Blogging from Unseo

I am now at a hotel in Unseo-dong, Jung-gu, Incheon, next to the airport. My trip has been very long. In fact, I think it has been too long and it seems hard to justify if not for some important things that I got done during this time, so I list them here.

Laos

1. My friend is here for undercover missionary work, so I don't mention his name in writing on blog. After some false starts, he could meet me after all. While I was on my way to him and in Vientiane I found he was raising some cash and some children's books for various causes. I bought the books and put in my share in a scholarship, in remembrance of a friend's mother who had recently passed
2. I bought a Hmong jacket in Luang Prabang. I used it to form part of an outrageous costume in a big upcoming dance party in Bangkok (Swing Era 2025)

Books from Vientiane

Thailand

1. Jamie joined Swing Era 2025 because she wanted to dance. I joined Swing Era 2025 because I was worried about everyone being kidnapped and shanghaied across to the Burmese border to catfish incels in perpetuity. Mission success! All my friends are home safe.
2. I danced a special dance with a girl on festival day 1. She had a different way of doing swingouts: she liked to give me a shove on the shoulder every time it happened. It was like the dance between Jeongnyeon (as Gumigeol) and Hong Jooran (as Guseuragi) in the show Jeongnyeon, and I was the freaking Hong Jooran. I was down bad for many days

Jme being iconic with Swing Era merch

Korea

1. Opus Dei activity this week. In addition to being down bad, I had also caught a cold after going to Thonburi. I spent many days not going on excursions. When I was almost recovered, I brought my mates on an excursion to Saenamteo Martyrs' Shrine and then Noryangjin Market. There, we followed our heart/gut bacterial overlords and had fried stuff and had no regrets
2. Waegwan Abbey is real-life community behind Amatodate. I finally visited them.

Saenamteo

Blogging from Abu Ghosh, Israel

Monastery and School in the direction of Gaza, view from Saxum House

8 October: Hey y'all. This is me after a couple month's wait again. I feel stupid to report this but I am in a warzone right now. They fired rockets at Ashkelon on Saturday morning; we saw two plumes of black smoke from the distance (and it was a clear view from Saxum House) which lingered the morning. We called off the trip to Jericho and Qumran. Wael the driver had arrived to pick us up. He arrived full of confidence, patted himself in the chest and said "Don't worry, Wael is here". After some minutes he also decided that this was not normal, and turned around the coach to drive back to base. 

Plumes in Ashkelon

Saxum House at Abu Ghosh is to the west of West Jerusalem, far enough to be in its own small town. It is populated with Arabs who have no appetite for war. A monastery dedicated to Mary, Ark of the Covenant, is based here and occupies the top of a large hill in front of the patio; the Muslim locals thus also enjoy the patronage and protection of their own great saint, Maryam bint Imran. Also occupying that hill is "Abu Ghosh Palace Technological School". The hill blocks our view of Gaza, and we only hear the explosions from behind it. 

Activities were cancelled and, after ducking into the air raid shelters a few times, we went into a lull. I quickly discovered that war was boring. This is something I knew from reading and hearing the experience of people who actually went through it. War is long days and weeks and years of waiting, staying put, and keeping up morale; this is true especially for noncombatants. In any case, it cannot hurt to put in prayers for people who live closer to Gaza, and now deal with the more traumatic kind of nonsense daily.

Flights are going through some drama in terms of cancellations and delays. Some of the fellow pilgrims have found their way out, reporting success. Inshallah, I will do so too.

9 October: I am recounting events on Monday while already back at home on Friday. I passed the nights at Saxum house at first nervously, with the solid metal blinds down, and having nightmares about Singapore being attacked with missiles, but by the second night I had become accustomed; I slept like a baby while explosions from Gaza rumbled on distantly behind the hill. On Monday morning 6 of us left the house in a minivan driven by Mr. Naseem Assad from Terra Dei, the tour operator. He sped us on the highway to Ben Gurion Airport at Lod. The landscape went from hilly to flat. The only checkpoint we ran into was just outside of the airport, who let us through without looking at our passports.

The departure hall was about 40% filled. Friends who arrived in the afternoon on the same day sent pictures, showing it already much more crowded. An alarm sounded when I was almost due to board the flight to Istanbul. Everyone in the departure gates went to shelter, but only stayed for a few minutes. Afterwards, everyone went back to business and boarding resumed, which was amazing given how many large families with young children and wailing wives were travelling on that day.

At the same time missiles from Gaza hit Abu Ghosh, killed 3 people, destroyed Ramzan Kadyrov's mosque, and frightened the people still at Saxum House. Joey Villareal and Gabriel Manasigan were in town, finding beer; this was to become the "beer run of their lives".

12 October: The last member of our workshop, Russ Edmundson, has successfully left Israel and is now stranded in Bucharest, but at least he is away from the warzone, like the rest of us.

Our last group photo in Saxum House

Blogging from Waitara, New South Wales

I am plopped at Waitara for the weekend. The main street here is lined with car dealerships. It did not seem like much of a place at first, and I had only come to this area of Australia to visit my friend Shaun, who lives in Pennant Hills. However, there are a few pleasant surprises:

1. There is a train station within walking distance, and the trains to Sydney Downtown runs VERY frequently.

2. There is a CATHEDRAL (Broken Bay) within WALKING DISTANCE.

3. The Ukrainian diner here is СМАЧНО

From the Desk at the Public Library in the Former Nepean City Hall, Ottawa

I spend these days skulking around the libraries a lot; first, the one down in Rue Rideau, which plays hosts to a dazzling array of vagabonds and other desperadoes including myself; then, the one in what used to be the City Hall of Nepean, a jurisdiction recently absorbed by the capital in what many see as a shameless money-grab. I almost forget to mention a third: a study room tucked securely in a residence for university students run by Opus Dei, and a fourth: a picturesque little lounge in the National Gallery from where I took this pretty picture of Gatineau. These venues give me ample supply of books, space to study, and distraction from the protracted visa paperwork with the embassy. The affair was anticipated to take only a few days, but evidently, it will drag for weeks to even a month.

I have decided to become Canadian in the meantime. To (interiorly) thumb my nose at the Yanks I have bought new clothes, bought a public transport card, registered myself at the library, mingled with the parishioners, and sharpened my French. Family friends have graciously taken me into their home, so that I have a taste of the most mundane Ontarian suburbia, and do not have to change hotels every few days while I wait for an indeterminable time for news from the embassy. New friends and acquaintances feed me so many opinions on how the country is (or should be) run that I almost begin to share in their anguish in the woes of Canadian society and politics, even though I do not have business in this country other than that wretched paperwork. Maybe, when things are going better, I will look back on these times and laugh.

From the Coffee Table at Siem Reap

It just so happened that I am now in Cambodia to join Dad for a few days. I am pleased to report the existence of St. John's Church, but probably won't be able to make any of their mass/rosary timings. The church is rather understated in stark contrast to the insane fixation that people have on Angkor Wat, which is not even currently used as a house of worship. In other news, we biked out of town to visit some farmers in the morning. The highlight was trying salak, which is a fruit imported from Thailand. The Australians saw those things for the first time today and they (the fruits) were much better-tasting than their Indonesian counterparts.

UPDATE: Turns out people worship at A.W., and I stand corrected

Blogging from Reykjavik

I am blogging from Reykjavik, from the hostel next to the city bus terminal called Hlemmur. This is the place from where Josef takes the number 5 to work. An record shop by Smekkleysa is a short walk westwards, plus a shitload of pubs. Reykjavik is the unofficial most underrated nightlife locations in Europe, if I can say that Iceland is part of Europe with a straight face.

Today the plan is to get to Snæfellsjökull through Borgarnes. On Saturday we might go to Þórsmörk for a short walk in the south. On Sunday we get to Þingvellir and all the waterfall stuff near to the capital, and on Monday we go to the Dickmuseum. After that in the evening we shall scram back south to the Burgh. More to follow.

Dublin Airport, Overnight

I don't know how many times a traveler has to endure this kind of situation before he becomes somewhat salty. In any case, today is my first time missing my flight. I have to get out of Ireland anyway so that I can meet Angi in Lyon, and I promised to arrive by train. And NO ONE ever breaks a promise made to a Finnish guy.

The new flight cost me like a kick in the nuts. I shall spend the night in this airport, then check in my whole jolly backpack tomorrow, because I might as well use my money's worth. Ryanair, suck this! I'm glad to be from Asia!

Hello again, London.
Ireland was good. I will blog soon about this country. No, Ryan, you're not in this.

From the desk at Crissier

The reformation fathers, and among their ranks Cromwell, a known scoundrel and tyrant

A summary of the first week of school:

ONE: Bureaucracy. Course registration last until the end of the second week in school, so people are still free to take up or drop classes as they please. Of course, the professors do not care whether you come for lectures or not, but the most important bits were still covered in the first lecture, so one is in a bit of a rut if he was busy in the first week and has no one in class to whom he can flood questions.

Residence permit is finally settled, on my third try of applying to the Crissier population office.

Bank account with PostFinance is now fully functional. They gave me my account details over the counter, then mailed me a cute calculator device for the e-banking, then mailed me me the e-banking number and password, and then the card, and then the pin, all in separate servings. This is just being extremely safe. In comparison, Nordea mailed me everything at one go, seven days after my application, and in Singapore one could get his card over the counter, and people just looked at you funny if you braced yourself for any more paperwork.

TWO: Courses. Materials semester project, Lithography, Biomaterials, Photovoltaics, Wood, Graph Theory and Numerical Analysis, in this order throughout the week. Textbooks from La Fontaine (bookstore in Swiss Cheese building) and free leisure reading from La Riponne. 

There will be a class presentation and my subject would be on a Swiss pine, though I wondered sometimes if only I could present on a tropical species and talk about a tree species that is closer to heart, like teak or something similar.

THREE: Geneva. We went to Geneva to crash Szu Yu's kitchen for dinner. Before the dinner we scoured the earth for cheap restaurants and chocolatiers and luxury-brand stores that the gang stared hungrily at but never stepped in. The season being winter, we wound up spending much of the afternoon indoors in a glassware and ceramics museum, which had free entrance.

The city was a stronghold of the Swiss reformation. It held a peculiar air, as if the statues of the Reformation fathers are suddenly alerted to my presence and are now glaring judgmentally at this intruding vestige of the old faith all the way across the city. This is in contrast of the feeling one gets when with the Finnish Lutheran fathers' statues (e.g. Agricola), who radiated only apathy.

FOUR: Church. It seems that going to the 8pm mass is a bad idea, whether at the Basilica or at St Francis. So few people were at Saint Francis yesterday that only the side chaplet was open. It so happens that there was a Parish special guy in the service, who instead of offering the Sign of Peace to just the people in the immediate vicinity, offered it to the whole church while the priest waited patiently for him to finish. The priest had an Iberian accent and he seemed almost, at times of weakness or distraction, to lapse back to Spanish or Portuguese or whatever it was that he spoke before he took up French. Mass in English are available once a month in Saint-Sulpice and once a month in Bussigny, rendering people like me wandering, parishless folk.

From the desk at Ecublens

The (Gallo-Roman) city of Lausanne in ruins

ONE. I have landed at Lausanne on Tuesday last week. I have been feeling zonked and nervous by the long plane ride and the swarthy, menacing disposition of the locals (as compared to that of the Finns, which was merely apathetic). At the train station someone tried to speak to me. He was a beggar who had journeyed many miles from faraway Italy in order to ask two francs from unsuspecting people at the Lausanne Gare. However, I did not have change, and ran away as quickly as I could dragging my luggage.

For my first week, I stayed in the hostel, the one between the Roman ruins of Lousonna and the museum exhibit concerning the ruins. Toilet was in bad shape but breakfasts and public transport were all free, so that was okay.

The heart of activity in this commune is the Riponne. At Riponne there is a square where flea markets selling cheese, vegetables, old books, old hats, etc. sprout Wednesdays and Saturdays. There is a so-called palace built for the public from the money of a Russian prince, housing several museums and a public library. The Basilica is on the other side of the square, undergoing renovations and thereby repelling all but the most hard-headed of tourists (and Catholics).

Branching south of the Riponne in a spidery network are pedestrian streets, along which luxury boutiques, factory outlets, bookstores and Asian supermarkets are implausibly juxtaposed.

Lausanne overlooks the lake Léman. The port is unfortunately named Ouchy, by an accident of orthography. Also overlooking the lake are several sh-tloads of mountain ranges. Yes, we don't just see France from here every day - it looms over us.

TWO. Contact Singapore, the agency under the wing of the ambassador in Geneva, has organised for us two free meals. Their stated mission is to try to get Singaporeans back to work in Singapore... ... ... In any case, free food has always been welcome, and even more vehemently so in these parts.

THREE. Lessons in EPFL. Because I don't know how to enjoy myself, I am now taking a 27 ECTS semester. This includes a project (8 credits) trailblazing in the field of Microscopic Data Analysis. I will be doing something similar in concept to facial recognition, so wish me luck.

FOUR. I am living in Crissier, three communes away from Lausanne. The place sells itself by its peaceful location and peaceful it truly is. It is thankfully 3 km from school but unfortunately 3 billion km from Lausanne. Next to my place is a socio-cultural centre which never seems to be open. There is a view to the north, where there are large expanses of flatland.

FIVE. Snow. I have been doing a survey on snow. I have concluded that snow behaves like a low-temperature ceramic, and all the physical processes in ceramic component manufacturing can be demonstrated with snow. For example, snowballs are best made with fresh snow, which are fine-grained. The making of snowballs is sintering in elevated temperatures and pressures (applied by hand). Late snow exhibits evidence of coarsening and Ostwald ripening. Now the snow are almost all melted, but I still enjoy crunching them around under my boots. I am an immature person. I'm sorry.

Blogging from Colombo

Tourmaline is usually hewn from a pillar of trigonal crystal, where the stone of different colours are arranged in layers radiating from the middle axis. The most valuable tourmaline comes in bicolour, that is to say, they come from the parts where the different colours meet. Tourmaline from these tumultous regions would feature much inclusions and imperfections, making it a stone of action and immediacy, of creative dynamicism, rather than that of a dull eternity, like what diamond pretends to be (diamond is metastable).

Prices of tourmaline in Colombo: If I remember correctly, 5 cts sell at US$1500 but go down to 300 bucks after haggling over inclusions.
Yesterday, the group visited a family-run topaz lapidary, where uncut topazes litter the place like sand. They were imported from Mozambique and Brazil and some of them were mined locally at Matale. The lapidary handled the cutting and polishing of the stones and some heat treatment, where a gaudy blue is put into the stone but will fade with time. Topazes are cheap and are sold at eight bucks a carat from the place. Aruna the foreman and the family were our guide, and treated us to bananas.

Blogging from Helsinki

Hostel at the Olympic Stadium

I have settled in the hostel at the Olympic Stadium. Jet-lag is still in force, so I woke up at 5am to a room full of burly sleeping men. I questioned my own sanity in having let myself come here with a half-assed command of Finnish and no point of contact other than the prof Dr. Makkonen at Aalto, as well as having chosen a dormitory suite instead of one of the private rooms. Having no other outlet to express my bewilderment, I turn to blogging. You may be thinking I am blogging to boast about being able to have come through half the globe to this strange city. I would have liked to, eventually, but I am still disoriented, so this post is for complaining.

The Language
What I am up against with this LANGUAGE thing:
I reached my current command of French in the time-span of 1 year, and can converse in it comfortably enough. French is an easy language; it is in the same language family (Indo-European) as most other European languages, and shares much of the vocabulary with English.
I am expected to reach a comfortable command of Finnish in ~2 months. Finnish is a Uralic language, related to Hungarian, Estonian, Sami and random languages scattered around Russia,. Basically Hindi is closer to English than Finnish is to English and the language institute here prefers to make up native versions of names rather than borrowing the word itself.

 Töölönlahti

The Surroundings

Two walks around the hostel revealed a bike shop, a supermarket (Alepa) and a Chinese restaurant conveniently positioned, and also a nice inland bay, Töölönlahti. There is a park. In the park there are patches of bare rock which are quite nice to sit on. There is a winter garden I don't know the purpose of.
The Finns seem to be avid bikers. The bicycle tracks are filled with them. I am considering this as a means to commute.

The Commute
Olympic Stadium to Otaniemi is ~7km. North Haaga to Otaniemi is ~9km.
There are direct buses.
I am going to figure out public transport today. Tip: by figuring out the public transport of a place, one mentally conquers it.
I have not yet gone around to get to Otaniemi, where the university is, but I hope I can mentally conquer that too.

Blogging from Listvyanka

Sleet today by the lake, whereas the first few days here had been quite sunny. It turns out that Listvyanka experiences not summer, but waning spring in the month of July, many thanks to this Lake Baikal that only completes its thawing in June.

The flea markets just outside the hotel sells interesting (if useless) stuff. The Jew's Harps they sell here caught my eye particularly, but they cost 1800 rubles (~S$ 72) apiece. Maybe the other stalls sell it more cheaply, but I'm not setting my hopes too high.

Blogging from Kanchanaburi

Day 3: It's my third day today in Kanchanaburi province. Since I had fallen asleep throughout the coach ride here from Don Muang airport, there is almost no sense of place. Only the looming hills and the anal weather made the landscape any more distinctive than what we have usually.

There is an internet cafe in the Sai Yok Camp canteen. Internet connection here is slow-ish. I play minesweeper when stuff are loading.

Day 6: I have gone out a while ago and seen Thailand. It would have been wonderful, if the weather wasn't so anal. The mountains here are funnily shaped and a funny smell hangs in the air at some spots. Dogs are all over the place.

Ok, no more updating for a long time, till I come back to Singapore, I think.

Day 14: Ok I'm sorry I just can't resist an update and stuff.

Back from a 7-day field excursion. Can't remember much except foodwise, and doesn't feel like writing about it anyway. Also, I have a cold thanks to the retarded weather. While calling back, had some updates on the outside world. Mom did not divulge anything much about this other than natural disasters.

Saturday was the real Mid-Autumn Festival, two weeks after the celebrations in school. The full moon and mosquitoes kept me awake all night, and there was no peace.

Blogging from Kaohsiung

In Kaohsiung for the second day today. This is not a popular place for those who have nothing more to think than shopping and clubbing and massaging and whatnot, because Taipei has all the better stuff.
Personally though, I'm content just to have the opportunity to have this "Blogging from Kaohsiung" entry put up.

Travelling with the group in this circumstances is not a good choice. It's much better to go by oneself: There is more freedom for you to go where you want to, boring places like art galleries and scenic areas, and avoid the fun and exciting places where you don't, and people drag you there against your will.

I am quite confident in using the city's subway system in getting around, after two tries. I always like doing that when navigating a city far from home. It gives a feeling of power.

Blogging from Bandar Seri Begawan

Small note at 27 September 2008, 1635h: I am blogging from the mall in Bandar Seri Begawan, in a corner populated mainly by kids, because the adults here curiously do not play LAN. Same problem here as when blogging from London or Paris or Vienna three years ago, like dodgy keyboards; the one I'm using in Brunei is okay, only a little weird but it jams a lot.

For my family back home: I have had a good harvest. Bedtime stories aside, there's 2x keychains, 1x potpourri box, and for Mom's banknote and coins collection, notes of 10, 5 and 1 ringgit plus a 1 ringgit coin.

Just to add that Brunei is a pretty cool place. Some of us almost want to retire here. Tell you more when I get back to Singapore; this keyboard is killing me.

Entry 155: Blogging from Vienna

Blogging from Vienna here; seems that the keyboard in Austria isn't as dodgy as the French version. The first six letters in the top row is QWERTZ.

Went to the Kunst museum thingy and the Hofburg palace in the city centre, and almost partied in the Donauinsel in the Danube Festival. Then we popped in to Hotel Geblergaße to see some friends.

ß is a nice letter to type. ßßßßßßßß And so is üüüööö and äää

Will leave tomorrow for Budapest.

Entry 154: Blogging from Paris

Actually I'm in this place called Saint-Ouen which is technically not Paris. And I'm stuck in another internet bar with this dodgy French keyboard I can't type properly with. It's full of às and ès and çs and €s qnd µs and other symbols you would not even dream of typing without the character map, and the type set is more like AZERTY than QUERTY.

The letters are arranged like this:
²&é"'(-è_çà)=
AZERTYUIOP¨£
QSDFGHJKLM%µ
>WXCVBN?./§

France is the first place I have ever visited where I have to try to speak a language I don't know. Vienna is going to be second. Budapest is going to be okay due to the international conference held there in the city.

I went to the Louvre yesterday!!!!! Details will follow.

Entry 153: Blogging from London

I'm in London!

We'd found an internet bar at Preston Road near the station and now I'm blogging from this place. Next to the road, facing the roaring traffic. Takes the spirit off writing really.

Anyway since I really can't write now, I expect pictures and all the other narrative crap will be up after the holidays. Just so you'll know.

Blogging From Kunming

Well we're finally here after a long and tortuous flight on another boeing 737 plane (though I rather suspected that it was the same one) we finally found the seat belt lights light up, which meant we were descending. Under the wing was a thick blanket of clouds.

Then after our plane broke through that, there was another blanket of clouds beneath us. So we were smack sandwiched between cloud layers. Brilliant. Never before seen anything like that.

And after we broke through that one, we saw Kunming city, where dad's conference is held. I have never seen anything like that either. It's city as far as the eyes could see. It's a concrete jungle as far as the eyes could see... before all is lost beyond the foggy background. Kunming city is one of those megacities in the midlands, as big as -- well, bigger than Singapore Island itself, for example.

They say that the air in Kunming is relatively fresh. They probably haven't been to Cape Town. Here all I could smell is engine exhaust and cigarette.

The view from my hotel room was horrible. So horrible in fact, I took relish under its drabness. It probably inspired a lot of tragedy plays. The window faced the Kunming broadway, which had hardly any traffic lights. If that's not enough, at night the sky turns grey! At least the sky over Singapore is inky black, and stars COULD show up if you looked hard enough.

But on the light side, Julie and her sister are staying with us in the hotel, so I have two more people to talk to... and with more on the way.