lots of ben&jerry!

Happy Ben & Jerry free cone day!!!
I made the most of it :) had my fill of One cheescake Brownie (totally yummy) and caramel chew chew (i love caramel!). Ky had her fill of cherry garcia and phish food :D
Amazingly, the queues here werent bad at all, in fact waiting time was only 5 minutes! Last year, I had to wait for more than 30 minutes (thankfully had tere with me!) to enjoy my strawberry cheesecake. Oh well. anyway B&J free cone day rocks!

Came across this shop with really cheeky sayings as wall hangings. One said, ' I can only please one person a day.."Today is not your day"!' And, this is my all time favorite!

The rain was a dampener though, for the first time experienced heavy rain with thunder & lightning and walking home in soggy shoes wasnt pleasant at all. Hopefully next few days are back with the sun.

Just 4 days left in glasgow..cant wait for London! I ve experienced the city and enjoyed a good elective at the Glasgow Royal and have completed my report too, so all set!

lazy sunday

Headed out to the Barras market again on sunday; the weather was excellent so was finally able to wear a skirt!

Lunch was at the Willows Tea room which is renowned for its architecture; I enjoyed my nutella/butter croissant very much anyway. :) Their tea was served complete with a strainer, milk, water and sugar (brown + white) cubes. Perfect concoction.

Once again PRIMARK beckoned; we all ended up buying an assortment of things but all for under 5 pounds. That's the thing about the place. Time for lots of restraint; really.
Think I am getting excellent excercise here everyday - in the form of our walk from the city centre to the house, a good 30 mins. As long as the weather is good, its an enjoyable walk.

But despite all this, I am totally misisng home; especially our sunday routines! Going to have plenty of maggi - cooked by mum - once I get home. And lazing around in the couch and subsequently falling into my afternoon nap. And our sunday walks and fruit days. sooooon!

Onwards North

Jumped into a tour bus yesterday for a feel of the famed Scottish highlands. The journey in photos:

from glasgow to Loch Lomond, the largest expanse of water in the UK

the rain and the mist combined for a perfect photo

it was very very cold thanks to the rain (although i look perfectly fine here)

and then onto Glencoe, which has a historic tale of 1000 weeping women, but also (perhaps more importantly ;) ) the site for the filming of HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban!

cute little house along Glen Coe, apparently used in HP as well.

Lunch stop was at Fort William, the end point of the West Highland Walkway (a 5 - 7 day walk to experience the Highlands)

as we left Fort William. I just like this pic!

Passing by Loch Lochy, the roads were right beside the lochs!

Urquhart castle by Loch Ness - the hunt for Nessie begins!

Loch Ness - the largest volume of water in the UK + with Nessie hiding within apparently. Hordes of tourist come here just to try to spot Nessie - also the reason why Loch Ness is the most well known of the many Scottish Lochs (which are all absolutely beautiful and tranquil)

Right by the edge; clutching my bag tightly for fear of it being blown away by the amazing winds!

From my prime seat on the bus - snow laden peaks of Ben Nevis

Dinner stop at the town of Pitlochry (really, just about 10 streets wide). But found this barber shop!

Onto the lowlands again; with marked differences in terrain

Back to glasgow together with this car & its cycles!

get ur heart pumping!

Just back from a 40 min jog. feels great! and best part is i didnt sweat half as much as in spore..but the uphill bits along kelvingrove park were a killer. Thanks to the sun! Weather was great today despite the gloomy rain in the morning. And with the intake of chips for lunch plus a caramel cake, i was feeling way too guilty for my coronaries (didnt help that we spend most of our day opening up narrowed vessels!). In fact we were strongly advising a patient today to excersie and stop smoking - about 40+ man with a sudden collapse and severe stenosis. I can totally imagine mine getting thicker by the ninute.

Anyway have been having a good week in the wards, getting to know the doctors better and of course following through with patients. Plus free time is being spent on report too so I am happily occupied. :)

Only a week left though! should finish touring Glasgow by then hopefully. And I ve got pretty used to Chaffy - meaning I can walk by him (still warily) but at the 1st go rather than wait for a few min trying to summon up my courage. seriously it was that bad! But jumping over him is still another thing. Thankfully he's not at home quite a bit now so we re having the house to ourselves esp during the early evening. Perhaps, just perhaps I might be able to take a photo with him (that's mum's request!). Lets see!

Have been having some very indulgent food lately. And there's plenty to look at too.


At a cafe called chocolate soup in Edinburgh. YUMMMY. that's triple chocolate muffin plus choc mocca latte that ky finished. absolutely chocolatey!


I pretty much gawked at this for a while..just watching the choclolate drip away. beneath the cream was more hot chocolate btw. Yummy. (and this didnt stop me from getting more chocloate eggs from the Barras the next day!)


Candy display at the Barras!


our picnic lunch at roslin glen! note the pasta in the foreground (moi's delightful cooking ;))


Mouthwatering display at one of the tea-houses in the city centre. seriously tempting.

Now you know why I am enjoying my food here!

harry harry everywhere

Have found way tooo many references to Harry Potter here. Its thrilling in a weird way though! After all JKR should have got her inspiration from scotland! below are a few examples :)



the birthplace of harry potter! they sell T-shirts
/mugs etc proudly proclaiming this!

Cornish pixies anyone??


Momentarily froze when i saw this, as i read it as platform 3-by-4!!


And read this as Hermionitis! (its taken in the Botanic Gardens which is a 5 min walk from house and has huge stretches of green with a greenhouse and collection of plants from everywhere. what struck me most was the LARGE number of dogs running everywhere. even Chaffy - yup, he was brought for a run at the exact same time as us. Talk about coincidences)

Roslin chapel

Edinburgh from calton hill. Love the effect of the trees here!

Went over to Edinburgh (pronounced 'edinburrugh' by the Scots) last saturday. Key stops were at calton hill, Edinburgh University and Roslin chapel. The university itself was inspiring more for its graduates than the architecture - found Glasgow University more impressive in terms of the latter. But the plaques honoring Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hodgkin (Hodgkin's lymphoma!) and Thomas Addison (Addison's disease) invoked a certain admiration/inspiration :)



The numerous plaques dedicated to Hodgkin and
the like. - these frame the entrance to the medical building.

Roslin is a small town, in the mid-lothian regions, about 40 min away from Edinburgh. I went in mostly with background knowledge courtesy of Da Vince Code, but what was compiled in the chapel itself was much more provoking in terms of history. The carvings were truly amazing - the work of the masons, from the 15th century was full of symbolism & minute details. Reminded me greatly of the South Indian temples in fact. Photos just cant do enough justice to the carvings. Well-worth the entry fee!





The place around the chapel itself - Roslin Glen - was a rustic park with a meandering stream-side path. Happily enough, the weather was just right for us to have a picnic-lunch by the stream. Very tranquil and laid-back settings.

knitting & The Barras

Had a really good clinic session today, got to pretty much run a clinic. Was much more fun and challenging compared with just sitting through. And the ward rounds here are much more relaxed - meaning more time to absorb and learn stuff. And with full use of library facilities, its good :)

And special mention to my regular commenter - i love reading ur comments! and other readers, do leave somthg; its good to know that my posts are being read! Will serve to remind me to keep at this too.

Went over to the Barras market last sunday - its about 500+ 'stalls' both indoors and outdoors, operating specially on weekends. At first it didnt look too impressive, but soon realised that these stalls were a real tresure trove of antiques, collectibles of all kinds and pretty much everything else. From teacups to books (novels, bibles,old old books on planes etc etc) to meat to fruits to wool to garments to watches to bags to even violins! It really was like being on a tresure hunt and most of these are a good deal cheaper (for they are mostly 2nd hand). A pity that I couldnt get all the collectibles I wanted; had to settle for a few paperbacks. But, Ive decided to pick up knitting! Got my first knitting needles and 2 rolls of knit material (for lack of a better word, pardon me) all for 3 pounds. And I am proud to report that my scarf is about 1-10th done. :) Aim is to finish it by next week! Much thks to J for being our knitting teacher (now that job needs a lot of patience & repetition).

this and that

Now showing in cineworld glasgow: Santosh subramaniam, yaaradi nee mohini, U, me or Hum, Tashan, Race and One, Two, Three. Pretty much the entire gamut of bollywood and kollywood! Thant should tell you the significant population of these movie-watchers here. Nevermind that tickets are 5.20 - 7.50 pounds. Pretty impressive still!

Glasgow has a rather weird traffic light system such the green man flashes at the same time for both directions. i.e if i want to get across to the other road (both parallel & perpendicular) i hv to walk diagnally across the road! And that too fast, for they flash for a rather short time. I find this reallyweird..once u miss 1 crossing its a long wait and then vehicles on all sides will wait for u. Another small thing i miss abt spore.

Its going pretty tough for all at home i ve heard..hang in there everyone. esp anju, im sure u'll get through all this unscathed. Trust me, u r going to look back at this timeframe and go wow. :) U are def capable and will finish all these nitty-gritties, no matter how much it feels otherwise! And very soon I'll be home again :D

windy windy days

I miss the spore sun. Cant believe that I am saying this but seriously. Today was an exceptionally cold & windy day. and walking against the wind is amazingly energy-sapping! its like fighting a battle to just take 1 step. Plus the fact that you can literally feel the numbness crepeing in along ur toes and fingers. And then u stop feeling them. I think I would definitely prefer the sun to the cold. (I never imagined I'd be saying this!). Wish I had a full face mask to cover my face too, lips become so dry that its full of flaky skin. yucks! May the wind over glasgow stop blowing!

post prandial stupor!

So having a good time eating junk food! last week was chips week, with a small pack of walkers just about everyday. and dessert of the week was a cherry pie. yummy! This week, its rasberry sponge cake and lots of kit-kat (which was on offer). Plus donuts from mabel's tearoom on & off. And yoghurt which is delicious (the kind with a mix-in of syrup/nuts). For mains breakfast is cereals with milo; lunch for this week is pasta (cooked the night before, has been good) and dinner is curd rice with some veg. A pity that veg choice is mostly limited to carrots, onions, potatoes and greens but cant complain much really :) I love curd rice and pickle btw. Food rocks!

Stirling

With much zeal we set out to stirling, wanting to make full use of the Queen's generous gift :) Took a train ride there, pretty exciting. I like it that they have seats with tables in the trains, arranged in a cosy 4 seats-facing-each-other style. The town itself was pretty small and very quiet, probably cos it was a sunday. In UK, everythg seems very closed down on sundays - even the metro runs only from 10am to 6pm on sundays. The 'ancient-ness' of stirling really came through though as it seemed like everything was built before the 1700's!

View of river forth from the Wallace monument

Stained glass in holy rude church

Church of holyrude was interesting, with loads of stained glasses (i really cant get enough of those!) and so was the walk up to Stirling castle (RIGHT) itself. The caslte was much more compact than edinburgh, but with active restoration works going on everywhere - somehow that appealed to me, as it seemed more real. The views from the castle itself (perched ontop of a hill) were amazing, with vast fields, snow capped mountains and blue clouds all in 1 view :)

We then proceeded to the wallace monument (LEFT) - William Wallace is scotland's hero, and this monument was obviously full of pride & admiration for him. The trek though was a good 30 minute walk up a hill. Happily, lunch was at the end of the trek before the final stretch - it was at this italian place with homemade pasta; the tortellini was fabulous plus they had gelato for 85pence. Splendid! Appreciated the monument for helped with appreciation of scottish history better. and of course more 360 degrees views from the top! With that, it was onto the cumbersworth abbey - which really was ruins with an intact bell tower. Shopping for groceries for the week completed our stirling experience (found really cheap & good yoghurt at tesco's!)..made it just in time for the train! All in all, a compact experience of a typical scottish town :)

picture perfect, along path to abbey. Robert Burns probably got his inspiration from here!

Scotland's tallest peaks - view fr monument

...and there's my Scottish man! ;)

Edinburgh!

We went over to edinburgh for a day trip over sat - absolutely brilliant timing cos it was the Queen's birthday as well, so all historic attractions were free over the weekend! yippee! that was a 11 pounds saved over the castle. liked edinburgh, the city had a rustic charm to it, with rows of old old buildings and lots of people milling about.there was this cute christmas shop with a store full of christmas deco. and loads of touristy shops with all kinds of stuff..edinburgh castle itself was majestic and huge..so sprawled over that i cldnt really appreciate its size.There was a lot of history involved obviously, I felt that I cldnt appreciate those very well with my rather lacking knowledge of scottish history. It was a unique feeling though, to realise that u r standing on stuff built like 600 years ago! Made a huge blunder of forgetting to put my battery into camera. (despite charging it fully the day before). :( unfortunately, ky's cam also ran out of batt so by the time we reached the castle proper, all we had were phone cameras. Still, those were kept clicking with all the sights around. And I m absolutely in love with scottish houses and stained glass paintings - these are so vivid and colourful!! cant get enough of them.

After the castle, had a sumptuous lunch of burger, chips and salad (think huge portions) which certainly put to rest all hunger pangs. they tried the haggis which is scotland's signature dish - a sheep stomach stuffed with liver and other things. (doesnt sound too good to me!). There was even a veg haggis (seriously!) but i decided to err on the side of caution and stick with the burger.

Royal mile street is the main street in edinburgh old town and this has lots of surprises. Most interestingly, there were numerous passageways connecting to the parallel roads - these are called closes, are very very narrow and often very steep and hv quirky names. like world's end close, old fishmarket close etc. all these are really old too so walking through them really felt like stepping into history.

And then we stumbled onto the Harrry Potter cafe!! this is called 'The elephant house' and proudly claims to be the birthplace of harry potter :D it was pure joy to have found it, as we hadnt been able to find any concrete details online. so that was something!

Another of royal mile's surprises was fudge stores, which had amazing fudge of a mind boggling variety and with free samples too! We indulged in some heavely highland cream fudge, triple choc and almond toffee fudge on the way back after Arthur seat. This is britain's only surving volcano, with its outer core eroded (and hence called a 'plug') and with a rugged path to get to the top. The slope was very steep and the rain made it slippery. But the views were worth it. Although we didnt make it to the very peak (this further path was at 45 degress and with no proper path either). So had to be contented with the half-way ascent. a good workout nevertheless and with fabulous 360 degree view (as we walked ard it) of edinburgh!

By the time all this was done, it was abt 6pm and everything was shut down..made a (seemingly) brave decision to leave glasgow without my trench coat and with just my cardigan that day and oh my, did i pay for that! it was very cold, esp with the rain - my poor fingers lost all their agility. Even folding the umbrella was impossible! So Roslin chapel and the edinburgh university proper have to wait for another day. Looking forward to it though!
In all, lovely edinburgh, much more old than glasgow which has a more contemporary feel (which is of course much more ancient compared to spore!)

Glasgow royal infirmary

The Glasgow Royal Infirmary was first built in 1792, an imposing 'old building' (named so really) forms the impressive facade and is supported by more buildings. Its a confusing place though, especially for the 1st few days. Our Professor is awesome, giving us a tour of the hospital himself, totally amicable and with a great sense of humour. :) Time in the hospital has been interesting, with a different patient profile from the one we see back home..the library is very well equipped complete with all journals (cldnt find SMJ though, saudi journal was in, hmph).
And our timetable is just right - not totally full but with enough activities to have time for own reading (read: own pursuits) as well! Its gonna be a good 4 weeks :)

settling in..with a dog to boot

So we arrive at the hostel, braving the cold and a 10 min walk from the bustop. The hostel owner is a lovely lady, she gave us bedsheets as well (since bag was lost) and then she says: 'oh i didnt mention this before, but i hope none of u are scared of dogs? cos there is one in the house, but he's a dear. so not to worry'. Heart sinks. to the deepest pit ever possible. gosh...i was really reeling away. this was my worst nightmare ever. oh no, worser still was the fact that i cldnt do anything about it. So we go up to the house, my heart in my mouth and a strong bark greets us. and out comes this HUGE, jet black dog. I am not exaggerating. So it doesnt enter our room but makes itself at home in the corridor to the kitchen and washrooms. Means i'll have to face it day in and day out for the next 28 days. Depressing beyond words. coupled with the fact that i was already missing home and wondering about food. The room itself was decent with a bunker bed and a large single bed. and a fridge & sink thrown in (thank goodness). Kitchen had a microwave and stove (and of course the dog, Chaffy who loves sprawling himself in the kitchen).

There's a supermarket nearby, about 3 min walk and a laundry mart few houses down (washing machine in house is spoilt). So that was sunday. had a margherita pizza for dinner and cleaned the entire room (which was rather dirty). The dog was scary. esp having to pass within inches of it. Thankfully J & ky were a big help, distracting it or shielding me from it. Oh well, just imagine being thrown into an alien envt with ur greatest fear ever.

A passage to Glasgow

So landed in heathrow after a 12 hr flight, which was fine except that the man in the aisle seat was BIG and a HEAVY sleeper so spent 10 min trying to wake him up. ended up squeezing legs whenever i was awake for DVT was on my mind. Slept most of the way though. Realised that the numerous movies all run simultaneoulsy so i couldnt pause when i wanted. Ended up watching only the kiterunner fully (that too, missed abt 20 min as i dozed off - amazingly, even during my 3rd run of the show at the exact spot!!!). Discovered the presence of a snack bar in the plane with lots of chocs!! but, cldnt make my way through the burly man so had to be contented with the hostess's selection. shall explore it fully on return flight.

Terminal 4 to 5 was a 30 min bus ride, nothing much exciting. Was grilled at the entry point to UK as to why i chose glasgow, not london and even things like what parents work as! And at the security, all my bags beeped and had to unpack everythg in trolley bag. turns out culprits were tuning fork and water (from plane!). and then we had abt 4 hrs to wait so walked ard and saw snow!! OOH! lots and lots of tiny flakes flying ard. and the ground blanketed in white. planes suddenly having a white cover drawn over them. green patches turning white. AMAZING! little did i realise though that the same snow wld barricade me in term 5 for 9 hrs! yup. 1st 0955 departure changed to 1055 then to 1155 then 'pls enquire at airline, flight cancelled'. Got really irksome and then were rescheduled to 1510 flight but w some haggling managed to squeeze into 1310. Which was also rescheduled to 1410 and finally left the tarmac at 1530!!! oh my. Now by this time i was worried abt checked-in bag so asked before boarding the 2nd plane and was told that it has been loaded. i was seated right in front of the plane (seat 1A) for 1st time ever! haha. So that was the long long journey to glasgow. saw snow capped mountains along the way. beautiful.

And then at the baggage collection, no bags show up. a grand total of 4 bags come thru after an hour. so we wait and wait. and then see a long line forming at the BA counter. So there it was, our bags lost. was told that it'll be found in 48 hrs. sigh :( Finally reached hostel at about 1830 hrs.

hi there!

hey all..after some pondering, this travelogue's been created to keep everyone updated with happennings ard me and to share my journeys & thoughts :) pls do comment freely and enjoy! i'll try to update every day (that's a bit ambitious though), but first i'll clear the backlog for the days gone. if any more info is needed, email/FB/msn's always there :)