May 10

Time really flies and its now 10th of May already. The weather is really nice now, getting a little bit too warm haha (today its 23 degC!). This place really has everything, in March the country's Ice Hockey tournament was held some 1km away from my place, and today there's cycling competition! (the video is kinda low quality because it was taken from my phone).

Compare and Contrast! This was taken on 1st February, and the other one below was taken today. Now you see why Snow can get pretty boring haha..

The sun is out most of the time now, I can see the Sun at the horizon at abt 10.30pm and 1.30am. This is a pic taken arnd 4am, it is actually much brighter than it seems on the pic.

27 April - Swedish Space Corporation

Sorry backtrack abit to 27 april when I visited the Swedish Space Corporation in Solna(Stockholm) because I totally forgotten to log it. A very interesting trip where we got to see model satellites as well as real stuffs going into space soon. It was really nice to get to speak with these experts and discuss the possibilities of a Moon mission.

May 1 - Hamburg (Germany)

Me and Venki went to Hamburg the day right after Vahlborg. Both of us made sure that we didn't got too drunk on Vahlborg so that we won't miss the flight. Its only a 1hr15min flight from Stockholm Skavsta airport + a 50 min bus ride to the city center of Hamburg.

Hamburg is really a crazy city. This street named Reeperbahn, is really havoc. Just behind me is the Europe's 2nd largest brothel.

Look at the cars here.. power!!
They openly sell knives, swords and even guns!!

This is the most crazy clubbing street. From normal pubs to strip clubs hoho. We came back on the 2nd night and it was really crazy. We were like having 'ladies night' in Singapore, but here, we could enter so many different clubs for free as students, and in one of the clubs we even got a free shot! The next morning after breakfast, we headed to the St Petri's Church, the place where we climbed 554 steps to the top of the church where we can see the whole of Hamburg. The staircases were really narrow and kinda steep too.

From the top we could see the Rathaus (Town Hall).

This is the St Nikolai's church, which was rebuilt after being badly damaged during the 2 world wars. It was black because it was covered by ashes during the war. This is a very unique building, Chilehaus. The Chilehaus depicting the form of a ship is propably the best example of the 1920s style of "Kontorhaus" architecture

Here is the St Nikolai Church turned musuem again. By the town hall, we witnessed a couple getting married and getting ready to take a ride on the chariots, what a way to get married!

Nice street dance!


This is how the Hamburg train station looks like from the inside.
We wanted to visit the St Michaelis's Church which is very much the symbol of Hamburg, only to find it under renovation (@#&$(!) Look how crazy this city is. It is not uncommon to find people drunk on the streets in the morning.
Another disappointment is the Erotic Art Museum which is not open for duno what reason.

This is the port of Hamburg, the largest of Germany. I got my shades in Hamburg because the Sun is really out almost the whole day in Sweden already, and it is really expensive to get it in Sweden. How do I look in it?

April 30 - Vahlborg

Vahlborg is the largest event in Uppsala where the whole city goes crazy to celebrate the end of winter. Parties start one wk before 30th APril all the way. 29th April is Kvalborg which means pre-Vahlborg and many peopl already got drunk. There are also other events like barbequeing at Ekonomikums like this. Every year, around 30,000 people travel here just to witness this day. Some people even claimed to have seen their teachers drunk and stripping away on Vahlborg! The day kicks off where people start to have breafast by the river, with CHAMPAGNE! and as early as 7am! It was almost impossible to even find a place to stand, people were standing on dustbins and climbing trees.

At 10am, the students showcase the boats that they have built for the past month. I wanted to join the race along with a few of my friends but too bad that we were too late. The admission was full and this year there are about 92 boats in total.
These people seem to be here on the wrong day. There are really crazy boats, some playing soccer on their boats, some playing drums, some playing volleyball with other boats, really funny when you see them haha..

After that, at about 12pm, everyone finds a spot to picnic and have their lunch. Look at the amount of people here. There's even a stage for bands to perform.
At about 3pm, all the ex-students, no matter old or young, gather in front of Carolina Rediviva (Library) to wave their student hats. It's a moment where they remember themselves as students before.
3.25pm, and this is not the first drunkard on the streets. The whole city is like in anarchy, shattered bottles everywhere, drunkards walking along the roads, the police just stands there to make sure no one gets hurt.

Even the birds go crazy today!!

After the hat-waving, it was a tradition that the students race with champagne into the student Nations. But nowaways the crowd is so horrendous that people just start to queue at 1pm and therefore impossible to get in if you go there at 3pm. Nevertheless, you can still see people spraying champagne at other people and in the nations like this one below, is really crazy. Champagne all over! By the time it was like 5pm, we even saw girls so drunk with their wet shirts torn so badly that it was non-existent.

Although we didn't get into any student nation, we managed to see something really nice also. People were dancing on the roads to live music along the rivers, old and young, everyone.

After that, we went back and prepare ourselves for the party that night. Again the queue was crazy and you could already see most people are already drunk in the queue. What a day!

April 27 - Gamla Uppsala

Gamla Uppsala (Old Uppsala) is one of the most remarkable sites of prehistoric remains in Scandinavia. It has history dating back to the 6th century. Nothing really much to see there, but the weather was so good that I was out in my Berms for the first time! The old building on the left is the Gamla Uppsala Museum.
The scenery there is pretty nice. The "mounds" you see on the right are believed to be burial sites of kings 1500 years ago, buried with precious items.

This is the Church from the 11th Century. Inside buries Anders Celcius, the one whom created the celcius temperature scale, and outside around the church buries many great people. From here I was even able to see the Uppsala cathedral and Castle from afar.

April 19 - Gothernburg (Sweden)

Me and 7 other people went to Gothernburg which lays to the west of Sweden. We rented this 9-seater Renault car and drove about 6 hours there. I also drove on the way back and it was really a different experience. It was at night when we came back and I had to drive on streets without lights, keep toggling between high and low beams, steer this left-hand-drive car and shift gears with my right hand when I haven't touched manual cars for like 4 years! It was so dark that I can't see which gear im on, so most of the time I just shifted from gear 1 to 4 to 6 haha..

This are the 4 other guys I was with along with 4 other gals. From the left is Mike from Massachusetts, Venki from SG, Daniel from Texas and beside me is a Swede which I forgot his name. Of course he was the one who did all the directions ahha.
It was really warm here in Gothernburg, I was already walking around in my T-shirt only. The streets look pretty much the same like Stockholm and it is really crowded. Btw, Gothernburg is the 2nd largest city in Sweden.
We went to this park which is really famous and there were quite a few animals to see. It was really weird as to why to put this animals here! Behind me is the moose, the national animal of Sweden, damn huge!
Here is the boy band again haha.. After that we went to the its port, the largest in Scandinavia. Scenery was nice but the boat trip after that was even better.
This is the boat ride which is kinda interesting. Halfway through it, everyone has to sit on the floor of the boat because the bridges were made so low in the past. There were made low because they can actually be lifted up with gears at the bottom. We got the Gothernburg pass to enjoy this ride, free trams and also entrance to a few museums. A pity that the theme park (Liseberg Park) which is the largest in Sweden is only open from next week, DAMN!

This is a playground outside Universeum and the guys got a chance to 'feel young' again..The musuem has alot of offer and I'll show you about them one by one. Firstly is the ocean aquatic animla display and you can see from this video what they offer, from Nemo to sharks like this!

They also have a showroom of snakes showing many of the world's most venomous snakes such as Anaconda.

Up next is the tropical zone. They really make it so real: the temperature and moisture was like singapore, so bad that the first thing I entered the place was to roll up my sleeves, and the most funny thing was the Swede left the place in 5 minutes!!
The last 2 showrooms we went to were really fun. Playing with really stupid games and taking pictures with cars like this.
O ya and FYI, I have gotten an internship at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (INSTITUTET FÖR RYMDFYSIK , IRF). Almost like a dream come true. I always thought it was impossible to get into the Space industry haha. Btw, I obtained it through real hard work: had to sleep for only 5 hours daily for almost 2 weeks to design and draw an antenna that they are going to propose to some company in USA the week after. It was a real 'real' experience. They are offering me a monthly salary of 14500SEK which is about 3400sgd! But the high taxation will only result in me drawing home only 2500sgd. Nevertheless, when you start to compare it with an SG internship... muhahaha. The institute is actually making a proposal to make components for a Moon Mission Chandrayaan-2 (Indian) and if they are selected, my supervisor says I'm going to be part of a real Moon Mission!!!!!!!!!!!!!!