First steps in Europe

It feels so surreal to be here but I ain't dreaming. I've set foot on British lands, have seen the cottages and fought with the chilling winds of the North. First of all, I wanna thank those that had came to the airport to send me off - Justin, Li Ann, Kylie, Jan Vy, Joel, Jon Low, Reuben, King, Jonazan and of course Godma and Jeremy. As expected, I had drove to KLIA myself with mama and my brother. I've passed by KLIA plenty of times last month to send off the JPA folks and each time, I'll return back from the airport. Only this time, I'll never return to PJ after driving to the Terminal. It's gonna be my last drive for the year and I hope those driving skills don't grow rusty when I return next year. I reached the airport at about 8pm, thanks to the rush hour jam at LDP..lol.It's nice to see Justin and the committee 30 minutes later together with Jonazan and King. I had one last great dinner with some of them on the 16th in Jan Vy's house and I find it a fitting end to one of my last few dinners in Malaysia with them.

I checked in my luggage at about 9pm and thankfully, the weight of all the stuff just touched nicely at 30.7kg. That means I need not ditch any books or stuff from my bag..haha. The check-in time was actually at 10.35pm, so I need not go inside that early as I had expected. Justin and the committee needed to go back early for their planning retreat, so my last moments in Malaysia was spent with King, Jonazan, my brother and mama. With the blink of an eye, it was time to say goodbye. I walked past the doors and checkpoints which I had seen the JPAs doing while I was standing in the viewing gallery previously. As I sat in the train connecting to the boarding halls, I can only imagine what went through the minds of each of them. For me, it was a dawning realisation that I'll miss many of them in Malaysia where communication is just a phonecall away if we wanted to have a gathering. When I reached the boarding hall, it was 10.55pm, so I sped up my walking just in case the plane door closes early. I'll be taking the Royal Dutch airlines (KLM) so the first destination would be Amsterdam Schipol airport before transferring over to a smaller plane to fly to Leeds.

The sight of the plane leaving KLIA towards Europe made me bid one final adieu to my homeland silently, but it's merely temporary. In the plane, the Dutch girls and boys shuffle up and down the alleyways of the plane to serve food and drinks. There's a small screen TV on board so I amused myself with some movies like A-Team and Karate Kid, which I did not catch in cinemas previously. The first hour of the flight was spent enjoying whisky while watching a movie since it's free on the plane. I spent hours drifting in and out of sleep because the seats were rather cramped and the air was stuffy. My lips and mouth were dry and bitter just after 3 hrs of sleep. But fortunately, I got it moisturised with the occassional plain water and orange juice. I did keep some little tracking on the route of the plane flight and it makes me go "Wow, if I were to paradrop out of the plane, I'll be in this place!" or just "I'm actually flying above Mother Russia!". The route taken was a diagonal cut past India, through Afghanistan, Russia (Moscow/Minsk), just below the Scandivian bunch of Sweden and Finland, Northern Germany and then finally at Amsterdam.

When the plane landed at Amsterdam, I was quite excited because I had stepped foot onto Europe for the first time. A small step for mankind, a big step for Stan. So this means that The Netherlands had the honour of being the first European country that I stepped foot on. There were lots of things to discover around the transit area, particularly Dutchy in nature. I went to check out the Dutch McDonalds, there were Dutch jerseys on sale, Tulips and even those wooden Dutch shoes. I changed my British pounds into some small amount of Euros to get myself a Dutch souvenir shirt..haha. There's also a small art museum in the transit area itself. An observation of the Dutch in the airport made me realised that quite a number of them are not Caucasian in nature. Quite a number of the Dutch are actually mixed ethnically with Indonesian or Pacific looks (van Bronckhorst/Patrick Kluivert) and I've met the Jamaican looking ones like Edgar Davids. I finished circling around the place for 2hrs and I still have 1hr+ left which was rather boring since the wi-fi there needs to be paid. Finally, the time to board the smaller plane came and this plane ride had more interesting views outside since the previous 12 hr ride was shrouded in darkness. In fact, I would say that my night time darkness was extended by 7hrs on my flight day. I had the opportunity to see Amsterdam on a bird's eye view before the plane ascended above the cloud to cross the English channel. When it was time to land, the plane descended gradually upon reaching the British mainland and I could see all those manors and cottages sprawling over the green fields. Apparently I find that Dutch had better looking and neater farms than the English..lol.

The Leeds Bradford Airport is a small one, and it reminds me of the Johor Senai Airport. Immigration was quite a queue. The officer checking asked a few questions but nothing complicated in nature other than tweaking my ears to catch the English/Yorkshire accent. The airport apparently had a few CIA/MI6-looking police officers stationed after the checkpoint which checks passengers even after they had passed the immigration officer. I collected my luggage and with everything cleared out, headed to the international students booth located near the airport entrance. We got a short briefing before heading out to catch a taxi. The moment I stepped out of the airport, a cold gush of wind blew past me and it was refreshing at first, something like Genting. At as time passes by, it got spammed constantly and it became an irritation even under the shining sun, which doesn't seem to warm up at any time. Waiting for a taxi was a learning experience too after observing several things. Apparently, there are Brit Man Utd fans who are not shy to parade it around in Leeds. I've seen plenty of them strolling out of the airport while I was waiting for the taxis.

The taxi service in UK goes all out to help the passenger. At first they called a standard car cab and when the driver saw my 2 classmates and I had 30kg worth of luggage each, he said that he can't take us but offered to ask the counter girl to change my transport provider to another driver. I was kind of worried that they would ask us to take 2 taxis instead of one, because one taxi already cost 20 pounds per car. Since we had 3, it was divided cheaply among us. Interestingly, the taxi company actually called another bigger vehicle for us at no extra costs. So, the way they work things in the UK, is that the company submits itself to the needs of the customer and making sure that the customer gets the service, no matter what nature/characteristic the customer is. This is reflected even in the airport workers helping the elderly or the disabled to carry luggages all the way into the public transport. Lol, you'll never see this happening in Southeast Asia where an extra mile to work means extra cash! And the other thing is that I noticed that a majority of the taxi drivers in the UK are Indians.

The first few sights that I saw as the taxi zips out of the airport was farmland with cattle in it and some cottages. As we ventured into the city center, we begin to see restaurants and other shops. The roads are narrow here and it is designed to make pedestrian walking easy. There are plenty of designer shops (LV, Prada etc) but all of them are housed in typical English styled shophouses. Even if there are complexes, they are only a few storeys at most. There doesn't seem to be gigantic complexes that exist in Leeds, so there's no way I'm going to find a replica of Mid-Valley or 1 Utama there..lol. Anyways, I reached Sentinel Towers in time and checking in was not a hassle at all. Two accomodation tour guides gave me the essential briefing on what to do. I'm thoroughly inmpressed when I saw my room because it has the better end of the deal with a double bed! I find it quite spacious and it's carperted at the same time. One of the best things for that room is that I have my own toilet to myself. I found an interesting welcome package on my table with tidbits and snacks in them too..haha. Oh well, that's gonna be my home for at least a year. There's so much to discover and explore in this new place, it's like a New World discovery. I'll update further on my experience later as I discover more things around the university and the city centre! :)