A Quiet Christmas

Those of us who grew up in Singapore where Christmas is synonymous with the Orchard Road light-up can be forgiven to think that York's city centre is lit with lights a few folds grander and brighter, with snow falling and revellers singing and dancing the night away.

Especially here in York, where is the Archbishop is the second highest ranking cleric after the Archbishop of Canterbury, one would imagine Christmas to be a grand, bright, merry occasion. The reality is that Christmas in York seems rather dull, when measured against Orchard Road's unrestrained profit making Christmas.

Firstly, Christmas lighting in the city centre is not as elaborate or bright as those in Orchard road where big shopping centres compete with each other to put up the greatest and the brightest to attract customers.

Secondly, in Singapore, Christmas is an end-of-the-year excuse for busy friends to gather for a binge. Here in York, as you may have guessed, Christmas is a traditional family affair where people spend their Christmas at home, much like CNY back in Singapore. As such, it turns utterly quiet on Christmas and Boxing Day as all shops and places of interest are closed. The whole country shuts down, even the trains and buses are not running, so if you don't have a car, you are basically much stuck and isolated at home.

On the campus itself, all of the UK students have gone home, and most overseas students are spending the vacation outside York. A Christmas party to be held by the university's chaplins has been called off, presumbly due to poor response. So the whole place is very very quiet.

York is well known for its Christmas market though. In the run-up to Christmas, there is an open air market held at the city centre everyday, which attracts a lot of visitors, making the city centre as crowded as Tampines Mall (ok, it still can't beat the Orchard Road crowd). However, as a tourist, I find Vienna's Christmas markets more interesting. For one, the weather there is colder and the more numerous markets are located against a backdrop of classical buildings. Also, the atmosphere and the goods there are more like our stereotype of Christmas: snow, candles, christmas deco, nutcracker dolls, hot wines etc. Here in York, the stuff sold at the Christmas markets are more down-to-earth: sausages, candy, poultry, clothes etc stuff that families, not tourists, would need. But to be fair, downtown Vienna is made for tourist whereas York is a small, traditional city that needs to cater to its residents needs.

So it turns out that Christmas here is a rather subdued affair. However, the upside is that it is still an authentic, religious and sincere. All of the many churches here hold services from Christmas Eve through to Christmas Day. I could hear the church bells tolling as I was walking on the campus grounds on Christmas Eve. I kinda sympathized with the Christians in Singapore, where Christmas has mostly lost its religious significance among those who celebrated it. I would think that a true Christian would appreciate Christmas here more than in Singapore.

Vienna

map of vienna
Perhaps the biggest talking point about this trip is that the trip was cut short by a week from 10 days to 4 days. What can I say? As this is a public blog, I will not go into details the reasons for shortening the trip, but let's just say that I am happy to get an extra week to study for my exams.

So it is four days in Vienna. We stayed in a Youth Hostel in the centre of the city, surrounded by buildings of old style architecture. Unlike the capital cities in many other parts of the world, Vienna has managed to retain the look and feel of its heritage. If you imagine the buildings in the whole of CBD area all look like National Museum, Raffles Hotel or the MITA building (but in pastel colours), that is how Vienna feels like. In the city centre, there are no modern buildings that look out of place with the historical buildings.

Weather wise, it was probably below zero most of the time. Even though it didn't snow during the time we were there, we can see snow on roof tops, grass lawns and back of lorries. So at least we know the temperature weren't warm enough to melt any snow that fell before we arrived.

The people of Vienna are cold and not very polite. Perhaps it is because they are a proud people with a very rich and glorious past. Austria produced many musicians (Schubert, Mozart), and scientists, among them numerous Nobel prize winners. The royal family of Austria was arguably the most powerful royal family Europe has ever seen, ruling from Spain to Serbia, and even briefly in Mexico. Having mentioned that though, we have a fellow Austrian student(Lea, she is actually of Brazilian origin) who invited us to stay at her Austrian boyfriend's(Reinhard) house. They were most hospitable and Reinhard also came to welcome us at the airport(with beer!) and showed us around the city.

Reinhard's apartment is in the city centre in a traditional Viennese building. The layout is very similar to what I saw in Vietnam last year, when a student in the MFA-IAI course invited me to his place. A typical apartment building consist of four blocks surrounding a court yard, with the corridor on each level facing the court yard. There are no lifts, so you climb up a spiral stairway up to the apartment. When you enter the apartment unit, you come into the kitchen first. The living room is across the kitchen directly opposite the entrance. There is another room to the left of the kitchen, and a bathroom on the right. The toilet is outside the apartment along the corridor.

Besides walking around the city with Reinhard, we also visited the Museum of Fine Arts, attended the "Nutcracker" ballet at the Vienna Opera House and visited the Schönbrunn Palace. The photos are in the photo album, so I will save the effort to describe what we saw there.

Vienna definitely deserved more than the 3 full days I spent there. There are just so many churches, museums, palaces and performances to visit and attend. I probably should also join Aki on to Salsburg, but I supposed the freezing cold, the long and late nights, and the thought of the coming exams got the better of me. I flew back on the fifth day, one day after the other Singaporean traveling companion suddenly decided to go back to UK. I also got to admit that my zest for travelling has diminished a lot over the years, as those of you who know me are already aware that I don't travel often ever since I started teaching in TP.

Perhaps when the weather turns warmer and the days longer, my enthusiasm for travelling will return. But I don't think I'll travel far again before winter's over. The room in the hostel is right now too warm and cosy for me to venture out.

British weather - take 2

It was raining for almost the whole of last two weeks. The rain has stopped, and we have got fair weather, but it has turned much colder. The daily temperature has been hovering around freezing for a few days now, and the lakes are starting to freeze.

It seems that the clouds act as a insulator to prevent heat from escaping, so when it rains here, the temperature is actually milder than when the sun is out. The opposite effect of what we have in Singapore where rainy days are cooler than sunny days.

The cold weather sets us up nicely for the trip to Austria, where the daily temperature now is about the same as what we are experiencing these few days. Cool!

Ducks walking on the ice, instead of swimming in the lake

Newcastle

Map of Newcastle
So, the busy weekends continue with a visit to Newcastle last Saturday. This one is organised by the Overseas Students Association, with the subsidised coach ticket costing GBP4. I was with three other students, all doing Linguistics, presumably one reason they went for the trip is to experience the Newcastle accent. A staff manning the Information Centre at the railway station had a strong accent that sounded not far from Scottish, but we don't know if that is the Newcastle accent.

The weather was wet and cold, the start of a cold spell to hit the eastern UK that has continued since. We didn't visit many places because it was just a day trip, and the coach journey already ate up 2 hours per way. But rather than bore you to death with the description of the places we visited, I'll leave it to you to look at the photos that I took.

One noteworthy incident though. Unknowingly, we took our lunch at a Chinese restaurant that was just opposite the Newcastle United football stadium. We happened to leave the restaurant 10 minutes before the start of that Saturday's game, and bumped right into the fans streaming into the stadium. The passion of the fans were evident. Despite the rain, they were singing loudly, shouting cheers and ignoring the traffic, and it was quite intimidating to watch them. And there were so many of them streaming incessantly up the street that we wonder where they came from. Singapore has tried to build up grassroot support for the S League, but I really don't think we will ever get to this stage. It is just not in our culture to be so fanatic over a football team.

Picture showing Newcastle United's fans streaming into the stadium, which is the structure in the background behind the Chinese arch.

Scarborough

Map of Scarborough
I have not been updating this blog recently, have I? Well, firstly because I have been busy on weekends, the last being a visit to Scarborough. It is a seaside town, so the beach is the main attraction here. The British students were most excited whenever the sea came into view.

However, as this trip was organized by the Birdwatcher and Naturalist Society, our main purpose of this visit is the Sealife Centre. It is not a bad place at all (see the photo album). I especially like the way the tanks are build. They have a lot of glass area, so you can really peer into what's going on within the tank. If you look at some of the photos I have taken, it looks like I took the photo in the tank, right? Too bad my camera is really quite low-end so the quality didn't turn out too good.

Some of the display area also have background music to accompany the movement of the marine life. For example, "space-like" music (any one can comment on the proper genre name of this?) accompanied the jelly fish area, plus with some clever lighting, you get a feeling that the jelly fish are like floating around in space as you are viewing them.

Scarborough itself doesn't have much other attractions. Besides the beach, there is a castle ruin on the ridge separating the North and South bay area. It'll probably be more alive in summer, and more interesting to visit then.

In case you are wondering, there were only 5 of us who made the trip: me and 4 other British students. Yes, the Birdwatcher and Naturalist Society is a small one (ok, bigger than 5 as not all members turn up), and trips like this are more of an outing of like-minded people than a formally organized event. It is easy to form a society here in the university. Get another person who share the same interest, and both of you can register as a society. So, the smaller clubs like the BNS are quite informal, and events are casual and adhoc.

Secondly, I have been studying hard lately, yes, really. We are now deep into "Block 3" of the autumn semester. My exams for "Block 3" will be held in the first week of next semester, and since I will be spending most of the vacation in Austria, I am working hard now to make sure I understood all the materials. Then I won't have to panic when I get back from Austria after Christmas.

So, I will be in Austria, not UK, during the Christmas period. And I'm be coming back in the midst of a big shut down as everyone goes on holiday from Christmas till New Year. I've got to work out how I'm going to get food for that week. But that's a blog for another time, another day. Till then, here's wishing everyone a happy holiday season!

British weather

The infamous British weather had not lived up to its reputation for the first month since I was here. The weather was mild, and even though it rained on a few occasions, there were lots of sunshine throughout.

Well, it now seemed that the weather was just putting up an autumn charade to welcome us. These past couple of weeks has seen the typical UK weather upon us:

strong wind...	clouds, rain...
	more rain, and frost.

The last picture was taken last Friday morning from my room's window. It is the first time since I came here that the weather is cold enough for the roof opposite to turn white with ice. As you can see from the middle picture, the roof is actually black in colour when it isn't so cold.

But we are considered sheltered. York city, and the university, are situated in the Vale of York, and so are protected from the rain and snow by the surrounding high grounds. A senior student told me that it snowed only once last year, so there goes the romantic, white Christmas we are awaiting.

So, to get a white Christmas, I'll be traveling with two friends to Austria during the Christmas vacation. Yes, the land of Sound of Music, so I'll be updating with lots of photos when I get back. Remember to tune in back then!

Block 2

With all the assignments for Block 1 subjects submitted, it's time for Block 2! Block 2 is a short one, just one week. We'll have one intense week of "Practical Software Project Management" plus "Java refresher" from 9.15am to 5.15pm(almost) every day this week. But PSM* doesn't end after this week. In fact, it is just the beginning for this 20 credits subject. We'll be divided into groups and be working on a project which will last till the summer semester.

* Acronym for the subject. Like TP, each subject has a acronym, but for York it is 3 letters instead of 4. The acronym for Java Refresher is JAR.

Recreation and cost of living

What do you do when you want to take a break from your assignments? Well, if you have been reading my posts and looking at my photos, the answer is obvious:


It's a sure way to quickly attract wild attention. Look at that seagull heading straight for me! (Don't worry, it is just an optical illusion. It didn't even come close)


But with the weather starting to turn quite cold, exercising outdoors is almost out of the question. My hands are like frozen numb everytime I finished my jog.

Ok, there is the gym at the sports centre (and now you know why gyms are so popular in "ang-moh" countries), but at £4.50 or S$13.50 per visit, it seems helluva expensive to me.

Yes, I still couldn't help but convert the prices to Sing dollar. The exchange rate automatically makes everything 3X more expensive.

10 minutes bus ride to city centre: $4.50
1 dinner at the canteen - 3 dishes, no rice, no soup, no drinks: $10
1 page of printing b/w: 18 cents
1 minute on handphone: 45 cents
1 day's fine per open shelf library book: 90 cents
if book's reserved: $1.80
1 week's hostel rent: $300
1 wash+drying of clothes: $9
1 loaf of bread: $3.30

I miss my bicycle. I regret not shipping more things over.

No wonder even the Japanese find the prices here expensive!

Guy Fawkes Night

Nov 5 is Guy Fawkes Night and the British celebrate the occasion by letting off fireworks in their backyards. The fireworks had already started a week earlier, though it was sporadic and far in between. The fireworks really sounded like rifles, tracers and mortars, and my initial thoughts were that the soldiers at the nearby army camp were practising live firing. It reminded me of the days at NTU where the campus was situated next to the SAFTI live firing area, but I thought that it was strange that the residents of York would allow a live firing area so near their residential area.

That is until someone told me about the Guy Fawkes night. Even though there were no official fireworks display, almost everyone take this opportunity to play with some fireworks. So you can imagine the noise on Nov 5 evening, the whole place sounded like a battalion live firing exercise was going on nearby.

As it turns out, Guy Fawkes is from York, and here is a description from the university's website on the origin of Guy Fawkes Night. Here is Wikipedia's entry, if the first link doesn't work. Will the British be celebrating a Osama Night come 29 June 2407, I wonder?

Autumn

Last Sunday, the clock was moved back one hour to GMT, and overnight, the sun sets one hour earlier at 4.30pm. By 5pm, the sky is already completely dark. The clock adjustment is a signal that autumn is well underway. Because the sun is low in the sky, it feels like evening time even at 11am. The photo on the right was taken at almost noon time, but it looks like evening time when the sun is setting, doesn't it?

Anyway, the scenery is turning red and brown, and trees are shedding their leaves. Click on the image on the left to view the complete album of the changing seasons.

Ok, back to working on my assignment.

Assessments in next two weeks

Well, time flies, especially so when a block is only 3 weeks long!

The assignments for the subjects in the first block will be released this Friday, and as luck won't have it, the assignment for the most difficult subject, "Formal Specifications" will be the first to be released and submitted. You can get an idea of what this subject involves from the image below(click on image for full size), which is a screenshot from a page of its lecture notes.

As the marks in the assignments counts for 100% of the subject grade, I will be spending all my time in the next two weeks doing them. So, blogs entries, if any, for the next two weeks, will be few, short and trivial.

Wish me luck!

Not Previously Seen - Part 1

Here is a picture of some stuff which I don't see in Singapore:

My "Formal Specifications" lecture notes listed a proposition¹: jaffa cakes are biscuits. So to find out whether the proposition is true or false, I bought some. Jaffa Cakes are a kind of biscuit covered with chocolate, wrapped around grape flavoured jelly. It taste quite good too.

The white disc in the picture is called a flying saucer. It looks like a toy but is actually a candy. The shell is made of flour and the hollow contains sour candy powder.

We have avocado in Singapore, but this is a rather large one that cost 68 pence (around S$2). The pen is placed there to give perspective to the sizes of the objects.

¹ A proposition in mathematical logic is a statement that is either true or false.

First week of full timetable

So, time is starting to pass quickly. We have started the full timetable for one week and things are getting hectic. As mentioned in my previous post, the time table is in "block mode". For the non-TP readers, this means that instead of spreading all the subjects out evenly over the term, we do lesser subjects in intense "blocks" of smaller number of weeks.

My first "block" is 3 weeks long with 2 subjects. My initial feel is that this is better for learning as there is less context switching. However, the student must be very conscientious during lesson, and keep up with all the given homework. Otherwise, there'll be no time to catch up once you are lost.

For CCA, I have signed up with the Singapore Society (must support, right?), Yoga Society and the Astronomy Club. Actually I'll like to join more clubs (Tai Chi, Outdoors, Skydiving etc), but studies have to come first (and it isn't cheap as each club cost at least 4 pounds, I was told imposed by the Uni, to join). The Yoga Society is surprisingly very popular, and about 60 students turned up for the first session. Hopefully, some (or most) of them will drop out as it is difficult to follow the instructor with such a big crowd.

The Astro Club met up for the first time last night at the campus observatory. This is a small one, with only about 30 members in total. Last night's attendance wasn't very good because the rugby world cup finals was playing live at the same time. We learned how to use the telescope, which is quite easy, with technology to help track the stars. But it was really cold last night (3C maybe?), so we have to stop after about 1 and half hours as everyone was freezing. I could hardly write my name as my fingers were too numb to feel the hold of the pen.

It's good to be a student again!

Academic calendar or rather, Best time to visit

Here is a summary of my academic calendar:
Autumn semester: 8 Oct - 16 Dec 2007
Christmas vacation: 17 Dec - 6 Jan 2008
Exams: 7 Jan - 13 Jan 2008
Spring semester: 14 Jan - 16 Mar 2008
Easter vacation: 17 Mar - 20 Apr
Exams: 21 Apr - 27 Apr 2008
Summer semester: 28 Apr - 29 Jun 2008
(but Project and Dissertation continues till end Sep 2008)
Summer vacation: 30 Jun - Oct 2008

As you can see, the assessments are at the beginning of the subsequent semester. Thank you, York, for being so considerate to give us sufficient time to study, and thus spoiling our vacation.

Anyway, if you are planning to visit, try to do it in the early part of the vacations. That will be the best time I can give you undivided attention.

Platform 9-3/4

Well, I supposed this would not merit a post by itself if not for Harry Potter.

Went to the railway station at the city centre yesterday to buy the Young Person's Pass (ok, I am not young, but mature students are also entitled to it) which will give me 30% discounts on trains tickets. After that, I wandered on to the platform (apparently tickets only need to be shown after boarding), and was pleasantly surprise to see another familiar scene from Harry Potter. The photos are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/puayc/tags/railwaystation/

Apparently, there is a real Platform 9-3/4 at London's King Cross station, which can be reached via a direct train from York.

The class

The MSc (Software Engineering) course is surprisingly enough, the most popular taught MSc in the Comp Science department. There are about 30 of us, and as far as I know, there is only one British. And surprise surprise, I am not the oldest in the class. The honour goes to the British, and he is almost 60 years old.

As for the professors, well, we have not met all of them yet as the full timetable kicks in only next week. Those that we have met seemed nice enough, typical professors in a university.

The timetable

So another week has passed. This is Week 1 of the autumn semester. We have started classes with a refresher on Discrete Mathematics, but the full timetable will begin only in Week 2. My timetable is arranged in what we would call "blocks" in TP. I will be taking 2 subjects in "Block 1", from Weeks 2 - 4. with open assessments for these subjects in Weeks 5-6. "Block 2" is only one week in Week 7, where we'll have a intensive "Practical S/W Engineering and Project Management" mdoule, and a Java refresher course. "Block 3" is from Weeks 8 - 10, where we will be taking two exam-able subjects. The exams are in Week 1 of the Spring semester in January next year.

So this semester will be quite intensive, averaging about 24 contact hours per week.

The Spring semester, starting first week of January, will be less intensive, where we will be doing our "electives". The summer semester and vacation will be for the project and dissertation.

Leeds

Map of Leeds
Went with a group of friends to Leeds yesterday. It is about an hour's bus ride from the York city centre. As this is a day trip and we went in the late morning, we only have a few hours to walk around the shopping district, Leeds university, and buying groceries from a Chinese supermarket.

The impression is that Leeds is like any other big, busy cities. People are less friendly, more rude, and there are areas which you feel unsafe and should avoid if possible. The upside is that it is more convenient to get stuff that are familiar to home, and cheaper prices for daily necessities.

Overall, I am glad to be in York rather than some big cities like Leeds. If the reputation of the degree is not top notched, then at least the environment and atmosphere has to be something I couldn't have experienced in Singapore (or the top university that might have been.)

Leeds photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/puayc/sets/72157602296056460/

The students

This week is orientation week for those who have signed up for it. Singapore is well represented, and the number of Singaporeans here is more than what I had expected. We are the most well-represented country in the orientation program among the countries in SE Asia. There are of course many international students here. As term proper starts only next week, most of the students I have meet so far are international students, mostly from Europe and Asia, plus others from Americas and Carribean. I supposed the British students would be coming in next week as most of them live off-campus as new and international students get priority for campus accomodation.

And many of them will be studying courses that would be considered as "unconventional" and "economically un-viable" back in Singapore, like astrophysics, philosophy, linguistics, post-war recovery, archeology to name a few.

It's going to be an interesting time here.

The coming term

The campus is quite peaceful this week as the term officially starts next week. When that happens, I was told the campus will be swarmed with students with lots of activities. I guess campus are the same everywhere, it reminds me of the contrast in activity level in TP between Week 0 and Week 1.

There are three terms in the academic year. From the online course schedule, my first term is going to be quite heavy as I will be doing 5 out of the required 8 modules. The remaining 3 modules will be in Term 2, and I supposed Term 3 will be for completing the project. If you are thinking of visiting me, I'll give you an update via email on my workload as I will only get my confirmed timetable next week.

The Hostel

Given all the nice scenery around us, the view from my hostel room is quite a let down as it is overlooking a car park. As we are in the countryside, it gets quiet at night, that is if there are no noisy students disturbing the peace of the night. Just now, while eating dinner in my hostel's kitchen, I can even hear the cows moo-ing in the distance.

Yeah, it's been a long time since I don't have to hear the sound of traffic at night. I suppose we all get use to the busy background noise in Singapore, but I do believe it has a negative effect on our well-being. You don't realize how noisy Singapore is until you get to a quiet place. I find that I can concentrate much better in my room than back in my apartment in Singapore.

My room space is quite big (matched equally by the rental -- bye bye allowance), and can comfortably fit in two other sleeping person. However, the attached toilet is really small. There is hardly space to spread out your arms when showering, and it feels a bit like trying to bathe in a pipe.

Each hostel block consist of flats. The flat here would correspond to what we call a unit in Singapore. Each flat consist of six rooms with a kitchen. So far, I have only seen 3 of my flatmates: One from India, US and British. Maybe more will move in next week because someone told me that there are many postgraduates who have now decided to transfer to my hostel, which is a exclusively for postgrads only. It's never a good idea to stay with undergrads.
Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/puayc/sets/72157602302351539/

The City

The York area is a historical area, dating back all the way to the Roman Empire. I was told it won a tourism award this year, and is the 2nd most visited city in UK after London. The city itself has no tall or modern building architecture. Not counting the churches and castles, the building in the photo on the right is about one of the tallest in York city.


There is this area, called the Shambles, which looks very much like a scene out of Harry Potter (Diagon Street?-- someone please post the correct name in the comments(Diagon Alley, thanks to Soh -- the town in Episode one where he went to get his wand and bank).


The area around the university itself is also very country side, with typical English country houses.

See the photos here:
City http://www.flickr.com/photos/puayc/sets/72157602296001492/
Campus outskirts
http://www.flickr.com/photos/puayc/sets/72157602302338503/

The University

The university is built around a lake, so the scenery is very pretty.

And there are lots of wild ducks (mandarin ducks mallards, mostly), geese and some other birds which I do not know the names of, and this is already nearing winter. One of the speakers during orientation joked that he's not too sure about York's ranking in the league table, but he is certain that we're top in ducks vs students ratio.

I was told that when spring and summer comes, there'll be lots more birds and we'll be able to see ducklings in tow too. Well, the downside of this is that we have lots of droppings on the pavement, and it is quite yucky as it is impossible to avoid stepping on them.

See my photos of the campus http://www.flickr.com/photos/puayc/sets/72157602296012322/

Welcome!

Okie, almost one week's up, so what have I been up to at York? Read on for details...