26.08.08

On Monday I decided to ride my bike to school coz the train was delayed and well... I could have tried to make the next train connection timing but... nah decided not to. So there I went riding the bike to work... the first part of the journey was... chilling...... wind went thru my sweater... later it was... warm.. coz there was dis slope... damn steep... either that or I lack excercise.. gave up halfway on the slope... walked with my bike up instead... then it started to drizzle... zzz.. no choice.. had to continue riding.. by that time my legs were already... nua.. its even worse than my 2.4 km run.. argh.. at least I arrived at my workplace... and thanks to my supervisor, I got my bike tires pumped (yes my tires were half flat when I was riding already) and I got my seat height adjusted... I guess every bicycle riding german always have the tools with them, lol. At night, my flatmate (mitbewohner) told me that there was this sushi party going on downstairs and well.. he didn't go down with me... coz he was not feeling well n stuff... So I had to go down myself, I didn't know anyone there and at first when I went in everyone there was like... "who's dis guy and is he looking for someone?" but well.. tt didn't really matter, I suppose I was there to make friends... they were quite friendly though and we really had a great time chatting! There were switz, french, italien, german, japanese, americans and mE! Man... but this was like their last gathering coz they've actually finished their course here... zzz.. just when I got to know them... for the first time I've actually felt that I know this place. Now I've got to wait for the new batch to come in and well.. make new friends again... Oh yea, there was this light alcohol that they offered me called 'sangria', 7% alcohol with a fruity taste and a whole 1 litre bottle costs only 1 euro! great party, chillout, drink, haha.

Sunsets

This was a sunset on 5th Aug



Sunset on 9th Aug

German gatherings

Heute gab es ein schoenes Wetter; waerme Sonne und kuehle Wind (There was a beautiful weather today; warm sun and cool wind). Today there was supposed to be a praktikant meetup whereby all the IA students in Bosch will meet up at Biergarten in Stuttgart near the main station. Then when I arrived there, I realised something - I didn't know any other students doing IA so I couldn't even recognise any tables there had a hint that they were actually from Bosch and were there to meet up! Sigh, the place I work at is kinda detached from the main compound so I guess I will never know any other praktikants. Luckily during the day, a masters student in my department came to me and invited me to this masters students gathering and its like they've all done Masters at Bosch and are currently working for the company. It was totally a german thing, no other races nor people from other countries. Everyone of them was like speaking damn fast, I totally couldn't catch anything at all. They must like phrase it damn simply for me, so paiseh to keep asking them what they wanted to say. Though uh ok.. I could catch 10 - 20% of what they are saying but... zz... cant say anything ya noe. I wasn't taught to communicate during a social function where all of them arn't students anymore. Yes all NUS german lesson teaches is mainly talking with other students. They were like talking about cars, what they work as, job scopes, talking cok; YES... how to talk cok in german... that's the thing I want to learn! LOL. Then again, it was a great experience, even though I didn't know what they were saying most of the time but at least I get to train my ears to listening to german.
Once again I must say, they have great places to chillax n talk cok over glasses of beers, HA.

Weekend

Woke up at 11, dont know why I just cant get myself to sleep longer. Went to Ludwigsburg to get myself a prepaid card. Somehow its kinda expensive, coz I paid 14 for the sim card itself + 1 euro stored value and i topped up 15 euros so that cost me 30 euros in total, ugh. Then again, I hope I wont be using the fone alot; at least I did survive in Germany for immersion last year for a month. There were alot more meet ups last year; this time I am by myself.
Went to this event called "Weinlaube" (wine leaves); this is an event whereby wine companies come together like a pasar malam and people just buy them, sit down and chillax. Great band performance that goes with it. I just wish that singapore had something like that; then again, it isn't that fun to chillax with singapore's weather. The music was definitely enjoyable just that no one was there to chillax with me. Zzz.





Pic of the Wine fest, lots of tents that serve different wine from different regions and the tent at the very end serves food. One of the many places where germans chillax.


Video of the band at the small wine fest.



And sunday I went to the sommerfest at Stuttgart Scholossplatz which is kinda like the center of gathering at stuttgart and most events are held at. The party was great! Great music, good food and great wine tho I didn't try the food and wine but hey, all booths are selling them and its Germany - how bad can it get!? U guys gotta come by some day man. THE livebands were just awesome definitely >> my speakers, lol.


The liveband I spent the most time on, 2 out of 3 hours there, was the latin music live band (Maquinaria) - very UP, totally owns the band at union square, HA. There were people acutally dancing there, great crowd, impromptu dances, totally fantastic. Will upload photos soon about it, I took like 2 - 3 mins of video of it. Once again its too bad no one was there to share the great moments with me. I wanted to ask someone to dance also but I had my bag, unglam abit the lame to dance with my bag also and I just cant leave it by the side u noe... ugh... had all the impt stuff inside so well... zzz... I aint bringing bags to the next fest and thats for sure!


Great Latin Band
I wanted to upload the video but i think its kinda too big, took too long to process guess my internet sucks. I'm not even half the limit...zz...




Pictures of the summerfest

End of first work week

Ok i haven't been blogging for the last 2 days coz I was totally trying to enjoy the internet. Now I'm just waiting for a game to start hence spending some time writing this up. Thursday I had this Greece lunch that the secretary of Bosch went to get at the nearby mall; pretty nice I must say. You kinda eat bread with a variety of stuff to go with like tuna, some garlic paste, greek salad, olives, cheese and alot of other stuff which I have no idea what they are called; and its totally vegetarian.
Yes and that costs me 10 euros! Then again, later that day, I think I kinda got subsidised - got 5 back.
While I went shopping at the supermarket again, coz i missed my bus -.-, bought thai chilli sauce for 4.39 euros, damn ex but i think its worth it, lol.
It is a pretty cold night, raining outside; I'm just happy that it doesn't rain in the day.

05.08.08

Went to work as usual, finally Herr Huebner (my team leader) gave me something to do. Before that I had to learn this software called “Projectkit” and they threw me a book, ask me to study and I had to know how to work it by the end of the week. It’s a total of 300 pages by the way… zzz… It is FUCKING boring reading that book; I fell asleep a few times reading it ok but luckily they didn’t find out. HA. Yes that’s why luckily he gave me something to do, some powerpoint thing.
Later in the evening had to meet to open a bank account. I walked out of the wrong exit of the train station and couldn’t find the stupid place coz there was so many Deutschbank subsidiaries around. Actually I was kinda dumb to not remember to use the exact address given to me.
Dinner was spaghetti, fish stix and egg.



5th day without internet. Zzz

First day of work 04.08.08

First day at work. Damn long queue at Security and there was this queue ESPECIALLY for praktikants; Bosch really does hire a lot of University students siah. After I was done with the admin stuff then I realize I wasn’t working at that area at all since there was a pickup which I thought was just this guy to bring me to the office building but he actually drove me to someplace else called Tamm. Oh their security cards works for all Bosch work place which is kinda cool coz it works even when I am not in the main compound. There is a small Bosch subsidiary there, really NICE office place – pantry, free drinks in meeting rooms, coffee maker machine and nice clean toilets, woot! LOL. Yeah and I do my work with a 19 inch LCD monitor.
It was a really rainy day; rained from like 11 to 4; had to walk in the rain to lunch and then when I went to register at the foreign affairs office, there was this shitty rain and the place was damn bloody hard to find. There’s like different doors which the offices have the same name but they have different opening hours. For a moment I was like FUCK coz I went to the wrong door, it was closed and I though I had missed the opening hours.
Dinner was once again spaghetti, 2 fish stix and bacon. Picture again.




4th day without internet… miserable…

Sunday 03.08.08

Woke up late today, say 12 pm – its pretty late for a german way of life… lol. Had a sandwich – just bread and ham – a little plain I must say and I had another one coz I though it wasn’t filling enough. Guess that was my lunch + an apple. Oh and I went to the Ludwigsburg town to use internet, cant believe I paid 0,50euros to use 15 mins of internet, I just cant stand the fact that I have a laptop but there is no internet. Then I went to check out my route to Schwieberdingen , which was where I am suppose to be on Monday morning. First I took the route that was provided by the company to the train station ‘Schwieberdingen’; it was a nice journey. I did find the place on the route but I arrived at this DAMN ULU place at the end (just for fun to take the whole route), somewhere you DO NOT want to be in the middle of the night and the train did not run on Sundays hence I took the SAME bus back to the main station. (yes the very same bus that took me there coz he had to wait awhile for the bus timing to leave the place, the same cokster bus driver checked my bus card AGAIN, don’t know why he did it for.)

Went to do some sight see-ing at Stuttgart city center

Some land museum at Stuttgart


The city center


Some world bear crap, suppose to have 1 bear of unique design for each country. After walking 1 round, I couldn't find the one representing singapore, lol. Then again, I have no idea what's so interesting about this that everyone's here hence I only took a picture.


Nice sunset view also from where my room is and where I am eating.


3rd day without internet. Play dota with AI 2 times for the night (argh to think I was kp-ing my brother for doing the same thing at night)

Saturday 02.08.08

Woke up at 9 am just to go do shopping at Ludwigsburg. It was the nearest town that I could actually do some grocery shopping. The place I am in is really a town… might even be less than a town; I could call it a student’s village, forgot to mention that there’s this building full of CHINA people – at least I see them going in and out non-stop from that building and every time it’s a different person. LOL. I bought this list of stuff; I could name it all! – ham, bacon, bread, margarine, 2 packets of spaghettis, 3 apples, black pepper, garlic, tuna, sardines, 10 eggs and fish fingers. Took a picture of my first cooked meal in Germany; I rate it not bad at least for a first time try of a aglio olio, a little lack of oil though.



The night meal HORRIBLE… tried to cook a soup like thing with salt, curry powder and spaghetti in water and added an egg inside with the fish stix. EVERYTHING with the mix was wrong hence I did not take any pictures for it. Was…. Really… horr… ible… you don’t wanna know.



Great Sunset view from my window

2nd day without internet.

Friday Arrival 01.08.08

Once again I’ve lost my luggage… cant believe it just happens again. Until the pick us up guy Prof Schoop told us its normal to lose luggages at Terminal 5. Well… it wasn’t really just me; the other 3 guys from NTU ALSO lost theirs. So this time I wasn’t the unlucky one; it is just TERMINAL 5 HEATHROW. Zzz. The good thing is my luggage came on the same day, at 11 pm though… zzz… I was going to sleep already. This was seriously one of my LONGEST wait EVER – from 4 pm till 11pm. I asked a cute gal for directions at the studentenwohnheim for the housemaster’s location btw, the only happy thing of the day… lol. I went to do some shopping though, through my understanding of the Wohnheim lifestyle – bought a packet of cereals and a 1.5L orange juice.



My room



The area I'm staying