Day 4 & 5

Day 4 was rather uneventful except for perhaps fixing our first meal together. However, it got off to yet another not-so-good start when I took a wrong turn (again!) and took half an hour instead of 15 minutes to reach Seb's place.

Well anyway by the time we started cooking, it was good time for brunch already.





Cooking in progress.



The end product was spaghetti enough for 2 meals. I over-estimated the amount of spaghetti used, cooked 1kg and we ended up having enough to eat for lunch and dinner.



Master Chef Wu. Hahahah BHB.



A photo before the meal, and all hail cameras with built-in timers. Hurraf.

After lunch we headed for the sports day which was at this ulu part of Amsterdam. Well its not that bad, we played some basketball. Trying to play in an indoor court during winter is one sensation that is hard to describe. You run abit and your lips feel like some dried ikan bilis, your throat feels devoid of any moisture and the fact that you don't sweat makes you feel like you suddenly hold all the sweat you were suppose to produce in the head. Quite a sensation really!

We left early and ended up going to Zara to shop. Stuff were and sale and was really cheap! I bought quite a bit of clothing and I reckon savings were like at least 50% if not more, compared to buying in Singapore.

After a quick dinner at my own hostel, I joined my group members for some drinks at one of the member's hostel, which happened to be in the block opposite mine. Its cool since the group member brought friends from their country and suddenly you meet quite alot of new people. We later proceeded to having another drinking session at the pub we went on the first night of orientation. The supposed final party was a disappointment since there was this freaking long queue of people waiting to go into the club, and people just cut the queue. We got fed up and ended up not going in. The way back to my hostel was extremely horrible since we had stood in the cold for a good hour and I just couldn't feel my fingers! Thankfully I made it home and turned in quite early.



Day 5

Sunday was very pleasant for all of us since it was the end of the orientation and we had the whole day free. It was by far the most touristy day we felt. I spent the morning lazing around in hostel, calling my mother and chatting for a bit. Breakfast was also quite a spread with ham and bread, myojo noodles with egg, coffee and lays potato chips. Hahah quite simple but its alot of food. I also managed to open up this childhood favourite snack of mine.. Kinder Surprise!



Kinder Surprise is about the only toy-sweet-surprise that got me caught in its craze for the longest time as a kid. I mean, even the tagline it had in commericals was so cool man! Something like '3 surprises in 1! Nice creamy chocolate, a toy and the surprise of getting 1 out of thousands of toys!' How cool is that! Once again, very much like my favourite drink the Schweppes ice-cream soda, this is also no longer found in Singapore. But its ok I can eat my fill of it here. Hahaha.

Like Sylvester, I'm on a holiday. He goes surfing on the beach while I'm here in Europe!



Shortly after breakfast, we had a dutch lunch in PHK (short for Prins Henrikkade, name of the accomodation where I stay) to welcome all the new residents of PHK. It was nice meeting new neighbours as well as the Residence Assistants who helped us by telling us some of the dos and don'ts around in the place. And another thing, IT SNOWED WHEN I GOT OUT OF THE HOUSE TO GO FOR LUNCH. YES SNOWWWWWW. I know I sound like the biggest frog around in any well you can find, but yes I have finally seen snow! Wow its like one of the many experiences I will definitely remember for life. Like getting out of the house to be surprised by this light drizzle of snow, the wind blowing the snow onto your face and clothes. Wonderful and surreal probably does a little justification to what I truly felt. Hahaha. I didn't bring my camera out at that time, but Bevelin caught this really nice photo of the snow at where she stays. Superb!



I made my way to Seb's place after the lunch where we planned to go out on a tourist afternoon on ourselves! And yes I am finally starting to take pictures of the wonderfully scenic Amsterdam!



Frost covered ground. The grounds over here are no where as clean as in Singapore. Cigarette butts and long thickened chewing gum litter the whole place. If you are unlucky, you might also step on land-mines aka dog poo.



Really nice carriage horse like those you see in olden english films. The horse was like as big as a mini-bus like those we see in Singapore!







The sun in Amsterdam just makes everything in pictures look uber nice. I don't think anything in Singapore look this gorgeous. Okay then again its a matter of perspective.

The canals are also beautiful in their own ways, even under the not so sunny afternoon sky.





Seb with his damn cool looking trenchcoat. He looks like the mafia boss and we are his henchmen.

In the town/shopping area of Amsterdam, or better known to us as SPUI, there was this very cool Heineken museum-themed shop, selling all sorts of Heineken souvenirs and of course different Heineken packages.





This probably sums up why Heineken is one of the more successful beers, and why my mum is quite a fan of it.



We ended up in Zara (again!). Hahaha and everyone kinda left that place poorer yet again. But well I also cooked my first curry in Amsterdam.

Unfortunately, at that time I had yet to know how to cook rice with a pot, and the bakery was already out of bread. We decided to eat curry as a main, with the potatoes the substitute for rice and bread.



HUGE amount of potato. To my surprise, dutch potatoes are very clean and quite nice, like the indonesian potatoes we eat back at home. The chicken drumsticks were also quite cheap, even though it goes for S$1 per drum. Its like the cheapest alternative around.



Almost ready.. one thing that makes my blood boil faster than the curry chicken is the flame from the stove. What takes 20 minutes at home now takes 1 hour. You need to have lotsa patience for this.



Curry chicken mission complete. Then again, not the usual standard since the coconut milk was like minimal. The gravy felt more like curry chicken to go with beehoon since it was so watery.



Luckily for us, there were still some nice bread which Seb and Weiliang haven't eaten. It was good to go curry chicken with bread!!!

It really does feel good to have friends with you on exchange. They are like the closest you get to having a family. 5 of us just had a nice time chatting and laughing away at the table. Since it was late and everyone were like quite tired we just decided to sleep over, having made plans to go venture more places on day 6.