12th day - Brig - Zermatt - Gornegrat

Today's itinerary will be brig-zermatt-gornegrat-zermatt-brig. had a good breakfast in our hotel before starting our journey. it'll be a rush against time because of the short daytime. upon coming out from the hotel, I'm surprised to see the mountains covered with snow..due to the fact we arrived late yesterday to brig, i didn't notice the mountains..but this morning, the mountains are beautiful! i love it!!
from brig, we took about 2 hours before reaching zermatt..along the journey, we only see mountains, rivers with crystal clear water and snow...lovely...zermatt is a town below gornegrat but with lots of place to shop..hahaha..i keep looking at the watches in most of the shops. an hour later, we took a train up to gornegrat..i started to feel dizzy and headache the higher we went up..and,it's a nasty experience to be up there and feel dizzy most of the time...
we had our lunch before taking a walk around the place...i even managed to took off all my clothes just to feel how cold it is...and boy!!!it's extremely cold without shirts on!!!!after a few hours in gornegrat, we took train back to zermatt and do some light shopping before travelling back to brig..it's a wonderful trip and i just love it very much...

in front of the train station in brig

me with the snow mountain and calsberg truck

a hut along the railway

passing by a small town while on the way to zermatt

view taken while the train was moving

crystal clear river

crystal clear water

zermatt

zermatt town

ice skating ring in zermatt

a wooden crafted eagle

zermatt is actually surrounded by mountains

nice house

zermatt's church

zermatt's town

horse! horse! horse! i see a horse!!!

going towards zermatt's housing area

half frozen river in zermatt

i just love rivers...feel soothing and relaxing whenever i see a clean river with water flowing
smoothly,unlike those in our country with lots of rubbish and teh tarik colour water

going up to gornegrat

views along the way up to gornegrat

airin and I playing snowballs

gornegrat train station

zermatt at 4pm

scholarships for further study

out of curiousity, i visited jpa website to check on scholarships for futher studies...well,first of all, i didn't get hlp for next year..therefore, have to find some other avenue as backup plan for next year if i didn't get hlp again...after went through all the informations, i think i need to do something about my level of knowledge and languages before i can think of applying for these scholarships outside hlp. i'm not saying i look down on myself, but it's just that i know myself better...i have good enough self confidence, but i just know my level of knowledge is not up to the level for me to compete with international candidates..language is a problem as well..after years of working in the service, i have lost command of my english language..damn it..the problem didn't lies with the service but more to personal reason. i take for granted we don't need much english in the service, therefore totally don't care to polish my command of the beautiful language..therefore, i will have less than one year to polish my english again before i can think of doing anything else...at times, we really need alot of supports and encouragement by our loved ones in order to motivate ourselves to go further..
for the last six years, i think i have accomplished several important things in my family and my own life, and now it's time for me to have a new target in life to push myself further..i fell that i have been stagnant for the last two years since i transferred to this division.. i learn new things of course, but the demands of the bosses and their restrictions doesn't allows me to do much changes in my working enviroment...so, i come to one solutions. i will give myself until june next year to improve my level of knowledge and polish up my english and then go for good competition to get a scholarship to do my master..only through knowledge will i be able to move forward...and, i don't want to look back at the past on my sickbed, thinking weather my life could be better if i have done certain other things...

11th day

today we will depart from paris and go to brig via geneva. feel sad because i have already fall in love with paris..told airin we will visit this city again in the future. we took a euro train from paris to geneva and from geneva to brig, a small town near to zermatt, the mountain where my bro and sis will take us for sightseeing and play with snow. today will be a travelling day across switzerland..

geneva

geneva

crystal clear lake water

tame swam...

and friend...

and friends...

our suite in hotel ambassado, brig

our living room

the 10th day

both airin and i woke up extremely early today. we will have half a day by ourselves around paris before joining my bro,sis and mom to montmartre. we decided we will visit lourve for afew hours before going around palais royal and tuileries before meeting up for lunch in angelina. by the time we reached lourve (and that's very early and extremely cold, we saw a long queue already formed in front of the entrance to lourve and getting longer and longer. due to my kiasu-ness, i went to queue without taking any pictures of the surrounding early in the morning. we queue for almost an hour before able to go into the museum.. frankly speaking, i think most of the tourists, especially from asia such as china and japan come here just to see monalisa.. and to be frank, i m in the same category as well...but, at the end, i think we definitely see more paintings and sculptures than just monalisa..i just love the paintings and the sculptures on the siling all over lourve...love it..and the painting that both of us love very much is the crowning of napolean as the king of france...too bad we only have two hours to spend in lourve...but, we don't intend to enter lourve again the next time we visit paris..both of us have no interest in paintings and sculptures.

the queue in the early morning

after coming out from lourve

lourve entrance

i think this is still lourve

introducing this monument without knowing what it is

lourve from a distance

tuileries

the golden horseman in the middle of the road

lunch in angelina

after lunch, we went to montmartre, a red district in paris where moulin rouge comes from...well, it's a nice and mysterious place i can say..every corner, place and building has it own story to be told to those who is curious..our tour guide for this tour was jacqueline.. funny and witty, she knows alot about this area and totally enlighten us with stories, informations and jokes..it makes me wonder weather it really takes a person to be funny, witty and happy to be a tour guide..hmm..anyway,here are some of the pictures that we took during our tour in montmartre...

in front of moulin rouge

the place they shoot amerie the movie

going uphill

a small garden in montmartre. in the middle of this garden is a statue of a priest holding his severed head

notice the breast part different in colour? it's because alot of passerby keep touching this part

a small bar where picasso used to hang out before he was famous

smart for two by canon slr 500d

a face on the wall

airin feeling sleepy

airin feeling high...

family photo at champs-elysees

couple photo

i like this car by toyota