I did the race Cold Half the third time as a solo this year on 4 February. I completed the race in 5:14:26 in 2020 and 4:53:47 in 2021. However, I skipped the 2023 edition because pandemic-related travel restrictions were still in place in Hong Kong, and I had emigrated to the UK already. My intention was to go back to Hong Kong and race every year. Training Unfortunately, I didn’t have much training before this race. I now have…
It’s the third new year since I moved to the UK, and in the past year I settled my life in London and recovered from some of my past failure in my life. Achievements in the year Career As my business didn’t take off, I returned to the job market, and started my role as a software engineer at Jnction in March. It is a rail consultancy with a number of innovative projects using rail data which I worked on…
I visited the Netherlands between 2023-12-14 and 2023-12-17, which was my first overseas trip from the UK without flying. I personally don’t like flying on airlines compared to other forms of public transport, mainly because it is a hassle to go to airports which are usually far away from the city centre, the strict airline security, the limited ability to carry luggage, and the need to book early as there is a strict limit on how many people a plane…
It has been a month since I swam across the English Channel from England to France. It was a magical feeling when I walked onto the shore at Le Petit Blanc Nez after entering the sea at Shakespeare Beach 18 hours and 21 minutes before, but the journey was incredibly tough, and it was nowhere near perfection. I made many irrecoverable mistakes during my preparation resulting in 2 years of time and opportunity cost lost, which would be valued at…
If you are a Travelcard (or Freedom Pass) holder, you are allowed to use a combination of it and an extension ticket to make a through journey across the zonal boundary, and the train is not required to call at the boundary station. This article shows a demonstration to buy an extension ticket, called boundary fare, on London Underground machines. Some other ticket machines sell them, including those operated by c2c, London Overground and Scheidt & Bachmann (S&B) ticket machines…
This article focuses solely on my journey to my second attempt of the English Channel. I will publish an article later for an overview of my whole journey from the point I started thinking about doing this in 2018. As mentioned before, after failing my Channel swim attempt in 2021, I had no intention to retry the swim in the near future. However, I made my second attempt on 2023-09-07 and got a provisional success in 18 hours, 21 minutes….
Contacting customer service about the use of a valid ticket combination results the combination becoming invalid.
Today I raced again in a regional open water championships under Swim England rules, my second year to do so. Now I have joined South London Swimming Club so I raced for a London club in the London regional competition for a national qualifying place. The top 3 in each age group in the national distance (5 km for 19+) are qualified into the nationals. I wanted to do this race because I would like to see if I could…
It has been a long time since my last post about my life in the UK. I have finally got a job which goes well in London since March this year, which is a rail consulting company, and I am a full-stack developer in the company. Unfortunately it is located in Central London (the closest stations are Chancery Lane and Farringdon), understandable because the company wants people to commute by rail as Farringdon is the central point of the rail…
The open water race season has started and my first event is BLDSA Champion of Champions. This event is 3 races, 5 miles, 3 miles and 1 mile, held successively on the same day, with the ranking determined by the total time. The race course was a triangular loop of 800 m length, i.e. 10 laps, 6 laps and 2 laps for the 3 races respectively. 5 miles The water temperature was reported as 15.3°C by the organiser. It was…