Wild things

What is slimy and all over you whenever it gets a change? No, it’s not a middle aged man in a bar, it’s our shower curtain!!! I have no idea why manufacturers make shower curtains out of such a thin material that they just wraps around you so that you have a feeling like being a sandwich in a vacuum packed wrapper. I guess I jus have to quit my “career” in a tourism industry and start designing more practical home accessories…

I probably haven’t told you that we have some pets, and they are exotic! Every now and then, especially on a dark time you can see little white lizards running around our flat. They are harmless and actually quite cute too, but they can give you a little surprises by showing up when you least expect them…Like once when Outi went in our kitchen and turned the lights on to find out one lizard doing some research in a plastic bag. I think the lizard though it was a Rambo since it made a fast run on a table then made a stuntman jump to the floor and ran to its home base behind the refrigerator…

Talking about lizards…(Outi is forcing me to tell this since she thinks it’s the best story of the year… and all of you keep your dirty imagination in control!!!) So we were in a park today and I came down the slide (yes, we were “playing”, what’s new?) and just sat there for a while. And suddenly I felt like something would be running up my leg! (I had a skirt…yes, I know, not the best thing to wear for a playground…) I freaked out and stood up basically running around playground trying to get that something out of my skirt! Well it turned out there wasn’t anything that could come out so I reasoned it had just been my imagination. After that we just went back to our flat and later decided to go and get some ice cream. While walking to store, I had a dejavu experience and the same exact feeling, like something would be running down my leg was back!!! This time I found out I wasn’t being paranoid since a little brown lizard actually run down my leg!! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!!! That frigging lizard had been in my skirt for the last 20 minutes without me noticing it!!! Outi giggled for about 15 minutes like a maniac having the time of her life. Nice to entertain people, seeing them laugh makes my day…=)

Outi finds herself so often in weird and exciting situations. Yesterday was a good example of that! Outi and Annu went out to check out this local dj ( I was way too lazy to go, actually to tell you the truth I just stayed home to watch American idol and to read lecture notes…I know, pathetic me) and Outi ended up hanging around the whole evening with a Chinese film star… I have no idea how she does that, actor, bartender, oil trader, dump truck driver, guard for the prisoners… Wherever she goes she always makes friends with people from different walks of life!!!

Tomorrow I’m finally heading to Bali. I am attempted to try surfing ( a great idea, especially when I can barely swim…) since that’s what you’re supposed to do in Bali! But probably I just have to settle for just watching some Australian surfer guys doing their thing…Not a bad choice either! So if any volcanoes don’t decide to erupt, some tsunamis to swipe over Bali or some Australian surfer boy to kidnap me to Great Barrier Reef, I will be back in a week to let you know how it was!

On the metro going to the ladies night for the first time. In a picture you can find my flat mates Annu, Mikaela and already so familiar Katja! 

Going to the ladies night for the second time. Smiles on our faces tell we are ready to party! So watch out Singapore! 

On our way to Sentosa. We took a cable car from mainland to this little beach resort in the coast of Singapore.  

We are chilling in a swing with Katja. This is life!!! 

The island of Sentosa has some nice beaches! Although everything is made by a man. The sand is brought all the way from Hawaii... 

Everyday life

HELP! I have serious motivation problems! And on top of that I seem to fall asleep every time I take out my lecture notes. And convenient enough, of course I wake up just in time for all the great tv-programs…( I should throw that tv out of the window, I did just fine last summer without it) We haven’t had lectures this week at all, cause it’s time for the midterm testS (luckily I don’t have any tests!Yipee!) and I thought I could get some group assignments and reading done, oh well that was a nice dream…

Guess what’s sleeping and talking in Chinese? That’s Outi!! One night I came to our room when Outi was already sleeping and I realised she was talking by herself. So I asked her something and she answered in a language that I have no idea what it was. I kept on talking with her in that deepadapa-language for a couple of minutes!! Every time I said something she replied!! I couldn’t resist taking that on a videotape and Outi had a nice surprise next morning. It seems she always ends up in a video tape while she is sleeping…

During the whole time I’ve been here I haven’t really read any news papers. That was the case before today. I saw one of my flat mates going through a news paper and BANG! I noticed a car, gorgeous, wonderful sports car in one of the pages! And surprisingly I was suddenly very interested in reading. So what did I find out after drooling over pictures of Porsche 911, Aston Martin and SLK? The article was pretty much about women’s vanity… Let me quote” Peacocks have bright shiny feathers, and men? We have Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches “, “At dinner parties, the men who prance around doing their best to entertain women usually watch their dates go home with the bloke who showed up in a Mercedes-Benz SLK”, “In my nine years of writing about cars, I’ve lost count of number of women who have asked me whether I could take them for a spin in a Jag – as well of the number who immediately lost interest when they found out that I couldn’t”. After reading all that, I can’t help but thinking are we (women) really that vain? We do like things that are nice and pretty, but do we appreciate those qualities more than individual’s personality? Oh well, I’m not the right person to answer to that question, I’m way too addicted to cars… =)

Milla is coming here next moth to check out Singapore. Can’t wait that!!! She is studying hard (just like I used to do last year, I mean I was married to my books!!!) and she is anyway a natural genius so maybe she will be able to make me a decent student again…

It’s hard to imagine that there’s snow in Finland right now. Here the coldest thing you can find is my ice cream (which by the way tastes like body lotion!)on the freezer. Well it was sun and sea that I came to find here and that’s what I got! I will see snow every year for the rest of my life, unless I move out of Finland after I graduate like I have planned to do. And if I plan to graduate one day, I should get back to my lecture notes at once! I came here to study and that’s what I will go and try to do right now!

Here's some pictures of our new years eve...We were chilling in our flat before leaving to Countdown party to Sentosa island. 

What's the letter of the day? Can you see it anywhere? S stands for serious fun! 

Outi, me, Katja, Andrew from New Zealand and Chris from the Netherlands. Everybody's having a great time! 

In the end of the night things got a bit wild...Round and round they go... 

Where would you find us in Saturday night?

Last Sunday we decide with the girls to have a little break from ladies nights cause they take their toll. Next 2 days you just walk around like a zombie and can't get anything done! Oh well, that was last Sunday, yesterday (saturday) we overruled our previous decision and put our dancing shoes on and headed to Gotham penthouse!We had taken about tree steps inside the club and guess who's there greeting us with a big smile? Who else but the marketing director himself! Seemed to be happy to get us back there...

So what happened last night?

- We broke one glass, Katja's cheers was a bit too rough =)
- If Outi made a acquaintance with 2 bartenders last week, after this week they all know us..Thanks to Katja and Outi who had some kind of correspondence with them...
- I was speaking in swedish with some girl who was adopted from korea to sweden when she was little
- I "stole" a garbagebag from one of the dumsters on our way to taxi cause Katja really needed to have something to hold on to...if you know what I mean =)


I have been puzzled about what to do next summer. I would need to help to renovate our little summer cottage and really improve my german, swedish and spanish. On the other hand I would want to go overseas...I was talking to Edia, who was an au pair from Latvia in St.Louis at the same time than I was and I would love to go and visit her in St.Louis.(she still lives there, married you know) And Finland can be so boring...But can I just fly around the world all the time. I mean if we take a period of a year, from last June to this June, I have been in Finland only 2,5 months!!! Well, I guess that's what I want...

Need to go and entertain myself with incentive travel & exhibitions lecture notes...That will be a blast!

Days of our lives

"The size of the tennis court is 78 by 36 feet and tennis is a nice hobby for all ages, but you need a partner to play.” I can’t believe I’m reading my lecture notes!! These things must be really important for the club and resort managers…Oh, it’s just getting better and better, “tennis ball weights 2 ounces and you need a special kind of shoes to play!” I really hope that the teacher is smart enough not to ask these kinds of questions in exam. Isn’t it punishment enough that we have had to attend this marvellous lecture…Oh well, we do study interesting things too, not just details about tennis equipments.

Have you ever tried to run naked in the middle of the city? Well, you should try, then you would have a little idea how we feel here when everybody is staring at us all the time, no matter where we go!! On the bus, they stare, in the store, they stare, at school, you guessed right, they stare! You kind of get used to it after a while, but it doesn’t still mean that you would enjoy it. After I go back home, I swear I won’t even take a peek if Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt are going to walk by!! Well, I have to admit that here in Singapore they are quite nice when they are satisfied by just stareing at us, in Malaysia it was different. When we were at Kuala Lumpur, you might have thought we were on a some kind of Miss World tour. Everybody just kept taking photos and they wanted to pose in them too!!! We couldn’t even eat our ice creams without somebody asking could she take a photo of us with her kids. And if only it had been that one photo, but the next thing we knew, the whole family with uncles and grannies were there taking pictures!!

Jihaa!! Only one more week to go and were are flying to Bali. I’ve spend already so many nights thinking about it that I haven’t been able to sleep. We have a pile of guidebooks on our living room table and I don’t even have time to read them thanks to school…

some pictures from Thailand...

Here are some pictures from Phuket!! Like you can see the tidal wave looks actually quite harmless. The best way to see how high the water rose is to compare its level on trees that were on the beach… But like you can see from the pictures, our trip wasn’t only disaster; it was also having a great time!!

Ladies night was fun! The place was quite small but really nicely decorated. We probably partied a bit too much and were at home around six a clock in the morning!! During ladies night only vodka drinks are free for the ladies, but once we became a good friends with the marketing director of the place, we could order what ever we wanted for free…

Have you ever tried what kind of a hairdresser your friends would be? I have! Last summer Milla cut my hair and the other day I decided to try how Outi would do the job!! She was actually quite efficient and by the time she finished 10 cm of my hair was on the floor…Well, shorter hair is more convenient here when it’s hot and humid all the time…

We bought our trip to Phi phi islands from this place, just 2 days before tsunami...Well, like you can see, it didn't survive from the tidal wave... 

This is what the beach looked like on the morning of tsunami when I arrived there. The whole beach is already under the water... 

And the tidal wave is on its way! See the palm tree on the left, try to find it from the next picture...  

And when the wave got this close, I ndecided it was better to turn and RUN!!! 

We found a new hobby with Outi!!! Snorkling can be so much fun! This is from Khai island. 

Picture from Phi Phi islands. There are actually two islands in Phi Phi. This one here in the picture has also hotels in it, but the other one is deserted. 

Here we are, Finnish exchange students in Phuket! 

Some nice buildings in Kuala Lumpur. Don't expect the whole city to look like this though... 

Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 

Here we are Outi, Katja and I, having some night caps in December. 

Home sweet home. This is what the building where our flat is looks like. 

Wanna go for a swim? Try the swimming pool in our campus, just a 2 minutes walk from our flat. 

Hey There!!

My flatmate Katja came up with the idea of having web diary, so surprise I thought to give it a try too! This way anybody who wants to know what's going on here in Singapore can read the latest news from here.

A lot has happened to us worl travellers( = all the finnish exchange students)after we arrived here a month ago. We got a flat tire on our way back from Kuala Lumpur (malaysia) and a "little thing" called tsunami made our vacation in Phuket (Thailand) quite exciting. So of course when we found out with Outi that they have active volcanoes in Bali, we decided to check out if they would explode if we were there. In other words we are having a holiday in Bali (Indonesia) from 22.1 to 30.1 !! Can't wait to be able to relax on the beach and see everything that island has to offer. Our hotel should be surrounded by a garden full of mango, banana and coconut trees! That's something you will never find in Finland!!

School is ok, although we are having way too many group assingnments! In Finland I got used to independent studying, you know, read your text book and take the test. Here they have huge assingnments in every single course and the signment is usually 50% of your grade!! Assignments could be ok, if we actually got something done during our group meetings, but usually we don't!!

Tonight our whole flat is going to ladies night. that means no cover charge for ladies and the drinks are FREE!!! (Free, that's my favourite word!) Why can't they have happenings like this in Finland? I will let u know later how it was..