.: ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery :.

So tonight I'm flying off to UK for 3 weeks! Finally a well deserved quiet time, some time to do nothing, take some pictures of flowers and insects and nature (ok maybe some hot white chicks too if I find any..).

Time to relax, read some books, walk in the countryside, eat some cream cakes, pork pies, scotch eggs, mushy peas, fish and chips, full english breakfast, sunday roast, bangers and mash, bubble and squeak, toad in the hole, chicken cordon bleu, gammon steak, chicken tikka masala, crispy aromatic duck, strawberries and cream, apple and blackberry crumble, meringue...and the list goes on! I'm salivating already.

Bacon and Egg sarnies of course.

Fish and Chips and Mushy Peas with a nice cold BEER!

3 weeks with no parties, no events, no forced late nights, no meetings, no nonsense, no nothing except what I want to do!

I'm taking Emirates, my favourite long haul airline. The service is good, they've never been delayed so far, the planes are in good condition, the crew are very professional and polite and quite chatty, the food is decent, the movies on the plane are excellent, Dubai is a pretty nice airport to spend a few hours in and the prices are reasonable too!

Qatar Airways was slightly cheaper, but they only fly to Manchester, which is a few hundred miles further from my places than Birmingham airport.

The worst so far is still KLM, bad food, HORRIBLE staff and can be quite often delayed...the upside is you do get to transit in Amsterdam with all the PORN!

The last time I was back in UK was in 2006, I didn't manage to get back last year...so this trip is going to be awesome! The fact my photography has improved a little is a bonus.

I've persuaded my Mom to get a new computer too so no more Pentium II 333mhz for me! Hopefully will be able to upload some better stuff this time.

I'm hoping the weather is more like this.

And less like this.

Updates may be a little infrequent until I'm back on August 27th, but I'll do the best I can and I've drafted up a few things just in case.

I'll probably check back in when I'm in Dubai in the middle of the night and I'll reach UK around midday tomorrow (about 8pm tomorrow night).

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.

Ah back to work today, so sad.

Continued from Part II.

September - Archives

September was a fairly busy month and dominated again by posts about my trip to UK and straight after that another trip to Dubai.

UK was great as always!

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After our walk I suggested we headed up to the top of the hill to catch the sunset over the bay, here I captured some of my favourite pictures of all time, including my number 1 all time favourite!

A couple I took from the car window on the drive up.

The Moors

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Well after lazing around on the terrace all day we went for a walk along to the harbour and down towards the beach (the opposite direction from Butlins!) to get away from the people and get a bit of fresh air and exercise.

It was a nice walk, along by the harbour, the lifeboat station and down along the beach.

Quay Street - Minehead

Moored in the Harbour

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I still have quite a few posts from UK, so back to normal service again for a while, until I decide to whinge about the stupid SE K750i I bought in January that now doesn't work because the screen is totally white...and the LCD warranty is only for 1 MONTH, yes I just found out today when I looked at the back of the warranty card..

Anyway, whilst I was in UK I suggested to my Mom we pop down to my Aunt's cottage in Minehead, Minehead is a small coastal village towards the south of Bristol in UK. You can read more HERE.

We had beautiful weather thankfully and it was a incredibly relaxing couple of days, the first day we did nothing, we just sat on the terrace, had lunch Al Fresco and enjoyed a good bottle of wine.

My Aunt's cottage is a quaint little place build into a rock hill, the back is actually joined to the hill it's ancient and she spent a lot of money fixing it up, it's really beautiful now.

She has a new neighbour too, this is their dog Jessie a beautiful Golden Retriever.

The stairs up to the terrace.

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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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Sorry for the lack of updates, was travelling back from uk, then resting, then had to rush to office, then was re-installing OS, finally time to move into the 21st century, gone is Windows 2000, here is Windows XP! I've been using Win2k since the advanced BETA leaked in early 1999.

I took some pics in Mom's garden, mostly as I was teaching her to take macro shots of flowers, so just used those in the garden as examples so she could get the hang of it.

Technically she picked it up fast, but needed some ideas on being more creative, framing the pictures etc as at the beginning she just took the flowers straight on, which is boring!

She got the idea towards the end, here are my efforts anyway..

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Ah the great English weather is back...I'm stuck in the house again.

Had a light dinner after so much heavy eating, some parma ham draped over a melon, some pork pie and carrot/cucumber with houmous and taramasalata.

Topped off with a beautiful meringue pudding, fresh cream and oodles of strawberries.

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