me(centre, duh?) & Bee(right)

Canadian girl (forot to ask for her name, lol) & Keaw

- Learnt some French words from Vincent, the French man, and whaddaya know, he was good friends with jolene and ru xuan (ntu exchange students who were in unb the previous sem!), it's amazing how small the world is!

Bee, Me & Vincent on the bus to Rivere Du Loop!


- Reached Quebec City at app. 11.20pm at night

- Met a Brazilian guy(really good looking Brazilian guy by the way, not as good-looking as the one working in the SUB at UNB but good enough) who was heading for hostelling international, which was near our hostel so we helped each other out and managed to find our way to the hostels with the help of a French guy who came out of his house to assist us ( i think we were making so much noise, he probably just wanted us to get along on our ways and stop casuing such a nusiance in the neighbourhood, lol)

- Checked into Auberge De La Paix (pronounced at Pee), it was a very cosy hostel and the room was small but good enough with 3 bunk beds, meaning 6 beds in total for 5 of us (Alev, Meric, Keaw, Bee and I)

1st March

- Inexplicably one of the most bizzare, extraordinary & amazing day of my entire life

- Keaw made friends again with another French man during a morning smoke outside & hooked up with him the very night(!!), talk about quick...not to mention the main complicating factor --> LANGUAGE BARRIER

- Adrian, the French guy, could barely speak English and needless to say, my gf Keaw could barely speak (no, cancel that, she has has absolutely no knowledge of) French

- They somehow found a connection, chemistry with each other through hand gestures and bits of english, talk about love overcoming all boundaries! Keaw said they even managed to talk about philosophy and evolution!! My first reaction was: ...........OMG....what kind of complicated gestures did they hafta use in order to talk about philosophy and evolution. I even have difficulty talking about it without the language barrier!

- And that was the start of her whole whirlwind, summer(or winter) romance. She was sooo mesmerized by him, she barely spent time with us the entire trip, she even stayed over at his place for the remaining trip! And not to mention doing it with a guy she barely knew for 2 days...not that it's very surprising corz it's Keaw, the typical hippie, free-spirited, independent girl who does whatever the hell she wants, has an ambition to visit scooter clubs all over the world and smokes weed (reminds me of mary-kate olsen actually) I think her life is probably really exciting but i don't think i'll ever be able to live life like her.

-As a bystander, i really felt like i was in some sorta movie, it was like a real-life enactment of "Before Sunset"(an independent movie about to foreigners meeting on a trip and finding a connection with each other through long conversations down the streets of paris(i think))

Keaw & Adrian

- We visited the Chanteau Frontenac, a magnificent hotel with a castle-like structure, it cost like 400+ bucks per night to stay there i think(!!) and we also went down to Laurier Quebec, the largest shopping centre in Eastern Canada(with 350 shops). Spent most of the time in the shopping centre because the weather was really bad outside, it was snowing like crazy and the wind was so friggin' strong, i nearly got blown off the pathway onto the road!


Streets of Quebec(so friggin colllldddd...)

Chanteau Frontenac

-We went back to the hostel for a short while to take a rest and gossip about eye candies in UNB and Alec's hot crush and hot hockey players in school, lol, we had tons of fun taking zilian pictures in the hostel room( Alev hasn't sent me the pics yet so i can't post them up, lol, not that i will anyway cause they're private, haha) and we face-booked cute guys photos.

- And then at night it was time for nightlife in Montreal! Whee! We went to Dagonbert, the biggest club in Quebec City! It was 3 stories high, with different music on every level, the first level played alternative music, the 2nd played techno(which is the more popular choice of Westerners, don't ask me why corz it's the most disgusting music ever invented)

-The club was really good though, in terms of effects, lightings, i think it's far superior to that of Singapore. They had like large screens around to show the dance videos and like a gazillion number of disco lights and they had dry ice and foam! Super nice!

- This time round, i only had a coke vodka instead of the previous time where i had a dave matthews and barcardi frizz at nicky zees. But i had lotsa fun without the nausea and headaches.

And gosh, French guys are bloody hot! Haha, elephant lady(lol, my dear Alev's new nick) was attracted to this amazingly hot waitor. She spent her remaining time in the club trying to seduce him, haha. Me and Meric even went up to the DJ to request for Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" so she could groove latin style to catch the waitor's eye! OMG, it was so funny, so both Alev and i were like dancing at the bars instead of the dancefloor cause she wanted to be more "visible". And, boy, did she dance Shakira style, it's too bad the waitor barely looked :( haha, i think he was more interested in the skinny bartender gal and it's probably company policy to get involved with customers.

At DagonBert entrance with elephant lady!

Outside Dagonbert

Us and Virginie(the French gal in red) -- she stayed with us in the same hostel room so we invited her to dinner and the clubs

- We went back around 3am! And then we found Keaw in the room, she just returned from her date with Adrian, she tried accompanying us to the clubs but it was too awkward having a French guy around, so they left after having dinner with us.

- Okay, that's all for now, i'm tired and i can't remember what i did the next day, there's so much things to say, i can't blog about it all at once, lol. But the next day was fun too cause we went to one of the only 2 ice hotels in the world!