Activism

It was really cold outside during the Christmas market, so we ran into a museum of sorts for a while just to warm up. And it was a really cool place because all the exhibitions and posters were related to making the world a better place. The issues tackled were sustainable fashion, closure of Guantanomo Bay, HIV prevention and non-discrimination, making health care accessible to the poor and the war against terror & the propaganda surrouding it.

Sustainable fashion never quite looked so good. I think I could be persuaded to wear that denim gown for my wedding....
Found peace?
A critique of health care inaccessibility to the poorer nations
This is my favourite, the caption read "we can heal the world"
This is really beautiful, considering that they are just a bunch of condoms. The caption read "First date? Bring me flowers."
Too funny!
More posters related to HIV/aids.

It's beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas!

After the let-down of the Santa village, I was really looking forward to the Lulea Christmas market in town on Sunday. It was the first Advent yesterday. So after church to meet up with the guys. The weather had had gone from 2 degrees to -11 degrees overnight, made it even more Christmas-sy :)
Nothing beats body warmth in times like this.
Cute little stalls selling lovely handmade items and yummy treats :)
Carolers! Singing traditional favourites so beautifully and in the cold some more! So amazing!
We were there for slightly over an over, and then at 2.15pm, the sun set. It's so beautiful :)
The giant tree in the center.
Real wreaths! Handmade by a nice old woman.
Hot Glogg boiling over an open fire. It's a traditional Christmas-time drink, they were giving out some...it's quite an acquired taste :s
My home-made caramel pop and the streetlights.

We all agreed that the Christmas market was exactly what we were expecting the Santa village to look like. It was much better because it was cosy, non-commercial, really festive yet simple and you could feel yourself getting into the Christmas spirit without even trying. The decorations were nothing like the elaborate ones back home at Orchard Road, but somehow I felt this was so much more beautiful without even trying.

Party like a Hippie

We arrived back in Lulea after our Finland road trip at 8:30pm and there was a party at 10pm next door. So after fixing myself a nice bowl of oatmeal for dinner and making myself look as hippie as I could I ignored my body's cries for SLEEP (since I did not sleep the night before) and ran over next door with my chocolate flavoured beer =D

Marco and I
I think Olivier would give Gene Simmons a run for his money
Limbo Rock anyone?
I love this photo, and yes, Vishnu merely arranged the bottles and posed =p
Katalin and Minttu make a sandwich outta me
I got picked up
So did Song.
And rolled around on the icy grass

Okay then I really had to get to bed. Pronto.

Day Trip to Finland - Arctic Zoo and Santa Claus Village

I was never this excited about any trip to tell you the truth. Seeing Arctic animals in their natural environment and then going to Santa's workshop! Wowee! But alas, the Arctic zoo was a major let down, it was so poorly maintained and the exhibits were not really reflecting the habitats of those animals. Besides, the animals all looked so sad and bored. I seriously think that the polar bears in the Singapore zoo are much happier, at least they look like they are enjoying themselves from time to time.

It was really icy, and many people slid and fell.

This deer was the highlight of the trip, she up really close and we all got to pet her. She loved the attention.
Pretending to be some animal with antlers with the help of Katalin =D

Next Stop Rovaniemi, Santa Claus Village!
Well this place was a huge let down too. I guess I went there with expectations of seeing the process of how Santa gets his job done, but all we were met with were shops, shops, and more shops. There was a show with santa in it, and you could pay 30 Euros to take a photo with the jolly old rip-0ff, so I didn't.
But there is one really valid reason to still go there if you visit Finland...
Santa's Post Office!
Here you get to see the elves at work, stamping the letters and cards people send from this post office with Santa's official seal.
They keep stacks of letters from all over the world, I found Singapore's :)
The central square in the village. The blue line indicates the polar circle boundary.
Well all in all it was an okay trip I guess, but if you don't see the need to send post cards from Santa's post office I wouldn't recommend going to Rovaniemi. And Just skip the Arctic Zoo :/

Celebrate!

On Friday night, we were all not planning to sleep as the bus to Rovaniemi (Santa Claus Village in Finland) was leaving at 5am Saturday morning. The gang was to be gathered at Vishnu's place for snacks and movies. And I had told them that I want to make a special cake to celebrate the birth of my adorable niece Amritaa. So that was the perfect time to do it :) And although the cake I made is essentially a Berry Crumble Pudding, that night it was dubbed 'Amritaa cake'.

Just drizzle some vanilla sauce and oh boy...this cake is a dream if I may say so myself.
Katalin and Minttu made some gingerbread cookies too, The made regular round ones and a very special........
I Love Singapore! How cute right?
Here's us doing what we do best, vegetate in front of the laptop watching some random movie =)

A Brand New Baby!

Leaving for Lulea, I knew that I would miss the births of many babies. Four to be precise. Three friends of mine were pregnant in church and so was my cousin Linda. Thankfully, Facebook kept me abreast with the baby news in my church and I got to see the lovely pictures of the little new friends I would be meeting in due time.

As for my brand new baby niece, I asked my cousin Linda to sms me when she goes into the labour ward and I got my mum and her mum to keep me updated with dailations, contractions and the actual birth.

So at 2:16am Swedish time, my cousin sms-es me and says she is in the hospital on a chemical drip and close to an hour later she was given an epidural. I then immediately called her mother (my aunty Jinni), my mother and my grandma because I was so excited. This morning at 9:40 Swedish time, just as I woke up, my mother called to say that the baby was crowning and my cousin was going to give birth anytime. And 9 minutes later I get an sms that she had given birth to a beautiful, helathy baby girl at 4:38pm Singapore time. I immediately Skyped my mother who was in the hospital waiting room and she told me she had already seen pictures of the baby taken by the baby's dad - my cousin-in-law Anjan.

I'm an aunty for the second time over! I'm so excited and cannot wait to meet my new niece. I was promised that I will get to see her on Skype, and that they will email me the first pictures of her taken by her father. A brand new princess to love and adore, and I live right next to them, I can visit her everyday! I wonder what they will name her....

p.s. the picture is of my cousin Linda and my grandma taken at my cousin's traditional Indian baby shower.

Onde Onde Biasa

I made onde onde again. This time the traditional way - rolled in coconut. Yellow ones were sweet potato and green ones were plain, cos I didn't buy pandan.

While my international friends liked it, it was the Singaporean verdict that mattered most- cos they know what it should taste like.

Vishnu said that it pops in the mouth and oozes out syrup. And the skin wasn't too thick. But the best indication that it was not a disaster, was the empty plate littered with powdery soft coconut glistening with sugar that was left behind for me to pick at =)

Pick A Date, Any Date

So my time in Lulea is drawing to a close.
It seems too fast, I have less than a month.
I have told the landlord I'll be leaving on the 16th of December.
I still have till early Jan in Europe, but Lulea has been home all this while and I feel like moving away means uprooting myself from 'this' normal.
But maybe I'm just being overly dramatic...Seriously, what roots right?
And I do miss everyone back home so much. I have a new niece to meet too!
It's always the people isn't it? I think knowing that out of all the new friends I've made, only 9 will be back with me in Singapore is the saddest bit.
See you soon, in our sunny island set in the sea, my loves.

The party upstairs

This post is really really late, but I just got my paws on the photos cos I didn't bring Gordon (my camera along). The theme was Chic-Shock, so I wore my knee-high stripy socks and colourful scarf as the 'shock' factor to what would otherwise be a 'Chic' ensemble. It was one wild birthday party, and I being one of the last sober ones ended up babysitting random drunk people, including a French buy who kept telling me his knee hurt and a girl from Hong Kong who was being carried around by random boys. I was also dragged out onto the balcony by a drunk guy so I could be pelted with snowballs, he was suprisingly strong for someone drunk...I couldn't break free from his grip around me so I gave up struggling and just waited :/

Incriminating evidence!