coriander in pho

So. I know I was mightily late for this, but to be fair, I was on sabbatical: 3-month of paid leave (sabbatical) from April to June. A perk given to Automatticians when they have worked with the company for 5 years. Trust me, I avoided opening wordpress.com during those three months, because that’s what you get when you are working for a product that you also using in personal life, hahah. I really don’t want to be reminded of work.

(I did peek several times and pleasantly surprised seeing the editor UX/UI changes. Good job, team!)

So! The trip. Back in March, my sister-in-law married in London, and due to time and fee constraints, only Ari visited. That said, we (Ari, me, and the kids) visited them on the next month: April.

One thing for sure: Never trust the weather in the UK — This is something that my fellow UKmatticians have warned me about, but I never thought about it seriously because:

1. “Come on, it’s April. It should be Spring, right?”
2. Ari told me that the weather! Was! Great! In! March! It! Was! Sunshine! All! Around!

And these, friends, are two reasons why you don’t trust Q1 of the year. You know what? Don’t trust the seasons. Climate change is real.

Manchester is located in the northern part of the island, and gosh dangit, it feels like the wind is cackling as it breezes through my ears. I never thought I could curse the weather even more than the ones in Denver (IT WAS OCTOBER. IN DENVER. LIKE. WHY.). To remind you all here, I hissed at the hotel’s automatic door as it opened, bringing inside a gust of Denver’s icy cold wind into the lobby, when a USmattician who happened to be a local Colorado walked up and said hi to me while wearing baggy knee-length shorts.

Despite the wind, I freaking love Manchester. The city is vibrant, thanks to dozens of universities and colleges there, with international students and people bringing their cultures and colors. Thanks to that, the city is not lost in having some of the best traditional food, lovingly brought by people coming to the UK. Go to The Piccadilly Street Food Market, and you can find one of the best palak paneer there. I really love seeing the red brick buildings (I also noticed the same thing in Denver) — and I love how it seems like it has become a “norm” in cold cities to have red brick buildings. The warm color of red gives such a beautiful contrast and warmth to the surroundings.

Another favorite part of Manchester is their city mascot: WORKER BEES! I love bees, and at first, I thought the bee was the mascot of our hotel because I kept seeing the bees around the hotel (we stayed in the Holiday Inn), but my confusion and curiosity grew as I saw the bees even far from the hotel. A quick Google search informed me that Manchester has set bees as their mascot since 1842.

During our time in Manchester, we visited Old Trafford and took a stadium tour. Even as a non-Manchester United fan (cue my husband gasping in horror here), I found the tour really fun and educational.

After Old Trafford, we also visited Manchester’s Science & Industry Museum. Manchester was one of the forerunners of the Industrial Revolution, and I love how the city simultaneously felt the pride and acknowledged the effect of the Industrial Revolution on places outside the UK and colonialization. In fact, I think Manchester deeply felt that — the richness and advancements they had and enjoyed were at the cost of other nations and tribes, and they took great care and pride in acknowledging it and put the credits where it’s due.

Like, how many museums do you think would be so openly talk about slavery, how it affected their country’s wealth, and at the same time, causing pain to others?

Next to that sign was this exhibit, and on the paper displayed there, you can see the list of cotton plantation slaves to sell at that time (1855.) Yes, you read it right. It’s as if the museum wanted everyone to take a hard look at themselves, technological advancement, and its cost to humanity and nations across the globe. I remember a couple of girls standing next to me in front of this exhibit, and as they read the list, they gasped and exclaimed, “It’s as if these people were cattle! This is so wrong!”

We need more museums like Science Museums group ✨

We also made an impromptu visit to Manchester Art Gallery. Like the Science & Industry Museum, the Manchester Art Gallery has been vocal in voicing out displaced people’s fight to live, people of color, women, and minorities’ rights.

It was only in February that those now hailed as “key workers” were labelled as “low skilled” or “unskilled” by Home Secretary Priti Patel – something that Manchester designer Craig Oldham has highlighted in a new poster that celebrates their contribution to society, not just during the Covid-19 crisis but in future, too. — Designer Craig Oldham creates a typographic poster to show solidarity with ‘key workers’

The gallery also holds some classic works, and one of my favorites is this:

On the exhibit information card:

Here we see the English and Papal Cardinals threatening her with the disgrace of a public trial if she did not consent to a divorce. Katherine was a staunch Catholic and would not agree. In order for Henry to get his way and remarry, the Protestant Church of England was established, causing centuries of religious turbulence.

I just love Katherine’s face here, like, ugh, you go girl.

Speaking about Manchester, who could forget Alan Turing Memorial? I found it really poignant to have the statue of Alan Turing sitting in the middle of a quiet small park in the Gay Village. You would love it, Alan Turing, sir.

After Manchester, we headed to London by train. It was a 2-hour train ride, and I was in awe seeing the landscapes changed from cities to villages to green pastures, then back to cities.

Remember what I said about unpredictable weather? Yes, Manchester was pretty moody — in a sense that yes, we did have some sunny days, but expect rain and drizzles at 4 PM.

London? London was that emotional friend with a pint of ice cream, Netflix, and a rant how their ex is horrible.

It was a glorious day when we visited the Big Ben and the Thames.

Then, as we walked, Rey quipped, “mom, is that… Ice?”

“Huh?”

Plink.

Plonk.

Plonk.

It was a hail. I know what hail is, I even heard stories on how some cities in Indonesia got hail despite our location as a tropical country. But dang it, a hail? In April? In London?

We ran to shelter ourselves from the hail, and as if it never happened, in just mere minutes, the hail stopped and the sun came back out.

As Ari crossed “Old Trafford” from his bucket list, I, too, crossed an item from my list.

Sherlock Holmes Museum.

I won’t say much on this. Let’s just say it was 29 years of dream. Sobbing and crying in the corner.

(Yes, I set the image to be wide width, with border AND shadow just because. If I could add confetti and sparkles that pop off and glitter whenever you scroll this image, I would.)

We also visited Science Museum in London, and just like its counterpart in Manchester, Science Museum in London showcase the importance of diversity, inclusivity, and knowing where we came from and how we achieve things up to this point.

The museum also had a special exhibition dedicated to the development of game industry: Power Up! In it, we can see how game consoles developed, even playing it!

Since the museum is located in the Exhibition Road where there are multiple galleries and museums located, we also took the chance to visit Natural History Museum. You can see a statue of Darwin on the top of the staircase, welcoming the visitors.

I also visited Victoria & Albert (V&A) Gallery nearby. I said “I” because the kids and Ari went back to Science Museum since Wira wanted to buy some stuff from the museum store. Museum store is our Achilles’ heel.

In the gallery, I was so surprised to see an old friend of mine.

I’m familiar with the bust of Helen of Troy above. When I was a child, I had this encyclopedia book on legends and myths, and there was this picture of Helen of Troy, this exact same bust, with a caption: “The face that launched a thousand ships”. I remember I looked at the picture and thought she looked so pretty, especially with the nose, and wondered how she felt during the Trojan War.

When I saw her on the gallery, I abruptly went, “hey girl!” It feels weird, to feel so familiar yet so strange of something.

Some of my favorites too:

On the left, “Truth and Falsehood”.

Here, Truth tears out the double tongue of Falsehood and pushes aside the mask concealing his grotesque features. His serpent-like tails are exposed beneath the drapery.

On the right, “Valour and Cowardice”. Both of them are a set, made by Alfred Stevens (1817-75), for the Duke of Wellington. As the info card mentioned, “… Stevens devoted much of his career to this monument but sadly did not live to see it installed.”

Another one here might be familiar to fans of Greek mythology.

“The Rape of Proserpina” (a.k.a. Persephone). On the info card, the names mentioned are Pluto and Proserpina since the reference is Roman mythology — while in the Greek mythology, it’s Hades and Persephone.

I also found an exhibit that, for me, super interesting as it shows how an artist is affected by their current culture and background (and there was no Google at that time! It was hard to find out what happened on the other side of the world, let alone hundred of years ago!)

This is a part, yes, a part, because the actual exhibit/trapestry is HUGE. The exhibit is titled “Tapestry from a set of showing the Trojan War”. Now, with our current knowledge of Greece and Trojan at that time, we might able to say, “oh wow, the people in the tapestry looked so European!” That said, it’s also interesting to note that, as the info card mentioned:

The popularity of the story is largely because rulers and noblemen saw the characters and their deeds as models for their own behaviour. The sumptuous 15th-century costumes worn by the figures in the tapestry emphasise this sense of identification.

(Although honestly, had three ladies came to me and asked, “Who’s the fairest?” I would nope-ed the hell out of it ASAP.)

Other than museums, we also took a stroll in parks. We checked the weather app closely during our trip to ensure we visited the parks when the weather was great, hahah. Just like how I got the honor of seeing the season change when I was in Sapporo in autumn, I, too, had the honor of seeing spring flowers blooming to welcome the Spring.

We also took a stroll in the Covent Garden and the Theatre District.

We closed the trip to another visit to Hyde Park (yes, we visited this park multiple times. This park is so pretty!)

Thank you, Manchester and London. Also, please follow Dean Franklin on Instagram (deanfranklinmusic), he sang Coldplay’s “Yellow” here.