purposelessness, brain detoriation and gamla uppsala picnic

Purposelessness causes dizziness, and I'm extremely dizzy. I've been bumming the day away when I could have made good use of a free Sunday. The only useful thing which I almost did, was to go out to replace my worn and torn boots just to realize that shops today close at 4pm. My goodness. I think it's really very silly and hypocritical to complain about not having time sometimes when I don't seem to make good use of time in the first place. I'm just feeling sian about the whole thing, but I'm still not in the state of mind to do anything. And I'd like to blame it on either mental inertia or that it's a well-deserved break from all the travelling. People always find reason to back up everything they do, be it good or bad. Or perhaps, whether something good or bad depends on how people find reasons to back it up huh. Maybe I should read 7Habits or something to mentally give myself a kick on my mental ass and start doing something productive.

Argh lousiness. And the one with the mental sums, which I usually do the best, has just hit an all-time low. I think I need to practise more and get those brain juices churning again.

Ok, I'm not all time-wasting. I'm still keeping up with the news. A bit.. And for one, the swine flu cases are quite worrisome. It also doesn't help that people from Europe do fly through Mexico and we don't know who is "incubating" the virus now. So that puts a huge part of the world (including us American and European exchange students) all at huge risk. I just hope that everything will tide over soon.

Yesterday was extremely pleasant. Most of the Singaporeans in Uppsala were out travelling, with the most of them at Singapore Day in London. So since Sherene, Melissa, Eugene and I were hanging around Uppsala, we decided to have a cycling trip to Gamla Uppsala for a picnic! How cool is that! I was pretty hyped up for the biking part cuz I've never mass-cycled with the rest here before. And it brought back all the good old memories from biking too =).

Sherene, Eugene and Melissa all geared up for the ride!

Gamla Uppsala is the place where the town of Uppsala originated from. And it is marked with many mounds where it is said that that old kings were buried under. So it is one of the must-visits when coming to Uppsala. The huge church in Uppsala (the equivalent of the Eiffel Tower in Paris) also used to be there before it was burnt down. Only after that, it was re-built 5km away from it's original location next to the river, and then the rest of present-day Uppsala was built around it.

Vikings in black found land in Uppsala and decided to locate here.

The last time I went there, it looked like this:

Doesn't it look like some wintry desert? This time when we went, it was all green and at a warm 18°C. Finally we could wear some summer clothes =)

We spent the time leisurely eating, lying down watching birds fly by, chatting and catching up. It felt so good, like we could just do our own thing without a worry. And just like that, time deceptively crept by and 6hrs just passed us by. So much so that the museum closed and we missed going in. So we just cycled around the place exploring and reading random information tablets.

After which, everyone cycled over to my place to eat again! So glad they helped me out with my Asian food. From a dearth of Asian-anything, my mum sent me 2 GIGANTIC DHL boxes filled with Asian stuff, some of which I've never seen in my life including weird-looking chinese fungi and small little crabs. Given my limited time, I need people to eat a lot of it for me - fast.

Exchange is fun. I guess when you're not travelling, you're either hanging out with friends, eating or bumming around. I'm really going to miss it once it's over. And every day, the day for it to be over is coming nearer and nearer =(.

the little girl knew that sooner or later
the balloon she held on to would stop floating, shrivel up and become a limp, useless piece of plastic
how could she bear to see it get to that stage?
tearfully, she gripped the string tighter, looked at her temporary possession folornly
remembered how it looked in her hand for one last time,
then turned her head
and let go.

11:03 pm ·