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!

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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.