Day 01: Singapore-Dubai-Gatwick

Finally mustered the erm inspiration to blog about the UK-France Lit trip. It rocked! By far the best holiday I've been on! Anyway, for fear of sounding like a snobbish film critic, I'll just get on to the contents proper and leave the critique to you guys eh. As self-proclaimed photographer, I decided to do this in the form of.... a photo essay! And to add to the immense originality of all this, I shall call it (for lack of a better cliche) :



(editor's note: all photos were taken by me, viz, Mark Thompson, unless otherwise specified.)

So. Day01. Been looking forward to the day for quite some time, although I somehow wasn't as outwardly excited about it as some others I could mention. Ms Chia had been nagging at me the previous nights to be Chief Photographer for the trip, and how I'm supposed to provide quality control every night as I sort through everyones' photos. With excellent 20/20 foresight, I accepted this role without hesitation. Since by the time we reached back every night, it was too late to play more than 5 hands of bridge, let alone have a critique session. I'm proud to say that my duties as Chief Photographer, throughout the entire trip, consisted of no more than saying "I'm Chief Photographer sia", and occasionally taking pictures of other people in front of exciting scenery (read: camwhore).

Back to the airport... Entered the airport same time as Yeow Boon, but wasn't that close to him, so just attempted to sidle away. Although admittedly the bright yellow VJ PE didn't help matters. Saw a whole bunch of yellow-shirt-wearers bouncing excitedly around one of the departure gates, so headed there and was greeted by Harris, who engaged in conversation with my sister (whom he taught) and my parents. In typical Harris fashion, he told us that he had just finished marking my essay, and that my parents could expect it by mail in two working days. As if I needed something to worry about on my trip.

[OK, realised I have covered half a page of the essay, but not so much of the photo bit. The author apologises and presents a random photo to make up for it.]

After being acquainted with the guys on the trip- all nine of them, (This is a sarcastic remark commenting on the small number of guys on the trip)- realised most were from VS! So could already begin talking cock with Warran and Mark (Leong). Oh ya there was this super enthu guy who hung around us during the pre-boarding briefing, saying things like "WOW LONDON AND PARIS EH!!!" and "COOL!!" and even "THAT'S GREAT!!!" when he heard we were on a lit trip. He used more exclamation marks than I did, and I was the one on the bloody trip.

Let's skip the plane ride, cos if I do talk about the horrible epitome of boredom that it was, you could re-enact me dozing off in the plane in front of your computer screen right now.And with the wondrous speed of recollection, we've just touched down in Dubai. Nothing much to see here, except that sleeping was made that much more comfortable once we got out of the airplane seats and into the hotel lobby sofas (note: sarcasm).

We had four hours of stopover, which means four hours to painfully think about the next 10h of flight time. OKOK I might be exaggerating the horrors of air travel. Promise I won't talk about the return journey. Emirates food rocks. Emirates seats are relatively comfortable. I recommend Emirates to anyone flying anywhere. (corporate sponsorship, hello?) The funny thing was, we slept and played cards in that hotel lobby for 3h, before the guy woke us up to tell us we couldn't sleep there. Anyway it was just in time for us to leave for our gate, while taking photos en route. Eg:

Enough procrastination! We're in Gatwick, and the weather is [quote Harris] absolutely dreadful[unquote]. It's raining. In summer. In London. Apparently this is something quite high up the shithappens scale. But it did nothing! to dampen our moods! Wahahah. Fast forward luggage collection to boarding the bus and meeting our friendly bus driver (for the next few days), Colin! Sadly didn't get a photo of him. Got this though:

London is full of nice square meadows and long hedges lining the road side, bordered by blurry horizons, blue sky and gray highways as far as the eye can see. It's a drastic change from Singapore's landscape, where you can't see half the sky, what with looming skyscrapers and HDB flats blocking every view. Come on, London is greener than Singapore! Every few minutes a cow would zoom past us (no, the bus did the zooming) or a flock of sheep. It was, as Mark (Leong) would put it, relaxing (brudder).



Our first stop was the small town of Stratford-Upon-Avon, the renowned birthplace of Shakespeare! (It is a lit trip) It's a quaint small town with cosy streets and a main street lined with shops. Nothing much to say about the birthplace museum- it basically preserved much of the 17th century stuff and living conditions, and also had stuff on Shakespeare. The drizzle was mildly irritating since I couldn't use my DSLR. Anyway dinner was chicken at the local pub somewhere down the street, and then we proceeded to the first big mistake of the entire trip. We went to watch The Seagull at the Shakespeare Opera House. Not so much a mistake, eh, until you factor in the bloody 20h transition from Singapore, more than half of which was spent without sleep. 30 students, sleep-deprived, recently-fed, put in a darkened room and asked to sit still for 2h. You don't have to be a bloody genius to tell me what's gonna happen. The only saving grace was that Sir Ian McKellen (yes that Ian) acted in the play! I caught glimpses of him in between nods (of sleep, not bloody literary appreciation) and he just has that stage presence that kept me awake. Although once he left the stage.. mm yeah.


Bus ride back to nearby Hostel rather uneventful, since everyone was asleep. Oh yeah and London was cold too. Freezing winds that threatened to freeze your hands if you removed them from your pockets. Bizarre for summer.

And thus ended my first day in Europe. Stay tuned for the rest! Yes, I know, sorry for talking way too much. Here's another random pic then:

update: Have just discovered the wonders of alt text. Hover (your cursor) over my pics to see!