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