Cambridge & Brighton

It has been a wonderful weekend.

I met up with Kit & Daniel in Cambridge on Wed. With a unique system of 31 colleges, it is essentially a university town. Dan stays at Girton college, the furthest college from the train station! He stays in a really beautiful place though. I love his room, the carpet is so soft, that sleeping on the floor is actually comfortable!

Kit & I enjoyed a punting tour along the Backs. - a Venetian like boat tour through the little canals of Cambridge. On a better day we would have tried punting ourselves, but with strong currents & bad weather, we decided that the tour was a better option. (We managed to bargain the price down from 12 pounds to 7 pounds anyway!) Our boatman was this French guy from London, who despite his 1.5 years experience, seemed to have quite a hard time maneuvering the punt with 8 tourists on board! It was quite a no frills kinda tour, which was nice. we caught a glimpse of the Bridge of Sighs, & the 'more famous' colleges; Trinity, King's & St John's.

Over a romantic Italian dinner at Strada's. Kim, Daniel Chen & I plotted a special birthday surprise with cake & customised candles for our dear host. Blessed 22nd birthday to you Daniel!
Brighton is a town that never fails to surprise you. It is no exaggeration that you can experience the world in one day here. Its streets & shops boast architecture of international design; a walk through the town takes you from the domes of Saudi Arabia, to the harbour of Santa Monica. Mediterranean-inspired houses of Italy & Spain line the coast, with an occasional monument & Anglican chapel in between. Finding food here is quite an adventure. A single street can boast food from India, Greece, Mexico, Japan, China, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand & Turkey! It's a perfect place for tourists to visit. In fact I suspect that very nature of this town is attributed to the immigration of tourists themselves! Whilst enjoying my roast lamb, I had a interesting chat with the cafe owner of "Breakfast at Tiffany's", a Kurd who migrated from the Middle East 30 years ago.

If you're looking for a lovely seaside town to spend your vacation, Brighton is the place to go. The wind at the coast is SO STRONG, it literally blows you away. The seagulls were having a fantastic time flying SIDEWAYS, without even flapping their wings. It was a sight to behold.

I enjoyed the sunshine in Brighton. It truly Brightons up your day :)
My only grouse (and main one!) of the UK is that the weather is so unpredictable, that you hardly ever get to enjoy a full hour of sunshine. It is possible to enjoy all 4 seasons in a day, from heavy snow to happy sun to gloomy rain all in a matter of hours. Many people here actually think of Singapore as a wonderful place. Having sun the whole year round sounds like heaven to them. Then again, this part of the world probably never experiences humidity. Kit officially concludes that Britain has the most ridiculous and worst weather on the planet. No wonder the Brits love to talk & complain about it all the time.

You'll Never Walk Alone

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark

At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark

Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown

Walk on walk on with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk alone

My Anfield Experience

In life, we all have a personal checklist of the "Top 10 things to do before you're gone". Tonight, I add another tick to my list. I have FINALLY graced Anfield, Home of the mighty Reds. Even better, I've got Kop End tickets :)

13:30 I step onto the Liverpool Lime St platform, it took me 4 hours to get here by train. I can't believe I'm finally here in Liverpool! Daniel (Lee), Daniel (Tan)'s friend from Cambridge, a fellow Liverpudlian is due to join me.

14:00 Famished, I walk in the first restaurant I could find...a chinese buffet for 5.85 pounds! Talk about a good first meal in Merseyside. I had 5 servings + 2 bowls of soup + ice cream :)

15:15 Daniel arrives & we take a 10 min walk to the Liverpool International Inn. Its a cosy, no frills, eight-in-a-room, quiet dormatory. Counter staff was really helpful, showing us the bus no.17 & bus stop to get to Anfield.

16:00 We find the Liverpool official shop in the city centre. A Liverpool jersey costs 40 pounds! 60 pounds if you wanna get one with Torres/Gerrard/Kuyt etc. Daniel gets his scarf for 7 pounds.

16:30 I make my way to the stadium 3.5 hours before kick off! A tad anxious that my ticket never made it through the post =s My worries were unfounded though, a few photos & a short wait later I got my tickets at the counter.

17:30 The gates open in an hour, we walk around checking out the nearby hotdog stands & Liverpool themed cafes. A few dudes try to sell their match tickets outside the gates, blatant black marketing in broad daylight!

18:30 The gates finally open. I find my seat in the legendary Kop End. Time stands still for a moment as I breathe in the surroundings. From my seat, I can almost touch the left corner flag.

19:15 Its getting really cold, 45 mins to go & the seat's not getting any warmer. I pop down to the waiting area to get a cuppa hot choc. The screens are showing the highlights from the 2001 Uefa Cup final that Pool beat Alaves 5-4

19:45 The lads start warming up. Reina is closest to me as Valero the goalkeeping coach takes a few shots at goal. Gerrard, Skrtel, Kuyt & Aquilani warm up in my area :)

20:00 The fans resound the anthem, You'll Never Walk Alone. The hairs stand at the back of your neck!

20:05 Kick off! Gerrard takes the first shot at goal after only 23 seconds!
(I shan't do a minute by minute commentary, for match highlights refer to http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/)

Reflections on the Kop:
Simply surreal, while the rest of the stadium sits, the Kop stands throughout the 90mins. Braving the blistering cold, singing with gusto song after song after song, cheering the players on with "C'mon you mighty Reds!", singing Ja-vier Mas-che-rano when he makes a good tackle, chanting Da-ni Pa-che-co when he comes on, booing the opposition player for playacting on the ground for too long, acknowledging Rafa when his subs make the game changing impact. Amazing stuff. Any football fan in the world has to come here to experience what being a real fan means. The 12th man really makes a difference. From the 70th minute on, you could sense the cheering intensity getting louder & eventually hitting a climax when Ngog nodded the ball home in the 81st minute. As the Kop leads Anfield in a reprise of YNWA at the 90th minute, its a truly proud moment to be cherished.

The atmosphere can only get better. I'm expecting much much more come the bigger games as the stadium wasn't as packed - Unirea's not exactly the most frightening of oppositions. The current Pool team still quite below par anyway. Bring on Fernando Torres when he's fit again, I'll be there.

Aptly, Ryan was the man-of-the-match tonight. Babel i mean :)

CNY @ Windsor & Holy Trinity Brompton

Windsor castle. One of residences of the Queen of England. It's a real shame that I can't post any photos of the inside of the castle, as photography was not allowed. It is really quite an eye opener to the life of royalty. You should go visit if you get a chance.

The highlight of the weekend though is the Reunion Dinner that we had at St Georges University in south London. It was a real pleasure to have been hosted by Jayden, a Singaporean studying medicine there & his friends. The feast included *deep breath* roast pork, delicious duck from Four Seasons, dumplings, fried rice, chow mien, chicken drumsticks, chop suey, tang yuan, salmon pastry, fish balls, topped off with banana ice cream crepe :) It was a lovely evening spent with HKers, Canadians, an Englishman, a Korean and my fellow Singaporeans. We rounded the night with a game of HK vs Canada vs S'pore mahjong.

With the 11 of us from Bath cramming into Jayden's apartment for the night, it really was a squeeze but amazingly we did it. I had a chance to catch up with Daniel (who happened to be in London) & his friend Charles on Sun morning. We visited Holy Trinity Brompton, the church which started the Alpha Course, pastored by Nicky Gumbel. The morning worship was led by Tim Hughes :)

I must say that save for the worship (which was good) & the church building, I was surprised by how different the service turned out. I'll try to sound as neutral as possible here. It was the first service ever that I attended that did not have a sermon. No lesson from the Word of God at all.

Perhaps today might be an exception, being Valentine's Day, Ps Gumbel did a "talk show interview" with Nicky & Sila Lee, authors of the bestselling "Marriage Book". Much of the questions centred on what made a relationship work, and how Christians could keep their marriage pure in a world of broken relationships & sexual pressures. Topics like communication, patience, intentionally making time for each other etc. wer brought up. The session was rounded off with a prayer invitation for couples.

Honestly, today's 'sermon' did feel like a Focus on the Family workshop more than anything else. Granted, it was very insightful & the congregation probably does need sth like that at this point of time. I do question the extent to which a church should go to being "relevant to the world" & perhaps omitting the Word of God might be pushing it a bit too far. Then again, today could have been the exception rather than the norm, so forgive me if i'm mistaken. I'm not in any position to make a fair judgement. Just that, yes I did leave HTB feeling a tad disappointed.

Back to CNY...Dan, Charles & I had the most marvelous Chinese char siew roast pork rice ever for lunch. I haven't found anything close to this in Singapore. A real morale booster for the week ahead!

Friends from Singapore (and the rest of the world)

Allow me to introduce my Singaporean friends:

from left: Siang Liang (SMU Accountancy), Bess (NUS Applied Maths), Ee Suan (SMU Accountancy & Econs), Raja (NUS Chem), Desmond (NUS Chem) & Gerald (Uni of Bath Aerospace Engineering)

Last night, we had a mini Chinese new year gathering at Cafe International, a cosy Tues fellowship Widcombe Baptist Church - the church that Gerald attends. It was nice to have a taste of home, with a 2 course 'chinese' dinner with minced pork rice & green bean soup for dessert. Overall we had a lovely evening of informal fellowship, with the emcee Tim (environmental researcher at the Uni of Bath) giving a speech on what Chinese New Year meant, with its red packets & gongxifacais.

Of course, while birds of a feather seem to flock together naturally, I've been making friends with other exchange students too. To name a few, my floor has quite a mix of international students: Armin, an Iranian who was born in Norway, Sundeep from India, Gil from Korea, Coleen from the US, and Betty a 4th year student from Indonesia. I take the bus up to school with Alvin, a Canadian with roots from HK & share modules with Peter, a Taiwanese who spent 12 years in Thailand. Soon I'll be playing tennis with Alex, a Dutch whom I met in one of my Management classes. Go figure.

And so at 10am today, I took the bright orange bus up to the Uni on the Hill. It's quite a steep climb, so cycling's out of the question. Being the first day, many of the exchange students were visibly lost, not knowing where the classes were and how to get there. With buildings 3WN, 8W and 6E, its quite a challenge, but once you realise that everything takes dressing from the library right in the centre of the school, it's not too difficult to get around really.

I had 2 classes today, Business Strategy and Modern British Society. Compared to the 3h 15 min ones that we had to endure at SMU, 1h 50 min long ones were a refreshing change. I'm getting good vibes about the lecturers, the workload's on the heavy side though, with the former requiring group HW submitted at the start of every class & the latter having deliverables like 1 presentation, 2 tests and 3 essays. We'll see how the rest of the classes go.

The weather today felt like it was the coldest thus far, at at around 1pm, it started to snow! So we all had a bit of fun taking photos and looking silly. I got to meet Gerald today - Daniel's friend from True Way Presbyterian - the Singaporean studying full time here. He does aerospace engineering, i'm sure Kit & Han Ling would love to meet him. He's a real friendly and helpful chap. In fact we're gonna have a pre Chinese New Year dinner gathering at his church tomorrow! All us Singaporeans are invited so I'm really looking forward to that.

After a long day, I attempted my biggest ever cooking challenge thus far, Beef Stew. Being my first shot at it, I must say that I'm really pleased with the end product. Taa daaa...

Believe me, it tastes better than it looks.

Settling in

It has been an eventful weekend. Orientation was on Saturday, it was great to meet up with all the international students, close to 80 of them - Canadians, Dutch, Germans, Argentinians, Spanish, HKeys etc. It was nice to meet 3 more Singaporeans from NUS! Raja, Bess & Desmond. I recall Desmond from my TJC days, in fact we had played tennis at House level together once! Small world..

The town center of Bath's quite a pleasant place to walk around, i've uploaded photos on facebook :)

The UK adventure begins

So this is it. After 4 inflight movies, 3 breakfasts meals in a row, 2 hrs on the coach, and 1 overweight luggage bag to drag around, I've arrived in Bath. I must say that Qatar Airways provided a really pleasant & enjoyable ride with its touch-screen inflight system, comfortable seat & adequate leg room. The first thing that greeted me in Bath was the wooden scent of my room in Carpenter House. It's nice to have a cosy room to myself, albeit a rather small one. Here are some snapshots:

the rectangle room

my bed

desk & window view

the big, clean kitchen

Effectively, the journey from airport to room took a grand total 24 hours. My body clock's naturally a bit ahead of time, I slept at 9pm at woke up this morning at 5am. The duvet provided kept me warm and snuggly. The weather surprising not as cold as I anticipated, it feels like 10 degrees, nowhere near the subzero winter that I was bracing myself for.

A morning walk around Bath with my 2 Singaporean fellow travellers takes us from cafe to cafe in search of our first hot meal. We eventually settled for a quiet little restaurant that was part a departmental store - reminds me a lot of the IKEA cafe back home. Breakfast was thoroughly satisfying. TEN items + toast all for a grand total of 3.45 pounds! McDonalds 'big' breakfast is not even half the size of this.

For those of you new to Bath, the reason why it is named as such is due the Roman Baths that were built here between 100-500 AD. Other attractions include the Jane Austen House (author of Pride & Prejudice), the Bath Abbey & the Sally Lunn House (the oldest house in Bath). More to come when I get down to visiting them.

And so today was spent fixing up my internet connection and orientating myself around the town. It is a quaint looking, old-fashioned town that houses famous brands like Marks & Spencers, H&M and Starbucks, very much similar to Bremen in Germany. My hostel is located right in the heart of the shopping district, so groceries and entertainment are just a stone's throw away. Nice.

Sainsbury's is the local NTUC with affordable bargains. My first attempt at preparing a decent dinner was well...decent. Spaghetti served with brocc-cauli & mushroom soup. Siang Liang liked it, so I guess that works out. Will attempt the meaty dishes on a more gung-ho day. Orientation starts tomorrow. This will be my first visit to the University of Bath. Pray that I will be able to get all my 5 modules! A bit of a bummer that I'll be missing the noontime kick-off of the Merseyside derby though =s. Peace to all back home.