Return trip to UK

Have just returned from my trip to the UK. Gosh, it has been a hectic 10 days.

I stayed in Cambridge the first night as my sister had come down to join me. She only stayed for a night to mainly catch up with me, and to collect the things that I had carried over for her from Malaysia. The next morning, I travelled to Cardiff for my Diploma exam the following day. It is a distance-learning diploma which I have been undertaking for the past 2 years. After completing all the assignments and coursework, it made sense to complete the Diploma by doing the exam. I had to stay in Cardiff for 2 nights as I might be called for a pass/fail viva, thus had to stay, just in case. Luckily, I was not called for the viva, which means I have passed the exam and now have an extra credential to my name.

From Cardiff, I returned to Cambridge to meet up with friends and then for the May Bank Holiday weekend, I travelled to Cotswold with the same 2 friends I went to Budapest with. Looks like that wasn't our last trip together but this one probably is. I am leaving to the US, one is leaving for Australia and one is remaining in the UK. Not forgetting another friend who is now back in Malaysia. Who knows when we will ever get the chance to travel together again....

At Cotswold, we visited the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway where they were celebrating Hogwarts weekend, and we got to sit on the Hogwarts Castle locomotive.

It reminded me how much I love trains. Especially steam trains. In my next trip to the UK, I will definitely go on the Jacobite Steam Train, up north in Scotland.

Soon, it was time to go home. Funnily, although I am now leaving UK for good, I wasn't sad yet. Or maybe because reality hadn't set in yet. Or maybe because as I haven't officially resigned from my UK job offer in London, which starts in August, I can always come back to the UK if things don't work out in the US. I have about 1 1/2 months in the US before August for me to see how I do there. Although I do pray that I won't have to come back to the UK. Not that I don't like the UK, but more that I have sold everything and have nothing left, thus if I come back to the UK, I will have to start from scratch!

And to complete my experience in the UK with a bang, I managed to used up all my Enrich points in exchange for a First-Class Ticket Heathrow-Kuala Lumpur. I first arrived in the UK on 27 September 2001 on an Economy Class ticket as a student and finally left the UK on 26 May 2009 on a First Clsss ticket as a medical doctor. I sure have moved up in the world...=)