Some things are just meant to be Part 1: What if?

Hi all, as you know I have just came back from St. Petersburg. To me, it's really like the perfect vacation. You met problems, but it's the problem that made the entire trip really fun and adventurous. What if I had not met this problem, would the trip be this fun? What if Karola and I decided not to go St Petersburg (SPB), what would happen?

In my next few posts, I will post many What-If questions just to prove that some things are just meant to be.

We arrived back from SPB @11:53PM and decided to go to the station, Park Kultry which we often go to (Every sunday for me and I always avoid rush hour), to see what is the situation like. We arrived there and saw no signs of explosion at all, just people paying respects, giving flowers, crying, etc.. heard that it was very chaotic on the day of attack, like there were human and train jams, but life still goes on. Here are some pictures taken locally:

1st What if: What if Karola and I decided not to go to SPB or we decide on other dates and not this weekend?
I would not have met the accident because I only take metro during off-peak hours. I would have to take my international marketing mid term test. I would have gone to tulag city which I heard from the others that it is more for old people. I would have gone for my first Pivo (Beer) Management party. I would have celebrated Maxime and Sahraida's birthday with them on Sunday and probably the weekend would just be another typical weekend. But, I went to SPB.

Day 0:
Our train was 1:05am, 27th Mar 2010. I meet Karola in her room at 11pm. But before that, many people visited me. Marina came by to share some SPB's photo with me, Allen came to chat with me for a while, Vadim came to chat with me for a while, Karola came to ask me if I'm ready.. etc. I was busy researching on where to go etc.. so I finished packing my stuffs only at 9pm haha.

So finally it was 11pm, we head out with a excited heart because we don't know what to expect. As we walk to the train station, we do the talking checklist:
K: Hostel booked?
G: Checked
K: Do you know how to go to the hostel?
G: Yes, Checked. Did you bring your passport?
K: Yes, checked. Train tickets?
G: Checked. etc..

Finally we arrived at Leningradsky Station. I know the place because I went to Tver through this station. Everything was going smoothly although I know I forgot to bring my comfortable pants for sleeping. We waited for the train as we were 1.5 hours earlier. the train lane was not shown yet. So we walked around, had a nice cup of hot milk chocolate and then walk to the train platform. Everything was so dark etc, because they switched off the lights. They only switch it on when the train move.

Our place was right beside the toilet. There's a door which opens and close if you wanna go to the toilet. I got the bed upstairs and Karola got the bed downstairs. Of course it's not the comfortable kind of bed, but still it was still sleepable. It was kind of cool. You can somehow flip the table into a bed. So Karola slept on the "table" and I slept on the bed on top of her. I can't sit up straight on my bed. But I was so tired. So I just slept anyway. Woke up a few times because the bed was hard and I felt numbness on my arms.


TBC...

Looking forward to SPB!

Hi all! Kak dela? (How are you?) I will be away from Moscow from 27th Mar to 30th Mar... Going to the next awesome city, St. Petersburg! (SPB). Soooo I won't be around.

My friend's father gave him a Singapore Calendar and he showed it to me:

I think the girl is thai...

He said this girl look like me...

What if these are actually not girls but Thai Transvertite?!?! Hahah... Singapore Calendar. Nice. I like the girl who looks like me. She has nice ass. I think I am turning into a lesbian here.. But it's weird I still don't miss home yet. I look at the calendar's address and I kept getting this deja vu thingy. The address system here is weird... Maybe I miss looking at Singapore Address. I hope I will not forget my Home Address hurhurhur....

Haha.. As promised, this is the video in the train... I don't dare to take too much of the video... but the song is really nice...

I forgot to mention in my previous post in Tver. After we reached Tver, we took a tram to the Volga River area... The tram has power heaters and it's really warm... hot... Extremely hot! Then there's this drunk guy who sat infront of emmi and i. He introduced himself and kissed me in the hand! And we talked a little bit. I tried to talk in my crappy Russian. It's really nice first impression of Tver because the people there are sooooo friendly! Then when they leave the tram, the guy said give him a high five but we couldn't understand because his hand position was a low five. After they left a granny told us that the high five is a low five or a hand shake. Hahha so funny.

TBC...

Buay Ta han

Yesterday I went to a city 200km away from Moscow, Tver. It's the city where the Volga River begins. A nice place to go and stay forever when you are old. LOL. The air there is fresh and it's a quiet and serene city. Anyway, prepare to read this long post.

I met Allen (guy from taiwan) in the morning and we head to the train station, Leningradsky Vokzal. We were suppose to take the 9:05am train. We reached there at 8:35am. We came out from the metro station and went to the smaller train station next to the metro station to ask where Leningradsky Vokzal train terminal is. The guy gave the directions so we went there and tried to buy the tickets. The lady told us that the next train is at 1pm! I was like no way... I saw the internet stating that the train will leave at 9:05am. So we went to the counter next to ask again and she told us to go to the small station to buy the tickets. We head back to the small station and the people there ask us to go to the big station. Damn. They must have had fun doing that to us. But we managed to find the right medium size station. But we missed the 9:05am train by 3 minutes... so we had to take the 11:35am train.

So we went to Kitay Gorod, which means china town, since we have 2 more hours. Damn... there is nothing china about this china town. There's church, italian restaurants, subway, etc... but nothing chinese about it. I thought we could grab some tim sum. But we grabbed arabian shaslik instead. lol.

Fast forward, we sat on the train and there were many people selling things on the train. There were even performances! I will upload it in my next post. Then we reached the city. at 2 plus pm Omg... I miss Emmi so muchie! (For the past two days, she went there and stayed with her friends and I did shopping alone (That... is another issue will talk about it soon) and went to the bar with others. ) Her friend, Nicol from Finland was there too. He was our "city guide guy". Seriously, the city is small... nothing much to see, but the air is really nice and peaceful. The Volga River was in ice and you can see people walking and fishing on the river. It's actually dangerous because we saw a few cracks on the iced river.

So about food... There's KFC there! You don't see KFC in Moscow, but u see it in this small city. Then we walked further down we meet KFC's competitor there... Chicken House. They sell cheap and nice food. Omg.. their curry sauce and mayonnaise with garlic sauce is AWESOME. Sooooo finger lickin good.

We went to their dorm... and damn they have their own kitchen! Over here in my dorm, you have to share the kitchen with another 30 people =.= But its okay because I always cook in batches and store it into the fridge and then microwave it when I want to eat it.

Then we took the train home.. I think this is the main highlight of the trip. When you are in the train, you will meet people there and we did. Usually Russians don't usually speak English and 90% probably don't understand what we are talk about... so We were talking about some sex stuff and then suddenly two young looking guys turned to us and ask if we were from america. It was so funny because we were talking about sex stuff and they spoke to us. Lucky they don't understand what we were talking about. After they left, another girl came to talk to us again. They really made the 2 hours and 30 minutes train ride like only 1 hour long. I like it. :)

Sooooo about my post title. What is so buay ta han? I have a friend who recently has a girlfriend. Look i am not being jealous here or what. I just don't understand what they are doing. They published (or spammed) their 3 similar looking collage photos on facebook and so I clicked on one of the photos. I saw their comments and I LOL:

I thought they skype or msn? Why are they so public about it? lol. My room mate saw it and said that maybe she should do that with her husband too (In a sarcastic way). Like msning and skyping is not enough? Okay nevermind. Probably they are in the honeymoon period. That's why. Maybe it's their monthiversary plus they they didn't take alot of photos together before he flew, that's why. Maybe the first collage the girl did it, the second collage the guy did it and the third one they do it together? Maybe they really want the whole world know how in love they are?

I have nothing against their love. In fact, in a way it is quite sweet, just that I hope that he can stop spamming my facebook with the similar-pictures-collage. If every monthiversary he spams the similar collage, except the photos are in different order, I will really LOL. lol.


TBC..

Papa's Place

Thursday I went to Papa's place. That was the 2nd time I have been to a club in Russia... I went there because I promised Katarina that I will go plus... it was ladies' night. No cover charges, all drinks for the ladies are free. So I went there.

The song was not bad at the beginning. I prefer RnB but at the back it was all trance. Soooo... as a Singaporean, when there is FREE drinks, you will just take alot.... And I think I drank like 8 cocktails. Before I went there, I drank like 1 liter of water. After the 5th cup of cocktail, I was really really really urgent. I went to the toilet and this is what happened:

Yeap... the guy pee-ed on the floor and then he turned back and lock the door. Entire process = 20 seconds because we were too shock. It was really super hilarious. His face was like the huh? face and he actually turn to me and pee-ed on the floor! LOL

I thought I was @ the wrong toilet. Then a girl came into the toilet then I realised that it's a mix toilet. But that was not all... I was about the try the 3rd door when... the first door opened. A guy and a girl came out from the toilet. I went ahead the try the 3rd door, it was locked and so I went to the 1st toilet, thinking what they were doing on the toilet seat.

After I pee-ed, the guy who pee-ed on the floor came out of the toilet at the same time. We were washing our hands and then he came really close to me and said some Russian in a drunkard way. I told him, I don't understand what is he talking about (Actually I do. He said something like wanna do something together?). And he went into my personal bubble and I just say I don't understand and I went out of the toilet. Geez. Why did he even try to talk to me? A guy should never initiate a talk to a girl after showing his penis by accident unless he wants to apologize.

Overall, the place was really fun. I guess I will be going there again next thursday. Okay I have to do my assignments now!


TBC...

Super Diskotect

Hi all, I'll be going to st petersburg on 26th till 30th of March, so I will not be online. Anyway, yesterday we went to the Super Diskotect of 90s concert at the Olympic Stadium... IT WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT. 660 Rubs... 33SGD. Omgggg. It's Awesome. I dance till my waist have muscleaches and my feet hurts. But it was awesome! Although I dunno most of the bands, but their songs were all so so so sososososooso catchy! Everybody was dancing in the stadium!

Post-Concert Photo

Children and Procrastination

My original plan for today:
Wake up at 8am, shower and etc.
9am cook soup. While waiting for the soup to boil, do the report for history of economic thought which is due next week.
12pm go see lenin.
1pm go shopping at HNM.
5pm go Kickboxing
7pm go take a shower
8pm have dinner
9pm watch show
12mn sleep

What actually happened:
Woke up at 8am, went back to sleep.
Woke up at 10am, cook soup. While waiting for the soup to boil, I watched "How I met your Mother"
12pm eat lunch.... lenin stop working at 1pm, so I did not go see lenin
2pm Still watching how I met your mother plus, emmi has to do her essay which is due today, so we did not go out.
3pm felt alittle bit sleepy and I fell asleep
5:30pm I woke up
6pm took a shower
7pm dinner
8pm wanted to go to nepkrectok (Pronounced as pere kross stek), 15 mins walk away from the dorm, but instead went to the prodycti shop which was just 3 mins walk away from the dorm.
8:15pm Sitting here blogging about how much I hate myself for procrastinating.

But this brings us to the next topic.. children. It is really mysterious because when I first came here, I did not see any children. It was after 2 weeks in Moscow, i met the first kid on the street. Where did all the kids go??? After 1 month of stay, I decided to ask Vadim and he told me that I have got to be kidding. There's actually a kindergarten beside the dorm and he sees kids playing with the snow everyday. I was like no way... if there is, why and how is it possible that I saw only 4 kids in Moscow so far?!?!?! It's so weird....

Okay and then, there is this playground near the dorm and you will pass by if you go to the prodycti shop. Every time I walk pass the playground, I would ask myself, why did they build a playground if there is only like 4 kids in Moscow? And BAM! I saw 2 kids playing at the playground just now. I guess more and more kids are coming out of their houses to have fun now. THEY LOOKED REALLY CUTE. omgomgomg. Big eyes, wrapped in many layers of coat. Red nose, staring at your legs because that is their eye level and they can't tilt their head too much because of too many layers of coat. THEY ARE SOOOOO OOOOOO CUTE! Okay... time to do some work (FINALLY).


TBC...

Ice cream

It's sinful... but it tastes really nice.... I will show u guys the funky packaging soon.

TBC...

Womens' Day

Today is womens' day and it's a public holiday here.

My wishes for all my girl friends, stay strong, healthy and cool.



TBC

Primary School

This entry is about my personal feeling...

I always catch up with Singapore news every sunday morning... And today I found something shocking. I have this primary school friend, she used to come to my house along with a few other primary school friends to play.. Now, she is in the newspaper for wanting to breakup a family of a famous person in Singapore.

After I've finished my primary school, I did not catch with my primary school friends because they were fun to be with, but they remind me how bad my temper was and whenever we have gatherings, I find it so hard to join in the fun because they do things that are bad. So catching up with them on later years was difficult although it was not difficult to guess what happened to them.

Then there's this girl... she used to have stomachache very frequently when studying due to Some kind of mental stress. So there's a period of time, she didn't go to school very frequently. All I knew was that we passed our PSLE and went separate ways and she probably complete her secondary school studies... or not. Okay that I am not sure... but when I was like 18 years old, I manage to add her in friendster and I thought she was doing pretty well as a hairstylist... then again poof no news of her and now she is on the newspaper.

It made me really curious about what happened to her life... I googled her name and now people are making bad comments about her looks, etc... It makes me really sad for her, makes me feel like whacking those commentator's ass. That famous guy has already admitted that he was the one who initiated all those things... So why must she be the one to be mocked at! Why must be the girl always be the one suffering in this kind of scandal!?!? Ass man!!

But this is so contradicting... now she wants that famous guy to break up with his wife... it's like what is she thinking??? Anyway she will be the spotlight of Singapore for a few months I guess.. I hope she can be more *er hem* in her thinking and everything would be fine for her soon...


TBC...

My name

My full name is *********************.. There is no Gina in it. Gina is just a name I came out with when my temporary Japanese teacher didn't know how to pronounce it. My name was suppose to be Gin. But the name's too cool. My capitamall debit card was put under the name Gin Ho. So I added an 'A' behind to make it sound more sweet and kind. It's kind of cool that no one knows my real name here because this means that I can do whatever I want right? hahaha... but you know what's even more cool?

I received my metro card yesterday and I was really thrilled cos I saw one of the French girls holding it. It looks like some kind of credit card and I like credit cards! I collect them. So if you guys have any unused credit cards, please pass it to me. : )) Okay let's go back to the point. I got back my metro card and this is what happened:

It says хожуан хуи... Direct translation: hojooan hooi.. Okay it sounds a little bit like my own name if you read it out loud... My family name should be HO, not Hui though... Okay.. enough of this... let's flip the card to another side:

Nice... eh? I spot something wrong...

Now I have a new name! Khui Khozhuan! Nice? It's AWESOME. Now I can kill people and get away with it because I have a new name! My Russian name is Khui KhoZhuan. LOL.


TBC

I tried this today

Pretty impressive!60 You are almost a hero! You've got a few more things you need to learn in order to become our next 100% Russia Survivor. Join our RT group on Facebook - we'll help refine your skills and show you how to really 'Live in Russia'. Try to check your survive status!

Hahah... Interesting.