Busy days ahead. Will be going for a personal development, leadership and management course. 4 days 3 nights long. :S

Starts tomorrow 8am and ends on Saturday evening. Hopefully I’ll have a good time there and that I won’t be roomies with another person that snores!

*braces for dear life*

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!

Just talked to the people at Virgin today. Lovely people I’d say. Compared to BT which sound like you’re talking a person that just wants to do his job and go home, the people at Virgin are friendly and extra helpful. They actually enthusiastic when talking to you which I feel is very important when talking to customers. I really enjoy talking to them every time I call them up for whatever reason whether it’s a problem or other reasons.

Oh well, just spoke to them earlier this morning and they’re currently having a back lock of orders coming in this month and I’ll only be able to receive my equipment at the end of the month! I’m already going home by then! T_T

Anyway, I hope they get over this back lock and send my equipment earlier the scheduled.

In other news, just got back from Glasgow on Sunday. Lovely city! Lots of Scotsmen! A little intimidated with them but I guess my friends there are used to it. No time to upload pictures as the library’s internet connection is totally useless. I’ll upload them to my Flickr account when I get back to Malaysia.

Until then, Malaysian peeps, watch out! I’m coming home in 19 days!!!

Just 2 days without the internet and I’m already feeling deprived. The internet is my sole source of entertainment. TV shows, Youtube, Wikipedia, Digg, BBC etc are all my daily reads. Without them, I feel incomplete, deprived and empty.

Just settled the BT line today and the worst part is that it’ll only be activated on the 17th of July!!! That’s a whole 2 weeks plus one day more! I can’t even bare 2 days without the internet, imagine 2 weeks!

*faints*

Oh well, I the Information Commons now is my second home. Thank goodness the university made this library operating 24/7. Without it, I’ll probably commit suicide out of sheer boredom.

So expect this blog to go stale for the next 2 weeks.

Oh, I’m off to Glasgow, Scotland on Friday for 3 days and will be back on Sunday. Interesting times ahead. At least there’s something to put my mind aside from this internetlessness.

Until then, ciao!

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!

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!

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

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

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