Sunday, February 17, 2008

Happy Swedish Chinese New Year!

ok. this post is kinda late, but chinese new year celebrations last a month anyway. so here it goes.. ;)

this is my first time celebrating chinese new year away from home. and i sure do miss all the usual chinese new year festivities.

like all my grandma's home made cny goodies. 9 layered cake, the white biscuit that melts in your mouth, pineapple tarts, popiah, logan fungus soup and my favourite kueh lapis! yummy! thanks to my mum, i brought over a box of pineapple tarts and kueh lapis which she bought from bengawan solo. but more importantly, i missed hanging out with my family and friends over the cny to catch movies, fireworks, chill out, visitation, poker, blackjack & mahjong!! what's cny without blackjack and mahjong man? xP

so how was cny over here in sweden you may ask? as some of you might have checked out my photos and videos, we had our own celebration here too. and it was almost as happening as it should be. i had 3 different cny celebrations here with 3 different groups of people. almost like gng for visitations man.. heh.. not bad ah.. just here for 3 weeks and can do visitations liao.. ;)

well, we had the first celebration with the nus peeps on fri night. the ncst5. ncst6 and the last minute invite of the sep people came together to have a pot luck reunion dinner, abt 20 of us. we had tons of variety of food & i made bak kut teh! power right? and it was well received too! all thanx to my darling for buying it for me. too bad no yu char kueh

(Above is just half of what we've got..)

(that's me cooking my bak kut teh!)


(about done..)

after all the food, we bought our own box of fireworks! the last time i played with fireworks was about 15 years ago when it was still legal to play them in singapore. but that was just small sticks of it, this was abt 90 seconds worth if it at one go!


(explosives...)


(preparing the fireworks...)

And here's my video of the fireworks...



after which, we had 3 insane fellas who decided to take a dip in the lake, IN WINTER! And the temperature was a good 1 degree, plus minus 5... i guess it was the chinese new year blues...


(the 3 musketeers..)

(us @ the beach...)

An of course, what is chinese new year without ban luck?!?! 


(huat ah...)

then the next day, some of us were invited over to an ex-singaporean's couple's place for cny brunch. on our 1st weekend, all the christians in our group went for service at Immanuel International and there we met Peter & Joanna, who migrated to Sweden. Joanna made all the pastries specially for us, and it was really lovely. We had a great time there eating and chatting.


(the "family" photo...)


(the noc peeps..)

then on the following day, we were invited over to Tom & Sabrina's place to have dumplings. They were the couple who travelled with us to Uppsala to visit Word of Life. We went for service @ New Life Stockholm earlier in the day, then shopping @ T-Centralen and then headed back to their place to start making dumplings. It was 1st time making it and also 1 of my 1st few times eating it. They were really nice to allow me to make special meat dumplings. So i got to enjoy my dumplings.. yummy. 

So overall, it was an eventful chinese new year here in Sweden. Happy CNY peeps! ;)

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Thursday, February 07, 2008

Uppsala Sunday

on sun, we went down to uppsala to visit Word of Life and explore the city. we actually had to meet at the bus stop at 7.25am to catch the 7.29am bus and then catch the 8.11am train to uppsala... it was an early day for a sunday!

at the train station, samuel brought 2 chinese couple that he met at church that had intention to visit uppsala too. and they were taking the same timing train as us. they actually had no idea what time or where is the church, but decided to just head over and ask around. man now that's what i call faith! but they were really glad that they met Samuel and learn that he was gng too. so we all went together, from 4 of us to 6.

the morning sun from our cabin on the train... a 40 min ride..


then when we reach uppsala, we had to catch a bus to the church, so we asked around and met another 3 ppl who were gng there and they were from stockholm. they knew the way, so we made our way to the church together. so now there are 9 of us. hah.. it was just so interesting, that we picked up ppl along the way to church..

that's tom, Samuel's friend, and me before the service started..

service was in swedish but we had the translation headset and service was awesome! the 1st thing the people asked after knowing that we're from singapore was, "Are you from Kong Hee's Church???". i was like yes yes. and they were all so excited. everyone there was really nice, friendly and warm.

but it sure wasn't cheap traveling to and around uppsala. the cost of the bus ride around the city is 30kr, which is abt $7 SGD!! $7 for a 70cents bus ride in sg! so our bus ride cost almost as much as our train ride, 39kr.

after that we met some other asian ppl in the church who eventually brought us around the city. one of which was this guy from chc sarawak by Pst George Ong. he is studying in the bible sch in uppsala sponsored by chc. ;)

that's us having lunch at a kebab eating place..

while visiting, we had a snow war! not just a snow fight, but a war! it was really fun, esp throwing snow balls at people! heh..

after that we visited one of the cathedral and i made a prayer for darling and my family with this prayer candle thingy.. ;)

they have quite a few castles too.. unfortunately they were closed. i'll be back there again in the summer to check them out..

meanwhile, you can check out more of the photos... ;)

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