Weekend in Nottingham

Despite complaining for heavy work load and "being busy all the time", we spend our precious weekend gathering in Nottingham. This time, the Londoners, me and Ai Woon visited Nottingham.

University of Nottingham is known among Malaysian for Nottingham games. However, though studying here as a Malaysian pansy for 2 years, this is my first time visiting Nottingham. As this is the very first time, we are always bombarded with lots of comments and reviews from people who went, or even from the Nottingham student themselves.

Wai Kit (once our Malaysian soc sports committee) said: " Aiya, Nottingham nothing much one la, just a big uni."

Ee William : " Nottingham is a place without chinatown"

Even Yiew Wen gave us a very rural impression for Nottingham.

So, you guys can picture Nottingham now can you ?
For me its something like :

Hmm... got trees, bushes, grass... Typical forest in the cold countries.


Ok ok... to be more realistic, our impression for Nottingham might be someplace like this

A little sandy path through nice countryside scenaries. Wow! look at the fallen leaves, the feeling is so right. You could imagine a scene in a korean drama, where Yiew Wen would run from the other end of the trees and greet us... running slowly.... as the wind blow the fallen maple leaves to your face.....

Right?

However, the day before I left, I told one of my coursemate about me going to Nottingham. The response was: " What?? You going Nottingham?? There has got nothing!! Just a University and buildings in the Uni !!"

Ok, that seriously spoilt the whole picture of Nottingham. In my mind, I thought I was going to --->

These explained the total shock as me and Ai Woon stepped out of the train station.

Let me rewind to 20 mins before we reached. As the train approached Beeston, a stop before Nottingham, they announced that passengers should go to the first few coach as the platform is not big enough to accommodate the whole train.

" Eh, should we move to the first few coach as well? Our next stop is Nottingham le ..."

Well, the real story now... Nottingham has got a city centre with trams and busses!! They even have an ice skating ring for winter, malls and loads of cabs!! This is a proper CITY ! Why didnt anyone at least tell me, Nottingham is a city, not an ulu place (rural area)?!

The first activity once we got down was mamak! Our mamak this time is not spicy, but its still 9.30 pm as usual! Yes at least its still at 9.30, in a pub. However we regret that not everyone could attend this session.

The mamaking session ends at 11.50pm a bit earlier than usual because the pub seem like closing. Oops, we almost forgot that we were in a very ulu uk city.

The next day, William made me a special omelette for breakfast which he said, inspired by Genting breakfast.

He too showed his talent by making us a delicious tiramisu. How delicious was it? I guess that could only be explained by Yiew Wen's blushing face straight after tasting the first bite.

 
The homemade tiramisu by William, if you hesitate, you wont even get a bite.


Bad rainy weather didnt stop us from visiting around.

'L' is for London! This is the university and the lake.

They like to call this the mancis building, but I heard munchy's all the time, which left me with a swt face.


Let me prove that Nottingham is a city

Can you see buildings? And wide pedestrian roads?

Cool contemporary architecture, come on, its so cool! This is named the sky mirror.


Though there is the oldest in in UK

And a castle...

Robinhood, the hero of Nottingham

Daylight is scarce for winter times... Soon, it was pitch dark and rainy at 5pm.

The next day, we were brought to a park which even prove the city status of Nottingham. Why do I say so? Normally, in really ulu (rural) place, there is no need to have parks, because its grassland everywhere. To have a park like this

for people to take a walk, this proves that people in the city needs a relaxing green area.

That afternoon, Yiew Wen and Tsi Ngar made us their ultimate homemade lasagne.

It earned 6 points from me and 7 points from William.

Next stop! Christmas in London anyone?

P/S: The night after I was back in London, I found out that it was so much more lively and bright here in the night. Even after midnight. So I take back my words.... Nottingham is indeed ulu ! If you would wanna feel like in a horror scene, go walk around in Nottingham after sunset.

Changes

As an engineer, we love must like to do calculus. Especially those derivatives, its everywhere! So I thought of ways not to get haunted by it, and why not I apply it here?

Don't worry, you are not reading through a calculus or mathematics geek shit post....

dx/dt is the change of variable x with respect to time, some mathematicians and engineers spend their lifetime solving differentials and changes of unknowns..... Didnt they realise that we are all changing? Can we ever predict the solution to our life like how you solve x(t) explicitly?

Reminiscing through past years of my, I giggled when I saw how we once looked and acted like.
In this post, let us solve the d/dt of ourselves, ie. changes with respect to time ok?

Say, d(person)/dt = +ve means change to a good point of view. d(person)/dt = -ve means hmm not so good.
Add parameters like ---> fat, slim, dumb, smart, i dont care, wth, wtf ......


Let's start with an ancient piece of photo, when world was once analogue and with no digital cameras.

This is a class photo of 1S SMKB. It took me 5mins to find myself. How long does it takes to recognise someone?


Then, moving on to form 4

This is year 2004 cny group photo.

Then we got cny 2005. The highlight of this photo should be the person on the far left. I looked at him as if I knew. Wow, he looked like my size now, during that time.

People in cny 2005.

Soon we graduated from secondary and moved on.

A random bbq party we held on christmas 2005, in zk's house. Still everyone looked different back then.

This picture was taken in Bukit Tinggi 2006. Highlight the top left person. In this picture, he was so "small" back then...

In summer 2008, we came back together for gathering. This is Santini during Tsi Ngar and Kim Hung's birthday.

And we had a day trip to try all the delicious food in Melacca.

Till 2009, most of us went overseas. Amsterdam when we were high from Heineken.

Yes, this is how we look like now. Sungkai 2009!

Legendary adventurous trip

In summer 2009, I went Sabah to visit Stephanie, one of our coursemate. The reason why I am only blogging about it now is that I just got the photos!

Remember the awesome to Arthur video? It was during this trip. The trip lasted about 10 days. During these 10 days, we went from learning how to dive, to climbing mount Kinabalu, and to getting an advance diving license.

Ah if I haven't mentioned, Stephanie is this person below, she is like the princess of Sabah!

By the way, if you have a very good impression of Sabah paradise beaches, I can tell you, Sabah's beach looks like this:

Oops.. actually this is one of the crappiest beach in Sabah by the roadside. Sabah beaches are really pretty!

Before I go into the beaches..... If you are hungry, I am sorry, but I have to spoil your appetite, because what you are eating now, might be just shitty as always. Welcome to the seafood heaven!

Lots of fresh living seafood caught from the ocean! Most of it you wont even see it in the peninsular.

Still not spoilt for choices?

Garoupas, prawns, shells, all types of seafood!

Look at this type of shell prawns? Its RM 100 for 1 kg. But we got lobster, which was double the price...

Now time to eat!

Buttermilk lobster!

Soft shell crab. Have you eaten this amount of soft shell crab like eating a huge tin of cookies? And we had a 7-star grouper fish too!


After filling our stomach with heavenly seafood for our welcome night dinner, things went serious the next morning as its our first day to dive!

We started off from Sutera Harbour.

Suit up!

Went to an island around the Taman Tunku Abdul Rahman marine park to confine water training near the beach.
In the afternoon, we hop on the boat to go for real diving in deeper waters.

Sadly, there was no underwater camera to take the pictures in the water.

Stephanie with her equipments..

A swim after an exhausting dive...

Thats the expression when you become pro.

Besides, we spend alot of time on different islands as well, sunbathing and playing volleyballs.

But sometimes you get distractions when you are trying to relax...
For example :

When you are happy happily sunbathing....

Suddenly you see...

Then the outcome...

Forget it if you see nothing in this 3 pictures story.

After diving into 20m underwater, we set foot to conquer the 4095m above sea level mountain the following day. Climbing mount Kinabalu requires a lot of training and determination. Even though before that I ran Menjalara park 10 times up and down the hill, going up the 1st 1km trail of the mountain has already got me draining all my reserved energy. All left was just the mind, to collapse and give up, or to thrive every one step further. And finally you step on the highest ground and shout: "TO ARTHUR!!". I was so proud to never giving up, carrying an extra 1kg bottle of Guinness up 8km of the mountain trail!
(the Guinness was a challenge/bet/joke.... when I brought out the bottle on the peak, people took photos of us..haha.... " What? You brought a beer !!?")

Because of the popularity of this Mountain, climbing it actually cost a lot. If you think you could train hard and give it a go, think again..... One night accomodation costs at least RM450 + guide + everything will round up to about RM600, even if you book early. So should you have this ambition, remember to save while u train!
The whole mountain was crowded with non Malaysians. It felt like I was in UK. I can tell there were lots of british, Americans, Japanese, HK, Singaporeans....

We started our journey all pumped up with "energergy", a special form of energy derived from our kind.

We were trying to do a chant to absorb some energergy.

And off we went.

The one little girl in the middle of this picture didnt follow us up.

This the begining of the trail, green,wet rainforest.

As you ascend, less and less vegetation.

They have pondoks (stops) every 1 km of the trail, each with different names. Like this one, pretty sure you are little dizzy when you reach here.


It took us about 3 and a half hour to reach the resting house and settlements. Faster than normal people do. It was more than exhausting. We took a nap and had a buffet in the evening, sitting and chatting with a New York couple.

The next morning, we woke up at 3am to continue, normally people start from 1 or 2 am, but with our overwhelming confidence and energery, we made it 3am.

It took us another 2.5 hours, again faster than normal to reach the peak and catch the sunrise at 6am.

Its the spot everyone takes a picture! See, we reach before sunrise, so energergetic!

And its time to celebrate!

Cheers!

After gulping down Guinness and got drunk...
We sat for 10 mins.....

And found out that it was actually very cold with all our wet clothing on this peak.

After a stunning and beautiful sunrise, we headed down. (we were lucky that the weather was really clear)

Down we went... rolling down..

And because we still felt energergetic, we did some stunts.

This is the view from the last "pondok", 7km up the mountain trail. The view of the villages and settlements down there could be seen clearly here.

We took an adventurous package, which include descending this part of the mountain like abseiling.

The people in this picture might seem to be in an awkward position, but its really steep and hard to maintain an upright position.

The descend only took like 2 hours, they were literally running downhill like a reward is waiting for them.
Tired and sluggish, we head back to the ocean the day after to complete our advanced diving. Walking and especially going down stairs had never become so hard. Our quadriceps and calf felt very painful. It made us hesitate for some time when we were going down steps.

That was, the legendary adventurous trip I had this summer. Never had combine so many adventurous activities within a trip.


Last but not least, let me introduce here a new award....
The Queen of sleeping.

She could sleep anywhere from land

To sea

To the mountains

Sweet dreamz..