The World of Ying & Brad

Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells and Scotney Castle

2010-07-03T22:27:00.001+01:00

We decided to head down to Kent for a country drive since it was such a lovely day.

We drove just over an hour to get to Tonbridge (not to be confused with Tunbridge Wells).

Tonbridge has a nice old castle ruin that we had a wander around before heading off to Tunbridge Wells.

Tunbridge Wells was founded around some iron rich natural springs back in the 1700's and "taking the waters" soon became a trend for the dandies and how dee doos of English society.

There is a lovely pedestrian mall called the Pantiles with shops, cafes etc. We stopped for lunch at a cafe and listened to music from a country & western group. There was a whole bunch of yanks promoting 4th July independence day (I don't really understand why considering it was a war with England that they are celebrating, but hey, the yanks are a strange lot).

After lunch we decided to head over to Scotney Castle. This is a National Trust managed property that was bequeathed when Mrs Betty Hussey died in 2006. Everything was handed over lock stock & barrel leaving furniture, art works, clothing and all manner of personal effects - and 1 cat still lives there.

It was £10 each to go to the house and gardens, so we decided to splurge and get an annual National Trust membership for the 2 of us for £80. This gives you free access to all 300 National Trust properties - so we figure that within a few weeks we will have covered the cost of our investment.

The new house was built in 1836 from stone quarried from the back yard. The house sits on impressive gardens that have 2 major highlights:

1) The quarry used for the house was converted into a lovely garden which accentuates the fall of the land,

2) The old castle - a stunning old building on an island in a lake for protection. Now in partial ruin it is a delightful building in a stunning setting.

See the full gallery on posterous

We ended up spending quite a few hours just enjoying the day (26 degrees and mostly sunny - believe it or not) in the beautiful gardens.

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Covent Gardens to Hyde Park

2010-05-18T21:58:00.000+01:00

On Saturday just gone we took the train into town and made our way to Covent Garden to take a look at the market there and then to have a walk across London to Hyde Park.

The market was not as big as we expected, but the setting of it with the cobble stone piazza style square with the lovely market halls in the middle was much nicer than we expected. We had a wander around and had an early lunch some fancy beef (from a rare breed of cow that wanders the rolling lush green hills of Devonshire and gets massaged every day) on a ciabatta with greens, It was pretty tasty.

After lunch & a wander we headed up to Monmouth Street to see if we could find the original Monmouth coffee shop. Luckily we did (thanks to my fancy navigation in my phone).

This store was a lot smaller than the one at Borough Market, but really had a great buzz about it, and of course the coffee was great. I love the simplicity of the decor, the no nonsense feel of it and the real `earthiness' you get from the wood, the smell of the coffee and the grungy hipster dudes and dudettes serving you and yelling out to each other through the never ended hubub.

From there we sauntered down to Picadilly Circus and headed east to Hyde Park.

We popped into this quaint commercial art gallery called Hauser Wirth - 196A Picadillym London, W1S 4AX. They had an exhibition on of art from a woman called Bharti Kher. She had some really interesting stuff, but the highlight was without a doubt a whole room full of massive mirrors with identical, but amazing, intricate frames. Each mirror was broken in some way but was covered in stick on felt dots. Having an entire room of these mirrors on a white background was quite striking. We were lucky to be the only ones in the room when we arrived up stairs, so the impact of the vision really was amazing.

This one could be straight out of a horror film like "The Ring":

The gallery was pretty cool, spread out over 4 floors but with each room containing just one installation. The basement was a bit weird - full on industrial with large circuit board cupboards, exposed cabling and really low light - complete with an usher reading a book by torch light to set off the mood. The only art downstairs was some big mechanical that looked like a Tim Burton inspired super sized mix master.

Hhm, too many beers at lunch?

From there we wandered through Green Park and saw lots of Elephants. These elephants are to be seen everyone in London at the moment as part of the London Elephant Parade - 250 elephants are painted by local artists & celebrities to raise money for Asiatic elephant conservation. There are some really cool ones around. You can even download the route map and walk around to see all 250+ of them if you have the inclination!

We escaped the elephants and went through the Wellington arch and paid our respects at the Kiwi & Aussie war memorials. The Aussie one was a masterpiece in design terms, it is a huge stone structure with water running down the front. What you see from a distance is the large engraved names of many historic battles fought by Australian troops (Kokoda, Tobruk, Okinawa etc). But it isn't until you get closer that you realise that the entire wall is engraved with names, not soldiers names as you usually expect, but the 23,844 towns in which they were born. It really is a wonderful monument to those that died in WWI & WWII.
They have a great website too - http://www.awmlondon.gov.au/

After that we headed into Hyde Park proper - had a wander around, Ying was disappointed that there were no speakers at the speakers corner, but the highlights were this enormous pink tent for a charity walk - http://www.walkthewalk.org/Home

and a really cool horse head statue up near Marble Arch

By then we were pretty shagged and went home for tea a bit of a lay down.

So a good day out all up. You can see the full gallery of pics here.

Check Out my QR Code Signature & Contact Details

2010-05-17T08:47:00.001+01:00

QR Code of my business card.

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Art Connoisseurs? Not us! A trip to Tate Modern

2010-05-02T17:39:00.002+01:00

The wind, the rain and the general unpleasantness of today made it an `indoor' day.

Being the weekend we wanted to actually go out and do something, so decided that we would head over to the Tate Modern (just near the London Bridge train station) for a dose of culture and nice wander around.

The Tate Modern itself is pretty spectacular comprising of a huge space reclaimed from an old power station. The mind boggles now at a power station like that being built on the banks of the Thames looking directly across at St. Paul's Cathedral - particularly as it sat empty from 1981 to 2000 when the Tate Modern moved in.

Apart from the building, the space and the location we were pretty underwhelmed at the art. Now neither Ying nor I are experts in art, but I just have to say that this modern art is a bit odd.

It seems to me that these artists are just not part of the fabric of reality - it seems everything is over analysed and just a little too `interpretive'.

Take a look at these examples:

Sticks with Ribbon

What's this one mean - no idea but it looks like the start of a good bonfire.

Greek Nude with Pile of Clothes

Now Ying reckons this is means that your naked body is wonderful and that you don't need clothes. I said it was representative of a material society where it is easier to dispose of your clothes than to wash them.

Either way - it's a naked statue with a pile of clothes - not really art is it?

There were a couple that I liked, this one is definitely my style:

This is pretty big at about 4m wide, the entire thing is painted in dots. I could see that on the lounge room wall no worries.

Then this one was really good - this bloke took photos of himself getting buried in the dirt and you can see in the sequence that he slowly disappears - but what is really great is that with German TV, over 9 days during a prime time TV show they showed one of the photos each day for 2 seconds - no announcements, not information - just a guy slowly sinking into the ground over 9 days. That is quality art in my book.

So it was a fun day out exploring, but I think that we will be happier looking at the art in the British Gallery and places where the art has a bit more realism (is there a comic museum I wonder - that would keep me entertained for awhile).

Dulwich Farmers Market at Dulwich College

2010-04-25T18:59:00.002+01:00

Today we took a walk down to the beautiful Dulwich College to the farmers market.

On the way there we went through Dulwich Park and enjoyed the lovely flowers still blooming, lots of white & pink blossoms in the trees.

Ying and the blossoms at Queen Mary's Gate Dulwich Park.

Dulwich College Main Building

I wasn't that fussed about the farmers market to be honest, I just wanted an excuse to be able to walk around the college which is made up of these absolutely gorgeous buildings with amazing ornate finishings and details. In the above pic, each window archway for example has a stone carved head, probably of a former head master. The buildings were lovely.

Dulwich College is set on quite large grounds firmly butting up against Dulwich Wood, and Dulwich and Sydenham Hill Golf Course - check it out on the map here. It is a boarding school for boys from age 7 - 18.

It has large sports grounds which gives it a really sense of grandeur and of being in the country.

This is the cricket pitch and club house at the college.

They have a small farmers market at the school (we aren't sure of the frequency - probably monthly). Not too much there, but some nice breads, olives and meats.

Stalls under the school clock tower.

Sun shining on the college and the market.

Looked like a little chapel with a wedding going on.

On the way home we ducked back through Dulwich Park and found a section where there are 4 ping pong tables available to be used. They are made of concrete with steel nets, very sturdy.

We'll be looking to get some ping pong paddles & balls now for a bit of a friendly game (any challengers?).

And a spring walk wouldn't be complete with some pics of lovely flowers in the park - so here are my 2 choice ones.

In front of an old gate keepers cottage.

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Look! Up in the Sky - it's Empty

2010-04-17T18:14:00.001+01:00

The weather this week has been amazing - nice long sunny days, clear blue skies and spectacular red sunsets.

One noticeable difference for the later part of this week to other blue sky days is the total absence of the usually criss crosses of vapour trails (contrails) left by jet air craft ferrying people across Europe.

We aren't seeing any of this for a while.

But courtesy of the Icelandic volcanic eruption of Eyjafjallajokull Volcano (nope I can't pronounce it either - but you can hear it here) no aircraft can fly in pretty much most of the UK. Airports have been closed for 3 days and it looks like the volcano is still erupting and spilling ash & gas out into the UK airspace - insert Iceland joke here (at least they are back to exporting something, they didn't cripple the UK with their dodgy banks but they'll get us this time etc).

The ash is also causing spectacular sunsets bursting with red & orange and really setting the evenings on fire. We are seeing colours that could be similar to those immortalised by JMW Turner back in 1815 when he painted many scenes with amazingly vivid colours attributed to the ash that was in the sky from a volcanic eruption of that year.

Chichester Canal by JWM Turner.

I love this painting and I think that it captures a magically sunset to a greater degree that a photograph.

So enjoy the crystal blue skies - you may never see them again (unless you are back in Oz in the outback!).

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Daffodils in Spring

2010-04-17T17:34:00.001+01:00

A lovely part of London in the early spring is the sudden awakening of millions of daffodils. They literally pop up everywhere, some (like the photo) are planted, but many just seem to appear in random places providing a lovely splash of colour after the drab winter.

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Driving on Tower Bridge

2010-04-05T20:59:00.001+01:00

I recently had to drive across London and unwittingly ended up driving over Tower Bridge (at the royal speed of 20MPH) and couldn't resist snapping a few pics as I was rather excited.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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We are now officially Londoners!

2010-04-05T20:40:00.000+01:00

So we made the move from Guildford to East Dulwich over the Easter long weekend and can now officially say we are Londoners!!

The move was pretty easy - as you expect when you have virtually nothing to move, we did a trip on Thursday with the little Peugot full of clothes, then again on Friday when we went to clean the house at Guildford. We have to go back this Thursday to do the `check out'. One of Ying's friends is going to come around and pick up my desk, luckily he has a big 4WD and will be in Guildford and lives in Forest Hill ( next door suburb to East Dulwich).

We are loving the new flat as it is much more homely that Guildford with proper rooms, a lounge, a nice big kitchen, a good sized bedroom and an office for me. Also a sofa bed for those of you wishing to come visit.

We did a trip to Ikea today and got some chairs, an office chair and a bookshelf (no bits left over - good as gold!).

So now we are at home and looking happy to be settled for some time (believe it or not :)

If you haven't got our address or phone number, then shoot us an e-mail.

I'll post some pics soon.

Moving to London In Less Than 2 Weeks

2010-03-23T10:39:00.001+00:00

After living in the beautiful Guildford for 8 months, we have decided to move closer to London so that we can have easier access to London to enjoy the london urban life. It will also make it easier to catch up with friends and meet new people.

So with our usual style, we found this lovely 2 bedroom flat in East Dulwich on our first day of hunting. Since we'd done the research on locations and knew where we want to be, it wasn't hard to make a decision once we saw the lovely flat, especially it comes fully furnished.

We are very impressed by the number of parks around us considering it's only 5 miles from the heart of London. The local landmark Horniman Park and Museum is only 2 minutes walk on the East side; to the west is the nice big Dulwich Park; to the North lies the Pecham Rye Park and to the South we've got the ancient Sydenham Hill forest.

Horniman Museum

The local East Dulwich High Street is very lively and has great vibe, with a lot of shops, cafes, pubs and restaurants lining on both sides. The more posh Dulwich village is also within walking distance.

In less than 2 weeks, we'll be moving in and start a new life once again! We can't wait to explore the local parks and pubs and be part of the local community. Evidently the local online community forum is one of the liveliest in the UK, at least that's where we found our flat!

Looks like winter is over

2010-03-15T14:29:00.000+00:00

Today it is sunny and 13 degrees - and I walked up to High Street without a beanie - the first time in about 5 months - so it looks like winter might be over.

Here is some blue sky to prove it:

St. Martha on the Hill - Guildford

Taken yesterday on a walk up our favourite hill to St. Martha's Church.

World's Smallest Cadillac - In London - in 1913!

2010-03-13T17:20:00.003+00:00

Found this really funny old video of a tiny Cadillac driving through London in 1913. What a brilliant little piece, just look at the traffic even back then.

It is also great just looking at the old double decker buses running and the way the people were dressed - even the kids wore suits and hats.

Plus it all ends with some high quality silent film slap stick.

Bargains at Guildford Farmers Market

2010-03-13T17:17:00.000+00:00

Every Friday & Saturday on North Street Guildford (runs parallel to High Street) there is a farmers market with stalls of fresh fruit & veg, local produce, cakes and flowers.

We tend to go there in the afternoon on the Saturday because they are trying to sell everything they can, so they have lots of specials for a pound, it is quite fun to hear the different stalls all yelling out "Everything in a bag only a pound" or "2 pineapples only a pound, fresh & lovely, come & get em before their gone" etc. The loudest of them all is a girl of about 20 - she is funny and always draws a crowd for her £1 bags of goodies.

You can get some seriously good deals - check out the bag of bananas we got for £1:

24 Bananas only a pound

We also got these satsumas for a pound and the 4 avocados for a pound.

All up we spend about £5 and get enough fruit & veg for the week. Bargain.

The New Forest, Hampshire

2010-03-07T18:04:00.004+00:00

Yesterday Sue, Alex & Zoe were going to come around for a Guildford trip but couldn't make it - so we decided to take a day out exploring.

Ying suggested a trip down to the New Forest in Hampshire. The New Forest is the smallest of the national parks in the UK.

It was originally founded as a park by William the Conqueror in 1079, so it's not really a new forest in my opinion.

You can read a bit about The New Forest here.

It is different from an Australian National Park in the sense that it was full of towns, roads, ponies, cattle and loggers. But I guess they are trying to preserve the historical context of it as a working common that is pretty much unchanged by the millennia that has passed since being founded as the private hunting domain of of William.

It was a beautiful place with quaint towns, ponies wandering the streets, wide expanses of heath and actual forest.

The ponies are a special feature of the New Forest and are actual a recognised breed and are all actually owned by the commoners - read about the ponies here.

Highlights were the main town of Lyndhurst. This was a lovely town with a really cute high street, lots of interesting shops (like going to those places like Bowral & Katoomba). The shop that made the biggest statement about the town was their only car dealership just at the start of high street - Ferrari's and Maserati's. I guess thee New Forest commoner is not so common anymore.

After a Cornish pasty in Lyndhurst we drove to a parking place a few miles out of town and hand a walk in the forest. Probably not the best time of year as the trees were all bare and the ground was very soggy, but we walked for about 2 hours and enjoyed the quiet and fresh air.

After the walk we drove around to Beaulieu - a gorgeous little town with a beautiful old manor house, a ruined abbey and ponies wandering the roads. We didn't have long to stay there, but will definitely be back in summer to do some camping and further exploring.

Beaulieu has a French name (coming from William the Conqueror's time) but now has a very distinctly English pronunciation - bew-lew. Here is how to say it: http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=beaulieu (speakers on).

Anyway Beaulieu also houses the National Motor Museum which is supposed to house the biggest collection of vintage cars in the word.

After Beaulieu, we popped into Buckler's Hard for a butchers, but found you had to actually pay to get into the village - serious. With time short we gave it a miss, but this was an important ship building area with the close proximity of logging from the New Forest supporting the industry there. It was one of the ship building towns that supported Nelson's ship building program.

From there we took the one & half hour drive back home.

Very much a beautiful part of the country and we look forward to doing some camping there in summer.

Dad suggests a book called The Forest by Edward Rutherfurd which is one of those historically based novels that follows life in the forest over the last 1,000 years. I haven't read it yet, but will do so soon.

Ponies resting in the open just near Lyndhurst

Brad and a beautiful old moss covered tree in The New Forest

Ying modelling on a great fallen tree.

Brad re-living the dragon riding scene from Harry Potter

Just a Few Tickets

2010-02-15T09:34:00.001+00:00

I had a 2 day trip up to Blackpool on Thursday & Friday last week going exclusively by train.

Left home at 5.30am on Thursday and got picked at 10.30am at Poulton - so with changes & waiting times, about the same as if I had driven. I did have the luxury of a first class ride on Virgin trains. In first class you get tea & coffee for free plus free use of the wireless internet and they have power points so you can plug in the laptop. So this 2 hours from London to Preston was much better than driving - I could actually get some work done.

Virgin have a funny pricing policy - when I booked my tickets, the first class ticket was only £4 more than standard, and for the return trip, first class was cheaper than standard - go figure!

All up in the 2 days of train trips I had a total of 12 train tickets (not to mention the Oyster card trips on the Underground) and 1 Oyster card receipt.

All up a good trip - but tiring.

Pyjama-Wearing Crackdown in the UK

2010-01-29T13:40:00.002+00:00

I thought only the Shanghainese wear Pyjamas in public. But that's not the case, it's apparently quite a universal scene!

A welsh woman was kicked out Tesco supermarket because she was wearing her PJs. Here is what she has to say: "“I’ve got lovely pairs of pyjamas, with bears and penguins on them. I’ve worn my best ones today, just so I look tidy,”

Tesco should give her credit for wearing her very best PJs shopping in their supermarket :)

With the upcoming 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, PJs are also being one of the crackdown targets by the government. Just like crackdown on spitting in Beijing before the Olympics, I"m sure PJs will come back sooner than their disappearance.

Here is the link to the article on TimesOnLine about the PJs crackdown: the article

Best Political Cartoon Ever

2010-01-14T22:26:00.002+00:00

He speaks the truth.......

iPlayer - Free TV Viewing in UK

2010-01-14T22:03:00.003+00:00

As previously mentioned, the UK still clings to the wastefully outdated TV License regime. So what is a law abiding citizen to do when they want to watch something on telly - like Doctor Who - but they don't have a license (or a telly for that matter)?

Simple - head on over to the BBC iPlayer. This has a majority of the TV shows and movies available to watch after the live broadcast that you can watch on demand for up to 7 days after the original broadcast.

So why can you watch that without a license? well, in the TV Licensing law it says that you must have a license to watch TV programmes `as they are being shown' - in other words - Live to air.

To get around the licensing rules, you just watch it a bit later on iPlayer, which is more convenient anyway because you watch it when you want to - and you don't need a TV License - the BBC say so on their iPlayer site.

Channel 4 (not BBC 4) even have a version as well called 4oD (4 on Demand).

The picture quality is really good as is the sound when streaming - if you have a slow or patchy internet connection, you can even download the TV shows and watch them later in the new iPlayer Desktop whether you are connected to the net or not.

So bugger the telly and the license - watch iPlayer for free!

Posted via email from The World of Brad and Ying

The Great UK Freeze Begins to Thaw

2010-01-14T14:58:00.003+00:00

I woke up this morning about 6am to the sound of some rain on the windows, "that", I thought to myself "is the end of the snow".

Sure enough once the sun was up enough to shed some light, you could clearly see that the tyre grooves in the compacted snow & ice were showing the road surface.

At lunch time Ying & I had a walk up the street and stepping on what had been deep, firm, dry snow was now soft and very wet slush. Everywhere you walk your feet slip as chunks of semi solid ice give way under foot. Ying saw a young lad of about 6 go for a tumble.

Without gum boots (wellies as they are known here) your feet are wet very soon.

With the temperatures expected to get as high as 6 degrees tomorrow and the following 2 days, we shall soon have no snow left, but plenty of water flowing into the Thames water system.

At least life will get back to normal and the fair weather flyers from Gatwick can get back to normal.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from The World of Brad and Ying

We Got Stood Up

2010-01-13T17:57:00.001+00:00

At 5am this morning we woke up to some 3cm fresh snow - bad sign! Having fully booked and packed, we left for the airport regardless.

We managed to arrive at the Gatwick south terminal at 7:15am. The security check was the smoothest journey ever as there was surprisingly no queue! Our flight was due 9am to Athens, so all was good at that point.

As soon as arriving on the other side of custom, we found ourselves join the other thousands of passengers whose flights have been delayed due to the "disruption" of the weather condition. We sat down and soon heard some flights already got cancelled. But ours was still delayed according to the big board. We were happy to wait for a while as long as we could still go.

We turned on the laptop to do some work whilst waiting for updates. 3 hours later, the news arrived - all the Easyjet flights scheduled before 11:30am were cancelled! So that was it, no holiday for us after all.

We heard Gatwick airport was to remain close until 4pm. Thousands of passengers travel plan was ruined, we were not alone. Easyjet offered its passengers either transfer to another available flight free of charge or a full refund. We took the latter choice, but it took us a while to confirm that our return leg will also be subject to refund. Hurray! Though we have no idea when the refund will reach us.

Next we went on to cancel car park booking and Athens hotel booking. We didn't expect to get any refund from either of them according to their terms and conditions. But good luck must be with us, after we explaining what happened, the hotel decided to charge us nothing (Hotel Cecil - will certainly stay with them next time) and the car park only charged us one day rate! God bless them for being nice and understanding!

I celebrated this "failed" holiday by clearing the snow in the front of the house with a heavy shovel!

Book a Seat for Your Wedding Cake

2010-01-11T17:41:00.001+00:00

Looking to see if our flight to Athens was going to be cancelled due to the snow or not, we looked up the Easyjet Flight Check Status and very surprised to see that people who were looking to see if their flight was cancelled were also searching for seats for their wedding cakes!?

Posted via email from The World of Brad and Ying

Will England's Inability to Deal With Snow Damage Tourism?

2010-01-10T16:30:00.001+00:00

The impact of the snow & ice in the UK over the past will have a pretty big cost in terms of lost productivity, but judging from some websites and stories I've seen recently, the impact will also be on tourism as the world looks at the incompetence of authorities here in dealing with a week of ice & snow.

We are pretty much as far north as any other country (except Iceland & Greenland), so you would pretty much expect that snow happens. The government, local government and the private sector have all shown themselves ill-prepared and complacent. It seems odd to be so unprepared as it was this time last year that the same thing happened.

Winter happens every year - maybe the government should plan for it before there are too many more people with stories like this one.

Posted via email from The World of Brad and Ying

Guildford to Godalming Walk Along River Wey

2010-01-10T15:30:00.000+00:00

Late September last year we did a walk from Guildford to Godalming along the towpath of the river Wey. It's a very popular walk, which goes on for 5 miles one way.

The river Wey goes through the town centre of Guildford. This is the starting point of the walk.

Some open space is just 5 meters down the river where we used to work in summer when we first arrived as there was very good mobile phone signal. We thought that was the best office we've ever had.

Quite often the river is busy with activities.

This is one of those signs along the towpath in case you get lost.

We went through a few locks, watching how people open and close locks to let water in and out so that the boats can go past.

Lunch break:

The river keeps meandering quietly, a railway bridge ahead near the town Shalford.

Narrow canal boats parking on the river.

Near Godalming, we deserve a break:

After 3 hours walk, we arrived at Godalming. We were planning to catch the train back to Guildford, but train service was cancelled that day, we caught a bus instead.

Cool Igloo and Snow Man

2010-01-10T12:07:00.000+00:00

Why You Don't Drive on Icy Roads

2010-01-10T09:38:00.003+00:00

With the theme of the big winter freeze and icy roads everywhere, here is a lesson on why not to drive in extreme icy conditions - and also why bailing out of a moving car is not such a good idea!

The video was sent through by my serial comedy supplier - Uncle Robin - who is a conduit for all the comedy on the internet.