A Very Enjoyable BUT Stressful Week (part 3)

Never thought I'll be able to write a triology of articles:P but this will be the last part of my travel log from Malaysia to Dubai to Manchester to Edinburgh. Read part 1 and part 2.

Friday 8th September 2006 (Manchester)

Woke up at 8.00am (GMT+1). Yup 48 hour non-stop action, supplemented by just 7 hours sleep. To be honest, I was pretty groggy for the next few days:P. Had breakfast and Jay brought me to my pilgrimage to Old Trafford (homeground for Manchester United, who just lost to Arsenal today in fact:P). Decided not to got for the silly stadium tour (£9.50) but will definitely go watch a match one day (Mr LC Lim, waiting for you). Some photos of Old Trafford:

Shawn forced to jalan around though he doesnt really fancy football:) He found the teddy more amusing than all the jerseys, I suppose:))

Very posh Megastore

Entrance to the entrance to the stadium:P

Then it was off to for some picnic lunch and golf at Jay's "home course":

St Andrews-ish building

Par-3 golf course

Posing sikit to "look" like a golfer. Can still get 2 pars and a few bogeys. Almost scored a birdie also. Golf is a game I have yet to master and probably never will.

Nice spot for a picnic lunch. Jay and Shawn, brothers from Kelantan. Guys who brought me to the dark side as well (world of Unix/Linux)

After golf, we went down to Manchester University where we visited a few places, one of them quite unexpected, Manchester Musuem. It's pretty nice actually

There's a botanical section with life animals in it:

Egyptian section with life mummies, erm, I mean real mummies. Lots of mummies, royalty, government officials, even child mummies, spooky.

Nice one was the pre-historic section, where they actually trace the mini-revolutions (sorry, to me, evolution is nothing but small revolutions initiated by the almighty God for His purposes and plans. Darwinism is as likely as 9 planets aligning themselves randomly so as to revolve around a particular star called the sun and out of these nine planets, it just so happens that the 3rd planet from the sun could support life in abundance) of earth. Do read "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson. It's a really nice book that really tries to explain everything like the birth of the earth, all the pre-historic ages (Cambrian, Jurassic etc).

I sort of let myself indulged in a bit of B-grade Jurassic Park acting:)

Visited Manchester University's registry, which had a nice Mazda RX-8 parked there.

Visited Jay's office

Had some nice Arabic food for dinner. White Rice with stuffed chicken and lamb stew. Dessert in 2nd pic above. Forgot what it's called but it's really really sweet.

Went to kacau pigeons after dinner. My job is to feed them till they all start waddling all around on the pavement. Shawn's job? Need I say more?

Went home to play Texas Hold'Em poker again. Played till 1.00am again as well:)

Saturday 9th September 2006

Finally, time to go Edinburgh. Went with Shawn cause he needed to go back to pack and get ready for his job in Sungai Lembu (Oxford). Luckily got him around. Lots of luggage to carry. Kekeke. I helped him a week later to move also. Took the 11.00am train from Manchester to Edinburgh. Transit at a place called Lancaster. Interesting thing about the train ride was that the number of passengers were actually more than the number of seats available. So Shawn and I spent quite a considerable time standing or using my hard-case luggage as a seat. Not bad really.

The train station at Edinburgh is pretty modern:

But my God, the moment you walk out of the train station, you can never forget 2 things:

1. the freshness and coolness of the air you breathed in with your nose

2. the sharp, crisp and clear view you absorb in with your eyes

The combination of the two things really left a deep deep impression in me. Despite still tired, despite lugging lots of stuff, I still could feel this sense of joy and excitement. It's just so amazing. I mean just look at this:

Princes Street: the first street that greets you the moment you get out of the train station. The buildings all look rather old and quaint and yet so well maintained.

Then you can also see the Edinburgh castle from afar, up on a small hill. I dont really appreciate architectures and history but I could still sense the uniqueness and age of everything around me.

Just a stone's throw away from the station is a nice looking park. From the park, you can see this bridge called North Bridge. The Edinburgh Castle used to be surrounded by a moat for obvious security reasons. Now this moat has been converted into parks, residential areas and stations. The North Bridge goes over this former moat area.

Getting onto North Bridge, you can see spectular sights of Edinburgh city, left right centre.

Walk further and it's joined by South Bridge, the old part of Edinburgh city. I live further down this street, off a junction. With such sights, walking out really puts a smile on my face regardless of the weather. Really different from Malaysia.

From North Bridge, you can also catch a glimpse of the highest point in Edinburgh, Arthur's Seat, the knob at the middle and Salisbury Crags, the long sliced off hill, fronting Arthur's Seat. More stories about these 2 in the next article

I'm finally here. The experience is just so amazing. From Malaysia to Dubai to Manchester to Edinburgh. Miss home and all the warmth of family and good friends. Yet strangely, I'm really looking forward towards life here for the next few years.