mandalar blog

Wales, which had 2.9 million population in 2001 census, is one of the countries in the United Kingdom. Cardiff is its capital city. When I got there, I felt I was in a foreign country. I think the Welsh people look slightly different from English with more rounded face. The Welsh language is what I can’t predict what it means. But we can still use English. Basically Wales is a really nice place to me.

Welsh flag

An example of Welsh

This morning, I was doing a minute research about clay as an attempt to find out the history of the Blue Pool encouraged me to do so.

Pine trees

You can see the Blue Pool photos I took yesterday.

Well, I went to Hardy’s home before going to Blue Pool. To be honest, I did not know Thomas Hardy until a friend of mine from Bath mentioned about his name and novels last month.

Thomas Hardy(2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.

This is what he was described in wikipedia.

According to the Thomas Hardy society founded in 1968, he was born at Higher Bockhampton near Dorchester. During his lifetime he composed nearly a thousand published poems and wrote fourteen publised novels including ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’ and ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’. He died in Dorchester on 11 January 1928. Much of Thomas Hardy’s work is based on Wessex, the South and West of England.

Unfortunately, when I got to Hardy’s cottage, where he was born and raised, now under the management of the National Trust, it was found out that the small museum was not open for the public. For some reason, opening days are from Monday to Thursdays and Sunday only, what I leaned later. Why not on Saturday? Still misery. Anyway, I had a chance to walk around nice and quiet surrounding woodland area. I saw some families with their dogs enjoying the place like me.

Hardy’s cottage

cute tiny wild fruits, close-up view (ရႊမ္းမိအတြက္လက္ေဆာင္)

Here are some more photos of Thomas Hardy’s birthplace.

After visiting above two places, I headed to Poole harbour to take boat photos. As it has been 6 PM, all deep sea boat services had already finished.

Full set of boat photos here

Reference:

http://www.bluepooltearooms.co.uk/index.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy

http://www.hardysociety.org/

Walking under the sun with temperature well over 35C was the hell. When I was teens, my parents managed me to walk to school on foot for many reasons. I did not have a choice. It was a pain. It may be a funny thing. But it is true that one of the reasons I moved to England was that I really hated tropical sunshine. I have been traumatised by sun in Burma, not by military government.

In England, I do not need to walk in that way. Really nice. I am still not keen to walk. I may run. I may swim. I may ride a bike. But I did not go out for walking at all.

This evening is different. I did take 30 minute walk around my house, exploring surrounding area. Here are some photos.

Wild rose

Roadside flower

Name?

White flower ( I dont know its name)

A cottage

a farm

a stream passing under the mill

phone booth “Coin not accepted”

a pub

church entrance

Only church in this village. It is constructed from flint and stone and has a Norman chancel arch with a 16th century nave.

an old organ for Sunday service

Graveyard with recent funeral service. It looks congested. Maybe not enough fund. Personally I would like to lie in a decent space of land.

An old graveyard

church lane

Since last spring, I had decided not to go abroad this summer after I was fed up with flight schedules, hotel deals and unexpected expenses that I experienced in my last trip. During my this short break, I just stayed at home. I did enjoyed lots of barbecue and wines. It was really nice until yesterday.

When I got up at 8, I was shocked to find out that the whole downstairs was flooded. The whole kitchen, the whole living room. The carpets and rugs had been underwater. I had to try to calm down myself first. The leak was from the connection point at washing machine. After securing it, I had to start very tiring carpet replacement. I removed all wet carpets. And I rushed to nearby Allied carpet. Fortunately, the one I like was on 30% off although it was still not so cheap for me as £7.45 per square meter. I finished carpeting this morning, gaining a new experience, but leaving me with some ache and pain as I had to moved all furnitures.

My house has already been equipped with smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector. After this incident, I was thinking to get anti-flood alarm if available at market

new carpet in kitchen

kitchen

Living room carpet.

view from rear garden while sunbathing.

a pigeon watching at me

under the blue sky I was doing sunbathing (I miss you darling)

Wild fruits

Next door neighbours trying to make friendship with me

Summer time means more people going out. Beaches, holiday camps and caravan sites have been busy places. At the same time, there is a noise pollution with rescue helicopters flying over my area.

For me, I don’t have too much chance to enjoy sunshine due to my work and education commitments. My organizer shows that most weekends have got full of appointments, on-call duties and “to do tasks”. But last weekend, I was able to manage to go to nearby beach, where I spend one hour time. Here are some photos sharing.

Jurassic coast

A sea gull


I deliberately avoided people in my photos .

Dogs also enjoyed summer

ရႊန္းမိ ေမးဘူးလို႕ လမ္းေဘးကပန္းပံုတင္လိုက္တယ္။ Englandက ဒီအခ်ိန္ဆိုေနရာတိုင္း မွာပန္းေတြေတြ႕ႏိုင္တယ္။ ေပါက္ တို႕ ေမျမိဳ႕လိုေပါ့

feeding myself in that evening

fed a bird as well

This is one of my favourite songs when I was young. Of course my elder cousins were playing it and I also enjoyed this fantastic song as an early teenager. My dream was the girl from the song. But never happened in my life.

Nowadays, holiday means going somewhere. My domestic lady spent 2 weeks in Spain. My colleague came back from Barbados last week after taking a bargain deal from lastminute.com . Sarah is a nurse from work. She was visiting Sidney according to her email. It can be said that going holiday is part of a human right. People do it regardless of their social and financial status. People with medical condition also enjoy their holiday.

A week ago, I saw a 78 year old man at emergency medical department who came in with acute breathlessness. He was recently diagnosed as lung cancer. He was from Lincoln, northern England. In east, once diagnosed as cancer, they are not willing to go far away from their home. They may stay inside the house. They may be praying for their health. They may be waiting for their time quietly. But in west, people try to live in their normal life style as much as possible.

Yesterday, a noisy air ambulance landed at hospital heliport, bringing a 69 year old man from the cruise ship which just arrived from Mediterranean with over 200 holiday makers. He had a heart surgery previously. His doctor advised him that air travel was not suitable for him. He did not stop and he kept going by cruise ship . Now he is in hospital with a massive collection of fluid around the heart. Of course, there is little or nothing relationship with travelling and his condition. But he might die if his condition deteriorates in the middle of an ocean where it is out of reach of air lift.

Coast guard

A German tourist is also in hospital. We had to use body language before interpreter arrived. The language barrier might lead to something went wrong. Anyway, he is fine now.

The most annoying holiday maker was from Lancastershire. He is 72. He has a long term air way problem. He drove his car along with his partner . He came down to see his daughter in Poole. He had a shortness of breath while staying at hotel and he needed hospital admission . He brought his medications with pill box. Unfortunately, there was no name on it. We did not know what tablet/capsule is what medication. He did not know either. We tried to contact his GP. But only answer phone as it was out of hour. The issue was sorted only after 12 hours when his GP was available in next morning.

Some people appear to consider their health condition briefly when they prepared for their journey. This might impose a risk. Personally, I would advise those with medical conditions should get a copy of their medical summary including medication list from their GP before going holiday.

ALS means Advanced Life Support. Yesterday, I took ALS course. It is an intensive course under the management of UK Resus council. We have to retake every 4-5 years. I took a few years ago. So it was the time to take it again. It is a mandatory course for the professionals working in Acute and emergency medicine. Fee was £390. There are many centres across the UK. I chose Bristol as I had never been there before. I booked at Premiere Inn for £68 a night. After 2 day extensive practice and the test at the end of the course, I got exhausted physically and mentally. I thought it was more tiring business than PLAB and MRCP exams.

My mentor congratulated as I passed the test. There are many causalities. I mean some candidates did not pass. They have to redo after some time.

For me, only pain was parking fee. I left my car in NCP (Natinal car parking), costing me £30 for 24 hours. Premier Inn provides parking place (£8 for 24 hours), but no space on my arrival. Anyway, I am happy. I have done a task successfully. My course fee was funded by my deanery. Well, I still need to claim it.

the Premier Inn where I stayed over night. Fortunately my room was at the top floor (17). So good view.

inside the room

A view from my room. That is Bristol

Another look

University Hospitals, Bristol . A view from Education centre.

Some candidates

During the last few days, I have been trying to organize my things. Still unfinished yet. Here are some photos of my new place in village. Hopefully, I can publish countryside photos after a couple of weeks. I have to attend a course in Bristol this Wednesday and Thursday. After that, my nights are from Friday to Sunday. Next week Tuesday is a long day again.

My cottage entrance

I start using my kitchen

Dining table

My fav roast duck

It’s a mess. Now I’ve already kept tidy

My temporary sleeping place while waiting for my bed.

I still need to buy a proper TV stand

Someone’s gift

Stair case to upstairs

Zoom in view from upstairs

Updated 02/07/2009 21:50 hours

My bed room အေလာင္းစင္နဲ႕မတူဘူးလား?

Last weekend, I moved to a village which is 5 miles away from my work. It is a very quiet place with organic farms around. House moving is a stressful business. I had to sort out a lot of things from removal of my belongings to address change. Royal mail redirect service cost me over £40 a year. The Internet is not available yet. I had to transfer my Virgin account that I left in Yorkshire last year. Since I moved in to Dorset, I have been using hospital Wifi network as I live in hospital accommodation.

Now I start enjoying England’s rural life. There is a tiny pub in 3 minutes walk. That is the smallest pub in England, according to a neighbour. I may have some time to go there next week.

The only issue today is that I had to get up earlier than my normal time for my travel. (My regular bed time was 2AM and my radio alarm went on at 8 when I lived in work place). Later I learnt that it was only 10 minute driving time from home to work, which is quite good.

By the way, the name of the village is Godmanstone!

Fireplace at my new place. I did try last night.

These are some London photos found in my computer. Just sharing my memory.

London underground

A London passenger

London police

London shoppers

A London bus

A London girl

London trishaw

London Geese

London cheap panties.

Update:

06 June 2009 07:00:00 BST

06 June 2009 07:07:00 BST

The old songs always remind me of my past.

It was in nearly 10 years ago. We were in London. We enjoyed this song while sitting down in the living room at one late evening. And, we talked about our plans. We discussed about our future. Fortnight later, She moved out to midland. I moved to East of England. We are still friends. We see once a year. But we do not talk on the phone.

Lyrics

Ooh…

Everybody’s got something they had to leave behind
One regret from yesterday that just seems to grow with time
There’s no use looking back or wondering (or wondering)
How it could be now or neither been (or neither been)
All this I know but still I can’t find ways to let you go

Chorus

I never had a dream come true
Till that day that I found you
Even though I pretend that I’ve moved on
You’ll always be my baby
I never found the words to say
You’re the one I think about each day
And I know no matter where love takes me to
A part of me will always be with you

Somewhere in my memory I lost all sense of time
Amd tomorrow can never be
‘Cause yesterday is all that fills my mind
There’s no use looking back or wondering
How it should be now or neither been (or neither been)
Oh this I know but still I can’t find ways to let you go

Chorus

You’ll always be the dream that fills my head
(Yes you will, say you will, you know you will, baby)
You’ll always be the one I know (I’ll never forget)
There’s no use looking back or wondering (or wondering)
Because love is a strange and funny thing
No matter how I try and try
I just can’t say goodbye
No no no no

Chorus

A part of me will always be with you…