Of Tough Luck, Nice people and the Place That's 'Stuck in Time'
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Went winter-clothing shopping on Saturday. Whoa for the first time in UK I see things that are considered cheap haha. It was a place called Castleford, 2 train stations away from the city centre.. and it's a nice outdoor cluster of shops.. mostly factory outlets or warehouse sales. And so check out how Singaporeans reacted to cheap stuff...
Haha.. and we had lunch at KFC. Interestingly the staff looked quite perturbed when I ordered 'whipped potato'. Until I realised that they don't have whipped potato.. just the gravy (which is considered a side dish.. quite bo hua hor?)
And here's what I bought..
Call it engrossed in shopping.. or just damn sway.. but here's what happens when you don't arrive at the train station early enough...
- Sway = I saw the 1527hrs train zoom off back to Leeds right before my very eyes.
- Heng = Some kind people at the train station told me I could take the bus back to Leeds at the bus station outside the shopping place.
- Sway = There was only 1 bus stop and I should be at another bus stop which I don't know where.
- Heng = I met an African kid who brought me all the way back to Leeds. Changed 3 buses.
- Sway = I missed my National Express Coach to Cambridge, which left at 1645hrs. Oh well, actually it was the coach to Milton Keynes where I had to change another coach to Cambridge at 2105hrs.
- Heng = There was another coach to Milton Keynes at 1800hrs. It would arrive Milton Keynes at 2050hrs, just in time to catch the next coach.
- Sway = The stupid bus driver (out of chaokeng or kindness or wad) decided to take a half an hour hot-food break along the way. I hence reached Milton Keynes at 2110. Yeap. I missed the coach number X5 to Cambridge.
- Heng = According to the notice, X5 operates every half an hour. There's another coach at 2135 hours.
- Sway = I boarded the coach only to know that it's going to Bedford instead of Cambridge. The last bus to Cambridge was 2105. So screwed up right? Oh well, I just decided I should just inch my way as close to Cambridge as possible. Yingting said that a cab there would cost £70+!!
- Heng = I managed to get a cab that charged me only £32!! Whoa immediately jump in and take! The cab driver was quite nice.. but when he knew that I had only been UK for a month I could almost hear the wa-lao-I-should-have-qiao1-this-noob-for-the-cab-fare in his tone haha.
- Sway = Yingting lived in the bushes la! Her place so hard to find! I felt so paiseh for the cab driver who had to drive me all the way to another city which he's not familiar with.. and of course.. charging me so little.
- Heng = We found her place at last.
- Sway = I only had a travellers' cheque with me. Yah I had lotsa travellers cheque which I decided I should use instead of cash. But obviously the cab driver can't accept travellers cheque.
- Heng = Yingting saved the day! Whoaaaa home sweeet hommmeeeeeee...... (not my home.. but it was the 1st time ever first arriving in Leeds that I had this feeling)
Check out photos of Cambridge!
Cambridge was awesome! Just so happened it was the annual Apple Fair and more so it was the 10th Anniversary! It was held at the Botanical Gardens and the whole experience was fantastic! I had never seen so many different types of apples in my life before! There were all the apple products as well.. apple cider.. some apple and spiced elderberry drink.. apple toffee (like 糖葫芦 like that.. but instead of dates it's apple) and.. cheeze. Ha not apple cheeze but just cheeze.. just that I swakoo never see cheeze in it's original form before.
And there was apple tasting. It was A WHOLE ROW OF APPLES! And every apple not only looked different, they tasted different! Like all my life I only thought there were 2 types of apples - the ang moh type like Royal Gala apples and the Asian type like Fuji apples. Real eye opener. At the end of the fruit-tasting row I actually felt full. Haha.
Though it was autumn.. we settled our lunch English style aka Picnic! With Yingting's friends from Cambridge medicine.. and they were a Fantastic bunch! All very sociable, friendly, great people to talk to and there was this Malaysian couple Peini and KunHiang that stayed with Mok and I all the way so they could do punting with us. (punting = this boat ride thing where you move the boat using this long stick that digs into the riverbed. Characteristic of Cambridge and Oxford) So nice of them!
But sadly I didn't get to punt. Bad weather. =(
So Yingting brought me around Cambridge to see all the colleges. Oh and the experience was exhiliarating!
Well you see, unlike stupid NUS or Leeds or most other universities in the world which goes by the modular system.. Oxbridge goes by the Collegiate system. Think Harry Potter now. So there are over 30 colleges in Cambridge, and each college is like a House in Hogwarts. The students have their lectures in the main university campus, but go back to their Colleges where they stay to have their tutorials. So they actually live and study at the same place! How cool is that! It's like I go for lectures in Engineering and go back to Sheares Hall where all the Chem Engineers will gather and have tutorials in Hall. A waste of resources for the University.. but the concept is just so cool. And as Yingting said, she feels so much for Cambridge and identifies herself with Claire College where she lived in. As for me? Haha NUS Sucks.
And the colleges were beautiful! There'd always be this big lawn where the buildings will surround.. somehting like a parade square of grass.. and the interesting thing is No One Is Supposed To Step On The Grass. Some of the colleges even have ducks wandering around and even COWS! And they all look so cosy and warm and so conducive for studying.. well probably amplified by the fact that the weather was drizzling and cold where I was standing looking at the majesty of the buildings. What's even more interesting is that each of the colleges have their own identity.. like some colleges are leftist, there's the richest and poorest college and there's even the gay college as well haha.
I was telling Yingting that I definitely will send my son or daughter to Cambridge. But that again, I have my brother. That's why when I called back home I told him to get himself into Cambridge or Oxford!!!
So that I can go again and do punting. Haha. No la. I will definitely go Oxford to punt one of these days. =)
Anyway the streets of Cambridge were very quaint. Yes, again, as Yingting described it was stuck in time. Not like Leeds or Birmingham or London where it's somewhat modernised, Cambridge is still very old-English. Nice, peaceful and happy place. I like!
Oh I'm so glad to have Yingting around. She seemed to be so experienced tour guiding me around haha.. must have practiced a lot in her 4+ years here already. And even better coz she's a student we could get into the colleges for FREE! Yes, some colleges charge admission fees for entering the college. So commercial.
So all in all, Cambridge was an unforgettable experience. I left feeling fully satisfied even though I didn't get to punt. The only regret I had? Was that I didn't study hard enough in JC to get into there myself. *sigh*
Just yesterday I decided to be adventurous and cook fried rice for dinner. Made a lot of rice in the afternoon and let it dry in the fridge.. figured out that I cooked too much rice so I invited the girls over for dinner.
Whoaaaaa it was VERYYY NICEE LAAAA!!! Haha either fried rice is damn easy to cook, fried rice is naturally nice, I miss fried rice too much, or I'm just a damn good fried-rice-cooker haha.
Ok.. I'm off to do my homework now. There's nothing else to do anyway.. And for the first times in my life I'm the only one who turns up for class with all my homework done. Felt so cheated the first few tutorials when I spent so much time reading the Soci readings, doing my Chem Eng tutorials, only to go to class hearing most of them say like "Oh I can't find the book in the library" or "I read but I didn't understand anything in the book". Bleah. The Chem Engineers even said they don't know how to start and asked to have another session to go through the tutorial. The whole class say they didn't know leh. Wa lao it's just smack in the notes la.. of course need some thinking with a bit of CEP and ESS concepts. And some more they are Postgraduate students lor. I'm just a freakking undergraduate still.
And I start to take back what I said about how good the lecturers are here. The Transfer Processes lecturer is an ah neh and he is damn ngeow la. He wastes time in lecture scolding people for stupid things like whispering and even looking out of the window. When the students genuinely don't know some maths equation, though simple, he thinks they are joking with him. Wa lao, what kind of lecturer is that? Ask question kena scolded. And last lesson he took lesson individually because he suspects that some of them were signing in for other students in the previous lesson when he passed around the attendence sheet. Like hello? You only have 1 hour of lesson don't waste time on these stupid brainless stuff.
And the Postgraduate module I'm taking (Numerical Simulation) lecturer is an ah tiong and he just rattles on all the irrelevant stuff and doesn't teach. Like just now during the make-up tutorial he just sat down there and asked us to go ask him questions personally. Whoa so I had to save the day by asking out loud "Is this the way to do the question? Blah blah blah..." out loud in class so everybody will know how to do. (like I'm the only one that did?) The last lecture was on MATLAB and he just brought us to the computer cluster and gave us a set of notes and told us to play with the computer programme ourself. And the notes sucked la. NUS gave so much better notes than his. I was totally bored coz I already know the basics of MATLAB after PDC and Process Lab last sem. He couldn't even explain why must put the ; at the end of evey command. Bleah I had to explain to the guy beside me after he left.
Means 4 things
- NUS is damn zai
- NUS teaches too much
- Only native lecturers are good. Just like Singaporean lecturers in NUS and ang moh lecturers in Leeds.
- If you are here just to do reasearch, DON'T TEACH!!
Ok. Going off le.
I don't think I know any Muslim friends reading this blog.. but Selamat Hari Raya Adilfiltri anyway.
Oh, Happy Deepavali =)
Signed off at
11:37 pm
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th reader
