11-08-2008 Monday

London Time: 12.50pm

Here I am sitting at St Pancras Station, Starbucks with my dad. Waiting for our 3.30pm train to... PARIS!

The past 2 days here in London have been pretty good apart from the lousy weather... Been raining for the past 2 days during most of the day.. But yeap.

Anyways my plan here was to live on a budget, by eating sandwiches and stuff. But my dad wants to have proper meals. So we end up spending around 15 pounds per meal instead. haha. Ah well I guess I'll indulge him cause its his first time here in Europe. Might as well enjoy it. Its also my first time in Europe anyways.

I'm GONNA BE BROKE!!!!!!

Ah well.

Oh and tomorrow's my birthday! Whoooooooo.

Alright don't know when I'll update again, but yeap. Haven't got pics from the past 2 days to post up yet...

08-08-2008

London Time: 5.20pm.

This is the last day for me in Rolls-Royce and Derby... 3 and half months just flew by...

I want to thank all the people I have worked with here in Rolls-Royce. For I had an amazing time and experience. I couldn't have had a better placement for my attachment. I don't know when will I see them again, but hopefully in the near future I'll be back!

Hopefully...

These are the amazing people I worked with during my attachment.


And tomorrow early in the morning its off to London...

And the start of my Eurotrip!!!!!!

4-08-2008 Monday

London Time: 7.00pm

Its my last week here in Derby. The last 5 days. And on Saturday morning, I'll be leaving for London! WHoooooooooooooooo.

I'll be picking my dad up from Heathrow Airport, then spend 2 nights in London.

On Monday, I'll be heading off to Paris by train.

And on Tuesday, it's my birthday! Which will be spent in Paris of course!

On Wednesday I'm off to Venice.

Come Friday, I'll be flying to Rome... Where I will spend 4 nights before returning to London.

And finally after another 2 nights in London, I'll be flying home.. Home sweet home.

Touch down in Singapore on 22 August, Friday! Approximately 5pm.

Looking forward to see you guys soon!

20-7-2008 Sunday

London Time: 2.00pm

Wow. Another week gone by.. And that means I'm only left with 3 more weeks of work. Then 2 weeks of holiday... And I'll be back on the 22 August! WHOOO.

So during most of my free time, I'm doing my Final Report, my travel plan for my Eurotrip. And I'm proud to say... I'm left with Venice and Rome to plan! And I'm halfway through my Final Report!

Hopefully I can be done with them soon.

Alright, so the last weekend I went to the Derby Beer Festival. It was... Crap. The entry cost 6 pounds and the beers tasted really bad. Had 4 half pints of beer then caught the last bus home. So yeap. Didn't get pissed that night..

















Then on Tuesday night, Andreas invited us over to his place for dinner. I had to use Google Maps to look for his place. Wasn't that hard to find cause it was near the main road towards the City Centre. But yeap. It was good cause he prepared Langsane(not sure if that's how you spell it, but yep). It was yummy. There was booze as well. Yay.


That's the entrance of his place.


Toby chopping up some ingredients. Andreas in the background.


The guy in the shirt is DeePak, from Trinidad!


Chilling out and having a beer while waiting for dinner to be ready in the oven...


There's Robert...








Tucking in into a plate of mouthwatering food. Quality food.





Sara got here just in time! well robert went to pick her up from work.


Last shot of the day.

Then on Friday night its party night! It was Robert's last night before he returns to Germany. And its probably the last time I'm ever gonna see him unless he comes down to Singapore or something. But he's a good lad.

We started off at the Fat Cat and a bunch of Robert's friends that I didn't came after that as well. But there were a few familiar faces that I've seen before on the other nights out.

Didn't take many pics though... But Robert took loads on his camera. Hopefully will be able to get them from him soon.


At the Fat Cat...

Next we headed off to a place called the Walkabout. Didn't really like that place cause the music were really crappy. But anyways, the drinks there cost only 2 pounds each. That's dead cheap.


On the way to the Walkabout.


In the Walkabout.

After that we went over to the Revolution. Had a couple of beers there but didn't do much cause the dance floor on the second level was closed.

So we headed across the street to Coyote Wild. The first level was all pop music and stuff and there was bar top dancing! But. The girls didn't look too good. Damn. haha.



Then we went upstairs where there was R&B and Hip Hop! WHOO. That's my kinda music.


When it got to around 2am, we decided that it was time to leave...




The guy in the left was proper drunk. haha.

Funny thing is I didn't really get tipsy at all that night. Not drunk at all.

12-7-2008 Saturday

London Time: 3.00pm.

I went to the city center today to pick up some maps and stuff for my Eurotrip and... I got stalked. By 2 Asian girls. Haha.

So I was walking out of Westfield and planning to head to a retail outlet nearby called NEXT. I can sorta remember walking past 2 asian girls along the way. They were... Young? I'd say around 15 or 16 years old? I didn't really notice them anyways but yea. In a place where most of the people there are Caucasians. Its hard not to notice.

So I got into NEXT and into the Men's section to look at some clothes and stuff. Oh yea. The ladies stuff are quite cheap. You can get a tank top for 3 pounds? It may be around the same price in Singapore if you do a direct conversion? But its cheap considering the cost of living here. And lots of other cheap stuff as well. But the men's stuff are slightly more expensive. So yeaps.

So I was looking at the stuff and in came the 2 girls. I didn't really bother about them at first? But then they came over to the men's section and were hovering about.. And one of the girls started taking her phone out and aimed the camera at me. This was when I kinda thought they were stalking me.

So after looking at the stuff, I went out and went into another shop across the street and looked at the stuff there. And what do ya know. The same 2 girls came in the shop.
Then I walked around more and got out of the shop and headed for T.K Max.

As I went up the escalator to the third level, the girls stopped at the first level and waited at entrance for god knows what. But yeap. I got up to the men's department at the third level and looked at some stuff. I tried out some caps and decided to get one which cost 5 pounds. Then I went to the jacket section and found this really cool leather jacket. Its for 40 pounds and it fits pretty good. Was thinking about getting it... But yeap. The sleeves were kinda long. But yeap. If I can't find a nice leather jacket soon I'll probably go back another day and get it.

So after awhile... the girls came up! Haha. So i went to queue to pay for the cap. They got over to the other side of the cashier and were looking over all the time while I was queuing. Ah.

As I was paying for my stuff, the girls went down the escalator and I thought this was the last time I'm gonna see them. But noooooo. I went down the escalator and there they were. One girl with her hand phone out again and aiming the camera at me. Ignoring them, I went down and out of T.K Max. It was getting late and I was really hungry so I decided that it was time to go home... SO I went to queue at the bus stop and when I turned around, the girls were standing in a distance looking over.

And finally when I got on the bus, they turned and left.

Oh and by the way, I really like the cap I bought. haha. Think I'll get the jacket next time.

8-07-2008 Tuesday

London Time: 8.00pm

***Sorry for the belated post. My internet is pretty crap cause more people have moved in next door. And we're sharing the same router. So yeap. Had problems loading up the photos. But they are finally here!***

And just like that, Sunday's here again. Which means I've left with 5 more weeks of work, and 7 more weeks before I return home! Its so near yet so far... ;)

So... Yesterday I took a trip around London, and... At the end of the day, I'd say its a really worthwhile visit. And I can't wait to explore more of it during my Eurotrip!

Its gonna be a really long post for a really long day! So.. Bear with me!

Alright, first of all, I had get up at around 5.50am in the morning cause the taxi is arriving at 6.20am and the train leaves at 6.50am. So I hurriedly packed some biscuits into a bag and packed some stuff and was ready to go!

The taxi costs 5 pounds to get to the Train station and when we got there, we used the ticket machine to obtain our tickets. Basically all you had to do was to insert in the debit card that was used to book the tickets online and key in the confirmation number, and you get the tickets!

This is Derby East Midlands Train Station!



We got on the train and it left promptly at 6.50am. The weather was looking to be a typical British day of rain, rain, and more rain. It wasn't looking good. The train journey took us 1 and half hours to reach London, so during the journey, I managed to catch some snooze time...

Train arriving at the Derby East Midlands Train Station.


We finally got to London St Pancras at around 8.30am and the weather still wasn't looking to be letting up at all. From St Pancras, we walked on towards the St Pancras, Kings Cross Underground Station. On the way there, we stopped by the ticket booths to get our day pass for the Underground. It was... PACKED. The queues were crazily long and there were people everywhere.( FYI. It was going to be like this for the whole day).

Getting off at London St Pancras.


Walking to the Underground...


So when it was our turn at the ticket counter, we found out that we were only able to get passes for certain zones of the Underground. But I was told before that if we were mainly going to the tourist places, the passes for Zone 1 and 2 were sufficient. The pass cost us 5.30 pounds each. We grabbed a free map of the Underground as well.

Crazy queues at the ticket booths.


For those of you who are confused, basically the London Underground is divided into Zones. the middle section, central London as they would call it is Zone 1. Around that was Zone 2. Surrounding Zone 2 was Zone 3. And so on until you reach Zone 6. And if you've seen the Underground Train Map. You'd know how bloody confusing everything is. But if you know where you are, and where you'd wanna go, then your fine...

So after getting our tickets, we planned to go to the British Museum first. This was located at Holborn Underground Station. So we got on the Northern Line and took down to Bank Underground Station, we then switched to the Central Line and finally arrived at Holborn station around 20 minutes later. Thank god the maps were clear.

So we got off at Holborn station and followed to the exit where the signs to the British Museum was pointed at. However, once we were out of the Underground, we were lost. There were no signs as to where the museum was at. And, sadly, we didn't have a street map of London at that time.

So we walked around and asked people where the place was, and after around 15 minutes, we managed to reach the British Museum.

Walking around looking quite lost...


One of the famous London Telephone booths. ( These are located almost everywhere)


I was really impressed.

The museum is... HUGE... and well. Magnificent. It looked amazing just on the outside.





And this is a picture of me!


Oh and I wanted to take pictures with my digital Cam. But I found out that my memory stick was still at home. Damn it. Haha. Thankfully Donato had his camera along. So I used his camera for the day. He had his video cam as well. So yeap. Anyways the photos taken before were all using my mobile phone camera.

The pictures that are posted from now on are taken using his camera and only until alter on when the cam memory was running low that I took somemore pictures with my camera.



So we got in the museum and well. It was another sight to behold. On the inside, it was massive as well. It was spacious, with a couple of displays around in the main area. We got a map from the information counter and started planning out route. We would first visit the Egyptian artifacts, then the Greek, then the Egyptian mummies. There was Asian history, African history stuff as well. But we were not really interested in them, so we decided not to.

Its incredibly large.




Some statues on display. This apparently is a Roman official.



So we got to the Egyptian section of the museum. It was spectacular. Its just amazing, to see artifacts on display..

Entrance to the Egyptian section.


Crowds around the Rosetta Stone...


More Egyptian stuff..






Some large pharaoh's arm. Really LARGE.



And this is the Assyrian section. Its apparently the age before the Egyptians.




One of the amazing Lion Statue.

And there are inscriptions on it... Cool eh?



Back to the Egyptian Stuff..








This is a false gate. Where the ancestors from the dead pass through to take the offerings.. If I remember correctly..



Baboon!








An empty coffin...





This is an ancient Egyptian Ritual Bathtub. LOL.





Ahh.. the Rosetta Stone. Well for those of you guys who don't know what it is. Its basically a stone that has the 3 ancient languages written on them. Its the same text in 3 different languages. It has helped archeologist's decipher loads of scripts and texts.









After the Egyptian stuff, we moved on to the Greek stuff... It was located in another room nearby, so we didn't really have to walk alot.

The Goddess Aphrodite. Or commonly known as the Goddess of Love.


And this one states that the Goddess Aphrodite is caught off guarded when taking a bath.. LOL. (Notice the water jug at her feet)



God of Wine. Dionysus.



The head of Hermes I think...


And this is the temple of the Nymphs. Daughters of the Lord of the Sea. Poseidon. They are all headless though. I don't know why...








And this is the Pantheon. The ruins of the temple of Athena in the city Athens.











A model of the Pantheon.



These are some more random Greek artifacts.








And as we were moving from the Greek stuff to the Egyptian Mummies upstairs, we passed some African stuff..




Mummies!!!!!





A preserved feet!



Some other Egyptian stuff..



This is an Egyptian Casket.



Another dead preserved person.



Cool eh?








Outside the second level. Amazing place isn't it. The British Museum.



And after getting some souvenirs, we went out!
The pillars of the British Museum.






The view outside..


Next up we planned to go to Leicester Square Train Station. Its also where China Town is! Well I wanted to go and get some sweets for the guys back at work. So yeaps. Thankfully the weather was looking to be really good. Bright and sunny. Yay!






So we got back to the Underground at Holborn. And we got took it down to Leicester Station. Thankfully, it was a straight trip without any changing of the lines. So yeap. Managed to get Leicester Station in around 15 minutes. From there, we walked out and I asked around for directions to China Town! Managed to get there a few minutes later. Its not really far from the station anyway. So I went to some shops and got some sweets.

Walking towards Chinatown.


In one of the shops..


More of Chinatown.




So after getting some sweets, we walked back to the station to get to the Science Museum at South Kingston's.

Walking along the streets towards the station..




So we took the Underground to South Kingston. And it was a pretty long walk underground that linked directly to the Science Museum.




And that's the Science Museum!



This is the view outside the Science Museum..



And this is at the entrance inside the Science Museum.



When we got in, our bags had to be searched by security. Well. The Science museum I would say is more like the science center in Singapore. With alot of interactive stuff . Its more for kids I would say. But its still a pretty nice visit!

These are the large machines and one of the earliest steam engines.






And this one was actually moving. A really huge wheel spinning by the power of steam.




Some other displays about Plastics...





And this one was about the communications technologies..




There were other stuff in the Museum as well, with loads of interactive stuff for the kids and adults alike. But didn't really take pictures cause the camera was running out of memory. haha.

In the Aerospace section. The lighting here was really bad. But the planes there were awesome.














When it got to around 6pm, the museum was closing, so we decided to head out. I was planning to go to Victoria Train Station next cause the hotel that I would be staying at was around that area and I needed to ask if I could leave my luggage there while I traveled around Europe and claim it back when I come back. So we proceeded to Victoria Train Station. Oh and I managed to buy a map of Central London for 2 pounds at the Science Museum.

London Underground


Alrights didn't really take any pictures during this part of our trip. We arrived at Victoria Train Station and got pretty much lost finding the hotel. Cause I didn't have the address. So I called up certain people I know and Andrew Newton told me to dial 118118. It was like a call search thing. So I dialed it and asked the operator to give me the address of the EasyHotel. They gave me a text of the address with the telephone number after that. And after asking around and wondering around for abit I found the place.

It was quite a tiny place I would say. Too bad I don't have any pictures now. But you guys will get to see it when I actually stay there the next time. So when I got there, there were 2 people smoking outside, and apparently one of them was a staff at the hotel. He asked me if I was checking in, and I told him about my situation. He told me the most they could hold the luggage was for one or 2 days. So I asked him if there was any other way I could leave my luggage. The other person told me that at Victoria Station, they had a service where travelers could leave their luggage there and pick them up later. And they could be left there for as long as we want. I'm not sure if the cost was 6.80 pounds per day or 6.80 pounds for as long as you'd like. So yeaps. I'll have to check that out if I can. But I don't really have a choice cause I can't really travel with my huge luggage around Europe.

After that was done, we went to Victoria Place, which was like a shopping centre beside the Train Station. We went in and most of the shops were closed cause it was around 7.30pm. We went to MacDonald's and had a meal there. By the way, it costs around 4 pounds for a meal. At Macs, I think there was a Singaporean family there cause I could recognize the Singaporean accents. It was really amazing for me cause I haven't seen another Singaporean for the past 12 weeks. I know I sound a little crazy but yea. It felt a little closer to home. Ah well. So we decided that the next place to go was Buckingham Palace. Wow whee.

Thankfully it was within walking distance and after walking for around 10 minutes we reached.

Walking to Buckingham.




They actually have these signs on the road everywhere telling you where to look for the traffic.


Buckingham Palace. Doesn't look as grand as I thought it would be.





However, the area outside the palace was amazing. A really wide open area with the monument in the middle. There were quite alot of people there, just chilling out and stuff. It was a really really nice place.

Lovely...





So after that we decided to walk to Trafalgar Square. It was around a 15 minute walk and it was pretty far. But the sights walking there were priceless.

There was a bunch of police officers patrolling the place... On horses!


And this statue is a dedication to the marines.


And this is amazing. Its the Admiralty Arch. Looks really grand. Just a fantastic view...




After walking for abit more Trafalgar Square was in sight.



A view around the Square.





And looks like I was out of luck. Just a little late. Cause they apparently had a concert there.



And it was just outside the National Gallery. The large building at the back is the National Gallery. Amazing...


There's the stage..




And apparently they are all watching some movie on a large screen...


Then I realized... It was... A GAY PRIDE PARADE PARTY. LOL.





So after hanging around there for abit, we went up towards the National Gallery.



Then after that we decided to proceed towards Piccadilly Circus. Its one of the shopping districts here in London. And well the sights were really... Amazing. I don't know. Probably its just cause it was getting dark. The atmosphere was just too good.



After walking around for abit more, we went back to the Underground and took the train back to St Pancras. And took the train home.

The train left at 9.25pm.

Reached Derby at around 11.10pm? And took a taxi home and got home and... Went to Zzzzz.. Walked for around 12 hours that day. Amazing.

I guess the only thing I hate about London is the crowd.