Hello good food, heat and humidity

After 5 eventful months in Europe, I’m finally back home. The journey home was a little more ‘happening’ than I would have liked, due to my flight home being inexplicably brought forward by 2 hours (yes brought forward, NOT delayed) without us being informed. And it had to happen at the airport i hated the most – Brussels. Luckily I arrived there 3 hours before my flight and when we realised at the last minute we only had 10mins to make the boarding gate from the check in counter before it closed, me and ds chiong-ed faster than u can say ‘Amazing Race’.

Thankfully we got on the flight, however throughout the mad dash i kept thinking to myself this wasn’t the way i wanted to leave Europe, this wasn’t doing my whole trip justice. I was rather pissed actually. The fact that i could not view the flight information on my inflight entertainment screen didn’t help. I’m a sucker for monitoring gadgets.

Oh well, at least i had some time to reflect on the train from Paris (my last stop) to Brussels. Amusingly, (and probably rather aptly), the first random song that played when i turned on my iPod was John Mayer’s Stop This Train. It brought a wry smile to my face. It goes without saying that i really looked forward to going home to family, friends and the amenities of home, but at the same time i felt more than a tinge of reluctance at leaving the continent which brought me so many beautiful memories. For this I would have to blame Paris for being so enthralling, on New Year’s Eve, no less. Returning to Paris after my first visit there with Qinlei 2 months back felt really good; I already kinda knew the city pretty well but i almost forgot how beautiful it was. As i told Rebec, there’s something about Paris, a certain je ne sais quoi about the French capital, while strolling down the Seine River from the Notre Dame to the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe, along the decorated Champs Elysees. It would have easier to leave Europe from say, Milan, which was my stop before Paris. Not to take anything away from Milan, its a fantastic shopping city, but somewhat pales in comparison.

After more than 30 cities and 14 countries (and a considerable loss of weight due to all the traveling), all good things have to come to an end. C’est la vie. This exchange provided me with lots of different perspectives, experiences and most importantly, what I shouldn’t take for granted.

Apart from the place itself, a substantial part of the enjoyment is the company you travel with. I would like to say a big thank you to the people who made my stay and travels in Europe fun and interesting:

• To fellow Maastricht FAs Shihui, Jo, Weiwen, Kate, Andrew, Dingsheng, Yinghan, Lionel, Melvin, Kenneth, for the all the fun moments in hall and while on our numerous travels around Europe, the casino nights, dinner standup sessions, Albert Heijn grocery shopping excursions, poker nights, snowfights, FA moments, EasyJet songs, act sey group shots, suay moments, sabo-ing, gey siao kuku jiao-ing, um chio-ing and many more.

• To Peg and Nancy, for being such great hosts in Cph, it was also great fun having u all around in Maastricht and traveling to Amsterdam for some potentially traumatic and pretty unforgettable experiences, heh.

• To Alicia, Nancy and Veron, for being such wonderful team-mates during Rubicon, for all your scandalous moments, and most of all for the hilarious times which I think we’ll reminisce with fondness for a long time to come.

• To Nancy, Rebec, Peg and Weiwen, for being such great travel companions during the year end trip, with no lack of silly pictures, videos, gossips and jinx milo games. Hope you all enjoyed it as much as your tour guide did =)

I’ll take my time to blog about the cities i haven’t blogged about thus far. Not sure if i’ll continue with blogging once I’ve exhausted my remaining 10 cities but I’ll see how when the time comes. I’m not the kind to blog about what happens in my life on a daily basis, like, who cares about what time u wake up or what you ate for lunch.

Well I’ve been back in Singapore for almost a week now. Apart from some pretty substantial inflation (tempered somewhat by my tendency to convert Sing to Euros everytime i buy something), the scorching weather and the new KPE, in most other ways, its as if i’ve never left at all. =)