Leong/Kheng's brup about life in the UK

More photos - Newquay and Oxford

2006-06-02T14:05:00.000+01:00

Hi

Currently, I am just going through all the photos I have taken and starting to start to sort them out and in the process, I will put more photos up on the net.

Newquay Photos
Oxford Photos

This Easter I went to Newquay for holiday, with my friend James and his school mates. It was brilliant and enjoyed every bit of it. Only thing is that it made me miss Australia and the beautiful beach we had. Those are the thing that we take for granted. Sometimes I miss the beautiful clear days.. Althought with summer coming around, the days here are getting longer and for the past few days we have been getting beautiful days. Apparently, the temperature will be reaching a high of 25!!!!!!!!!.. haha...

Went for a walk with Tan yesterday and the street was littered with British hanging around the outside of pub having a nice drink.. I will be doing the same tonight.

Long Weekend - photo links

2006-05-31T00:01:00.000+01:00

On the long weekend subject, I just want to post the links to the new photos I have uploaded on the web. The Saturday I went on a and the bike ride to Bath. The last part of the photos with heaps of Jessica is only meant for Jessica as she is taking part in a 50mile bike ride soon and wanted a photo of her on a bike.

The other photos were taken on Monday when we drove to the south coast of Dorset. We went to lulworth Cove, then hiked to durdle door and back and then stopped at Shaftesbury on the way back for dinner (tea). In Shaftesbury, we we found the golden hill, A cobbered street on a hill with thatched houses on the side. Very pretty. We also saw a rainbow On the way home in the evening.

Long Weekend (Bike Ride)

2006-05-30T14:58:00.000+01:00

Back at work today. It was a long weekend last weekend. On Saturday, I took the plunge and cycled from Bristol to Bath and back again. It was nice to be riding a bike again after a long absence. My bum however doesn't agree. I was sore for at least another day. Sitting on anything hard is not an option. I spent the whole day lying around at home. Apart from that I was suprised that my body took it quite well. No sores. Also my bike came home in one piece. Hope to go on more adventure on my bike. Especially with the long summer days.

Football (all codes)

2006-05-25T13:54:00.000+01:00

Football season have finished, both in England and also in the league I play in. I play in the Bristol church league and we were in the Second division. There are only two division. This year we won the second division and will be promoted next year.

Incidently, I won the most improved played award for my club. Quite happy about that. The standard here is higher than what I was used to back in Brisbane. It is cooler as well and the pitches have grass on them. I was amazed that some Saturday morning, I struggle to get out of bed to go play football as it is soooo cold. It is worst when it is raining and cold.

I was happy to hear that Australia beat Greece 1-0 in a friendly played that MCG. On another note, QLD lost to NSW in the first State of Origin by a solitary point. Must have been a cracker of a game.

Finally an update

2006-05-25T13:31:00.000+01:00

It is lunch time now. Had a crappy baugett. It was too chewey. Lately I had a sudden urge to update this blog. Also, have been more interested in publishing more of my photos online. Hopefully, if I don't lose interest, I will publish more photos soon of our travels. Matt, the guy who sits next to me at work sent me a link where I can download a program which would install apache, php and mysql on Windows. How cool is that. Really feel like getting back into programming.

Firstly, I went to South Wales with some friends a few weeks ago and here are the photos. We visited Chepstow castle and the abbey at Tintern.

Tan and I visited Amsterdam during the weekend and the photos are up. We had Monday and Tuesday off and would like to go somewhere. Having visited Amsterdam earlier in February (photos not up yet), I was quite reluctant to return to Amsterdam. The only reason we went there was so that we can visit the Gardens at Keukenhof. The gardens are only open for 2 months each year during spring and attracts 800,000 visitors. We being 2 of the 800,000 this year. I have to say I was quite dissappointed as it was the end of the season. They extended the opening day by two days and close last Sunday which was when were there. I wasn't aware there they would have cut all off the tulips. As you can see on the photos, there are still some tulips there but lots of them have been cut off. As you view the photos, just imagine that they are there.

Amsterdam is a nice city. Nice canals but the thing I like most about it is that fact that people cycle everywhere. It helps being a largly country. It is too hilly to cycle in Bristol.

Talking of which. I was given a bike last year which haven't had the chance to use. Apparently this Saturday, I have been invited to join my work collegue on a bicycle ride from Bristol to Bath which is approximately 30 miles. I am still contemplating if I should go along. Firstly the bike might not last. The bike haven't been used for about 4 years. Secondly, the rider haven't ridden a bike for at least 5 years. That the peril of having a car.

3rd and 4th day in Switzerland - Snow

2005-02-22T21:30:00.000Z

We are currently in Interlaken, Switzerland and we are staying in the Backpacker villa and they have a free wireless internet which i am connecting to now with Tan Shin's laptop.

What can I say. I will leave the other days of our journey till another time and wil ljust talk about our day today and yesterday in Interlaken.

Yesterday we took a train from Montreux to Interlaken. The train line is called the Golden Pass line and the hightlight is between Montreux and Zwisemmen (sp). Montreux is on lake Geneva and Interlaken is in the middle of Switzerland flank by two lakes. We paid the extra money to get a VIP seat on the train. With the VIP seat you get the same view as if you are driving the train. We sat at the front of the train just as if we were in the cockpit and it was well worth the extra money.

Switzerland is not a cheap country but it is a bit more tolerable converting from Pound to swiss Francs.

The train ride was spectacular. White. Trees covered with snow, just like christmas decoration. Villages with beautiful chalets formed part of the scenery. We just can't get enough of snow. The pine trees and mountain are everywhere and it seems like a dream.

The dream continued when we reached Interlaken. It was snowing and has been snowing for the past few days. The streets are dotted with white flakes and the park is just white. The snow is so soft. I have never seen snow this thick before. It snowed in Lausanne, Geneva and Montreux too but nothing like interlaken.

We were having lunch in a restaurant and just contented to sit there by the window starring out at the snow gently falling.

Interlaken it self is a pretty little town flanked by not only lakes but by mountain which was barely visible through the snow.

Interlaken is in the German part of Switzerland and most people speak swiss-german. The previous cities which we visited are French speaking.

It is amazing how the scenery will be so different during summer where the snow would be replaced with green grass. I just can't imagine it right now.

Interlaken has a reputation of being an activity centre, a bit like Queenstown, NZ, I suppose but unfortunately for me, most of the activity takes place when there aren't any snow during summer. There is rafting, canyoning, walking and stuff by the lake. There is also Europe highest train station nearby in the Juangfrau area which resides about 3 mountains over 4000m and a few other smaller mountains. The train station is called Juangfraujoch (Top of Europe) and it sits at 3454m. It is an easy way for normal people to experience such heights without having to climb/trek mountains.

The Juanfrau area is also home to several skiing resorts during winter. Due to the not so perfect weather we decided not to take the train to the top of the mountain as it cost about 160 swiss franc per person. We thought we might come back during summer sometime, maybe?

So, being me, I choose the next most exciting activity for today, 22 Feb. We can't ski and didn't feel like skiing so the next best thing to enjoy the snow is to go sledding. We haven't done it before but doesn't seems to be that hard. You sit on it and use your foot to control the sledg.

I was pleasantly suprised at the number of sledging and hiking courses and the way the cater for non skier as not everyone skis.

The exciting activity I choose was to take a train to Grindelwald (1034m) and then catch the cable car to First (2168m). First is an area with lots of ski lifts and also most importantly for us, the start of a walking trial to the World's longest sledge run at 15km.

What was I thinking? I have never been to a snow resort. Only tried to ski once in my life. Never sledge before and now I want to try the longest sledge run. Thank God i have a supportive wife who seems to go along with my crazy idea.

The longest sledge run is the attraction but the fun does start until a 2-2.5hr hike until Mt Faulhorn (2681m). So basically to get to the world's longest sledge run. We will have to hike from First to Mt Faulhorn which is a 2.5 hr hike on snow pulling our sledge. Sounds silly but somehow we believed we could do it.

So this morning we set off to Interlaken Ost train station, bought our return ticket to Grindelwald. Grindelwald is a pretty little town full of skiiers. There were a few people dragging their sledge.

We then bought our cable car ticket and made our way to First. The weather was great. No snow and plenty of sunshine. I believe the temperature was about -2 at First. At first we rented our sledge at 15 francs each and started off on our walk. At the beginning we were contronted with a steep climb and I can tell you it is not easy to hike on snow especially snow that is quite fresh. Sometimes this trail we are doing is closed when there are too much snow.

When we started off, the weather was turning with cloud coming in and light snow. It was a hard slog. I can't remember how many times we stopped. This is the most difficult hike I have done. It could have been due to the altitude or the fact that I have to drag the sledge. The last part of the hike is a killer, it felt like i could only take 10 steps before having to stop and rest. I felt pethetic, it is like what's wrong with me? I felt so unfit.

Incidently, this is off topic, I weigh myself the other day and have lost about 7kg during our stay in UK.

Finally we made it to the junction which would have taken us up to the top, to Mt Faulhorn (2681m). The world's longest sledge run is from Mt Faulhorn to Grindelwald.
which is 15km in length.

From the junction, this is only about a few hundred metres of up hill climb to the top of Mt Faulhorn and we said bugger it. We are not climbing anymore as we were stuffed and the it was getting cold as the snow is getting heavier. It took us 2hr and 45 mins.

We sledge down from the juction and not from Mt Faulhorn and so we couldn't really say that we have done the 15km but only about 14 and a bit km which is not too bad for a first timer.

Sledging is so much fun and quite easy when you have the right gear. We didn't. I wore my jeans which was a very stupid thing to do as the jeans gets wet and my thighs and buttocks was freezing. Not going to wear jeans doing stuff on snow every again.

The first part of the run from Faulhorn to Bussalp was a nightmare. The snow was thick and because it was the first time we sledge, we brake alot by putting our feet on the snow which causes the snow to splash all over our front, which is the face, body and pants. The body is fine as we have water and wind proof jackets. The pants is not as i have jeans. The face. I couldn't feel my face, it was just numb. my fingers were getting numb too. I couldn't see as my sunnies was getting muddled by the snow. It was horrible and we have about 15km of this?

There were a few times I totaled head first into the snow. It was fun and nice coz the snow is soft but not good for the face and my pants. I totaled about 4 times in the beginning as it was very difficult to see the track.

When we got down to Bussalp the weather was better. There were sunshine and we rested for about 10 mins there.

The rest of the trip was great as the track is the road the bus takes to get to Bussalp from Grindelwald. The snow is thin and the track is wide. The thin ice is great because we don't get splash by the snow when ever we put our foot down on the ice to steer and to brake.

I loved it. Would do it again. I really enjoyed the trail as it seems like a cross country sort of trail. There are other sledging trails where you take a ski lift up, sledge down and then repeat the sequence again. The run which we did was unique as it is long and also you have to hike to it.

The sledging took about 1hr and 25 mins overall.

When we got to Grindelwald, we just couldn't wait to get on the train and then head back to our hostel for a hot shower.

We were very happy with what we have done. I am stuffed now. We are heading off to Luzern tomorrow.

I am going to go to bed now and hopefully my battered body will get enough rest. There are more walking tomorrow in Luzern.

Football and pub

2005-02-07T18:22:00.000Z

Alot of people have asked me why am I coming to the UK? And inevitably, people would assume that I came over here because of football. But that's not really true.. unless if i was a football player then it is a totally diffrent story. I still haven't been to watch any games yet. As for games that are televised on the TV then, I would say that the coverage in Australia is not that bad, at least I have cable TV at home but over here, if you want to watch the football games, you have to have cable TV.

Which means that if Everton was playing, I would have to go to a pub to watch the game. So far we have been to the pub twice and twice we felt disgusted afterward due to the smoking. I don't think Tan could take it much longer. This weekend Everton is playing Chelsea and it is shown live on Fox. The solution would be to find a friend who has Fox and self-invite my self over. The only person i know who is a football fan and has fox lives over at Cambridge.

The beer is not bad.. If only we can find a non-smoking pub.

Back to football... I have played football twice now. I play on Tuesday night with a bunch of guys from Vineyard church. Tuesday night is their training night and they play on Saturday.

We play at a community sport centre which means that they have to book the football court. We start at 6:30 and finishes at 7:30 and it is played under lights in a court similar sized to indoor soccer. The thing is, the courts are outdoor and it is freezing. The people are more skillful and bigger than what I was used to.

The ground is concrete. good luck if you fall down.

First holiday abroad

2005-02-04T20:29:00.000Z

Finally, we will be visiting the mainland Europe. Tan have holidays from 19/02 till 6/03. At first we thought of going skiing as it is the right thing to do during winter in Europe. I wanted to either visit Andorra or Austria for skiing.

But dunno why, we might not go skiing after all, are plans is to visit my friend in Strasbroug, France and from Bristol, easyjet, a discount carrier flies to Geneva. So our plan is to fly to Geneva and then make our way through various cities in Switzerland and then to Strasbroug and finally to Paris.

I never imagined that the first city that I would visit would be Geneva. I have always imagined that i would visit Austria or Italy or France first as Switzerland is one of the most expensive country in Europe if not the whole world.

The lonely planet western europe guide is an invaluble resource. Switzerland is truly an amazing country. The transportation is impressive and most of all the fact that over 70% of its terrain are mountains. I can just imagine it would be something like Queenstown, NZ. And i loved Queenstown.

I am excited.. and just then we booked our flight to geneva, our flight from France to london Heathrow and bus from Heathrow to Bristol. We have also book our first accomadation in Geneva in a youth hostel. We have had good experiences with hostels in NZ and Australia but I am not expecting the same over here. From what i have heard, the hostels in NZ are the best.

The fun part is where to go in 7 days in Switzeland. Even though it is a small country, there are heaps to see and not having been there, it is hard to judge how much time one should devote to a particular city.

There is train ride that we have to do and our journey follows the train journey. The trainline/journey is called the Golden Pass Line and goes from Geneve to Montreux to Interlaken to Luzern.

From Luzern, we will catch a train to Basel and then on to Strasbourg.

That's our plan so far. I am thinking of spending a couple of days each in Luzern and Interlaken. One day in Geneve and maybe one day in Montreux. We will see.

I will also have to get my camera soon.. I still haveent got my camera yet.. hmm

Car

2005-02-04T20:17:00.000Z

We have brought the car. The 1996 Peugeot 306 Diesel Turbo. It is not the world's quickest car, I can't imagine a diesel without turbo. We are quite happy with the car. It has 5 door and is quite spacious and most importantly quite stable at high speed, i hope. We haven't done more than 40mph on it yet.. maybe we will go somewhere this weekend, maybe the costwold.

Driving here is certainly different to OZ. When I get close to home, the first thing i have to do is to keep an eye out for parking spaces and if the places closer to home is unavailable, then i will have to turn back and park at the available spaces. The car is at different location, street every night.

It is not like oz where you can just rock up to your garage and then press the controller to open the automatic door and presto, you are home, you need not worry about the weather.

Here, we have to fold our side mirrors too because the footpath and the roads are small.

Driving here is about compromise as most small roads are one lane, due to cars parking on each side.

Our has a cassette player which i don't think we will ever use as we didn't bring any tapes or have any tapes to bring. At least the radio works. It doesn't have air cond but i doubt it if i would need to use it. It does have a sun roof which is handy.

A lovely stroll in the park - yesterday

2005-01-31T13:25:00.000Z

The day is definately getting longer. There is still sunshine at 5pm and it can only gets longer till about 10pm at the height of summer. That of course, is aided by having daylight saving during summer.

Not from where we live, about 10 mins walk up Whiteladies Road is an area known as the "downs". It is a weird name as it is no a valley or a low point but is on top of a hill on a pleatue. It is wonderful, I remember the first time I saw the downs when I was on a bus . When the bus reached the top of Whiteladies Road, all you see is a vast green space with pockets of trees scattered throughout the downs. There were people walking their dogs, walking and jogging. There are about 10 soccer fields at some part of the downs and it is bigger than any park i have encounted in Brisbane.

Tan and I walked for about 1 1/2hrs yeasterday. It was a cloudy day and the temperature was about 8 degree. Everytime before I leave the house I would visit the BBC website and check what the teamperature and the wind speed of Bristol is. Since living here, I have also been pre-occupied with the weather.

Car Hunting

2005-01-30T16:41:00.000Z

Hi

I went to the car auction in Bristol last Thursday with a friend. It was an interesting place. Might try out the auctions back in Brisbane for my next car. In England they have this thing called a MOT. Any car over 3 years old will have to have a MOT every year. I guess MOT is equivalent to a safety certificate (road worthy) in Queenland but the different is that you only need a safety certificate in Queenland if you are selling your car but you will need a MOT done on your car every year in the UK. If you car doesn't pass the MOT then you will have to fix the parts which failed. I believe that it is a great system and ensures that the cars on the road are road worthy and also you have a guage of the milage of a particular car as it will be recorded on the MOT every year.

With that in mind, at the auction, we only looked at cars which have MOT certificate and service record. I believe that with those two, you are more likely to not buy a lemon.

The auction was a very intresting place. We were they just for an hour and there were a myrid of cars to bid on all from old to new, dump to perfect condition. A car went for $200 and another could have gone for £15,000. You will find large and small cars.

The auction itself happens so quickly. A few bids and the the next car will be driven in and the process goes on. I could have brought at 1995 VW golf for £800. It was so easy, just raise your hand and the car is yours. I didn't buy it in the end coz i made it a point of not buying anything on my first visit. I think I bid on a Rover 214Si too but it went for £1700, £200 more than what i was prepared to pay.

At the end of that a friend told us that he have a car he wants to sell to us. It is a 1996 Peugeot 306 1.9L Diesel turbo. He is selling it for only $800 which is a bargin. It has about 106,000 miles on the clock. I have taken it for a test drive and hopefully Tan can have a drive later today.

I have always wanted a french car. I also liked the Renault Clio.

I also wanted to drive a diesel and now i will have a chance. The test drive was good. I like the car but will have to get use to the heavy clutch and the heavy accelerator. Also, the diesel engine sounds different to any petrol cars i have driven.

I like the car. it has tape player, sunroof, immobiliser, power windows and is 5 door. If everything goes fine the we will have the car next week.

Some more random thoughts

2005-01-29T23:42:00.000Z

Hi all

Finally.. Once again.. i have so much on my mind. I think too much but don't do enough. It is like reading alot, and knowing about facts, truths? and what does it benefit if you don't take action and change and do things differently after you have read something. Sometimes we take comfort in the fact that we are knowledgable but what's the use if it justs stays in our head but have not reach our hearts which should then causes us to do something about it.

I've always like the saying "Innorance is bliss". The more you know about something the more you are troubles but alot of times, we know something but we put it behind and not do anything about it.

I dunno why i start writing about this suddenly. I guess i have been reading about our supermarket, the food quality of the food we eat. I have just been reading a bit on the guardian website and there is a book published by one of their journalist. It is called Not on the Label: What Really Goes into the Food on Your Plate. I haven't read it yet but have just read stuff about it on the internet where people have highlighted intresting facts from the book. There are quite a few books out there about supermarkets and their growing power.

On the subject of supermarkets, why are they doing so well? price.. we all like cheap stuff, i do.. who doesn't? and prices of food seems to be dropping.. heck, prices of most things seems to be dropping which goes against inflation.

The thing is, with cheap prices, there has to be a catch, someone, somewhere along the supply chain have to lose out, I just don't think that the company (supermarket) themself are the one. The corporations don't just sell it cheap out of the goodness of their heart, they have to look after their shareholder.

Most of the time, the primary producers and even the consumers ultimately because the quality of the product/produce are decreasing.

But we enjoy our low prices, the government enjoys it too coz it keeps inflation down and the people are happy.

This is a very difficult subject. would i want to pay higher prices so that the farmers/producers gets a fair share of the market by buying my stuff from the vege shop or the butchers? We can just turn a blind eye and not to know where our stuff comes from and like alot of people out there, we have to look after ourself first.

I am not sure if i am making senses. I guess not working and having too much time is the culprit. I spend too much time thinking.

2nd day of 2005 - Wiltshire and Oxford

2005-01-10T23:08:00.000Z

The second day of the new year. Today, well not really today, this happened about a week ago.. I am going to recount the story and if it happened today. Today was a perfect day, it was sunny for a change but normally, it is cold when it is cloudless. I used to wear sunglasses all the time in Australia but since I have been in England, I have never wore them even once. I am not even sure when I have put them.

Today, our journey takes us to one of England's most famous landmark, Stonehenge. Before Stonehenge though, we fist drive to the town of Avebury, which is another town where stones circle is found and it is more remarkable then stonehenge in that there are more stones, and the stones are so spread out that they built a town within the stone circle. They even have a motorway which goes thru the town and the stones.

I have never heard of Avebury until I stumbled across it while looking for places to visit in Wiltshire in the Lonely planet.

Having not heard of Avebury, I didn't have any expectation or pre-conception of the visit. It is sometime a good thing and we can be suprised. It is same with movies, sometime we go and watch a movie which we know nothing about and more than often, we are glad we watch it.

When we reached the public car park which is about 0.5km from the town centre which is in the middle of the stones. I was suprised that we have to pay £1 for parking. As usual we didn't have any loose change and thought that we will buy something in town and pay the £1 later when we return to our car, which we did, even though it was a Sunday and we didn't really think that there would be an inspector checking for parking ticket to be displayed on the dash.

Next to the car park is a soccer field and there were people arriving for a game there that morning. I was amazed. Imagine playing soccer next to the largest stone circle in Europe. Well from the playing field you can't see the stones because of the external bank but it is so near to ancient site.

From what I have read, you can't get near to the stones at Stonehenge but at Avebury, you can walk among them and touch them. It was incredible, all the stone standing there surrounded by a ditch and a bank. Naturally we took some photos and we also walked up to the bank. The stones at Avebury are said to be older than the stones at stonhenge. There are also less tourist too at Avebury. We found that out when we reached our second destination, Stonehenge.

We were driving along motorway A360 knowing that we were getting close to the famous stones. I then noticed a big parking lot coming up to our left and felt that that was it. Then out of nowhere, there it is, on the right futher down the road. We drove into the car park and park our car. The car park was quite full and there were a few tourist buses there too.

Stonehenge just stands there out in the middle of no where with two motorway nearby. Initially I thought we have to cross the motorway to get to the stone but soon realised that they are smart enough to build a tunnel for the tourist to get to the stone.

We then had to line up and pay £5.20 each to see the stone. It is not cheap especially if you convert it back to Aussie dollar. It was then i realised that we could join and be members of English Heritage for £58 for a couple per year and get free access to Stonehenge and other 400 historic sites all over the UK. I believe it is a good deal as most historic sites requires a fee. We will probably join it after we get our car.

Realisticlly, you don't have to buy a ticket to see Stonehenge. You could cross the road and see Stonehenge thru the barb wire fence. You are not much futher away than the people who paid. We thought we would pay and by paying you get access to the recording guide thingi and we get to walk around the stone.

I guess Stonehenge is more impressive as the stones are larger and some somes are stacked ontop of other stones. I think I enjoyed the two stones equally and recommend the two stones to people.

I am forever impressed with the English countryside. I still can't belive how green the grass is. I am constantly reminded of how old things are over here, how much culture there are in this place. It is still a mystery why the stones were erected. I hope that i don't start to take my surrounding for granted. It is easy to lose the feeling of being in awe.

From Stonehenge we made our way to Oxford. With more than half the day gone and with the sun setting at around 4pm, we know that we won't have time to really explore Oxford fully but still I wanted to get a glimpse/taste of Oxford.

Oxford is a little town, smaller than Bristol but the buildings are incredible, especially the colleges. We managed to find a parking in one of the many parking station/building around the city centre. We gave ourself only 1 hour and so we just walked along the mall and visit the Carfex Tower in town.

We had to pay a few pounds to enter and we had to climb little spireling stairs to get to the top. The view is great and it gives you an idea of where things are and what oxford looks like. You get about a 300 degree view of Oxford.

We will definately visit Oxford again some other time perhaps staying there overnight. I think it takes a whole day to fully appreciate Oxford. Oxford, Stonehenge, Bath and London seems to be the places most tourist visits when they visit England.

On the way back from Oxford, I was planning to drive thru the villages in an area know as the Cotswolds but I got lost on the road and we somehow ended up on the M40, the main highway between London and Birmingham.

In England, they have ring roads around most decent size city which is a good idea, as traffic can bypass the city and thus helps with congestion within the city. The bad thing was that the Signs are confusing. I can't wait for the M25, the largest ring road in UK which surrounds London.

I can't believe I was lost and ended up on the busy M40. It was frustrating. Unlike Australia where towns are far and few in between major cities, the reverse is true here. We were able to go on the smaller roads and was able to drive to the Cotswolds. I don't think one could really get lost in England, there is always another road somewhere.

The town of Burford is unforgettable, even when it was dark when we passed by. The houses on the main street is just charming. We will visit again one day. I also wanted to visit Burton-on-the-water and several other towns in the Cotswolds. The good thing is that they are only about 1hr away and when we get our car, we can go there for walks and picnic on the weekend.

That's the end of the day. We didn't visit all the towns as planned due to the longer than expected (but plesantly suprised) stay at Avebury and the wrong turn at Oxford's ring road, but I am happy with the quality of the sites. I just can't wait for summer when the days are much longer so we can fit in more quantity and quality sight seeing.

Microsoft anti-spyware, virus and TV tuner card

2005-01-09T15:03:00.000Z

Today (Sunday) is, I think a typical winter day. The is no sun and it is raining. A perfect day to be staying at home. Tan is doing some adjustment to the pants she bought during the sales which started on Boxing day while I am on the computer researching TV tuner cards and reading the Sunday newspaper. There are heaps of newpaper here in the UK. I personally enjoy reading the Times and the guardian online and it is FREE. I like free stuff. I only buy newspaper on Sunday and sometimes on Saturday.

Anti-Spyware
While browsing, I came across Microsoft's antispyware software. I installed it and am currently performing a deep scan. It also comes with real-time protection which is a bonus.

I am paranoid about spyware and thus have installed ad-aware SE peronal edition and Spybot search and destroy on my PC and I scan for spyware at least a few times a week. I even use Firefox for my general surfing. Firefox has features not found on IE such as TABs which is great. If you haven't tried firefox, I wholeheartly recommend it. Because of IE's dominance, some website are optimize for IE and thus won't display properly on Firefox. When I encounter this then it is just a simple matter of copying the address and then open IE and pasting the address into IE. In effect, I only use IE if I have to.

I have seen people's computer who doesn't have antispyware software installed. I reckon that out there, there are heaps of people without any spy ware detection software. You can't really blame them can you? Not everyone is aware of what's out there. Not everyone is interested in computer. The computer is SOO different to any other appliances people buy. Is computer an appliance? A computer especially one with internet connection need constant maintenance, much like a car. The computer breaks down, just like a car. The computer can have accidents (virus) just like a car.

When you think about it, you bring your car for service at set intervals, why not your computer? Perhaps there is a great market out there for a company which specialise in maintaining computers such as updating people's antispyware and virus software. Think of the thousands of people who jumped on the broadband bandwagon. Some of them just have a free modem from their ISP. I belive that having a modem is not enough, it is recommended to install a router as well. If not a physical router, at least install a firewall on your PC. Why not have both, a physical firewall and a firewall on your PC like me? I think i am a freak but you can't never be too careful.

Talking about virus protection, there are two free products out there which provides free updates over the net and I think you can get the updates from most CD/DVD which comes with computer Magazine. They are Avast and AVG.

The MOST important thing with virus protection and antispyware program is that you HAVE to keep them up-to-date. It is no use just having them. If you are like me, then you probably would have bought a computer with free anti-virus software and free updates for a few months. After that, if you pay your subscription then you are safe, but like me, no way would i pay for subscription as there are free virus software out there as mentioned in the previous paragraph.

The microsoft antispyware program just finished its scan and detected just a "threat". It would be fun running it for the first time on some unprocted PC and finding thousands of threats. hmmm. I am sick.. hmm

Out of the three antisypware program I have installed I think I like Microsoft's Interface. It is as easy to use as Ad-Aware. Because of my paranoia, I will be keep all of them and update and scan my PC with each one, one at a time.

TV tuner
Back to TV tuner card. At the moment, we don't have a TV and as we are here temporary. I don't think buying a TV is sensible, it just adds to our possesion which is still growing!!. Therefore, having a laptop already, all I need is a USB TV tuner card which would turn my laptop into a TV. Right now for news we watch BBC news over the net. I am quite impress with BBC news. From the news player, you can also access weather, sport and their radio stations which are broadcasts over the net. CBS and Channel nine (Australia) also have FREE news over the net. Most other network requires subscribtion.

During the day I normally have Bristol GWR Bristol FM in the background.

Back to TV Tuner :). The things in the UK is that there is now digital TV available and it is known as Freeview. It comes with 30 TV channel and 20 radio channel. The channels includes the 5 which you would get from the current analog system. I belive freeview is only SD quality. I don't really care what quality it is right now. Any channel is better than nothing and I don't have the necessary equipment to take advantage of HD anyway.

In light of that, It would be sensible and logical to get a Digital TV tuner for my laptop because I will be able to get all the 30 TV channel which includes the 5 which comes with standard analogue. The only catch is that digital TV is highly dependant on the quality of the signal which could be affected by the area you are in, the condition of your aerials and/or the wiring etc.

Because of that, if I get a digital TV tuner, I might only be able to get a few channels and not the whole 30. I guess I can return the tuner if it doesn't work and just get an analogue Tuner which is cheaper. There is this Lifeview TV walker DUO which is the first USB 2 based digital and analogue capable tuner. I think it is about £100 at the moment. ATI also has a product which is capable of receiving analogue and digital signal but it is only available on the PCI interface. I think in the not too distance future, we might see more duo product being offered on the USB interface as laptops are as common as PC. I remember, a few years ago, laptop sales in Australia outnumbered desktop.

I think I will wait a bit longer to see what people say of the lifeview walker DUO. I might not be able to wait and just spruge on a digital TV tuner.

A funny story

2005-01-07T13:34:00.000Z

While we are talking about router/modem etc, I thought i should share this story. About a month ago, I receive a call from my mum. She said that her internet is not working. I am concern initially because I set it up for her using a Billion 5100 ADSL router/modem. Her ISP is Telstra/Bigpond.

She said that the ADSL is not working because she had changed plans with Telstra and thus will need to change the password on the router. Which is strange, because all she is doing is to change from an unlimited plan to a limited plan, I thought they could set it all up on the router at Telstra's end without need my mum to change her password. And as the Billion is not bought from Telstra, they said that they can't support the modem and suggest that she buy a crappy router/modem from Telstra.

She had her next door neighbour come over and talking to the tech support at Billion to try to put in the new password without success.

I was seriously thinking of getting some of my old work mate to come over to help my mum with the router because I thought that even if i get on the phone and walk my mum throught it, she might not be able to do it.

To my utter suprised, we manage to get the ADSL connection working. I am so proud of my mum. I even got her to type in CMD and then pinging various ip addresses. :)

The funniest thing in the whole episode is that when i asked her to default the router by inserting a pin in the reset hole at the back, she was stuffing something into the hole marked "console".

It was strange that when i asked her to reset the router, it didn't work and she said that she is using something to press the hole at the back. Finally, after feeling a bit frustrated at the router which won't reset, i searched the web to see what a billion 5100 looked like. That was when i discovered that she was pressing the wrong hole at the back. hmm

After she pressed the reset button, the router reset and i walked her through setting up her internet connection.

Hmm, i don't think i got her to change the password on the router. I will have to call her tonight to do that.

wireless and scams and footballers

2005-01-07T11:45:00.000Z

Recently i have installed a Belkin wireless ADSL model/router. I am quite concern that will many more people going the wireless route and have no idea on how to secure their wireless network.

I recently saw an unsecured network which i was able to join and use the internet. I felt bad about it and stopped using it. As they didn't change the their SSID, i was able to tell the make of their router. Having been assigned an IP address and a gateway by the DHCP server, i was able to log into the router with the default password.

It felt funny. Here i am on someone's router. I can be nasty and reboot their router and/or kick the other users out using the MAC address filtering. I wanted to find out who they were and to help them secure their network but didn't know how to.

They since have secured their newtork with a key but i think they are using WEP.

I have just found this article about the danger of having unprotected wireless network. It talks about a spammer getting access to unprotected network and using it to send spam and thus hiding his identity.

For myself, i am using WPA and turned on and apply MAC address filtering. I think the most important thing is to turn off SSID and also to change your defaul passowrd.

I even changed restricted my ip address range and used a non standard subnet mask. Wireless is great but you have to wonder how secure they are.

This new USB 54mb g wireless key/card that came with my router/modem i believe is quite unreliable, it drops out once in a while. i am not sure if it is the card or that the router is having problems. i sometime found that i have to power cycle the router to have my wireless connection established.

I was tempted to use my old reliable PCMCIA 11mb b wireless card but then it can't do WPA encryption. Am I being paranoid? coz even if i use WEP 64 bit, i have MAC address filtering turned on. But the thing is that using a weak encryption, someone can break it and thus get access to the packets and will then beable to get the ip address and MAC address <- is this correct?

Also, who whould go to such trouble? All i have is an internet connection.

Another annoying thing which is happening in the UK is that there are companies out that which phones people up and then telling them that they have won a prize and to claim the prize they will have to call a number, which is a premium number, costing like i think 50p per minute or something ridiculous.

The thing is that the first time i got the call, i thought i was listening to a real person. It is a recorded message which sounds so real it is not funny. you can find out it is not real when u try to say something and it just keeps going on and on. I have to say, it is quite convincing. I had since received about 5 such calls. One even claim that it is from a radio station, radio 5 or something, i can't remember the radio number. That radio number turns out to be a real radio station but of course, the call was a scam.

It is quite clever really and could easily prey on unsuspecting people. I am not sure if stuff like this is happening in Australia.

People preying on the innocent just makes me sick. But then what business don't prey on the innocent? I am sure we have all been seduced by their advertising/marketing. We live in a materialistic world. It is very hard to get away from it.

Everyone or most people know that I love football. I play it as a player and also am a fan and follow it. I guess, i am concern about the amount of money player earns. This prob apply not just to football but to other sports and entertainment where people earn obscene amount of money just because the rest of us need our leisure.

How can football earns so much? isn't because most of us subscribe to sky tv so we can watch football game. We buy the marchandise and watch the games in the stadium. it is same with movies. we all go to the movies to get away from the reality of life. We read books and do many other things for leisure.

Going back to football, personally I feel good for a while if my team wins and if they lose, i feel bad for a little while. If my team wins the championship, I might feel better for a bit longer. The point is, how does it profit me if my team wins or lose? if they win, do i get a share of the prizemoney? what do i get from it? a feeling but what can the feeling translate to in real life? That's the point isn't it, that we want to get away from real life but real life is REAL.

Why are we so obssess with celebrity? I was just thinking. Imagine, everyone stop going to a few football matches and stop subscribing to SKY sport for a little while. I wonder what that would do to the sport? I am sure other poeple have the same gripe about how much footballer makes and how uneven the money is spread around.

After saying all that, I would still like to go to Liverpool and visit and watch a game at Goodison Park and maybe own an Everton jersey.

New Year holidays - 1 day

2005-01-07T09:53:00.000Z

I wanted to start from the beginning which is Christmas and the days leading up to christmas but since the New Years holidays is still fresh in my mind, I will recount my new year holidays first.

Firstly, I am glad that we bought the lonely planet guide to Britian, without it, it would be difficult trying to work out where to go. There are so many places to visit in UK alone. Imagine the whole of Europe!! When you start to list the places you want to visit then the task becomes daunting. I don't think/believe that I can visit all the places in the world. I remember Tan, being a practical and focus woman, asking me to list out where we (more of where I want to go) want to go. I start to list out some places in europe and then my attention would focus on Asia, Africa and South America.

When you think about it, as King Solomon, the wisest man on earth lamented in Ecc 1:8 "All things are wearisome, more than once can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing", we will never fully be satisfy. there are always more places to see and to visit. I guess one must be sensible to realise that time and finances is not on our side and to prioritise the places one really wants to visit.

Tan also points out another intresting point "What does one gain with seeing all the sights? (my paraphrase)". For one thing, it is not going to feed you when you grow old. I guess there is a balance, should one settle down and start to build for the future or wonder around the world seeing fantastic sights and not prepared for the future.

The future is something we cannot predict and our well laid plans could be gone just like that. I guess, for me, I want to live life and to have an adventure when we can. I guess Tan, being a woman (I am generalising) wants security.

Sorry about that.. back to our adventures during the New Year holidays. Well we, when I say we, it is mainly "I", as I am the one who is doing the planning for our holidays and where we go. I would say "wow, isn't that building nice, look at that cathedral", Tan would just say "IT is ok, they all look the same".

So.. as we don't have a car yet. We hired a car from Hertz for 4 days starting from New year's eve on Friday and returning the car on Tuesday morning. Tan still had to work on Friday. We booked the cheapest car from a reputable car hiring company namely Hertz. We seems to alway rent from hertz, we rented from there in NZ and when we were in Canberra. I normally seems to only get quotes Hertz, Avis, National and budget. and most of the time Hertz has the best rates.

We hired a Ford Ka or equivalent which could be a Smart car fourtwo. I am not sure if you have come across the Smart car? I think it was designed by Mercedes and Swatch (yes the watch maker). I was secretly hoping that we won't get either of those cars and get upgraded to something with a bit more grunt. The Ford Ka has a 1.1L engine I think. The smart car is too eye catching even for me.

It was exciting having car, we could buy things we otherwise won't be able to. On Friday when i picked up the car, they have upgraded us to a Hyundai Getz. Still a small car but with four doors and a 1.3L engine. The car has only done around 300mils, thus a practical brand new car. I was trhills and exciting as i got behind the wheels, at the same time I a bit worried about driving in the UK for the first time with small congested streets, different rules and signs and different drivers attitude.

The first place I went to was IKEA. I brought a portable cloth line/hanger/rack so that we can dry our cloths in our bathroom without having to go to the laundrette all the time. The second item is an ironing board. I then went to Tesco and did a big grocery shopping.

Shopping in UK is similar to Australia. The big 4 supermarkets here are Tesco, ASDA-Walmart, Sainsbury and Morrison-Safeway. Our local shop here is a Sainsbury which is a 5 mins walk. ASDA is supposely to be the cheapest follow by Tesco. Sainsbury is not that cheap in comparison.

One major differences with the shopping here is that all the supermarkets has their own brand. like Coles having home-brand and Woolworth having ???? i can't remember what Woolworth's homebrand is called. Anyway, home brand is a big thing here and their homebrand has different quality level of goods for the same thing. Like tesco has normal Tesco brand and finest, which is a bit dearer then normal tesco stuff but are cheaper than other brands.

The second thing is that the packaging of the home-brand products are impressive, in many case they have better packing than the other brands. In Australia the reverse is true.

We normally shop home brand whether it is Sainsbury, Tesco or ASDA. They are cheaper and quality is similar to other brands.

Enough of grocery shopping. So, in effect, we have 3 days of exploring with our car. I didn't really want to stay in a hotel/motel and didn't want to travel far, just our surrounding area by going in a loop and finishing back in Bristol.

The first day, which is New Year Saturday, I decided to visit Wales, South Eastern Wales. Bristol is very close to Wales thanks to the two bridges which crosses the Severn river? and it only takes 45mins to get to Cardiff across the bridges. The catch is that you have to pay a toll of $4.80 into Wales but you are not required to pay toll on the way back. It is a one way toll.

So, not wanting to pay the toll and as this is a holiday we decided to drive to Gloucester, which is at the mouth of the river and thus were able to get to Wales on land without crossing the river. We plotted our course on the www.theaa.co.uk website and it tells you the approximate travel time. The site is similar to www.whereis.com.au? .

By going around the river, the journey to Cardiff takes about 2 1/2 hours but we didn't care as we were not planning to go to Cardiff directly. It is not easy planning a trip as you are not sure how long it is going to take. I wanted to go all the way to Swansea but glad that we didn't. We just didn't have enough time.

Finally, we decided to drive pass Gloucester, stop at Monmouth, thru the Black Mountains to Brecon and then down to Cardiff and to Bristol via the Bridge.

Gloucester is a small town, the drive was nice and plesant, I think because of New Year, there weren't many cars around. The national speed limit in UK is as follows, 40m/h in built up area, 60m/h in highway and 70m/h in multi lane highway. In town, they have their own signs like 50 or 30m/hr.

The weather for the day was patchy showers but the morning was fine. After gloucester we arrived at Monmouth and into Wales. The thing that struck us was that on every sign there are two languages, Wales and English. It was cute. Monmouth is small and there is nothing much here. They did have a public toilet which was open :) .

We took a few pictures of Monmouth and continued on our merry way. Brecon is our next stop. Brecon is like the main stop for the black mountains. The black mountains is a great place for hiking and all sort of outdoor activity. Because it is a mountain, I was expecting a drive like one to Springbrook national park on the Gold Coast Hinterland where there are rainforests and the roads are small, windy and in some place steep.

I couldn't be more wrong, the tress are low and the road is straight, most of the way and brecon didn't seem to be too high. Brecon is a pretty little town with pretty old stone built houses. We visited the cathedral and walked around the narrow road in town. It also started to rain.

On the way to Cardiff, we decided to take another route, which is what we decided, as we are doing a circuit/round and it is most logical to not take the same road twice, so you get to see twice as many sights.

We passed by the outskirt of Merthy Tydfil. A pretty large town. This highway is even straighter and wider. No wonder, the lonely planet said that lots of people from london drives to brecon for weekends. This highway joins the M4 and goes straight to London.

In the UK, most roads doesn't have name but number which I think they are trying to implement in Australia. It makes it easier to get around and I think we remember numbers easier than names. I am not sure, i can't remember either that well.

Cardiff is beautiful, with the imposing millenium Staduim and the Castle. It was raining heavily so we decided not to stop and won return another time. It is dangerous to have not stopped at a given place because I think as a general rule, you have to assume that you will not go back to a place ever again. Therefore, you should always assume that it is the last time you visiting the place. As I say before, there are soooo many places to see and visit.

On the way back, we passed by the new bridge. It was great, I always likes bridges and buildings. I belive it is a suspension bridge. on the new bridge you can see the old bridge, which is still in use. We will be using the second bridge the second time we cross the Severn.

As usual, on many return trips, Tan will be sleeping in the passange sit. It is a nice sight.

I really enjoy driving again. Especially a newish car. I guess we were spoilt in Brisbane and I do miss my old car dearly. We are facing a delimma. We want to buy a newish car now, instead of a 5-10 year old car.

Initially we were thinking of paying cash for a $1000-$2000 car. But then, if we were planning to sell the car later, wouldn't it make more sense to borrow money and buy a 2-3 year old car which has already experiences most of its depreciation. It is always better to buy on borrowed money than to use cold cash.

Anyway, needless to say, we were buggered at the end of the day. When we got back, I started to plan for the next day. I decided to visit a bit of Wiltshire, taking in the world famous stonehenge, oxford, the not so famous other stones at Avebury and the beautiful villages at the Cotswolds.

Weather and other things

2005-01-05T13:11:00.000Z

I guess i don't update my blog very often. and when i do i tend to write a whole heap. i think this tells me a bit about myself. i tend to do thing with a large burst of energy. which could also explain, especially with studies why i am mostly a last minute person. i don't think i can schedule a time for entering blog every day. I don't think i can stick to the schedule. Maybe I can.. it can become a habit. I was told that habits are formed if you do something about 15 times? So, if i keep blogging at a specific time of the day for 15 days then it will become second nature. I can just imagine myself doing it.. NOT

The problem with not blogging at a regular interval is that you have sOOO much you want to say and i dunno where to start. even if i do start somewhere, things will start to pop into my mind and as a result it will be one huge incoherent mess.

I think i will break it down by topics which would makes sense. I might also repeat myself but who doesn't?

On the topic of repeating oneself, should we interrupt people when they are recalling some facts/stories which you have heard from the before? should we just pretend that we haven't heard it before and let the speaker enjoy themself as they try to recount their tales?

First of. The weather in England, Bristol, not England because even though england might be a small country the weather varies. I, we (Tan agrees on this point) are happy that we are in Bristol. We were looking at the calander the other day and noticed that day light saving starts in March, which means that winter is ending soon. We already had the shortest day of the year last month and things, weather wise, could only get better.

So Far, (things might change during the second half of winter), I thought that the winter is not bad. I was expecting much worse. It is not terribly cold except for a few days and when you are under-dress. I like it here. So Far. I think i have to say so far because we have only been here for about 1 1/2 months. It hasn't really rained that much yet. and generally temp is around 5-11 during the day. We bought a 13.5 TOG duvet, so as long as we are under cover, we are fine at night.

The british has a standard of measuring the warmth of duvets using TOGs. I am not sure what it stands and it range from 7 to 15. 13.5 then is just nice. it could get a bit warm in the summer maybe? we should find that out in a few months time.

Cooking and the weather

2004-12-23T13:07:00.000Z

Hi

Tried to cook "3 cup chicken" yesterday and i think it was quite a success. It is a taiwanese dish with 1 cup of chinese wine, 1 cup of soya sauce and 1 cup of saseme oil and thus the name. The only problem is that the whole palace smelled like saseme. When Tan got home yesterday, she said that she could smell it in the hall, it was worst then when i cooked curry the other day.

I wondered what my upstair neighbours would have thought?

I have been listening to the radio and it keeps asking people to be aware that the temperature will be around 12 degree and ask people not to over cover or they will heat up. To me, it is so funny. In Australia, Brisbane in particular, recently the temperature got up to 36 degree.

I am also consider which digital camera I should buy. Either the Nikon D70 or the Pentax *isDS. The Nikon D70 i belive is the better camera and the kit lens which it comes with makes it a bargin. The only thing for the Pentax is that it is supposely to be the smallest DSLR out there which is a great bonus.

I think I will go with Tan and have a play around with the two cameras. that is the only way to settle this. The Nikon could be a bit bigger but both being SLRs, a little smaller is nothing.

Hope that we can get a new camera before our real holiday in January. We are still not very sure where we will be heading to.

Also, we can't wait for Christmas to be over so we can do some boxing day shopping. I like shopping. i like window shopping. I know it is weird coming from a guy. Most guys hates it and only go to the shop and buy the thing they set out to buy.

Updated website

2004-12-21T16:00:00.000Z

Hi

I have finally updated my website with photos of Bristol and Bath. will be working on my website. it is pretty rough as it. Site is at www.meyobbo.com/leong.

An Addendum to my previous blog - flats

2004-12-21T08:22:00.000Z

Hi

Before I start, i think today is the shortest day of the year in Britian. We shall see. At the end of my thrid blog, I talked about the unit which Tan and I visited. Unfortunately it wasn't to be. We were thinking of calling the landlord that night to let him to that we wanted the flat but thought that it could wait till the morning coz we thought that the englishmen slept early as the sun sets at about 4pm these days. I know Australian sleeps early and sun sets at about 6:30-7 there.

I called him in the morning and he said that it was gone. Another person had called the night before. Oh well. We were really dissapointed. I think Tan and I had thought/plans of what we were going to do with the place and was quite sure we were going to live there.

I think it would be another week before we view our current flat. In the mean time it is back to buying the local paper and looking at the accomodation pages everyday. There isn't much. I think there are more shared accomodation which we didn't really want coz we enjoy the privacy and also that we can have guests over without any hassle.

We saw one. it is a 2 year old apartment on the edge of the city. It was £700 but it included the council tax and water bills. all we had to pay was electircity and the rent. The apartment is fully furnished, sort of like a serviced apartment because the owners only lives there during the summer months and during winter, he lives in Spain or somewhere else warmer.

We thought that it would be great living as we wouldn't have to buy anything. it is not easy buying stuff when you don't have a car. We take our cars for granted, those of us who have cars. Living here, we are back to being students sort of. having to catch public transport everywhere we go. We had to catch two buses to IKEA and we still haven't bought our ironing board yet. We can't just buy what we want, we have to think about how we are going to transport it back. It is fun in a way. Also, the only chinese shop we know of is about 15 mins walk from our current place so we walk there to buy our chinese grocery which is quite expensive if you compare it to Australia and the stuff are quite limited. I think everytime we go to London, we will buy some chinese grocery in London.

Anyway back to flat hunting. The newish flat in the city was certainly tempting, the only catch is that it could only be on a 6 month lease as the owner will want to live in there from July onwards. you have to understand that at that stage we were quite desperate to have our own place and the dissapointment of missing out on the last property added to the desperation. This flat was managed by an agent. i am not sure if i said this before but with agent you have to pay an agent fees about 25% of the rent and also have to pay various fees so we were desperate yet we didn't really want to deal with an agent.

On the day we were suppose to view the flat, the agent called to say that they didn't have the keys and it is with a contractor doing work on the flat and so had to cancel. I think it was God interviening coz if we had seen the flat we would have say yes to it/ to anything.

So a few days went day and a few newspaper later i saw an ads for a place in Redland, where we currently live. it is close to Whiteladies Road, which is the hippest road in Bristol, apparently it contains alot of nice restaurent which i don't think we will sample. Also there are plenty of transport on Whiteladies Road. The areas we were looking at were Redland, Cotham and Clifton with Clifton being one of the most expensive area of Bristol, I read somewhere that Clifton is sort of like the Chelsea of London.

We have only looked at the areas north of Bristol. We have never been to the south. People here generally dislike the South. I am not sure why but I am sure that it is much cheaper to live in the South. One day we will go around there and see for ourself. Redland is in the north obviously, along with clifton and cotham. Clifton is on the north west with Whiteladies Road separating Clifton and Redland and to the south of redland is cotham. Basically to the right of Clifton, across whiteladies Road is Cotham and Redland. I think the bristol city council has some nice maps of Bristol if you are interested to see where we live.

So, i called this guy and we view the flat that afternoon and saids yes straight away. Our current flat is about 50 metres to the other flat we missed. Our flat was built in 1875. I think it is a Victorian style flat. It has a bathroom, room, kitchen and a living room. The building has two flats, one on first floor and ours is on the Hall floor. The people upstairs seems to be nice. Three girls live there and we haven't really talked to them yet. Thinking of getting some chocolate for them for Christmas.

The living room is larger than the other flat. Our bedroom is large and the kitchen is brand new. it has gas hob which we like alot. and heaps of cupboard. we have a new bosch fridge with ample freezer place. Also in the kitchen we have a table which can sit 2 to 4 people. This is very handy as we eat there most of the time. Our bedroom has about 3 wardrobe, a bed, a tall boy and a make up table? those table with a big mirror and lots of drawers. We were quite impressed with the furnishing of the place.

Our living room has a 6 sitter dinning table. a double couch, 2x single couch, an ottoman, 3 coffee table and a large cupboard.

The toilet is like a standard toilet with a shower head in the bath. The only thing about this place is the weird layout which we have gotten used to. Our place is U-shaped. As you open the door, the toilet is on the right, futher down, the living room is the next room on the right. On the left is a wall and beyond the wall is the stairs which leads upstair. Futher along the hall, you go down a few stairs making a complete U turn, the door on the right leads to the kitchen. The kitches has a big window which looks into the garden. The garden is a low maintenance garden with pebbles instead of grass. there is a outdoor in the middle of the garden. Once into the kitchen, there is a few stairs and a door on the left which leads to the bedroom.

As i said, this place has a strage layout. Our rent is £600 per month which is very reasonable for our area. I really like the high celling. The whole place has central heating. The heating is via hot water supplied by the boiler in the kitchen.

On the bottom is a cellar, accessible from the outside, are two washing machine, one for each flat. This flat didn't come with a washing machine but the last tenant left it there as she didn't need it anymore and it works fine :) . There is also a storage room to store bicycle, boxes and stuff. The garden is only accessible from the cellar.

So that is our place, it is nice and we spent alot of our time in the living room. In australian the trend is to open plan and over here there are doors for every room and we are used to closing and opening door to keep the heat in.

My journal of our first couple of weeks in the UK

2004-12-20T16:46:00.000Z

Below are some stuff I wrote, like a diary. Also, over here I am known as Kheng. still getting used to it.

Malaysia

What can I say but eat, eat and more eat plus a bit of shopping. I think I gained at least a few kilos in Malaysia.

It was great to be able to see my relatives again. Driving in Malaysia is always fun and exciting, a chance to be aggressive and do stuff I would never do in Australia. I will miss KL, my hometown. I don’t think I like the people’s attitude in Malaysia. People are impatient, don’t care about other people. The divide between the rich and poor can be seen. You go to a local coffee shop and u can get coffee for $1.50 malaysian ringgit but if u go to star bucks a cappuccino will cost you $7 ringgit.

I love the food, it is cheap and nasty. I like the small servings which means that u can have more than one dish at a time.

8 days is toooo short a time to sample the various cuisine available in Malaysia.

8/11/04
Thank God everything went smoothly, we checked in our luggage without any hassles. We were about to bring about 5 pieces of hand luggages onbroad. Tan shin was able to use her OLD Malaysia passport to get thru the immigration. Praise God.

The flight was pleasant.. as pleasant as any flight can be. The 12 hours of flying seems better than the 7:30 from Brisbane to KL. Weird. The movies on the flight was again disappointing. I think I still like Singapore airline in the area of entertainment.

9/11/04

Arrived Heathrow at 5:30 am. Passed thru the custom fine. All our luggage is here. Our driver, Max met was there to meet us. I was surprised to see him picking us up on a Mercedes. Very nice car. It belongs to PPLS. We stopped by a stopping station at Oxford for coffee and cake before making our way to Birmingham.

It is quite cold. But not what I expected. Maybe it was a good day. The thing is that u don’t see the sun. it is just cloudy. Tan said that it is grey and grey is a depressing colour.

Our accommodation is like a hostel which is acceptable, nothing flash. The main thing is that it is nice and warm.

Went out for a walk and had lunch at about 11am at a litter diner called Petes. Tan ordered chicken nuggets and chips while I ordered burger and chips. The nuggets was nice but the chips looks weird. I think the oil they used is dirty.. there are spots on the chips. My burger consists of a piece of thoroughly cooked beef patty in between two buns. I can’t believe I ordered beef.

We walked to the middle of town and it is beautiful, the architectural, magnificent. On this is that everyone seems to smoke. Everyone is in a black coat. It seems like we are on a holiday. It seems to be similar to Australia. It is weird coming from Malaysia where u see heaps of Chinese and malays. Here, it is African, Indian and white people. We don’t see many Chinese.

While in town it started drizzling. I think the temperature is about 10 degree.

Came back to the accommodation at about 2:30 and went to sleep at around 3:30pm

10/11/04

Slept thru the night and skipped dinner. Woke up at 5:30 to make breakfast which was supposed to be our dinner.. We bought 3 bread rolls, a can of tuna and a can of Heinz soup for about £2.60.

It is now 7:33am and the sky is grey as usual. We are situated in the jewelry quarters. Lots of jewelries stores. We will probably go out for a walk around this area before our appointment with the recruitment people at 9:30 to open our bank account.

Went out for a walk around the jewelry quarters. I can see the sun today and blue skies. But not blue skies like Brisbane where there is not a single cloud. Next to the blue skies are dark clouds.

Time to go meet Pooja (PPLS).

We have set up our joint account with HSBC which is one of the largest banks in the world which also happens to have a branch in Brisbane and Sunnybank. We got a saving account, current account and a credit card. We will be getting our first cheque book too.. Apparently they don’t have withdrawal slips at the branch. To withdraw money you will have to make out a cheque for cash. Weird. Also, u can’t pay bills with credit cards, not sure about this.

We had a chicken mayo salad baguette for lunch today.. yummy the bread was great. After lunch went downtown to see the canals in Birmingham. It was great. They used the canals for transportation in the old days. Walked a lot today. Was totally exhausted towards the end of the day.

We ended up having an below average dinner at a Chinese restaurant in the Chinese quarters. The food was below average to say the least and costs us £9.

We caught a bus back to the jewelry quarters. It costs us 70p but as the bus driver does not give change and I only had 1 pound, we lost 30 p but then at the bus stop, a lady gave us a day pass so in fact we gained 40p.

Birmingham is a beautiful city, a mixture of old and new buildings. The shopping centre, Bullring is incredible, I haven’t seen anything like it before. It has an entirely glass ceiling and it is huge. Apparently it was designed by Norman Foster, the same guy who designed the bridge at Milau.

We finally have a mobile number. It is 07799276260. Our provider is Vodafone. I can’t wait to get to Bristol.

Even only having been here for two days , I can see why people complains and talk a lot about the weather. The sky was dark at around 4:30 pm, it looks like it was 8pm in other parts of the world.

11/10/04

Woke up today and the sky is the same as always, cloudy. Had a nice breakfast of bread, cheese, roasted chicken slices, coffee. Bought them from Tesco express. We think we will be catching the bus to Bristol tomorrow.

Think we will visit a balti restaurant today for dinner. Balti is a Indian dish made famous in Birmingham England.

We are back at PPLS after a day out in town. Going to catch the 8A bus to sparbrook to try the famous balti at Al Frasa. Sparbrook is known as the balti triangle. Bought our bus tickets to Bristol for 11pm tomorrow. Had another baguette at Gregg’s this time.. not as good as yesterdays.

Went on the Birmingham wheel.. a whooping £5 each. Still getting used to the pound and pence. Things seem to cheap here until u start to add 2 ½ times to the price of things.

Spend $15 pound on our dinner at Al Frasha. It was great.. the dish was big, the papadum was big. The naan was big. It was a great dinner. The area is a Indian/muslim area. The bus which we caught was full of African people.. prob English but of African origin.

Tan shin was quite worried at Sparbrooke. She said that everyone was looking at us. The restaurant was nice.. it has just opened when we walked in.. we were the first and even after we finished, we were the only ones there.

12/11/04

We are in Bristol finally. It still seems like we are living in a dream. We still can’t believe that we are in England, Bristol. Well I can’t, not sure about Tan Shin. We are finally here.. no more just looking at the map of Bristol. We are here.!!!! Sometimes we think we are in Melbourne.

Our trip to Bristol was an adventure. Praise God again that we were able to get here fine with all our bags. The buses only allow 2 luggage each but we had3 each. Also the bus was delayed by 45mins. Also during the trip, there was an accident on the highway and so we went on a detour to avoid the traffic. We didn’t mind the detour at all. We got to see Chetelnman??

The British countryside is so green. So different to what we were used to. Also, the country side is quite flat.

There is apparently going to be a cold night tonight with frost forecast. Tomorrow is going to be a beautiful sunny day .

We are currently living in a B&B called the “Gala guest house” in Fishponds, Bristol. The place is small. It is just a little room with a wash basin and a bed. Thank god for the pay TV. I will get to watch everton play Brimingham on tv tomorrow.. yippee.

We have to use the shared toilet. I don’t think we can live here for a long period of time. This accommodation is provided by Lloyds pharmacy for a month while we look for our own place. The good thing about this place is that it is 10 mins away to where Tan Shin will be working for a month.

Fishponds seems like a ok area. I think this would be considered an outer suburb but it is only 4 miles away from the city centre.

Can’t believe we have been sleeping quite early since coming to England. We are in bed by 9pm. We are still not used to the time the sun sets. It is unbelievable. I am sure we will get used to it.

The max temperature tomorrow should be around 9 degree because of the wind from the north.

Can’t wait to get our own place so we can finally unpack all our stuff and have our own bathroom and to be able to cook and have a phone and internet. Hmm

Sometime we think if we have made a mistake coming here by forsaking all our comforts in Brisbane.

We will also have to visit the launderette tomorrow to wash our clothing. We should also be visiting Bristol city and hopefully seeing what sort of places we can rent.

Bristol is smaller than Birmingham and definitely smaller than Brisbane. I think that even Birmingham is smaller than Brisbane. When u think about it, London is so much bigger than any other city in England. We should be visiting London on the 25/11/04 and we can see for ourselves what it is like.

Bristol is older than Birmingham.. the architecture is anyway. So far we haven’t seen many Chinese either in Birmingham or in Bristol.

15/11/04

Tan Shin starts work today. It was cold yesterday morning. Freezing. There are so many churches around the place. We had a walk around Clifton. We are most likely going to stay there. It is the expensive area in Bristol. You can really see a difference when u go there compared to where we currently live. The houses look different. There is also Bristol university at Clifton. It is a pretty place. The rent is around $600-$700 pound per month for 1 bed room apartment. Also over there the renter will have to pay all the bills like council taxes etc. it costs quite a bit too to start renting. You generally have to pay one month in advance and then also have to put in a deposit of 10% + one month rent.

You will also need references and also a guarantor someone when you don’t have a record like us. I can’t wait to get our own place so that we can cook, unpack all our baggages, get internet access etc. a phone so that I can buy a calling card to call Australia.

I am going to go to town today and want to access the internet. I miss the internet. It is so hard to get information about anything without the internet. I miss the wealth of information. Also we didn’t go to church yesterday as we couldn’t find a church. A church other than a traditional church or catholic church.

I will visit Bristol uni and see if there are flyers about churches etc. Bristol is a nice little place. The buses are quite efficient without having to wait long. I can see now why people complains about the traffic in Bristol. Personally I don’t think that the traffic is bad it is just that the roads here are small and there are a lot of cars. I guess it is due to the cheap cars.

Today is a long day. I visited the library which gave me 30 mins of free internet which is too short for anything. Went to the International student house at Bristol university. The person there was nice. We have decided to visit an evangelical church called woodland church this Sunday.

Tomorrow, the local papers have listing of places to let. Apparently it is cheaper and less hassle to find a place for rental via the papers rather than agents.

I have also visited a recruitment agency. Reed. The person at Reed gave me 6 other agency I should contact. I will be visiting them tomorrow. I don’t think I want to work so quickly. Maybe in the new year?

Another day passed by today.. spent most of it in the library.. turning out to be my favourite hang out. Went to Greggs for lunch today. Greggs is a bakery chain. They sells bread, sandwiches, pies, sausage rolls etc. they are the cheapest by far. They don’t have any sitting area and have only small shops. I think they stuff are baked at the shops. There are heaps of Greggs everywhere. Today’s lunch was only 1.17 pound which is cheap. Burger king’s meal is 3.99 pound. Standard restaurant meal is about 4 pound. These are lunch prices.

There is a channel here on pay TV which is dedicated to holidays. All they do is advertise holidays. Like 399 pound to somewhere for 7 days. It is quite tempting.

The roads here are small. I think I have said that before. Most of them are one lane each way. Most of the houses here don’t have car parks and ppl park on the road. I am quite tempted to get a place to stay at a newer building.

Haha.. I finally changed my setting to UK and I can use the £ symbol.

The weather here is great for taking photos as it is mostly cloudy here. They said that the best times to take photos is during sun rise or sun set as the midday sun is too harsh but that doesn’t apply here. I am still waiting for the Pentax DSLR camera to arrive before I buy any camera. They are offering a £100 cash-back on the Canon 300D. They are also offering £300 worth of free accessory if you buy the Nikon D70.

There are only 2 zones for the bus service here, compared that to Brisbane’s 5 zone and you know how small Bristol is. The bus systems here and Birmingham are similar in that they are mostly double decker and they uses long paper tickets. England is really old and traditional. There are still lots of little shops here and there aren’t many huge buildings and thus making the city wide.

I have enjoyed and have been walking a lot in England. The weather is perfect for walking.

I still feel like a tourist here. I can’t wait to go to church this Sunday and perhaps meet some people.

I am still coming to terms with the fact that the sky is dark at 4:30 and that A LOT of people smokes.

One thing. As we are living in a B&B, bed and breakfast, we are served breakfast every morning which is great but the problem is that it is the same thing every morning. Cereals and then 3 pieces of toasts with either tea or coffee. I have had the same breakfast since Saturday morning which is 4 mornings in a row. I do miss my half boiled egg with toast. I miss egg.

We had Chinese take away tonight.. thought we better eat something decent.. we ordered fried rice and chicken chow mien.. it is passable, the fried rice was full of oil and the two dishes costs us £8.20.

We are still sort off in the lookout for a Chinese shop, apparently there is one in Bristol. A pack of 10kg rice costs £10 in Birmingham so I think the prices should be around there or dearer here.

17/11/04

Had Greggs for lunch again today. Went to the Safeway to buy dinner for tonight. It is quite depressing going to the supermarket and not be able to buy a lot of normal food. The veges here are quite expensive in comparison to Australia. Aust is a good place, the food is great and cheap. Fresh food at least.

It is not easy starting out in a new place with people you don’t know. I guess I would never know this if we didn’t come on this trip. We had it easy in Brisbane. I guess I am enjoying this challenge.

18/11/04

Today is a wet day. So far we have been spared from rain. It drizzled the whole day. We saw our first property today and could be our last. The one bedroom property have been done up. It has a modern kitchen with all the necessary appliances. It also has all the furniture. The owner is nice and it is 5 mins to the main shop in a nice surburb.

We will pray tonight and then give the guy a call tomorrow morning. If it is still available then we will take it. He seems to like us as well. It will cost us £595 a month plus council tax which is around £80 and electricity. The unit has central hot water heating and it is included with the rent. It is good coz we don’t have to pay to heat the place up.

We went to a letting agency earlier in the day and normally u will have to pay for water as well. On top of that with a letting agency you will have to pay for a letting fee about £200 and one month advance rent plus 6 weeks deposit.

With the property we saw, the guy only needed £500 deposit and also the unit is available very soon. Well the unit is unoccupied at the moment. We can’t wait to move out from this guest house. The one bedroom in the unit is bigger than the room we are in now!!!

The unit has separate kitchen, lounge, bathroom and bedroom. They are all of a good size. The important thing is that the lounge is big enough to have people sleep there when/if we have people around.

The kitchen has a washing/dryer machine. Electric hobs with oven. Microwave and a refrigerator and it is of a decent size. The apartment has 6 units and it is a stand alone building meaning that there are heaps of windows. I was shocked when he opened the door to the apartment. The first impression was good and we were impressed by the size of the bed room.

Apparently tonight is going to be a very cold night. Especially north and middle England. We are glad that we are in the South where it is not as cold. I think it will be 0 degree in Birmingham tonight. It will be about 3 here. Tomorrow is suppose to be a beautiful sunny day but the sun here seems to have no effect. It is normally colder here when it is a cloudless day.

Finally a second blog - snow and Bath

2004-12-20T13:15:00.000Z

Time does fly by quickly. We have been in England now for 1 month and a bit and Christmas is just around the corner. We are starting to get used to the weather here althought i didn't mind it that much in the beginning. It is just that when it is really cold, you wish you had thicker or worn more layers.

We have been to Bath and the city is beautiful. It took us about 45 mins on the bus. We visited the Roman bath and althought it costs us £9 each it was worth it. The admission price included a device which has built in commentary of the different areas and artifacts on display. It was entertaining and informative.

Because we only made it to Bath around midday, we were restricted on where we could visit. We choose the Roman and a free guided walk tour of the city. It was brilliant, because if we were to walk around ourself, we wouldn't learn alot about the surrounding. The tour is hosted by retired citizens of bath. It is similar to the tours we had in the War memorial and old parliment house in Canberra. Suprisingly, on the tour, all the visitors were Australians. There were about 10 of us.

It was a cold day that day and perfect for walking. The tour lasted about 2 hours which took us to about 4pm where we went on to catch the bus back to Bristol.

I will upload some of the bath and bristol photos to our website very soon.

Yesterday morning. We were walking down to the city to watch "the Incredible" and to visit the "slow food market". After walking a few paces we noticed that there are white things covering cars along the street. At first we didn't know what it was, it is snow or frost? Then we touched it and by its texture and it's whitness, it is snow. It was amazing, SNOW. even though this is not the first time i have seen snow, this is the first time i have seen snow on ground level, not having to go up some mountain. It was incredible, the thought of snow falling down while we were sleeping. I don't want to lose this sense of awe.. also when we walk anywhere, i always like to look at the buildings. This place is beautiful. The buildings.

A few days ago, the world highest road brigde in France was opened and it is absolutely stunning, imagine driving your car on the bridge. I am suprised sometime why I didn't continue with my civil engineering study.

You know what would be more wonderful. Snow falling from the sky, that i have never seen.

While at the market, the guy who sells fish told us that it would be nice to take a drive down to exmoor as you can see snow covering the fields. i could just imagine it. it was a beautiful day too with the Sun shinning. Makes me want to get a car sooner and a better camera.

Lastly, the incredibles was great. funny and entertaining and yet has some truths in it. Time for lunch

My first blog

2004-12-08T14:26:00.000Z

I guess this is my first blog. Sitting here starring at the monitor in a new city. I think I will paste some of what I wrote about my experinces in England later on.