Cambridge trip

I won't want to bore you with what I've been doing during the past week except to write about our day trip to Cambridge organised by the Postgraduate Student Assciation. We set off from Nottingham at around 9:45am yesterday and arrived at Cambridge around 12pm. Shah and I used up most of our time visiting most of the colleges in the city centre and snapped lots of pictures. We ended up capturing 185 pics which mostly were of the college buildings. I really liked the architecture of these old buildings coz they have very intricate carvings. Unfortunately we were unable to go inside King's College coz they had to close early due to some concert scheduled for later that day. But we did manage to go into Clare College, Queen's College and Corpus Christi College to have a look around. Queen's College is home to the Mathematical Bridge which is famous for the myth that it was designed by Sir Isaac Newton. However, the truth is that the bridge was designed and built many years after Newton's death. There was one part of the college building which I really liked. The building had interspaced wooden beams on its walls and had a courtyard in the centre.

The weather was quite nice coz it was not too hot and not too cold. However, it was rather clooudy and the sun only decided to shine after 3pm. By that time we had finished taking pictures of most of the colleges. After a late lunch we headed to Cambridge's Museum of Zoology coz Shah really wanted to visit it. Our trip coincided with Cambridge University's Science Festivel so there were many demonstrations on science targeted at children at the New Museum site of the Uni. Shah wished we had more time at the zoology museum coz he wanted to take his time reading everything that was on disply but unfortunately we had to get back to the bus by 5:45pm. So we just took pictures mostly of the skeleton of different animals display. There was a skeleton of the Orca or Killer Whale as well as that of an African Elephant. There was also a skeleton of a Malay Tapir. Anyway, after that we headed to the Sedgewick Museum of Archeology and Anthropoly. It was a rather small museum but it had a display containing a totem pole and a long boat of a indigenous tribe of New Zealand or the islands in that region.

I have to say we had a nice time in Cambrindge even tough it was a short one. At the end of the day we were knackered and our soles hurt like hell. Luckily the bus came on time and it wasn't a surprise that on the way home I slept like a baby. But I woke up after an hour of sleep coz I felt sorry for Shah coz as always Shah never sleeps when travelling. He just can't go to sleep when onboard any kind of transportation. Well, I guess that's it. Till next time..

P/S: Shah has uploaded some of the pictures we took on our fotopages.

Books etc..

We just had our dinner of roast chicken with potato salad and we're just kinda just vegging out in the living room. Shah's playing his football game on PS2 and I'm just browsing the net looking for some interesting blog templates. Nothing much happened this week. On Friday in accordance with the Comic Relief 'Red Nose Day' the George Green Library at Notts Uni held a book sale with all proceeds going to Comic Relief. Luckily we got there early so we were able to snap up four novels which we have been eyeing for quite a while in the shops. We bought the following books for a total sum of £5. Cheap eh!





(pictures taken from of Amazon.co.uk)

I can't wait to start reading them. As any girl, I love books on relationships and romance plus all the chick literature out there. So it's not a wonder that 3 out of the 4 books up there are chick lit books. Amazingly Shah likes to read some of them too so he doesn't mind me buying these kind of books. I also like to read thriller and adventure books too. I love John Grisham and I think I've read quite a few of his books. Although I must admit I can't get around to reading Stephen King books (or the like) so I just watch the movie version of them.

Lately Shah and I have been buying novels like crazy. Come to think of it we're buying novels every other week and everytime we buy books it's not just the odd 1 but at least 3-4 books at a time. We are quickly filling up our bookshelf and we might just start our own libarary of novels. As you might have gathered from my previous posts we have become addicted to Dan Brown books and we curently have all 4 of his novels. Shah has read all of them and I have finished only two. There are many more book which I really want to start reading and my list of 'to read books' is growing by the day. I really want to collect the 'Shopaholic' series of books by Sophie Kinsella coz I've heard many people say that this series of books are a real joy to read.. I can't wait to go the 'Nottingham Bargain Bookstore' to look if they have any on them. This bookstore sells books at very cheap prices coz most of the books here have some slight defect or printing error. But so far the books that we've bought from the shop are still in good condition and we can't even find any flaws in them. I love this shop and 'The Works' so much coz the books are dead cheap. Two weeks ago Shah and I bought 3 novels at 'The Works' for just a fiver. I wish books were as cheap in Msia.

I've always loved reading but ever since I started studying here in the UK i've sort of stopped reading as I would have loved to. When I was back home in Msia I used to go to the rent-a-book shop every week to get my weekly stash of novels. Who ever came up with the rent-a-book idea is a genius. I never used to buy my own books coz I always know that I could just rent them. But they don't have these kind of shops here in the UK (luckily they have these cheap bookstores here!). I think this renting books concept is still going strong back home so I can't wait to frequent these shops again. I also love the idea of book clubs coz it encourages people to read books at least 1 every month and them you can discuss them and chit chat about them. Maybe when I'm done with my PhD I can join one but I don't know how to find a book club in Msia. I guess I have to know at least one of the people in the club for me to enjoy it. So if any of you reading this know of a good book club in Msia do let me know. Over here there is the 'Richard and Judi Book Club' where Richard and Judy are a husband & wife duo who have their own talkshow. Usually the books they recommend are either bestseller or will go on the be bestsellers. So that's where I go to find my next book to read.

We'll I guess that's enough on books...got to go hit my study books now!

Cooking desserts

At the moment I've got a pot of mutton curry simmering on the stove. So while waiting for the mutton to tenderize, I decided to put in an entry. I didn't put in my weekly post on Sunday coz I was quite busy with work and I spent Sunday afternoon cooking. Both Shah and I were craving for pengat pisang so I decided to cook that as a dessert with chicken rice as the main meal. But while adding the tapioca pearls (a.k.a. sago or sagu) to the pengat, we remembered the dessert made of sagu and gula melaka syrup that we had during the Malaysia Night dinner. So I looked thru the recipe book we have to see if it had the recipe for that particular dessert. Alas, it was there listed under the title 'Puding Sagu'. Seeing we had extra sagu on hand we decided to try make the puding sagu since the recipe was quite simple. Although we substituted the gula melaka with muscavado sugar when making the syrup. Even so we were successful in making the puding sagu. I even took a photo of the desserts we made.


Pengat pisang and puding sagu

(I just remembered my mutton curry...got to go season it and take it off the stove)

Well, apart from that, last Thursday Shah and I went to Solihull (near Birmingham) to transfer the conditions of Shah's visa since he's no longer considered a student. We took off to Birmingham on the 9:11am train and went on to Solihull from there. I really liked Solihull. It was a nice little English town. Even so, the high street in the centre of the town had all the major stores we usually find in bigger cities. We took some pictures of the town which I have yet to upload to our fotopage. But I will upload them soon. Amazingly, while walking around the Touchwood shopping mall in Solihull we came across a cart selling Auntie Anne's Soft Pretzels. The same Auntie Anne pretzel's that are found in almost all the major shoping complexes Malaysia which I really love. So I jumped at the chance of getting a pretzel. I was like a small kid in a sweet store coz there were at least 7 different varieties of pretzels to choose from. We settled for the cinnamon sugar pretzel and we asked the lady for one. She told us that if we bought 2 then we'd get one pretzel free but we decided to buy just the one. What a mistake! After devouring the ONE pretzel Shah and I realized that we needed at least another to satisfy our craving for pretzels. So we missed out on the offer the kind pretzel-selling lady told us about. Anyway, we started thinking about the calories and sweet content of the pretzel we just had and decided not to get any more. (Sigh..) Now, while writing about the pretzels my saliva glands are starting to salivate and I'm silently wishing Nottingham had an Auntie Anne Soft Pretzel's cart. Unitl a store opens here, I just may have to visit Solihull again to satisfy my pretzel craving.