In school, sometimes it seems like you almost have to talk to everybody and anybody you meet along your way for lessons, or plainly when you’re sitting down, your friends or your friends’ friends join you at the table and apparently, I find myself talking more than actually ‘studying’. And someone once told me “those are contacts and precious friendships that will last you a life time. Even more precious for you since it’s global.” Everyday, meeting a new friend, making them remember you and knowing that in the future, we’re bound to meet. Oh and which is why, when it’s time to return to studio, I’m able to dive into the endless amount of readings, surfing the internet for research materials and flipping the books for more information, it’s nice to have some alone time too.

A typical day in school at the Bar M and me doing my work at 10am.

Sometimes the clash of schedules don’t even allow you to meet any close friends at any point in time. Not like you need to meet them, but apparently living in campus, we see almost everybody every second except on Fridays and the weekends where most of the Swiss find their ways back home, other towns/cantons/cities in Switzerland, whereas us the foreigners either do a day trip or stay in campus, often pondering upon the same old questions, namely “What shall we do?”, “What shall we eat for lunch?”, “What shall we eat for dinner?”, “Shall we go to Vert Bois (restaurant behind school) for meals?”, “Shall we do takeaway or dine there?”, “Shall we go downtown Lausanne to do grocery shopping?”, “Shall we cook for dinner?” and you get the drift there…

Nowadays, friends from the preparatory year are doing practicals, which mean expecting to see them at the Bars, Takeaway counters/kitchens, La Ferme and Berceau des Sens serving or whipping up good food! You hear about how sharp the knives are and how they end up having cuts on their fingers. Some tell you about how tiring it is, some enjoyed it so much. Reminds me of the days in Top Table and Sugarloaf and kitchen back in Temasek Polytechnic…

I find myself eating at weird timings nowadays. Let’s say for a day of lessons 8am-6pm, I eat my breakfast at 7.30am, find my stomach creating a din and myself and my classmate looking at each other (me being embarrassed and her being amused) at 10am already. If possible, a croissant and earl grey tea to curb that hunger. Soon it’s 12nn, I seriously can’t wait for lunch at the food court, especially time for you to just dine at the long table with groupmates or close friends from other years/classes. Then 4pm, I know I’m hungry again, but I don’t do anything about it until 6, time to dig in for dinner of which most of the time, I prefer takeaways like a burger with fries or if we’re lucky, asian cuisine by our favourite hong kong chef! I really like my studio, it’s conducive (if no one plays tennis at the courts too excitedly with all the screams) and while studying, I might see a fox dart across the school campus, no I’m serious, I’ve seen it once but oh I’m beginning to find it getting rather cold too, I like to snuggle under my comforter and I heard that all we want to do during winter is to hibernate and sleep, oh dear!

We have sushis takeaways made by the Chile Chef in our school who knows Japanese cuisine well.

Just this Saturday that whizzed past, I chanced upon a lesson on ‘set your priorities right’ which I’m glad I did well. Like how we’d always look forward to going out for day trips or the least to downtown Lausanne on Saturdays, it was Evolene that we were going on Sat. But on Friday, a need to have a project group meeting popped up and I was glad, the first thought that came into my mind was “Yeah sure, saturday it shall be, since I kind of prefer Sunday to be my study-on-my-own day!” and next that intruded my mind was “Oh yeah, Evolene, aww the snow and the fun that I’m going to miss!”. I didn’t even mention that I was ‘supposed’ to go to Evolene because the fact is ‘I’m not supposed to go to Evolene’ as I could have my choice of going or not going anyway. Though I missed out on the fun and the snow that they were all raving about, doing quite a bit on our 2 weeks due project made me feel good on a Saturday as well. At least my dear Js were kind enough to ask me out for chinese dinner though it wasn’t all that good but a cup of caramel frappucino with only a little whipped cream summed up the day well too!

I can’t quite decide on my desktop wallpaper nowadays and the entire desktop is filled with so many documents I’ve never quite seen myself like this. I’m spending quite a bit of money over here printing the presentations and readings we’re supposed to do (but at least they are double-sided) because I still can’t quite get used to doing the readings by just staring at the laptop screen and moving the cursor up down, I still like the whole idea of writing notes at the side margin of my readings.

But anyway this is my wallpaper at the moment: Vintage Collection of Belgian Bicycle Plates

Before that, it was GOD x Starbucks “Bing Sutt” Concept Cafe Corner which was too much for me. It reminds me too much of Hong Kong and Asia that it hurts so I switched it to the above.

Oh yes, I made a new friend this week.. well not exactly, 1 sided friend apparently. I met a deer while running the forest. I was silly enough to try approaching it (knowing that it’s a deer), wanting to snap a photo of it but it definitely dashed upon the sight of me. I really like running in the forest, did I already mention that it forces me to run x amount of kilometres because I need to get out of the forest? Oh I think I did… but it’s getting cold nowadays, like how the temperature dropped to 8-12 deg just this weekend that passed. Surprisingly, I ran slightly better and more consistently in this weather, cold on the outside but warm on the inside.

Out of curiosity, I went back to Temasek Polytechnic’s website and then was surprised to see myself featured in this issue of the BizNews, for the Overseas Internship and Spotlight Singapore in Cape Town experiences I’ve undergone just months ago!

Back to my readings again! Hopefully this time round, am able to go up to Zurich with J, heard that winter’s coming soon and we need to get our coats!!!

Most importantly: I finally caught up with lessons, beginning to be reminded of the concepts of accounting, financial analysis, marketing (or at least I thought so)! Joy!

And I’m part of Like Eat committee, not the main committee unfortunately because I’m already in BSC2 and the whole point was to allow the preparatory year and year 1 students to learn the tricks and skills from the current BSC2 main committee… so here I’ll just look forward to the events organised. It is a committee which gathers people who are passionate about culinary experience. As its mission clearly states “To bring back the knowledge of Art de la Table, gastronomy and lifestyle at EHL” so I thought it’d be interesting.

Can’t quite seem to get out of the Ambassadors circle, so once again, received training from senior ambassadors and will be soon taking up the role as ‘campus tour guide’ in time to come!

I have to start thinking about where I want to do my internship as well.. I have some destinations in mind, but perhaps the upcoming job fair in school could give me even more information and ideas. Having to take up the managerial internship position and only speaking un peu francais is the reason why I’m not quite certain about doing it in Switzerland yet though it’d be great. We’ll see, I’m still thinking…

Anyway, just some random mix of English, Chinese, Korean songs I’m listening to nowadays in my room: