Sun 20Jan08: Leaving on a Jet Plane [The Longest Journey Ever]

++ Hui Yan, Wei Han, me, Pris, Kiki, Elvin, Tse Tyng, Tony++

The clock ticked to 12.45am, time for ‘UK girls’ and ‘UK guy’ to be ‘officially’ out from Malaysia. But me and Elvin seemed to be not ‘permitted’ to go without FINAL session of picture-taking by the URs and other Narcissists. And for Kiki, I HAD IT! I HAD YOUR “3 MESSAGES”!!!!

After going through the never-ending blitz (I had them since Friday night!), and the continuous huggings & cheek-kissings, off we go. Finally… YOU WISH! Not yet! Haha... Well, after we went downstairs to the immigration section, there were echoes from them. Only after we had our passport chopped, they started to leave quietly.

Now, I dedicate this paragraph to say ZILLION THANKS to those who had sent me (and Elvin) off – Kiki & her Myvi 3431, Tse Tyng & her Toyota Rav4, Priscilla, Steffi, Wei Han, Ken Seong, Hui Yan, Oliver, Tony, Sue Ann, David, Yo Mei – as well as those who called and texted. I know supposedly it was the time to celebrate the end of exams, not to drive up to KLIA to say good bye. Sincerely, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Anyway, although Boeing-777 is quite big, and offers various entertainments such as music, movies, radio, and games through the touch-screen TV, I must admit that the seat was not as comfortable as I expected it to be. Elvin who sat beside me grumbled because the seat was cramped. With the fact that I had a window seat and another ‘big’ guy in the aisle seat, it was quite uncomfortable for us both in case we wish to come out. Indeed, the flight was seriously full. I didn’t see any unoccupied seat. Another annoying thing was the long, continuous announcements made in 3 languages (English, Arabic, and Indonesian), in which during those times any entertainment activity would be suspended. Overall, flight EK347 to Dubai was on time (roughly 2.10am), and the food served was edible. And I finally had the chance watching Rush Hour 3 finished (yeah, I had not watched it!)

Reaching Dubai International Airport at dawn after 7 hours journey, we had approximately 2.5 hours to explore the airport. It is undoubtedly smaller than KLIA, so it looked more packed everywhere. The duty-free shops in the ground floor are designed pretty much like those shops in malls. But the overall interior was nicely designed, I like it. Well, saying that, I should omit the fact that there were people sleeping on the floor covered in their sleeping bag (seems to be well-prepared, eh?) ~_~

There were no many things to see, so we headed to the departure gate earlier – you would prefer not to go outside the airport due to the local temperature, trust me. This time we took EK1 to London Heathrow, another 7 hours journey with a better seating since Elvin finally got aisle seat and me next to him (again). The flight was also full; the announcements were long as normal, but only in English and Arabic. Here, I enjoyed my meal while watching Game Plan – a hilarious comedy movie – and continued sleeping.

We arrived London Heathrow at around GMT 12pm, 25mins behind the schedule. We had to rush in order to catch the university pick-up coach at 1pm. Fortunately and strangely, the so-called the most busiest airport in the world had not much queue in the immigration section, foreign passport. I went it through quite smooth (with big smiles and polite answers to the officer =p) and rushed to claim our baggage. Well, I was so delighted that we could make it on time in that such a short time, because based on my past experience I had a very long queue at 5am in the morning, took me around 30-45mins. Yes, things changed. Some of us went to the shop to buy some sandwiches & drinks and, quite predictably, got shocked with the price – a must, common symptom for Asians like us. A bottle of orange juice was my first spending in GBP which cost me £1.80, and so I depended on my Cadbury chocolate (given by Kiki) in case of I was hungry.

Until now I just couldn’t understand why the university charged us extra of £10 for bringing more than 1 big luggage and 1 small luggage, when they rented the so-called VAN (‘their’ van is ‘our TRUCK). Indeed we had been given notice before our departure, but they never mentioned the size of the small luggage, so some of us eventually had to pay (note that their definition of small luggage is smaller than cabin-sized luggage). I was lucky, because my heavy backpack was just right to ‘their standard’ of small luggage, but not to Carolyn, Meei Yunn and Jia Qian. As a matter of fact, why did they still charge us for that ‘oversized’ baggage, when no more than a quarter of the van was loaded? Sigh.

Indeed I purchased a new SIM card in the airport. Soon as I activated it during the 2-hour journey from London to Nottingham, I wish to inform my number by mass-messaging the URs after my family members. However, the moment I found out that the international sms cost £0.20, I changed my mind. It literally means that I had to rethink 6.3 TIMES before I typed the sms because it was only RM 0.20 for the international sms in Malaysia. And so I decided to announce my new number via msn. Truly deeply sorry for this, hope that y’all understand.

It was 5pm – but the sky is already as dark as night – when we reached the Raleigh Park (our self-catered accommodation) reception to collect our keys. Flat 36 Sillitoe Court is the 5 girls’ cribs, whilst Elvin stays in Flat 18 Madison Court. Me myself occupies Room B; and currently Room A is empty since Hui Yan, the supposedly tenant, cancelled her leaving to UK due to some reasons. So, the 5 girls are staying together in one flat with 2 shared bathrooms and 1 kitchen. Thank God that Sillitoe Court has an elevator because apparently our flat is on the 5^th level, which is the top floor. The lift is so small that we had to divide all of our ‘large’ baggage into two times lifting.

Oh yeah, there’s an interesting issue about our key. At first I was dazzled bcoz the reception only gave me one key. But, whatever, my brain wasn’t really functioning well at that time. When I found Block 4 (Flat 27-36) it was locked but I successfully unlocked it with my key. Up to my flat, I used my key again, it was open. Into the flat, I used the same key to enter my room, and it did. Well, the point here is that each Block 4 tenants must have a ‘common-shape’ key that enables it to access the main entrance, same flat tenants must have ‘another common shape’ in their keys to open their flat door, but each tenant can only unlock/lock their own room – all with ONE SINGLE key.. It’s cool isn’t it? Compared to the bunch of house keys that we all possess!

Shortly, we had our pizza for dinner (two 12”s for £9) in the Raleigh-Park-owned bar ‘Beach Bar’. I never expected much of the taste, and I was lucky I didn’t. It was only 6.30pm when we finished our dinner, so we decided to walk around and find ourselves the way to Jubilee Campus so that we would not get lost and miss the 9am compulsory registration session in the following day. We did take some pictures, but they were quite blurred. Sorry for being incapable to share the wonderful night sceneries of Jubilee Campus ;p

I guess the effect of the dark and jetlags simultaneously had caused 6 of us fell asleep at 8-9pm, soon after unpacking our clothes. To summarise, it took us at least 24 hours from KLIA to Raleigh Park, Nottingham (no joke!). What a long, long day!! ~phew~