Archive for the ‘pictures’ Category
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Restart
By now you may know that I’m living in Cambridge. Cambridge, UK. That’s 10512 kilometers away…
I’m studying A-Levels, doing Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics and Economics. To make it clearer, I’m doing: Maths, More Maths, Scientific Maths and Maths About Money. You can probably guess my favourite subject.
Now I’ve been here for just over two weeks. I”ll talk more about life in Cambridge next time, but for now, let’s rewind to the 1st of January, New Year’s Day, which is also the day I left KL for good. There was the numerous, numerous goodbyes before this. Some were nice goodbyes, and some were very, very sad goodbyes…
But anyways, that day my parents and I left from the LCCT on AirAsia. I know many of you think, “AirAsia?! That cheap-lak plane? Aiyo, so uncomfortable… how you survive?” and probably “AirAsia sucks!” as well. And in a way, you’re right… they take off from a small, hot (not much air-con) airport, they charge you for everything (including water), they only let 15kg of luggage (MAS does 20kg, and 30kg for students)… but when you buy AirAsia XL, it’s all worth it. Really. Take a look:
These seats also recline to become a bed. Awesome.
The flight took 8 hours, mostly spending my time fiddling around with the MacBook. The airport was Stansted Airport in London. Stansted is to Heathrow what LCCT is to KLIA, except Stansted actually looks really, really nice.
Anyways when I walked out of the airport, I experienced my first ever winter! It’s hard to des- actually, no, it’s easy to describe:
COLD
We slept in the Radisson Hotel, right next to the airport. The three minute walk is really easy, except for the fact that:
- It was cold.
- We had to carry 9 bags of luggage between the three of us.
- It was really cold.
Cars around the airport.
Signboards.
The Radisson hotel is… (click!)
The next day was Saturday, so my dad rented a car (\o/) to drive us to Cambridge. But the best part of the morning was seeing this:
Never before have I seen such a skyline...
As for the car:
Car frost! I love winter!
Interestingly, most cars in the UK are manual. Imagine that! A first-world country where (I think) automatic cars are not the most popular.
We drove about 20 minutes to Cambridge, thanks to the nifty little gadget called GPS. If GPS wasn’t invented, the world would be pretty lost.
Eyes on the road, eyes on the road, looking like a fool with your eyes on the road. (I kid, I kid)
Thank you GPS-thingy!
Finally we arrive in Cambridge. My accomodation is a small apartment called Purbeck House. I’ll post much more about this next time.
After I settled down a little, and after my mum made a full appraisal of the room (she is very good at doing that, in fact, I think all mothers are good at that), we drove to the city centre of Cambridge. There’s a supermarket called Sainsbury were we bought tons and tons of foodstuff. When we piled them all on the cashier, I remember this conversation with the man behind us:
Man: Dear God, that is a lot of food. Do you have a big family?
Me: Oh, no. I just moved in here, I’m living on my own.
Man: Oh.I think we bought: bread, cup noodles, plastic utensils which looked like metal, plates, cups, sharp knife, water kettle (the electric ones), chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, biscuits, dish cleaning liquid, detergent, tea towels, containers, soup powder, hand soap, tissue paper, toothpaste, toothbrushes, hot chocolate powder, shower gel, shampoo, paper plates…
Ok I can’t remember everything. But there’s a good half of what I bought.
Once we transferred everything into the car, we ate some Spanish food nearby, nearby being the key word because somehow, the temperature dropped ever more. I can’t exactly remember what it was we ate, but it was pretty delicious. And then it snowed.
You can't see the snow very well... unless you click on the picture!
It’s my first time seeing snow! I ran out and let the snow fall on me for about 10 seconds. Then we walked quickly to the car because it was cold. Snow is awesome if it wasn’t freezing.
I think I spent the rest of the day doing nothing in my room…. oh I remember. I was admiring my 4MBps internet connection in my room. :D My parents went off to the Doubletree Hotel in Cambridge to sleep.
Sunday was spent the same way, except we did more walking around town. They bought me a new pillow too :/
Monday was the first day of school… I’ll leave the schooling stuff to a new post. That day my parents went off to London for their “holiday” which they spent looking at property. Fun.
Skip two days of school. On Thursday they came back, and before they took their flight home, we ate at a Peking restaurant called “Peking Restaurant”. I know, it’s a catchy, original name.
That's the last meal we had :(
And then they went home… and I was all alone in the UK.
That’s the fun part of course :P
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One Life Ago: Other Stuff
[Part of the series of posts: One Life Ago]
There’s been quite a few other happening in the three weeks after SPM. For my own chronicling purposes, I’ll be writing about the slightly more mundane things here.
Just before SPM I got my driving license! Unfortunately SPM arrived and so did any hope of me driving. Well, after SPM my father let me drive his Golf GTI around, as long as he was sitting in the front seat. I’ll be frank, I was quite nervous at first because it’d been so long since I drove in the test, and a Golf is quite different from a Kancil. Like the indicator signals are on the left instead of the right, and the accelerator and brake pedals are about ten times more sensitive. I pity anyone who rode with me (that’s everyone in my family :/) that time, for they surely had a bumpy ride all over the place.
In those three weeks I drove around the neighbourhood. It’s liberating 8D. I finally got to drive myself, and that freedom is just exciting. Sadly now that I’m heading to the UK I can’t drive for two years until my ‘P’ license expires. Sigh.
My father was nominated for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. He didn’t win, the guy from Sapura Holdings (which is about 20 times bigger than every other company nominated) won, but at least I can tell everyone that my dad was one of five nominees for being awarded an award for being good at selling stuff. Datin Frieda, chairwoman of Cempaka Schools, was there for the woman Entrepreneur award and she won (the only other nominee owned a small textile company I think). Good for her :D
Time to go! It's a nice tuxedo.
My dad + his friends.
One funny story, only for those Cempakans who know what I’m talking about. Cempaka had at least two tables at the extremely formal dinner at the hotel, but everytime Datin Freida showed up on stage or on video, the adults at the tables would do the Tepuk Cempaka. It’s great to see the enthusiasm at such a formal occasion :) (Clap-clap clap-clap-clap, clap-clap-clap-clap-clap, clap-clap).
My family is soon moving to a new house! Currently I live in Duta Nusantara, a nice cosy gated community. We’ll soon be moving to a bungalow about 5 minutes away in Damansara Heights. It’s so much bigger than my current house…
Funnily, it turns out that Datin Frieda owns the neighbouring house. I guess you never really escape from her.
I have a laptop now! 2.8 Ghz Intel Duo Core, 500GB HDD, 4GB RAM 15-inch Macbook Pro. It’s made of awesome and win.
Another story coming up: when my dad went to Bangsar Shopping Centre, he found out that a Apple store (Mac Studio) was opening there that day, so he booked the mine and my sister’s laptops there before the store actually opened. When we returned there at 2pm, the outside of the store was filled with people waiting in line for free iStuff. Then later the opening ceremony started for some reason, there was a lion dance before Christmas, since Chinese New Year is obviously nearby (2 months is near right?).Now imagine the narrow corridors of BSC, with the really loud Chinese gongs they use for lion dances, and then remember all the people waiting for the store to open. Not fun, but we already booked the laptops so we had to wait. But the lion dance went on and on with no end in sight (much like this blogpost actually…) and after about half hour, one of the employees actually let us in to pick up laptops. This means that we were literally the first customers into the store, and best of all about a hundred people watched us go in, buy some computers, and leave before the opening ceremony finished. Probably the closest I have ever felt to being a celebrity.
(Boring technical stuff ahead)
Somehow they made a silly mistake and gave me OSX Leopard instead of Snow Leopard. Those idiots >:( So we had to go back and they actually gave me the upgrade CD, with no licensing limits on it. Hah! If anyone wants a free upgrade to Snow Leopard when I come back from the UK, tell me and I might be able to help :D
Also, my dad bought Windows 7, which after wrestling with video drivers for a while, finally managed to play TF2. I think my life is complete.
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Ow, Injury
Story: I went to use my parent’s toilet to wash my hands after eating delicious brownie. The sink area is quite wet, so as I stepped over a puddle of water, my leg slipped forwards and hit against the edge of the sink cupboard. I was like, “Ouch! That’s gonna leave a big swelling,” but my parents in the room were quite panicky. They thought I hit my head or something :/
Anyways, it felt like crap at the start, then the pain wasn’t actually too bad. Then when I rested it actually got worse for a while before suddenly disappearing. Pain is strange that way.
Here’s two pictures:
It wasn't as bad as I though. Also, thank you fibrin and fibrinogen!
It's a pretty bad swelling though.
Quite a silly post I reckon. But here’s a little game to cheer you up:
Spot the moth!
And here’s a few lines of emptiness to prevent a spoiler of the answer.
Actually, it’s not that blank. Hmm.
*drum roll*
Now do you see the moth?
