uk!!

whoa! uk!

it's freezing here. literally. ponds have frozen and ducks have flown to warmer places. london was busybusybusy! i managed to cram so many things into a few days. i feel proud of myself. :) haha. ok there were westminster abbey, buckingham palace with the changing of guards, ucl, imperial, oxford street, london eye, big ben, downing street, harrods etcetc. well i'm not done with london as yet, so i'll be going back again for another 3 days escapade in the heart of england. it's exciting really. people are not as friendly as i thought they would be: when we just arrived and took the tube to our hotel, we got lost and stopped in the passageway for a few seconds and got shouted at in return. wonderful welcome eh? hotel staff were also not up to par; the concierge were either sleepy or hostile. owell. at least the reception was friendly, guess it's all up to the individual. there were the exceptions definitely: this cool underground guard was so helpful when we were stranded at oxford circus tube station for awhile, he paged for bird over the intercom at the station! HAHA. paging for elizabeth cheong! and the silly girl didn't even know that her name was being broadcast to the whole station!

highlights of london so far would have to be the football game and les miserables. i went to watch the carling cup semifinals between arsenal and wigan at highbury!!! oh goshhh, it was amazing! :) live football at HIGHBURY! haha even though i'm not a fan of arsenal, it was such an experience! everytime the ball got anywhere near wigan'g goalmouth, the whole highbury got to their feet and you could hear the sounds of 30000 chairs moving! haha throughout the whole match, i would believe i stood up and sat down a total of 100 times or more! exercising together with the football players... oh and arsenal sent out their first team! whoa, i saw henry in his first carling cup match in 6 years! how cool is that? pires was there, so was van persie, campbell, hleb, bergkamp, the works! ahh the atmosphere was unbelievable! i love it to bits... i must watch another one if i come here to study. watch many more in fact, not just one more. hahaa. ok now for the bad news, the stupid underground line to my hotel had to breakdown on the night of my football game. so we were left stranded in the middle of nowhere and were forced to walk until the crowd dispersed in the freaking cold. imagine: 30000 people walking down the same street to the same end point, which was the next nearest tube station. all strolling at the same pace, not by will cos if u are slow, u get pushed by the people behind you. people were talking, shouting, walking, shoving. we got kinda desperate after awhile cos we were totally lost and heading to god-knows-where until we met this cool british guy, who teaches scubadiving in thailand no less, and he single-handedly led us to the correct bus-stop and directed us to where we wanted to go to. ahh, he was so nice to talk to too! was talking to him the whole time we were walking to the bus-stop, but mostly cos it was cold and i talk to keep warm. haha joking.

ok enough after football, oh wigan lost the game but "won" in the end, surprisingly. the silence after the last minute goal was scary. i half expected a scuffle to break out. ok now les miserable. yep my first london musical! it was wonderful although i had to keep asking mummy what was going on cos i couldn't really catch some of the words in the song. haha

now i'm in cambridge! pembroke is a gem!! i am now dead set on coming here next semester! met with herman, audry and a few other ex rj pple. they seem to all be settled in real well. it's exciting! ooh, everybody should come to cambridge cos it's really medieval and u get to be in awe of all the majestic castles and chapels and what-nots. it's a typical english university town, well it's the most authentic university medieval town, even compared to oxford which is a little more commercialised. so it most definitely has its charm. i love it here! i went for one of audry's medicine supervisions and they way she sprouted medical terms like they were the alphabet was well, not surprising (she's the president's scholar after all), but still scary! eee that means i'll have to work towards becoming a medical dicitonary before i even enrol for classes at cambridge! dieee. haha i'm going for one of churchill's formal dinners later tonight. dunno what i'll be wearing though, but apparantly i have to wear a gown of some sort. not prom dress kinda gown but university-type of graduation gown or something like that. hmm. i have to take a picture of that haha, should be fun!

alright i'm done for now. going to europe soon in the next few days. not before i head back to london first though. i'll update soon! (i hope)