This blog is now closed

And so we end this adventure with the A380 flight from London. Bye bye, and see you around in Singapore!

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.

Easter Snow!

I know, snow goes with Christmas, not Easter. But this is the British weather, just when I have started tagging my photos on flickr with "spring", along comes a heavy snowfall early Easter Sunday morning. Hey, heaven! You are supposed to snow on Jesus' birthday, not on his re-birthday!

This time round, I was awaken by the glare of the snow into my room. I actually woke up about the same time as the previous snowfall, but this time the sky is already bright. It is past the spring equinox already, mind you, so the sun rises at the "normal" time now.

Anyway, it is a good chance for me to shoot some photos of places that I missed the previous time. And it's an unexpected photo opportunity for the many families from overseas visiting their children this Easter holiday.

Yes, the spring semester has already ended. We are into the second week of the easter vacation already. The campus is quiet, as many of the local students have gone home, and overseas students for their holiday trips. But unlike Christmas, most shops remain opened, closing only on Easter Sunday, when many people here have gatherings with their families.

For me, I don't really have time to go for long trips (but for 3 days to Lake District next week). It has been a very busy spring semester, as you may have guessed from my lack of posts. Our group project is way behind time, and unfortunately, I am the only one in the group with any substantial skills in Java programming. So it is up to me to move the project forward. This vacation is the time for me to catch up with the schedule. Well, I don't really mind doing most of the work. This is perhaps the last time, for a very long time to come, that I will have a chance to do some real coding. A good opportunity to get familiar with UML, junit, eclipse, Linux and CVS too.

Before I go, something on Easter eggs. They are actually egg-shaped chocolates, same as the "Made-in-China" chocolate eggs that we enjoyed as kids during Chinese New Year. I never realized that they are actually used as Easter eggs until I come here! How sua-ku! At one of the chocolate shops in the city centre, they made Easter eggs, the biggest the size of rugby balls, and you can have icings with the names of the person you are giving it as a gift to. Nice!

Earthquake!

Of all places, one would never expect an earthquake to happen here in the UK. Afterall, if you look at this map here, UK is far away from any of the major fault lines, much further away than Singapore is from the Sumatran fault line that triggers the 2006 tsunami.

So it was a surprise when I felt the earthquake happened last night at around 12.55am. But I quickly remembered that there was once when nobody in Singapore ever believe we will be affected by earthquakes either. So never say never!

The earthquake felt like two very short bursts of vibration, separated by about 10 seconds. It is quite unlike the gentle swaying I felt in Singapore from my 17th floor flat from the tremours in Sumatra. In fact, I almost mistook it to be from the gusts of strong wind blowing at that time, if not for the fact that the vibration was coming from my cupboard, and not the window.

The earthquake has a magnitude of 5.2, and the epicentre is about 80km away from York. Because of the relative closeness of the epicentre, the vibration is stronger than what we experienced in Singapore, even though the magnitude is much smaller than the Sumatran earthquakes. I am staying on the 2nd floor (which is the 3rd storey, the British count floors starting from 0), and I can feel the shaking. In Singapore, earthquakes are mostly felt only above the 10th storey.

So if UK is so far away from any fault lines, what caused the earthquake? It seems that there is something call the Midlands Microcraton. This is an enormous block of rock running through Central England. The softer rocks on either side of the microcration are disturbed by the tectonic pressures that originate in the Atlantic Ocean, and this cause earthquakes when the pressures build up to a point where the rocks slipped. So, I supposed the mechanics of the earthquakes here are different from what we have in Singapore. It certainly felt different.

Well, according to the British Geological Survey, this type of earthquake happens only once in 30 years! So how lucky I am to feel it (must go buy 4-D!). But as I said earlier, never say never, who knows what other rare occurrences will I yet encounter?

Saturn!

I think I've mentioned somewhere in my blog before that I am in the Astronomy Society. The society meets every Saturday night. If the sky is clear, we'll proceed to the observatory （picture on the left) for some sky gazing. Well, as you might have guessed, given UK's kind of weather, it is not often that we get a clear sky, chances are even lower when you restrict it to just Saturday nights. Most of the time, we just make do with partly cloudy skies.

So it is a very rare opportunity last Saturday when the sky was completely clear of clouds. I had actually planned to attend a Chinese New Year Gala concert at York's Opera House, but a clear sky on a Saturday night is probably rarer here in York than CNY, so I decided it is not a chance to be missed. And boy, did I made the right choice.

First of all, the society's telescope wasn't working quite well, so the Astro Soc chairperson decided that we will use the main observatory telescope, which is several times more powerful. It seems that the professor in charge of the scope is quite particular about people going up to the observatory, so usually we just make do with the society's scope, placed outside the observatory. But last Saturday was just too clear a sky to observe the rules! But not to worry. The chairperson is a student of the professor, and is trained in using the main scope, so it's not like we are going up there and messing things.

And we were not disappointed. Not only is the main scope more powerful, it is also controlled by a computer, so all you need to do is to click on the object you want to observe and presto! the computer will point the scope in the correct direction.

So the chairperson brought us on a tour of the most interesting sights of the night sky: Crab Nebula, Andromeda Galaxy, Seven Sisters, Betelgeuse, Sirus etc. But the most magnificent of all is of course Saturn. It is really fascinating to see Saturn surrounded by its rings, and its moons. It looks something like the picture below, which was taken a few years back by the society. The angle of the rings was different this time round, and we were also able to see two of Saturn's moon. And of course, seen with your very own eyes, the image is much sharper.

Another pretty sight is what is called an open cluster. It is a group of faint stars which you can't see with the naked eye. So there is a patch of dark sky there, and you are thinking "ok, so why are you pointing the scope there?". Then you look through the scope, and you see so many points of light that look like jewels shining in the dark. Really amazing! The picture on the right, from Wikipedia, shows something like what we saw, but through the scope with your own eyes, it is much more fascinating.

In contrast, the nebulas and the galaxies are rather disappointing. They appear as blur blobs. One reason, I supposed, is because York suffer from light pollution like all urban centres, so the sky is really not dark enough to observe these faint objects. And of course the pictures we usually see in astronomy magazine are usually filtered to produce those sharp, magnificient colours. Through the scope, they all look more or less black and white, with reddish or bluish hues at best.

What a night! What a unforgettable 年初三. Now I know how the early astronomers felt when they see through the scope for the first time!

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year comes at a wrong time here, when we are finishing our first block of subjects for this semester. So, over the CNY period, I have 3 assignments and 1 group project to tackle. In fact, I have to give the CNY dinner organized by the Singapore Society a miss, because we had postponed our project meeting till late afternoon so that the Chinese students on the team can call home.

But not to worry, I didn't really miss home or CNY. Perhaps because there is no atmosphere of CNY here at all, so there is nothing to remind me of it. Or maybe it is because I know I'll just be here for one year, and I'll be tied to TP and Singapore for the next 5 years when I get back. So subconsciously in my mind somewhere, it is telling me that I'll have more CNYs in Singapore than I like when I get back.

However, this experience makes me realise that CNY is not something you can pass by with just having a party with fellow country man. What I consider as CNY is really the whole atmosphere that comes with it: the pasar malam and festival goods that are only on sale during that period, the new year songs in the air, the smell of pineapple tarts baking and bar-kuah BBQing, the traffic jams near flower markets, the air of expectancy as the day draw nears, the busy markets which opened through the night, the quietness on the street during the Reunion Dinner hours, the sight of bright coloured clothes on the MRTs and buses on the first and subsequent days etc.

These are the things about CNY that cannot be re-created here. These are the things that are missing, and without them to remind me, I don't think of CNY at all.

新年快乐，万事如意!

British weather - take 3

(River Ouse, which flows through York, flooding its blanks)

Why were the British so adventurous, exploring the world and building "the empire where the sun never sets"? It is because the weather here is so bad that they just have to get out of here and find somewhere nicer to live. Well, even the ancient Romans (who ruled Britain for a while) complained about the weather here in their records, as has every foreigner since. On Monday, during our RSD lecture, the sun suddenly broke through the cloud during a pause in the rain, and shine right into the lecturer's eye! The lecturer, who is from Germany, and had earlier just complained about the persistent rainfall, was so exasperated that he exclaimed "Now what's wrong with the weather in this country?"

Since the excitement of the first snow, it has been raining non-stop, until middle of this week. It was almost like Singapore's end-of-the-year rainy season. As the rain comes in from the Atlantic Ocean, riding on top of the warm ocean air, the temperature has been warmer than usual. Even after the rain stopped, the temperature has remained well above 10 degrees, whereas the usual temperature at this time of the year is about 5 degrees. Is this just a weather anomaly, or is global warming truly upon us now?

Liverpool

Map of Liverpool
The Overseas Student Association here organizes trips to major cities regularly and last weekend's (i.e. 19 Jan) was to Liverpool. Well, actually all they do is to hire a coach to bring us there and back. These trips are "touch-and-go" affairs, really. The coach leaves the campus at 8.30, and leave for the campus at 5pm. Discount away the 2 hours road time per way, we really only have a few hours for sight seeing. But one cannot be too fussy with the ticket costing only 5GBP per head, which is a few fold cheaper than going on your own by train.

I supposed the most famous things about Liverpool are The Beatles, and Liverpool Football Club. (Apologies to Everton fans, but they really should have called themselves Liverpool United or Liverpool something), so a trip of few hours should not exclude visits to places related to them. But since I am not a fan of either, there is not much things to say, except maybe "It's raining, as usual". So just enjoy the photos I have taken!

Not Previously Seen - Part 2

This is something that Mr Paul Phua would be delighted to have. It is a calendar I bought during the post New Year Sales at the campus bookshop. As you can see (click on picture if you can't), it cost 5GBP after a 50% discount. 15SGD, is not cheap for a calendar, but hey, this is not just a calendar. It comes with 300 paper aeroplanes that flies well!

The magnetic covered box opens up neatly into a calendar stand. There is a new paper plane every weekday, and 1 for the weekend. You fold the plane out of the calendar paper, which has the pattern of the plane on one side, and the instructions for folding the plane (the previous day's -- can you figure out why?) on the other. The instructions also illustrates the proper wing angle and launch speed for the best flight.

The planes fly very well if you follow the instructions closely. The wing angle and the launch speed is very important. Even that simple "Flying Wing" you see in the picture below flies well. The size and type of paper matters too. It is A5 size(half of A4 size) and of the same type of paper as the "horse racing calendar" we have back in SG. I tried using normal printer paper, but it doesn't fly as well, most likely because it is too heavy.

For daily recreation, this beats computer games. The creators of the calendar have a website here and here. Take a look, it's interesting! And get fascinated by what a origami genius can turn a piece of paper into at http://www.folders.jp (Just click on the links under the dates if you don't understand Japanese), keeping in mind that origami artists does not use glue or cut the paper to get to the final shape.

Exams over, but no celebrations

The only thing I don't like about being a student is taking exams. As I was telling someone, an exam is like a FA Cup match. No matter how well prepared you are, you can never guarantee that you will win the match. Exams are also disadvantageous to older students, where our "RAM size and processor speed" are not as high as they used to be.

Should an assessment be solely testing your understanding of a topic? With the tight time constraint in an exam, the answers are more instinctive than well thought, so it isn't really a very fair test of understanding. Or perhaps a fair test should cover a person's capability to memorize all the details in their heads, and the ability to form (hand written) answers from them in the shortest time? Maybe, but with information so easily available nowadays, perhaps this ability is not as crucial as in the days gone past when information is restricted to selected experts and libraries. Besides, tight time constraint isn't really that crucial in the engineering world, where the ability to generate a precisely correct answer, even if it takes more time, is preferred over giving a half correct answer -- being as useless as a totally wrong answer-- in half the time.

And that is why I feel quite frustrated after finishing the exams. I know that the answers that I have submitted is not a good indication of the knowledge that is up here in my head. If there isn't that 2 hours time pressure there, I would certainly be able to come up with a perfect (ok, a much better) answer, yes, even if I am not allowed to refer to my notes.

I much prefer open assessments (or as we call it in TP, "assignments"), not that it is easier. Open assessments are more like a NBA Play-Off series. It is a longer process, but besides giving you a chance to recover from an "off-day", I feel it is a more accurate test of a person's ability to apply his knowledge in the real world. But of course from the examiner's point of view, there are issues not present in closed book exams which needs to be tackled, plagiarism being one of them. Here in York, plagiarism is taken very seriously and the university put in lots of effort to ensure every student thoroughly understands what plagiarism is all about. But that would be a topic just as lengthy for another blog entry.

First Snow!

Nothing excites me, one from the tropics, more than seeing snow fall. Yet, looking at the snow falling, it also calms the mind and put a person at ease. Somehow, looking at snowflakes dancing fast and furious in the wind, and yet not making a single sound in the air, gives one a peaceful and rather surreal feeling. Is it just an illusion, or does the air really becomes quieter when it is snowing? Perhaps the falling snow acts like a sound proof wall? I must google to find out.

I was woken up very early this morning by the cold, since I did not turn on the heater as it was still mild when I went to bed last night. The weather report had forecast snow for parts of UK, but York was not one of them. So to my surprise, and excitement, when I looked out the window, I saw the carpark covered with snow.

I was out with the camera(this one belongs to a friend) at first light. It started to snow very heavily as I walked around the campus. Among the wildlife, the seagulls seemed the happiest, flying and circling around the lake, shrieking. The swans, as usual, are graceful in the water, oblivious of the snow falling around them. The ducks looked subdued, but the most miserable seemed to be the "black coloured bird that walks like a chicken" (update: it is called a moor hen, thanks to seismic. Click on comments link below to see his comments). Though they are usually shy birds, they just sit there in the middle of the road, and got up reluctantly only when humans come near.

The workers are busy around the campus though, spraying de-icing agents on roads, walkways and bridges to prevent people from slipping. Snow means more work for them, so I supposed not everyone is happy to see snow, unlike me. According to the barber at Langwith, it doesn't snow as much as it used to, perhaps it is because of global warming, and don't bring back any snow from Austria, he had said . Snow may not be pleasant for the residents here, but it will be a sad day for them if it doesn't snow here anymore.

Oh yes, I also found that cameras using AA size batteries don't work well in the cold. I think the fault lies in the batteries, which stop discharging electricity when it gets very cold. I have to rely on my trusty old camera to finish up the job. Lithum ion batteries seems to work better in the cold. But unfortunately, not anticipating the snow, I didn't charge the battery beforehand, so that too went flat after a few shots.

Anyway, here are the photos that I took. Even as I type, snow continues to fall. I would like to spend the whole of today out walking in the snow, but unfortunately exams are just a few days away, so one must get down to studying. Will update with more photos if it snows again. It is tempting to say it will, since this is just the first snowfall of winter. But with global warming looming, one cannot be too confident. It only snowed once last year, a third year student told me. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

2008 New Year's Eve

Well, what do you expect to do in York on New Year's Eve when the exams are exactly one week away? Not much, except to dig your heels in and study hard. But we still manage to find some time for a small gathering in my kitchen. Shown in the picture are students from Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, standing around the window to look at the small scale fireworks from the direction of Millennium Bridge. Guess who is from where?

With most students still away on holiday, it is still very quiet here on campus. Most of the students left are East Asian whose home are too far (and thus too expensive) to fly to for this short holiday.

But it is not a ghost town here in York. Between Christmas and New Year is the post-Christmas Sales season. This is UK's equivalent of the Great Singapore Sale, so York's city centre is decorated with Sales signs all around, and crowded with shoppers carrying shopping bags big and small. Any good bargains out there? Well, GBP has weakened somewhat over the weeks, but at 1GBP=2.9SGD, things are still almost 3 times more expensive here. Anyway, I don't really know as I have not been bargain hunting around; you are looking at someone who don't even go for GSS.