I have lived my whole life in a former USSR republic and I have never even given a second thought about the beautiful bus stops that we had. While traveling in the Belarus and Ukraine as well, I faintly remember seeing bus stops that were not just a piece of concrete covering travelers from the rain, but had sculptures and mosaic in them. Beautiful, beautiful bus stops. This man though, went out of his way to take photos of the most interesting stops around the former USSR. All I can say is that you guys should take a look at the video and if you can visit Russia, there is a lot of beautiful architecture there.

(Photo from the window of my plane, you can see Mt. Fuji)
After a whole 4 years in the planing, 2 months worth of packing and preparation, and a 16 hour flight with 2 stopovers, I have finally reached Kagoshima! Here I will be studying as an exchange student for the next 10-11 months. A big big thanks to all my sempais who helped me out to prepare for this and a thank you in advance to the new sempais I have met here today, who will be helping me from now on.
I have settled into my dorm and just finished unpacking all my luggage. Now for some well deserved sleep. Tomorrow will be a long day of shopping and meeting with teachers.

Capcom makes a lot of good games like Street Fighter and Super Street Fighter and Ultra Street Fighter, and …. well you get the gist. Nah, of course they have more good games and one of them is this puzzle detective game called Ghost Trick. It was recommended to me by my puzzle loving girlfriend (at the time) Amy a while back and now I have finally finished it! It was a very interesting story with a nice plot twist at the end. I wouldn’t call it the best puzzle game, but it is definitely worth the time. I will write up a mini review without spoilers, because what fun is it playing a puzzle game when the story has been spoiled for you.

Visa and plane tickets have been acquired, packing has been done, all my boxes have been moved to my Imouto’s and Lexi’s place, and now all the farewell lunches, dinners, and parties are now done. I have 1 day left in Sydney and then I am off to glorious Japan. Thank you to all my friends who took the time from their busy lives to meet me one last time this year, before I head off. Thank you for giving such a wonderful experience in so many different restaurants. Thank you to the anime club, drawing circle and JASS people (especially Ritchi) for organizing a farewell party last week before the Kyary concert. Thank you to all my friends from urbanest, all my Russian friends and my friends from back home for this last week.
Also 2 of my closest friends had their birthdays this week. Ruben and Tac.

There are a lot of instant messaging apps around like: WhatsApp, Line, WeeChat, Viber, Skype, FB Messenger, etc. But this app caught my attention because of the promise they make. The promise of privacy. Telegram promises to provide the user with a encrypted messaging service that helps you protect your private information not only from the american government, but also from your friends. It has an option, similar to what Snapchat offers with its photos, a setting that will self destruct the message after a certain period of time, such as 5 seconds.

Kyaaaaaaaryyyyyyyyy, one of the most ‘unusual‘ J-Pop idols visited Sydney last weekend, and how better to celebrate your 6 month anniversary with your girlfriend, then by visiting this concert! It is the first time that Kyari visited Australia, and it seems that she rather likes it here! This one and a half hour concert featured all of her most popular songs, as well as some new and less famous ones. It was a very nice way to spend one of my last days in Sydney for 2014; together with my friends like Seb, Ruben, Clara, etc. I managed to take a lot of photos with Amy’s iPhone and she posted them all up: here.
Kyari is continuing her world tour now, and hopefully she will come to Sydney again next year! Better quality photos of the concert: here.

My new years resolution was to be more organised and get more control over my money. And the one thing that helped me achieve this goal was the App – Numbers.
Even though I masterly avoided using any Microsoft software throughout university so far, ever since I started working, I was required to use Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Mainly when dealing with numbers and calculations, I was told to use Excel, even though I have never used it in my life (never had the need so to say). Well That help me get an understanding of how spreadsheets work, but to be honest, it wasn’t a very pleasant experience. Of course many people will argue that the functionality of Excel is all that matters, but alas no, if the design is bad, then I don’t feel I want to use the application any more then I have to.

(above image is from our previous hotel: Borei Angkor)
Now we have reached our final destination – Sokha Beach hotel in Sihanoukville. Here we will be spending 6 days just relaxing on the beach and eating fresh fruit. But I will be posting up more photos from the hotel and stuff later on (by the end of the trip).
For now, have some from our previous hotel:

You know Venice right? A city which lives on water. The photo above is not from Venice, far from it, it is from a small city (housing 10,000 people) on the Tonle Sap Lake in Cmabodia. People have lived on this lake for generations and will continue doing so, but one thing that separates this town from any other town is that during summer all you can see are poles, thousands and thousands of poles (and I do not mean people from Poland). Then, during rainy season, the water goes up 9 meters and floods everything in sight. Thats why these people had to build houses on such huge pikes as a foundation for their homes. Its an amazing sight, which you wont be able to see anywhere in the world.
After that we had a very nice spa massage and cocktails while looking at the sunset. This is the life.
Photos:

Yesterday, on the 3rd day we took a 1 hour flight from Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam to Siem Reap in the neighboring country of Cambodia. Once we arrived in Siem Reap and got to our hotel, we were in for a little surprise. Apparently my dad’s agent booked us rooms in the so called Privilege Floor of the hotel Borei Angkor. What this means is that we get our own reception on the floor, free minibar refills, a bathtub in our bathroom, complimentary champagne in our bedroom and free access to the Damnak Lounge where we can have free cocktails while watching the sunset. Well basically we are living in a 5 ☆ hotel with like extra service. Even my dad was like: “I did not pay this much!” All the photos are on my flickr~
Today, we went on a tour of the Angkor temples. These buildings were built in the 12th century and are still mostly standing in tact! Seeing them left us speechless. We were constantly asking our tour guide: “How did they build them so well in those ancient times?!” There were a lot of tourists all over the place, which is understandable as this is THE most famous place in all of Cambodia. But even so there was enough space for all of us, that just goes to show how grand these temples are! Also it was scorching out there, around 35° C so we had to drink a lot of water and cover our heads. That didn’t help us from being drenched in sweat.
Photos here:
