I'm finally flying home next Tuesday, and I will be spending a month back in KL for a month before coming back to London with my family for my graduation and a bit of travelling. After my graduation, I will send off my family as they return home, before I fly off to the US on my own.
In the past week, I've been finally getting round to actually preparing for my trip home, by thinking about the logistics of travelling to the airport as well as what to pack. The latter is somewhat complicated as I have to figure out what I want to bring home and what to leave here as part of my US-bound luggage.
These preparations have brought about a strange sort of melancholy in me. A friend thought I was stressed out from the packing, but that's not true as I'm leaving the brunt of it to the eve of my departure.
My schedule for the upcoming trips have been fixed months ago, but it wasn't till I actually started preparing for it that the feeling of being a wanderer emerged from somewhere deep in my consciousness. I've known for years that my ambition has probably uprooted me permanently from my homeland, that for the foreseeable future I still have no idea where this whirlwind will leave me. However, this usually gets buried under the routine of daily life, and there it stays until a reminder of my state of flux, like a major trip, rears its head.
This time, there is additional pathos, as I draw to a close my time as an undergraduate in UCL. I'm heading to Princeton in September, and while I have spent a summer in Baltimore before, actually living and doing my PhD in the US will be a different thing. Also, even though I know that I will be spending the next 4-5 years there, I really don't know where I'll end up after that.
The last time I had the same feeling, I was about to fly to London for the first time as a fresh undergraduate. Now, that chapter of my life is drawing to an end, and going back home will allow me to reflect on things, although I suspect that more questions would be raised than answered.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Monday, July 10, 2006
Apologies for the long hiatus since I've updated. There were quite a few reasons why I haven't found time to post (including laziness), but the main reasons were the World Cup, my music (I've been taking lessons for the past couple of months, so need to keep up with my practise) and exercise. Also, I've been spending some time thinking about the itinerary for my family's trip to Europe when they come over for my graduation in September, and booking the train/plane fares and hotels that they need, which took up quite a lot of my time bargain hunting.
The other couple of things which happened was my trip to Liverpool to visit my high school friend Cher Pheng ('Ah Pheng'), and his reciprocal visit to London in the past weekend. Since I have such a backlog of things to talk about, I'll start with the trip to Liverpool.
Liverpool is about 5 hours coach ride from London, but my trip didn't start off very auspiciously when the engine on the coach refused to start. By the time the coach started, we were close to 20 minutes behind schedule, and in addition there seemed to be shitloads of congestion on the highway right outside London. I'm generally a seasoned traveller, but one thing I absolutely hate is stop-and-go traffic, which makes me totally nauseated. When we finally got out to the open road, there were a couple of Polish women right behind me who didn't seem capable of shutting up, and they jabbered away for at least 3 hours nonstop at the expense of any sleep I could have gotten.
As we swung into Liverpool well over 1.5hrs late, I was greeted by the charming vista of boarded up houses with graffiti festooned over their walls. Ah Pheng was already there waiting for me, and he first brought me to his house to dump my stuff. The buildings along the way were generally seedy and depressing, and when we walked by a sex advice centre he commented on the number of schoolgirls he'd seen going in there. He also mentioned seeing an advert on a bus which said 'Discover the benefits of work!', aimed at the 40% of Liverpudlians (otherwise known as 'Scousers') who were living on welfare. As we turned the corner round to his house, we saw a guy scraping some powder of some sort to give a teenage girl, and Ah Pheng whispered 'Don't look!'. It also transpired that the estate he lives in is just next to the estate where Anthony Walker, a black teenager, was killed last year for having a white girl friend in a high profile murder case. I'm used to living in more salubrious surroundings, so this raised my eyebrows at the very least.
The next morning, we ran out of ideas of what to eat (he rarely eats out), so we ended up in a Chinese buffet, after which he brought me to the pierside at the River Mersey, where the famous Royal Liver building is:
(Left to right: Royal Liver Building, Cunard Building, Port of Liverpool Building.)
Those were nice buildings, but we have better in London (I'm becoming a good snobbish Londoner). We then went to the Maritime Museum near Albert Docks, which detailed the history of Liverpool as a merchant port. Indeed, it was the drying up of merchant shipping in the post-war period that led to Liverpool becoming a bit of a shithole.
The other thing that Liverpool is famous for, of course, is the Beatles. I'm not a Beatles fan in particular, but I did visit the 'Beatles Story', which is a rather tacky exhibition which offers us the chance to buy random Beatles merchandise afterwards., although I limited my foray to the non-paying sections. I did however visit the Cavern Club, where the Beatles got their first gig:
Liverpool did have a couple of nice churches and cathedrals though. In particular, I thought Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral was a fairly magnificent neo-Gothic building. These picture don't quite do justice to its looming presence at the top of a hill overlooking Liverpool:
Another interesting one is the Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral, which looks like something out of Lord of the Rings:
Finally, there was St. Luke's church. This church was bombed out during the 2nd World War, but they never did scrape together the funds to repair it, which I somehow find allegorical of Liverpool as a whole.
These pretty much sums up the tourist attractions offered by Liverpool, but the World Cup didn't stop while I was there, so we did catch a few matches while I was there. In particular, we were relieved that England beat Ecuador in the quarter finals, not because we supported England, but because as foreigners we might have been beaten up if England lost.
Yes, Liverpool is a haven for the species of young Briton known as the 'chav', dressed up in hoodie and bling, and usually found with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. We spent an afternoon sitting at the pierside while a bunch of young chavs who appeared to be no older than 14 were getting piss-drunk in public, and desecrating a couple of war memorials to dead sailors that were there.
As you probably guessed by now, I wasn't overly impressed by Liverpool, but I mostly enjoyed getting together with and old friend and catching up with old times, and I guess it was a chance to see another side of England as well.
The other couple of things which happened was my trip to Liverpool to visit my high school friend Cher Pheng ('Ah Pheng'), and his reciprocal visit to London in the past weekend. Since I have such a backlog of things to talk about, I'll start with the trip to Liverpool.
Liverpool is about 5 hours coach ride from London, but my trip didn't start off very auspiciously when the engine on the coach refused to start. By the time the coach started, we were close to 20 minutes behind schedule, and in addition there seemed to be shitloads of congestion on the highway right outside London. I'm generally a seasoned traveller, but one thing I absolutely hate is stop-and-go traffic, which makes me totally nauseated. When we finally got out to the open road, there were a couple of Polish women right behind me who didn't seem capable of shutting up, and they jabbered away for at least 3 hours nonstop at the expense of any sleep I could have gotten.
As we swung into Liverpool well over 1.5hrs late, I was greeted by the charming vista of boarded up houses with graffiti festooned over their walls. Ah Pheng was already there waiting for me, and he first brought me to his house to dump my stuff. The buildings along the way were generally seedy and depressing, and when we walked by a sex advice centre he commented on the number of schoolgirls he'd seen going in there. He also mentioned seeing an advert on a bus which said 'Discover the benefits of work!', aimed at the 40% of Liverpudlians (otherwise known as 'Scousers') who were living on welfare. As we turned the corner round to his house, we saw a guy scraping some powder of some sort to give a teenage girl, and Ah Pheng whispered 'Don't look!'. It also transpired that the estate he lives in is just next to the estate where Anthony Walker, a black teenager, was killed last year for having a white girl friend in a high profile murder case. I'm used to living in more salubrious surroundings, so this raised my eyebrows at the very least.
The next morning, we ran out of ideas of what to eat (he rarely eats out), so we ended up in a Chinese buffet, after which he brought me to the pierside at the River Mersey, where the famous Royal Liver building is:
(Left to right: Royal Liver Building, Cunard Building, Port of Liverpool Building.)
Those were nice buildings, but we have better in London (I'm becoming a good snobbish Londoner). We then went to the Maritime Museum near Albert Docks, which detailed the history of Liverpool as a merchant port. Indeed, it was the drying up of merchant shipping in the post-war period that led to Liverpool becoming a bit of a shithole.
The other thing that Liverpool is famous for, of course, is the Beatles. I'm not a Beatles fan in particular, but I did visit the 'Beatles Story', which is a rather tacky exhibition which offers us the chance to buy random Beatles merchandise afterwards., although I limited my foray to the non-paying sections. I did however visit the Cavern Club, where the Beatles got their first gig:
Liverpool did have a couple of nice churches and cathedrals though. In particular, I thought Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral was a fairly magnificent neo-Gothic building. These picture don't quite do justice to its looming presence at the top of a hill overlooking Liverpool:
Another interesting one is the Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral, which looks like something out of Lord of the Rings:
Finally, there was St. Luke's church. This church was bombed out during the 2nd World War, but they never did scrape together the funds to repair it, which I somehow find allegorical of Liverpool as a whole.
These pretty much sums up the tourist attractions offered by Liverpool, but the World Cup didn't stop while I was there, so we did catch a few matches while I was there. In particular, we were relieved that England beat Ecuador in the quarter finals, not because we supported England, but because as foreigners we might have been beaten up if England lost.
Yes, Liverpool is a haven for the species of young Briton known as the 'chav', dressed up in hoodie and bling, and usually found with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. We spent an afternoon sitting at the pierside while a bunch of young chavs who appeared to be no older than 14 were getting piss-drunk in public, and desecrating a couple of war memorials to dead sailors that were there.
As you probably guessed by now, I wasn't overly impressed by Liverpool, but I mostly enjoyed getting together with and old friend and catching up with old times, and I guess it was a chance to see another side of England as well.
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