My Apartment Unit

Ok. A continuation from yesterday's post. It is almost 2am here right now. Just finished washing some clothes and also chat with some colleagues over Skype. Made some really good friends over here already.

The journey from Frankfurt to Leipzig took less than 1 hour, somewhere like 45 minutes. From the sky I saw large green fields everywhere and was excited to see some windmills for the very first time in real life, with the exception to the small, non-functional decorative windmill in Melaka's clock tower area.

Two Q-Cells' HR rep were already waiting for us in Leipzig airport, Katja and Nils. Katya speaks a spanking good Indonesian Malay; better than any Chinese-educated Jinjang Joes, while Nils is an intern, and it was his second day on the job.

Meet Katja and Nils:

The journey from Leipzig's airport to our apartment took about half an hour, and I pass the airport everyday to work. I didn't know who I was going to be staying with until the point that they started to distribute the apartment keys to us in the bus. Luckily I am partnered with a nice guy from Cheras/Setapak (I'm not too sure now). His name is Hang. Daniel Hang. He's that guy with glasses standing on left most in the group photo of my first post. I have not taken a photo together with him yet somehow in my own collection. Maybe there's some in other's camera.

Our apartment unit is kinda like a studio apartment, with 1 room and a hall, kitchen area, batroom/toilet and also 1 small room which is large enough to hang clothes for cold drying and storing stuffs. Actually is a decent enough room for a maid I would say. The apartment unit is meant for 2 persons, as the living/dining room is also fitted with bed and cupboards. We decided on flipping coins on deciding who makes the call to choose his choice of room. I flipped the coin and got the chance to pick. I guess it is only natural for everyone to choose a proper room rather than staying in the living room. He was cool about it, as the living room also has a door fitted for privacy. Our room doors were never closed anyway.. The difference is that he has TV and sofa in his room.

View of my apartment block:

I stay on the second floor in the blue and white building on the left of the photo. Have not gotten a decent full view of my apartment unit yet. According to Nils, the building must have been standing since the Cold War era, looking from it's structure.

Ok now let me show you my room:

The square thingy beside the bed is the heater unit. There's a lot of Ikea stuffs in the apartment. And notice how big is the pillow? Big but soft. And there's also that small pillow I took out from Lufthansa. The pillow case mum bought for me from Aussino doesn't fit.

There's a drawer/writing table opposite my bed. The annoying tray of decorative dried flowers is now on the floor beside my luggage, and I use the table top to use my laptop and store some clothes inside the drawers.

My big cupboard with large mirrored-doors, and also another shelf on it's side. This is a very blurred photo.A nice little table beside my bed, with an Ikea lamp:

One thing caught our attention when we came in and inspected the apartment unit as instructed by HR people. My apartment-mate, Hang called out for me saying that his window was toppling down. We thought there were some screws not properly secured on the window panel and reported about this 'potential risk of windows toppling down our heads' to Katja. She immediately followed Hang and inspected it. She said it is how German's windows are built, and we finally figured out that it is meant to be opened 2 ways. One way is to open it out wide sideways, and the other was to enable it to be slightly opened on the top section for ventilation. Hehehe.. Both of us were really embarrassed for our 'kayu-ness'. Have a look at what I was talking about. Notice the ventilation gap:

Now into our little kitchen. There's a small fridge, toaster, coffee maker (we don't know how to use it yet), cooker hood and complete set of frying pan, 2 sizes of small periuk (whatever you call it in English). Lots of plates, coffee mugs, glasses, fork, spoon, tea spoon. Everything complete. Tip top. Plates and all comes from Ikea. Very nice to use.

Alright. It is almost 2.45 am now. I think I have to sleep now. Planning to go to the morning market tomorrow at 9am. There's a morning market just opposite my block, every Tuesday and also Friday. Will update things that I see soon...

A 25-Hour Travel

I flew off from KLIA on 9/10/2008 at about 9.15pm, together with another 14 persons reporting to Q-Cells AG in Thalheim. The destination was Leipzig, Germany. The flight was routed with 2 transits in between KLIA and Leipzig. I flew into Leipzig through Lufthansa.

We stopped at the first transit point; Bangkok, and it took them 2 hours in between refueling and picking up more passengers, mainly Europeans. They did not allow us to go down from the airplane. All of us who travelled from KLIA had to go through excruciating heat as they shut off the air conditioning in the cabin. As more and more people were in the plane, I felt sweat breaking out and I had to take off my Adidas sweater I was wearing. Mat-Salleh walked in looking tanned and some carrying with them weird huge rattan souveniors from Thailand. Some walked in alone, and I thought to myself, "hmmm.. he must be a pedophile...." Hehehe

After Bangkok, our flight headed for Frankfurt, whereby the journey took God-knows how many hours. 17 hours I guess. During the flight, I felt at certain time an extreme degree of uneasiness, discomfort, stiffening muscles and joints. Watched a pre-recorded Animal Planet show on the little TV in between the cabin lanes, and listened to 1 channel that played old-school 80s English pop songs which kept repeating after the sequence ended. The rest of the song channels played some weird, gypsy sounding German songs, German opera singers, and some really weird German classics (I guess)..

Throughout the journey, it appeared dark in the sky. I couldn't help it but to walk around a little in the plane a few times, peeking out off the window panes on seats meant for the air stewardess (I had to sit in the middle row), whenever she was not around. The view of the Earth at night was beautiful from the sky. I saw small city lights, orangy-yellow in colour and see how towns and streets were carefully planned.

I had to head myself to the loo just 20 minutes before we touched down in Frankfurt. Had some funky feelings in my tummy after 3 rounds of weird German servings in the plane. Well, shitting in mid-air was not that bad as I thought it would be. Just that the damn flush was simply too loud. No water in the flushes that I can see. I guess they must have used some super-strong vacuuming system to suck off all those nuggets and slurpees left behind.

We were stuck in Frankfurt for almost 4 hours waiting for the next plane to Leipzig. We arrived at about 6.40am German time (almost 1pm in Malaysia). With nothing much to do, most of us kept ourselves occupied by snapping some photos and also trying to figure out foreign sign boards around the airport.

Just half of us in the frame:

Some interesting views that I saw:

In Germany, recycling is highly appreciated and practiced. You can see recycling bins everywhere you go, at every corner of the street.

Subhi and me posing with a super sporty looking KIA car in Frankfurt airport.

There's quite a number of bicycles in the airport too. Bicycles are mostly used by airport personnel. I don't know who this old man is, but it was really something different to me to see people cycling in airports.

A part of the airport building being demolished for some reasons unknown to us...

A really interesting cloud formation. Wish I could edit this photo, but I can't for now due to some restrictions of software installations in my laptop.

And finally....

Me, taking a self-shot while waiting for the plane to Leipzig. This was taken next to our check in counter of Lufthansa, in Frankfurt.