.: ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery :.

I actually often get asked this, "Dude what's the difference between Britain and UK, are they the same?"

Actually they aren't there is a slight difference. There's a reason why it's called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Great Britain = England, Wales, Scotland + outlying islands (Wiki)

United Kingdom = Great Britain + Northern Ireland. (Wiki)

British Islands = United Kingdom + Crown Dependences (e.g Channel Islands). (Wiki)

British Isles = Great Britain, Ireland and a number of smaller islands (Wiki)

England is just that, England without Scotland, Wales or Northern Island.

For those that don't know the history of Ireland it's somewhat segregated into Northern Ireland (part of UK - capital Belfast) and Republic of Ireland (independent country - capital Dublin).

Read more on Wiki about Ireland.

Everyone also assumes I'm from London (no that's NOT the only place in England..) and every football fan asks "Dude is Manchester near London?"..

No it's not, see map above..there's 3 main areas South (London etc), Midlands (Birmingham) and North (Manchester/Liverpool). There are other divisions too (East Midlands, West Midlands etc.) but those don't really matter so much.

Anyway it's all rather complicated but there you go.

Well the next folder just mainly contained a collection of random food pics, so I thought I'd share them with you.

Some of the stuff my cooked when I was back.

Argh off to Dubai again this afternoon at 4pm, hopefully will be able to come back soon and double hopefully I'll have Internet in the room so I can keep posting..

First up is the classic English breakfast, this time with an added waffle, yummy, this is more like a brunch version as I don't tend to wake up very early..

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So a few days later I headed back down to town to capture the cathedral again with my sturdy tripod and the correct ISO setting..sadly it was closed by the time I got there, but do enjoy these pics of the Riverside.

We started off customarily with fish and chips sitting on a bench by the river watching the children playing and people feeding the swans and pigeons.

The kids were really enjoying the fountain.

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Hmm nothing like a lovely fat pork chop covered in stuffing and some lightly boiled vegetables!

The stuffing on top means the pork chop rind goes super crispy but the meat itself stays moist and juicy!

The left over boiled potatoes were turned into potatoe salad the next day and served with some super fresh premium pork pie, DELICIOUS!

After that I headed into the cathedral with my new el-cheapo telescopic tripod to try out some HDR, I forgot to change the ISO down from 500 though...AGAIN so they are a little bit grainy.

Still some nice ones though, enjoy!

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I went to see my decrepid old gran, who's reaching 100 soon..

We took her to the Garden center for lunch, it's quite nice there.

English weather still get's me though, if you sit in the shade, and there's a breeze you need to put a jacket on..but if you move out into the sun you break into a sweat.

Crazy.

This is my Gran's street.

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Well after missing my connecting flight and being stuck in Dubai airport for a grand total of 10 hours, I finally made it home, trip time around 25 hours..

Let's just say I was pretty tired, but not too bad as I got leg room on both flights, yay!

The second one was surprisingly empty, but I guess everyone in UK is leaving to go on holiday in August not yet coming back.

The skies were beautifully blue and it was a nice pleasant smooth journey.

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Streamyx, but actually I do!

Current equipment - Pentium II 333mhz, Windows 98 and a crappy dial-up connection.

So yeah I did manage to get on the plane the second time, I didn't miss it again, flight was smooth, slightly earlier than planned they gained some time. Watched a Spike Lee movie on the plane "The Insider" with Clive Owen, not too bad, might review it later, and had a few ultra strong Gin and Tonics and passed out.

I'll try and upload some pictures, but flickr takes forever to load so I'm not sure how many I'll be able to do, I got some nice ones yesterday of the Malvern Hills.

Did an 8km walk up to about 1300ft, pretty tiring, totally not used to walking.

Was beautiful though, if rather windy and cold up top at the beacon (the highest point in the range).

I'll try and sort out a few pics after lunch and get some uploaded from yesterday!

My Moms addicted to Flickr now too, but she goes down the library to look at it.

She's so excited about her new camera, I bought a Panasonic DMC TZ-1, 10x optical zoom, 5 megapixels etc..

Excellent little cam, shame about the high noise at higher sensitivity ISO, but I guess they will fix that as they go along.

It takes great macro and very nice scenery and the flash metering is good so indoor portraits look nice too.

I'll post a review and some samples from it when I get back probably on DigiSniper.

So Hi and Bye for now, off to have some bacon and eggs for breakfast it's 9.30am here.

Will be back later with pikchures and stuff.