So, week 9 is coming to an end. And I am starting to make an effort to blog a little, which is good, I suppose, take a break to tell you what’s going on around here.
Which isn’t much, considering that I hadn’t been out often this week.
But, in the past few days, the weather has got a bit weirder. Monday morning turned out fine; sunny and breezy, the ducks happily shedding their feathers all over the place. But within an hour or two, it turned cloudy, then dark, then the weather system unleashed the mother of all winds; it was so strong that when you watch the rain, it’s as if the drops of water were hosed at 90° rather than falling from the sky. Tens of umbrellas were fatally destroyed, papers (presumably posters for climate change) flew everywhere, and everyone standing outside the library at that moment looked like Batman, jackets and scarves blown up like some epic superhero movie. I for once looked like George Clooney, when he’s got a bad hair day, that is....
24 hours later, and it seemed that my uni had been transported into a totally different weather dimension. The sun was even brighter, the wind was gone, more ducks and herons this time. Then, you step out of the accommodation and POW!! Your nose is frozen. Weather forecast forecasted (so corny) 4°C that day. THAT DAY!! Not night, but the day, and I wouldn’t doubt it, the first time in many years since I trusted those silly graphics of clouds and rains. I was properly insulated though, my Abercrombie and Fitch jacket doing a tidy job of keeping myself and my handphone nice and warm. But my nose and ears were, I dunno, frosting? So listen up, Nike and Adidas and Marks and Spencer and Cheetah and Kiki Lala, and whatever clothing line, here’s a tip to make some money (or at least my money). Try selling ski masks that reaches up to the nose, something like Zorro’s but inverted to cover the nose rather than risk not seeing any oncoming car.
That night, though, my uni was transported back to the initial horrific climate conditions once again, with a severe downpour and even stronger winds reaching 16mph, if my memory (or Google) didn’t fail me. Which is about 26kmh. Which is normally how fast some uncles drive in KL. Freaking slow, but latch yourself to his windscreen and you get what I mean. Imagine walking against it, just like what I’ve experienced, and everyone on the path looked like they had osteoporosis, slanting back and forth and side to side just to stay upright. Funny.
These days, the sky turns dark at 4.30pm, rather than the usual 5pm a few weeks ago. With this, I can tell you with certainty that jogging at 5pm with temperatures hovering around 6°C is not a right thing to do. Right after my last class on Thursday, I gave it a solid 5-minute run back to my ecological duck-friendly place. After getting into my room, I felt like pouring hot water down my nose. That was how piercing the cold was. And funnily, after jogging around my biologically diversified place many times, I still can’t get myself to sweat.
A bit of economics now, and the Dubai debt default thing seemed to be a new hype today. Dow Jones is down 154 points (at time of press), presumably being affected by this. That’s what economists do best: relate everything together. Pimco’s investment manager went like “relax, testing testing oni, very quick okay wan la” (@CNN). Experts say it isn’t a crisis at all. US stock markets were like “Sei Lo!!” and percentage points fell.
This is big news, but there’s something that is even more important than the crazy debt: the Krafts-Cadbury thing. Oh, its so big that it will determine whether we will eat chocolate or chocolate cheese for snacks. It will determine whether future Dairy milk will come with bacteria and microorganisms. And, it will determine whether the Cadbury packaging will remain purple, or become yellow. Scary.
I can’t imagine how Krafts is going to integrate the famous Cadbury Dairy Milk into their line of products. Imagine brown Oreos, Jacob Crunchie biscuits, and Toblerone Flakes and you are not far off. I also cannot imagine Cadbury stuff taking in a bit of Krafts: Cadbury Dairy Milk with Ali Coffee, Dairy Milk with Taco Bell, kinda scary. And then there’s the cheese- Dairy Tiramisu!! Can bake cake....
Then there’s the Cadbury factory in Birmingham. The chocolate figures were annoying enough, but if they’re sold, there might be Cheeseman and Chocolate Girl holding hands in the amusement park, production side that smells like cough mixture, and at the chocolate bar, they ask you, “green cheese or purple cheese to go with the chocolate?”
Maybe Krafts would just buy over Cadbury and keep them as an individual entity, like Oreo, you don’t get Oreos with the yellow stuff inside, do you? Or they might just use it to make better Toblerone. And Taco Bell.
Let’s just hope for the best, and eat as much Cadbury as possible, in case the brand disappears.
And hope for good weekend as well.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Oh My Blog......
I have neglected my blog so badly that when friend had actually went “go update your blog la”, and I thought, “oh, ok, yeah, what blog?”
To make it up to my blog, I’ll just write a summary of the week, not like I have a lot of time to do so (gotta a lot of catching up to do i.e. catch up with some sleep, catch up on football etc etc).
So, let’s go.
Week 7 was a week of ups and downs, just like any other week here. There’s The Economist going on promotion, selling for a pound with free gifts and the Guardian newspaper going for 45 pence and giving out free chocolate and tea. The weather was not so good on aggregate, windy and rainy, and there was more duck poo on the walkway than last week.
But leave that alone. I‘ve gone out twice this week at night, on both occasions to the same place, Varsity. It’s a pub somewhere north of the campus, only 5 minutes from my scenic place, but 5 years from all the other ugly places. Which is far, for my friends. I hear you say “why the same place” but this is a campus university, not Campus@Euphoria or something, so choices will be limited. Unless, of course you want to go pub-crawling in Coventry and get drunk and get on a wrong bus. And end up in Pulau Tioman. And be late for next morning’s lecture.
But anyway, back to Varsity. (sounds just like another building block in uni. Hey guys, where’s your next class? Humanities building? Maths and Stats? VARSITY? ) The interior is very TGI-ish, with wood and soft lighting all over the place. There was no music on Tuesday, but it was a blast on Thursday, as it was a £1 night, where selected drinks went for a pound each.
Nothing much happened on Tuesday, as we only thought of coming here to check out the place. A pint of Kronenbourg and a bucket of chips later, and we were off at 11.15pm. But on Thursday, it was more crowded, and we had to sit outdoors as the bar and tables were full. This posed a new set of problems. Aside from my pro-photographer friend complaining about the hopeless lighting, a quick glance on the Internet showed temperature of about 10°C and winds of 10mph. So we had guys who shrieked ‘cold!’ after 3 Heineken, girl who shrieked ‘cold!’ all the time, and a guy who was bored of all the shrieking. Guess who.
Nightlife aside, I did spend my last weekend (Saturday) in the Cadbury Factory in Birmingham. It was a much-needed outing, considering the after effects of being conned in the Maths test (comparing the past year papers and the actual ones was like putting HSBC Bank and Tyra Bank side by side; both are banks but that’s about it). Anyway, the place was not very beautiful, but interesting. We began our excursion with a visit to the mini museum. There, there were displays and portraits of the pioneers of Cadbury, as well as a glass wall looking into the factory, where robotic arms were arranging the chocolates for packaging. The robot had actually made a mistake, as it arranged the boxes too close to the edge of the boxes below. The second row came, and, pow, all of the top row chocolates fell, and out came my laughter. Then the machine operator came and picked them up. Some robots just never learn.
Then, it was a short trip into the history of how the dairy milk chocolate was made. Before I go on, grab a Cadbury chocolate wrapper and observe the 2 glasses of milk being poured into the chocolate, and you’ll notice that one is full, while the other is half full. This is because, while the 2 pioneers of Cadbury was figuring out how to give the chocolate a better texture and taste, one had drank half the cup before deciding that fresh milk could be added, thus the milk-pouring symbol.
History lesson over, we were lead to a chocolate bar, where we choose our ingredient, and top it up with warm, liquid chocolate. I went for marshmallow, which the taste was an out of this world experience. We then got into the larger museum. There, they had displays of all sorts of Cadbury; the first few original Cadburys (all expired, I suppose); chocolate trumpets used in their TV advertisements, and media boxes explaining how each type of Cadbury was made (Caramel is good, Turkish, er...no comment). Past that, we ventured to the production side, where we caught glimpses of how the chocolates were manufactured. No doubt it was a fun job to work in a chocolate factory (Willy Wonka comes to mind, but not that hat) but watching those guys in white standing around the machineries, looking at us looking at them, I dunno. Like a zoo?? So bad....
Past the factory, and into the amusement park, where we get into the ‘car’ and it brought us along a track decorated with figures of chocolate houses and animals and, I can’t really describe it because it was really meant for kids and I can’t decipher what message it was sending out. At the end of it, the attendant unlocked the car and the first words my friend said to her were “WHAT WAS THAT?” That’s how bad it was.
Finally, gift shop time. Everyone went for the, wait for it, 1KG DAIRY MILK BAR!!! Other stuffs we bought were irrelevant compared to the mother of all chocolate bars. I was looking for 2kg, but, I suppose they don’t make it because if the robots drop them, the guys will break the robotic arm. I also took the assortment packs, that holds 25 mini pieces of caramel, crunchie, flake and dairy milk, as well as some Santa’s biscuit or something. The t-shirt was very tempting as well, but, oh well, maybe next time.
So, here’s it. 7 days of week 7. There’s more to come, I guess.
Birmingham city streets
holographics used to tell the stories
museum exhibits
chocolate trumpet
Chocolate Marshmallow
at Varsity
lousy drink
To make it up to my blog, I’ll just write a summary of the week, not like I have a lot of time to do so (gotta a lot of catching up to do i.e. catch up with some sleep, catch up on football etc etc).
So, let’s go.
Week 7 was a week of ups and downs, just like any other week here. There’s The Economist going on promotion, selling for a pound with free gifts and the Guardian newspaper going for 45 pence and giving out free chocolate and tea. The weather was not so good on aggregate, windy and rainy, and there was more duck poo on the walkway than last week.
But leave that alone. I‘ve gone out twice this week at night, on both occasions to the same place, Varsity. It’s a pub somewhere north of the campus, only 5 minutes from my scenic place, but 5 years from all the other ugly places. Which is far, for my friends. I hear you say “why the same place” but this is a campus university, not Campus@Euphoria or something, so choices will be limited. Unless, of course you want to go pub-crawling in Coventry and get drunk and get on a wrong bus. And end up in Pulau Tioman. And be late for next morning’s lecture.
But anyway, back to Varsity. (sounds just like another building block in uni. Hey guys, where’s your next class? Humanities building? Maths and Stats? VARSITY? ) The interior is very TGI-ish, with wood and soft lighting all over the place. There was no music on Tuesday, but it was a blast on Thursday, as it was a £1 night, where selected drinks went for a pound each.
Nothing much happened on Tuesday, as we only thought of coming here to check out the place. A pint of Kronenbourg and a bucket of chips later, and we were off at 11.15pm. But on Thursday, it was more crowded, and we had to sit outdoors as the bar and tables were full. This posed a new set of problems. Aside from my pro-photographer friend complaining about the hopeless lighting, a quick glance on the Internet showed temperature of about 10°C and winds of 10mph. So we had guys who shrieked ‘cold!’ after 3 Heineken, girl who shrieked ‘cold!’ all the time, and a guy who was bored of all the shrieking. Guess who.
Nightlife aside, I did spend my last weekend (Saturday) in the Cadbury Factory in Birmingham. It was a much-needed outing, considering the after effects of being conned in the Maths test (comparing the past year papers and the actual ones was like putting HSBC Bank and Tyra Bank side by side; both are banks but that’s about it). Anyway, the place was not very beautiful, but interesting. We began our excursion with a visit to the mini museum. There, there were displays and portraits of the pioneers of Cadbury, as well as a glass wall looking into the factory, where robotic arms were arranging the chocolates for packaging. The robot had actually made a mistake, as it arranged the boxes too close to the edge of the boxes below. The second row came, and, pow, all of the top row chocolates fell, and out came my laughter. Then the machine operator came and picked them up. Some robots just never learn.
Then, it was a short trip into the history of how the dairy milk chocolate was made. Before I go on, grab a Cadbury chocolate wrapper and observe the 2 glasses of milk being poured into the chocolate, and you’ll notice that one is full, while the other is half full. This is because, while the 2 pioneers of Cadbury was figuring out how to give the chocolate a better texture and taste, one had drank half the cup before deciding that fresh milk could be added, thus the milk-pouring symbol.
History lesson over, we were lead to a chocolate bar, where we choose our ingredient, and top it up with warm, liquid chocolate. I went for marshmallow, which the taste was an out of this world experience. We then got into the larger museum. There, they had displays of all sorts of Cadbury; the first few original Cadburys (all expired, I suppose); chocolate trumpets used in their TV advertisements, and media boxes explaining how each type of Cadbury was made (Caramel is good, Turkish, er...no comment). Past that, we ventured to the production side, where we caught glimpses of how the chocolates were manufactured. No doubt it was a fun job to work in a chocolate factory (Willy Wonka comes to mind, but not that hat) but watching those guys in white standing around the machineries, looking at us looking at them, I dunno. Like a zoo?? So bad....
Past the factory, and into the amusement park, where we get into the ‘car’ and it brought us along a track decorated with figures of chocolate houses and animals and, I can’t really describe it because it was really meant for kids and I can’t decipher what message it was sending out. At the end of it, the attendant unlocked the car and the first words my friend said to her were “WHAT WAS THAT?” That’s how bad it was.
Finally, gift shop time. Everyone went for the, wait for it, 1KG DAIRY MILK BAR!!! Other stuffs we bought were irrelevant compared to the mother of all chocolate bars. I was looking for 2kg, but, I suppose they don’t make it because if the robots drop them, the guys will break the robotic arm. I also took the assortment packs, that holds 25 mini pieces of caramel, crunchie, flake and dairy milk, as well as some Santa’s biscuit or something. The t-shirt was very tempting as well, but, oh well, maybe next time.
So, here’s it. 7 days of week 7. There’s more to come, I guess.
Birmingham city streets
holographics used to tell the stories
museum exhibits
chocolate trumpet
Chocolate Marshmallow
at Varsity
lousy drink
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