Que se reanudarán en breve

The blogging will resume. But in the mean time, here is some Asian Spice for you.

On the first few days of our stay in Barcelona, since work hasn't started, we did alot of walking and beach-ing. The necessary tourist spot would be of course La Ramblas, but I didn't take any pictures knowing that I would go back there again.

So on one of the days, our spanish chica friends brought us for a walk around the city. They are awful tour guides They tried explaining the places of interest as best as they could.

Entrance to Parc de la Ciutadella

Estacio Franca, all trains here depart for France?

Trying to get up in a ball

No its not Harbourfront or Sentosa

I think the hill is called Montjuic

Road linking Barceloneta with La Ramblas, with the statue of Christopher Columbus ahead

A Catalunya government office in the park

Me Ilamo Lam Chee Kiang

Egyptian Pharoah

Andrew from USA, Ana and Ari from Espanyol, and Paulios from Lithuania

All road leads all to Arc de Triomf

Some random park

Wok to Walk is EVERYWHERE. Red Light District, Amsterdam; Soho, London;

and now off La Ramblas, Barcelona!

Placa Reial (Royal Plaza)

Was it for the royal family? "I don't know!"

Ang-Mohs go crazy over exotic fruits

OMG a juice is only 1 Euro! O.o"

I rather a 3 Euro Cafe con Leche (Ice Coffee)

An outdoor performance around the Avinguda Diagonal. They have alot of these things in Europe. Joying over the Summer Sun.

Barcelona has about three beaches, at least that's what I observed.

Ok so there's more than that. Let's just say its 10 km of sun, sea, sand and girls garbage.

After meeting my housemates (of which I will blog about in later posts), we decided to head to the beach for dinner. American Blonde, who knew spanish and was here before, attempted to bring us from the apartment. (Note the keyword "attempted") We got there in the end, after a walk around some shabby industrial area.

As our work only starts the following week, we spent most of the days by the beach. Our goals were to tryout every part of the beach, on every different time of the day. As the only Asian guy, I had to get rid of my solar-phobia and mingle around with the solar-desporado caucasians.

The road to Mare Magnum shopping center

The beach in the afternoon

The beach was happening! People were lying by the beach, playing in the sea, tanning their sickly-looking boobs, playing some football...

Yeap, I saw a beach-load full of boobs!! I was more shocked that aroused. In fact, they were all just in your face that it became a normality rather than something that you need to put an effort to get to see it. Perhaps these women are trying to show some sort of gender equality, where women can also wear like men to the beach. Hmm...

There were also people going around promoting their clubs, which was where we dug more info on the clubbing scene in Barcelona.

The first guy...

"Hello boys and girls would you like to go clubbing?"

(Curious) "Oooh tell me more"

The second guy...

"Yo watsup guys, you planning anything tonight?"

(Still Curious) "Erm, not really, what do you have!"

The 1001th guy...

"Hola!"

"Sorry we got plans"

These people were obviously friendly, but we felt no harm having a chat with them! Within one evening, we had three contacts offering us discounted passes into clubs. Mind you, one entry costs about 20 euros here O_O. One of the contacts nicknamed me "Party CK", and he has been messaging me non-stop since of all the parties. Barcelona is a party animal O-M-G!

See any boobs? The decks were for rent by the way.

Enjoying the Mediterranean sun

Where rich people park their vehicles

Drunkard Sandman

Introducing Ivana from Croatia and Katarina from Slovakia

Me and housemate Paulios from Lithuania

More on the beach in upcoming posts!

Barcelona 101

I know nuts about Barcelona.

The only thing I knew before coming here was that they have nice beaches, it hosted the Olympics a few years ago, and they have two football teams (of which I will not mention further).

The first thing I found out here was that people speak Catalan. Don't ask them why they don't speak Spanish, it's a sensitive question.

The next thing I learned would be how inefficient the airport staff were. I landed at the El Prat Airport punctually, but have to wait for more than an hour to get my luggage. There was actually a point where the belt stopped moving, and I panicked for not seeing my backpack! It started moving again 20 minutes later.

When I came out, there was someone holding a sign with my name on it. Didn't take a picture though!

After a few further hiccups in the airport i.e. waiting for a Latvian girl whose flight was actually scheduled for next week, and settling a baggage lost report of a Turkish girl.

And I thought Malaysia was inefficient. I landed at the airport at 12pm. We left for the city at 3.30pm. We reached our lodging at about 4.30pm.

And he tries to blog again

This is my attempt to blog about my experience in Barcelona.

I have actually been living in Barcelona for about two weeks now, half way through my month long internship. I'll try to be as chronological as I can.

I guess I can start off with a little intro too. I'm a Malaysian Chinese reading Pharmacy at the National University of Singapore. This summer, I've secured a month long Student Exchange Program under the International Pharmacy Students Federation (IPSF) organization to work in a hospital pharmacy in Barcelona. I live in an apartment with others on the same program. Will blog about them in later posts.

My life in Barcelona can actually be summed up in this movie "L'Auberge Espagnole". In this movie, a french exchange student lives in Barcelona with people from all over the world. Some study, while some work. Barcelona is just the setting of the movie, but the theme of the movie revolves around the universal topics of love, sex, relationship, growing up blablabla. You get the picture.

Of course, the only thing different between my experience and what is depicted in the movie would be that I actually HAVE TO WORK.

Anyway, will leave you with the trailer. It's in French, but what the heck, no one understands them too anyway.