MooPig & The Babe

Labels: Berlin, Christmas

Posted by MooPig at 14:52 | Permalink | Comments

The mother's test- passed.
The grandmother's test- passed.

Christmas was E-X-C-E-L-L-E-N-T.

Everyone was nice and friendly. Food was excellent. Company was great.

I love love love love love the Christmas Markets. I decided to eat toffee grapes instead of toffee apples (which I eat annually) and got sick of it before I could finish it. Lovely Christmas lights. I still can't get enough of the caramel almonds. *yum yum*

I got a shock when the bill came up to 15euros for 9 packets of german sausages and hams. I did not realise I put so many in the shopping basket. :P So yeah, the housemate is happy, the friend is happy and so is the aunt.

German custom officers are extremely strict. And I mean, EXTREMELY strict. Scary. I thought I'd never make it to London anymore. He looked at me as if I was holding a fake passport. At one point, he even asked me to tuck my hair behind my ears. No one has ever scrutinised me like that.

But sadly, my German did not improve much but I picked up a few Polish words here and there.

Time to hunt for a language school, aye? :P

I'm knackered.

And now... what should I do on NYE?

And I'm already missing the cheesecake his mum made. I reallllly should have eaten the second piece for lunch on Boxing day. Arghhhhhhhhhhhh

Labels: Berlin, Christmas

Posted by MooPig at 01:10 | Permalink | Comments

Posted by MooPig at 01:19 | Permalink | Comments

Mariah's "All I want for Christmas Is You" has always been my favourite Christmas song. Listening to this song always makes me wanna dance. =)

I think it must be 4 years ago. My corridor mates used to blast Christmas carols in the kitchen. "I saw Mummy kissing Santa Claus" has also become one of my favourites. Sounds cheeky and not quite right for Christmas but somehow I like this song.

"Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" is also another favourite or mine but it sounds a little sad. It's been gloomy lately and listening to this song makes me feel even sadder. But I'm a sucker for songs like this. :P

Posted by MooPig at 23:57 | Permalink | Comments

5 days to Christmas. How do you feel?
Christmas doesn't mean much to me because we never celebrated Christmas at home.
This is my 5th Christmas abroad.

My first Christmas was in Japan, back in year 1999. It was a house party hosted by my host parents.

And the second Christmas abroad was in 2002. I spent that Christmas in Coleraine. I was really looking forward to it. I travelled by myself to Coleraine. I took a train to Holyhead, took the Ferry to Dun Laoghair (sp?), took the train to Belfast and another train to Coleraine. Brian picked me up from the train station. I think it took me about 6 hours to get to Coleraine. I had no idea how Brian and family celebrated Christmas and I thought it was a huge occassion with loads of preparations to do the night before. But I was wrong. It was all quiet. Silent Night. On Christmas Day, Brian and family brought me to BushMills Inn (Does it ring a bell, LB?) for Christmas dinner with Brian's brother's family and Nana. Joan's sister and her family came over. Everybody was excited to meet me because yellow I was 'representing' Daddy. Daddy used to spend Xmas with the family when he was in Ireland years ago. On Boxing Day, Joan cooked lunch and invited Adam's girlfriend over for lunch. That was it. I was there for 6 days and I was dying to get out of Northern Ireland!

The third Christmas was unpleasant. Joan and Brian separated so I stayed with Nana in Tobermore. Adam, Brian's son was diagnosed with Acute TB. Sigh! This time round, I took Easyjet to Belfast and it took a mere 50 minutes! Brian brought us to The Lodge for Christmas dinner. A family friend of Brian joined us as well. Over dinner, I was talking to Aiden since he was sitting opposite me. Aiden was a smooth talker who tricked me into telling him what alcohol I liked. He bought me one alcopop after another. He was smart though- he paid the waiter to bring the drinks to me while he went out to get his dose of nicotine. He wanted to bring me out for drinks in the evening but I declined because Nana wouldn't allow but he went on and on and on so I just said yes to shut him up. But I knew we wouldn't meet up because Nana wouldn't allow me to go out anyway. He was ultra nice to me after that. He waited for me to get my food, took my plate away when I was done eating. He became bolder too. He said we should go to Adam's house party and spend a night there and have sex. I told him straight on his face that I wouldn't do it. Then he got the message. I avoided him after that but before I left, he said to me "I hope I'll get to fuck you next time." That Son of a... No, that jerk. If he weren't Brian's friend and his Dad weren't Nana's friend I would have given him a tight slap. Oh, did I tell you he was 20 over years older than me? I never looked at Christmas the same way again.

The following Christmas, Joan and Brian reconciled but Joan was diagnosed with cancer. I decided not to spend Christmas with them because I would create more trouble. Besides, I was haunted by 'that' experience. I told Dad about the bad news and he agreed I shouldn't spend xmas there. Phew! I spend this Christmas in Bangor. A quiet one.

Last year, I spent Christmas day watching telly. Wahey! Must be the winter blues, I tell you.

And this year, I'm actually in a Christmas mood already. I downloaded some nice Christmas carols a while ago. I put on my earphone and started writing Christmas cards. =) I have no idea how my Christmas will be like but I know I'll be spending Christmas in Berlin, with the boyfriend AND HIS FAMILY! I've bought his mum and granny presents but not his siblings because I have no idea what to get for them! I'm really looking forward to Christmas this year. 5 more days to go, 3 more days till I see him again. I need a bear hug from him!!

Tell me about your Christmas, will you? =)

Stay tuned for the "meet the family" posts. Or maybe not. :P

Labels: Christmas, memories

Posted by MooPig at 03:06 | Permalink | Comments

Labels: Christmas Lights, London, Regent Street

Posted by MooPig at 00:35 | Permalink | Comments

Will be leaving on Saturday evening to Frankfurt. We're going to Berlin on Christmas Eve and I'm flying back to London on 27 December. He'll join me later and we'll celebrate NYE together. =)

And this will be my first time visiting the parents. I've never done that in my life and boy, I'm extremely nervous.

Now.... what presents shall I get for everyone?

Time to go shopping!! teeheeee

Posted by MooPig at 20:33 | Permalink | Comments

She told me the feedback will be on Friday.

I slept after 4am. On a normal day, I wake up about 6/7 or maybe 8 hours later. But not today.

By 9am, I woke up immediately after the alarm rang. No lazing on the bed nonsense. The first thing I did was to switch on my laptop and checked my email. My mobile phone never leave my visibility. I've even set the gmail page as my home page. I never log off the account.

Positive or negative reply? I wonder. Again, the intuition says the latter but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the former.

I've been so stressed for the past 2 weeks. I have 4 mouth ulcers. That's a sign of how stress I am. I need more Vitamin B12, Iron and Folic Acid, Wikipedia says so.

Do you think the HCM lady will ring me up to tell me a favourable reply? Or she will say the same thing like the Business Psychologist that BAT employed told me? "Thank you for attending the BAT assessment centre on XX. You've done very well but unfortunately...."

I'm so scared. I'm so worried. I'm so nervous. The heart is beating so fast.

Fingers crossed. Toes crossed.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I brought my mobile into the living room when I went to cook dinner. And I DID NOT HEAR IT RING!!! When I realised it was 9 minutes too late. I hate 'No Number' or 'Private Number' phone calls.

I called one firm. I thought the HR rang me to confirm the interview date after I left a voice mail. Nope.

I checked my email. No.

I guess I'm taking this as a negative reply. The last time I made it through to the final round, the HCM lady sent me an email and told me to ring her a.s.a.p.

And you know what my intuition says? Wait till Monday. Maybe there's a good news waiting for me. But the pessimistic side of me says no.

I'm so annoyed. So confused. :(

Posted by MooPig at 15:37 | Permalink | Comments

K and I talk every night when he comes back from work. Since he started work, we've been doing that, except for 1 night when I went out clubbing and arrived home at 3.30am.

We don't spend much time talking on the phone. Sometimes it's just a 5 minutes conversations but sometimes, we spend an hour plus on the phone. That's the longest we've done. Gone were the days when I used to spend hours and hours and hours talking with the ex-bf on the phone. :P

Our classmate, T, is at his place. T came all the way to London and decided to fly to Frankfurt to visit K before he leaves to Tokyo again. Last night, I told K not to ring me if it's inconvenient.

I can't help but feel a little awkward. From time to time, I check my Voip and mobile phone for missed calls. And then I realised that he won't call me tonight.

It's not that I miss him terribly. It's just that I'm so used to talking to him before going to bed every night and tonight, it's a little different, simply because I'm used to the routine and routine isn't routine tonight.

=)

On another note, there's an invitation for 'meet the family' during christmas. Get what I mean?? Now I'm worried and... umm.. nervous. Not sure if I'll take up the invitation though.

Posted by MooPig at 23:41 | Permalink | Comments

So yes, call me a drama queen if you like it.

Had to wake up at 5-ish this morning because this miss drama queen takes about 1 hour to get ready. That includes showering and NOT picking what to wear for the day because I've prepared everything (including socks and the earrings) I was supposed to wear this morning, putting on a 10 minutes hydration mask (because I was looking really awful from lack of sleep), plastering thousand and one layers of cosmetics on my face, trying very, very hard to cover my extremely visible dark circles, and at the same time, multitasking in front of the laptop- reading emails, blogs and listening to music. And I did not have time for a cup of tea. -_- Really can't imagine how it will be like when I start work the next time.

It was still dark when I left the flat in my favourite suit (my best investment so far!). I arrived about 25 minutes early so I grabbed a hot chocolate from a cafe nearby. There were 2 of us scheduled for the 8am interview. The first one went okay I guess but I thought they might be 'too excited' to interview the first person. The guy was slapping me with questions, questions and more questions and when he stopped, the lady continued. I thought it wasn't going to end until he asked me if I had any questions. *phew* And I thought, in the final round, there would be technical questions but I was so wrong.

I had to wait for more than an hour, or maybe two, for the next interview. At the mean time, I got to know the candidates of the day. 2 Americans, 2 Canadians but 1 is from HK and the other one is from India, 1 Chinese, 1 BBI, 1 Greek and me. They are very nice people and we actually got on really well.

The next interview was with the guy who interviewed me from the first round, and the CFO. The interview lasted shorter than the previous one, probably they were tired from interviewing other candidates and I was the last one. The CFO seemed quite pleased with my answers and the questions asked were basically competency based. The other guy was emotionless. I can't tell.

I was quite dead by the end of the second interview.

We did an office tour but we were running late so the HR lady didn't bring us to the trading office. Dang! I really, really wanted to see how trading is like in an IB. Oh well... next time, hopefully? We had lunch- sandwiches. How cliche can that be!

The final one was the group exercise. My brain just decided to shut down during the last 10 minutes or so. I just couldn't think anymore and I wasn't absorbing any information. I don't think I did particularly well. Other people were just yapping and talking and giving information and opinions but I just talked when I thought I could contribute something to the group.

I felt like the whole assessment centre thingie just drained my brain juice, right down to the final drop. It didn't appear very taxing but when I came out from the building, all I wanted to do was to get home and go online then jump onto my bed.

And then the bus decided to play hide and seek with me. Oh well.

Anyway, I'm done rambling and I'm off to bed. Another one tomorrow and I can't be bothered to prepare for it.

Posted by MooPig at 22:55 | Permalink | Comments

For the first time in many many many months I got up at 5-ish.

I feel like dying now.

update later.

Posted by MooPig at 18:38 | Permalink | Comments

First and foremost, thank you very much for the comments and encouraging words.

Once, everything looked bleak and gloomy. I did not know where to start from. I had no plans for my future. I took time off to do some 'soul-searching'. I finally decided what I wanted.

Application forms were filled in and sent out. Rejection letters, like the waves in Cala Millor, came one after another. And finally, one invitation came. Boy, I was estatic. But I wasn't good enough after the first round.

I did not give up but I was worried. I fear my dreams will not come true and I have to pack my bags and go. I fear I will remain unemployed for the rest of my life.

Finally, I had another interview.

K arrived with a bouquet of flowers on my birthday. I put the flowers in a little vase. Everyday, I look at them and wonder when the lilies will bloom. The night before the interview, while looking at the flowers, I said 'if the lilies bloom tomorrow, I will do well.' The next morning, I was disappointed. None.

I went to the interview at one of the most reputable investment banks in London on Tuesday. The traffic was bad and I was late by about 10 minutes! Thankfully, the interview hadn't start and it was chaos in the office so no one realised I was late. I had to do verbal reasoning and numerical reasoning tests. I don't know how well I did. I managed to finish everything but I don't know if I answered them accurately. I had another interview with 2 interviewers from the department. They were nice and friendly. Helped me when I struggled. One of them said I gave a very good answer when all I did was just say something which I didn't think it was relevant. At the end of the interview, my intuition said I won't get the second interview. When I came back in the evening, I realised one of the lilies actually bloomed but it was hiding.

I prayed and I prayed and I prayed. I made 2 vows.

When I woke up this morning, the lilies were at full bloom! I checked my email. Another invitation from another company. =)

In the evening, I received another good news. I actually passed the first round interview and the next round is on Monday!

I see light at the end of the tunnel. The lilies are at full bloom.

=)

Posted by MooPig at 00:06 | Permalink | Comments

Have you ever experienced this?

Your intuition tells you no, but being an optimist, you still hope. You hope that your intuition was wrong and the answer is yes.

And you start talking to yourself. You start telling yourself the answer is yes and your intuition is wrong. You tell yourself to be positive. You tell yourself that you've done your best.

I wish my intuition is wrong.

I want a positive answer. Please.

Posted by MooPig at 00:09 | Permalink | Comments

I don't care if this post sounds cheesy or mushy.

The boyfriend is so damn sweeeeeet!

He's flying to London tonight and back to Frankfurt on Sunday afternoon! I was in tears when he broke the news to me. It was meant to be a surprise- and he pakat-ed with the flatmate. The flatmate keeps her lips so tight- not even a single hint!

I didn't sound very cheerful when he called after 12 midnight (and he was still in the office). No, not because he's not here. It's just me- I've been under the weather for the past weeks. Anyway, he rang again when he got home, about 2am. He told me that it's ashame that we can't see each other so often because of the distance. He told me he's too busy to buy present for me. He told me how much he loves me and how he feels about this relationship. I was listening and was about to shoo him to bed because he has to get into the office by 11am on Saturday, and suddenly, he said he's flying to London tonight to spend my birthday with me!

I thought he was joking. I must have asked him the same question like, 3 times? I just could not believe my ears. I was in tears. Literally.

It's like a dream come true. I never expected him to fly all the way here because he works over the weekend and he's afraid of flying. He's very, very afraid of flying.

I'm estatic! I'm counting down the hours till we see each other again!

I love you!

Posted by MooPig at 01:56 | Permalink | Comments

又过了一年。

明天就二十三岁了。

一直以来，我都很喜欢庆祝生日。生日前几个星期，我就很兴奋，开始计划自己的生日要怎么过。

可是，今年不一样了。不知道为什么，一点也不觉得兴奋。反而室友比我更兴奋。她前几天就问我生日要怎么过，可是我都说不知道。哎~

嗯~ 很想哭。

二十二
离家6年了
出国4年
最后一次和家人过生日，嗯....18岁吧!
搬来伦敦后, 觉得跟以前不一样了，
学了很多东西，长大了，
嗯。。。应该比较成熟吧！

噢~ 二十二岁做的‘坏事’比以前多
最坏的....应该是不跟妈妈说就坐飞机去德国找男朋友。
回来了也不跟她说, 也不打算说。

二十二岁
生平第一次去工作面试
虽然不成功，可是累积了不少经验。

嗯~
酸甜苦辣的滋味都尝了
不过
还是很幸福啦

二十三岁，
会是怎样的呢？

Posted by MooPig at 02:15 | Permalink | Comments