12 years after it first came out, it's still as cool as ever - and most importantly, controversial. some pple swear that this is one of the finest anime ever produced (me included) while some believe this is the most overrated anime of all.

thank goodness that this was the first real anime i watched (way back in 2000), which is a fantastic introduction to the world of japanese animation.

i simply can't wait for the september 1st release of this movie!

while writing blog posts concerning stuff that happened a looooooong time ago, i got an sms from kok hao saying that he couldn't catch the last 1am bus from stansted airport to cambridge. his flight from frankfurt landed at 11:30pm, but the queue he was in didn't dissipate until way past 1:00am.

the sms reached me at 1:10am.

i thought for a while, then checked the next bus down to stansted from cambridge. it was at 1:35am, and there was a bus every hour or so even through the night.

i made one of the craziest decisions in my life - i quickly threw biscuits and books into my bag, and cycled into the night. the bus station was a 10 mins cycle from my place, and i had to stop by a cashpoint midway as i didn't have enough money in my wallet.

i reached the bus station just in time to catch the bus - i was the last one to board the bus.

the bus arrived in stansted at 2:20am, and then i set of searching for kok hao in the not-very-deserted airport.

and i found him (actually, he saw me first) in a cafe in the airport.

we basically talked the first five hours there, then boarded the first easybus van (yeah, it wasn't a bus) to london. the van reached london in 5 minutes time as i basically passed out when my head hit the headrest of my seat.

we had fun getting lost in london - the map i had was from a travel guide, so it basically sucked at telling us the names of the smaller streets we were on. but never mind, since we had so much free time, we diffused on the streets of london, which gradually filled with londoners.

london, i have to say, is a city with loads of random monuments and statues dedicated for all sorts of random things. take these for instance:

a building with a plaque dedicated to the people who lost their lives during the 9/11 terror attacks (on hindsight it's kinda inappropriate for two of us to grin idiotically in a place where solemn contemplation should be appropriate. whatever). it's built, appropriately, just opposite of the american embassy in london.

... i'd be surprised if they did..

random arches like these in corners of hyde park.

first planned stop of the day (yeah, the previous visits were all unplanned) was to look at the changing of the guard ceremony at buckingham palace.

crowded? that word is an understatement. the place was positively teeming with people.

i was quite far away from the actual procession, and this was what my camera's optical zoom could do. notice the number of hands with digital cameras near the guards (with black bearskins!)

we left buckingham palace more amused by crowd antics than anything, and proceeded to meet some of my other friends at the regent street tube station.. but ended up walking in the wrong direction, forced to take a tube to the meeting place, and appearing 20 mins late and earning sound beration from my friends. oh dear, since when malaysians started to be so punctual?

we walked to chinatown to eat dim sum - not really hong kong style though, the restaurant was aptly titled "the chinese experience". the absence of char siew pau, yu dan and other hong kong dim sum staples were felt amongst our group, but it was compensated by the presence of har gau and siu mai haha. ended up ordering some weird dishes, but i have to say it was rather cheap as we ended up spending only like £5 per person. maybe it was more of our reluctance to order anything expensive than the prices being cheap haha.

kok hao and i then split from the other 5 friends of mine to do a bit more roaming in london.

the next stop was westminster stuff - big ben, westminster abbey, london eye, downing street (oh yes, it's a tourist attraction), etcetc.

this proves that this place is a tourist attraction - there are people who bother snapping pictures of the name of the road..

.. but too bad we couldn't say hie to gordon brown.

met a fellow course-mate from hong kong in london (of all places!), ended up touring with him for a bit. we parted ways after downing street, as they went to meet another friend while the two of us continued to roam the streets of london, randomly.

with so many tourists touching its head and posing for photos with it, i totally empathize with its decision to give annoying tourists swift kicks in their arses.

randomly diffused to st. james park, where we spent a good half an hour lazing in the sun. never really had such an experience while traveling (rest? what rest?), really relaxing haha.

we decided the tube near trafalgar was the nearest, hence we headed for it. photographing in trafalgar square was rendered impossible because of..

the presence of pakistanis celebrating their 60th national day (or so i gather from the small little badges worn by some of the people there). there was a chiobu performing, her song and dance number was shown on the big screen, but.. we had better things to do =)

we took a tube first to king's cross, where rowling's writings left an indelible mark in the creation of a new platform situated between the 9th and 10th one. shan't post the picture, won't embarass kok hao further =P

and no trip's complete without singing the all-familiar kiddy song proclaiming the fall of london bridge. sorry kids, it's not likely to fall in the next 100 years. why exactly this rather unexciting and unspectacular bridge (tower bridge's much more interesting) as the subject of the song still leaves me scratching my head over it.

i was tempted to leave for home, cook dinner and collapse into my bed, but my friends called me up and tempted me with chinatown food for dinner.. and thus the desire to sleep was suppressed for food =) the restaurant we went to served really cheap chinese food - though not very tasty, it wasn't that bad after all.

took the 9pm train back to cambridge, the journey magically lasted for 5 minutes again.

reached cambridge, met another friend catching the same bus back to town (we were on the same train and didn't know it), and trekked back to magdalene.

discovered that somehow there wasn't any hot water, was forced to take a bath cos i didn't bathe for >48 hours - hey, i was planning to bathe after bringing kok hao back to my room in cambridge, but ended up going to the airport myself. it was my first cold water shower in.. 9 years?

drank hot chocolate to prevent internal organs from freezing over, chatted a bit more and collapsed.

the next morning i brought him on a speed tour around cambridge - 1 hour between our leaving of my room and his bus leaving cambridge (not much choice as there's only one flight a day to frankfurt from stansted). managed to see 6 colleges (magd, johns, trinity, kings, queens and downing) and numerous other dna-related sites (eagle pub, ex-cavendish lab) before arriving, just in time, for the bus he was supposed to take.

what a crazy weekend.

have been neglecting this poor blog - not at all because i was extremely busy, it was more of not having the mood to pen down random thoughts and feelings lah. haven't really had the urge of writing stuff down.. until now haha.

i'd be backdating the posts that i'll write to dates closer to when the events happened, so that it'd serve as a better point of reference haha.