Monday, June 27, 2011

Pollok Country Park & West End Festival

Taman Negara Pollok. Yup, that's the place that I went a week ago with half of my friends. Reason? No other than to sightseeing the beauty of Scotland park. There's a huge amount of park around Glasgow which I haven't explore yet.

We (with Wanji & Duwe) boarded the 9.27 am train from Glasgow Central Station which is 15-min walk from my hall to Pollokwest station. The journey took about 10 minutes and the ticket price is £2.10 which sounds reasonable for a journey which pass trough 3 stations only. The weather wasn't very good that day with lightly rained and windy. It's very cold! The raindrops kept on attacking my face if I didn't use my umbrella.



"Pollok Country Park is a large country park located in Pollok , south Glasgow. Prior to the building of the M77 motorway it was the largest urban green space in Europe. In 2007 it was named the best park in Britain."
wikipedia


The park itself is very huge. Walking here didn't really make ourselves tired because of the cold weather. First, we walked along a farm which contains several highland cows. The cows are quite different from the normal cow. It has a very thick browny fur and longer horns. We spent a few minutes here capturing photos of the cow before Aleen and Bee arrived.




Then we continued our walk to the Pollok House. Pollok House is a 270-year-old mansion which has a very pretty classic design and architecture. The entrance fee into the house is £6. However, we were allowed to gain access into the shop for free. So we bought wool scarf at £9 here and also some pin badges. The Pollok Garden has a nice view as well. There's a lot of flora around here, arranged and designed in a pretty manner.



At the Old Stable Courtyard, nothing much could be seen here except there are several horses in the stable but we didn't have access to enter the stable to touch the horses. So I snapped some photos from outside the stable. Next to the courtyard, there's a sawmill but the door was locked. So we took photos from outside nearby the river.


We stopped for a quick lunch at the flower garden. We had cooked fried rice last night. There's a small hut here so we stayed here for a while. A large variety of flowers can be found here; colourful flowers, scented herbs and many more. There a glasshouse here as well. It was warm inside it to preserve the flowers in here. Then, there's a vegetable garden. I could recognise some ot the vegetables such as onions, salads and some fruit trees. This place is called Botanical Garden.


Our next destination was Burrell's Collection. This huge building contains a lot of artifacts, art collections and old stuffs and I have no idea who Burrell was. As I didn't adore museum very much, I captured a very few photos here.

We proceed our journey to the Pond via Riding School (sebenarnya sesat, salah jalan). What I could see inside the pond was a hundred of tadpoles. WTH? Where are the fishes??

Our final destination would be an old fort, which is a leftover of a so-called castle. However, there's nothing here except drains and trees. It was an imaginary castle only because the instruction asked us to imagine the place without trees and put the castle there.. What a waste of time..

Oh ya, there's a lot of dogs here. Some dogs were too kind to play around with us like WTH?? Though the owner said that the dogs were friendly and harmless but please understand and respect us okay! Muslims don't play with dogs! There were a few cases where dogs ran into us and we got gelabah and jerit2 because they nearly touched us!

However, the overall walk was great! We got the chance to view the beauty of the nature and we spent almost 6 hours here. Walking!


Back in the city centre, we had a quick meal at King's. We had margherita pizza and onion rings before we continued our activity at the West End. We were planning to go to the West End Festival at Kevingrove Park. We took subway from Buchanan Street to Kelvinbridge, dropped by Dawatul Islam, 31 Oakfield Avenue to perform prayers before we headed to the park.

Kelvingrove Park is quite big, however only few areas where filled with booths and exhibitions. Not so many people came to this festival because it was raining all day. The booths sells food, clothes and stuffs which I didn't even bother to buy. I felt that the timing wasn't right, so it was boring actually. The only thing I bought here was a Kulfi ice cream, a traditional East almond & pistachio flavoured ice cream.


Back in the city centre again, we had dinner at Chilli Thrill. I had Lamb Shish Kebab and Ben & Jerry's caramel ice cream. Yummy~

Fuhhh, it was a long day and very tiring actually. Walk by feet all day long.. But great trip! =)

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Family Day by MalaysianGlasgow

Last two Saturday, my friends and I attended a family day organised by Komuniti Malaysia Glasgow (KMG) and other bodies which was held at Strathclyde Country Park nearby. Not really near from my place, we still had to take bus to go there. The transport was arranged for us, about £6 return fee. This event were also joined by our seniors and also Malaysians who live in Glasgow.

When we arrived, some people were already there preparing and organising foodstuffs and activities. The brothers and sisters brought a lot of food such as fried rice, mashed potato, lamb curry, coleslaw, apple pie and many more. We had barbeque as well where we took part in roasting the marinated chickens and lambs. There was even tandoori chicken wings! Yummy~

For the activities, I took part in pijak belon while others joined other games such as swapping rubberband by using straws, armwrestling and there were also several games for kids. It was very fun and from this event, we could tell there are actually a lot of Malaysian here in Glasgow.

I don't want to tell more, just enjoy some of the photos below. =)





















This kind of event surely can make our relationship grow stronger and closer. It's a good time for us to get to know other Malaysian who live in Glasgow other than ourselves.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Glasgow Safe & Sound - Part 3

We started our day by registering ourselves as a student of University of Strathclyde officially. The registration took place at McCance building which is just 5-minute walk from our hall. We had to queue up to submit our printed application form and captured photo for our student ID which was done on the spot. We spent less than an hour here and after that, went to sightseeing around the city again.

amek gambar depan cermin tingkap

my student card (muka tembam)

While waiting for Anis and Syifaa who went back to their hostel to change shoes, we filled our time camwhoring in front of the McCance Building. There's a flower garden at the hillside so we snapped here and there. The scenery are beautiful, there's a lot of blooming flower from white, yellow and purple. Quite fascinating though because in Malaysia, we can hardly see these types of flower.



We had lunch at Chicken Cottage with a couple of akak seniors. I ordered a different meal from yesterday. This time I had Mountain Chicken Burger meal which costs about £3.++... Luckily the senior brought a bottle of chilli sauce. It made our day better. =)

mountain burger

2 pcs chicken

survey periuk kat Argos


At noon, the girls went back to the university to attend a brief introduction by the accomodation staffs and lecturers while the boys went to SUMSA (Strathclyde University Muslim Student Association) for Friday prayer. We went back to the university after the prayer to meet our counsellor, Dr Iain Ostwald. It was very fortunate that three of us got the same counsellor which will act as our tutor here. However, we won't see him so much since he's not going to teach us because he is major in Physical Pharmacy which we had learned during our second year in IMU.

After having buffet snacks at Lord Todd's Bar, the boys followed Rahimi and Joe to the city centre again to buy cooking utensils. It's quite affordable £19.99 for a set of pans, pot, knives, cutlery, baking tray etc. Then we headed to Chung Ying, an Asian groceries store selling foodstuffs from Asia. Here, we bought vegetables, sauces, pastes and frozen shrimps. Thanks to Joe who belanja us a bottle of oyster sauce..

buffet snacks.. jadi vegetarian kejap..


Chung Ying


Before the night appeared, I followed the akak seniors who brought us to eat rice at Wok to Walk. It's really far away and I was like walking for 20 minutes to reach there. Sumpah penat gila! Then, in the restaurant, we could pick rice or noodles as our main base and added more side dishes and sauce according to our desire. I tried jasmine rice + beef fillet + shitake mushroom + teriyaki sauce. And Dr Pepper as my drink! First time I tried it, it was good though some people didn't like it. It's a cherry flavoured carbonated drink and they compared it with a cough syrup because of the similar taste. But for me, it's still sedap!

Wok to Walk


my choice

nearly night time


That's all for the day.. Gonna write again very soon.. Especially regarding MalaysianGlasgow Family Day which was so havoc and meriah!

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