the montreal airport (do they have only 1?)
where we were gonna spend 6 hours..
6 hours later...
try pinching your nose and saying "tank you"
the amsterdam schiphol airport at 7:55am
i took this while queueing to buy our 15-min train ticket to the city centre. which cost us 6.50euros!
cute!
inside the train. it was really just cruising along the city. you gotta understand that we just came out of quebec, all positive and ready to unleash a smile. and we were quite surprised to see that the dutch people at this part of the city looked bored and stoned. i think it's because most of the people we met/saw are waiting for their trains to get to work.
central station at amsterdam. it was about 15deg and pretty cloudy throughout the day.
just outside the train station. it's quite a green city with more trams and bicycles than cars. and the damn tram nearly got my face off me.
the whole city had a funky smell. i suspect it's because of:
1)the river
2)marijuana
3)rubbish trucks
4)shops selling fish
rush hour
quite a nice city
check out her waist size!
chinatown!
perpendicular to chinatown is the famous DeWallen. i wonder if city planning did this discriminatingly.
this is back in Singapore on our way to customs.
Sorry about the lousy photo commenting i'm quite an idiot with blogspot (either that or blogspot's platform sucks)
Anyway it's my 6th day back in singapore and i'm still jetlagging. It's good that i don't really have to follow a tight schedule for these few weeks.
I remember asking myself on my first few days in quebec:
Where are the beggars??
It was such a beautiful city, everybody (locals and tourists) lived like they didn't need money. I don't know if I've said this before, but it could be either that that's the case, or they're just not showing their neediness. But anyway, watching CNN (cause almost all other channels in the hotel are french!) i learnt about even more gang fight casualties in montreal.
Just yesterday I was watching Jamie's Kitchen: Australia (it's not a cooking show, per se). If I were to be given the chance to learn cooking from a great chef (jamie's sidekick), and eventually get a chef's place in Jamie Oliver's restaurant, it'd be the first thing on my list. I'd push away anything just to attend his classes. It just seems like the logical thing to do, right? But I realize that I do not think the same way as 15 of these apprentices. They're all from the wrong side of the town, with family problems, drug addictions, learning disabilities. Some of them really want to learn and are giving all they've got. But more than half are missing classes, giving excuses like their knees hurt in the cold.
Plus hanging out with the guys from bands from all over the world, mostly the canadian peeps, i realize that people are different. I always tend to assume we're the same and smack my forehead and think "why don't you see as I do?". The upbringing, situations you've had to get out of, struggles you had to overcome, people you've had to deal with, all play a part in making you. Though we react and behave differently, but still all over the world every country has the same group of poor and uneducated people. We still share the common goal of surviving and making sense of life.
I have so much more to learn about why people are the way they are. and i think if one day when everyone understands that, and respects that, we'll be living in a much better world without discrimination. i know it's idealistic and this is blatant amateur writing. Do recommend some text if you want me to get out of this immature state of mind!
until the next time, peace out stay cool respect yourself and other people and remember to live!
