Me. By Me.

That's what a single hump camel is called. It's cool. If I were in a band I'd so wanna call ourselves Dromedary. LOOL! Thanks Rena for that Info.

Anyway, some updates on Germany:

This Grafitti was on a Statue on the RWTH in Aachen.

Yea I've been pretty busy lately, which is why I haven't been updating my blog that often. Last week for example I had three tests, Mechanics, Maths, and Electrical Engineering. I only sat for two of them, Mechanics and Maths, I skipped the Electrical. Because I didn't really understand Electrical that much, and I thought that if I were to sit for that test, it would just be a waste of time. And one thing was that last Friday we didn't have Electrical Lectures so Math ended at 12 and we would have to wait till like 4pm to sit for the paper. Well I have to say that I am not proud I skipped the paper, because my finals are gonna be in Feb-March and yea I'm only gonna have like 1 month to prepare. Like the one thing about German Unis, well for my studies at least, is that they don't include assignments in your CGPA. It's basically just like A-levels, where only the final exam counts. Oh and their CGPA is 1.0 being the best and 4.0 being the worse, ie. fail.

So yea the tests weren't all that important, only just to see how good you are at this point, they're sorta like the mocks we had during A-levels. And I'm pretty worried about my studies. It really is difficult right now. And this week, being the week without any tests, and also the fact that next week I'm gonna be away, I feel really lazy and I haven't really studied much.

Yea I'm gonna be away. My family's gonna be coming up this weekend, well as I type now, they're probably checking in at KLIA. And on Sunday we're gonna be flying out to Perpignan, France; where I'm gonna be until the 31st. :D YAY!

But seriously, note to self, when I come back I have to seriously start focusing on my studies, because I really really really don't wanna re-sit any of my papers during the next semester. Although that really is pretty common at German Unis.

I was also pretty involved with AFS Deutschland. Volunteered for the End of Stay camp last month. It was kinda ok. Met 3 Malaysians there, HI JUNE! But yea, volunteering with AFS Deutschland is pretty different than volunteering with AFS Malaysia. Like the other volunteers aren't so friendly and I don't know it's like they don't like me there or something. It's just different. But it's ok. As long as Andrea, my Chapter Leader keeps calling me and I'm not busy with studies and what not, I'm definitely gonna be volunteering.

So I've wanted to post up these pictures for quite some time now but somehow I keep forgetting. They're pictures of my room when I first moved in 3 months ago on the 1st of October:

That's the bed. It's actually just sponge, not a real mattress.

My cupboard.

The view from my room window. It's a park, and sometimes, when I'm lucky, I get "free shows"

Yea the desk and chair and my room.

Close up of my sponge bed. The whole room was really really dusty.

The so-called common area. That's where my neigbour puts all her junk. I share the bathroom and shower with two other people. Right now it's just with this one russian girl living next door to me and I hope it stays this way, well that I share the bathroom with just one other person.

The shower.

I was in Cologne last Tuesday with classmates. I actually skipped one of my classes, Deutsch fuer Ingeniuerwissenschaft (German for Engineering) to go out. But basically what we do in this class, is just fill in the blanks handouts and watch documentries in German. So I thought I'd just go out and see the world, well Cologne instead of going for class for once. It was pretty cold that day. My feet were freezing and so was my ass. But yea Rena, who is from Cologne, showed us around and that was pretty cool! It's my third time now there actually, and I actually climbed the Dom another one more time. Don't know whether or not I'd be climbing it again when my parents come or not, but just so you know, it takes about 30 minutes of climbing stairs in a narrow tower to get all the way up to the top. The view is nice, but up there, the sides of the walls and what not have graffiti all over, so yea. Some pictures:

Satay for RM20. And only 3 batang. Don't be fooled by picture. the portion is just like our satay, like it's no bigger or fatter, it's the same freakin size.

This picture is emo. I like. They were actually gnomes sitting on swings rotating around.

Cologne! Picture of the Dom, from across the Rhein.

The locks were put there by couples who got married as a symbol for long lasting love. Or something like that.

Taking a breather, 3/4 the way up to the top of the Dom.

And me taking the opportunity to pose. :)

At some bar after walking around pretty much the whole day.

That is Koelsch, only available in Cologne. It's the so called Woman's Beer because it is less bitter, and the texture is really soft. It's like drinking silk.

And some pictures from yesterday's German class, our last class of the year. Oh yea I'm not sure whether I've complained about my german classes here or not, but yea they suck. I don't think my german is ever gonna improve. One thing, it's only once a week, and it's on Wednesdays. And on Wednesdays, we have Lectures the whole day, from 8 am till 3.30pm. And German class starts at 4.30pm. Oh and we'd have to take a 15 minute Tram ride from the ST Building, to the B building. So we're all pretty much tired and hungry by the time it's 5.30pm. The class doesn't end till 7.30pm. Oh well. :( Might as well...

Some chinese kids trying to do a debate in German. Thats our teacher by the way, the lady sitting by the desk on the left side of the photo.

Vova watching football instead of paying attention. Lool

And me taking photos with my phone instead of paying attention.

The Estonians/Russians

And Yay class is over!

And Oh yea it finally snowed in Duisburg. I was cooking in the kitchen and decided to open the kitchen windows to let the smoke out so the kitchen wouldn't be so staffy and the last time the Smoke alarm went of because I didn't open the windows. So yea as I was opening the windows, I saw stuff falling down the sky and I thought Oh it's raining again. Pooh. but I look closely and the raindrops were pretty much falling down really slowly, and they looked pretty thick to be raindrops. So yea It was snow flakes and at that time I was so happy I wanted to scream out loud so that everyone at the dorm knew it was snowing! But yea one should not act so jakun-y, and therefore I just kept my happiness to myself and only lepaskan when I went on Facebook, MSN, and Twitter. Heee Hee I even went for a jog in the snow. SO yea:

Things to do before I die:

#21 Jog in snow

Can be scratched.

Some pictures from last night and this morning from my room :) and also some pictures of what my room looks like now, 3 months later:

That's snow!

See it on the cars and on the street?

This morning, the park outside my window.

Before I left to come to the library, I swear I saw a german kid going up to the slide, well that wooden part of the slide that's facing you right now, the papan to naik the thing, he put his hand on it and rubbed it and licked the snow of his fingers. LOOL!

My bed now :) and pingu

My desk, that's where I chat with you!

Yup, so that's that for now. As I said before, parents are gonna be here tomorrow, pretty excited! And yea... can't wait till I type, I really hope this last couple of weeks of the year goes by pretty slowly and that I have a good time in France. Cuz I really don't look forward to being stressed over exams again. Hmm...

Well Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Frohe Weihnachten und glueckliches Neujahr!

Love Colin

xoxo

First of all, this is what I usually have for dinner. :P Boiled potatoes, brussel sprouts, and wurst. All cooked by myself :)

Last weekend I was in Muenster. Cool city, waaay better university town than Duisburg. We had a Planungswochenende at the Aasee in a Jugendherberge which was sorta like a YMCA. It was sorta like them training workshops that we had in Malaysia. At this camp we started out with discussing everyone's idea for the CHapter. The one thing about my chapter is that it is probably the only chapter where the older volunteers are involved actively in the chapter in germany. Later in the evening on Saturday this lady came in and gave a talk about visualization and how it can make a presentation interesting. Well I thought the talks were pretty ok. I learnt quite a lot about how a chapter works in Germany besides meeting a lot of new people. :)

The one thing that I didn't really like much about the camp was my inability to speak german fluently. Well basically I was nervous and making grammatical errors everytime I spoke.

Looking through the application for next week's Auswahl. Out of all the applicants, only one guy is applying to Malaysia and it is his 5th choice. It is gonna be my duty to convince him to apply for Malaysia next week.