Two months… already?

I just saw on my friend’s blog, my blog link with the words “2 months ago” referring to the date of my last post. Wow, it’s been almost two months since I’ve first arrived in Nottingham.

So many things to talk about, but I shall do this post in a “First time I’ve..” style.

So, here goes.

First time I’ve…

1. Worn 3 layers of clothing and not die from overheating. When I first got here in mid September, the weather was lovely, summerish weather and you could venture outdoors without much warm clothing. Then came October, and instead of wearing just a cardigan or my thin zipper hoodie with a shirt, I actually had to wear both cardigan and hoodie with the shirt when going out. Just this week, temperatures have finally started to dip below 10C during the day and my 60% wool coat has finally made its appearance. And yes, the people here love talking about the weather, and associated matters, it’s caught on.
2. Spent what equates to almost RM60 for a normal Chinese meal. After church one day, my friend and I ended up following some other people to go for a meal, and we ended up at a Chinese restaurant nearby. Sure, it was a decent enough restaurant and 10 pounds a Chinese restaurant meal is actually quite cheap by standards here, but it didn’t make it any less painful on the wallet. But ok, that was the one and only time we ever ate Chinese food outside. After that, no more.
3. Packed lunch. Throughout my entire life, I’ve never ever had to pack lunch for myself. When younger, school ends just before lunch time. At uni in Malaysia, going to the cafeteria or going out to eat was convenient and affordable. Now… Say hello to the sandwich culture. I started off with a lot of ham, cheese and salad sandwiches. My current favourite is pan-fried mushrooms, onions, ham/salami/chorizo with eggs in pita bread that is lined with lettuce. Roast chicken sandwiches with mustard is nice as well. And no lunchbox is complete without fruit of some sort, and chocolate and/or dried fruit.
4. Walked half an hour one way to do groceries. Now this I really still cannot believe I still do from time to time. The nearest Sainsbury to my house is a good 30 minutes walk away in Beeston. Beeston’s a really nice little shopping area with one main street where there are some decent shops that come in miniaturised forms. It has the only Iceland within decent t ravelling distance, Iceland, home of cheap milk, cured meat, frozen food. And then, it has Sainsbury. Which we can easily end up spending more than an hour in, choosing fresh food, looking out for offers. Best offer so far was the 2 for 3.99 pounds Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream. Until Asda did a 2 for 3 pounds offer. That is cheap for a 500g tub, compared to in Malaysia. Ok, point is, we have on two occasions so far, bought groceeries and actually carried all that crazy amount of groceries we bought to walk 30 minutes back home. I still find it unbelievable. After that, I could barely feel my fingers. I swore to myself, never again. But.. hmm, we’ll see.
5. Seen buses and trains arrive as stated by the timetable. Now this I find impressive, being able to go to a website, type in your location and the place you want to go, put in the date, time you want to depart from or arrive at and voila, it gives you clearly stated options of how to get to where you want to go, what buses to take and how long it is estimated to be. Even factors in the walking time. Although yes, there are the few odd occasions when the bus would be late especially on some routes and at night or weekends, but I’m still amazed by this public transport system. And I love how at many bus stops, there is a digitised display showing what buses are coming in at what time. And the buses I’ve sat in so far are never too full, I’ve only had to stand once I think, and that was because it was busier on a Sunday.

Gosh I really want to write more, but there is so much to write and not that much time. Like how I went to Birmingham, and loved it. Or about English food.  Or about class, yes the reason why I came here, to study.

Really don’t know when’s the next time I’ll be blogging. May be winter by that time. Brr..

1am on a Friday night and I’m blogging

I’m on the laptop, while my sister is on the computer with its not-so-quiet CPU fan, and writing about it reminds me of its noise. Funny thing about noises: when you try to ignore them, you’re reminded of what it is you’re supposed to be ignoring and then you become annoyingly aware of the noise. Same can be said for lots of other things. It’s 1 yet I’m still awake, sleepy yet still not asleep, probably out of habit.

Collected my medical checkup results, declared fit enough to go to the UK. The UK, everyone has been asking me when I’m leaving. 15th September. I can probably say it in my sleep by now. Second favourite question, how has preparation been going. Well I’m the kind of person who packs last minute. Sure, maybe I’ll have a towel or two, some socks and misc items placed nicely in the luggage a few days before. But the bulk of packing would be done the night before.

Okay, enough talk of UK, it’s making me jittery. Do not want to be jittery before bedtime.

I baked yesterday, a very rare moment in my life, would not have happened without the prodding of my mum who decided during lunch that I should bake that afternoon. So she took out the ingredients for the cake, and then left me to spend a surprisingly fulfilling hour in the kitchen. But nah, baking really isn’t my thing, I’d rather cook. Getting all that doughy gunk in my hands, and all that washing up.

I took photos, but my camera’s upstairs, I’m downstairs. Walk up to retrieve one measly photo? Nah. The photo will have to wait.

Oh, over summer I’ve realised that behind the wheels, I am not me. Especially when driving alone or with my sister, I have slight road rage tendencies. “You stay there, lady” “Hoi, you’re not supposed to turn” How very unlike the normally mild-mannered me *meek smile*. Now it’s gotten worse, I’d be in the passenger seat with my mum driving and occasionally the odd road rage comment would crop up, albeit a lot more toned down. And it’s taken a lot of courage to admit this, but throughout my history of driving, the two incidents where the car was scrapped was with stationary objects. Stationary objects. Not scraps with crazy, possessed drivers turning out from nowhere. Not because I was speeding. Both times were actually when I was going into tight spaces, at significantly reduced speeds. You know the thing with having accidents with other vehicles is that you could perhaps place some blame on someone or something else. With stationary objects, you have no one to blame but yourself. Food for thought.

Speaking of food. Mmm.. Lots of eating to be done. Laksa in the morning perhaps, if I wake up in time. Which judging by the time I’ll be sleeping… Hmm.

Post-sugar buzz

I’m buzzing.

It is kind of annoying, I want to sleep but my body has a serious intolerance towards caffeine and perhaps sugar. The last few times I went out with friends at night I thought “whatever, I don’t care I’m ordering tea”. Bad idea. This time, I ordered an Ice-blended Chocolate, conveniently forgetting that cocoa has some amount of caffeine in it. Plus the drink was really sweet, it tasted like store-bought-brand chocolate ice-cream.

And that’s why I’m buzzing, I think.

I don’t know if it’s just that I have bad taste ordering drinks or the places I’ve been to just don’t have decent drinks or I’m picky. I’m just about to give up hope on having a decent cup of chocolate in Kuching when I suddenly remembered Hilton’s Cafe which serves really nifty hot chocolate that consists of steamed milk and rolls of dark chocolate on the side which you’re supposed to stir in. Yes, must go there before I leave Kuching. Plus, the price is about the same as those trendy watering hole places but what you get is so much more worth the money and calories.

Oh I love going to places where they serve tea in the pot and I’ll have an English Breakfast tea with lots of milk and a bit of sugar. But it is kinda weird having it like that, macam so auntie, or so I think. Actually, any nice cup of tea with milk is nice, whether it’s local, Hong Kong, Indian… Green tea’s nice too.

Wow, I ramble a lot when I’m buzzing.

And suddenly I’m hungry and thinking of food I can’t get. Like authentic kolo mee, laksa, char sieu bao, Teh C peng special (the real one, not ciplak one), cha kueh, grilled fish.. Ok maybe I should stop. No more rambling. Yea, stop.

It’s summer…

My blog is dead… Wow. Almost 6 weeks without a single post, I’d be surprised if anybody still bothers checking for updates.

Well, summer happened, it’s still happening, and there’s about 3 weeks left of it before uni starts. By which time, I’ll hopefully be in Nottingham safe and sound.

Half of summer was spent at uni at Selangor where I spent two or three days a week at lab, some sort of placement. The remaining time of which was spent procrastinating doing lab reports, streaming tv series, hanging out with friends and the occasional trip to KL. Lab was pretty cool in some ways that we got to do stuff we didn’t get to do in class, like use the HPLC machines with minimal supervision and formulate nanoparticles (which really isn’t as fancy as it sounds). But HPLC, darn you time-sucking machine which takes up whole days of labs. The last few sessions of lab which required doing HPLC for like 8 hours a day, minesweeper was my salvation in between waiting for results. As was the occasional logging onto Facebook.

Then the other half of summer is now being spent in Kuching. Where days just disappear without you realising it. And really I’ve just been doing a lot of…

1. Facebooking, more out of habit than anything else
2. Twittering, I’ve finally succumbed to getting a Twitter account. It’s more active than this blog, honest.
3. Youtube-ing. Internet connection at home really does not allow me to stream on the sites I normally frequent and downloading is so slow. Youtube is just about the most bearable loading speed among all the options. I’ve since discovered the joys of the Natalie Tran vblogs, 10 Things I Hate About You (the tv series), HD movie trailers online, and the occasional random comedy video.
4. Did I mention 10 Things I Hate About You? It’s the thing I look forward to every Wednesday now. Started watching when they were airing episode 3, it’s been 5 weeks since. The storyline isn’t much to wow about, it’s the execution and the witty, amusing banter between characters that keeps things fresh. This shall do nicely for summer, before autumn comes and mmm.
5. Piano playing, almost everyday. But I don’t feel I’m getting any much better than it. Can only just about play simple renditions of songs by ear. Attempted a Sonatina the other day, my fingers stiffened in protest. Kinda do miss playing the guitar, even though I’m not any good at it, but strings would make a nice change.
6. Shopping in small doses, my mum actually “drags” me to shop. 3 out of 5 trips to Spring have resulted in me stealthily accumulating two jumpers, three shirts and two pairs of socks. How practical =_=. I still have yet to get jeans though…
7. Searching for the most random things about UK. Like how much grocery items would cost, hair care, toiletries, bedding. Google-mapping supermarkets, how to get to uni from my house (the pedestrian view function is awesome).
8. Eating! Enough said… I’m surprised I’m not a blob yet, what with my non-existent exercise regime.

Okay, end of post, who knows when the next would be. So much stuff left to do before I leave Malaysia.. Argh.

Beijing Day 6-7

Beijing Day 6:

Okay okay, last part of the Beijing series, finally. After that I’ll have to actually think of what to write.

We only went to Temple of Heaven on the second last day, I almost thought we weren’t going to go. My only regret going to all these places in Beijing was that I didn’t read up about them prior to the trip, as I went immediately after exams, would have helped me appreciate these places we went to so much more. But really, the Chinese and their ancient buildings were impressive.

Only after going back and looking through photos I realised this person with the turquoise coloured umbrella popped up in at least 3 photos, at the temple, the gate to it, and in the rose gardens. To get to the Temple of Heaven, you have to walk through a park, quite a nice park actually. Bustling with people, tourists and locals alike. People singing theatric-sounding songs, playing something that involves kicking a feathery “ball”, selling souvenirs along the Long Corridor that leads to the Temple of Heaven.

After exiting that part of the park, a short walk away is a rose garden. Which seems strangely not Oriental to me, but beautiful nonetheless. Did wonder how the delicate looking flowers were not wilting away in the summer heat.

Walking in the summer heat in the gardens got overwhelming, time for a icy summery treat, ice cream. China milk melamine scare? Didn’t occur to me at that time. Normally I’m a vanilla kind of person when it comes to these store-bought ice-creams, don’t know what possessed me to pick up a strawberry one but it was nice. Normally in Malaysia of these strawberry Cornetto ice-creams is just some weird strawberry jelly, a bit of cream. This one had something that seemed like bits of freeze-dried or preserved strawberry skin on it, and the ice-cream actually tasted creamy. Blissful eating this on the park bench under the shade of trees while hearing sprinkles going off in the distance.

Some more walking after that led us to this, the Altar of Heaven, where the Emperor supposedly prays for good weather for crops or something. And again with the three gates thing, one big one in the middle, two smaller ones on the side. Everything about it has some significance. Even the number of steps leading up to the next level at the altar, 9. The diameter of the concentric circles that form the altar, the number of paving stones used, all significant numerically. So if you’re Chinese and you wonder why you’re OCD about numbers and/or symmetry, it’s just in your genes.

On the top tier of the altar is this raised circular platform, where the Emperor prays. Through some marvellous work of science and mathematics, standing on the platform supposedly allows your voice to be echoed back to only you. As the soundwaves would supposedly reflect against the balustrades that surround the altar. Talk about magical acoustics. If only I knew it then when I was there. Everybody was just jostling to have their photo taken there. Guess it’s one of the few points in Beijing where you are certain the Emperor has actually stepped on that’s open to the public for.. stepping on.

Intermission with food photos. Had this strange fruit at Beijing looks a bit like a round mulberry but tasted sweeter, and the juice is really dark in colour, beware light-coloured clothes. Also had real lychees (not the canned stuff we get here), cherries, nectarines, and cute little mangoes. Did not expect to have fruits like this during my trip here. Wonder why it doesn’t get exported to Malaysia, we only ever see Chinese apples, oranges and pears here.

This was the noodle dish they prepared on the spot during the breakfast buffet, with a floury looking soup, seaweed, peanuts, spring onions and coriander in it. You could opt for meat dumplings to be added. Something about the floury soup looked murkily offputing yet tasted oddly nice.

Day 7 (Last day):

Our flight was only in the late afternoon so we still had time for a bit more sight-seeing. This time we went to the New Beijing Museum, which certainly looks new.

The space that spans from the ground floor to the top floor, with only high level windows to let in a bit of light. With walkway spanning the right side, and escalators on the left.

The ground floor had a clearing with lots of bamboo trees, adding to the ying-ness feeling of the place. Glass panels and metal railings run alongside the walkway. And at the end of the walkway is a glass clad elevator, spiffy. The exhibits of the museum contrasted with the architecture, featuring cultural relics of Chinese history.

Lunch was at a food court on top of Parkson, where locals from the surrounding working district filled the place. Must be decent enough if locals eat it. Had these nice noodles. A bowl of yellow egg noodles topped with minced meat, seaweed, peanuts, coriander, cucumber strips and spring onions, drenched in a savoury, oily sauce.  Sad to say, this was probably the nicest noodles I had during my trip to Beijing. But probably only because we had mostly rice-based meals.

So there marks the end of my posts about Beijing, I think I want to visit more parts of the Oriental world. Read a few travel food posts and would love to go to Taiwan or maybe Hong Kong or Shanghai sometime in the future. But probably not in the near future, UK and Europe awaits me =).

Beijing Day 3-5

Here’s Part 2 of the Chronicles of Journeying Beijing. Seems more like I’m blogging for my own benefit, to prevent the inevitable fact that my memory will fail me, more than anything else.

Day 3:

The weekends are over and we can finally go to the Great Wall of China, the part that we went to is the part that I think most people visit, at Badaling.

Here’s how we got there: There’s a subway station right beneath the hotel we stayed at, Beijing Railway Station or Bei Jing Zhan. From there it’s not too hard to get to the XiZhiMen station. Initially, we intended to get off at XiZhiMen station and walk to the nearby Beijing North Railway Station where there are direct trains to Badaling which is in the outskirts. However, when we got there we arrived about 15 minutes too late to take the 9am train and the next one was at noon. So we ended up taking a “taxi” nearby. Not much choice, taking a public bus would have taken too long for our liking, it was quite a distance to get to Badaling.

When we did get to the Great Wall of China, it was already about 11. Certainly not the best weather to be climbing up the steep steps, under the hot noon time sun. But what to do, up the loooong flight of stairs we went. I think I underestimated how challenging this stair climbing would be. The steps were steep and uneven, there was quite a crowd of people huffing and puffing their way up, and thank goodness for the rails on the side, especially on the way down. Going up was much harder than expected, I actually had to stop 3 times and by the time I got up to the second(?) tower I was winded but kind of on a high. But nah, that was as far up as I went.

There’s actually a small tourist shop at this point where you can get a certificate with your photo on it saying you have conquered the Great Wall of China, buy drinks, the usual touristy traps. We catched our breath in the “tower” or whatever they called it which had people in every corner where there was a window. The layout of this tower is kind of hard to explain in words, I’d say it is like a lattice structure with stone pillars forming the lattice. The only thing I regret now is not taking more photos, as I was tired and distracted.

That’s the view from the stairs on the way down. By this time it was really hot and the crowd had dissipated. On the way down, I heard a few young Chinese men wondering out loud how soldiers in the olden times could sprint up these stairs in times of battle. I too wonder.

Anyway, since we were doing the outskirt trips today, we went to the Summer Palace next, which isn’t exactly in the downtown area.

Sorry for the weird framing of this photo, it was taken on a boat that we took to get across the lake in the Summer Palace grounds. Well we got lost trying to get to this part, went up the wrong uphill track. Before we realised that this place is actually further uphill than it looks and we eventually didn’t go to that part of the park. So we followed a route which took us downhill and to one of the 7/8 entrances to the Summer Palace grounds. From here, we found ourselves kind of stranded and had to take a taxi to get to the nearest subway station.

Day 4:

A bit fazed by all the major touristy attractions sight seeing and today ended up being just a day in the city.

As with the case of the dumpling lunch, this was the same with paos. We had 3 or 4 kind of pao fillings, rather a game of luck and chance as they mixed up the flavours on the same plate. And the yellow and reddish-brown liquidy things are not tong sui or desserts as one may think, they are porridge. Don’t know why but the porridge we find here tends to be served with red beans, green beans, pumpkin, millet etc. Not just white rice porridge. This was red bean porridge and pumpkin porridge I think.

Oh and the local beer is cheaper than drinks like Cola, so beer appears on the dining table quite often during the trip. Since it’s cold and cheap, quite easy to drink stuff. But I like their Minute Maid bottled concentrate juice stuff, especially the pink grapefruit flavoured one, easily available at drink kiosks and supermarkets everywhere.

After that, off to one of the shopping areas it was. One of the qualms I have about shopping in Beijing is they don’t seem to have a decent mall which houses all the decent shops you can actually shop in. Earlier on in the trip we went to Wan Fu Jing district which was a mix of really high end brands in the mall and then the local shops at the street side. On Day 3, we went to an area which had 3/4 malls but only one that was newer seemed worth going.

This is the directory at Joy City, the mall we went to. See how they categorise each level and call them themed names like Glamorous, Sexy, Delicious, Dating. Heh.

Joy City also supposedly has the longest escalator in the world. It seems to go from the ground floor to the 5th(?) floor. The shops here are pretty decent, with the more familiar international brands available here. But nah, didn’t buy anything here.

Day 5:

A change of means of transportation, today we only took the bus to get around town.

First mix-up of the day, getting off at the wrong bus stop and having to walk to get to the National Art Museum. The main reason we went there was because we saw adverts that there was an exhibition there featuring works of Turner which normally is displayed at the London Tate. And I think it really is worth the ticket price which I do not remember how much it cost, just that it was worth it. Because really, how unlikely is it that you can view the works of great artists without having to go to Europe or America? And when I got there, I was surprised to see they had quite a collection of works displayed, I was expecting maybe just one section of the gallery displaying works but they had a whole floor dedicated to it. No photos allowed, so yea, no photos on that.

After my art-enthusiast Dad and sister had fully gone through every work and listened to the audio commentaries whilst my mum and I wandered off, had a drink, ended up at the art shop, it was off again by bus in search of food.

As we were on the bus to the next destination, we passed by Tiananmen Square. This photo was taken quite by chance, I had been dozing off in the warmish bus when we stopped at this traffic light, I opened my eyes and spotted the Malaysian flag at the Tiananmen Square. I supposed it was there because our Prime Minister was on a visit to China that week. Few moments after zooming in to snap this photo, the lights turned green and the bus rumbled along. Oh one thing about the buses at Beijing is though it is very affordable at RMB1 per trip, the drivers are all really fond of switching from accelerate to brake very abruptly. There is no such thing as a gentle brake, not so nice when you are standing and have to grip the handle for dear life.

This place we went to in the evening deserves mention. It is called Qian Men Da Jie, meaning Front Gate Big Street. What used to be a street along an old tram/train line lined with old shophouses has been given a new facelift. The tracks are still there, but the space in between the shops are nicely paved over. As you look from one end to the other, you can see how the buildings have a old to new transition. The shophouses have been given facelifts, some more so than others. Most of the shops were still vacant but in the future this should be quite a pleasant pedestrian mall if properly maintained.

H&M is one of the earlier international stores to open here. Seems popular among the youth there. Weird, I didn’t see Topshop, Forever 21 or the like at Beijing. But I did see Mango, Esprit, Uniqlo..

Oh and chiffon was really in, what to expect, it is summer. But people in Malaysia don’t seem to wear as much chiffon. Chiffon billowy tops, chiffon mini skirts, eeh so girly. Speaking about skirts, I couldn’t wear flary skirts at Beijing because it could get really windy there. Oh and the women here are out of their minds, everyone wears heels, from the young teens to the old aunties. Even if they are going to be walking miles, they wear them heels. I feel pain just watching them strut up and down the subway stairs in those torture devices, I don’t know how they do it.

Anyway, the sky got dark and it was time to find some place to eat. Thankfully this time food wasn’t as hard to find. Along the street was a duck place that looked decent.

We went in and discovered there wasn even a sitting area for people to wait for their tables. Business must be good. When you come here, you must order the Peking Duck, it’s a must. Every table orders it. I think they actually expected us to order two ducks since there was 5 of us. Even couples that went ordered a whole duck to themselves. But nah, we ordered just one. And really, you cannot find duck as good and at this price here in Malaysia. For about RMB260 (about RM130), we got one whole roasted duck served to us, every single part. And there were the “flour pancakes” to make rolls with, garnishing that included lettuce, spring onion stalks and some thick, sweet sauce.

A chef will come our and slice and serve the duck right in front of you. Every part is served, the crispy skin is placed on a separate plate to be eaten with the pancake roll. And even the bones would be made into a soup and served, it kind of looks milky in appearance but watery, with a very distinctive duck flavour.

This is what you do, except maybe not as crudely as this. You get one piece of the thin pancake, spread sauce over it, place lettuce and the garnishes over it, then you put slice(s) of duck. Don’t forget the crispy skin. Yea it’s unhealthy but come on it’s a once in a lifetime experience that I get to eat this at Beijing. Okay, after you got all the stuff you want on the pancake, you roll it up and eat. I guess there is some method of rolling it so you can eat it daintily but I couldn’t be bothered. Kind of like eating a fajita, except this is Chinese style.

The place we went to have this is Quan Ju De, which at first I was a bit skeptical about because it looked like a touristy place, but hey it turned out to be pretty good. And after coming back from Beijing I later on found out that this is one of the featured classic places to have Peking Duck in Beijing. Not bad for an accidental find.

Last mix up of the day, taking a bus that led to going to Beijing West Railway Station instead of Beijing Railway Station which is on the East side of the downtown city area. Ended up at the Beijing West Railway Station, all too harsh reality of seeing people sleeping on the pavement waiting for the morning train, police on patrol nearby, people rushing to get on buses that seemed a little more infrequent at that time of the night. But anyway, we got back to our station and hotel ok. What’s a holiday without a few getting lost incidents anyway.

Beijing Day 1 and 2

Three weeks ago marked the first time I’ve ever been to China, so called mothership motherland. Went to Beijing and just Beijing for 7D6N. Which some people may seem as odd, considering most tour packages cover much more of China in the same amount of time we spent in the capital of China. But no, the way our family does holidays,  we are anti-tours, preferring to do things according to our own pace.

Oh and blogging about the trip shall take more than one post, too many photos and too many things to write about.

So late Friday night, we were on the Malaysian Airlines flight to Beijing in a Airbus a330. There wasn’t any personal inflight entertainment, only those overhead screens and they were showing Red Cliff 2 and Bride Wars. But after Red Cliff 2, I forced myself to catch some sleep on the short 6 hour flight. However, was awoken about 2 hours after sleeping to have breakfast before it was even 5am. Well, saw the sunrise which was beautiful, and pre-holiday jitters kept me up. Breakfast was decent, we even got Carman’s muesli bars, normally you’d see these in supermarkets priced quite expensively.

Day 1 (30 May):

We arrived at Beijing early in the morning, the sky was already all bright and sunny, a beautiful summer day. I had expected the skies to be hazy and dull, but no, they were decently blue and clear. After checking into the Beijing Howard Johnson hotel, and catching up on sleep, we were prepared to set out and explore. And we submerged quickly into the city life alright, taking the subway all the way to Tiananmen Square. The subway is awesome, but more on that later.

Then from Tiananmen Square, a short walk away is the Forbidden City. The place involved way more walking than I had expected. A huge palace which involves lots of “gates” before you can actually get to the main court on the inside. We went in from the South entrance, making our way in. Sure was really really windy that day, umbrellas to shade from the sun were rendered useless.

Sorry I’m not good at this, I can’t remember what hall is this or what it is for. But doesn’t it look magnificent?

People were crowding endlessly to take a photo of this. And most of the rooms in the Forbidden City are like this, you can’t actually enter them, but they are opened up for viewing from outside. The whole palace is huge and we only managed to see the main areas.

Walking towards the North, you will finally end up in the gardens of the palace, a whole different feeling from the grand palace courts where no plants are in sight, everything made from stone and wood, stone carvings and statues. Then you get to the backyard of the palace, an image of serenity, with cypress trees which grow into the oddest contorted yet strangely beautiful shapes. After getting through this area, you will wind up at the North entrance. And across the road is a hill from which I’d imagine the view of the Forbidden Palace would be awesome but we were too tired out on this first day of walking and climbing a hill, no thanks. By this time, it was already late afternoon and we were still pretty tired from the lack of proper sleep on the previous night, so back to the hotel it was.

Ended up snoozing too long. By the time we got out of our hotel rooms and search for dinner, it was already past 9. Which is not normally a problem for us in Malaysia, food is abundantly available 24 hours, it’s not too hard to find food. But to find food in Beijing, we’d learn during our journey, is not such an easy task. So with not much choices and many shops almost closing, we settled at eating in a Japanese fast food chain nearby, Yoshinoya.

The food are mainly rice based, which is why it’s no surprise at how seemingly popular it is in Beijing, particularly among youngsters.

Had their “signature dish”, beef with rice. The beef was very thin strips of tenderloin(?) with Japanese rice drenched in some dark-coloured, salty sauce and with some brocolli, cauliflower and carrot on the side.

I ordered the same dish last weekend at the Yoshinoya at Midvalley, KL. Spot the difference.

Day 2:

Still not going to the Great Wall of China yet, because the place is supposedly packed like crazy on the weekends. So we went to the Olympic Sports Complex instead. Very easy to get to by subway.

The Bird’s Nest.

We had to pay to enter the Bird’s Nest. Not much to see, apart from how the place looks like. But it was nice to hide from the heat for a while.

Aren’t the toilet signs cute? And they have vending machines for smoking cessation aids. Cool.

The Cube, we didn’t pay to enter this. But look at the translucent “walls”, cool.

The whole Olympic Sports Complex was more like a touristy place, the usual touts offering tours, selling bottled water, maps and miscellanous items. But not as many as at Forbidden City.

Then after that we went to the Wan Fu Jing, supposedly some kind of shopping area. But personally wasn’t too impressed. The shops were either really high end or dodgy looking. Again the hunt for food, not easy. We must have walked up and down the street looking for some eating place along the main street that didn’t seem half bad but there seemed to be only shops. Settled on eating in one of the restaurants in a shopping mall instead. Which didn’t turn out half bad, it was a dumpling restaurant. Goodness we had SO many dumplings that afternoon. The thing I noticed in Beijing is that they sell dumplings by kilogrammes. “One kg of dumplings, please” Hehe.

We had 4 types of dumplings, this is just but one of those 4 types. And the one I personally liked best. Pan fried dumpling with pork and chives as filling.

And now I will rave about the Beijing Subway, which is truly one of the most impressive things about the city.

You can get to anywhere along the subway line for just RMB2 (approximately RM1)!! No matter how many times you change lines, no matter how far away the subway station is, anywhere for the same price.

It’s so easy to purchase tickets, just get ready the cash, head to one of these machines at the station. There’s chinese and english wordings. Press a few buttons, no need to select location, ticket price is always same, insert cash, get ticket, go. Simple and fast.

Once you’ve got one of these tickets, head down to wait for the train. There are maps, like in the photo where the stations and different lines are clearly marked. All signage are both in Chinese and English. And a good sign of a train station is when most of them don’t have benches to sit while waiting. Know why? Means you probably don’t have to wait long till another train arrives. This is true for the Beijing Subway, or at least it seemd to be with the trains and lines I took.

Most major tourist and shopping places can be reached by subway, making travelling much more hassle free. The bus isn’t too bad too. Only had to taxi twice, excluding trip to and from airport.

And changing lines is easy too, the station would be connected by passages underground and within walkable distance.

This is a snap on the special line of subway that only goes to the Olympic Sports Complex. Quite empty, so managed to take a shot. Most of the trains I were on during my holiday at Beijing were similar to this, good air cond system, clear signage of which station we are at (indicated by blinking lights), handles placed sensibly. Well compared to.. what I usually get here, you can understand my awe ok? Though there was once or twice when taking the train at places further away from the main downtown area where the trains were a bit older, bit less white, and even the lighting seemed yellower. But other than that, subway, good, very good.

I mean come on, you can actually understand what the announcer is saying in the train. And people know where to stand, all move obediently towards the door when approaching their destination to ease getting off. Even when it’s crowded, you don’t get crazy pushed into the train by a mad stampede. And if you miss the train during rush hour, worry not, another train will be along soon.

Wow, I’ve raved about just the subway quite a bit. Ok, that’s all for my post about just the first two days at Beijing.

Hello, I’m still alive

Yes it has been ages since I last blogged. Since the last blog post, I have:

1. Finished exams
2. Gone to a beach at Sepang after exams with friends
3. Gone to Beijing with my family
4. Spent a week at home at Kuching
5. Came back to uni in Semenyih, Selangor to start on my placement which involves helping with some research project
6. Accumulated quite a list of things to read and find out more about because of no.5
7. In the process of trying to accomplish no.6, rediscovered the joys of Taiwanese dramas

More on going to Beijing in a future post, too many things to talk about, lazy to do a proper post at the moment.

At the moment, I am not at lab, because some supplies needed to continue with the experiment have not arrived and I have nothing else to do except do item number 6 in the list. Have to refresh my memory on HPLC, TLC, Fluorescence spectrophotometry, polydispersity index, zeta potential etc. And then attempt to understand something completely new to me: polyelectrolyte complexation. And supposed to write a report on this eventually. Woe is me?

And yes, in the process of all this reading, I rediscovered the joys of Taiwanese dramas. Which began by me discovering that streaming is fast at uni, probably because so few people are around using the internet. Then after running out of ideas of what movie to stream, asked for recommendations. And not wanting to watch anything too violent, gory, intellectual, or medicine related, ended up with this. Very light, not brain taxing, addictive stuff.

At first I was very much into the spirit of learning, went to the library to source the book recommended to read about chromatography and spectroscopy; googling stuff to read. Then by day 3, which is today, the laziness is starting to kick in. Going to lab was better, at least my days were not as aimless, though work is more tiring.

Ok, short intermission with a photo to share:

That’s what we got on the Malaysia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kuching on 6th June, a small tub of Baskin Robbins Vanilla ice-cream each. Don’t think it’s something they serve everyday, supposedly served because it was the Agong’s birthday that day. What a nice surprise though. And the meal itself came with those packs of 3 of Ferrero Roches for dessert. Sweet.

Okay, back to life and back to my Taiwanese drama and later back to a bit more reading… C’ést la vié

Obsessed

Setting: A student’s room on campus. It is a hot and humid afternoon.

Scene: Girl returns from lunch, turns fan on, walks towards study desk and proceeds to settle down for some work. A few moments pass, she closes the file, takes down a file from the bookshelf, and another. Random sheets of paper fly free after being released from being stacked between files. Girl looks disturbed by the chaos. Takes down a few more random sheets of paper from the shelf, proceeds to organise them into the files.

Fast forward a few moments later, girl spots a pile of books and more random sheets of paper on one corner of the desk. “I can’t study with a table as messy as this”, she thinks. The random sheets of paper were mostly drafts of work not needed, girl quickly glances at each before scrunching them and disposing of them. The books were arranged along with the files on the shelf.

Girl looks up at tidier shelf, and more empty table, sits down and opens chemistry file. Takes out past year papers and attempts them.

Before long, girl gets distracted by hair on the floor. “My goodness, I’m losing so much hair these days”, she thinks. Before she realises it, girl has unlocked door, gone to the corridor and came back to the room with a broom in hand. Sweeping her tiny room takes only a few moments. After sweeping, she feels her hands need washing, and proceeds to wash them with liquid soap in the bathroom.

“Oh no, I am obsessed with cleaning…..”

Girl goes back into room, room looks decent enough now. Time to study? Yes? Yes.

“Thebaine.. R-reticuline.. biosynthesis?.. extender units.. medical use.. geranylgeranyl diphosphate..”

“Urgh. I am so lost”

…….

“Urgh it’s hot” Girl glances at fan. Dusty fan meets her eye. The fan is dusty.

Girl removes fan cover, brings it to the bathroom and rids it of dust. Comes back to room, place cover back on fan. Switches on the fan. “Hmm, slight improvement”

In conclusion, my day was not productive. Experiment of staying in my room to study as opposed to going to the library as I have been since last Monday did not turn out well. Can’t wait for weekends when people go home and the library will be much less packed. First paper is next Friday. So little time, so much much more to study and prepare for.

Vain talk: Me wants contacts, yes. I’m going vain, yes. Contacts, then perhaps a pair of nice sunnies. Realise I don’t have nice sunnies. Then again, will I need nice sunnies once I get to cold sunless UK this autumn? Hmm. Anyway, yes, contacts. And a pair or two of nice jeans, practical necessity.

On another note, I guess I’m staying here at uni a bit longer than expected. I’ve got a placement here helping with research for a few weeks over the summer holidays. Few weeks could mean as long as 6 weeks. Good thing, I’ll get to be near to KL, also convenient for when I’m going to be doing visa. I’ll have time to further explore Peninsular Malaysia. On the downside, I’ll be quite isolated here. There are much less people on campus during the summer. And yes, I’ll be quite stranded on campus unless I do the whole take the bus and train and long transport time thing. But nevermind, I brought this unto myself, and anyway I’ll have something productive to do this summer, which is good.

Okay, back to reality. Back to the notes and books that have been my companions these days. Back to facebooking aimlessly when I’m exhausted or my attention span has failed me. Oh but I’ve been very good today, stayed in my room whole day but only turned on the laptop after dinner. Hmm, isolation during studying is not suiting me well, can’t wait for exams to be over…

The end is nigh

Comes as no surprise if I said that I would miss the food in Malaysia when I’m leaving for UK this September. As much as I like to try new food places, there really is something comforting about going to somewhere you know, sitting down and knowing exactly what you want to order, getting your order and having no nasty surprises.

Have been quite blessed to make friends here with similar food-inclined interests, will be going on quite a foodie weekend trip this weekend actually, to Penang *happy grin*.

Anyway, actually in quite a contemplative mood whilst writing this post now. The second last week of the semester has just ended, it’s less than a month to my first paper. Soon, I’ll be leaving this place, and perhaps will never come back again. We just had our pharmacy farewell party yesterday and it just struck me, wow two years here have just passed, just like that. And another two years will pass just like that and I’ll be graduating!

*Ah ok, insert random photo to maintain interest*

Ok everyone, say hello to Grace. Photogenic girl who has an internal detector for cameras, she makes a good subject. And on a dSLR, mmm. Have been having opportunities to fiddle around with a Canon 450-D recently, this photo was taken with a prime lens. Me like the bokeh… And the lighting at Starbucks was pretty nice and soft. Aah..

Approaching the last few weeks of being here, I come to realise more and more of what I’d miss about this place. And it’s not just the food, okay. I’ll miss the people as well. I’ll miss having the luxury of sleeping a bit more since lecture rooms are only 10 minutes walk away. I’ll miss having the swimming pool less than 5 minutes walk away. I’ll miss walking around seeing familiar faces. Ok stopping here before I become more emo.

See, I can write a post without featuring food, though this is not very substantial. But substantial posts shall wait until some time when life is not such a distratction yea. Until then, tata.