London

Posting this from the very small hotel room opposite King's Cross station in London. (How small? The attached bathroom occupies half the total room area) Manage to squeeze in the essence of London in the past 2 days: Tower of London, Tower Bridge, South Bank, Westminster, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, West Ham United Football Club, British Museum, British Library, and also Sound of Music. Nothing much to say about these, since it is all familiar stuff to people. London is crowded, fast-paced, and untidy. Not a city that I would like to stay in.

Today is also the autumn equinox, which means that from tomorrow, the night will become longer than day. And I will be flying back tomorrow morning, and that will be the end of my stay in the UK. Almost time to close this blog.

Final night in York

So that's it! Tonight is my final night in York, in this dormitory, in this room. It will be my final night hearing the cows mooing, the ducks quacking, and the geese gawking. Yes, I will miss these animals. I don't think ever get a chance to stay so close to these animals again.

To sum up all my feelings: It has been great being a student. I have enjoyed my stay here; the studying, the scenery, the weather(well, the temperature, not the rain), the peace and quiet, the break from life . To all who made this possible, thank you!

I'll be heading down to London tomorrow, and then flying back on the A380 on Tuesday. I won't have regular access to the Internet from tomorrow till at least a week after I arrive, since I have to reapply to Singnet, and their website says it takes at least 4 working days to get the connection done. Even my residential phone line is acting dodgy; I was trying to test call just now and all it returns is a busy tone. Perhaps my mum displaced the phone's handset accidentally when she last visited my house, or perhaps Singtel disconnected the line because it has been inactive for so long. Anyway, if you are a friend reading this, calling me on my HP from next Wednesday is probably a surer way of getting me.

My feeling right now: I am more of looking forward to getting back to Singapore than London. Come to think of it, putting off visiting London till the end is probably not such a good idea, since all I want to do now is to get home as quickly as possible. And dragging heavy luggages around is not my idea of an enjoyable trip. But well, I'll have the chance to visit the British Museum, and fly in the biggest plane.

Anyway, see you soon.

Not Previously Seen - Part 3

Not previously seen, at least not for me. I have been trying to get my hands on one for a while now, but the Sony Reader is not sold in Singapore. As luck would have it, Sony launched it here this month, so I just had time to grab one before I go.

I have to do a little bit of hacking to get the Chinese display though, since the ones sold here does not support Chinese out-of-the-box. The hack resulted in me having to store all ebooks on the SD card instead of in the main memory, but that is just a minor issue.

To be honest, e-books still can't really replace the real ones. For one, it's still easier to read from real books, especially when you need to flip back and forth through the pages quickly. However, the reading screen, built out of e-ink technology, is a vast improvement on the eyes than LCD. But of course, real books can't beat it on convenience. Now I can have several tens, if not hundred, of thousand pages of reading material I can carry around and store on one small device. You are looking at a whole bookshelf there in the picture. Great space saver.

The beginning of the end

Well, well, well....to think that I have not been posting all summer, and the first when I return is one signalling the beginning of the end of my York days. I have just returned from printing out 2 copies of my 82 page dissertation, so I am all ready for the submission tomorrow morning. So, this is it. I'm left with one final presentation middle of next week, and then it's time to close shop.

Before looking towards the end, just a short recap of what happened this summer. As you may have guessed, I have been busy with my dissertation. In fact, the only other significant thing that I did during summer is to tour England and Wales with mother and sister for three weeks. That was nice, and if you had been observant, you would have noticed some of the photos taken during the trip on flickr. There are still more than half of the photos not yet uploaded.....shows how occupied I am with the dissertation...but anyway, will try to upload them over the next week. Moral of the story: Don't take so many photos next time! "Film" is free, but time is not!

Weather wise, it has been a miserable summer. It has been raining or cloudy most of the time, literally. We have the shortest number of sunlight hours and most rainfall for summer on record! It is just as well that I have to spend the summer huddle up in the lab doing the project.

The weather has now turned colder, between 10 - 20 C now, and the days have been rapidly getting shorter, with the sun now setting at the "normal" time of about 7 plus. Ya, just when I have finished all my work, now there is no more "after-office" sunshine to enjoy. Well, I supposed it doesn't matter, the weather has continued to be wet and cold, and anyway, it is time to get use to 12 hours daylight again.

The gooslings and ducklings have all grown up, and there are now no signs of any baby birds on campus. Now that the mating season is over, the birds are again a picture of peace and harmony (ok, except during feeding time when they fight each other for the bread crumbs you throw at them). In fact, they now like to group in big flocks (will post some photos that I have taken when I can find them). Maybe they are getting ready for the migration south, and are building up relationships for the long journey ahead.

Well, to think that next week this time, I will be all packed and ready to leave York. It makes me quite sad to think about it. Since my undergraduate days, I have always enjoyed being a student, and I never dreamt that I have this chance again at this age! But all good times must come to an end, and I think this is really really the last time I will ever be a full-time student (at least not in this lifetime)

That's life. Time to prepare myself to being a teacher again, ya, and all the stress and pressures that comes with it. It will be a good test of how well prepared I am for life during this one year's break from life.

There is one more week to go here, and I'll probably be able to get a few more postings in before leaving this place for good. Almost, but not quite time yet to say goodbye.

Summer

How time flies! All my lessons have ended, and I am now doing my dissertation. Well, in case you think that it is now time for me to sip lemonade on the beach, think again. My MSc project is to describe the Be File System as Formal Specifications. If you have forgotten what that is, here is a re-cap. So, time to start squeezing brain juice again.

The nice thing about summer is the long daylight hours. The photo on the right is taken at 9.15pm "at night". It's still so bright, isn't it? With the sun setting so late, there are still a few hours of daylight to enjoy after work. The only hiccup is that most shops here close at about 5.30pm, latest 6pm. It feels quite weird to walk around the city centre after work, when it is still so bright, but the shops are all closed and the street deserted.

The late sunset also makes it difficult for the Astro club's activities. We now meet at 10.30pm, but even at this hour, the sky is still too bright to see anything but the brightest stars. It is quite a quagmire actually. To see the stars, we need clear skies, but when the sky is clear, the sunlight is able to linger over the horizon even after it has set. Last week, we waited until 11.30pm, but still could not see much.

Most of the gooslings have grown up, and the campus is now quite crowded with geese..... and geese droppings. The geese are quite big birds, so their droppings are not in small piles either. Well, one can't always have the best of everything.

Of course it is not just the animals who take advantage of the warm weather and long sunlight hours. The other thing I like about summer are the wild flowers, which seems able to grow anywhere grass can. It makes me want to lie on the grass among the flowers, just what the locals like to do when the sun is shining.... until I remember the geese droppings :) Well, I'll make do with enjoying the flowers from afar.

For the duck lovers, here is something to cheer about after the events of The Sinister Duck. Some ducklings did manage to survive, and have now grown quite big. Their mother ducks have kept them well hidden, and they have emerged now that they are not so vulnerable. The picture below shows a mother duck casting a watchful eye over her almost grown up ducklings. These ducks are certainly better mothers than the ones I describe previously. Firstly, they are bigger in size, and presumably able to fight off marauding drakes. Also, the father drakes are around to help look after the young ones. Some of them are even brave enough to quack at me when I venture too close. Well done, ducks!

Don't mess around with Water Buffaloes

Ok, this is not York stuff, but I thought it would be good relief following the depressing post of The Sinister Duck.

A pride of lions thought they had easy veal when a buffalo couple with their calf walked straight into their path.

Or so they thought. The response from the buffaloes was impressive, and nothing short of dramatic.

No wonder buffaloes are respected by the human societies where they are found in.

The Sinister Duck

If you have been wondering about the progress of the ducklings since my last post, well, I have bad news. None of them have survived.

The reason is that there is actually a very sinister side to a duck's character. To be more precise, the species of duck commonly found here in the UK, and on the campus, is the mallard(and not the mandarin duck that I mistakenly wrote in my previous posts). In fact, the mallard is considered as an invasive species in many parts of the world. But the reason why the ducklings didn't survive has got to do with the mating behaviour of the mallard.

Firstly, most male ducks (proper term is drake, duck is the female term) will leave the (female) duck once the it has laid the eggs, so the drake doesn't help protect the ducklings. Then there is a gang of drakes here on campus which do not have any mates. So what do they do when they spot a duck? They will gang up and start chasing the duck continuously until she is exhausted. At which point, they will take turns to copulate (rape is the more appropriate word, really) with her.

In the process, the ducklings are separated from the duck. The cries of the lost ducklings attract other drakes, which promptly pick each up one by one, and submerge them underwater to drown them! It is really heart wrenching to watch! On top of that, according to the barber, the ducklings are also picked off by crows and magpies. Well, if it is any consolation, it is the thought that some of the ducklings will grow up to be like these drakes!

But of course it is not that bad for ducklings every where, otherwise mallards would not be so common here. When I visited Castle Howard, I saw many ducklings there growing up quite well and nice.

The gooslings, on the other hand, are growing up very well. Both father and mother geese take very good care of the gooslings, and would hiss and chase at you if you get too close to them. The first gooslings are almost grown up now. You would not have recognise them as the gooslings of two months back if not for the fact that they still call with a squeak instead of a squawk. See how much they have grown!








The youngs of the Swans, Canadian goose, Coot and Moor hens have also hatched. See my photo album for their pictures!

Ducklings!

I have been walking around the campus these few days, hoping to catch sight of more spring babies. And I was not disappointed. The mandarin mallard ducklings have hatched, and they are swimming around with their parents.

Their parents are cute enough, and the tiny ones are simply adorable. And they are tiny indeed, especially after I have seen the gooslings and the swan chicks(anyone knows if there is a word for this?). But though they are small, they swim and run very fast. So fast that my poor little camera could only snap blur images of them.

And they have to. In such a crowded environment where swans, geeses, moor hens, coots and ducks are jostling for limited nesting places, they can be chased and pecked to death anytime by another adult bird. Already this evening, a Canadian goose was chasing after a batch of them when they swam too close. Only the presence of a human, that is me :), prevented the goose from chasing them all the way up the bank.

Each mother duck has about 10 to 12 ducklings, and it is quite amusing to see so many of them swarming around the mother. 12 ducklings per clutch seems like a lot, until you consider the hostile environment they are in. Besides the nesting birds, there are also those weaker birds who have lost the fight for territory, and the victor's ducklings seems like a natural target to reduce the competitor's gene pool. The weather here is very fickle too. Today the temperature is 17C, but this weekend, we are expecting a below 5C cold spell. So I don't expect most of ducklings will survive beyond summer, otherwise there should be more ducks than what I am seeing here.

Lake District

Just came back from a three days visit to the Lake District. As its name suggest, the area has lots of lakes. The interesting thing is that the lakes all radiate out like the spokes of a wheel, with its centre at the highest point, Scafell.
View Larger Map

If you have ever visit New Zealand's lakes in South Island, or the lakes in Canada, the scenery is not unlike these places. But the difference is that the region is just a compact thirty miles across, so it takes less than 30 minutes to move from one point to another.

I'll talk about the specific places that I visited in separate blog entries.

The scenery is nice enough, but as many of the trees are still in their wintry brown, I think it will be better in late spring or summer when they turn green again. The white swans there impressed me though. There aren't any resident white swans on campus, so this is the first time I get a really closeup look at them, and they are much bigger than I had imagined. The adult swan, when it straightened up, reached up to my neck level. They could easily peck out my eyes if they want to. Their chicks are the size of ducks, so you can imagine the size of the adult. When they fly, the sound of their wings whooshing against the air can be heard 30 metres away. Impressive!

Overall it was a good break. One good thing about going on this tour is that it forces me to leave behind my daily routine. The second good thing about this tour is that it gives me lots of exercise. I am on my feet the whole day except during meal times, with lots of climbing. At the end of it, my body was feeling rather ached, not unlike the "high" I feel after a long run.

So, here are Yeow Cheong's tips for a refreshing break:
1. Don't bring your work along.
2. Engage in prolonged physical activities of substainable intensity, until you feel some slight aches in your body.
3. Avoid mental activities that stresses the body (like planning how to re-mortgage your loan)

Have a good break.

Spring babies!

Though it is already spring, the weather is still quite cold here. So it was a surprise today when I saw gooslings on the way to the supermarket. The honour of being the First Family belongs to the Greylag goose.

Spring seems very romantic to us: seeing the flowers bloom, the wildlife pairing up and babies sprouting from the union. But, there is an ugly side to it. All the water fowl here: the mandarin mallard ducks, moor hens, coot, geese etc, chase and fight each other for territory and mates. It is sad to see the weaker birds being attacked by the strong ones. And they have to cope with the unpredictable weather, like snowing on Easter. So don't envy them for their seemingly carefree life. It is tough surviving out there. Let's hope the weather will turn warmer from now on, otherwise a lot of babies may die.

Here is my album of wildlife babies, as I photographed them throughout spring and summer. Do remember to visit it regularly for more updated photos.