i want to go to Cuba

i want to go to Cuba - especially Havana because it's such an exciting artsy city, with loads of great dancing (be it Ballet or Latin dance) and Jazz music. there's a Havana Jazz Festival every other year in february, Havana Ballet Festival in october and International Festival of New Latin American Films in december. OOoooOoOooOo...

Lonely Planet has this price guide for you to get an idea of how much things cost in Cuba.

Item Price
small bottle of beer Cu$1.00
highball of rum Cu$2.00
bike rental per day Cu$3.00
print film Cu$6.00
Internet use per hour Cu$6.00
ticket to ballet Cu$10.00 <-----

then if you look at this...

Average Meal Prices
Low Cu$105-210
Mid Cu$210-315
High Cu$315-420


going to the ballet is 10% the price of a cheap meal! waaaahhhh I WANT I WANT!

and then i discovered THIS

but yes, it's expensive... :( BUT HOW COOL IS THAT?!?

and as my brother pointed out a while back when he was thinking of going to Cuba, we'll probably be put under some security surveilance in Singapore when they find out we've gone to Cuba...

that will be an easy task...

my brother blogged this last night:

I definitely want to carry on with it (referring to swing) back in Singapore after graduation and when I go back. will probably try to get my sis hooked onto lindy. she's already gotten into ballet, jazz, tap. She suggested going to Cuba to learn salsa. I am not kidding.

come on now... that wouldnt be a difficult project now would it? considering i wanted to after A Levels but didnt have a partner...

and i am serious about Cuba though... any takers?

burn baby burn!

yes i should be writing an essay but my eyelids are slowly feeling heavier and heavier so it's THAT point in the night that i need to blog to stay awake.

i'm feeling so exhausted it isnt even funny. a full day of rehearsals, church and an all-nighter is taking a toll on my body. not to mention i have 10-5pm classes tomorrow (which i think i wont make the 10am screening). for the first few hours my brain was just not processing much but after a one hour nap (which btw was supposed to only be 20minutes), the panic helped me write 500 words in the proceeding hour. which now has helped me back on track to my 300 words an hour target.

everytime i tell myself i shouldnt be doing this to my body. it's fine when i'm not so physically exhausted from physically demanding activity in the day, but today is just so overwhelming. but then i bet at the end of this essay, i'd be on such an adrenaline high that i'd be pumped up for a full day of classes.

argh!

the holidays are coming up - time for an update on my travels

	Your travel type: Culture Buff The culture buff needs to see a museum, an art gallery, a 16-th century church every day during his holiday. When he travels he is always well prepared. He has read history books, speaks a few words of the lingo, knows about the strange habits the locals have.
	top destinations: Amsterdam Las Vegas New York	stay away from: North Korea Ciudad Perdida Darien Gap

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Full Dress Rehearsal and the drama backstage

the stuff that happens at rehearsals are very amusing, once you are out of the stressful situation and can look back and laugh.

watching a dance show onstage, you'd never expect all these pretty girls to be swearing their heads off in the changing room, a flurry of strapless bras, g-strings and blindingly shiny shimmer tights while rummaging through their piles of costumes. like *bleep* where's my top for this dance?! *bleep* i cant find my shoes! i doing have *bleep*ing time to do my hair the way you need it to be for the dance, sorry. 5 minute call already?! you've got to be *bleep*ing joking. i *bleep*ed up that dance just now. there's no *bleep*ing way i am going to do that dance for the show. i just cant do it!

and then they run off to stage swearing down the corridor. classic.

then of course you have people like me who make mistakes, not once, but twice at the same point of the dance (because we had 2 runs of the full programme today) while standing one person next to the centre of the front row. and not like a little mistake. i was doing a turn when everyone else was facing front. what a twat!

oh and get this. the Boar came and took a 'publicity shoot' for the paper that is coming out on tuesday and the photographer made us form the shape of Great Britain so that they could take an aerial shot. in the first place, what does the shape of Great Britain have to do with the Tap Show? all of us thought they were joking but then the guy whipped out a map of the UK and started putting people in place, yelling 'i need an anglesea here!... kent, move down a bit. norfolk? norfolk? i need people in norfolk! liverpool you are looking a bit sparse. can people in the midlands shuffle to the north please!'

and guess what? the article isnt even about the Tap Show. it's for an article they are doing on the population of Britain. WHAT?!?

procrastinator schmocrastinator

i'm supposed to be doing my european theatre essay due monday but it just doesnt feel right doing an essay the night before the eve of when it is due.

life-and-death question: have i become that reliant on the adrenaline to write a proper essay? perhaps i should pretend it is sunday night...

i'm so fidgetty - i'm stalling by packing my huge bag for tomorrow's full dress rehearsal, checking my checklist for every pair of tights i need and the right shoes, down to the right black tops for the dances. PLUS i packed my hair and makeup bag - i even tested the eyeshadow i brought, checked that my mascara hadnt grown disgusting (after 1 yr of not being used) and fixed the cracked top end of my eyeliner. then i sewed the press-stud on my red ribbon for the choker. and while i was at it, sewed the broken bit of my makeup bag. and now i have absolutely nothing to use as an excuse to not do my essay. :(

OH MY MOM JUST CAME ONLINE! hehehe...

RED ALERT! SECURITY BREECH!

ever since coming back from Oslo, i've been getting signed out of MSN pretty regularly especially when i am not physically at my computer. i attribute this to the fact that when i was in Norway i used MSN at an internet cafe and could not figure out how to turn on the security for MSN (i.e. the computer doesnt store my email address in the sign-up pag) because everything was in Norwegian.

this hasnt been a big problem for me (other than it just peeving me) until iain told me today that i apparently messaged him this morning in a language that looked Scandinavian asking for something that seemed like whether he had a webcam. he thought, wait a minute, this isnt in English and ade's picture isnt up. he replied, huh? and there was no reply so he closed the window.

YIKES!

feeling a bit empty

recently i've been feeling pretty spiritually empty - i think the whole rushing from place to place and being so busy with my life has led to me neglecting to spend time with God. i guess sometimes we are so busy with life and feeling like so much needs to be done that we forget God's rightful place. i've been wondering: is my relationship with God one of Him being my God only in bad times? i feel like i am more conscious of God and remember to go to Him only when i need something. the last few weeks have been pretty good and i've not spent as much time with Him as i should be. and me missing a few sundays in church because i was out of the country or too tired has just left me feeling so hollow. it isnt about feeling guilt for not going to church because i know that i'm totally justified in Christ and dont need to go to church to earn favour with God but it is kind of like how not going to church and dedicating the first day of the week to Him and spending time resting in Him just makes me feel like i'm missing something. perhaps that's why i've been feeling pretty drained and tired these days. it isnt that my week has been bad - in fact it's been pretty good. only that i'm just feeling so exhausted from everything. and i need to just stop everything and go to Him and sit at His feet. today in cell we were talking about physical manifestation of the spiritual because time spent worshipping and praying in all sense of human reason should not revitalise you because you spend energy doing it but how because it ministers to your soul, your body is rejuvinated.

i need You Lord. i cant run this race alone because it should be about You. i tend to forget about God in my day-to-day life and i need to change that. i need You Father to be ever-present in my life, to be there in the small things, not just in the big decisions i make or the big problems i need to tackle.

You are the God of small things. and i thank You for that.

Your Grace has found me just as I am
Empty-handed but alive in Your Hand

My DanceDirect order has arrived! (or rather, in part)

was a bit disappointed that my Capezio tap shoes dont have adjustable front taps and still waiting for the shimmer tights but I HAVE NEW ANKLEWARMERS! :)

COME FOR TAP SHOW!

i tried to take a nap this afternoon because i was exhausted from a long day of class and tapping and i could not seem to fall asleep because all that was going through my mind was the sequence of steps for one of the dances... so basically i was tapping the rhythm in my head for a full hour before i tired my mind out sufficiently to get some shut-eye.

strange strange strange.

anyway, if you haev not bought your Rendition tickets, they are still on sale!! if you are unable to get down to the Box Office at the Arts Centre, why not buy your ticket online from the comfort of your home/room/chair (while you are online and erm, reading my blog...).

CLICK HERE

Flyering at Top B leaves one wondering...

Top B has become THE place for socials because of the £1 drinks (Carling, Strongbrew, shots of Smirnoff, Purple...) and last night was one heck of a strange night...

MTW was having a gay/transverstite social where everyone came in drag (or at least the guys) while the girls were all in glamour-mode with the feather boas teetering on the edge of hooker. Essentially it was all in the name of fun and to attract a lot of attention when they went round flyering for their show this week called The Revue where the are doing Broadway numbers (not a full-length musical). Streetvibe was having their usual drinking social but it was made into a hat party... saw people with bunny ears, a cleopatra-inspired headpiece, a leprechaun hat, a newpaper-folded hat... In the middle of the CHOLO sitting area was a mega group of people having some social but none of us could figure out what society they belonged to. Pirates, Cowboys and Red Indians seem to be a popular choice of fancy dress for whatever other parties/socials were going on.

For Tap on the other hand, we just wore our insanely bright orange shirts and went around sticking flyers in random places hoping people will be curious and read them. Then we spent some time sitting and chatting over some Purples and occasionally giving out the rest of our flyers to people we saw that we knew. How wild does that sound!

anyway, if you have not already bought your tickets, COME FOR TAP SHOW! like erm, if you are in the country and able to come to Warwick. :)

Of Zha Jiang Mian (translated: 'Assorted Sauce Noodles') and Tacos

it's 1-1 between me and josh for cooking our food cravings over the last few days... here are the highlights...

presenting, josh's zha jiang mian! yes he has been having cravings for this so it was a good opportunity for me to christen my new bottle of chingkiang vinegar!

using the following ingredients...

pork mince
ginger paste
minced garlic
spring onions
hoisin sauce
chilli bean sauce
sugar
sweet soy sauce (ABC)
chicken stock
sesame oil

... he whipped up a yummy sauce to ladle over my precious scallop noodles that i brought from singapore. add a dash of chingkiang vinegar and a handful of thinly sliced cucumber (done by me), VOILA!

next up are my easy-peasy-follow-the instructions-on-the box tacos! yes, i've been having cravings for these yummy corn shells filled with mince beef and topped with loads of salsa and vegetables, plus sour cream and guacamole for a few weeks now. finally got down to buying the taco shells, taco spice and sauces/dips from Tesco at my last visit.i used the El Paso brand of taco shells and spice, Doritos salsa and Tesco guacamole and sour cream with chive to do this quick ready-in-less than-twenty-minutes, perfect-for-the-one-hour-in-between-classes dish. just fry the beef mince the spice, add a bit of water and let it reduce, chop up the lettuce and tomatoes, shove some taco shells into the oven, and you are good to go!
and this is what happens to the top few shells in the box that have openings that are too small to properly fill with the ingredients... they break when you apply a bit too much pressure... but they work well as really big nachos! :)

Rendition - Warwick Tap's annual dance extravaganza

RENDITION!
brought to you by Warwick Tap Society

one fantastic show filled with spectacular performances by Streetvibe, Salsa Dancing Society, Latin and Ballroom Dancesport Club, Breakdancing Society, Classical & Modern Dance
AND Tap Society!

2 showtimes on 5 MARCH 2006 (Sunday, end of Week 9)
Warwick Arts Centre Theatre
5pm - £7.50 (£5 for students)
8pm - £10 (£7.50 for students)

Tickets on sale at Warwick Arts Centre Box Office
or at their website

PLEASE COME! For all who were impressed with last year's show, this year's will be even bigger and more slick!
The theme for it is 'Movies and Musicals' so prepare for a funky night of amazing dancing!

a delicious gourmet dinner

yesterday (i.e. a few hours ago), i had a lovely dinner cooked by josh while i crashed out from an exhausting day of classes and tap.

josh had been having cravings for duck with orange sauce so we bought 2 duck legs a few days ago at Tesco and today he cooked it with a modified recipe he got online...

and so for dinner we had honeyed duck with orange sauce, served with brocolli and parsnips! YUMMY...

here's a picture of the duck roasted with salt and pepper, and gorgeously basted with honey and orange sauce...
and the final plating! mmmmmmm...
the sauce was made up of oranges (juice and zest), lime, honey, strawberry preserve, salt, pepper and cornstarch. mmmm... BESTEST!

Oslo, Norway - land of loads of water and snow (and fish)

reading week this year was spent doing something uncharacteristic of me - holidaying. usually i spend it catching up on work that has been piling up over the first half of term but this time i made the exception because antonia was in the area (by area i mean europe) and was coming to visit. using the excuse that we will probably never see each other for a few years since she is stuck on the southern hemisphere and i hover between europe and singapore, we made plans to go to somewhere where ryanair would take us cheaply. in all sense of randomness, we chose Oslo, Norway (because the price for return plane tickets were a mere GBP 10).

we spent the night sleeping in Liverpool John Lennon airport because we had a 7am flight. and may i say, the airport was freaking cold because the winds kept blowing in when the automatic doors swung open and we were freezing. furthermore at 5am, the people who were in front of us in the queue all had overweight luggage so we spent ages watching them unpack at the counter so that they could get their baggage down to the maximum 15kg per person. sigh. later on we realised we could have gone upstairs to the departure area to sleep because there were SOME sofa seats at Burger King and no sliding doors to worry about.

anyway, we landed in oslo at while in the queue for the bus to the city centre, we took our first photograph in Oslo! yes, we are all bundled up but it was not as freezing cold as i expected though it still was really cold...on the 1 1/2 hr bus ride from Torp airport, we got a chance to peak at the snow-covered landscape... so pretty... saw a woman doing cross-country skiing as well... looked really fun...once we checked in at our first hostel, we decided to take a walk down Karl Johan Gate ('gate' isnt gate - it's pronounced 'gar-ter' and sort of means street or road... i made that mistake when reading the map and antonia pointedly corrected me...)

we decided to view the Oslo Catherdral - sadly no interior pictures because no photography was allowed. someone was inside practising her singing for a church service (if i am not mistaken) so we had a treat of listening to beautiful soprano singing with organ accompaniment.
it started to snow while we were outside which was pretty but meant that we had the annoying problem of snow blowing into your face. the cathedral really is located right smack in the middle of the major pedestrianized street and you can see all the shopping buildings in the background... btw, H&M seems really big here...
i absolutely needed food in my stomach so we stopped at this little cafe to have our first bites in oslo. i had a pasta salad because they were out of quiche and everything else was bready, and a cappucino. i got a taste of how expensive food is in oslo - this cost me GBP9!
it was snowing pretty much the whole evening and as we trudged through the already thick layer of snow on the ground, the lion in the middle of the square outside the Sentralstasjon (Central Station) seemed pretty out of place, covered wth snow and all...
the next day we visited the Norsk Folkemuseum (Norwegian Folk Museum) on the Bygdøy peninsula (which btw is such a beautiful bit of Oslo - sort of suburban which gorgeous houses and a little bay where everyone keeps their yacht... i'd love to live there! it seems to be a really family-friendly place because every other house had a swing set on their front lawn)
the Folk Museum is a huge area that showcases Norwegian way of life - from the little museums and gallery buildings that display folk art to reproductions of how peasants and townspeople would have lived. everything was covered in snow because it had been snowing the whole evening and night the day before. the picture above is of one of the museum buildings in the square near the entrance of the museum.

we walked into one of the stand-alone buildings that was a mini-museum of a family that is the largest publisher in Norway and their place in Oslo society...
... and wandered around the little cottages of lower-middle/middle class Norwegians not living in the cities...
i thought the cottages looks so homely... all so pleasantly decorated...
we visited the 'grocery store' and the pottery place where the potter busy at work making even more pots...

the quaint little streets of the Norwegian 'town'...

then we visited the reconstructed block of apartment buildings from Oslo city centre - apparently when the government wanted to tear it down to do recevelopment, they moved the building bit by bit to the museum for heritage reasons. they refurnished the entire block with each apartment reflecting a different period during which actual tenants lived there... one was the room of a relatively well-off young family, one was of a more modern couple who were architects (so you had the really post-modern interiors). on the top floor they had a recreation of how the apartment of Torvald and Nora from Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House would have been (to represent the newly-rich living in Oslo). they had a copy of the play on display!
outside we wandered around the different houses from the different regions (and time periods) in Norway. look how much snow there was! it came halfway up my shin...
this is apparently how houses used to look in Norway in the 1700s... doesnt it remind you of the Gauls in Asterix and Obelix?
there were live demonstrations of typical Norwegian life in some of the small cottages... one had traditional Sami (a sort of ethnic gypsy-ish group in Scandinavia) children's stories told in Norwegian...
while in another a lady was making traditional lefse - sort of like tortilla but nice and sweet because it is made with buttermilk. we got to try some (for only NOK 20 = GBP1.75?) with butter and it tasted soooo good... reminded me of a mix between Indian roti and pancakes. mmmmm....
was so excited try this... guess what it is! it's... REINDEER MEAT! (and in the cup beside is marrowbone broth). it tastes like beef but smells like mutton... the broth was wonderful... packed with flavour and nice and warm which was great for my stomach...
they had an exhibition on toys in Norwegian culture and i learnt that dolls were pretty big in a typical Norwegian girl's life (especially after they realised how important play was to mental development of children) which is why Ibsen's A Doll's House hit hard when it was performed in the National Theater in Oslo (see? it was an educational trip!)
i think the teddies and the monky on the bottom shelves looks so adorable...
in the next room was an exhibition on Sami culture - these are typical traditional Sami costumes. they kind of look like what the tribes people wear in Mongolia/Tibet (or Yunan in China...). Many Norwegians actually have Sami heritage though they will scoff at you if you hint that they do. they are considered inferior people in Scandinavian societies though they are beginning to get more voice (i think they have their own elected government in some areas). Samis used to be pretty nomadic and they live all across the northern regions, in some areas of Finland and even in Russia...
one timer-camera-balanced-on-a-wooden pole photo at the Museum!
that evening antonia and i decided to meet at the open-air skating rink at 7.30pm since she wanted to go to church for mass and i was going to go grocery shopping so we could prepare some sandwiches to take when we went skiing. we asked at the hostel for directions to get to the church and for us to get to the skating rink later and basically the guy at the reception gave me the wrong tram number to take. so i was on tram number 12, thinking that i definitely was not where i was supposed to be because the journey was taking longer than it should have... i finally got off when i was definitely sure the tram was not going to pass through the national theater area and waited in the cold on the other side for the tram number 12 going back, then changed to the right bus number finally get to the rink at 8pm.

upon reaching the rink, i met up with antonia and she told me that the guy's instructions for her to get to church sent her off the map so she never made it to church and came straight to skate. like what?!?
the open-air skating rink is free - you pay only to rent skates... it's in the middle of the park right along Karl Johan Gate and next to the National Theater. the streets look really pretty at night with snow falling all around you... rather romantic actually...
the National Theater! they have statues of famous Norwegian playwrights - of course Ibsen was one of them :)
antonia woke up the next morning not feeling very well so we had a lie-in and decided to postpone our skiing to the following day and take some time off to see more museums (yay!).

we did a day of maritime-related museums, first stopping at the Viking Ship Museum just next to the Folk Museum.

Oslo in winter is all about snow... and it actually is so pretty - not like dreary winters in the UK...
it's a pretty small museum, showcasing the 3 Viking ships that were discovered buried under some mounds along the coast and some of the treasures that were buried with them.
i learnt that Vikings travelled along coasts and often slept on shore in tents rather than on the boats (because they did not have any covered area/cabins - unlike pirate ships which had an area under the deck). they followed routes that had been charted by men before and when they did sale across the Atlantic, they probably slept on deck and ate dried food all the way (urgh... poor things...).
one of the artifacts found - i think it was either a handle of a chair or something similar?
the ships were all used as burial chambers for important people. the one above was for a queen and the ship, judging from it's structure, was probably only a leisure craft used on calm waters. this one below was for a chieftain and was actually a sturdy ship that might have been used for battles even...
they were doing some reconstruction work on a carriage because it was disintegrating... the historians/archaeologists work in a studio at the back of the museum behind one-way mirrors (so that they wont be distracted by visitors).
this ship did not fare as well in terms of natural preservation from the elements... but any artifact provides vital information for a historian...
a few bus stops down towards the fjord (a long, narrow, deep inlet of the sea between steep slopes) is the Norsk Sjøfartsmuseum (Norwegian Maritime Museum).there they have loads of model ships on display as well as maritime-related paintings and artifacts...
here's how a kitchen would have been on a ship... not too bad... sort of like a kitchen in a cramp student home (haha...)!
they made a reconstruction of a luxury liner... and we couldnt resist a perfect place for another time photograph!
the view out onto the fjord... the museum has got gorgeous scenery... see how cold it is? even the top of the sea has frozen a little...
they have on display items found in shipwrecks which help historians understand how people lived in the past...
loads and loads of model ships!
they had a giant steering wheel on display. antonia kept asking me to take a picture with it but erm, i am not really the kind who likes taking pictures with displays in museums...
can you guess what this ship is made of...? it's soooo coool!
YUP! it's cloves! and it even had clove sailors manning the ship!
we both took turns to take cheesy pictures with the women who adorn the helm of the ship...
they had so many model ships and some were just HUGE! they had a section on ships that have explored the artic as well... which i found really cool...
right next door (which you get entrance to once you've paid for admission to the main museum building) is a building housing boats from the different regions in Norway. each region's boats are different because of the specific needs of fishermen due to the different types of catch they get along Norway's long and vast coastlines...after a day of museum-hopping, you have to top it off with some cake! dont know the name for this though because i just asked for it from the display fridge but the cake was not soft and spongy but actually quite hard. a bit like a softer and more moist scone and it seemed to have a hint of coconut. yum...
finally on day 4 we went skiing. which was an entirely new experience for me. we had a 90min private lesson with this nice old man who made us walk down this really steep slope which we had to climb up at the end carrying our skis since we couldnt take the ski-lift as we hadnt even made it 1/4 of the way down. i learnt to stop when going down a slope and how to make turns... natually antonia was a fast learner (it is NOT FAIR!) because she skates and she never fell or went out of control like i did... as our instructor said, she has the advantage because skating is about gliding and dance is about friction. oh well...
after scaling our 'Everest' back to the top of the hill to get the bus back to the ski rental place/T-Bann (subway) station, we rewarded ourselves with a meal at a restaurant called Schroeder which serves cheap and traditional Norwegian food in a relaxed atmosphere. Lots of locals (middle-aged especially) were in the restaurant and we ordered the cod on the daily specials. it came with sauteed courgettes and carrots on top of the cod and a serving of potatoes, topped with a buttery sauce. YUM.
on a side note, i realise that many Norwegians read the paper over dinner... hmmm...

the next day we decided to try one of the slopes. which freaked me out because while it looked relatively gentle at the beginning, the gradient of the slope got steeper and steeper, finally ending at THIS!
and in my first few tries, i could not control how fast i was going down so guess what... i ended up taking a LOT of tumbles. not falls. TUMBLES. like rolling down a part of the slope, skis and poles ending up a few feet away from me. antonia was gliding down so poor girl had to wait for me while i got up and got my skis on again. which is really hard especially when you are not on a flat part of the slope. because once you strap one on, your ski wants to run away from you and go down the slope when you havent even got the other one on. this all done while you are sideways to the slope, not even when you are facing the bottom of the slope.

after a while i realised why i kept falling - it was because i was pretty much going straight down the slope, rather than going side to side down the slope. so i started making really wide 'S'es down the slopes and soon was able to go down without a single fall/tumble. YAY! antonia said i improved a lot on my control (hehehe...) and we had a funny conversation that went something along the following lines:

antonia: "I dont understand how you manage to go so slowly down the hill. I cant control... I just zip down..."

me: "I dont understand how you can go down the hill so fast. I'd freak out and take a tumble. How do you manage to stay up?"

we had our last Norwegian dinner at Fyret along Youngstorget which was decorated with the owner's maritime memorabilia. it's a cosy little cafe lit only by candles which added to the ship-like feel of the place.
we ordered a fish burger and a skipperburger (their speciality - it's a beef burger). the fish patty was rather starchy and really reminded me of fishballs at home and came with some prawns and 2 mussels! fabulous! the skipperburger was yummy too except that antonia doesnt eat pickles or raw onions so i got to benefit from it. :)
so we bade a goodbye to Oslo and boarded the bus to Torp airport. on a final note about Norway, their chocolate brand Freia (which apparently Norwegians swear is the best chocolate in the world) makes rather nice and very milky-tasting milk chocolate. but the funky thing is the logo they print on the chocolate squares...
flamingoes! soooooo cute! :)