Expectedly Unexpected

Day 6 in Malaysia and I’m still severely jet lagged. Rolled around on the bed for 2 hours last night because I couldn’t sleep at all. My 1 week quarantine is almost over, but technically I didn’t quarantine myself at home. I just quarantined myself from my friends.

Malaysian are overly paranoids about this swine flu thing. All of them think that the minute the get it, they’ll definitely DIE! I blame this on the media for aggregating their swine flu stories. Either that or Malaysians don’t know how to read the papers. It’s CLEARLY STATED that those who died with swine flu had SERIOUS UNDERLYING HEALTH PROBLEMS. Unless Malaysians English standards has deteriorated beyond belief, serious underlying health problems is easily understandable.

On a heavier note, it’s the haze season once again. The dry season always brings in the haze from neighbouring Indonesia. To make things worse, it’s getting from bad to worse every year! The WHO should charge the Indonesian government for letting their citizens burn their forests down without any control whatsoever! This is giving us Malaysians lots of respiratory illnesses that is completely unnecessary.

To end things on a lighter note, more pics from my Eurotrip!

Chateau Versailles Royal Courtyard

Tour Eiffel

Went down to London the other day to renew my Malaysian passport as it’s almost due to expire pretty soon. Took a 7.40am train down to London which meant that I had to get up at 6am! Not woke up at this time of day since I left high school 4 years ago! Oh well, 2.5 hours down to London St. Pancras and straight to the High Commission through the tube. I shall not indulge myself with the application process. Nothing to brag about.

Me being down in London, although I am a city boy, I still got a culture shock! There’s just too many people in London. Walking along Oxford Steet and Regent Street was a nightmare! I had to pay so much attention in avoiding colliding into a stranger that I couldn’t really look around for a place to have lunch!

Oh, I met up with Miss Sharon Khoo! Which I’ve not seen in 2 years! Did lots of catching up and eating of course. Introduced me to Ben’s Cookies in Covent Garden Market which is awesomest cookies on the face of the planet ever! Awesome! Before we even knew it, it’s already time to catch my train back to Sheffield. Another 2.5 hours back to Sheffield, a nice shower and straight to bed. 5 hours of solid brisk walking around (not to mention the stress of avoiding people on the road too) totally sucked all the life out of me. Slept for 10.5 hours until the next day.

Good times. =)

Trafalgar Square on a hot summer's day. Look at the amount of people everywhere!

With all this swine flu/A(H1N1) business going around lately, I am now gearing up my precaution level. Especially next week, when I’m going down to London. Extra precaution has to be taken and one of them is this…

Tamiflu doesn't work anymore, so kill it before it enters!

The end of June is approaching rapidly and the end of month spells the end og my housing contract with West One. Will be handing my keys in on Tuesday 12pm but I have a cunning plan under my sleeve. Due to me staying back for another month waiting for my graduation ceremony at the end of July, I’ll have to find a place to crash for that 1 month while waiting and doing absolutely nothing. Hence, I’ll be crashing back at my current room until the end of July when the friend, after next week my room shall be hers, will move in. So at least, no big hassle of moving all my stuff around everywhere like the past 3 years. It was absolute hell.

This is where I live but in a different block

Anyway, 70% of room cleaned and clutter almost entirely removed and thrown away. Now my drawers and wardrobe is almost empty and hollow. And next week, they shall be filled again with my stuff. A small hassle but better than moving to another place entirely.

On a lighter note, Mr Chew has gone to Scouserland i.e. Liverpool for those that don’t know.

A group lavender in St John's Garden, Liverpool

Liverpool’s now a much better city compared to a few years ago. Come to think of it, Sheffield is currently like the old Liverpool – old abandoned industrial buildings, grey coal dust covered walls of buildings. But Sheffield is currently going a giant overhaul of the city and every year new buildings sprout out bringing the city into to 21st century though we’re almost a decade late!

Albert Dock was a superb place to photo taking. Especially the views of the river mouth entering the sea and wide panoramic views of Liverpool bay area and Birkenhead.

Albert Dock

Lovely place.

Yup. That was the trip I made in the past 1 week. Extremely exhausting I would say. The Sheffield – Thirsk – Helmsley – Scarborough – Whitby – Middlesbrough – Sunderland – Coldstream – Edinburgh – Manchester – Sheffield (which shall be called Leg 1 from here henceforth) leg was by car. And of course the Sheffield – Malaysia leg is by air.

This post will be focusing on Leg 1. I would say around 98% of it. (Apologies for the slightly blur pics as I shrunk them to save time uploading the whole lot)

OK, so part one of Leg 1. Sheffield – Thirsk – Helmsley – Scarborough – Whitby – Middlesbrough

Thirsk and Helmsley are small historical market towns. About 3000-5000 residents. Very small towns, nothing much really but at least it’s still a different scene compared to the cities.

Thirsk had lovely tearooms and fish and chips shops. LOTS of them!

The stone cross in the middle of Helmsley’s carpark.

Click here for a panoramic view of Helmsley’s market square!

The main road at Helmsley was pretty narrow but the pedestrian walkway was jam packed with tourists.

Next stop was Scarborough. We had tea there. A coastal city. Loaded with fish and chip shops. But we’re just too full to eat anything so we opted for a light and refreshing cup of English tea instead.

We spent approximately 30-45 minutes in each town before proceeding to the next town. After Scarborough, we stopped by Whitby. Another coastal town. Whitby is a lagoon where lots of yachts dock. For a full panoramic picture of the lagoon, click here!

After Whitby, evening has almost come to an end and it’s time to find some shelter for the night. We stopped by Middlesbrough to spend the night. There wasn’t anything interesting in Middlesbrough, it is said that the city is the dung of England. All the dirty industries are located there. Oh well, let’s fast forward to the next day.

Day 2, part two of Leg 1. Middlesbrough – Sunderland – Coldstream – Edinburgh.

First stop Sunderland. Another coastal city. We stopped there for some brunch and to restock our food supply for the trip ahead to Edinburgh.

We visited Sunderland’s Museum & Winter Gardens.

After Sunderland was the border town of Coldstream between England and Scotland. It’s on the Scottish side of the border.

We had high tea in Deakins Tearoom. Forgotten to take pics of the food because we were too hungry to wait for pictures to be taken.

After Coldstream, we’re off to Edinburgh. Starting from here onwards, I’m going to dump a whole load of pictures so I’ll just be describing the pics as I am just too lazy to tell you everything I did in Edinburgh.

The Royal Mile (Edinburgh’s historical stretch of road)

A medieval friend that we’ve met on the Royal Mile

One of many churches along the Royal Mile

Just another random road in Edinburgh

Ruins of St Anthony’s Chapel on the hills of Holyrood Park

The view of Edinburgh from the ruins of St Anthony’s Chapel. Click image for larger view.

Yours truly on Holyrood Park

Some swans at the pond in Holyrood Park, there were ducks too but they’re boring. Swans rock!

The National Gallery along Princes Street, I think that’s Queen Victoria sitting on top there.

Queen Victoria marks the end of Leg 1. Leg 2 of the trip, Edinburgh – Manchester – Sheffield wasn’t really eventful as we were rushing back to Sheffield to attend the convocation ceremony the following day and the trip from Edinburgh to Sheffield is about 5-6 hours.

Leg 3 was THE MOST uneventful leg of all 3. The pure boredomness of a 17 hour flight from Manchester to Dubai and then to Kuala Lumpur. Not to mention a 3 hour transit in Dubai. I stayed awake throughout the whole flight except for a short 30-45 minute nap on each flight which brings to a total number of hours awake to 36 hours.

Exhausted by the end of the flight and fainted on the bed for 13 hours.

Oh well, that isn’t news anymore. The news is that I’m back in Malaysia!!! Woohoo!! Food food and more food, here I come!

From now, I have 20 hours left here in the UK and 37 hours more to arrive in Malaysia. Been extremely busy the past few weeks and especially the past few days. In the previous post, I mentioned that I was going on a road trip to Edinburgh. It turned out fantastic and I enjoyed it immensely.

No time to blog about it yet but will once I arrive back in Malaysia and sleep off my jet lag. Lots of pictures to post too! *here is where you pretend to be very excited*

Until then, it’s time for me to pack and double and triple check that I’ve brought everything and not forgotten anything important.

Malaysia here I come!!!

Busy busy schedule ahead!

Went to Manchester yesterday together with Karen to pick up her parents at the airport. Had a good dinner and today Karen finally got her black belt for Aikido! Woohoo! Congrats to Karen.

Today, we i.e. Karen, her parents, me and Ei Leen made an impromtu visit to Chatsworth. Since Karen’s dad decided to rent a car, we had more freedom to drive to wherever we want to. Chatsworth was about 40 minutes away from Sheffield and it’s the estate of the Duke of Devonshire. HUGE mansion and even HUGER garden. 102 acres of it! Go do your own calculation.

A panorama of the mansion and the surrounding garden area of Chatsworth. Click!

Beauuutiful!

And here are a few other random pictures.

Some of the paintings found on the ceiling and walls of the mansion

Pretty stairwell architecture.

The dining room.

I’m off to Middlesbrough and Edinburgh with Karen and her parents tomorrow and wil be back on Wednesday. Will be an exciting drive up north and I’m going to be their GPS system with the map.

I also went over to Glasgow a visit a friend, E Ling about 2 weeks ago. Splendid city. Very beutiful architecture and lots of people and shopping areas.

Here’s two pictures of Glasgow. Sadly, I didn’t really take many pictures og Glasgow. Totally forgotten about my camera in the bag because I had such a great time!

Glasgow City Hall at the rear and the war memorial in the front.

One of Glasgow’s many museums.

For more pictures, you can visit my Flickr account from time to time.

Until then, I’ll be back on Wednesday with more pictures of Middlesbrough and Edinburgh. Stay connected!

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