I realise I owe this blog an update. Many updates, in fact. I’m at home now, have been for almost two weeks, probably more. I was going to write a post about my Spain and Portugal trip, and then consecutively my trip to Ho Chi Minh with my parents that I just got back from last Saturday, but right here right now I am just going to plain outright admit that I don’t know when that will happen, or if I will end up even writing them at all. This sounds dramatic. I probably will eventually for posterity’s sake (lmao) but as of now I can’t find the heart to do any of that. Neither can I find Heart, my dog, for the past few days. He’s been missing speculatively since Wednesday and I implore everyone to keep an eye out for him, especially my friends and family in Alor Setar, because it breaks my heart everytime I come back home expecting to see Heart running around excitedly to greet us and be welcomed by an empty house instead. It breaks my heart everytime I instinctively and habitually start to call out “Heart” only to stop myself in time because the little fella won’t emerge from his favourite spot under the settee, little bell round his collar to announce his approach. It breaks my heart to hear my mum say that she thought the silhouette of a pair of slippers in place of where Heart usually waits for her behind the kitchen door was actually him, and it also breaks my heart when my dad went outside at 4AM when there was a thunderstorm to check if he was back and hiding under the car because he’s afraid of thunder. He’s been with us for six years that his absence feels like a glaring phantom limb for such a tiny canine. I can’t bear to think of how scared he must be, and I hope he is at least okay, wherever he is. Not a day goes by when we don’t miss you, little buddy.
They say home is where the heart is, so please bring Heart home. Please.
Just spent the whole day packing things into storage and then things into luggage and all the busyness coupled with the immediacy of just coming back from Spain and Portugal has left me with little to no capacity or time to truly think and lament about the fact that it’s my last night here in Manchester before the summer. I’m going home to Malaysia tomorrow. It’s finally happening.
Despite all my complaints, there is no denying that I’m going to miss my tiny blue room in Weston. It’s…tiny, but it’s been somewhere I can call a shelter, a home, for the past nine months. I’ve stripped my walls bare of posters and photos and postcards, things I treasure and have put on display to make this room, a room that has changed owners annually for years, mine, and it feel so weird and out of place to see this room empty again, just like how it was when I first moved in. Every little sound I make generates echoes now. What was previously a crowded city where you couldn’t walk down a street without bumping into at least one person that you know feels incredibly barren right now, with the few exceptions of me and my friends who are also flying off tomorrow. It’s all happening. Everything feels so overwhelming, now that my first year is actually already over and I’m going home, after nine months. I’m not without emotion, but I feel like I’m feeling too little for an event of a scale this grand. Objectively I’m making a mountain out of a molehill I know, but that’s always the case and I feel unnerved when I’m not “feeling enough” anyway.
Well. See you in a bit, Manchester, and see you soon, Malaysia.
it was already 8pm when we left oceanario and we didn’t really have any idea how to get to the 25th of april bridge. each of our google maps was suggesting different transportations and routes, so in the end we decided to take the full package combination of train, metro, bus and walking.
it turned out our travel pass was not valid for train journeys so we took the metro from oriente, and then spontaneously decided to stop at saldanha and take the 727 bus to the bridge. of course, the bus went right past us as soon as we emerged from the metro station. we spent 16 minutes waiting for the next bus while playing spyfall, and then spent another 30 minutes on the bus continuing the game while simultaneously trying to figure out where we had to get off.
in the spirit of things going wrong, the bus dropped us at the wrong location and we had to walk 10 minutes to the bridge, but we got there in the end. it was beautiful. the full moon was directly above it and lights lit up the bridge connecting two cities within lisbon. the weather had cooled considerably compared to the afternoon’s harrowing heat and we could see the cloudless sky full of stars. all day we’d been talking about the bridge and despite everything, we made it. it was 10.30pm, and there was no one around, but we made it.
we sat by the riverbank in silence as music from yee lin’s phone played as a background theme song. i was just indulging in being able to appreciate the incredibly scenic view before me in the presence of my friends, friends whom i have travelled around spain and portugal with for the past 10 days, have encountered many problems and challenges with but have also found joy and gratification with. and i’m not even gonna lie, it’s been a gruelling and exhausting week, but right at that moment, realising the impending future of our departure, i felt nostalgic for what was merely a trip that lasted for 11 days. not even weeks nor months nor years, but considering all that had happened, it most certainly felt like that.
i allowed myself to stare up at the sky with marvelling eyes, allowed the slight breathlessness that comes with realising how big and beautiful the world is and how fortunate i was to be able to take in with my own two eyes the shining dots above me, the reflection of the moon in the water, the chilly salty breeze blowing against my skin, and of course, the good company of my friends.
it feels largely unnerving and overwhelming. i don’t like changes to a comfortable routine and never will, no matter how much i say i want to leave. because it always feels like i’m losing something important. what was once a life i led can now only be referred to in the past tense.
Every year since 2014 (which is not much of a track record since that’s only two years ago), I tell myself to upload a webcam selfie on my birthday as a blog tradition, because that is as real time a photo as one can get. And also because it gives me a reason to take and upload a selfie nbd
This year is my first year (too many firsts) celebrating my birthday in a different country. Despite that, just like every year, I spend it in the presence and company of a family.
Thank you so much to everyone who celebrated my birthday with me, who went through all the effort to make me feel happy and special today. Thank you for all the wishes from everyone despite the time differences and being in different countries (and even from people I’d only met for the first time through Skype). Thank you for spending your time and energy on me, and for allowing me to be a part of your lives. I am honestly so overwhelmed with the love and affection everyone has given me.
It’s been a while. And I say that because the past posts arguably since I got here have been more inclined towards reporting what I’ve been doing and where I’ve been than anything else and it just feels really weirdly detached. They feel more like necessary obligations — which, I’m not griping about because it’s not like I’m writing them involuntarily, but rather that they feel quite one-dimensional. This is very ironic; before coming here, I told myself to write less about emotions/feelings because it was all I could write about during A Levels and then after that but now that I don’t have the time to do so (lol) it feels odd and out of character. This blog has seen and recorded so many thoughts and emotions over the years, allowing me to look back at them and recall the thought processes I’d initiated and the emotional spectrums I’d ridden on. And I want to be able to do the same during my university years.
I mentioned this in my Blackpool post — that my first year of university has finally come to an end. Wow. I honestly don’t know what to say other than that. I can’t say it flew by really quickly, because at times it felt like everything was moving by laggardly, but at the same time I am also in disbelief that I’m one-third through university. I survived these nine months in a university in Manchester. If I properly sit myself down to think about this more clearly, it would just feel incredibly surreal. Like without a doubt, when I go back to Malaysia, the past year would feel like nothing but a dream to me.
But it isn’t, and the proof lies in the fact that so many things have changed. My hair has grown so that it looks more like a pudding head than the blonde bob I had on my first day in UK. I also apparently like K-pop now. I can now give an analysed answer if a friend asks me, “If someone kicks me and I kick them back, does that count as self-defence and will I be excused” that is if they’re willing to stick around to hear the entire tedious process of it. I also like to think I’m somewhat better at cooking, which is frankly not saying a lot because being better at cooking when I previously couldn’t cook at all just means that at least the food is edible now. I’ve also grown to be less afraid in various aspects — going places alone and doing things by myself is one of the more pronounced ones, but I’ve also discovered that learning to (for lack of a less clichéd word) open up and not closing myself off from the rest of the world out of fear and reluctance takes a certain kind of courage too. When I first came here, I was wary about every single thing, afraid of doing anything that would end up wounding my sensitive feelings, my frail self-esteem, and a foolproof method of preventing that is to just clamp down on the existence of connections that would enable an open path for direct or indirect assaults. And I can’t say I didn’t succeed, during the first few months, but it didn’t take long for me to realise that it was a scheme designated for a backfire. Osho said, “No relationship can truly grow if you go on holding back. If you remain clever and go on safeguarding and protecting yourself, only personalities meet, and the essential centers remain alone. Then only your mask is related, not you.” For a while, this resonated with me so much because even if I was doing what I thought to be the right thing, I was goddamn miserable because of that, and that was a cost too heavy to bear for the next months or even years. And that is why I am grateful that I have met people here who have allowed me room and space to grow, who, during my endeavours to take one step forward and several steps back, at least gave me the chances for my forward steps. It’s not a slope with a steep gradient, this learning process, but it’s a process, and I’m slowly learning the ropes of what it means to be a good person, a good friend to others, not just the friends I’ve made here but also the friends I already have and want to keep for a very long time.
In one of my previous posts in October, I said I hoped there would come a time when I am able to call this place home. I’m on my way there.
The Coldplay hype had been going strong since last year when we bought our tickets to watch them perform live on the 4th of June at Etihad Stadium and now, it was finally upon us. Eight months later, we were finally watching Coldplay live for the first (and most probably last) time on their A Head Full of Dreams tour.
On Saturday, Rumin, Brian and I took an Uber to Etihad Stadium at around 5:30PM (we had reserved seating tickets so we didn’t have to queue), joined by Jovaynne who I later on found out was also going to the show, albeit seated at a different section. Etihad was already full of people and incredibly traffic jammed by the time we reached the stadium. We still had time before the first opening act started at 7PM so we attempted to find Yee Lin, Jia Yang and CC who were volunteering at the food stalls that night but unbeknownst to us, they were actually at a different entrance (out of approximately 40 entrances) from ours.
Our seats were literally second highest from the top on the topmost section, which also translates to 1) climbing an incredibly long flight of stairs that gave me mild vertigo and 2) the singers and band on stage appearing tinily ant-sized to us. But despite that, it was Coldplay, and the mere sight of the massive crowd and stage was enough to make me feel super excited in anticipation of what the night would entail. Ash and Ee Min were in the unreserved standing section and even managed to spot us (equally ant-sized) at our elevated position.
The first two hours were occupied with Alessia Cara and Lianne La Havas’ performances as opening acts. I’d heard of them before but not really their songs but they delivered, even though most of the crowd was just itching for Coldplay’s set to start already.
These Xylobands literally single-handedly brought Coldplay’s performance value many notches above everyone else’s. Your faves could never
And then at 9PM, the background music died down and peals of excited screaming echoed throughout the whole stadium, mine included. It was actually beginning, one of the (if not the) best concerts I’d been to, even if I didn’t know it yet.
Bright rainbow-coloured laser lights lit up the stage while a rotating kaleidoscopic sphere appeared on the LED screen behind the band as Chris Martin started to run down the extended stage pathway, commencing the night’s show with A Head Full of Dreams.
The Xylobands were all centrally synchronised and lit up in different colours according to different songs, and at different frequencies and rhythmsThe rainbow smoke was soooooo coooooolWhen they played Yellow, the stadium lit up in a sea of, you guessed it, yellow
During Adventure of A Lifetime, the Xylobands lit up in the pattern of a heartbeat at the lyrics “I feel my heart beating” and it really just sends shivers down your spineThis was during Fix You, particularly at the part where the lyrics went “lights will guide you home”. Can you imagine being surrounded by this and witnessing it with your own two eyes. It felt as breath-taking as it looked
The small stage at the very back of the standing section where they performed song requests and acoustic songsA Religious Experience™
It was amazing. Beyond amazing. The visual effects were absolutely stunning and the best I’ve ever seen, as expected and more of a Coldplay concert. The atmosphere was brilliant, everyone singing at the top of their lungs regardless of tone and pitch, letting loose any and all wild contagious dance moves. The songs and Chris’ showmanship made it impossible for us to stay in our seats. At one point during Adventure of A Lifetime, he got everyone to quiet down during the bridge and once the chorus hit, everyone leapt up and so did I, not caring that I was at a very high place and that I probably looked incredibly silly. That feeling you get at gigs when everyone around you is as indulged in the music and the ambience as you are was amplified so much more at a stadium of capacity 60,000. It was phenomenal.
Two hours later, at 11PM, they ended the night with Up & Up before the credits (literally) started rolling and the stadium lights came on and we had to reluctantly leave, the magic of the night having come to a halt but still lingering upon us, evinced in our blushed cheeks, hoarse throats, sore limbs and most importantly, wide grins.
As far as concerts go (and I don’t proclaim to be a gig veteran but I’ve been to a fair few so I’m basing any personal opinions on my scarce experiences), I can, without a doubt or hesitation, conclude that Coldplay’s 2016 A Head Full of Dreams show at Etihad Stadium, Manchester was hands down the most astounding and spectacular concert I’d been to. And honestly, I don’t see how anyone could disagree with me.
Michelle’s People I’ve Watched Live List, updated:
This is probably by far the least appealing title I’ve come up with but even after days of contemplating in the shower, I still cannot think of a witty or clever title to do with the word “Blackpool”. Accepting ideas and submissions from anyone possessing the creative brain juices to replace this title with a better one.
My last paper, and thus by default, the last day of my first year in uni, was last Wednesday, and the sweet taste of liberation that I’d been craving and harping on since a month ago was as climactic as I’d wanted it to be. Which in this case meant splurging on Grade A Japanese food with my friends and then going home to binge watch Fullmetal Alchemist until the accumulated deep-seated exhaustion from exams took over and I surrendered to it willingly for the first time in a very long time.
But this was not before my friends spontaneously suggested a day trip to Blackpool the very next day and, still riding on the fresh fumes of freedom, I had every reason to say yes and bought train tickets right then and there.
Our train the next morning left at 8:46AM and we reached the seaside town of Blackpool at around 10AM. The weather was ideal, as English weather has generally been for the past few days with its optimal temperature range within the 20s, so we immediately headed for the beach which was a 15-minute walk from the train station.
After being cooped up in the city for so long, the mere sight of the sea admittedly made me more excited than I thought I would be. It was a welcomed fresh change of scenery appropriate for post-exams therapy.
We didn’t hang around for very long because we still had other places to go and empty stomachs to fill. On the way to lunch, we passed by an arcade and spent a good few minutes (and pounds) in it because, well, just because we could.
Lunch was, stereotypically, fish and chips, and then we headed for the Sea Life aquarium (reminiscent of KLCC’s Aquaria) where, stereotypically again, we spent more time pointing at sea creatures in the tanks, exclaiming where the best hawker place to eat sambal sting rays is and debating whether a spotted fish is kam bong hu or peh chiao than actually reading facts off the plastic boards mounted next to the tanks and marvelling at exotic sea life.
We bought a joint-attraction ticket with the Blackpool Tower Dungeon so that was where we headed to next. What was initially thought to be a haunted house turned out to be just creepy (and smelly in particular areas) where we were educated rather sinisterly about England’s history filled with macabre plagues and gory witch-burnings. Theatrics and scare tactics were things I could stomach, but what I did not expect at the end of the tour was an approximately 20-feet free fall ride. I keep getting deceived into getting on roller coaster rides. This needs to stop.
When we came out, it was almost 3PM and none of us were very hungry yet so we went to Poundland and Starbucks to get some snacks and drinks and subsequently chill by the beach (a real beach, this time) for the next four hours or so, basking in the sunlight and lack of obligation to do anything while playing Contact.
Yee Lin, Nicole, Jia Yang and CC were the only ones who took their shoes off to play around in the water but the rest of us didn’t, preferring instead to just observe and stand guard for everyone’s stuff on the beach. I still went ahead periodically to paw at the tide with my shoes, but I had to keep on retracting my footsteps because the ocean tide kept inching forward at an incredible speed that in mere minutes, the size of the beach was halved. It wasn’t until Siow Le suddenly turned around and exclaimed that the sea tide wasn’t just rising from the direction of the sea itself, but large puddles were also forming behind us, right at the base of the stairs, trapping us on island that was rapidly being consumed by the waves by the second, that we began to panic. Ash, Siow Le and Xue Wen attempted to make a run for the shrinking strip of dry land between two approaching puddles but I was terrified (and extremely lazy) at the prospect of having to clean my shoes back in my halls were they submerged in sea water and would rather run across barefooted at the expense of guaranteed discomfort and exposing my toe corn to sea water (which was #1 reason why I decided to remain full-footed in the first place). I was competing with the rising tide to take off my shoes and socks and roll up my pants (I won) but unfortunately, the sea seemed to be taking our competition too seriously that by the time I was halfway across the stretch of puddle to the stairs, the water level had already risen up to my thighs, wetting my pants anyway (I lost).
We all made it to the dry stairs in varying degrees of dampness and I couldn’t stop laughing (though there was a hint of laugh-crying in there too), wondering how amusing we must have looked like, screaming and complaining all the way from the beach (which was now absolutely submerged) to the stairs. We tried our best to clean up with Yee Lin’s supply of wet tissues but there was no getting rid of the ickiness either way, so we could only make the best of the situation (which in this case meant walking in squelching wet shoes for some) and head to the train station for our train leaving at 8:40PM.
And then of course, the night ended with a late night dinner at Pearl City. Stereotypically.
Right after my Obligations I paper last Friday, I went to the Dot to Dot festival scattered around Northern Quarter. But because I got restless while waiting for an 8PM set that hadn’t even started by 8.45PM, Ee Min and I went to get sushi and bubble tea before making it back just in time to squeeze all the way to the very front for The Temper Trap’s set.
Despite only attending their show that night, it was well worth it.
Michelle’s People I’ve Watched Live List, updated:
There is a saying that goes, go big or go for the cheapest option that requires you to stay up till four in the morning and then attempt to get sufficient sleep on a moving coach before you reach your destination the next day with the expectation of being a fully functional human being. But hey, at least we got to witness the 5AM spring sunrise.
Also, if you’re worried about getting bored on the five-hour journey, here’s a brand new interesting game called Don’t Fill Up the Plastic Bag. Rules are simple. Bring along a plastic bag. Try not to fill up the plastic bag, particularly with any form of liquid substance. And if you manage to do that by the end of the journey, you win! It’s fun, I play it every time I get on a coach.
Tip: bring Broccoli on a well-deserved vacation!
2. Go sightseeing around the town of Cambridge in a semi-zombie mode while attempting to absorb the surrounding intellectualness by osmosis
If the first thought that comes to mind when you step on Cambridge soil is, “Oh god, I am quite literally surrounded by people who are brilliant enough to get into Cambridge” accompanied by a festering feeling of intimidation, don’t worry, you are entirely not alone! The town itself is a neverending knowledge hub, always has and probably always will be. Every single college building and/or structure has its own story, all of them involving students and scholars from the past (some even the present) and their quirky endeavours, like taking apart a bridge to see how it works and fighting among each other for the erection of a clock tower. We even walked past a pub with a plaque on its outside wall stating that that pub was the exact location where the discovery of how DNA carries genetic information was announced at in 1953. An incredibly large portion of knowledge that we’ve learned since primary school was actually (figuratively) outsourced from this intellectual English town. And then you can’t help but compare that the stories that you tell your friends when they visit Manchester are along the lines of “yes, that’s the Tower where they have this thing called the Tower Challenge where people basically race to drink alcohol to the top”. Gotta love Manchester.
And when we were done visiting the various colleges scattered all around campus, convinced that I’d definitely walked down the same alley more than twice, it was time for Ee Min, Yee Lin, Ash and I to pay our respects to our English law overlord that was the Cambridge University law faculty. It was to us as Google is to the Internet.
Other activities you can do include: roleplay as if you’re in The Theory of Everything if you’re into that sort of thing, marvel at the strict rules the university imposes on grass-stepping (and learn the methods to decipher which patch of grass is steppable-on [hint: benches]), take selfies with a marble statue of Isaac Newton
3. Play extreme dress up to attend a Cambridge Formal Dinner™
Only to be served Indian food. But it was certainly the precise ambience for our outfits and one-hour of pretending we were important people, especially so sitting opposite our robe-clad Cambridge friends.
4. And then, clad in the very same formal garments and adornments, escape the cold by entering a random common room and play Cards Against Humanity
We learned a thing or two playing this game. Or three. We all had slightly traumatic Google histories on our phones that night.
5. Squeeze six people into a room, three in another and two in the smallest one
And at the same time, seize the opportunity to educate a fellow friend on the comprehensive list of everyone’s birthdates until one in the morning.
6. PUNTING!!!!!!!!!
Here is a non-exhaustive list of things to expect when going punting for your first time:
A lot of initial panicked shrieks of boat instability
Getting rare close-up views of ducks in their natural habitat
Having a death-like grip on your phone/camera when taking photos after hearing recounts of friends of friends’ gadgets vanishing into the depths of Cambridge’s scholarly canal
Bumping into other boats with intensities ranging from saying hi and waving to strangers from a different boat to reflexed cursing and punters squatting down to brace for the impact
Which led to several canal congestions along the way
Realising the next scaled-up activity to do is, of course, attempt to punt ourselves and temporarily relieve Yi Chao of his skilled punting duties
Also realising moments later that maybe that wasn’t such a good idea and punting was actually a lot harder than it looked
More bumper car situations
More canal traffic jams
Taking selfies at the end to commemorate a moist and exhausting day of punting and paddling
7. Eat diabetic waffles and attend a busking concert at Market Square to reward yourself
Pretty self-explanatory.
8. Eat sushi on the train back home
Fully utilise the table seats you booked beforehand by buying a gigantic sushi set to share with your friend. And then for the next two hours back to Manchester, sporadically play Contact with your friends while also simultaneously playing Don’t Fill Up the Plastic Bag.
*
Photo credits to respective owners. Special thanks to Ze Kai and Yi Chao for bringing us around despite being so busy. As a token of appreciation, here’s £20 from us. Just kidding. See, this is why you should always read the fine print.
I have dreamt of home countless times, and I don’t mean home physically, not really, but home where I am with my parents. It usually starts out flooded with the feelings of pure, unadulterated happiness and relief, that I am finally home where it is safe and familiar and full of love. And then because this is an occurrence that happens way too often — so often that I fall so easily into the trap of believing in it and wake up the next morning feeling completely disorientated when the first thing I see when I open my eyes is my anime poster-plastered blue wall instead of my pink one back at home, filled with dread, feeling like I’d just lost something incredibly significant to me, because all these false hopes feel like a ten-tonne weight pressing against my chest when the dream bubble of a transient home is, yet again, cruelly burst — my mind subconsciously develops a testing system so that each time I plummet into yet another illusion of home, a brief moment of lucidity wherein I get myself to recall my flight back to Malaysia stands as gatekeeper to adjudicate whether this is real or not real. If I am unable to do that, to remember the details of how I left Manchester, what I did on the flight, and what I did upon reaching the airport in Malaysia — which is every single time because, well, it really isn’t real and I have never actually flown back yet — I subconsciously get to acknowledge that this is a dream within the dream itself, to cushion the guaranteed delivered blow so that it won’t be as hard and dreadful upon returning to consciousness. Pretty much the same principle as the spinning totem in Inception, except perhaps less cool.
But last night was a first. It was the first time my test malfunctioned and failed itself. It was the first time that I managed to fabricate a memory of flying back to Malaysia and deceiving my subconscious into truly believing that I was home. I dreamt that I was in my uncle’s old house back in Taman Golf and there was a family gathering. My relatives were all present and so was my cousin who I was hanging out with. Even my dog, Heart, was there. The subsequent sequence of events were all surreal and would never ever happen in real life (as dreams usually are) but because I was reassured of the verified status of my being at home by that mind test thing, I relaxed considerably and let all my guards down, which was why the mini panic that I had upon waking up and staring at my goddamn anime posters made me feel the most bewildered I’ve ever been after waking up from a dream of home. And after you’ve repeated this entire process a sufficient number of times, home in itself feels like the most unreachable concept it’s ever been.
Ernie, KY, Jia Yang, yours truly, Rumin and Pui Jen
The last time I went on a legitimate roller coaster thrill ride was when I was eight years old at Lotte World in Korea. Since then, I found little joy or desire to go on roller coasters, attributing this aversion to my fear(s) of a) adrenaline itself (a hormone that I am more familiar with in states of anxiety rather than excitement and thus has left a bad taste in my mouth), b) heights, c) losing control of my own body movements (which in this case refers to being jolted around aggressively at very high speeds) and d) involuntary paranoia of something going wrong.
Morbid and downer facts aside, I paid heed to none of those antipathies and said yes almost immediately upon hearing that Weston Hall was organising a trip to the renowned Alton Towers theme park, mainly because it was free for us residents and also because my friends were going. I mean, had nothing to lose even if I chickened out of all the rides.
The coach ride to Stoke-on-Trent took about two hours and my motion sickness didn’t fail to pay me a visit, so I spent a good deal of time clutching onto a plastic bag as placebo and trying to ignore the tendrils of nausea curling nastily within my guts. We reached Alton Towers at around 10AM, vomit-free, but I was greeted with another calamity upon alighting from the coach in the form of unexpectedly cold weather. But there was still warm morning sunlight in sporadic places if you stood at a correct angle unblocked by the clouds so that helped alleviate my nausea and coldness a lot in the queue to enter the theme park.
The first place we headed to after acquiring a map was The Smiler, one of the more, if not the most, infamous rides at Alton Towers for an accident that occurred a year ago that led to victims suffering from crippling injuries and leg amputations. But that wasn’t the first thing that I thought of when I saw the roller coaster tracks; what I thought of was leaning more towards variations of holy shit.
It was just loops upon loops of 360-degree loop tracks. The eerie laughter sound effects and flashing static screens of distorted human laughter expressions that played up to its thematic attraction was nothing short of disturbing. If this ride had a theme song, it would be a jarring melody weaved from the screams of human beings. Which was why I was truly so in awe when my friends all immediately went “Let’s go” and proceeded to head for the entrance while I adamantly posited myself before it, unmoving, out of fear, volunteering to take care of my friends’ stuff in the safety of two feet placed firmly on the ground with my body the right side up.
I had a 20-minute live viewing session of the ride and it remains to this day the scariest roller coaster ride I’ve seen. Just seeing the cart go upside down repeatedly at speeds that made even the metal tracks echo in their vibrations sent additional goosebumps all over my skin. When my friends emerged from the ride in whole pieces, I honestly could not have admired their guts and dauntlessness more. I have amazing daredevils as friends.
And so this group of daredevils proceeded to the next terrifying ride: a 90-degree vertical drop into, well, Oblivion. Jia Yang stayed with me on the ground for this one, but I have to admit that I had tiny impulses to go on it because this didn’t look as bad as The Smiler and I didn’t want to be such a bad sport so early into the trip. But as always, I refrained from subjecting myself to fear-incurring situations and instead laughed and took videos of my friends on the ride.
It was already noon when Rumin, Pui Jen, Ernie and KY returned so we decided to have lunch at The Burger Kitchen. After that, because it would be the worst idea of all the ideas in the world to go on a thrill ride immediately after a meal, we decided to watch a 4D Ice Age movie at the area where all the kids’ rides were. We had to wait an hour for the next movie viewing, so what better to do than embarrass ourselves among Caucasian toddlers by going on the merry-go-round.
And so it was to be remembered in the history books that my first ride at Alton Towers was the merry-go-round.
We also went on the 80% children-populated Spinner-style ride with swings that get rotated continuously (which I was also not a fan of because of the heights and speed and dizziness) and then watched the 4D Ice Age movie (the other D in this circumstance materialised in the form of artificial snowflakes raining on us and quick, sharp gas releases aimed at our legs).
Our next stop was the Dark Forest (Alton Towers really play their intriguing concepts well), home of the Rita and Th13teen rides. We bumped into Puru and the other RA members prior to that and they’d recommended Th13teen, so that was where we headed first.
At this point, I was starting to feel tired of being a bad sport by refusing to go on rides, but at the same time also feeling terrified beyond belief at the mere notion of going on one. Regardless, I didn’t want to wait outside anymore so I joined the queue with my friends, reasoning that I could still get out of here if I chickened out in the end. I told myself that, then told my friends that, and then got the same reassuring response from them but truly I knew I had to do it, in a “now or never” debacle I waged within myself during the entire queue. We got up to the bag counter where I deposited my bag. There was no going back now. And so I tried to console myself by asking my friends rhetorical questions like, “It’s not going to be as bad as The Smiler right?” “This is probably more of a scarehouse than a thrill ride right??” “There are no over-the-shoulder harnesses so there shouldn’t be a 360-degree loop right???”
Indeed, those were the truths I’d chosen to believe in (maybe not 100% but a convincing 60%) due to the way the ride was publicised (green lights and an ominous dried-up clawed hand on the poster, making it seem like a haunted house more than anything) and the fact that the only restraints we had were lap bars. I could do haunted houses. And as long as there weren’t any loop-the-loop tracks, I should be okay. I thought.
And then our cart was deployed into the unknown.
Here’s the thing about Th13teen: unlike all other rides at Alton Towers, Th13teen’s tracks were hidden from view, mostly blocked by Rita’s tracks. You couldn’t see anything from the queue, or anywhere at all, rendering my initial excuse of “I’ll decide whether I want to go on the ride after I see the tracks” useless. Anyone’s guess was as good as mine when it came to what was to be expected on this ride.
And so I expected very little. Way lesser than what was actually in store for us.
I was already beginning to laugh-cry a little when the roller coaster left the sheltered station into the chilly open and Jia Yang started apologising profusely for convincing me that the ride wouldn’t go very high because the cart was slowly and painfully crawling up a rather steep slope. At the pinnacle, I sent an arbitrary prayer for this ride to Not Go As Fast As I Am Beginning To Think It Will but I was interrupted once the descent commenced and there was nothing I could do but close my eyes and scream and cling onto the meagre lap bar for dear life, the only glaring thought that stood out among all other thoughts in my head at that time being PLEASE GOD DON’T LET ME FALL OFF BECAUSE THE ONLY THING I’M FEELING RIGHT NOW IS THE FEELING OF FALLING OFF
Halfway through, the cart slowed down and I allowed myself to open my eyes in relief but that relief was short-lived when I noticed the cart entering a shoddy off-white warehouse-looking structure and I thought, okay, this is where the scarehouse part begins. No more screaming my ass off while feeling the very same screams being forcefully dashed by the rapid winds as I try to regain a feeble semblance of control over my motions.
We entered the building and green lights lit all around us — and then the cart stopped. After regaining senses of my surroundings, I realised why that was. There was a wall right in front of us where the track ended. I was allowed the luxury of confusion for a while before the cart jolted and dropped a bit. Paused for two seconds. And then FREE-FALL DROPPED BEFORE IT STARTED MOVING BACKWARDS IN PITCH BLACK DARKNESS AS FAST AS IT CAME FORWARD
I honestly don’t remember much in the panic of that moment because I wasn’t expecting it to move backwards and the horror at the beginning of the ride was amplified that much more. Until we finally emerged into the bright open and the cart stopped for a while before moving forward again.
It was moving slower this time but the sluggishness was reminiscent of the suspenseful build before a fall so I still kept my eyes closed, until I was told that it was over. The ride was finally over. I could see the station where we had set off from and it was filled with people but I was still afraid of more unexpected things happening, like an extra track pulling us sideways or the cart speeding ahead past the station without stopping, launching into another alternative track route. But this time, none of my fears happened and I got out of the cart with shaking legs, amazed that I was still alive and breathing.
It turned out that none of us expected the things that happened to happen either, and we collectively exchanged shocked exclamations of the unexpected on the way to the Skyride cable cars to get to the other side of the park.
We saved the best ride (subjective, but objective in terms of newness and specialness) for last, which in this case was Galactica, the first virtual reality roller coaster in the world (apparently). I was quite excited for this because my first experience with VR at the Nottingham National Videogame Arcade with a HTC Vive was AMAZING and coupled together with a roller coaster ride should be pretty mind-blowingly impressive. I was still nervous of course, but going on Th13teen lent me some courage (more accurately adrenaline, probably) and this time, I could see the tracks and they looked okay, not too much loops and not much screaming either. Plus, the VR would probably make things less scary as opposed to seeing myself actually being whirled around in real life.
The queue took up to almost two hours because it was a new ride and let’s face it, VR gets all the hype it deserves. It was cold and I gradually needed to pee as the queue continuously moved forward but it didn’t really feel that long with my friends around.
Galactica’s immersion was really well done; they had monitor screens displaying departure “destinations” and “times” narrated by an AI ala a real space station situated where the queue was. When we got to the front of the line, the set-up itself looked like a space station. We deposited our bags and got into our seats before putting the VR headsets on. Before departing, our seats were turned 90-degrees upwards into a crouching position facing the ground, except in the VR, it wasn’t the ground I was facing, but a white bottomless pit surrounded by suspended robots that were preparing for my departure into outer space.
The ride started speeding up at the first “wormhole”, which brought me out into space and if I looked down, I could see Earth. I suddenly realised that, VR or not, this 3D illusion of me floating in space was actually also still very frightening. The next couple of minutes quite literally flew by, as I was brought through multiple other wormholes at increasing speeds, soaring over different planets constituting both hot and cold terrains. There were even parts where the seats turned around so I was facing skywards while moving backwards. The speed of it all still made me scream, and there were moments when I was more concerned about the headset falling off than immersing myself in space, but it truly was an experience like no other. I can’t say that it’s something I’d willingly go on again and again because it is after all, a roller coaster, but it’s definitely something worth trying out at least once in your life. I doubt you’d find the same experience anywhere else with anything else.
It was already half past four when we left Galactica and we had to get to the coach by five so we took the cable car back to the main entrance, where we had some doughnuts before sauntering back to the coach park. I was asleep throughout the whole coach ride, thankfully, and after reaching Weston, we had Mala steamboat dinner at a Chinese restaurant at Princess Street for three hours.
It was one of the best and most fulfilling days I’d had in Manchester so far, and I fell asleep that night cherishing that.
i am so contented, a contentment that stretches beyond physical surroundings and instead lodges itself firmly in your mental crevices. a contentment that makes you feel dizzy from the accumulated joy, gratitude, relief, excitement — which all then peter out into contentment. it’s the disbelief that stuns you when you realise how remarkable it feels when good things just keep happening one after another, how you find it hard to catch up but you savour the chase anyway. it takes away all the negativity and pessimism built up within you over a long period of time and then just firmly crushes them to dust, and you want to indulge in this continuous pummelling, want to bathe in this luxuriously rare feeling, want to savour it endlessly, want it to not end.
and it’s just. i am finally learning to notice the good in situations and people rather than the bad. focusing on things that make me feel happy and confident. willing to tear down barriers previously set up to be more welcoming towards positive thoughts. these are the feelings i am grateful for when i look around and take in all my family and friends around me and realise that i am loved. it’s the thing prompting me to document our time together and my feelings at that current moment, to go on and on endlessly to anyone who was willing to listen about things that make me excited, optimistic for more to come. because i am grateful, i am so grateful and i will never stop telling that to the people who make me feel this way. never stop telling them how fortunate and blessed i feel to have met them and be a part of their lives, their stories. so i say thank you, while inside i feel the weight of those two words holding more meaning and gratitude than they commonly do.
and that’s great. that’s all great! like i always say at the end of every outing blogpost because it’s the truth. i’ll go to sleep thinking about it while smiling, and wake up the next day feeling the same sort of contentment and cherishing the fact that i have the opportunity to curate an archive of memories filled with adventures and tales i’ve gone on with the people i love.
¶
i am so tired, a tiredness that stretches beyond physical exertion and instead seeps into the very fibre of your being. a tiredness that makes you feel dizzy from the accumulated sadness, fear, anger, frustration — which all then peter out into tiredness. it’s the disbelief that stuns you when you realise how egregious it feels when bad things just keep happening one after another, how it doesn’t even allow you room to catch your breath. it takes away all the willpower and optimism built up within you over a long period of time and then just ruthlessly crushes them to dust, and you want to escape from this continuous pummelling, want to go home, want to disappear from the world, want to not exist.
and it’s just. i am blowing things out of proportions. making a big deal out of things when they really aren’t. behaving like someone who has never gone through hardships in her life. these are the responses i hear in my head before i can start to tell people that maybe i’m not okay and that is it okay if i cry in the presence of a human being for a while? it’s the thing holding me back from shaking my head when people ask me if i’m okay, from bringing my finger down to click send on a message that reads “i need someone to talk to”. because i am weak, i am so weak and i don’t want people to know that. don’t want people to feel the irritant parasitic latch of my whining and ranting onto their own lives, their own problems. so i say i’m okay, while inside i feel like a ticking time bomb.
and that’s fine. that’s all fine. like i always say at the end of every conversation because what other conclusion can i come to. i’ll sleep it off, and wake up the next day forcefully wiping everything from my immediate memory and hope it’s an actual erasure and not just a subtle accumulation that will actually lead to a detonation one day.
KY was the one who suggested pre-Easter break that we should go to Lake District, one of the more renowned northern destinations to travel to on vacation. Two weeks into Easter break, it was getting obvious that if we didn’t just up and go, we would probably end up never making the trip a reality. So, on Wednesday, I received texts from my friends saying they were buying train tickets to Lake District for tomorrow. So I did the same. And the next morning, at 9:16AM, we were heading for Windermere, Lake District.
The night before, I came home at 3AM after spending the day with Rumin at Trafford Centre after picking up my US Visa from Moseley Road. Then, as per my daily pre-sleeping ritual, I spent an hour on my phone before realising it was 4:30AM and started to panic and in turn, the panic made it even more difficult to fall asleep. By the time my alarm rang the next morning, I was pretty certain I’d barely slept for more than two hours.
Rumin, KY and I headed for Manchester Piccadilly first the next morning since we live nearest to the station and waited for the remaining seven (Yee Lin, Nicole, Ash, Jia Yang, CC, Ernie and Ze Kai) to turn up before heading for Platform 14. It was already past 9AM so we started rushing — and it was exactly this rushing that led to me hearing yells of “NO THIS IS THE WRONG TRAIN” as soon as I stepped on the platform and seeing CC attempting to stop the closing doors of the train with his hands. And failed. Still in my half-asleep state, I turned to look at the sign next to the railway track which announced that the train that had just left, the train that CC and also, I later on found out, Ernie, had wrongly boarded, was a 9:06AM train to London Euston. The Piccadilly station workers noticed our shocked, and quite frankly, amusing, predicament and advised us to call CC and Ernie to get off at the next Oxford Road station and board the right train heading towards the direction of Glasgow.
We couldn’t really stop cracking up with laughter after that, all the way to Oxford Road station. The trip hadn’t even started and we’d already lost two of our members.
We were reunited at Oxford Road, after which the two-hour journey to Windermere commenced. I forced myself to take a nap despite being in a rather unideal position for napping because I knew I would probably be filled with regret if I didn’t once we reached Windermere. I barely caught a few winks from the discomfort and okay, maybe also excitement at going on a trip with my friends for the first time in the UK, and before I knew it, we had reached Oxenhulme where we had to change trains to Windermere. Half an hour later, we finally reached our coveted destination.
The first thing to remark once we got off was the weather. I was highly apprehensive the previous day when I checked the weather app and was told that the lowest temperature would be a negative integral. However, it didn’t seem to be the case in reality as we were, thankfully, greeted by a clear, azure blue sky, glorious sunshine and warm heat against our skin.
KY, designated tour guide of the day despite his repeated protests that it wasn’t like he had been to Windermere before, devised a route for us to take that involved ferry rides and AN 8 KILOMETER WALK, something I paled considerably after hearing about. But I refused to be a bad sport and was convinced that it wasn’t going to be as bad as I imagined it would be with my friends around. And so it began.
It was a roughly one-hour walk from the train station to Bowness-on-Pier, which was exactly what its name suggested, a pier. We bought 10 ferry tickets to Ambleside and had the opportunity to sit at the very front of the upper deck of the ferry.
The view was breathtakingly spectacular.
Our initial plan upon reaching Ambleside was to have lunch before going on the next ferry. So we entered a posh-looking hotel restaurant complete with a bar with golden-lighting, embroidered sofa sets and framed paintings hung on walls and was led to a waiting room to wait as they set out a table for 10 of us. Halfway through waiting and looking through the menu, it was brought to our attention that the last ferry to Wray Castle was leaving at 2:40PM, which was 40 minutes from now. Deciding we didn’t have enough time for a proper lunch meal, we quickly and sheepishly informed the waitress that we had a boat to catch and then quite literally bolted out of the restaurant. It was comforting to know that we would probably never step into the same premises again.
In place, we had a mini picnic at the tables by the lake, snacking on sandwiches and fruits we’d bought prior to the trip.
We didn’t actually end up dining at the luxurious posh-ass restaurant but at least we took a selfie in the mirror and that’s all that matters#minimalistic picnic
The trip continued: a 15-minute ferry ride to Wray Castle.
It was getting sunnier and hotter when we found an ideal spot for a photography session by the road that lasted for at least an hour, living up to our Asian tourist stereotype of being obsessed with taking vacation photos. It was quite the literal materialisation of Best Coast’s song The Sun Was High (And So Was I).
After that, it was time to finally, reluctantly, embark on our 8km journey along the lake.
We even stopped for a while to hurl pebbles into the lake
The commencement of our embarkment was a lie. At the beginning of the trail, we stopped so many times to take photos, throw pebbles and climb stray boulders that overlooked the lake because it was just so beautiful. I am no good at describing sceneries and frankly, I usually can’t care less about sceneries but I think it was probably the fact that this was my first time on a trip out of Manchester with so many friends, and it’d been a long time since I was out of the predictable and monotonous hustle and bustle that the city of Manchester constantly provided us with. The sun was out, there wasn’t even any need for coats. The sights before me were sights that could previously only be seen on postcards or National Geography documentaries. Or maybe it was even the fact that I was kind of delirious from lack of sleep. But I felt so happy and contented, being able to take in this picturesque place with my own two eyes and be there with my friends. There was barely anyone around either, so it felt like the entire place belonged to us. It felt like we were in an insulated bubble, a world of our own, untainted by anything foreign or unbelonging. The recurring theme of that day was perhaps the word “~feel~”, complete with the tildes, implying that we were all like-minded when it came to basking in the ambience we were in. At one point I told Ash that I felt like we were in a music video.
It was, in all the true sense of the word, a getaway.
In the running spirit of movie-inspired photoshoots, I guess this would be Twilight
Once we got past the initial excitement of being in a setting that looked fitted for a medieval movie shoot, the 8km loomed ahead of us more glaringly. All too sudden, the scenery got repetitive to the extent that I was starting to feel more trapped in the aforementioned bubble than I was enjoying it. The pathways became sporadically interposed with muddy puddles that did damage to our shoes. Every few meters, we would chance upon a wooden sign that informed us of how much distance we had left. When we reached the sign with “2 1/2 miles” (of 4 miles/8km) carved on it it felt like the highest form of mockery towards my feeble stamina. We hadn’t even been halfway through the forest yet and I was already starting to feel all my cultivated energy from the previous high-ness dissipate at an alarming rate, as it usually does whenever I participate in marathons, rendering me with a guaranteed title of top five from the last place. But I could still feel consolation and gratitude for the fact that at least it wasn’t freezing cold, and at least it wasn’t as windy as the name of the district might have suggested.
As the sky began to darken slightly, Jia Yang suggested we might as well play a game to create an illusion of time passing by faster, and it worked. We played Contact until the pier where we were supposed to take a ferry back to Bowness came into a sight, and I had never felt more relieved. Our chance of survival wasn’t yet guaranteed, as Ze Kai reminded, but I was still elated to see ugly, concrete buildings and tar roads. It felt like a return to civilisation.
The ferry was a short ride and upon reaching the other end of the lake, we were told that we still had to walk another 2km to reach Bowness. My feet were screaming and frothing at the metaphorical mouth but in light of the 8km we had somehow managed to successfully conquer, 2km almost seemed welcomed.
Upon reaching Bowness, we hailed two taxis (after Ash and Yee Lin were unsuccessful in their attempts to hitchhike a ride for 10 of us) to the train station and the prospect of being able to be stationary and not having to walk was so blissful. Our train departed at around 7PM and everything after that, the two train changes we had to take etc was a huge blur as accumulated fatigue finally caught up with me. The night ended ideally though; as I like to always say, every good day ends with a dim sum dinner/supper.
I pretty much passed out the moment my head hit the pillow that night but it wasn’t without a heart bursting with good spirits and gratification from an enjoyable trip with lovely company.
*Photo credits to their respective owners among the 10 of us
The week before, I had lunch with Yuri, a friend I made when I went to Liverpool for a Rocketworld volunteer session last month. At a moment of sudden inspiration, I asked her if she might be interested to attend an anime con with me at Sugden the following week, and to be honest, I was really pleasantly surprised when she said yes because after all, it involved seeing white people dressing up in costumes of a popular culture that originated from her home country. That had to be some degree of weirdness. But she said yes and we bought tickets for the first day of the con on the 2nd of April.
This wasn’t my first time at a con in Manchester; I’d attended Doki Doki last November but the company this time was definitely way better. We went there at 10AM and already there was a huge line full of cosplayers and we attempted to point out characters that we recognise as we waited in the queue.
Yuri got an Assassination Classroom packet of candy while I got Love Live wafers
One of my absolute favourite things about cons is visiting the artists’ booths themselves. After so many years of following fan artists on the Internet, it was so incredible to see them in actual print and just so cool to see artists so passionate about creating art for, say, an anime that they like and putting them on display for everyone to see and purchase at a convention. I got some art prints for my wall too, of course.
Cosplay masquerade
After walking around in general for a few hours, Yuri and I ended up playing Super Smash Bros on these actual ancient televisions and Nintendo game consoles for an hour or so.
We had gyoza dumplings for lunch at Umami
Later on, I found out that Lara, a Twitter friend, was also at the con cosplaying as Kotori so we started to search for her. I loved the fact that both Yuri and my favourite Love Live girl is Kotori.
By the time we got relatively tired and had pretty much scouted the entire area, it was already 5PM. So I went back to Weston and Yuri to Dalton Ellis but not before she gave me a lemon cake her mother had sent to her all the way from Japan! ╰(*´︶`*)╯♡
And below, my haul for the day:
Kenma, Kuroo, Kotori and UmiThe LL wafer packet had a shiny card in itSonic print by @weiliwonka and Spirited Away print by @ZeeLinn
michelle teoh 