Monday, 9 July 2012

Geneva, Cité Universitaire

I give up trying to keep track of which day it is. But yeah, I think about 12 days have passed since I left Singapore.

Reached Geneva at 12.40am last night. Had a sense of coming home as I crashed into the bed.

The realization that home is relative.

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Anyway we spent the last day in Barcelona going on the free Gaudi walking tour, where we checked out 4 Gaudi buildings, the most memorable being the Sagrada Familia. Had lunch at Burger King (I swear I do this only when traveling with Americans).

Then the rest flew back to Geneva since their flight was at 5pm. Mine was at 8.30, so yoshi and I went to check out Parc Guel, which was this really nice elevated park that allows you to look down at the entire city of Barcelona.

Oh and the day before we went to the beach. I was wearing spaghetti straps and shorts, and I was the most well-dressed person on that beach. The girls lying down 2 metres before me were tanning their boobs. Bikinis would be the formal dress code there.

Well. Welcome to Spain!

I'm too lazy to upload photographs, though rest assured I took plenty of them. Will update them later on.

I am such a lazy blogger it's getting demoralizing x.x And this is just the beginning. Blogging is hard work and after all.

Total spent in Barcelona = 140 euros (excluding hostel)

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Dragged myself this morning at 6am to finish up the case paper which was due at 9am. Finally finally finished it, 5 pages including biblio. It's 25% of my grades already, so I honestly hope it goes well. In retrospect, this is just as important towards my GPA as any other course at Duke, so I have no idea why this feels so relaxing.

Maybe for once, I'm actually enjoying my classes and looking forward to waking up everyday to attend them. Prof. Reeves (or Martha, as she insists we call her) is a really nice lady and it's easy to pay attention in her class. She seems really experienced with working in the business world too, so her anecdotes are good.

Brian said Prof. Rosenberg's class was supposed to be kinda dry, but in a way I kind of enjoy his class more. Maybe because it relates more to economics, and it makes me see this from a different perspective i.e. the philosophy/ political science way. It's nice to have my bits and pieces of random knowledge from philosophy and political science come into use in that class and woven into a bigger picture. I'm so grateful that RGS made us do philosophy in secondary school so at least I was already familiar with all the terms and theories he randomly throws out. So it's the constant feeling of "ah I know that already" and then "oh so that's how it's supposed to fit it".

If only my courses at Duke could be this engaging. Fingers crossed for the next semester.

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On a side note:

Ronnie

I have made arrangements for you and Rui to go to see Sue Mizera, the President of Young and Rubicam on July 18. (Wed.) From 2 until ? (probably a few hours). I'll give you directions to her office before. You can take a bus to get there. In the meantime, it would be good if the two of you can review their website. www.yr.com/content/yr-geneva.html
Thanks

Martha

I'm shadowing the president of a marketing firm! Excited :) I always thought marketing was my thing ever since the business course I took in sec 3 (which in retrospect was like a joke compared to college level classes, but was interesting nonetheless). It combined creativity with empirical studies and psychology - an irresistible melange.

Went grocery shopping at Coop after class with brian and a couple of other people. Bought garlic, onions, lettuce, tomatoes, tortillini, pasta sauce, mushrooms, juice, eggs, milk, chicken, donuts and sausages. Thankfully brian very nicely offered to carry most of the stuff on the way back, so I didn't end up breaking my arms. Cost about 36 bucks, 20 after splitting with yoshi. This would last us for an entire week, so it's reasonable enough (20 bucks for 5 days). Cooked pasta with sausages and mushrooms with brian and yoshi, and had salad to go with it.

Shall take a nap now, then wake up to read Chapters 3 and 4 of Martin Wolf's Why Globalization Works. Then read the readings for Martha's class tomorrow.

Castles in the Air 15:50 l 0 Coconut(s)

Saturday, 7 July 2012

Barcelona, HelloBCN Hostel Room 204

Accounting in Barcelona

Day 1 - Thursday 5 July 2012:

- Dinner = 7.75

- Taxi = 5

~13

Day 2 - Friday 6 July 2012:

- Picasso Museum tickets = 9

- Dinner = 14

- Top from Nafnaf = 18

- Body shop = 15

- Water = 2

- Boat = 3

~61

Day 3 - Saturday 7 July 2012:

- Lunch = 15

Total spent thus far:

$90

Castles in the Air 17:54 l 0 Coconut(s)

Barcelona, HelloBCN Hostel Room 204

I fail at updating.

So I survived my first week in Geneva amidst classes, tons of readings, cooking, grocery shopping and socializing (I hope).

I have plenty of time to describe the daily routine back in Geneva, so I shall move on to Barcelona.

A group of us flew to Barcelona last evening, where we'll be spending our first weekend for the program. The 10 of us went to the airport together, flew on EasyJet and arrived safely at Barcelona with no trouble (apart from yoshi losing his wallet on the bus).

Reached Barcelona about 5.30pm and the bunch of us grabbed a taxi to the hostel HelloBCN.

It's a pretty nice hostel. Well actually I have no idea what a nice hostel is since I have no basis for comparison, but this one uh...has a bed and decent pillows. Everyone who stays here is about our age, so there's always tons of drinking going on at night and it gets a little noisy, but no matter.

We were split across 3 rooms and two of us eventually ended up in a 4-room dorm. Our roommates are pretty nice and friendly - a guy from Canada who is working for Lenovo, and a lady from Quebec who's just traveling around Europe.

After brief introductions the guy Kory started telling us stories about how bad pickpocketing in Barcelona is (number one city for pickpocketing). Apparently people can just bump into your and steal your wallet/ cut your pockets etc. Kids especially.

I've heard about the Spanish siesta (afternoon nap on a national level) but that night I fully understand why they need that.

Every night the hostel will organize a trip to a local club, and before that somewhere to get cheap drinks (so you get nicely wasted without having to waste money in the expensive club). And they leave the hostel at midnight. And the parties usually reach their peak at 3am.

Wtf.

The bunch of us never made it past the bar; by 1am we all gave up and came back to sleep.

This morning yoshi and I woke up at 11am, and unfortunately the rest of the group already left x.x Brian left a message saying to meet at 10.25am.

Anyway we decided to just check out Barcelona on foot.

It was a pretty awesome trip. Turns out our hostel is really close to the main tourist attractions - la rambla, the cathedral, a photography museum.

Shared a Kebab on our way there. Saw cute bunnies and little duckies!!

And we went to the Picasso museum, where we got to see not just the famous paintings but the paintings from Picasso's formative years. It cost 6 euros to go in and 3 euros for the audio guide, but it was worth it because it was quite a thing to watch his progress from academically rigorous drawings to his own creative flair (the Blue period) and cubism.

Then we went to the central park of barcelona (the one with l'arc de triomphe), which was one of the nicest parks I've been to. It's so full of energy and everyone's just chilling out there in their own ways. Including a guy who was juggling while walking across a suspended elastic band.

I came across orange trees for the first time in my life.

Had tapas for dinner (patates bravas and prawns with garlic). Wasn't full so we shared a seafood paella.

It's getting late. Shall sleep now so that I can get up earlier to finish the case study due on Monday.

Can't believe I'm one of the unfortunate few with work worth 25% of our grades due on Monday T.T

Castles in the Air 00:26 l 0 Coconut(s)

Saturday, 30 June 2012

Geneva, Cité Universitaire B5.26

Accounting

- 60 fr. room key deposit 28 June

- 21 fr. water and drinks 28 June

- 14 fr. food 29 June

- 14 fr. groceries 30 June

- 6.50 lunch 30 June

Total till 30 June: 55.5fr + 60 fr recoupable = 115.5fr

At this rate...

55fr. in 3 days.

I'm staying in Geneva for a total of 30 days (6 weeks excluding traveling on weekends). Which means I'll spend about 550 fr. on food alone x.x

Castles in the Air 17:42 l 0 Coconut(s)

Thursday, 28 June 2012

Duke in Geneva - Day 1

So. After 1.5 months in Singapore and 12 days in China, I'm finally finally in Geneva where I'll be spending a large part of my remaining summer days.

The last day in Singapore was spent in a frenzy of shopping for last minute stuff, exchanging USD to pay the fees for fall term, last minute bank trips and of course, frantic packing. Had dinner with mom and dad at Ding Tai Fung just before I flew.

The Flight

The packing evidently failed when checking in at Changi showed that both my luggages were overweight x.x The big one was 25 kg while the small one was 14kg. Qatar was nice enough to let me check both in even though technically I was only allowed one check-in baggage.

Qatar also wins the cutest airline award, hands down. Seriously this is the first airline I've come across that gives out stickers.

In terms of service it doesn't lose out to Singapore Airlines in any way, but it's way cheaper (about SGD$700 for a 17 hour flight to Geneva).

The flight was pleasant enough. The plane was pretty empty, so after watching a couple of movies I left my seat, found an empty row of 3 seats, lifted by the hand rests, hogged 5 pillows to myself and slept. Awesomeness :D

Transited at Doha, and on this flight I ended up sitting to a kindly old man who was Canadian but lived in Doha. He was working in the petroleum industry, and we talked a little about traveling, high costs in Singapore versus in Geneva (Geneva wins by a far measure) etc.

Soon enough we were flying over the Alps, which looked pretty stunning from the sky. Geneva looks beautiful from the plane, especially when we flew low during the plane's descent. Green, neat without being too meticulous, modern but retaining the freshness of nature.

Getting to Cité Universitaire

I must admit I was rather apprehensive. I was obviously not going to spend 60 francs (about SGD$90) on a taxi to the Cité Universitaire, but lugging 2 heavy luggages up the bus with a bus change in between did not strike me as very fun either.

It didn't turn out to be that bad. Granted, I was cursing a lot the entire way. But all in all everything went pretty smoothly.

From experience, things usually work out whether or not you worry too much about it. So I walked out with a heavy luggage in either hand, knowing that I'm supposed to get a free bus ticket in the airport somewhere (but no idea where). But then the ticket machine appears about 3 seconds after I wonder about it, so I got my ticket.

Next I wandered around following the signs to the buses. It was easy enough to get to a bus, but I needed to get on Bus 10. I hopped on the first bus I saw and asked the driver in very shaky French if the bus was "numéro dix". The driver said no, and pointed me to somewhere ahead in rapid French.

T.T

So I wandered off again in that direction with my two stupid luggages...and didn't find the bus stop. Decided to ask the nearby ticketing vendor, once again in broken French how to get to bus 10.

Finally found the bus stop. A minute later the bus arrived.

Geneva buses are really nice, and people just board without having to show their tickets. Integrity system I suppose. And there's an additional stop button, blue in color with a picture of a baby pram, that you press to get the driver's attention so he could take note and not close the door on you.

Took bus 10 to Coutance (which was easy enough since they announce every stop), then dropped off to transfer to bus 3 to get to the last stop - Crets de Champel, right at the Cité Universitaire.

Got my keys at the reception, left a deposit of 50 francs, and lugged everything to Bâtiment B, where my room B5.26 was located.

I am proud to say that at this point, I have not spoken a word English to anyone. After more than 6 years of French, I still find it painful to converse with a native French speaker in French.

Failure x over 9000.

My Room...

...is pretty nice. If it wasn't so damn hot and yet unadorned with aircon.