Easter city outing

Spent a number of days touring around Edinburgh. :) But my holidays started with getting to know this bunch of fellas.

Ruben and Shreekanth ( got that right!) preparing dinner. Been having good dal curry and rice and card games with them since term holidays.

Oi, listen!! Pose replicated with permission from Suren. haha. I will intro more later.

Anyway, after Skye trip i went to this Edinburgh International Science Festival. One of its venue is the Royal Botanical Garden!! Gosh, the place is so beautiful, drawfing the campus' . But because its still early spring, all the plants are dead, but the animals are out no doubt.

Woodpigeon and squirrel gathering. This type of pigeon have something sort of a white collar, quite smart looking.

Pretty.

The huge greenhoue.

Nice..

Bonzai plants!

Family outing, so cute eh. Children playing with the bubble soap.

Aiks, i am in the wrong group, haha. Its a tour about, well sort of a talk about the Signs of Spring. Global warming is affecting the animal's hibernation and so on.

Hunting for tadpoles.

Some sceneries.

Aww..

Here it is again.

Sylvester from Looney tunes.

Now i am heading back towards the high street.

A beautiful river within the city. The ducks are floating there on top.

The famous Edinburgh University Medical Centre.

A warm and lovely day.

The event also host many talks about the sciences. I went for 3 of them, the first is a presentation about Dongtan, Eco-City by the ARUP company. Half the lecture theater was reserved, and i entered about 10 minutes early, sitting on the reserved part of the theatre, wondering who will be sitting there. 5 minutes later, about 100 men and women in full formal clothings walked in and took their seats.i was thinking, gosh i am certainly at the wrong venue!
In the morning i was hanging with a bunch of kindergarden kids, and then in the evening I am attending the same talk with Execs from the ARUP company! What a day eh.

Anyway, the talk was about the first ever eco-city, Dongtan, Shanghai which is still in its planning stage. The CEO of the company was presenting the slides. He showed one slide where he was signing a contract with President Hu and with President Tony Blair at his rear overlooking the signing. WOW. I was amazed at the amount of stuff he managed to cram into his presentation. From how they won the tender, whats their initial plan for the city, objectives, and company objectives, how they integrate the chinese culture into the city, transportation, water, religion, government,waste management, employment, CARBON NEUTRAL, the focal point of the project, green buildings, optimal population density, hydrogen fuel cars, education, etc etc.
(How i managed to remember all these was because i can somehow relate his slides to my computer games, haha, not bad eh. Heard of Simcity and Ceasar 3?)

The theater, with feedback surveys on the chair.

The lighting and ventilation system, mom might be interested.

The second talk, right after Dongtan was about Bio-energy. This time the talk was much more relaxed, being presented by university lecturers. It was more like challenging the views of the public concerning bio-energy, whether it is worthwhile using bio-fuel or not. And so it begins. 3 main reasons why the western world pushes for it. 1. Climate changes. 2 Fuel security. Now that was interesting, because i never thought that can actually be a reason for biofuel. To wean the country off dependency on oil coming from the Middle East. 3. Rural development.

Well, it was quite shallow in a sense, and some grumbled about wanting their money back. But still, i learnt something, well, a lot of things but just cant recall now, so, it was well worth it again.

: )

The second and last outing to the science festival. Spent the whole day at the Royal Museum of Scotland, looking at some exhibits and was given a 1 - 1 specialty tour round the museum.

A very unique looking clock tower. Not sure whats its significance is.

Some of the robotics exhibits.

Interior of the museum, Victorian design.

My museum tour guide. A retired doing some volunteering work for the museum by giving tours round the museum. Very intelligent and friendly guy. He said he admired me when i told him i am studying maths, lol............. I bet he was a lecturer.

After the tour i walked towards high street again, which is just 10 minutes away from the museum. This is the Old Town of Edinburgh.

Edinburgh Castle.

Royal Mile.

Entering New Town.

Behind the musuem.

Kids hangout area. Skateboarding and loud music.

Went back to museum after that for the last talk. Topic is what makes us unique?? Well, basically the answer is our imagination, and ability to tell stories according to the lecturer. To be honest, i can hardly get what he is saying! HE was a lecturer of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology.

Damn, thats deep.

It was a study of the relationship between the size of human brain and the relationships we have with others. It explains that the brain can only cope with at max 150 people which you personally can relate to, starting with 5 close friends, 15, 50, 150. Interesting

Another thing is about the degrees of intentionality. @_@
It says the human brain can at max cope with 5 linguistic relationships.

Like, Mary is a friend who got her book from this guy who intended to sell it to Tom who is going to rent it out for 5 pounds..............

Things like that, and that to be a good writer, like Shakespeare, you have to be able to write a complicated story based on at max 5 main characters, because thats the brain limit. To be able to do that, he said that person must be able to cope with higher degrees of intentionality, which means he is a genius!

One last thing is about how having activities together creates a sort of bonding. And he compares the grooming of monkeys to the social events of humans. Now, this is interesting, he managed to link this to how dancing and singing creates a sort of uplifting in the spirit, and his example was the church! hahaha. Nice. The Anglican church, which stands still is given a low brain activity, while the charismatic, with the fast singing and waving of hands, he describes as "WOW, they are really have a good time!"

HAHA. AWESOME.

It is coherent with what the Bible says, aint it? Worshiping and serving together uplifts the human spirit like nothing else. And it is scientifically proven now.

By the way, he is awarded doctorate of the year and awarded a million pounds for all these research. Better believe this!

Heading back to the bus stop. A perfect shot of the Old Town when the sun is setting.

Sunset view of New Town.

Third day, went out with the gang to do some groceries and lunch at the city. But at first me and Ruben, from the earlier post went to the last and final event of the science festival. A small exhibition on Physics. Walked along Royal Mile and discovered lots of stuff.

Me and Ruben ended up here. Nice...............

The child was so scared. hahaha. "Monster from Ultraman!!"

Flowers are blooming~~~

So nice.

Poeple are coming out to enjoy the beautiful weekend.

Later that day we went out for movie, One Missed Call. Me and Suren were basically laughing throughout the whole movie. Hahaha. Crazy man.

Bollywood stars again.

Again.

and again.

On the way to the cinema. So cool~~~~~~

Here he goes again. Backspin, and.

and lands.

perfectly.

After movie camwhore.

The last outing. Went to Livingston, the real contryside of Scotland. They have a 'huge' shopping mall ( size of Jaya Jusco) according to the locals. Went there to buy some shorts and badminton rackets. Really enjoyed myself that day. Well, basically everyday, haha, but this was the last.