Royal Armouries Museum

The first weekend since school started...as usual...being the typical Singaporean...we scout for some FREE places of interest to visit :P

The first two places we tried to visit (Mill Hill Chapel and City Art Gallery) were close when we reached there. In fact, City Art Gallery is under renovation or something till May....arghhhh....

Since we were already in the city, we decided to head for the Royal Armouries Museum, a place which we always wanted to go but don't feel like going...haha...cos from the map, it seems that it is located at some "ulu" place which is damn inaccessible.

Luckily it was quite a nice place...manage to catch some performaces which is only shown during the weekends...and we reached there at a perfect timing that allowed us to catch two free performances...hahaha The red doted line shows the direct distance from St. Marks to the Royal Armouries Museum...we practically walk across the whole city...haha :) A sword fight performace...they actually explain how to use these weapons in different ways, and did an actual "sparring" session with sword...pretty cool!!! A funny mask i saw...damn wierd la...haha This piece of chinese armour looks like one being wore by Jay Chou in the movie: "Curse of the golden flower"...quite impressive... I like the expression of this guy here...just find it interesting...haha...Anyway, IIRC...this piece of work is about a tribal guy pointing his spear at an America soldier and the soldier pointing back with his rifle bayonet...something like that... This is a five storey chamber that display all sort of weapons and armours on the walls. A really cool view from the bottom :)

After the museum, I continued my walking session (trying to orientate myself to the city so can travel without the map next time, and maybe try to find some short cuts around...) while Jai rushed back for his "video conference" session with his mom.

I found out a sad fact that nothing in Leeds is cheaper than back Singapore. Even products from TopShop, supposed to be products of U.K., are slightly more expensive here...sigh...think I should get just try to get use to it and stop having the mindset of multiplying the cost of whatever items I see by 3 (thats the currency conversion rate from SGD to pounds)...that will make life easier :)

Anyway, I came across this wonderful shop in Merrion Centre, called the "Shared Earth". The first part of the shop is about recycling stuff which is normal...but the rest of the shop contain items from different part of the world...got some handicrafts from Kenya and Indonesia...some Buddha figurings from China...some Christian figurings...some Sun god figurings from Egypt...some tribal items from dunno which tribes...and some musical instruments from India etc...quite a lot of stuff to explore...and the shop was playing some traditional tribal music...cool right!!! Think I stayed there for about half an hour without buying anything...haha...was touching everything I can get my hands on...and reading through all the inspirational post cards...think I will visit this shop again :)

Oh ya...that reminds me i still need to hunt for some gift for my friends back in Sg...sigh...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Treat the earth well... It was not given to us by our parents... It was loaned to us by our children... -- Native India proverb