Halfway

Yesterday, Karen and I randomly decided that we should just get on the tram, get a DayRider ticket, and go to Halfway. We’ve never been that far on the tram. A total of 22 tram stops from University to Halfway and 40 minutes from start till end. We didn’t expect it to be THAT FAR away.

On the ride to Halfway, we actually left the city and into rolling meadows and farmlands. It’s interesting to see the tram passing through the countryside. A city transport service going into the countryside, how often do you get that?! No such thing in Malaysia.

Got there, we were instantly blown off our feets as we had no idea where to go. We didn’t do any research of the place either. So we just randomly walked down a road, found out that it leads to somewhere we didn’t really wanted to go and turned back. Walked pass through some pretty houses (which I forgot to take pictures of) and about 20 minutes later, we finally found a beautiful large green grass park.

Packed with meringue, oat biscuits, hibiscus tea in a flask and notebooks, both of us had a small picnic there right in the middle of the park. Looking at people walking their dogs, big and small and writing and drawing and discussing our “future plans”.

I think people in Halfway rarely see East Asians hence they were all staring at us as if we were aliens. Well I don’t blame them, I don’t think many East Asian students will just randomly hop on the tram to Halfway. Most East Asians and even Africans all reside in the city centre. Africans and Asians in the countryside is literally non-existent.

Had a good 1.5 hours picnicking there and it was time to leave. Had a great time though! The experience of going somewhere totally unfamiliar and finding a great place for a picnic under the blue sky is totally worth it.

Only took a few pictures there cause we had such a good time I forgotten all about the camera in the bag.

180 degree panorama of the park (Click!)

Daisies stained by Karen’s purple magic pen

Karen devising her future plans

…and me and my pretty flask.

Have a nice day!

Heeley!

The holidays so far have been a blast! Today, went out for a very very long walk with the other housemate, Karen to Heeley in the suburbs of Sheffield. Had a nice long walk there. Took about 30 minutes from home to reach Heeley. From there is fun starts.

Heeley City Farm, a farm with cows, horses, goats, ducks, swans, geese, peacocks, cats, rabbits, ferrets, guinea pigs, flowers, vegetables, plants and PIGS! Yes, you read it right!  PIGS!

Took over 100 pictures and about 80% comprised of flowers. Here are just a few of the pics I took. You can check out more over at my Flickr page.

A panoramic view (Click!) of Sheffield city centre from the top of Bramall Lane. Took us quite a while to reach the top of the hill. Extremely exhausting!

A HDR attempt of Bramall Lane, you can see the slope and that’s only about a quarter of the road that we hiked up.

And various pictures of flowers.

Lady bug vs Spider! Who will win?

All in all, had a blast at Heeley. Very exhausting though but extremely enjoyable and fun! Had great fun. You can read up on Karen’s opinion of the trip on her blog.

And lastly, not forgetting the PIGS!

Various Updates

Yay! The holiday season has definitely begining to set in and to start the holiday season, we (housemates and me) went to Alton Towers, UK’s most popular theme park! Woohoo! I have to apologize for the lack of pictures because we decided against bringing any bags because we are obviously not going to ride roller coasters with our bags and we are not leaving them with anyone else. There’re a few pictures of Alton Towers there on the Wiki page. So go check it out.

In 7 hours, we managed to ride 7 rides. Not bad I would say. The 7 rides (in chronological order) are:-

1. Oblivion
2. Hex
3. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
4. Corkscrew
5. The Duel
6. Air
7. Nemesis

This excludes the ride on the Skyride (cable car), Ug Swinger, a walk through the Hanuted Hollows and Gloomy Wood, a failed attempt to ride 3 rides: Enterprise, Spinball Whizzer and Rita - Queen of Speed.

7 rides in 7 hours. It’s not bad. Of course looking back, out of the 7 hours, we spent 90% of the time waiting for rides. Waiting about an hour for each ride and only to experience 20-40 seconds of adrenaline. Things we humans do… Tsk tsk.

Oh well, all in all, I would say it was a blast and the top 3 rides according to me is:-

1. Oblivion
2. Nemesis
3. Air

Oblivion because it’s the world’s first vertical drop roller coaster (something like Solero Shot in Genting but shorter and faster). Nemesis because it’s the world’s most intense (according to the park management) and Europe’s first inverted roller coaster and it’s exhilarating. Air because it’s the world’s first B&M flying roller coaster (not scary but totally fun, 10X better than Genting’s flying roller coaster).

Sadly, I really wanted to ride on Rita but the line was longer than China’s longest dragon ever told in history and the waiting time was in excess of 60 minutes. *die* Rita starts off by accelerating from 0 to 100km/h in about 2.5 seconds. That would probably be the best part but it still looks very appealing. Oh well, hopefully there’s a next time.

Enough of Alton Towers! In othe news, friends from Birmingham are coming over today! Finally! After so many months of convincing them, they’re finally coming over. 3 of them. Kimberly and la boyfriend; and Wai Khang a.k.a. Wilken.

It’s going to be a blast. Lots of activities in store for them already. Busy busy busy!

Attached below are various POV (point of view) videos of several rides in Alton Towers.

Rita - Queen of Speed

Oblivion

Nemesis

Air

Corkscrew

Yay

MEEEEEEEERRRRDDDEEEKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That’s the end of year 3 for me! Hello, summer holidays!

Absent

Will be gone from the blogosphere for the next 11 days until the 13th of June due to exam preparations.

Until then, enjoy this Jonas Brothers’ cultural shock video.