When the Irish met, a party broke out

Carrie-Ann and Lorna arrived on the 6th Wednesday. The two good friends that Pat meet at UCC during his undergrad. They were classmates, doing chemistry of some sort. Anyway, Pat had been excited about their arrival for a while now, and had been freaking out about what touristy things we could do- Classic Pat Moment! Of course this was about when I took my cue. I seem to have an inclination to event planning and organising fun things to do. Maybe I need a change in career direction... erm. Nevermind about that for now, lemme tell you all about the what went on during their visit.

Wednesday night, Pat made some dinner- famous oven baked crispy chicken with pepper sauce and mashed potatoes on the side. Delicious! James, one of Pat's work colleague, someone I am not necessarily fond of and I shall refer to as Creepy just for convenience... So, Creepy decided to come over to check the acoustics of his guitar in the living room at Pat's place. You see, Pat had organised a house party on the Friday and Creepy had been psyched about it- wanted to play his guitar, drink Absinthe and sing away to his glory. Oh and of course do what he does best, creep the girls out with is creepy stare. So while Pat, Carrie-Ann, Lorna and his housemates were conversing and dining, Creepy decided to sing away and strum his guitar like he was some talented one at a jazzy restaurant.

The next day Carrie-Ann and Lorna had a tour guide of Pat's "fantastic" lab. Freshers week was on, so they were entertained with some stalls and sales. I, meanwhile, needed to unwind and look into what we could do the following days.

Friday night was finally around, people were buzzing in the house. Pat's housemates, colleagues from work, friends from Cork and me were on the guest list! That night was memorable on several levels. The drunk drama- always so amusing. Everyone has their own version of the same incident. The Absinthe story wasn't the best one. It got the best out of few, fruits thrown about in the kitchen, Creepy sitting out the house in the cold for 40 mins, bit of drama here and there. But it was great fun! Came back home after a aching hour and a half of dancing at The Lounge at 5:00 am the next day! People were asleep on the floor in different rooms. Man, what a night!

The Saturday we decided to take it easy. Went to town, walked by the canal, popped in at White Cross, because a band was playing live there. There was a Lancaster Music Festival for the weekend, so there were bands playing at different avenues. The town was buzzing! Plus, the new comers at Lancaster have arrived by the thousands. So, a lot of new faces. Reminded me of my first week at Lancaster... :') *sniff*
We then headed over to Lisa's, (the man-girl I was talking about earlier- check the recent FB pictures) where we watched X-factor.

The Sunday, Lisa and her somewhat boyfriend, Matt, the Irish girls, Pat and I went to Windermere. We had breakfast at The Lighthouse Cafe, and strolled down to the lake where we took at cruise around. We stopped by at this aquarium. Where oddly, we found a special variety of tiny monkey's, a snappy small croc, amphibians that creeped me out, Asian otters, among fish and tiny sea creatures! Someone should have told them that aquarium is derived from "aqua" meaning water and "rium" meaning place/ room, therefore only water bearing animals should be there. But the mammals were an interesting twist!

The Monday morning they left, I headed into to Stopford with a heavy head and the need for sleep. Pat and I have a cold and sore throat. I took a day off to well, not do anything but pamper myself today... by cleaning my room up!

Man what a week! I'll leave it to Pat to let you know the details of what happened when and where. Or maybe he would cover the next story about Sheehan's visit this weekend. Which reminds me, Fifi, you could come down the weekend with Sheehan if you'd like, lemme know!

I think I hear the ice cream man by the corner of my street, time for me to race up to him!

bye for now!

Sick, so I finally made it here.

That sums up why I'm here. Believe you me, it's Sunday and I had planned last night to be back in the office to, well, catch up on many things relative to my thesis. Fortunately or otherwise, I woke up with sore throat and a throbbing head . With nothing else to do, I finally found the time to make my presence known here.

In other words, I do miss you guys, don't get me wrong. It's on days like these that I get to reminisce the Lancaster experience with nostalgia.

Perhaps a comprehensive update on the one month since I arrived in Singapore: the heat is despicable.

I have no idea therefore how Caucasians (how white Westerners are called here, rather inaccurately - so Pat prepare!) get to enjoy the tropical sun in Sentosa when it is in fact hovering around 35 celsius. The one thing I have always been concerned about is how to avoid getting even darker and developing skin cancer along the way.

I got a fantastic place on the 37th floor of a high rise residential building in this area called Queenstown. By bus, my office at NUS Bukit Timah Campus is accessible in less than 30 minutes. At night though I choose to walk home which normally takes me an hour, that is if I don't pass by the local market.

A brief digression: If you hadn't known yet, Spar at Lancaster was my hangout place after a full day's workload. For some reason I find joy and reprieve in carrying home a piece of banana and a can of tuna but only to decide later on that I wouldn't eat them anyway.

Well, walking home justifies my lack of exercise in this country. The first time I went to the gym I had to compete with Law undergraduates who were taking turns in using the treadmill and crosstrainers. Little did I know that they were reserving those for other friends of theirs who were to come much later. I had no choice therefore but to stick to this rowing machine which I grudgingly used for the next 45 minutes. And that was the last time I was at that gym. It's simply immature to scold those Law undergrads. They might bring me to their moot court on campus and have death penalty pronounced on me on the spot. My ultimate aspiration is for my body to decompose in Philippine soil.

The view from my place, I must say, is simply gorgeous. From here one can have a glimpse of Bowland Tower at Lancaster, if my sight serves me right. Well, any of you guys can stay here. I have a nice flatmate (there are only two of us) who is the Vice President of SwissRe, a global reinsurance company. He always gives me a treat. Invoking the hardship and poverty of being a student always works, I must say. I don't know how I would behave once I finish the PhD.

I may have more to say but this has been getting longer than usual already.

It's good to be here and to be reading everyone else's entries. So shall we start counting down to Manila already? I will be home for Christmas!

*The Mainland European Times*

Hola amigos!

Cómo es? Bien??? Yo soy muy bien! Yo tengo mi una clase de espanol. Comprende?

From the above you can notice that I have had muchos clases de espanol (many Spanish classes). It's tough having 3 hours of Spanishness all over you, but I have to admit that I am loving it. Spanishness, I define as a flood of emotions and RRR's which is a rrrrrr-sound but made with your tongue in front of your upper front-teeth (try it, please, so I can see that I am not the only Spanishspeaking-retard). This said, I also have to admit that I am probably the slowest learner in the entire group . If that has to do with the busieness of the rest of my day, or if it has to do with my language abilities, is for somebody else to judge. So my weekdays are filled with attending classes every day for 3 hours, then have a Lunch on the go in the beauty of the subway, and then start working at my dad's company at 1pm till 8pm. My day finishes with Spanish deberras (homework) and dinner (which my mom is a specialist in preparing it), then I fall into deep sleep at 11pm and wake up at 6am again. Uff, telling you this is even tiring to me.

Anyhow, my weekends are splendid!!!!
Right now I am sitting in the mountainhouse in Austria, the sun is setting, the tiled stove crackles with a warm fire and I am enjoying a hot milk with honey ..... well, it all sounds pretty cozy, ey? But all these blankets wrapped around me and the three layers of clothes is because our heating installation doesn't have any more oil. I guess this is how it will be when the world will run out of oil eventually / or how the mountain people felt 200 years ago. The greatest challenge was taking a shower with ice-cold water which felt like it had just sprung out of glacier mountains. After a power-shower which left me with blue toes, I felt the appreciation for not being born a century ago.

This reminds me that, 200 years ago there was a bavarian King called King Ludwig I, who held a horse-race and festival with free food and beer for the entire city of Munich. Now, the Oktoberfest is no longer a horse-race, but a 16-18 day beer festival, attracting 5 billion people from all over the world per year. You can imagine it just like Blackpool's venture/fun-park but 5 times bigger and aimed mainly at drinking beer. The autoscooters, rollercoasters and haunted houses are just for entertainment after the drinking madness. So this madness I dared to go. My first visit was with my parents where we met my brother and his girlfriend. In the first picture you can see my brothers gf, my mom and me in traditional bavarian dresses. It was just such a beautiful day because we strolled from beergarden where we had roasted chicken with potato salad to booths with glaced almonds, cotton candy, chocolate glazed fruits - I felt like I was in Cockaigne!

Besos y hasta luego,
Vuestra Johanna

The buzz at Lancaster CIty

So although I've not been doing something solid, I've been finding out details about things and socialising quite a bit... Where do I begin?

Job wise:
Been applying for jobs... I'm going back to the company I had been interning with on campus, starting Monday. Just to while away time and keep an eye out for the current environmental news. That sorta thing. I'm considering a part-time job at Lancaster City. Will keep you posted on that when it's finalised though.

Social wise:
The past week, I've been avoiding spending the evenings at my place, simply because I dislike having to deal with my live-in landlord, who is undoubtedly immature, inconsiderate and OCDfied. So, Pat and I have been hanging out with Pat's housemates friends, Lisa (the big girl-boy), Matt (her boyfriend of some sort) and Anna (the lesbian). We caught up on X factor at Lisa's place yesterday, had a couple of drinks the previous week and had dinner the week before that. Lisa and Anna are really nice to talk to. I always did like Lisa for some reason.

We hung out with Mike (Pat's colleague from work) and his girlfriend, Sam's place on Friday. Well, Pat and Mike were playing the new FIFA game, then after realising Sam's and my bored face; we watched Rush Hour 3 and the Planet Earth series. Speaking of movies, Pat and I watched The Other Guys and I think it was really really funny. I loved it!

Lancaster news updates:
Return tickets now cost GBP 2.25 as oppose to 2.15 while single ticket cost GBP 1.50.
The new students moved in on Saturday, campus recruit was busy accommodating the new batch of freshers. Common Room is cleaned out, I think they put in a new sofa set though. Lancaster City night clubs are back in business having noisy drunk fools strolling about. The weather is grim, raining some days sunny the other days.