Day 51 - Tastefair

After our Geopolitics lecture today, Heather asked if I want to join Mingli and her to a Fairtrade fair, called "Tastefair". Was a bit reluctant at first, cause I was still recovering from a week odd of travelling, but the idea of finding out more about Fairtrade, especially for future lessons, made me decided to go take a look.

Trains on the Circle line. Much wider, as compared to those on the Piccadily Line. The same platform holds trains that runs on three different lines, in which at least 1/3 of each lines over lap. I have no idea behind such rationale.

Other than brochures and handouts, there wasn't much about Fairtrade, but there was this coffee roasting demonstration by CaféDirect. So why not take a look anyway.

Pictures of farmers who are happy about the Fairtrade system. Apparently, the premium is not paid in cash, but rather, used for social purposes.

A real coffee tree.

In a few years, they will grow as tall as the one before.

They will take a few more years to grow bigger.

The demonstration was interesting, especially when they talked about cupping - tasting the coffee to determine it's flavour. The person who did the demonstration was from Mexico, and was formally a coffee farmer, till he was trained to be a cupper by CaféDirect. Hmm, gathered some interesting insights about Fairtrade.

Day 48 - Fieldtrip to Brighton

A fieldtrip to Brighton for my "Coastal and Estuarine Environment" course. Was very excited about it, cause I finally get to see a shingle beach!

But the day didn't start off too well. I overslept by 15 minutes, discovered on the tube that I forgot to bring my camera. Ran around the areas between Victoria Tube Station and Victoria Coach station for another 20 minutes, because someone misdirected me back to the Tube Station, claiming that that's where the coach station is. Anyway, I manage to reach the bus in time, partly thanks to Mingli who tried to delay the bus driver.

After a long 2hrs ride, we're finally at cold, grey Brighton. The following pictures you see are from my 2MP handphone.

Took this by accident, but it more or less gives you the scale of the shingle.

Brighton Pier - it's like lost in time, stuck in the 70s or earlier. It's like amusement park on the sea, with really lame things like "Horror Hotel". A German exchange student said she'll love to go there just to see how lame it is. That's our meeting point by the way. But hey, since it goes so much into the sea, it provided a good vantage point during the fieldtrip. Except the fact that the lecturer is constantly interrupted by those ride's music every 5 minutes.

Future lesson material. Guess if I'm on the updrift or downdrift?

Just when we were wondering how did so much material get here, we were told that the beach was nourished. Then again, it was nourished from the offshore material. So the pre-nourished beach would have roughly the same sediment size.

It's too painful to fall on shingle. So they created a sandy area for beach sports.

Finally some sand!

My first fish and chips in UK. This one is.......

A destroyed pier from the past. When we walked past here, our lecturers looked at a painting of Brighton at a nearby art shop. Guess what they said? "There is no way the waves will break like how it is shown in the painting".

You see signs like this.

A more un-vandalised one.

It was so cloudy and foggy, you can't even see a horizon.

Someone found something close to home.

Some summer palace. Attempt to mimic Moghul architecture with disastrous distasteful results.

And so it was a long bus ride back to London. It took only 30 minutes to hit Gatwick, but 1hr odd to reach Victoria. Why? London's traffic. Start, stop, start, stop. Even I would puke. But hey, like this lame sign on the pier says, "BRIGHTON UP YOUR DAY!"

Day 46 - York II

Outside our nice and quaint B&B.

Yorkminster, one of the largest minster in forgot where. There are so many things in UK that lay claims to be the largest or tallest or whatsoever that I've become cynical about it. Tallest waterfall in UK, tallest waterfall in England, tallest waterfall in my toilet bowl, largest discharge in UK, largest discharge in England, largest discharge in my sink, biggest abbey in UK, biggest abbey in England, biggest in terms of materials used in UK, biggest in terms of materials used in England biggest in terms of volume in England, biggest in terms of.....you get my drift on why I've become cynical to these claims. But hey, it's a really beautiful building.

After I took this shot, Nardev was about to take one, in which a lady told him that it is not allowed during service.

A statue of Constantine (The Roman Emperor lah! Not the comic book character portrayed by Keana Reeves)

Beautiful sight

But we have to spoil it with a group photo. haha.

We proceed to take a walk on the old city wall.

It took us around most of old York. And we joked of walking it again, this time, inside the wall, outside the wall......

National Railway Museum. Highly rated. And boy are we impressed.

I wish you were here, but the sign thinks that I'm the Station Hall.

Nardev attempted to do a Titanic. A lady came. Thought she would tell us off, but she just told us to be careful not to slip off with a smile. How nice!

See if you could spot the accidental smile on the train.

I just find this very funny and cute.

We took a ride on this old steam train.

Totoron missed his stop on the bullet train.

Nardev was super apologetic about the trip, but hey. It aren't his fault that these sights were a little over hyped. York is nice, it's beautiful, but for people who lived or have seen Cambridge, York aren' much different. But it was a good trip for us to recharge and gather. :)

Day 45 - 3/4 Machas in York

I almost forgot that I had booked train tickets for this trip while in Cambridge. As a result, I had to change my flight ticket back from Athens, in which i wasted money on processing and administrative fees (ouch to the power of infinity).

Anyway, Royce, Nardev and I decided to visit York for this weekend, since we have heard so much about it. Keng Rui has done York before, so he didn't come along. But his advice was "It can be done in a week".

Coincidentally, it was after we booked the train tickets did we realise that that weekend will be a Viking Festival in York. It's quite good apparently, according to the Brits. So boy are we lucky!

York train station. It was the largest at one point in time.

Old Castle Gates. Somehow, the York crests reminds me a lot of Cambridge's crests.

We went to the Jorvik (pronounced as your-veek) Viking Centre, which is apparently a popular Viking Museum. Boy was it popular - the queue was long! It started off with a "Time Machine" Presentation, where we all sat in this room. As we were "transported back in time" by the decade, the characters on the screen change their fashion too. Every decade we move back, the chair will shake a little. Royce commented jokingly "Skali they do this all the way back to 800AD" (That's when the Vikings came to York). Turns out he was right.

Then we took this amusement-park-ish ride (see picture above), where we were taken around, shown different facades of actual life during the times of the Vikings. So there were manequinns who moved, talked, defecated (with the smell), while the narration is played from the speakers at the back of your head. Thanks to Royce's playfulness, I get to hear it in Spanish or Japanese sometimes.

And when the ride ended, all we saw is some museum display of Viking archaeological finds found on the site of the museum. That's all. Thought it is a family friendly place, but not very sophisticated (read: boring) enough for young adults though. We suspect the museum had a lot of budget to do all these time machine shaking chairs thingy and amusement park kind of rides.

People wearing Viking costumes and zooify themselves.

Exoticisation of the Viking culture

Next we went on to Clifford's Tower. It is apparently another key attraction of York. But when we arrive......

Its so small???

Well at least the view on top is good. But having been to larger heritage sites like Barnard Castle, it seems quite small. Oh I bumped into Deborah there!

Eh Nardev! you didn't take me with the Minster!

Much better!

We spoofed Keng Rui while taking this photo from the tripod. Hehe.

Some Abbey ruins. There was a demonstration on some Viking's customs, as part of the Viking festival. What was it? A "viking" laid on a boat motionless, while another person explain their beliefs about afterlife and funerary rituals. 6 minutes later, end of demonstration. =.="'

So we walked to our B&B, which is about 2km away. Somehow, all our repressed tiredness came out and we all napped till 6pm. Ventured back into the city centre to meet Nardev's friend for dinner.

Yorkminster at night.

Some of the Yorks dressed in Viking costume. Or as Jonathan will call it, "Medieval Cosplay".

We passed by the meeting point of the Ghost Tour, which we decided to give it up in the end. What we saw was green lighting, with a "ghost" as the guide. And that's the scariest part of your tour? Well, the pamphlet says that it's voted the "Best City Tour in York", but what other city tours are there in York? Thank goodness we gave that a miss. It's not like York is filled with horrifying history, like Scotland.