Ramble Bramble

[This post was copied and pasted off my LJ]

Shuffling my V Kei songs on my new iPod nano on the bus. ^w^
'Togurou' is my favourite GazettE song!!

But anyway, to rewind a little, I'm back in Beijing.
The air is just as polluted as ever. But thank goodness the temperatures of 40 deg cel seem to have gone away. It's around 28-30 deg cel now, and it feels cooler than it was back in Singapore as there hasn't been any scorching sunlight (yet?) and there isn't that deathly humidity.


Anyway, just to chuck a few pictures out here.



The sunrise from my dining room back home. I practically never am up early enough to see the sun come out, but was seated rather dazedly clutching my cup of tea at a ridiculously early (for me) hour to leave for the airport.



I bought three macarons from the patisserie Canele the night before and got the air stewardess to bung it in the fridge for me.
My favourite Passion Fruit and Milk Chocolate, Coffee, and Violet. They actually managed to last about 24 hours in Beijing.



The Violet macaron is so pretty! ^^;



I thought Singapore changed rapidly enough when I went back after being away for 4 and a half months and found so many new shops and buildings that sprung out of no where.
It turns out this city is faaaar worse. Which isn't surprising.
In about a month and a half, there's been quite a lot of change!
Went to Zhong guan cun, an area with many office blocks and huge-ass malls. Found a Haagen-Daz and a branch of a Taiwanese restaurant that does the most amazing desserts, which made me happy.
One of the hulking developments had a lot of open public spaces, and people were skating, remote-controlled car racing, or just chilling. Was nice to see amongst all the concrete and steel and glass.




Went to register at the university. Then wandered around the campus. Which was monstrously huge.
My university in London was basically two buildings facing each other across a teeny square which is barely large enough for protests (haha) and another barren building that served as another 'campus' "a 17 minutes walk away" (according to a testy, just ever so slightly neurotic Swedish lecturer of mine).
University in Tokyo had more buildings (whee) but being smack in the middle of the city meant no rambling grounds either.

So. This is quite a change.



I walked around the South West section, which seemed to be a succession of secret garden after secret garden in various states of abandonment.
Then I started getting hungry and my legs started to hurt. I seem to have developed varicose veins or something. >_< Probably from walking waaaaay too much too fast. Eek.

Anyway, I did finally extricate myself from the tangled vegetation and buildings eventually. Last night I took the bus here for the 2nd time in my life. Haha. I usually rely on the subway, my legs, or taxis for moving around. The subway is the best, but requires a lot of cooperation from the legs and transfers between lines are ridiculously far apart, and things are often pretty far from existing stations.
The first time I took the bus was rather traumatising. Was going to one of the hills in the outskirts for a walk and picnic with friends on a Saturday in early summer, and the bus was absolutely packed and of course the roads jammed as well. Stood pretty much the whole way packed in like an unhappily dead fish in a can.

Last night the bus was empty-ish, but traffic wasn't that smooth for the really short distance that I use to walk in about 20-30 minutes.





I really like 176BIZ, but sadly only discovered them after they disbanded.
Love their sound. I like how it has quite a lot of groovy bass, and I like their vocalist's voice too.




Aaand, lastly, my silly kitty cat! (^ω^) Looking silly in my room. (^人^)

I took some videos of him with my iPod nano, which I will probably put up when I finally transfer them to the laptop. Along with the alpacas I mentioned in an earlier post! Haha!

Boo, I want my silly black blob!