after church,

sainsbury’s blackforest cupcake. taste heaven… ,

groceries at sainsbury, i got this ferrero rocher at bargain price. yayyy!

wandering at selly oak park. those spring flowers are beautiful …

finally i’m posing. teehee.. see my hair. definitely need haircut.

HAPPY SUNDAYY!

hi all, happy friday. happy weekend! which is definitely not for me. how can we really enjoy weekend with piles of work? tell me. please. even if we do some fun, our mind (and heart perhaps) will still be haunted by the ghosts of study stuffs, creating anxiety. yes, pathetic. but believe me, i’m still sane. haha. those study stuffs are not strong enough to bring me down, or maybe yet. so i’m here, blogging. enough blabbering about assignment.

it’s only several days until spring break! sorry if i bore you with my excitement and keep saying this until million times. i-am-indeed-beyond-excited! i’m so much into travelling, wherever the destination is. really. still those kiddos who are extremely happy when it comes to holiday.

photo courtesy of SusannahT

Here are some tips and tricks or just the way i do travelling for this particular holiday, as it may vary from one person to another.

about the preparation thingy:

• if the travel destination requires visa and we are willing to do everything our own, start more or less 2 months prior the departure, well 1.5 months is ok. why 2 or 1.5 months? because if it’s a high season, the ticket price might increase sharply closer to holiday season.
• hotel booking are usually cancellable up to one day before check in. but be aware that transportations are usually non-refundable if we are travelling cheap. read the terms and conditions carefully. cheap eurostar price is often non-refundable so we must be sure with the schedule before departure. there are several cheap flights to European countries from the UK if we book 2 months before. i’ll travel with easyjet. it can be rescheduled or rerouted or both but require us to pay £25 more as the changing fee for single trip. and pay more when there’s price difference between the old and new schedule.
• apply visa at least 1 month before departure.
• in the case of travelling to EU countries, choose a nice country for you to apply for schengen visa. some countries are very strict in giving duration of stays and expiry date. some are nice (e.g. Italy, people say).
• making visa appointment by phone is more reliable than online. yeah, despite we have to pay £1/min.
• check all the documents and make sure that we’ve completed all the requirements before applying. once we’ve entered the visa till, paid, but further realised that they are not yet complete or we haven’t met the requirements, we won’t be able get the money back. instead we have to make another appointment and pay another visa fee.
• visa will be processed 15 working days.

on the departure thingy:

• arrive the station or airport at least 1.5 hours before the timetable.
• do not bring a lot of stuffs. one medium luggage is enough (they limit 18 kg travelling by plane) to avoid the exaggerating overweight charge.

on the holiday thingy:

• camera is a must! (i’ll bring both my polaroid and DSLR)
• casual, comfortable yet still chic outfit. and raincoat! in case the weather fools us.
• drink a lot of water.
• no laptop during holiday is preferable. but i reconsider it. in order to anticipate abundant pictures i’ll take, i think i need my laptop to transfer all the pictures. buying new memory card is so lavish.
• if we got only short time, do not push ourselves too hard to go to follow the crowd of tourism attractions. for some highlight places it might worth. but thereafter, just enjoy and feel the city. observe what the local people do. feel how the local people live. take pictures as many as we can. that’s the point of travelling. later when we’re trying to recall the memories, we can still feel the atmosphere of that place and remember all the details and feel blissful.

University of Birmingham’s library.

I perceive this is going to be the most rambling post in this blog. just because i have no particular topic to share and on the other hand, i feel like i need to say something, uhm, i mean lots of things. just finished my business report due next week but too lazy to move on the other essay due next month. and i’m currently waiting for my laundry because i run out of clean clothes (i haven’t taken a shower) and listening to my itunes. oh well i just upgraded my itunes to itunes 9 and i’m psyched because of the sleek design, my sony notebook turns to look like macbook, haha. ok, that sounds like unessential information.

• i’m counting days to my spring break. can’t hardly wait. i think spring is already here though still not warm enough to really put off jackets. flowers have started to grow and that’s fabulous. sometimes i think my mood swings in accordance to the weather. haha. well, i’d love to write something about travelling tips or just simply travelling ala me (ah that sounds weird but i believe you know what i mean) but i don’t have much time these days to organise the content. i also wonder is it supposed to be travelling or traveling? see ‘traveling’ many times. but i write “travelling” everytime. so curious that i asked google (i’m addicted to google since i’m here) and fortunately it answered both are correct. it’s just the matter of British or American spelling. so i can continue with double ‘l’ as in travelling. haha. have i told you this spring break i’ll go to Holland? keukenhof is on my top list. and maybe if i have enough time, i’ll to travel to brussel and paris. i hope there is no rain during my holiday. i need sun. so i can wear sunglasses and casual clothes without umbrella or raincoat and also for the sake of good pictures.
• library cubicle has been such a fascinating one lately. haha. yet there are two things i hate from studying in the library or doing essay in library. first: i can’t sing out loud while listening to music. what a torturous as i always found it difficult to not sing when listening to music i’m very familiar with. haha. the only thing i can do is moving my head or my body with the beats, a very littlee bit otherwise your cubicle neighbours will give wry look or stare at you deeply expressing “you crazy stop that or get out of here”. (my own experience). second: so difficult to find plug for my notebook. during afternoon and evening, many students with their laptops pop in the library and for sure they target the areas where plugs are available. so it’s a bit of competition here. and bunch of luck is what we need to win the competition of getting plug (i just introduced new kind of competition to you haha).

sorry for the continous ramble. haha. gotta get my laundry now, take a shower, and off to library to have a date with “developing food structure through termal processing”. have a nice day! xxxx

look what assignments have done to us. only one percent sanity left, haha. this is the real refreshments. the night is ours!

technology makes it. skype to support the speaker, yahoo messenger to provide all pictures, camera to capture the moments. ah i must go back to work now, with 99 percent insanity. haha.

casts: me, emy, windy.

photo courtesy of weheartit. i love those lines.

anyway, how would you like the new blog layout? i’m bored of the previous one, haha. will add some improvements later. (thank you boyfr!) anyway,  i’m off to library now, my second home. haha. good news is: business report almost finished. i’m happy. even if there is still a bunch coming ahead. sometimes i think it’s good to keep myself busy.