2:36 AM

hohoho. i discovered a reli HUGE sainsbury superstore today!! heh. kinda like walmart in the US. so happy!!i simply love grocery shopping! and they actually sell stuff like thai chilli sauce and hoisin sauce. they even have my beehoon!!! =) i lugged all of them back of coz.

now tt i'm alone in the UK and have got no car to dump all the grocery shopping in, i go everywhere with my backpack. so i get reli pensive when it comes to buying heavy stuff, which is reli unhealthy of coz. u realize that when u start feeding urself by the physical wt of the food and not the nutrition value, u'll be filled up to the brink with junk. choc, cookies, bread, cakes and cereal weigh sooo much lighter than fruits, meat and milk. there u go.

anyway, i baked bread pudding today!!

complete with custard sauce and ice cream too =)


the housemates liked it as well. so so pleased with my dessert. i demolished half of it. happy food makes the world (and stomach) go round.

side note - Spike hurt his foot today.. so poor thing.. he was like half stumbling all over the house. think stu's gg to bring him to the vet tmr. hope he gets well soon!

~gone in a moment..

4:53 AM

yeah! end of 2nd week =) finally bought my rail card today. wanna go into london to take a look. but there's nobody available to go with. argh.

the office was awfully quiet today. my supervisor's wife had a baby. the other snr engineer sitting next to me.. his wife gave birth yest as well. so the entire engineering department was kind of on paternity leave. heh. maybe engineers are reli more productive.

anyway, look wat i bought today.. bomber jacket!! in preparation for winter..

and guess how much it costs???

5 poundS!!! that's coz it's 2nd hand. they have a lot of shops here that sell 2nd hand stuff. ppl juz bring them in and all proceeds will go to charity. so i donated 5pounds to charity today and got myself a bomber jacket. so pleased =)

~gone in a moment..

cats and dogs.

3:41 AM

Stuart (my housemate) was just finishing up his chinese dinner (ordered in), when he suddenly asked me, "why do you eat cats and dogs? how do they present them? the entire cat sprawled on the plate like how they present fish and peking duck??"

i was soooooooo stunned. i told him that singaporeans dun eat such stuff.

"but u're chinese rite? the chinese eat cats and dogs."

"no, i'm not chinese. i'm singaporean. there's a difference."

"but singaporean chinese came from china, don't they?"

"no, we are singaporean. we came from our mother's womb."

"oh, but if given a choice, would you eat cats or dogs? u have to choose one. either eat it or pay a million bucks."

"dog. i'll eat up ur dalmation."

Disclaimer: ALL of the above is NOT fictatious.

~gone in a moment..

wii party with the student interns

3:23 AM

yesterday was fun! went for the wii party at one of the student intern's house (the one whereby they attempted to psycho me to move over). there were plenty of finger food, hotdog bread, chips and alcohol. loads of it in fact. I didnt drink of coz. i had to stay sound enough to cycle home at night.

There were 10 student interns in all, 3 french, the rest british. They're quite a fun bunch, really nice of them to invite me over. And they thought that I was a student intern as well. Oh well, tt's coz at this gsk site, u're either married and have kids, or u're a student intern. heh.

My supervisor's wife just gave birth to a baby girl early this morning. she's half iranian and half irish. really exotic and pretty!

Anyway, I'm seriously pleased with myself coz I finally managed to cycle ALL the way up the disgusting slope on my way home from work today. woohoo!! up the benjamin sheares bridge. =) aren't u proud of me. To celebrate my feat, I bought 3 THICK chocolate bars and a TUB of strawberry trifle and demolished them after dinner. =)
side note: they dun sell cakes/ dessert by the slices. they sell them in TUBS. not that i'm complaining of coz.

Tmr's supposed to be some charity fund raising day. Everyone in my department is supposed to bake sth to sell during morning tea break. But I dun think I have an adequately equipped kitchen so I shall do my part by buying others' bakes tmr. (and eating them of coz!) =) happy food for the happy soul!

P/s I just realised how totally _____ the UK HSBC ppl are. they mailed my HSBC card and password to my Singapore address when I already gave them my UK add at the time of application. How smart.

~gone in a moment..

4:40 AM

cycled to work today. this is just the start of ALL the torture to come. it's a 35mins cycle to work.. which was alright actually. But getting home from work was horrendous!! It was an uphill climb ALL the way.. arghhh.. just imagine climbing up benjamin sheares bridge. I'm so not exaggerating. I would take a photo and post it if i can. but too exhausted climbing the stupid neverending hill to do anything else. so i dismounted and walked the bike up.

anyway, this is just the start of my misery. apparently the rainy's season just beginning (in UK, every mth is a rainy season). but it's gg to get worse when winter approaches. imagine cycling in the rain. oh yay. drenched and cold. i'm so looking forward to it.

received a whole lot of work to do today. so its officially the end of slacking days. had to calculate some pipe flow thing using a really ridiculous software. so tedious! Paul and i spent the entire afternoon at it and we still couldnt come up with a value that made some sense. argh.

btw, do you know that even the flow of water thru your toilet bowl pipes have to be calculated to make sure that your pipes won't burst? be thankful for engineers.. =P

~gone in a moment..

Sunday, 21 sept

7:43 PM

Alrite! enough of backlogs. finally moved to my perm house at tunbridge wells yest.. and tada! here i am.. with internet access =)

bought a bike yest as well.. since i have to cycle to work from now onwards.. going to try out the cycling route later.. so that i wont get lost tmr morning. sigh.

anyway, here are some photos of my current house!

my bed room.. its reli sunny in my room as there are two windows.. brilliant!

here's the wardrobe

and my table.. (more like a dressing table actually.. but i'm not a student so thats fine)

the 8 yr old dalmation.. Spike.

and here's the toilet..

the stairway

Spike's bed

the kitchen

dining room

living room...

with Stuart's huge collection of cds..


~gone in a moment..

Tuesday - 16th sept

7:37 PM

Today was great! Morning started out with reading of horrendously boring SOPs and some guidelines.. not that I’ll ever be finished with them though. There’re just sooooo many to read. My supervisors took pity on me and decided to let me do sth else. So now I’m kind of supposed to work together with this student intern, Paul, to figure out this extensive network of P&ID on vacuum pumps.. wp. Apparently even the most senior of engineers have no idea how the piping network flows or sth. So complicated!! So we’re kind of tasked with tracking all the pipes and stuff.. and see how they link up, eventually coming up with a new and improved (and correct of coz) P&ID. Oh well, nothing to tax our puny brains over anyway. At least it beats sitting in front of the comp deciphering SOPs!

Lunch with my direct colleagues (those in my department) is reli quite weird. Like I mentioned previously, they’re all married and have kids. So yeh.. major generation gap. There’s like totally no common topic! (obviously they have enough sense not to discuss baby issues with me) sigh. Anyways, got to know another 2 of the students intern today. (there’re 8 of them here apparently). One’s theoretically from Philippines, the other’s Indian, but both are British. They are like trying to psycho me to rent the vacant room at their house coz they’ll have to pay more to cover the rent otherwise. The location’s in Tonbridge town itself, so it’s so much nearer to work. And they drive! Meaning free tpt to and from work. But I’m so not interested in taking it up. Living in Tonbridge is not exactly very enticing you know. I would much rather live somewhere nicer and cycle to work (I’m sure when it rains all the time in winter.. I’ll regret that I ever said that.)

Ate fish and chips today for dinner. Coz I got sick of oats and sandwiches. Their chips are HUGE!! It’s like kind of New Zealand style u noe.. wrapped in a large cone of baking paper..(wateva u call that). And it’s soooooo nice! Thick and hot and potato-ey. Woohoo. Beats those at Mac’s anytime. =)


~gone in a moment..

Monday, 15th Sept

7:36 PM

First official day of work! It was great really. Had a walk around the plant, part of the induction program. The pilot plant’s not exactly huge. It’s just 3 storey tall, but it’s reli interesting!! The tour made all the useless textbook stuff that we learnt in sch seem so much more realistic and hmm enticing? Haha. For once, I was glad to be an engineer!

Oh.. sth else really awesome happened today. I got my own laptop set up at work, that means internet access! Woohoo!! At long last. =)

There’s this phd girl, Sarah, who’s staying at the GSK house with me. She went home to Southampton over the wkend, and was back today. It was great having someone physically there to talk to. Haha. She was from University of Oxford – Collage of Christchurch, where Harry Potter was filmed! So she was showing me pictures of her hall dining room.. (the exact same grand hall where the harry potter ppl dined!!) it’s sooooooo pretty!! And when u compare that with our lousy ntu canteen.. oh well, u dun even want to start thinking abt it.. makes you really depressed. Heh. Anyway, I made a resolution to go visit the University of Oxford.. especially the grand dining room with the loooooooooong tables!! Even if I have to travel alone, I’ll make sure I visit there within the next 18mths. Heh. Wait for my pictures!! =)

Oooh, btw, this reli sux. My colleagues here all strongly believe that I’m malay. Not Chinese. Not saying that there’s anything bad being perceived as a Malay of coz. BUT. BUT. How is it possible that they can proclaim so confidently that I’m surely not Chinese??!! Sigh. Tanned Chinese DO exist you know. Bah. Time will tell. Wait for me to decolourize with the disappearance of the sun, and for my yellowish Chinese roots to show.

P.S. I went supermarket shopping today AGAIN. Oh well, ALL the other shops are closed at 5pm. And there’s no other form of entertainment. The supermarket’s like my second home.

~gone in a moment..

3rd day in UK - 14th sept (backlog)

7:27 PM

Went to explore tonbridge town today. Not that there’s much to explore actually. It’s Sunday so a lot of shops are closed. No wonder EVERYONE’s at the sports field and park exercising.. playing football (they dun call it soccer here) or rugby.. I was too busy staring at them play till I stepped into a pothole on the kns footpath and sprained my left ankle. Oh yay. Hurts like hell. Lucky I’m a seasoned – sprainer. (if there’s such a thing) so it wasn’t too bad. Can still walk without looking like a duck.

Decided to go see Tonbridge castle today. And guess wat? It happens to be heritage day as well! Woohoo.. they only have ONE heritage day the entire year round, and it so happened to fall on the day where I decided to visit! Wheee.. this means that there’s no admission fee payable today. Haha. Lalala.. oh well. Learnt abit about castles, moat, how others attack from outside and their defence strategy. I must admit I’m not much of a museum or history-fanatic. But I guess when u’re alone and really bored, castles suddenly seem extremely interesting.. even though most of it was destroyed and wateva that’s left is the stale river (moat) surrounding it, and the gatehouse. Anyway, I must admit that the Tonbridge castle’s really quite pretty..

The tonbridge castle

ppl canoeing in the moat

the castle interior

view of tonbridge from the top

look!! i was looking for the sink.. and here it is!! they have water, soap and air.. haha

Went supermarket shopping at Sainsbury after that. Heh. Easily my favourite part of ANY day.. you know it feels really weird.. can’t help thinking that the people here must be really rich and have a lot of spare cash.. I mean.. say they earn like 3000pounds per mth.. and their food is like soooooo cheap to them. Super huge packs of potato chips, cookies, 1litre milk, pasta and bread all going for like less than 1 pound each! And their ice cream and chocolates!! Woohoo.. it’s any little kids’ heaven (not to mention mine as well). So with 20pounds.. you can easily fill up your entire trolley!! And their clothes, books, bathing stuff.. mostly less than 5 pounds. So where do they spend the rest of their money rite.. yeh. So I came to the conclusion that they should be relatively cashful.. hmmm.. This is my third day ALONE, with absolutely nobody to talk to, nobody to irritate, and no internet!! But I lived through it. Haha. Can’t help feeling super pleased with myself. I feel so accomplished you know. Of coz I shouldn’t be too pleased. One should never ever be too accustomed to a hermit’s life.

Oh well, my 1st day of work tmr (theoretically speaking). And I’m quite convinced that they wouldn’t know what to do with me. Heh. Hoping that I’ll have some stuff to get busy with and not have to pretend to be busy. That really sucks you know. Pretending to be fussing over nothing. Can’t wait for next Saturday to move in to my new house! There’ll be internet access and REAL people to talk to! Right.. 5 days more. I’m so going to survive.

~gone in a moment..

2nd day in UK - 13th sept (backlog)

7:15 PM

Today was so much better! Woke up at 9am, after 12 hrs of concussion. Took the train from Tonbridge into High Brooms station which is one stop away. Stupid cost of rail is really high. Like 7sgd for one stop return trip. I would have walked if I could, but it’s kind of like.. highway all the way so tt’s out of the qn.

anyway, here're some pictures that i took while walking along the path from gsk site to town (and train station).






Stuart and Cara came to meet me at High Brooms with their dalmation, Spike. It was a short walk up the hill to the house. The house’s really cozy and homely with a nice backyard (with a trampoline). Met the other housemate, Sylvia, as well. She’s from Germany – really pleasant girl. They showed me my room.. it’s quite small but there’s sufficient space for the essentials I guess. The smaller the room, the easier to clean anyway. Was really pleased with the house and housemates, so paid the full rent up front. I’ll be moving in next Sat morning! Woohoo.. sth to look forward to. Access to internet next Sat, and end of lonely wkends..

Of coz I would have saved heaps by staying at this GSK house for perhaps another wk or so.. but seriously.. I’ll risk going mad from extreme loneliness and lack of internet. So yeh. Money solves the problem =)

Spent the entire afternoon exploring Tunbridge Wells town. It’s a really pleasant town! Huge shopping complex with other smaller uptown shops around the area. And I found the much talked about Marks and Spencers!! Haha. Their M&S here is HUGE! The grocery section alone is like our ntuc. They sell EVERYTHING. And it’s so cheap!! There’re sandwiches, salads, lots of sinful cookies, cakes, cereal, yoghurt, fruits and even meat! It was soooooo tempting to buy the entire range of choc and cookies! They have like one huge pack of premium choc/ cookies going for less than 2pounds each!! Basically everything’s really cheap la.. if you don’t convert of coz. If you start converting.. then you’d be better off juz munching on plain bread. (for once, I’m so pleased that my jetlagged brain lost the power of conversion.. thus my bag was heavily laden with M&S products =)

Attempted to sign a line today.. but they needed my UK debit card, which I obviously do not have. Yet. Set up my UK HSBC account today, and was informed that the card will take 7 to 10 working days. Soooooooo long la. When it comes to efficiency, Singapore really wins hands down. Anyways, no use complaining. Your complaints won’t even be read till probably 7 to 10 working days later! Heh.

Oooh.. I registered with the Tunbridge Wells library today. Just so that I could gain access to the internet at one of their lousy computers. Heh. Yeh.. I’m that desperate. (Internet cafes do not exist here) And horror of horrors.. their computers were sooooo outdated! Their keyboards were arranged weirdly as well, such that the alphabets were kind of mis-arranged and their symbols were all over the place. And to make it worse, their internet loads super slowly!!! I had to wait for like a good 10minutes?? before the first webpage showed any sign of life..yup. but you cant expect too much. I’m happy as long as it’s internet! So deprived of it.

Yeh.. and I just realized that the chicken tandoori (yes, the Indian food), is considered as one of their national British food. How odd. Anyways, it’s not up to me to comment. Ooh.. and their subway is super good!! I mean they sell pretty much the same range of stuff as Singapore, but they have the herbs and cheese bread here. The bread itself is oozing with cheese!! And they have corn under their vege selection. Woohoo.. their sub just tastes so much better.

Anyways, tmr’s Sunday.. shall go Tonbridge ALONE again and explore all the castles.. and supermarkets! Heh.. I love supermarket shopping.. ooh.. and their strawberries, blueberries, black berries (ALL kinds of berries) cost as cheap as their bananas and apples. Great huh. I’m berry-satisfied!

~gone in a moment..

1st day upon arrival - 12 sept (back log)

6:51 PM

It was a long flight on A380. Sat on the upper deck. Everything’s pretty much the same actually, other than the addition of a pretty well –lit spiral stairway at the back.

Upon arrival, I had to leave the rest of the group for Tonbridge. They went off in a bus for Stevenage. Together. Lucky people. I was received by this really friendly carribean-mixed-english guy, Paul. We got on very well and he shared with me a lot of stuff regarding UK. It turned out that he’s a Kent policeman! Tonbridge Taxi is his part time job. Heh. So I was in really good hands- I had a policeman for a chauffeur! How good can things get? He’s really cute and amiable. He kept showing me his GPS thingy.. asking me if Singapore has got such intelligent devices. Anyway he said it was essential that he used the GPS, as the GSK – Tonbridge site where we’re gg and I’m supposed to stay for the first 2 wks, was extremely isolated and located amongst the village AND farms. Wow. Imagine my reaction.. I never knew that UK had farms. So close to London somemore. Oh btw, Paul thought that I was MALAY. His exact words, “you’re definitely 100% not Chinese.. are you malay?”………….

Finally reached the GSK site at around 820am. The route to get to this place is really a maze. Imagine a pharma plant right smack in the middle of erm.. Lim Chu Kang farm (not even tuas mind u). So along the way, u’ll start smelling animals and seeing a lot of dung on the road. How authentic. Oh.. quite a few woolly sheeps along the way as well. And I thought that my relationship with sheep ended in New Zealand..

The staff here is really friendly! The reception tried Extremely hard to pronounce my name – to no avail of coz. It sounded suspiciously like “Sing- u”. So they all decided to call me Linzy. Lin Z.Y = Linzy. Oh well, sounds decent enough so I shan’t complain. And my name in all the company emails and documents suddenly became Zhiyu 2 Lin. Amazing huh. Coz EVERYONE has to have a middle initial, which I obviously dun, thus they put the 2 in for me. Oh yay. My name just keeps evolving.

And yeh, my supervisor, Mark and Frank, wanted to let me go rest and sleep the rest of the day off today. But it was only 8.20am!!! and I’m alone in the middle of this desolate sheep town. So where am I supposed to go??! So I very earnestly declared tt I’m not suffering from jetlag and asked to tag along with Mark for the morning… which was obviously a huge mistake. Mark is the HEAD of all the engineers in the plant. So naturally, all the meetings that he attended were really impt and for big shots kind. Anyway, since I was supposed to follow him, I ended up in this really torturous FAEM meeting.. sth like HAZOP but a lot worse. For one, I realized that ALL the stuff we learnt in sch was utter crap that did not apply to the REAL world. (lousy NTU education) And to make it even worse, the English accent is really strong!! ALL of them speak like characters from Harry Potter. *faintz* I have to summon all my attention and effort juz to concentrate on deciphering what they’re discussing.. Bah. It’s as if they’re speaking alien language. Of coz, I suppose the feeling’s very much mutual.. sigh. Maybe I must start talking like them before we can understand each other eh. Oh.. and they greet each other by “ Heya Mate!” ..so when I said “Hello” everyone looked so stunned for a moment. Sigh. Oh well oh well. I dun really know what’s English anymore. I should start learning Harry Potter language.

The Tonbridge site is really small. So small that everybody seems to know everybody. And I hate it that I stick out like a sore thumb! I’m like a dark shadow drifting amongst the erm.. clouds..so everyone kind of know me.. but guess wat.. they all look the same to me! And it doesn’t help that they all have common English names. (like duh). Simon (s), Paul (s), John (s), Johnathon (s), Alan (s), Ian(s).. and blah blah blah.. u get the drift. Why dun they haf more unique and different names?? Like mine la. Zhiyu 2 Lin. So unique (not to mention weird). Go where find. Only one in the entire puny Tonbridge plant.



Ooh.. and 90% of those working at the plant are married and have kids!! I hold absolutely no grudge against these old happy ppl of coz. But hello.. how to communicate AND haf some social life here if 90% of them are like.. past middle age!!! Faintz. It so doesn’t help that I’m stuck all alone here in Tonbridge. Though this temporary GSK house is free.. I would rather pay the EXPENSIVE rent and move out of here into some form of civilization in Tunbridge Wells soon. Here there’s no internet, nobody after dark other than sheep and dung for company. I’ll forget how to talk to normal people in normal English soon. I’m like seriously bored to tears!! Bah.

the GSK house..

my bedroom



One good thing though.. I tried out the route to the MRT station juz now.. soooooooo glad to find that it’s walkable. Like.. 25mins walk along this footpath (note.. when I say path, it reli means path. It’s NOT a road), that is embedded amongst oh-so-lush greenery.. decorated with glorious animal dung ALL over the narrow path. WOW. Alrite, to be fair, the path is walkable. Really not so bad.. but I can foresee that when it rains.. this lovely dung-covered path will turn into a mud pool. Oh yay. I’ll need to invest in PCK boots.

Went to Tonbridge town centre (via the “lovely” footpath) to explore in the afternoon. Mark decided that my blank expression during the FAEM meeting was due to jet lag, and told me to go back to GSK house to rest. (btw, this GSK house is really directly next to plant site) So now I’m staying in “LIM Chu Kang”. Yup, anyway, Tonbridge town centre wasn’t so bad. The clothes are cheap, the food is cheap, especially the chocolates!! Woohoo.. glorious chocolates!! So many different kinds somemore! Really had to remind myself that I’m not as rich as I would like to think I am. But I still bought a few bars of coz. Heh. Lonely ppl deserve to eat happy food. “lonely, I’m so lonely.. I have nobody.. I’m all alone!!” how apt.

Yeh tt about sums up the day. Think next wk I’ll be slacking at work as well. How un-exciting. Coz my supervisor’s wife is about to give birth. So he won’t be around. Meaning there’ll be nobody around to give me something to pretend to be busy with. =(

Going to Tunbridge Wells tmr to view my potential more permanent house. Hope tt it’s pleasant enough and more lively than here. Else I’m so gg to rot….

~gone in a moment..