… 4 o’clock in the afternoon…

sitting reluctantly in front of the computer
trying to work on the essays
reading the books
sipping the coffee
smoking the cigarette
life couldn’t be more interesting than that (yeah right!)

then suddenly
as I shift my attention towards the window
there I see the most beautiful scenery
the first snowfall in my life
distracting my mind from the essays
To hell with it!

I am going to enjoy this scenery
Sipping the coffee
Smoking the cigarette
Letting my mind wandering aimlessly through the window
Till the shadow of the night comes
And leave my mind alone in the dark

(Keele, Winter 2003) - ftd!

Going Around London

30 December 2002 – 3 January 2003

Going around London during holiday season is awesome! There are lots of interesting places to go and you’re gonna see people from all over the world there. Oxford Street is one of the interesting objects to visit, not only by tourists but also by Londoners, for most of the stores there offer a big sale.

There are many other beautiful places worth a visit, such as Westminster area, where you can see Big Ben, as one of the landmark of London, and the Parliamentary House, Westminster Abbey and Westminster Chatedral. At night, the illuminated Big Ben looks so magnificent from across the River Thames.

As we go along the river, we’re gonna see Tower Bridge standing marvellously beautiful with the lights at night. Nearby the bridge, there standing the mystified Tower of London, which was built around 900 years ago and had been functioned as a royal palace and fortress, prison and place of execution, arsenal and jewel house. Another place that worth a visit is Buckingham Palace, although it is quite boring there because the Queen is not in the palace during the holiday. Thus, we cannot see the changing-of-the-guard ceremony, not only because the Queen is not there, but also due to wet weather during winter.

St. Paul’s Cathedral is the next interesting tourist object. Like any other old buildings, St. Paul’s Chatedral looks so pretty from the outside and looks even prettier inside. The bad news is, there is an entrance fee for the Cathedral and visitors are not allowed to take pictures in the premises. By paying £5, we can go around the Cathedral and climb up stairs with 530 steps to the top of the Dome: 259 steps to the Whispering Gallery, another 199 from the Whispering to the Stone Gallery, and a further 152 from the Stone to the Golden Gallery. Believe me, it takes lots of energy to climb up those steps, exhausting! When you reach the Golden Gallery, you can see part of London from there. It’s not so beautiful to see it in daylight, but maybe it’ll look better when the night comes.

For shopping spree, Oxford Street and Piccadilly Circus are the best place to go, especially during the end-of-season sale. For people who love music, Virgin Megastore and Tower Records in the corner of Piccadilly Circus are like heaven. You can find any kind of songs from various genres there, even tanjidor! If you’re lucky, the CDs you are longing for might be on sale and the price is so much cheaper. Alternatively, you might find collectible box from your favourite musicians, and although it’s not on sale, you are willing to spend extra money for it ; )

Right next to Virgin Megastore, we can have a mug of nice coffee in Coffee Republic. And if it is your day, you might get free coffee, like we do! The cashier is a nice Malaysian student, and when he realises that we are Indonesian, he says that the coffee is on the house… super cool!

For a fancy shopping spree, Harrods is the right place! Everything is so expensive there, even when it’s already on sale. Nothing is interesting at Harrods, though. It’s just for the sake of curiosity we go there, nothing else! It is more interesting to go to Leicester Square and Covent Garden for shopping in neat stores and market, also for buying souvenirs.

If you’re not a sale-freak but still want to spend some money for specific souvenirs, try to go to Baker Street, where the Sherlock Holmes Museum located. It was the home of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. You have to pay to enter the museum, but it is free to see the souvenir shop there, the price is a bit more expensive, though! Next to the museum, there are two other interesting stores, i.e. Elvis Presley Store and London Beatles Store. The souvenirs are quite complete there.

On new year’s day, between 12.00-14.00, we can see New Year’s Day Parade from Westminster to Trafalgar Square. Even though they have this kind of parade almost every year and the rain falls during the parade, it doesn’t stop lots of people from going there to see the parade. It’s not a too-extravagant parade, though!

You don't fancy shopping spree or sightseeing? Maybe theatre would be interesting for you. London has lots of good theatrical and musical plays. Take “Stomp” at the Vaudeville Theatre and “The Phantom of the Opera” at Her Majesty’s Theatre for examples.

Spending £15 for an amusing performance like Stomp is not a waste of money. For about one and a half hour we're gonna see eight performers producing rhythmically sound from everyday objects such as broomsticks, toilet plungers, trash cans, basket balls, boots, plastic bags, and even matchboxes and zippo lighters. All the eight performers come in turn, sometimes they come all eight together, and the other time only the three or four, or even only one of them. There is no dialogue among them, they just keep making harmonious sounds from each gadget they use. Yet, they maintain a very good communication with the audiences through their body language, which is sometimes very comical. Stomp demonstrates unique musicality, movement and comedy, it is so entertaining that you will not regret to see it.

For the Phantom of the Opera, we need to pay £18.5 for the ticket. The show is so great and amazing. The stage might be small, but it is supported by a good lighting system and the setting is sophisticatedly combining the high-tech theatre and traditional techniques of the 19th century wooden stage. The setting of the stage keeps changing according to the story setting, one time it appears as the ‘stage of the opera’ then it smoothly changes into ‘dressing room’ and the other time it turns into a ‘beautiful lake’ illuminated by candles. The story itself is just like any other love stories. It is about a bizarre love triangle among the Phantom, Christine Daaé and Raoul. It seems like there is no moral of the story, just simply love story. But again, the stage setting, lightings, and good performers make the Phantom of the Opera worth to see. It is a great show!

In short, visiting London for holiday is one of the best choices we can make. There are plenty of interesting and nice places to visit, and it is easy to going around London. We can buy a one-day travelcard for £4.10, then we can freely hop on and hop off buses and tubes during that day. Just grab the maps of london and underground, then you'll be alright. The underground map looks complicated in the beginning, but actually it’s quite easy to understand and user-friendly. Nonetheless, just like any other big cities, we still can see homeless people all around the places, like in the corner of underground stations and on the streets. ftd!

Christmas in Keele

Keele is a very quiet place, especially during winter holiday when most of the students are going back home for Christmas. We realise that there’s no way we’re gonna feel the atmosphere of a merry Christmas in such a remote village like Keele, it’s waaaay beyond our wildest imagination. So, we just forget the idea about having Christmas experience in British way and decide to enjoy what we have.

So, in the morning, after having coffee, the three of us decide to have a quick walk and have breakfast afterwards, while the other two decide to stay. We walk to Keele Hall, take some pictures, see some cute ducks swimming in the pond, see people walking their dogs to the woods, then we plan to go back home. On our way back, we pass by the Chapel and decide to see what’s going on inside. Then, there we are, looking around the Chapel and reading stuffs on the notice board when suddenly the Chaplain lady comes to us and asks if we need some helps. As we answer that we’re just visiting and wondering what’s going on inside the Chapel, the Chaplain offers us to join her for Christmas dinner. Well, since we’re students, and students are not supposed to reject such a nice offer, we end up sitting in her car heading to her house for the dinner.

We help the lady to prepare the dinner, cooking the turkey, vegetables, pudding, and then arranging the table, until the other two students from Germany and The Isle of Man come. We really never expect to have a fancy Christmas dinner like this. First, we have the turkey with gravy, potatoes, carrots and brussel sprouts as the main course. Then, before having the desserts, we watch TV to see the Queen giving the Christmas speech. Later on, we have christmas pudding, which is so yummy! After cleaning the dining table, we move to the living room and have coffee. While enjoying the coffee, we watch Catherine, the Chaplain lady, opening her Christmas presents sent by her friends. The dinner is so lovely!

Since we have two friends waiting at home and don’t have any idea of where we are, we think that we’d better leave soon before they call the police. So, it's time for us to say goodbye and millions of thanks to Catherine for inviting us to the dinner. For foreign students, having a British christmas dinner is such a nice experience. And somehow the experience comes when we least expect it... we only plan to have a quick walk to the woods wearing only sweatshirt, pants and trainers, and we end up having a quite fancy Christmas dinner in a real house… miracle does happen to nice people like us! ; )

ftd!

A trip to Chester, 21 December 2002

A two-hour bus journey from Keele to Chester is worth to spend when we see beautiful scenery in Chester. We join a small group of Christmas tour around Chester, guided by an old lady dressed like Santa. The lady is quite talkative and likes to tell lots of stories. However, some of the stories are interesting, like the one about Santa Claus. Long time ago, the figure of Santa Claus was not an old white-beard guy dressed in red jacket with hood. The father of Christmas used to wear green jacket, then in Victorian period he worn a blue outfit. Why is Santa wearing red jacket nowadays? It was started by Coca-Cola that commercialised the image of the father of Christmas by using Santa in one of its commercials wearing a red outfit. Interesting story, eh?

Well, back to the trip around Chester. We depart from Chester Visitor Centre to Roman Amphitheatre. Long long time ago, Chester was occupied by Roman Empire. We can see it from the name, ‘Chester’. The ‘chester’ suffix in the name of places around the UK shows that it used to be occupied by the Roman. Let’s go on to the next place, which is the Eastgate Clock, one of the symbols of Chester. The clock is so beautiful, it looks even more beautiful at night.

The Eastgate Clock was built during the 1800 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. When we are standing on the bridge where the clock is located, we can see the bustle around the Eastgate Street, lovely!

The trip continues to Chester Cathedral, a marvellously beautiful old building. Can’t find other words to describe the beauty of the Cathedral, especially when the lights shimmering at night. It looks like a picture we can only see in fairy-tale books.

On our way back, we pass by a bar named ‘Marlbororough Arms’, nothing special about the bar actually. It was built around 1800s or 1900s (it’s just my rough guess, though!). What interesting about the bar is why it ended up with the name ‘Marlbororough’. Actually, it was supposed to be ‘Marlborough’, but the man who was hired to make the signboard was too drunk to spell it correctly. Surprisingly, that weird signboard invited even more customers to come because the name was so funny and more people were curious about it. So, the owner just decided to keep the name that way.

Our last stop is the Town Hall, it's not part of the tour, though. Nothing more to see in the Town Hall, however, the building itself is amazingly pretty.

All in all, we can see so many attractive sceneries in Chester, most of the buildings are soooo gorgeous. We only spend 4 hours there; so little time so many things to see. We only have a chance to see a small part of Chester, it’s beautiful, indeed! We’ll come back to explore some more interesting places there. If you love beautiful scenery, Chester is a must-visit place when you come to the UK. ftd!

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