Frederick and I woke up extremely late. We were supposed start our journey to Birmingham at 8am. If it were not for Charles, we would be sleeping till late afternoon.
We took our sweet time, cooking, eating and even went online to check mails. We got out from the house at 11am and fetched one of Charles’s friends on the way.
The journey to Birmingham from Sheffield takes about 1 1/2 hour. I slept throughout the journey. zzzz
The British International Motor show is held in NEC Arena, Birmingham. That place reminds me of Hollywood studios with its huge geometrical buildings and small entrances. As usual, everything is expensive. The parking cost 8 quid, the entrance fee cost 15 quid and even the ice cream cost £1.30.
The Motor show consists of 5 huge halls and each hall has its own attraction. The new James Bond car, produced by Jaguar was on display on a frozen platform. There were 3 cars on display but only 2 of them has the James Bond equipment (ie missiles and machine guns) strapped on them.
I’m not a fan of cars. I can’t name any sport cars or whatever spare parts a car have. Attending the motor show was just an excuse not to stay home on a Saturday evening. I was bored throughout the whole day but kept myself entertained by taking pictures. Frederick, Charles and his friend were car fanatics. To them, the motor show was like heaven. They didn’t mind lining up to sit on the driver seat of the cars. And when they take photos of cars, they made sure that they took at least 2 or 3 picture of the same car.
The car fanatics complained that the Motor Show isn’t good enough. They were expecting heaps of concept cars but all they had was just couple of concept car and a lot of commercial cars. The motor shows seemed more like a market rather than an event of promoting the expression of idea and technology.
I was almost bored to death during the end of the evening until something happened. While Charles was looking at the Porsche cars, one of the lady staff asked whether did Charles like the car or not and soon a conversation started. I overheard their conversation and I decided to join in. She was telling us her experience in Malaysia. She got a friend who works for Malaysian Airlines and somehow she ended up ending seafood in Fatty Crab. She did all the talking, all we did was just laugh and comment a little bit. Suddenly, she invited us into the Porsche VIP lounge. Obviously, without hesitating, we gave us guest passes and the next thing we’re in the Porsche VIP lounge. Brilliant!
The VIP lounge consists of 4 Porsche on display and a small café upstairs. We couldn’t believe our fate that we are sitting on a Porsche alone and playing with its function. I immediately fell in love with Porsche. Its outer design is amazingly sleek and its interior, my god, its as if there’s a computer installed into car! It has a GPRS navigation function, SMS function, excellent sound system and so on.
We took pictures like mad despite that we’re they only young people around. The others seemed like middle-aged professionals.
The café was next. We rested in the café for an hour, drinking free juices and eating free food.
We finally left at 7pm as soon as the closing announcement was given. It seems that we spent 7 hours in the Motor Show today. I guess it was well worth our money.
– 11:00PMDownload Melbourne Shuffle ripped and coded by Wei Chen.
– 4:00AM