ok. finally an update. a brief one though haha. i promise more will be coming... soon. hopefully.

well where did my time go? europe for one. uk, edinburgh, paris, switzerland. it was great. seeing my mum, travelling with her, navigating through the maze of trains, and just absorbing the life of the cities that we were in. it was a great experience, and an amazing way to top off the semester. hopefully, i will get down to posting up pics and doing the travelogue that i want to...

then took about a week and half just for myself, in the new place that i'm in. subletted a friend's apartment, so now i have the entire place to myself. my own room, a living room, my own kitchen and toilet. yeah it's amazing. so i chilled and did a couple of admin stuff, settled things, watched dvd and grey anatomy's epsiodes (yeah harwin, it's totally your fault. i'm at ep 24 now haha), read 4 books, cooked and experimented, and cleaned the house.

then my friend came up from chicago to stay over. she just left this morning, but it was pretty fun. we went to the zoo. which is a 5 min bike from my place. amazing huh? (but they have tarantulas and scary snakes that freak me out. then again, they also have pretty cool stuff like piranhas) showed her the farmers' market, did a campus tour. oh yeah, and we tried biking to the arboretum. but after biking like 4 miles into it (this is not even counting the distance it was from the zoo to the arb), we were still only somewhere in the middle of it. so we took a break, did photo shots, then headed back haha. watched dvds, and did a movie marathon day (4 movies. cars is pretty good by the way. so is MI3. and tom cruise is as tom-cruisey as every haha)

but it's been getting pretty hot down here. hit 31 degrees yesterday and for someone who's dying at 24 degrees, yeah it's pretty pretty hot. and of cos, the high temperatures had to result in a weather system that created tornadoes. again. not in madison, but near enough for tornado warnings (oh yeah, didn't mention that last week had tornado warnings for an hour. and tornardo warnings are given only when tornadoes have been spotted. again, not in madison, but close enough for the warnings to be issued) guess the tornado season (and hurricanes, thank goodness i'm not near the coastal areas) is back.

school starts tmr. sigh. thank goodness it's not so intense the first 4 weeks. then it gets... pretty tough. oh well. need to get my engine started again. the brain has atrophied so much. erpz.

so yeah, i'm enjoying my solitude and my personal space. man, i love living alone :) at present, i'm still controlling my slob tendencies though i expect that to explode on me when i sink neck-deep into work. so cheers everyone, to a hot and volatile summer that will have me rising at 5am in the morning cos the sun is in my eye and the stupid birds outside think that it's nice to make a ruckus cos everybody should wake when they wake. gaaaaah. stupid birds. but yes, other than that (and me baking in the heat), it's great here.

and yes. guess what the main topic of discussion was between me and my friend who stayed over? food from singapore that we miss. now i reaaaaaally need to make a trip down to chicago and do a penang restaurant binge. (and did u know that the SAMSU in chicago gets a 10% discount at penang? next time we're down there, please get them to come eat with us haha)