5-star Berba

Delighted 5-goal hero Berba celebrates with his teammates

Prior to this game, Berbatov was running into a bit of a trouble. He has not been scoring ever since his hat-trick against the Scousers in September. It looked at first that the Scouser hat-trick was a sign of greater things to come. But instead of building up on that and cashing on the bad press that Rooney is having, he allowed the scoring feat to be continued by Hernandez instead. His failure to contribute to the goal tally has increased the amount of frustration in the United circle. But nobody, and I reckon not even Fergie, would have anticipated the Blackburn massacre which was led by the Bulgarian. Fergie had such low opinions on Berba that he did not even feature on the bench for the Wigan game.

Within just a minute or so after kick-off, Berbatov slotted in the first goal to put United in the lead. The early lead was certainly welcoming but United had to pay attention to ensure that it doesn't go slipping away like the past. The second goal came from a Rooney assist as Korean hero Park Ji Sung finishes a fine run-in into the box. Barely 3 minutes later, Chimbonda did some slack back passing and Berba pounced it and swiftly delivered it into the back of the net. That was a shocking self-destructing move and there was no way Blackburn is gonna come alive out of that. Just a minute after the 2nd half started, Berbatov completes the hat-trick rout. It was already impressive at that time, to announce his return to goalscoring from a hat-trick to a hat-trick but United were not done yet as the blitz continues. 1 minute later, Anderson produced a slicing long range pass to a dashing Nani who smashes in for the 5th goal of the match. By now, Blackburn felt that they are going to have a long long way to go in the match with 40 over minutes still to play for. At the 61st minute, some chaotic movements in the box saw Berba pouncing on a rebound from Park's feet and put in his 4th goal, which is quite a hard feat to achieve already. Berba was not satisfied with just that as he wrote himself in the history books in the 69th minute by slotting in the 5th goal at the tightest angle, making him only the 4th player to score 5 goals in the history of the Premier League. That is one crazy performance from the Bulgarian and it does looked as if all the goals that he was supposed to score were clogged up and it was suddenly released in a diarrhea fit. Suddenly, Dimitar Berbatov became the leading top scorer of the Premier League. He has to start distributing his goals around in the future instead of letting it clog like constipation..lol. Blackburn had a consolation in the last bits of the game because Johny Evans was going to sleep while defending. In any case, the Old Trafford crowd did have a super match to remember by, just like 7-1 smashing of Roma a few years back.

Man Utd's massive win was the best way to announce their charge to the top of the league table as Chelsea faltered yet again in Newcastle with a 1-1 draw. Things are looking great for Fergie and the team as Liverpool got destroyed too at White Hart Lane with a last minute winning goal from Spurs and the noisy neighbours could only manage a draw. Just need to tighten up at Blackpool this coming weekend so that the team enters into the match against Wenger's boys in the highest morale possible and I'll be looking forward to be there to witness the match live =D

Paramore LIVE!

I've been looking forward to this for a long time especially so after I've missed seeing them in Malaysia. I was already out of the peninsula when Paramore came to KL in October. I did notice their UK tour dates and that one of them fell on Manchester but again, I was looking for people to join me for it. After much effort in advertising around, I managed to find two people to join up and they're Serena (my law classmate) and Nick (CG and churchmate). Since it fell on a Friday, I had all day to prepare myself. My 16 GB SD card which I ordered from Amazon arrived just in time and I had Henna to thank for lending me her camera to film some videos from the concert. At around 4.45pm, I met up with Serena and Nick at the railway station to take the 5.08pm train and I'm impressed that the train actually left the station on the dot at 5.08pm.

A quick survey when we reached the Manchester MEN Arena was that there seems to be a higher proportion of high school kids than older people in the crowd for Paramore. For the Linkin Park concert, there were lots of older men and people with piercings and tattoos but geeezz, it's so weird that only "kids" turn up for Paramore concert in the UK. In Malaysia and most probably the US, Paramore is a big hit even among the University students. I guess part of it has gotta be attributed to the content of the lyrics..lol. And I saw lots of parents accompanying their kids to watch Paramore too. I, for one, can't imagine any Malaysian parents going to any rock concert with their kids...hahaha.

When we entered the arena, one of the opening acts was already playing. F.U.N. was halfway through some of their songs while we were finding our seats. I really enjoyed their cover for Queen's Radio Gaga. I find Paramore's opening acts to be much better compared to the one in Linkin Park although I don't fancy any of B.o.B's song until "Airplanes" came on. Hayley made a brief appearance on the set with B.o.B. for the "Airplanes" song before heading back to the stage during the interval. After a good 20 minutes meeting, Paramore kicks off the show with "Ignorance". After playing a couple of hard rocking songs, they switched to an acoustic set with the sofa, playing "Brand New Eyes", "Misguided Ghosts" and "When It Rains". As expected, Paramore did lots of fan interaction and this is something which I liked about them. They took time to get the crowd involved instead of many other established bands where it's just play and go.

Paramore left their best songs, and also my favourites too towards the end. "Pressure" got stretched to about 8 minutes plus because Hayley took the time to introduce the different band members one by one. The best thing was seeing Jeremy Davis doing his bass flip in "Pressure" with my own eyes and it looks amazing from the top at where I'm sitting. Unfortunately though, the battery for Henna's camera started to die by the time I reach "Looking Up", another big favourite of mind and I had to cut it short before the last climatic part. Arghh..low memory space was the bane for the previous concerts and I solved it by using a 16 GB card and now, the camera battery life can't outlast the amount of free memory space. The next best thing then was to revert to my own Nikon camera and record the last bits of the concert. It certainly does not have audio pick-up or video quality as good as Henna's camera, but it's still better than having nothing. Hayley and co. did something like a false "ending" when they said that "The Only Exception" would be their last song. It's kinda obvious that they would come out for an encore again because the two biggest songs "Brick by Boring Brick" and "Misery Business" were not played at all. It's a big crime if they don't play it at the concert, something like Muse not playing Supermassive Blackhole or Green Day ommitting Wake Me Up when September Ends. Paramore ended the whole night with a bang with some lucky fans at the standing area being invited to do a dance with the whole band on stage. Taylor York literally gave up his guitar to someone else to play while he ran around like a monkey on rabies on stage..lol. Btw, Hayley got an England jersey with the no.7 on it from the crowd..haha. At the end of it all, it was a great satisfaction that I had in attending yet another awesome rock night out. It's opportunities to go to nights like this that I'll remember for years to come :)

Anberlin LIVE!

I got introduced to Anberlin thanks to the exposure to Alvin Ting's music video collection way back in March last year. Anberlin is not exactly mainstream stuff but the Florida rockers are well-known in America and they are one of the names that stood out when I browsed through the list of bands who are coming to perform in Leeds. I had been searching for company to follow me to the concert in Leeds and once I heard that Kington is going for it, I booked my tickets straight away. So since it's a Tuesday, my lectures end only at 6pm. I whisk off quickly the moment it ends and met up with Kington to head off to pick up his friend from the train station. The venue of the concert is at the Rock club (The Cockpit) and apparently they have a history of lots of other bands coming to play there before including the Ting Tings, Franz Ferdinand, Panic in the Disco and The Killers.

While I was at the club, I was fairly surprised when a local Brit student tapped me on my shoulder and said that he saw me playing drums in the Christian Union the night before. Before I continue, I'll illustrate a little on what happened in CU meeting on the Monday before the concert. As you've known, the CU does not have their own drum equipments but it so happened that the Monday is actually a combined meeting with 4 other CUs from Hull, Huddersfield, Bradford and Leeds Met. I was asked to play drums for the meeting which I happily obliged and that was my maiden service in England, playing in a room filled with 100 over other Brit students. The drum set was on the verge of falling apart though and the high-hat was missing, so I had to substitute it with the stand instead (which reminded me of The Offspring). Well, I thank God for giving me that rare opportunity to serve through drums because I'm pretty sure that I won't be getting the chance to do that again anytime soon. Of course, it is even more of a major surprise that I made some form of impression on a few of the local Brit students there. Anyways, the dude who recognised me studies in Bradford.

Back to the concert - There are gonna be two opening acts, one by Xcerts and the other one by Hawthorne Heights. Anberlin is not scheduled to play until around 9pm. We went off to have dinner first before coming back just in time to see a few songs Hawthorne Heights. They are quite good and I enjoyed them better than So does it offend you at the Linkin Park opening. Their style is a mixed screamo hybrid of Yellowcard and Breaking Benjamin. There's around a 20-30 minutes interlude after the end of their performance for Anberlin to set up their equipment. During that period, the three of us took the opportunity to move forward to the frontlines of the stage while the crowd disperse to go to toilet or get drinks. So at around 9.15pm, Anberlin kicked off with "We Owe This to Ourselves" and followed by one of their trademark songs of all time - "Paperthin Hymn". And they did end off with a bang, leaving their two best songs "Impossible" and "The Feel Good Drag" to the last. With a standing position and being so near the action plus a mosh pit for the last song is one the best experience for a rock concert that one could have with all the sweat and the heat..haha.

As with many concerts, band members may throw some of the stuff that they use on stage to the standing crowd in front. Kington and his friend managed to get the picks. Then one of the crew kinda threw the sticks into the crowd and I managed to grab one of it. However, it was also caught by another fellow standing in front of me and we were engaged in a brief tug before he released his grip, to my delight! Woohoo! If only the drummer had customised his sticks to the band or his name, that would be a real deal since the picks themselves were actually customised. Anyways, as a drummer, I'm happy with my "loot" which I can proudly display for many years to come! Overall, it was a fantastic rock night experience to remember!

Transform and Encounter

Another hectic round of seminars has just passed and I found myself having air to breathe again. Time to update what I've been doing so far since last week. Well last Thursday was a particularly enlightening time at St. George's CG time. We didn't have the regular sessions at the church center and we have instead the Transform tour on the various community works that the church is engaging in ranging from assylum seekers, alcoholics, drug addicts to homeless people. I picked the Crypt tour, which is basically the church's community center which is located just beside the main church building. Although it's an ancient structure that dated back to the the late 19th century, it has since been renovated as recent as last year to a top-class facility which really feels like a 5-star hotel..lol. If I'm homeless and staying for the night, I would definitely think twice about leaving!

The second half of the tour involves a choice of going either to a rehab hostel or a wet hostel. I opted to go to the wet hostel since its an interesting concept I've not heard of. The wet hostel basically takes in alcoholics like the rehab hostel but the difference is that the residents in the wet hostel are still allowed to drink alcohol. Most of them do not have the intention as of yet to quit. On the surface, it may look quite queer and difficult to justify too the existence of a wet hostel but in looking deeper, one would find a different side of the story. I would say this is really something which could be said to be what it takes to really love and care for the lost without expecting anything in return. Most of these alcoholics are unwanted in the streets and to leave them there would be dangerous for their lives since if anything untoward happened to them, nobody would know. Although they may continue with their habits indoors, the very least is that they are safe and have a place to stay. One of the most remarkable stories came from one of the staff workers overseeing the compound and apparently he's a former resident of the hostel 4 years ago and he literally transformed himself over time in his own timing and accord for the better and he was thankful in the sense that if the wet hostel had not taken him in, he would have died on the streets. And look how much God had transformed the situation into, as of now, he's looking to hep the others who are in the same situation as him. It's nice to experience another side of Leeds, the part of it that's filled with poverty and brokeness - the side that most of the public do not take notice. Mhmmm..I'm thinking I may spend some time volunteering to help out at some of these places after all these studying stuffs are done.

During the weekend, it was another getaway retreat but this time its with the Leeds Chinese Christian Church (LCCC) for their encounter weekend. It's a good time to get together with fellow Malaysians and other fellow Chinese Christians peeps. Although the sermon sessions are much more intensive compared to the ones at CU weekend away, I still had the opportunity to squeeze in a little time to have fellowship with the LCCC members, many of whom I had known from the Friday CG sessions. The venue of the retreat is not that far actually, about 10 minutes from the Leeds City Center at Lineham farm. It's one of those countryside areas that is near to the airport which I had spotted when I first landed. At the end of the retreat, it was nice to have one of the church members dropping me off right at the doorstep of my accomodation. Since I'm back early, I had the time to rest up before going for the evening service. Well, that basically sums up my previous week!

Nottingham Games

This happened last weekend on Saturday where it is an annual event in which Malaysian students from all over UK descend upon Nottingham University for a day of sport competition with each other. Within one morning, Nottingham is transformed into a mini Malaysian village with Malaysians walking everywhere and it suddenly feels like home out of a sudden. For our contingent in Leeds, we were supposed to meet up at Parkinson's steps at 4.30am in the morning for the bus since we need to reach there by 8am. The buses are double deckers and the seats are not easy to sleep on for those of us that are trying to catch up on lost sleep. All was well until when we are about 5 minutes away from the Nottingham University campus when the bus suddenly had a water leak and this caused the engine to overheat. Apparently, something like this happened last year too and it looks set to repeat itself this time. So, we ended up waiting at the bus until the 2nd bus following behind drops off its passengers and return back for us.

Well, I'm representing Leeds for Scrabble(if that even counts as a sport..lol) and with all the delays and "Malaysian time", we only get started at about an hour later from the scheduled time. The first round was actually a qualifying one and we had 4 players competing for two spots. We had one Cambridge student at our table but I managed to make it to the next round. The next round proved to be super fatal as I was matched up against quite a pro player from UCL. By the 4th round, he chalked up 53 points with just 2 tiles. It still looks possible for a comeback until sometime later when he dealt a death blow by putting a Bingo (all 7 tiles) with the word "antired" and "amen" at the triple word stretch - 86 points at one go. GG. At that point, it's just sooo miserable to continue because he's like literally torturing me with the gap and to make matters worse, I kept getting vowels for all my tiles. Anyways, I found out later that even the Cambridge student got defeated by the UCL guy. That's how pro that fella is.

With my exit at second round, I have all the free time that I want to explore around and watch the other games in progress. There was also a food fair for all the Malaysian food that we crave for like Nasi Lemak and Rendang. It's quite overpriced though if compared to Malaysia and I assume the sellers earn tremendous profits from these. After getting bored looking at the gamess, I went to the city center with a couple of my coursemates to see what they have down there. Apparently the taxis in Nottingham look different from those in Leeds and they have electric trams passing through the city just like San Francisco! We had dinner at Yates before heading back to the university campus to wait for a bus to return us back to Leeds. Overall, it's a long day but I got to meet up with some of the other Inti people that are distributed in the other parts of the UK.

Linkin Park LIVE!

Well, what can I say. This wasn't supposed to be on my schedule or even cross my path but it did. Anberlin was supposed to be my first major rock band concert but out of the blues, Linkin Park came and dislodged the queue to be the first! Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't pay for such a steep price to attend the concert but I'm very thankful indeed to get a complimentary ticket. I'm pretty excited for it after arrangements were made on Wednesday and so on yesterday, right after all the resting, I met up with Tim at the bus-stop opposite my place to get a bus to the railway station. It'll be my first time taking a train from the station and to travel in between cities using the rail. The Manchester Evening News Arena, more well-known as the M.E.N. arena is located just beside the Manchester Victoria station and it's covenient to walk over from the station. This place is the venue for plenty of major acts as compared to Leeds and it's just 1.5 hrs away, giving me another reason on why I chose to study in Leeds - rock concerts are just a train stop away.

We met up with Tim's cousin to get the tickets and although we were there on time at 7.30pm, the place was not fully filled up. Looks like lots of people have the habit of being late for concerts. We had an opening act by some band called does it offend you yeah and they're more of an electro-techno kind of band. I find them irritating though. Linkin Park did not appear until about 8.15pm or so. The first recognisable song that was played was "New Divide" and this was followed by "Faint". Other favourites were "Numb", "Breaking the Habit", "One Step Closer", "In the End", "Shadow of the Day" and "What I've Done". Chester Bennington has the fantastic stretch of screamo as usual and Mike Shinoda looks a little withdrawn though with his hoodie and playing behind the keyboards. Since I have a limited space of 2GB of SD, I could only record a few songs and extracts of others. Ughhh..I think I should invest in a 8GB SD for concert purposes. The concert ended at about 10pm and yea, I'm definitely delighted to have gone for such a major concert. This trip is also useful in the sense that I could scout and survey the area for Paramore on 19th November who are coming to the same venue to perform. I would come for sure for Hayley and co but the question is finding people to accompany me there.

It's so convenient to hop back onto a train back to Leeds although we had to squeeze through and stand half-way the journey. British rail speed feels alot like KTM but they are punctual in their arrivals. Haha, at the train, I could hear that everyone was just chatting about Chester. By the time we arrived back at Leeds, it's around 12am and it's pretty decent in the sense that in the future, I do not neccessarily need to stay overnight in Manchester for any event. That was once-in-a-liftetime opportunity to witness Linkin Park live in action and I'll be looking forward for Paramore!

Shropshire

Three seminars this week and having completed them, I managed to squeeze in a little time to blog about my recent fantastic weekend away with the Leeds University Christian Union at Shropshire! The name Shropshire does sound weird indeed but it's actually a small English town near the border of Wales. Since I've already anticipated a heavy seminar week coming right after the weekend, I started to work on my Evidence seminar on Friday where I have no class. In the evening, I headed to Parkinson Steps to board the bus. Winter's approaching and this means by 5.30pm or so, it's already turning dark.

Well, this shall be the first time where I'm heading out of my base of operation in Leeds for a camping trip outside. With the bus hitting onto the M62 route, I had an opportunity to see what British highways are all about and I realised that there isn't much difference. Certain parts of the road are dark since it is not economical to place streetlights and there are exits just like the PLUS North-South highway back home. The foliages that they plant in between exits of course are different since back in Malaysia they are oil palm and rubber. Since we were caught at the massive traffic jam at the city center, it took us longer than expected to reach Quinta Hall, the place where we will be staying.

I would say that the weekend away is a good opportunity to mix and get to know more of the local Brit students since on a daily basis, interactions are very very limited as they are more reserved. Interactions happens best during free time or during activities and even a simple act of knowing one another's name can go a long way in breaking the ice and starting conversations. Since Shropshire is a suburban area, we had the opportunity to have a long walk on Saturday to explore the countryside and cross the Welsh border. I had the opportunity to see the Chirk Aqueducts, ancient structures which were built in 1801 and standing tall at the aqueduct, I can see the vast green fields with sheep grazing on it (although it reminded me of lamb chop..lol). There's also the Chirk Tunnel which stretches 421m and it was kinda fun navigating through total darkness although we could see both ends of the tunnel. We also played the wide game in the evening after sermon which is basically something like capture the flag. Everyone will be given a glowing wrist band according to their team colour and basically, one team gains points by stealing the flag or making "kills" by snatching another opponent's wrist band. So, we get funny instances where isolated individuals will get overwhelmed like a zombie mob kill. Since the field and the surrounding areas are muddy from the rain, it would a rough and dirty affair with some of them wrestling in the mud during the encounters. It was pitch dark too and it's very hard to identify whether it is friend or enemy that is approaching. Overall, I had great fun playing it and right after the game, it was bonfire time with sparklers and marshmallows!

At first I thought that we were going to be sleeping on the floor since we were asked to bring sleeping bags but in the end, I found out that we have comfortable beds to bunk in at night and yea, sleeping arrangements were great. The first night was spent on a mini-party while the second after-activity night was playing cards. Since the Brits don't play Tai Di, I'm wondering what else they could be playing and it seems that they have an interesting game called Spoons - a modification of Snap. I enjoyed the food very much for lunch and dinner and it was really a surprise to me that they had rice on Saturday night! Sunday pork roast was awesome too with all the potatoes and corn. Sunday was apparently the end of the daylight saving time and so, the clock had to be reverted one nour earlier. I was kinda confused with that initially, but I understood after reading about it in the net. I was just wondering then that if an international student had no idea about it, he/she will definitely get pwned for lessons on Monday. Even when I was on the way back to Leeds, it turned dark already by 4.30pm already, an indication that winter is approaching. I managed to squeeze time to go for service that Sunday night and when I got back to my room, I was too exhausted to do anything and proceeded to sleep right away..haha. Anyways, here's a couple of new things that I discovered about the Brits during the weekend:

1. The Brits do laugh at each other's accent and have difficulty in understanding some of their own countrymen's accent. They may all speak English but their accents are diverse from all over the country. The Scouser(Liverpool) accents still tickles the other Brits from other parts and so does the strong Leeds Yorkshire accent.

2. The Brits eat rice with knife and fork! This is the most amusing thing I observed on the dinner table. Seriously, they eat rice with the fork. The knife is only used to cut the small cocktail sausages while the fork is used to scoop the rice. o.0

3. The Brits find it interesting that my real name in my ID card is actually Stanley and it is not an adopted name like most China students have. They though that the only name I have would be some exotic sounding Chinese name and they're also suprised to hear that I speak English as my 1st language.

4. While evangelism back in Malaysia is focussed on turning people away from their hand-crafted idols, it is a different battle over here in Britain where atheism is a big thing. It does seem that a lot of Brits no longer believe in the existence of a God despite having a rich Christian tradition.

Alrighty, that's all for now. I'll be looking forward to the Malaysian Nottingham games happening soon this weekend and perhaps have a chance to meet my other Malaysian brethrens from the other parts of the country!