Final weeks of the European life.

Hey guys (or whoever actually reads my blog), sorry for the lack of updates. Still adjusting to the very visible absence of a 15 inch macbookpro. The 10 inch glory of my asus eee pc is still driving me crazy. I’m squinting at font size 4 text as I type now. And my main form of entertainment, believe it or not and laugh if you must, is Spider Solitaire. You have no idea how much of it I’ve played in the past week. Schadenfreude for you.

And now the biggest blow to my Apple ego… I have downloaded GIMP. This little guy is never going to run Photoshop (it can’t even stream videos without lagging, and I can’t play flash games because it lags too. Hence Spider Solitaire). So… a laggy GIMP is still better than nothing. >_<

I have Lightroom installed but I was never that much of a fan since I normally use Aperture for photo editing. And the interface becomes a lot less user friendly when its on 10 inches. In general, to sum up using a small netbook for regular daily use = I have never had to use so many scrollbars (horizontal and vertical) in my life.

And with that I shall stop whining about not having my macbookpro at my disposal. I miss you Greenie.

Instead, I shall talk about happier things! Like the fact that I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S ALREADY THE END OF JUNE! WHICH MEANS THE 1ST OF JULY IS COMING (NEXT THURSDAY)!!! WHICH MEANS, *DRUMROLLLLLLLL* JASON IS COMING!!!!!

I’m so excited. I’m through trying to study for Thursday’s and Friday’s exams. Berlin, then I’ll get to see boyfriend (1/7), sister (6/7) and momma (9/7). Joy joy joy.

This is a (very kiddy, I know, I’m no artist) doodle I shoved into Jason’s bag just before we left for the airport in a rush on 5 Feb 10. I intended to give it to him properly but there wasn’t time so I folded it and threw it in for him to find when he got home. I know it looks like it was drawn by a 5 year old but he like can already okay? Lol.

Time flies. I can’t believe I can finally say I’m seeing him in a week.

Starting to firm up plans with my Mom and Sis for when they’re here in Swiss. They’ll both be here at different times and we’re doing different activities. (E.g. paragliding with sis and no we haven’t told mom, and sightseeing and taking cablecar and staying in nice hotels with mommy…).

The USIfriends are all starting to leave one by one. Jesus (one of the Spanish, for anyone who may suddenly be very confused) leaves tomorrow morning, and we’re waking up to say goodbye. I’m bad with farewells these days, but I definitely have had some amazing times with these people. By the time I get back on 1 July most of them will be gone… And I’d be saying bye to Becky and Maxi at Milan MXP itself as I wait out many hours for Jason to arrive. (Camping out in Berlin Schoenefeld overnight, reaching Milan MXP at 9am, Maxi’s flight is at noon, Becky’s at 1pm, and Jason arrives around 2.) I’m so definitely taking StarStation back to Lugano this time. Goodness.

StarStation is a private shuttle operator that costs 35CHF/23EUROS and goes from Milan MXP straight to Lugano. The other alternative to getting here is taking the shuttle to Milan Centrale (7.5EUROS), then taking the regional train to Chiasso (first stop on the Swiss border, 4.2EUROS), and then changing to the far nicer, brighter and more comfortable Swiss trains to return to Lugano (free for us after 7pm as we have the Track 7 Swiss Rail card).

According to our well thought out calculations, being stingy students abroad who try to save every dollar we can, this means that we save about 10EUROS going the long way. However, in the case of our return from Barcelona last week, saving 10EUROS also meant wasting 5 hours of my life as compared to the 1 hour bus ride proffered by StarStation.

Junhua and I landed in MXP around 8pm, got to Centrale before 9.30pm, missed our 9.38pm connection, ended up having to take the metro to another station to catch the last train at 10.38pm, got to Chiasso past midnight, and finally trudged back to our accommodation past 1.00am in the morning. Srsly? I’m just going to take StarStation. :]

Gonna go crash now so I can wake up by 7 to see Jesus off. But here’s some shots of my mini-Moo cards and card holder that came ages ago but I haven’t posted pictures of.

Moo’s pretty fun to use and it’s not exorbitantly expensive (yes yes I know we can get cheaper printing in Singapore), but I’m a victim of good marketing, services and user interfaces and Moo really makes it very easy for you to make namecards even if you aren’t a designer. Go check out their site (moo.co.uk). If anyone wants to get them done and wants to save on shipping you can send them to my Swiss address and I’ll bring them back for you. 100 minicards costs €13.79, with up to 100 designs if you so chose. I printed 5 designs, so its 20 cards per design. Shipping to Swiss is another €4.25 and I paid €3.74 for the sleek orange minicard holder. Total: €21.78

Go play around with the interface a bit and you’ll see how easy it is to use. They also offer a lot of gorgeous premade designs for people who want cards quick and ready to print, and you can easily add and tweak how you want your contact information to look.

Okay end of commercial. No they’re not paying me (I wish) to advertise, but I do acknowledge and admire a well-thought out online business.

Mmkay, bed time. I will do my best to keep to the resolution of updating more frequently. Goodnight, and good morning to everyone in Singapore.

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