Saturday, May 31, 2008

Beautiful Europe

currently it's spring time in stockholm and it's absolutely lovely! the sun's out more, the flowers are blossoming, tons of people sun bathing in every park at every square feet of it and the weather is almost perfect, warm enough to ditch your jackets and yet cool enough to not need aircon.

europe is an extremely lovely place to be in. it's very different from asia in almost every aspect. for example, the cost of living here is much higher than singapore. with the price of 1 big mac meal here, i could buy 2 in singapore. a normal lunch meal out on the streets would cost me about $17, and that's considered cheap. the culture and pace of life here is much slower and more flexible. people are not so rigid and uptight about things and people tend things slow and easy. like work for example, it's not a big deal if you're late for work or if you have to leave early to pick up your child or if you just have something on. at the end of the day, when work gets done, then all is well. over here, the relationships between people are more flat rather than hierarchical. the swedish dislike the use of titles and everyone would address each other by their firstname. whether you're the boss or employee, professor or student, everyone would be calling each other like how most of us in singapore would call our friends, just by their names. and one of the most amazing thing about europe is it's history and architecture. the intricate designs of the historical buildings, medieval castles, beautiful sceneries and the variety of it all over europe is absolutely breathtaking. every country, state and city is so distinct, almost like moving from one era to another era, and yet so accessible with such affordable cost. you can actually get flight tickets from stockholm to london for $25 SGD (including taxes). it's amazing! i'm gng to germany next weekend and my flight from stockholm to frankfurt only costs me $27 SGD (including taxes and credit card payment charges). so if any of you guys are coming to europe anytime this year, do let me know and maybe we can meet up in some nice city and have some real coffee with a postcard perfect backdrop. ;)

right now, i'm kinda busy with work, school reports to write, living the swedish life and traveling around europe, thus my infrequent blog entries. but i'm more disciplined and enthusiastic in capturing photos and uploading them as often as i take them. and i'm currently more into microblogging, as it's more convenient, more updated and less time consuming. microblogging is an alternative form of blogging, where it's shorter, as the name explicitly suggests. one example which most could identify with is the status update feed on facebook. but i actually do my microblogging on jaiku & twitter via my gtalk (aka google talk aka the chat function in gmail), which then automatically updates my facebook status update. and if you're wondering, yes i'm a computer science student... ;) you can also find my microblogs on my site.

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