My London Life

After all, my blog towards London started a bit late, a month after I touched down in London Heathrow Airport. Anyway, I try my best to write down my closest feeling here.

London, a city that takes me 13 hours of flight to reach. Be frank, first 2 days I had bad jet lag, which had been quite painful passed through. I am lucky that I have a very nice friend, a going-to-be doctor. He helps a lot for my accommodation, culture shock, making friends... he really gave me a good kick start in London. I owe you a lot, bro!!!

Well, I have made some good friends in London. Thanks a lot for all the helps and blesses, from friends in Dawson Hall and cari.com forum. You all make my life great in London Thanks :)

London is a nice city, with good transportation facility. The tube here is well developed. I feel it is very convenient in London. Compare to Kuala Lumpur, which barely able to survive without a car. Any how, you will need to walk a lot in London, to catch up a bus or tram. It might make you healthier :P With Oyster card, you can travel around the London, with the automatic maximum day travel capping calculation. What i mean here is, if your travel is more than one day travel charge, the machine will automatic charge only the one day travel fare, instead of the sum. Quite smart. One more credit for transportation in London, you can check out your trip detail from http://www.tfl.gov.uk/, which provide you different travel options and direction for the destination you choose. That's so much convenient ever!

Buildings here are so interesting. There are various kind of designs across the whole city. Some are exotic, some are modern, some looks high tech and so on. Online sales is popular here. You almost can buy anything from the web, including grocery from Tesco, but with little charges. Besides, you will find out a lot of online discount, voucher code, hot deal and so on to make it a great deal. Well, 10% discount make a big difference! (if converted to RM... lol)

People here most of the time take sandwiches for lunch. Pret-A-Manger are every where in London, it is nice and delicious also, with 3 pounds, it is quite filling. Dining out will cost you around 10 pounds. The best way is cook yourself, which might cost you only 20 pounds a week!

After all, the accommodation rental in London is sky high. with 100 pounds per week, I can rent a banglo in Malaysia, but I only can get a small single room here. Some properties, you might need to pay the council tax for the owner as well, which overall state the major expenses of you life in London.

My First Tooth Filling - 26 Jan 2008

Today is a memorable day, as I have my first tooth filling in my life, at 5.15pm, Penang. I never have my teeth being scaled, clean and filled, but not this week. My teeth are not that strong after all... lol...

Last Wednesday I went for scaling and cleaning. Dentist told me that I have 2 teeth that suffered cavities and i need filling. Well, I can tell that the dentist is charging expensively. No doubt that they are using a very modern device, that able to show you tooth photo before and after.

Well, after clarification with HR department, it should be covered by our company issurance for the charging on filling. Hence, I decided to have the filling. It is tooth color filling, hence it will not be obvious.

Now the 2 teeth are filled. Although it is tooth color, the 2 teeth are a bit different, because others appear to be a little brownish... anyway, chinese traditional, have everything fixed before the Chinese New Year. So there should be a fix... XD

Preparation for Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is approaching. Everyone is busy preparing for new year stuff, like new cloths, decoration, cookies order, cleaning and fixing. So do I. I used up 2 days to totally clean up my room. Remarkable... lol...

Well, my room is full of dust as my many things are remain untouched except simple floor sweeping is carried out weekly (*occasionally, XD). So I had to pack up all my stuff, moved it to living room, before I started my total cleaning (wipe windows, fan, clear the spider net, sweep and mop floor, it was tiresome and the dirt was reaching unacceptable level... -_-||| ).

At last, I have a whole new room. I reorganized all my stuff, clothes, documents... Now I realise that I have quite a number of new clothes (probably my mum bought it and leave it without my notice =D). So this year, I didn't go for any shopping on clothes. There should be enough.

Amazingly I had fixed my laptop lid. Although it is not that nice looking now, it at least allow me to fold it. After clean the whole room, I had plenty of time to enjoy the freshness of my room. In the mean time, my gut feeling pushed me to take an action on my laptop.It is fixed now, although it still has a crack on the lid (I need a superglue that I am azy enough to get it from shop... -_-)

There are something that still unable to be fixed. Perhaps, I don't have the intention to fix. My car door, another problem. However, it is too hot outside there to stop my mind from repairing it myself. I rather let it remain silence, as I still can live with the problem along. If I have a chance, perhaps I will fix it by my own, else I will wait until my car go for next service XD...

Now with everything fixed and clean in my room, it comfort me a lot. Toast for Chinese New Year~!!!

Altera Bowling Tournament - 3 Nov 2007

This is one of my company yearly sport event. Previously I am one of the committee for badminton tournament, and suppose I will be the committee for this event as well. However, in the end, company cutting cost caused the budget for the event scale down a bit. Hence I have nothing to in charge for, and became one of the participants.

Well, I not familiar with bowling. In average, I think I only play it maximum twice a year. Sport events can help to stimulate the release of epinephrine, a hormone that makes you feel happy and excited. It also increases the body’s production of endorphins which create a sense of well-being. It sounds great :D

There were a lot of people participating in the event, roughly 250 people. As expected, I scored extremely low. First game I scored 80, then 85, last game is the best 128! Some how, I had strike for few times. Unbelievable…

There was another unbelievable thing also. I had won a lucky draw, a hamper. Seems like my luck is coming back to me :D Anyway, the hamper is not that interesting after all. A lot of cheap stuff there, especially there are 5 packs of Mee Maggie -_-

Compare to last time, with food provided, this year budget is so tight… anyway, I still enjoy a lot, kind of a break :)

Bad days...

Today morning, I was having a bad hang over. I didn't drink much, but i drunk and felt for throwing up. I thought everything will be fine after a night, but then it doesn't. Worse thing, some how i broke the water pipe in the morning. I had to turn off the main supply to stop the water flooding my house.

Bad luck keep coming into my life. I spent the whole day in my room for waiting plumber to come to my house. I skipped lunch and breakfast and bath. It cost me 100 bucks for the fix and new replacemet.

I nearly collaspe for the first time. Extremely sad and heartache... now it already turn to an end for me.

There are more things I need to send for a fix and replacement. I need to repair car door lock, replace my laptop lip, replace my pda sylus... hopefully nothing will be broken again. Life needs to go on...

Penang Turf Club

Penang Turf Club established on 1864, which is 143 years of history until today. There is a plan to move the club from island to main land of Malaysia. It will become an historical landmark for Penang Island.

There was a feeling that want go out from house to have some fresh air and find some activities. Penang Turf Club will be a nice place to visit, as it might varnish from island, or may be I no longer have chance to visit after this year. So, I decided to go with my housemates on 21 October 2007.

There is a bit different from what I expect. Penang Turf Club is that big compound like what we see in HK series drama. It quite small, but there will be a lot of people I can tell you. There are 2 halls, main hall and common hall. We paid 6 bucks to enter the common hall, that without air-cond. Every bet cost 5 bucks. There is a choice for you to choose, buy a win or a place for a particular horse. Win mean the champion. Place mean the runner-up. There are different odd for different horse and of cause for different places, win and place. The odd is depend on the demand and will be shown at the electronic board inside the run course.

I thought I had my luck that day. Three of us, I entitled a free gift for entering the club - a Turf Club cap. So I had tried hard for my luck, too bad, I lost all my money, left a buck in my pocket :’( But lucky thing is I only bring less than 20 bucks there. Let me roughly brief about how the game goes. You will hear some ‘beep’ sound around 10 minutes before the race. Then jockeys will ride their horse to a base field, which is near to the crowd. Then those uncles will rush near them to see the horse if fit and in high moral. Well, it is very hard to observe anyway. If easy, I won’t lose all my money -_- After that the jockeys with ride their horse to start point and waiting for race. You can place your bet anytime before the race take place.

Horse race is quite amazing. It seriously will make human to addict. First of all, the horses look so different. You can feel their moral and high spirit on competing. Some how, it affects your emotion. They looked great. I love horses, dude! The body muscle, the shape, the high spirit behavior, totally bright up your life.

The excitement on waiting the horse to pass the end point as champion is so irresistible. If you are not addicted to gamble, horse race is a good sport to enjoy. But some how, it is too easy to lose your fortune. So, don’t try it if you can’t control yourself from addicted! So, I won’t enter again in near future :P