Anna's birthday; BBQ at Auntie May's place (25th April 09)

The pastries Anna baked for her birthday. They were superb.

Half of our home group! (a bible-study group we're attending in IPC)

Anna has dozens of beautiful roses in her house! (Anna is the lady in red)

The very yummylicious food Uncle Frips bbq-ed for us

The really lovely and beautiful garden Auntie May has

Lovely Dinner with lovely people.

It was a nice gathering, and a nice get-to-know occassion with Auntie May's nephew (Wei Ren) and his girlfriend (Eileen) who are currently in St Gallens doing an SMU 1 month summer programme.

We've truly been very blessed to be able to meet these wonderful people here.

some pics taken from the wildlife park and silhwald forest

Through the river, as it flows
A rock tumbles,
grinds; battered and bruised
Weathered down into a little stone.

The river rages
havoc on these stones,
the water carves a picture;
never once foretold.

The stone tumbles
and grumbles, and falls
by the wayside
It remains, but never alone.

A little favour...

I would like to sincerely ask all our christian friends out there, who reads this blog, to say a little prayer for Matthias. He'll be having his 1st oral exam in ETH tomorrow, and thus, he doesn't know what to expect. Do pray for the following:

- calm mind, calm heart, God's peace
- clarity in speech, good articulation, succint points
- that his answers will be relevant to the question
- grant him favour in the lecturer's eyes
- warm and friendly atmosphere between him and the lecturer
- to know how to answer the questions
- that God would grant him a pass
- faith in God that He will guide him
- focused and in the best physical state

His Exam Details (i only know the rough one):
Topic/Module- Ecotoxicology
Time- 2.30 -3pm (30 mins)
Venue: ETH Zentrum

Thank you so much for your prayers. They're greatly appreciated :) God bless all of you!

p.s.// keeping u in prayers dear! i'm with u, God's with u, and u'll do well i'm sure :) - huggs -

Bad cooking experience...

Well, cooking is really fun when the result turns out good. But when it's bad, u just sigh cos of the waste of food and wished it was better. As dear will be having his 1st exam next wednesday, I've been cooking both lunch and dinner for the past week and most of them turned out pretty well. But today's dinner was a tad disappointing. I planned to cook sweet & sour chicken wings but somehow, i probably didn't mix the starch well enough with the tomato pury and added too much lime. It turned out too sour and too starchy, making the entire dish taste weird. Perhaps i should have tried the taste while cooking and add some sugar... But it's okay, i'll try it again another time. Thankfully, the corn rice didn't turn out too bad.

Not only did the chicken wings turned out bad, these other things happened in the process too..
- didn't hold the bag of rice properly while pouring into the cup...so a lot of rice came spilling out...wasted almost half a cup
- pulled the kitchen drawer too hard till the whole drawer came falling down, along with all the knives, forks, spoons...

i could have been hurt by the latter...imagine if the angle of the knife is wrong, i would have been injured badly. Thank God that i didn't get hurt at all. My roomie was so funny...she heard the loud crashing sound, and ran to me, and when she saw the knives lying on the floor...she got so worried that i got hurt. Thinking i was in shock and needed to cool down, she insisted on rinsing all the fallen utensils for me haha. so sweet of her.

Somehow, today wasn't a good day...considering that i didn't do much work too.

Cycling arnd Zurichsee; Hiking in the Sihlwald Forest

Just last sunday, we did cycling with the rest around Zurichsee and it was really fun though pretty dangerous since we had to go through all the traffic and cars and whatnot. Worse thing was the bike sizes are all standardized, so imagine me riding the same bike as dear's. My legs couldn't even tough the floor when i'm on the bike! We had Teddy as our tourguide, and he brought us through all the busy traffic to zurich lake. The weather that day was pretty nice, and it felt really good cycling down the busy old town of Zurich. And the best thing was that it was free! You can rent a bike for free here, anytime!

Yesterday, both of us headed down to Langnau, where we went to visit the Nature park. It was enriching and exciting. We managed to see mountain goats (huge ones), wild boar, wildcats munching on a fresh lamb leg, real wolves, fox, moose, deers, horses, wicent etc. And again, entrance to the park is free! :) :) So it felt like we were in a zoo for free. It's really nice, mainly because the park was totally natural on the mountain, and not like the man-mades ones we have like our singapore zoo. The entire park is hugge, and we walked quite a fair bit up and down the slopes. By the time we finished visiting the park, it was 2pm. So, we headed to start our hiking trails by taking the train down to Horgen.

The routes:

1. Aabachtobel Forest Educational Trail, waterfall
Bus stop Käpfnach - Käpfnerweg - Rietwiesstrasse - Dow - Eichenbänkli - Aabachtobel - Wasserfall - Bus stop Arn


2. Horgenberg mountain pond, swimming, barbecueing
Postauto bus stop Enderholz - Horgenberg mountain pond – Post Horgenberg

The 1st hiking trail was the best thing that we had ever experienced here. We went through the forest, with hardly any guide for us...we had no maps, so we just had to follow our intuition hehe. Pretty dangerous actually, but since we were heading to the waterfall, we just had to follow the river streams and go upstream. It was so fun, cos both of us went down the muddy slopes to the river stream itself. We were so excited, and it was really rewarding esp when we ended up at the waterfall....the beauty we saw in the forest took away all the physical tiredness we had. Truly rewarding! Do wait for the photos! The waterfall is just a mini one...but still, it's natural! haha. The entire route probably took us about 2 hours, thereabout.

Still having some time, we decided to go for our 2nd hiking route. This one wasn't as exciting. It was more challenging than anything else, cos there were too many alternative routes, and there were many logging paths as well...so we don't really know which is the right way. We just kept walking and walking, in search of the mountain pond...but all that we saw was a huge depression in the midst of the mountain, covered with snow. There wasn't any water or ice at all. So we figured that this route has probably been abandoned already. Anyway, to cut the long story short, we couldn't find our way out...so we just had to walk down the 30 degrees inclined pasture slope, and end up at the main road so we could find the nearest busstop. This hike was terribly exhausting...cos it was muddy and full of horse shit. We just had to keep looking at our paths, and kept walking and walking until we gave up finding the right path haha. So anyhow, we managed to get to the road after stepping lots of cowdung, cos the entire pasture slope smelt as smelly as cow dung. After walking along the road for several minutes, we managed to see a busstop and guess what, we were just in time for the last bus! I can't imagine being stranded there if we missed that last bus. Really thank God for guiding us safely through our entire hiking encounter.

We were both dead tired by the time we got back, and could barely walk. Nevertheless, the experience we had was once-in-a-lifetime! :)

Daylight Savings

I've never encountered daylight savings before, and it's just weird cos suddenly, the day seemed so long. Now, the sun rises at about 6.30am, and sets at 9pm. Good thing too is that the time zone difference between singapore and zurich is now reduced from 7 to 6 hours.

Because of daylight savings, both of us didn't manage to go to church last sunday. Thinking it was just a normal day, we went to the train station, only realising then that the clocks have been adjusted 1 hour ahead. It felt really weird haha. But it's really nice to have long days, definitely makes travelling much easier!

A christian song I liked since secondary school...

"Every Season" by Nichole Nordeman

Every evening sky, an invitation
To trace the patterned stars
And early in July, a celebration
For freedom that is ours
And I notice You
In children’s games
In those who watch them from the shade
Every drop of sun is full of fun and wonder
You are summer

And even when the trees have just surrendered
To the harvest time
Forfeiting their leaves in late September
And sending us inside
Still I notice You when change begins
And I am braced for colder winds
I will offer thanks for what has been and was to come
You are autumn

And everything in time and under heaven
Finally falls asleep
Wrapped in blankets white, all creation
Shivers underneath
And still I notice you
When branches crack
And in my breath on frosted glass
Even now in death, You open doors for life to enter
You are winter

And everything that’s new has bravely surfaced
Teaching us to breathe
What was frozen through is newly purposed
Turning all things green
So it is with You
And how You make me new
With every season’s change
And so it will be
As You are re-creating me
Summer, autumn, winter, spring

Swiss Friends

It's really nice that we formed a project group with the locals today for one of our module, Environmental Sanitation in Developing Countries. We were quite a diverse group; 1 coming from Germany, 2 Singaporeans (that's us), and 2 locals! Both of us came here, wanting to make some swiss friends, and get to know more about their culture and their lifestyles but we both found it very hard despite us being very initiative already. The swiss students tend to keep among themselves and always sticking to their cliques...we felt as if we were aliens or something. But thank God for some really friendly swiss friends that we've made. Like Bea, she's really nice, she almost joined her usual clique to do the project, but decided to mix with us :) And she added that singaporeans doesn't seem very sociable (except for us! haha), but she said it was partly her fault too for she didn't make an effort to really speak to them. That was so nice of her. Other international friends that we've got to know from our classes are Isabella (from Austria), Clementine (from Switz), Rafael (from Switz), and Max (from Austria).

Thank God for them, for making us feel welcome here. It really means a great deal! =)