I thought to put some pictures here from Down town. Although this first one is not from there...This is our local grocery store from around the corner. Looks a bit different than yours, or...? 

This picture is from boat quay, and that river is "famous" Singapore river. That white, pale looking dude in front of the picture is Sir Stamford Raffles, the British founder of Singapore. 

This concert hall behind me lookes just like that smelly, crap tasting Durian fruit. Well, what can I say, Singaporeans just love their durians, lah! 

Here it is, Stamford hotel that used to be the tallest hotel in the world untill some hotel in Hong Kong droped it to the 2nd place. In top of that hotel there's that New Asia bar, that is the bar situated highest in the world... 

Here we are inside Stamford hotel in 70th floor going to New Asia bar. And doesn't Annu and Outi look kind of like twins? It could have something to do with those green shirts of them...(the next day, they both accidentally wore pink shirts and same kind of skirts...Outi though would say her shirt was coral colored not pink, but that's just a lame excuse...They are the twins what comes to clothes, no matter what they would say!) 

Annu and Outi (the twins...)in New Asia bar with drinks that tasted like mudslides and brought back good memories from last summer 

Been around the world...or then not

During my almost 23 years of existence in this world, I have been in 13 countries, seen 13 States of America and spent 2 years and 4 months outside Finland. And just like this wouldn't be enough in 2 weeks i'm boarding to a plane that'll take me to Australia to conquer yet another continent. The question is, will I ever get enough of travelling?

If you had told all the facts mentioned above to the girl I was 10 years ago, she would have laughed and said that you must have been mistaken and that wasn't her life. Oh well, that girl didn't really know much about the person she would turn out to be anyway. I always said that I would be the last one of my friends to move from home to live on her own, actually I was the first one in the age of 16. I was confident I would never ever quit my hobby of dancing, but eventually I did. And most of all, I never thought I would have the courage to leave everything familiar behind me and move to another country for a year. In 2001 that became reality and after that I've been ready to travel pretty much where ever, when ever.

All these things are coming in to my mind now that my studies here in Singapore are over and I'm supposed to return to that northern reality of Finland within 4 weeks. In the back of my mind, there's a question, What next?

She's so much like me...

I love challenges every now and then, they just spice up your life. My challenge at the moment isn't as spicy as the indian food here that you'll never learn to eat, but it has as many pages as Singapore's metro has Asians during the rush hour! 1024 pages of Gone with the wind is something I got to accomplish within 5 days!! (then my library card expires and I'm damned to be bored without any books for the rest of my stay) At the moment I'm in page 317 and already now driven Outi crazy by reading it a weird grin and smirk on my face, laughing aloud every now and then. But what can I say, when you find a character who is as stubborn, determined and even as selfish as you and you notice she is behaving in exactly the same way than you would in similar situations, You cannot do anything else than have a goofy smile on your face and realize how dumb you are...=)

Over and done with!

YES! The finals are over and everything went more than well. Except for the little fact that we were in a wrong classroom with Outi in the beginning of the first exam...UPS!=) But you know, we are just dumb exchange students who were following their classmates when instead we should have been reading a paper that was in our hand and said our classroom was 18 instead of 12...

I think the teachers had actually been reading my mind since they seemed to put all the questions that I knew the aswer for to the tests, or then maybe my week long marriage with the lecture notes wasn't such a bad idea and waste of time after all...Anycase no more school for me untill the end of August!!

Except I almost forgot, I've been planning to study Spanish, German and Swedish on my own during this summer so that I wouldn't be totally clueless when my classes starts again next semester. So most likely I'll turn out to be a German-Spanish murmuring handyman-painter, who storms around our little cottage all summer long fixing places and listening to music way too loud at the same time.

I know I'm not a Bob the Builder, but I do know the difference between hammer and shaw and that's a good start! And I'm so sure that this summer I won't get bored after painting just one wall, so I'll finish those 3 walls I was too lazy to paint like 2 summers ago ...=)

Today is a good day!

First of my 3 final tests is over and it was easy (that might have something to do with the fact that I have been married to my lecture notes for a week, reading like a maniac...) Now there's only 2 left which is a whole lot better situation than yesterday when there we still 3 left =)

My mom let me know the other day that we got an invitation to my brother's weddings. I have time to be at home for 2 weeks before this supposedly big day is. I don't understand though who wants to get married in the middle of May when it is still cold and everything is pretty much brown...Well that's not my problem. The good thing is though that this is a good reason for me to go and buy nice pair of high heels and a new dress to wear...That is the case if i can even wear a dress, maybe I will need a fur coat...

My life at the moment

So what's new in my life?

1) Final exams are next week
I have somehow managed to get married with my lecture notes and since last Saturday we have been inseparable. I don't even go to pool without my notes...

2) A little surprise called mom
What I thought would be a nice relaxing last month on the pool with great books, turned out to be something totally different. My lovely mom is flying to see me 6th of April and is leaving 25th of April (Which means almost 3 weeks of mom...) Yes, that 25th of April is exactly the same day when I'm flying back to Finland, so actually mom is literally flying here to take me home.

Moms are nice when you're back home. But when you're abroad it means that you are with them 24/7 ! My mom does not speak english (except for couple of sentences she learned from the Bold and the beutifuls = will you marry me, and stuff like that...) so I need to take care of everything. I need to go to all of Singapores attractions again (and I have seen them so many times already...) and just plan what to do, when to do and where to do them. Okey, I do sound selfish and I should be glad she is coming cause we are supposed to go somewhere outside Singapore for a week, but right now I'm just so tired of travelling that I would just like to be and then go home.
Thank god, my mom is at least cool and fun to hang around with...So I think I'll survive.

3) I can't sleep anymore
I have tried to count sheep, pigs, kangaroos and even shoes in our livinroom (which by the way is 35 pairs right now, but it used to be closer to 50 before girls packed most of their shoes away...)Well nothing helps. I have listen to music, planned what to do next summer, eaten ice cream...but nothing seems to work. That's why I found myself last night at 1 am sitting in our livingroom going through my lecture notes! And how pathetic and sad is that if even they can't make me sleepy!?

So I was going through notes when I saw a creature on the floor. A creature that was heading towards girl's room and would have definitely caused a scene if girls had been awake and seen it. So I ended up runing around after the creature and finally killing that nasty cockroach which was bouncing around (yes they kind of jump and fly...And they prefer to do that straight at you!) at 1.30 am.



I put some pictures here from our last ladies night. It was okey night, not exactly what we were expecting, but memorable anycase. Lot of good and not so good things happened that night, not to forget that I got advice about men from transvestites! They said that all men sucks. It was kind 0f weird to hear that from 3 persons who looked like women but when they opened their mouth...boy they were definitely men!

See I'm telling the truth when i say that I'm studying even at the pool...Well Annu is kind of studying too since she is checking out hot night spots to go to... 

Here we are, At guys place ready to go to ladies night! This is the place where we are moving with Outi in 18 days... 

I saw a round tray and couldn't resist myself...You know how hard it was to get a round tray at work last summer, so now that I got it, I just took it! Yep, I guess there's still a little cocktail waitress living inside of me...=)

Just don't ask what we were thinking about when we decided to take this picture...In the bar!! 

Oh dear! Paparazzi caught the girls. I wonder what they were talking about... 

A day that I could just forget

So I thought yesterday wasn't that good a day. Well today was even worse!

10.30 am I turn my computer on. It doesn't work! It just keeps telling me to reboot it (or something like that) and asks me to press any key to continue. I do just that and the same text just appears on the screen again and again and again...

10.40 am I call to J-P ("computer guy" and one of the Finnish exchange students here) to tell him my computer hates me and asking should I throw it to the wall.

11.00 am J-P arrives to save me from computer hell

1.00 pm J-P has done trillion tricks and announces that I have to reload windows and that all my files might have gone to a "better place" called the heaven of disappeared files. YES! I have always wanted to lose everything I have on my computer...

1.30 pm I send thousand text messages to my mom to keep up her pressure to find my sosial security card (the american one). I need a copy of it for my "tax thing" that I need to send by next Tuesday. (Actually I probably should have sent all those papers weeks ago...They probably should be in the States by now...)

1.45 pm I send one more text message to mom just to let her know that what she is looking for could be in that white drawer by the door...or then in the one by the window...come to think of it, it could also be in one of my cardboard boxes in the attic...

3.00 pm I try to concentrate on reading my lecture notes for the tests. Only thing though that runs through my mind is that where the heck are all my files and why my computer hates me. I was thinking about back up copies a week ago. But it doesn't help me now that I thought of them, I SHOULD HAVE DONE THEM TOO!! I feel like Carrie Bradshaw when she lost her files in the sex and the city...

3.15 pm Great, fridge is empty. Time to eat instant mashed potatoes again (just the 3rd day in a row). I look out the window. Great, it's raining! I run to balcony to save my clothes, but they are a bit wet already. When I get back to the kitchen my bread in the toaster has burned. Just lovely. I'm starting to think that instead of Friday 11th, today must be Friday 13th!!

But there's also something good in all of this. At least I know that tomorrow must be a whole lot better day!

Weird thoughts...

Have you ever thought about who you would want to be if you could pick just one person? Well as retarded it may sound at first, I would want to be the person I pretty much "hate" the most in the world! She is so vain, dork, simple minded, and that bitch has everything. Yes, I'm talking about Paris Hilton. If you have that much money, all those opportunities to do and study what ever you want, and maybe even one day to run one of the world's biggest hotel chains, why would you want to make a tv-show that only proves how dumb you are. And anycase who wants to have a dog that looks like a rat?

And what made me to think of Paris Hilton? Well the first reason is, that her face appears in tv every saturday at 10pm. The second reason is that when Milla was here, we kind of explored Singapore's five star hotels and I was dying to see all their suites and private functions. Well maybe I should start to write reviews about the worl'd best hotels and I could see them all.

Gotta go, Outi's sister is here and we are going to ladie's night...

Wonderful view of Singapore at night. We are in New Asia bar, which is a bar that is situated highest in the world.( 71st floor to be exact) 

This is from the island of Sentosa (which is part of Singapore). And the place where those 2 towers are is the most southern point in continental Asia... 

There were still some decoration left from the Chinese new year in Singapore's chinese garden, and of course we had to take a photo... 

Chinese Garden, two towers and Milla in a red shirt! 

Our faces pretty much tell how much we enjoyed tasting durian. Durian is a fruit that smells so bad that is forbidden to take it to public places or transportation! (trust me it smells better than tastes!!) They have actually had this fruit also in Fear factor... 

Still alive and kicking!

Yes, i’m still alive though I haven’t up dated my blog for a while. Milla was here for 2 weeks, exploring the Asian way of living (and being extremely happy not to study here…) and days just went by so fast when they were filled with different things and action.

Lectures are over after this week and then we will only have tests left. I have no idea where the last 3 months have gone, wasn’t it just like yesterday when we came here? Oh well, I would be lying if I didn’t say that I’m happy that school is almost over. I prefer so much Finnish way of studying! No more group assignments for me!!

Even though we have last test on 26th of March, we are flying back to Finland in 25th of April. Which means we have exactly a month of vacation!! I have no idea what we will do during that time with Outi since shopping is a definite NO-NO for us, we will already now have problems to take everything to Finland with us… Well Russian’s Elisabeth I had 15,000 dresses so it’s not like we would be breaking her record anytime soon.

After this month we will move with Outi. All our fantastic flat mates are flying back to Finland by 23rd of March and this place is too big and too expensive for Outi and I to stay for April. But no worries, we already have a place where to go! The Finnish guys have big enough apartment for us to move in with them, and they have washing machine, and that’s luxury after doing all the laundry in a bucket since last June…There’s only one rule and restriction in that apartment though, we are not aloud to take any pork in there cause people who rented it are Muslims. Oh well, it’s not like I would want to roast some ham there or cook something, that’s not really my favourite hobby…=)