LONDON!!!

Anyway, back from London! (finally) Concluding my series of holidays.

Met many interesting people - all Simon's friends - Lip Ho, a malaysian maths major at NUS, Lim Kwan Yew, an AMAZING cook! And Victor, funny guy.

An incredibly fun filled 7 days, from 22 to 29th, and now I'm back!

Ah, visited too many places, and did too many things to blog about everything, guess I'll just let the pictures tell the story...

Greenwich, and Dinner at Simon's place,
staring Lim Kwan Yew, the Master Chef!

Introduction to the vices of London at Lim Kwan Yew's

Simon's

Me and Baden Powel!

Geese at Hyde Park, all grown up!

Snapshots of London

Dozing off at the British Museum

=)

A world without Saddam?

Wow, can't imagine a world without Saddam.

He's been like the world's nemesis since I could remember, and now they are really going to murder him!

Kinda sympathize with him... wonder how it feels to be hated by everyone, then again, he probably wasnt one who would sympathize much with others, guess what goes around, comes around.

Now, has anyone paused to consider who's going to fill his shoes after he's gone???

In Search of the Truth - The Initial Proposition

There is one's consiousness, and there is the truth.

One's consiousness conceives an action into the truth,

and the action is returned to one's consiousness as an emotion.

...

Power is the set of actions one is able to conceive into the truth.

...

Every instance of emotion corresponding to an action is an experience.

A theory is an attempt at modeling the truth,

and can only be based on one's limited collection of experience.

The outcome of one's action on his emotion
is independent of theory and dependent on the truth.

...

Jammin'

Hey Sam!

Check out the song's I've picked up over the term!!!

My Redeemer Lives


Now That You're Near



Yes they are my own recordings, and yes, my strumming's very boring, but we've gotta jam when i get back!!!

Also thinking of making a library of my favourite songs, just for the record :p

I came, I saw, I ticked it off the map

Summer 05 -
UK: London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Gloasgow, Belfast, Dublin

Christmas 05 -
Germany: Frankfurt

Easter 06 -
Sweden: Stockholm & Kiruna

Summer 06 -
Italy: Rome & Venice

Christmas 06 -
Spain: Madrid, Toledo, Malaga, Gibraltar & Sevilla

Big big update.

Back from a really busy sequence of events -

End of term, christmas party, aloysius's birthday, church and punting on sunday, houseparty, london, spain trip, and now i'm back!

A Roman bridge in Toledo,
still standing after 2 millenniums

Spain!
A country incredibly rich in history and architecture, many many magnificent and historically significant buildings and monuments. Got to learn a little more about spainish history, from the roman days dating 2000 years back, to the arab rule from 711 to 1492, catholic rule, other significant events like war with napoleon, the spanish civil war 1936-1939, dictatorship, followed by the current democratic government.

Visited many interesting cities,

Gibraltar:
- a British colony
- where the mediterranean meets the atlantic,
- which marks the edge of the Roman known world, gate of hercules,
- the gates through which the arabs conquered spain
- huge rock, huge cave, intelligent apes.

Seville:
- center for commerce between the americas and europe,
- city from which Magellan begun his quest to find an alternative route to the spice islands through the americas. He found the pacific ocean, and the Phillipines.

150m high cross marking the civil war dead
on valley of the fallen

Picasso's birthplace, and the valley of the fallen are two other remarkable places.

Not only did i learn spanish history, i also understand a little better the jewish perception of things, from a jew who was on the trip, as well as my own family history :p Kinda puts my current pursuits and struggles in perspective.


Houseparty! '06
Was a nice time... guess there's not very much to say (or maybe there's just too much, that i dont know how to start), except that it just adds to the experiences in Cambridge that I'll cherish when i leave...

Also have been pondering on the spain trip what I should do in summer, more specifically, whether I should go on a mission trip to china with the cf people. Guess I've kinda decided in its favour; on the grounds that it's an event that will certainly happen, and that promises to be really enriching, and the opportunity to work with the people I'm beginning to grow quite close to.


Christmas Party, Aloysius Birthday, Punting
Were the events immidiately following the end of term. Christmas party went really really well, unfortunately i was too busy with work to play a bigger part in it. Aloysius celebrated his 21st birthday that day too! his first overseas. As birthday present, we did his comsci maths example sheet questions til 3 am, reminising our maths society days at the same time. Slept over, went to church the day after, and punted with Simon and a few other malaysians.


K, think i've decently recorded the past week in the annals of my days. Coming up - a few days in cambridge, with parents, london for christmas, and back to cambridge to catch up with many many work.