Of Manchester

Finally settled down in Manchester, thank God. Having so many days of jet lagged, I find myself sleeping wierd times like sleeping by 9:30pm and waking at unearthly hours like 5:30am. Manchester has been pretty fun so far, albeit we have to do everything ourselves here. The weather is very nice (although we have been advised that the weather has been exceptionally nice), around 7-10 degrees with some wind. No raining cats and dogs for 7 days. Apparently it was raining for 7 days straight the day before we came and it only stopped hours before we came. okay, back to when we left singapore..

At the airport before we left, my wonderful parents who took care of almost everything preparing for this trip.

Us before boarding..

MY first 14 hour plane ride. it was really painful. Wenqi doesnt like plane rides too much. Thank God she slept for almost 10 hours. She ate ALOT on the plane. We even had to run for our transit flight. Funnily enough, we supposedly had 1hr45mins to get to the transit plane from Terminal 4 to Terminal 1. Although the plane landed about 10 mins late and we were supposed to take 4 minutes (according to the british airways customer service girl), we had to run for the transit plane. the timeline of running goes like this (bearing in mind that the gate closes at 6:15am):

5:10am - plane landed at heathrow

5:15am - got out of plane

5:30am - got on to the bus which leads us to terminal 1

5:35am - alighted from bus at terminal 1

5:40am - look for gate, walk and walk and walk, cannot find gate

5:50am - got lost, looked lost, ask for help at info counter, directed back to where we were initially

6:00am - finally found the right place at the passport control for passport stamp. But long queue

6:10am - our turn to get passport stamped. Immigration officer took REALLLY long, or so it seemed.

6:14am - passport stamped. Asked the immigration officer how far gate C5 was, he said "just a short walk"

6:15am - walked for a while, and realised that it was not short at all, so we ran, and ran and ran and reached the gate. My watch said 6:23am, but it was only 6:15 on the electronic clock, so yeah guess we made it.

The Black Cab, cab fare was exactly 20 pounds, thats 60 BUCKS! The other picture was of the girls I came with. Each of them had almost 40 KG of luggage, and what this picture doesnt do justice to was the fact that they couldnt handle their trolleys. HAHA. I had to help them push the trolleys because it was too heavy for them.

Us on the first day trying to find our way around, looking for food and banks and student services centre.. It was a busy day. Background of a really old catholic church, supposedly quite famous around this region. Where we are standing is on the street Oxford Road. University of Manchester is a City Campus, so we need to walk on the streets from building to building. Manchester has a very historical kind of setting, where many buildings are very old school and just refurbished.

One of my dinners so far. Lovely Soup with lettuce, mushroom, chicken drumsticks, fried onion.

Okay, I think thats about it so far in my first few days. So far so good, thank God. Will blog again soon i hope. blogging is quite tiring. Love you a lot parents. Take care back home!