96 more days..
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
While Singapore's suffering from the Haze.. look what shrouded Leeds this morning...
THE FOG!
Just finished my lunch of super-salty noodles. Tried to stew chicken and potato but think added too much soya sauce haha. But now am so full I can vomit a cow. The weather is sooo cold and the fog's making it worse. Glad the heating is up.. means ah.. can go and sleeeeeeep soon haha.
96 days more.. to going back to Singapore.. The countdown timer on my desktop finally went past the 100th day mark... much as I wanted to blog that day.. I.. lazy. Haha. Was busy these few days though.. doing my tutorials (when I realised no one in the class did!) and reading my Soci readings (and I realised half the class didn't read!) and soon I should be doing this online assignment which is due on Friday...
So the past 2 weeks just zoomed past like that.. and the most exciting things that happened were probably planning all the weekend trips and our December Europe tour, which we would probably be visiting Berlin, Interlaken, Venice, Pisa, Roma, Chamonix and Paris. And of course the next few weekends will be spent in Cambridge (punting with Yingting!), Bath (27th meetup!), Bristol (Bumming with Daniel!), Dublin (with Elibirdbird and Teckie), Scotland (with Fangxi and Summer) and Nottingham Games at well, Nottingham. Oh Nottingham games is this sports events where ALL Singaporean and Malaysian students from all over UK will meet up in Nottingham for sports! How cool is that? Haha.
York - 7th October
It is said that of all the UK cities, only York's and Bath's architecture were not destroyed during the WWII and hence retained a lot of its Roman Architecture. Yeah quite true. It's really different from Oxford and Leeds and Bradford.. Buildings are much older.. and more rustic. As we went with MASSOC (Malaysian and Singapore Society), it was a massive group of people which was really hard for the organizers to coordinate.
So the tour started off with the Railway Museum.. Just a lot of trains lor. Nothing particularly interesting. Saw some that looked like Daily Express. Teckie was particularly excited though. Yea coz some looked like KR's KRonos. I forgot to bring my SD card in my camera.. so just snapped around with Yuanjing's camera instead.
And after that we walked along the York Wall to the York Minister.. one of the must-sees of York. I could only appreciate the architecture to a certain extent.. coz it was after all, a church. So how? Just take photos lor. Haha.
There was a 1 hour lunch break and we walked around before settling down at this shop that sells cheap crepe roll thing. Not that filling.. but they had free-flow drinks.. something very well appreciated when the weather was chillin cold outside. Oh and they had a buy 4 get 1 free promotion.. so the 5 of us just saved 50p each on our lunch. Just nice =) The shops along the streets of York looked somewhat like those in Sweden though. And yes, EXPENSIVE.
After lunch we split up into small groups and visited where we wanted to. So while Teckie, Elibirdbird and Yuanjing went to the Viking Museum, Manhon and I took the boat ride down York River. Thought could take the drive-yourself boat.. but we ended up on the guided tour boat instead. After which we walked around.. and out of sheer tyconess we managed to get into the Castle Museum for free! Nothing much though. Luckily didn't pay!
And if you ask me the most interesting thing that happened that day was when we came back to Leeds.. for there was this cool high-tech game machine that projected a huge screen on the floor.. to play 4-on-4 virtual soccer! Yeah once you stand in the area the motion sensor could sense you and you just have to kick the virtual 'balls' into the other 3 goals while defending yourself. Haiyah. Got video but lazy to upload. Go figure out from the photos yourself! Haha.
Blackpool - 8th October
Not wanting to spend a Sunday slacking in Leeds, Yuanjing and I decided to head down to nearby BlackPool to check it out. Why Blackpool? Simply coz it was in my 'Rough Guide to England' that it's a Must-Go. So we go lor!
Turns out that it was just like a Genting Resort by the black Irish Sea. Yea the Irish Sea was surprisingly Black. Not nice and blue under the sun but dark and ugly. It was high tide when we arrived the the waves were lashing at the shore. Very nice.
So of course the main highlight was the Blackpool tower.. which was a blatent copycat of the Eiffel Tower.. shorter of course. It was even explicitly stated that the Blackpool Tower was inspired by the Eiffel. Bleah. No originality. But since we were up there.. just climb up lor. Got lift.
We got our Bird's Eye View of the city.. which was quite ugly coz it just comprised of many short buildings of the same colour. Only somewhat far away can some greenery be seen. The view of the sea and the shore was much nicer. And since it was sunny we stayed there for a while to let the sea breeze chill us out for a while before going down.
At the lower levels of the Tower there are other 'attractions' like the Dinosaur Ride, Ballroom, Circus, food.. We took a walk around the city instead of staying in the Tower. There were many many other attractions around like the Theme Parks, Sea Life Museum, Wax Museum all of which needed exhorbitant entrance fees. So we just took photos outside the attractions haha.
Guess what? It was low tide already.. and what was lashing waves a few hours ago now reveled a nice flat shoreline peppered with families and their children and dogs running around playing. And donkeys. Yeah correct, donkeys. It's surprising how many children were sitting on the donkeys who were made to stroll along the length of the beach. But the view was so beautiful.. the clouds.. the sea.. the sun that I just took photo after photo after photo...
We took the 6pm coach back. Would have stayed for the night if we could.. coz the night view of the place was going to be spectacular.. with the tower in lights and the big ferris wheel lighted up also. But the last coach to leeds was at 6. So too bad lor.
At least we managed to find stamps and posted back postcards from the top of Blackpool tower =)
Birmingham - 14th & 15th October
In the weekend that passed Fangxi, Yuanjing and I decided to pop down to Birmingham to visit Summer and Lilian. While Yuanjing went for her mega dive exhibition.. the rest of us headed down to the Cadbury Factory (or Cadbury World for the kids) and had a WillyWonkaChocolaty lotsa fun! It was all for kids.. and the whole tour was about how chocolate was discovered.. how cadbury was founded.. their work ethics.. how the company grew.. blah blah blah.. the best part was being immersed in the smellll of chocolate the whole time. And of course.. the free chocolate bars.. free chocolate samples that were given out. Whoa by the end of the day ah.. we were sick of chocolate already.
Then we took a loooooooooooooooooooong walk to this park called the Cannon Hill Park. Through Birmingham University.. discovered the Sheares-Hall-Lion-minus-the-Book logo on a lamppost.. discovered a place that looked like Singapore! Check out the photos for details.
Yea the park was a nice place.. lotsa ducks. Didn't really take many photos though.
Summer's and Lilian's Japanese flatmates cooked for us! So nice of them. We helped out a bit though. Haha. And Fangxi and I were struggling trying to converse to them in Japanese.. but ah.. just cannot make it la haha.
The next day Summer and her Japanese flatmates went for a charity run.. so Lilian brought us to this shopping complex called Bullring. It was like Taka.. huge shopping centre with lotsa small shops inside. And the highlight of the day was.. eating Krispy Kreme Doughnuts!! It was expensive though.. a dozen doughnuts for £7.99! Oh but it was heavenly...
Blah blah blah walked around.. went St. Martin's Church.. Chinatown.. wanted to go to Art Gallery but was too far away...
Interestingly when we went into Bullring again we were surprised to find out that Krispy Kreme were giving out FREE doughnuts! Of course we went to grab ours but we stood there for very long looking perturbed.. figuring out why they were giving away so many free HOT doughnuts.. they weren't deformed.. they still tasted great.. and they weren't going to close shop anytime soon. Turns out that it's a promotion thing.. when the red logo on top of the shop lights up.. they will give out FREE DOUGHNUTS! Aiyah shouldn't have bought just now haha.
This pretty much concludes the Birmingham trip.. but for me the best part of the trip was reconfirming that Summer Alamak Pan is essentially.. a bimbo.
On visiting Hamburg and Frankfurt
Summer: Oh Frankfurt! I like to eat the hot dogs!
Me: Oh yah in Frankfurt all the buildings are tall and thin. Some of them are a but curved. But in Hamburg all the buildings are short and fat and round. Got 3 layers.. the middle layer is darker colour..
Summer: Really ah! I wanna see!
On cheonging in Singapore
Yuanjing: But in Singapore you all cheong until late at night meh? Take taxi go home very expensive leh.
Summer: Oh we don't take taxi. We share cab.
On where we are going to travel
Summer: (looking confused) Wait wait wait.. so confirm we are visiting Paris and France?
Got lots more.. but these are the classic ones that I remembered.
This post sure took long.. haha I typed half of it then cannot tahan went to sleep then I woke up.. went to the Japanese Society gathering for free sushi (haha so gian beng) but it wasn't much anyway. So now I'm back to complete the post.
Yeap and finally I see something about halls here that is similar to halls in Singapore
Haha IHG! Finally something other than cheonging.
And to end off.. a check on how the leaves of the tree outside my window are shedding away...
Nice ah.
Ok la.. end off already. Hope that I update soon.
Ciaoz.
Signed off at
11:54 pm
▐▓▓▓▓▓▓▒▒▒▒▒▒░░░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▓▓▓▓▓▓▌
th reader
