Late Nights

27/12/04

everyone woke up late cos of the late night we had the night before from playing risk. ken and i decided not to go out today cos it was already rather late - something like 2pm by the time everyone was up, plus it was raining. we had some leftovers for lunch and started baking an apple pie at about 3pm. we split the work evenly - ken did the pastry while i worked on the filling and deco.. haha~ it turned out nicely except that the pastry was a little too crumbly possibly cos of excess butter. looks pretty good though. =) will upload the picture soon on my online photo album.. everyone had a huge slice of pie each with some vanilla ice cream, tasted really good. the pie proved too much for my small appetite and i skipped dinner. (anyway, it was already past 9 after we finished the pie). ken decided not to cook the stuffed pasta and had another slice of pie instead.

28/12/04

was up rather early today compared to the previous days - woke up at about 9. (everyone was still asleep as usual.. *gosh, these pple really sleep a lot* waking up at 12 is considered early to them..excuse that it's the holidays doesn't work for me=P) we cooked stuffed pasta and scottish sausages for lunch.. hmm..ken's cooking skills are starting to impress me... think he can cook more dishes than i can.. i'll have to buck up some time. oops, can't let him see this if not his ego will go sky high. haha~

sam aaron and his wife alethia came to pick chris, ken and i up to go shopping at braehead at 2pm. braehead was the largest shopping area in glasgow until glasgow ford opened a month ago. braehead doesn't have as many shops as takashimaya ngee ann city though it spans a 1mile radius. braehead's not the usual shopping place for students as it's rather far from the city centre and u need a car to get there. it's more for families and those who own cars i suppose. students usually shop in town, around buchanan. though glasgow ford's the largest shopping area now, according to sam aaron, it's near the area where a lot of NED's (non-educated delinquent) stay so ford's usually flooded with them. it's because of this and the fact that ford's much further from the city centre than braehead, braehead still remains the more popular of the 2 places. i managed to get some stuff from gapkids (hey.. i can fit the large sizes ok..=P). more than reasonable sale prices.. =)

we left braehead past 5 and asked sam aaron to drop us off in town. ken and i planned to catch a movie and intended to watch The Incredibles initially but chris had already watched it twice. though ken had already watched it once, he still highly recommended it and wanted to watch it a second time. for chris's benefit, we decided to watch national treasure instead. we headed to UGC cinema, the largest cineplex in the world. it houses 18 screens and each theatre is much bigger (seats more pple) than lido 1 (at shaw ciniplex). cool! since we had 2 hours to kill before the movie started, dinner was a good idea. after dinner, we checked out the glasgow royal concert hall before heading back to the cinema.

the movie was excellent but i shall aviod giving a movie review here. =) we took the subway and reached home at about 11pm.

The Bright Shining Star

first of all, sorry, all my blogs are like backdated but i've seriously got no time to log on!!
right.. just brief summaries for the past few days..

24/12/04
ken went grocery shopping in the morning to get some stuff that we needed at home as well as some ingredients for the cake that he was going to bake for the christmas dinner that night. victor and kerwei had invited all of us (his flatmates and i) to their place. ken made us lunch (rojan josh - some indian style stir fry chicken.. served with rice and naan bread). wanted to help but he kept chasing me out of the kitchen saying that he WAS able to cook a meal.. not that i doubted but i really did want to help and not just sit around ya know..we started baking his chocolate cinnamon cake (served with banana sauce) , to bring to the party, at about 4pm and finished in 2 1/2hours. turned out nicely=) most of the people there that night were medics or students on that same route. the party was terrific, food was great, played 'taboo' (which was absolutely hilarious) to end off the night.

25/12/04
christmas day.. it snowed beautifully. the roads and roof tops were covered with a thin layer of snow. nice.. i was still recovering from lunch and dinner the previous day so i didn't have any breakfast or lunch. we attended christmas service in the morning at st georges tron. typical christmas message but i enjoyed it anyway.. =) christmas here is so different compared to singapore. all the shops and restaurants are closed. everyone's either at church or at home celebrating and u hear the sounds of christmas carols resonating from churches. lovely. chris, ken and i vistied the botanic gardens in the afternoon with the intention of playing frisbee. chris was our guide since he'd already been there 50 times (or so he says) =Phehe.. first time there for ken and i. fabulous place, nice scenery, amazing greenhouse which housed species from almost all climatic types, walked to humpback brigde which overlooked kelvin river. we didn't get down to playing in the end (leaving chris rather disappointed) since it got dark quite early and we were more interested in exploring the gardens instead. started snowing again while we were there.. really pretty white christmas, the first one i've ever had!

Snowy Landscape

26/12/04
boxing day sales!! walked to town since the subway started operation only at 11am and we were out at 1030! had to get a pair of slacks but failed to find any to my liking. got a long bathrobe (6pounds) and a cap (50pence) instead.. nice prices ya? =) ken got a pair of new sneakers and chris got some new playstation games. headed to Pret for lunch, a place which serves the most amazing sandwiches. they have a whole selection of really amazing recipes. went to findlay memorial church (glasgow chinese christian church) after lunch. it was a combined service (english, chinese and cantonese) and there was a tea/dinner for everyone after that. in the evening sam aaron (ken's cell group leader) came over to our place for a game of risk. chris, baldwin(another one of ken's flatmates), siewkuan (baldwin's gf), ken, sam aaron and i were at it for hours.. i couldn't hold out till the last game ended so i left and went to bed at about 130am.

Faith

I finally arrived in glasgow, scotland at 1020hrs on the 23rd of dec. My flight from singapore to london's heathrow airport was delayed by one and a half hours. why?? - the plane which arrived from perth was making a stopover in singapore before continuing it's journey to london. it seems that a passenger bought a ticket to fly from perth to london but decided to stay in singapore instead. as all of u know, passengers on transit are not allowed to visit the stopover country (i.e. leave the transit lounge/enter the country). the airline did not know about his new plans until it was near departure time when they found out that he hadn't boarded the plane. since he was a transit passenger, his luggage was obviously still on the plane. for safety reasons (in case the luggage contained some kind of explosive material), his luggage had to be identified and removed before the plane could depart. cabin and ground crew found one of his bags within half and hour but had to search the cabin and apron 3 times before they finally found second bag, hence the cause of the delay.

The delay made me rather fidgety as i had to make a connecting flight in london. my connection time was only 2 1/2 hours and i had to travel from terminal 4 to 1 and clear immigration on top of that. well, fortunately i managed to do all these in 45minutes as the airline had made special arrangements for all transit passengers. so... i managed to make my flight to glasgow..=) haha, but there was more trouble.. my luggage had not been loaded on the plane as the previous flight was delayed and there was insufficient time to load the bags. ...to cut the long story short, my luggage was to arrive on the next BA flight from london. this meant that i had to wait 1 1/2 hours at the airport for the next plane to arrive. haha.. fortunately for me, i had the company of kenneth, who was there to pick me up at the airport.

after picking up my bags, we took the shuttle bus to buchanan bus station before taking the subway to his place. payment for the bus rides are done on the bus with cash and the bus conductor issues the tickets on the spot. for train rides, all passengers are required to buy tickets at the control station and it costs a pound seventy for unlimited rides throughout the day. the trains are small and cramp.. i miss the mrt trains and my ez link card!! =P it was a short walk to ken's place from the train station but the rain was treated with much displeasure especially since i didn't have an umbrella and i had packed my detachable hood in my luggage bag..

ken's flatmate chris had his friends eugene and shuying over for 3 days. nice people.. they were on a uk tour together after eugene finished his exchange programme in wales.. he's currently studying in UIUC (university of illinois, urbana champaign) yep.. wow. shuying's graduated from nus.. arts student. anyway, after i got my stuff settled and my bags cleaned dry from all that rain, all 4 of us, eugene, shuying, ken and i went out together on this mini day tour of glasgow for which ken was the guide. we had fried mars bars, visited the german market fair (which was ending that day), walked around town, visited ken's uni (uni of glasgow), including the uni chapel (which was really beautiful).. in fact, the whole campus looks majestic. all pictures will be uploaded soon on my online photoalbum - http://sg.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/icymistral/my_photos
will leave my photos to do the talking.. just to add that the day was absolutely fantastic and i can't wait to see more of glasgow!

Family