My journal of our first couple of weeks in the UK

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.