Beautiful Bath

Went to Bath Spa over the weekend. It is a beautiful beautiful place. As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words. So I shall let my pictures do the talking. Alas, there could have been more, had my camera batt been more cooperative. Must be the cold! Moral of the story: lug the charger around!

1st Day: 25 Feb

On the National Express Coach to Bath



The River Avon





The Royal Crescent at Sunset


This is my favouritest place in Bath. I need a helicopter to do the view justice.

Caramel Apples!!
I SO wanted to eat it. Yes yes, it's just an apple coated with caramel and chocolate bits. But looks sell! But I didn't la. Haha, the rational mind was still stronger.



2nd Day: 26 Feb

The Roman Baths





My Sally Lunn Bun with Lemon Curd


This is not any old bun ok! It's a must-eat at Bath. Comes with many toppings.

The Abbey



Along Sydney Place (where houses are a million pounds each o.O)


Jane Austen stayed in one of the houses around this area too when she visited Bath in her time.

Really idyllic way to spend a weekend! *bliss*

Snow and Duck

It snowed this morning!

Well, it wasn't the first time I've seen snow, but it was the first time I'm seeing it in Central London. I was totally exhilarated when I realised that it was not rain. Laughter just bubbled out of my entire being. I felt like a little brook burbling (ok I made this word up) and gargling with excitement. I felt like a small kid. So I called pw and woke her up just to tell her that it was snowing. I HAD to tell someone!

The snow didn't come down in delicate flakes or pretty white fluffs; it was more like little pieces of ice. If you don't look carefully, it may even pass as rain, just that the pieces land and hang around on your coat for a while before melting. Though cold enough to snow, it was not cold enough for it to accumulate, so the ground wasn't white but wet. Anyhow, the snow came and went, so it was alternating snow and rain. Luckily there wasn't wind, so it was not nearly as cold.

The wetness is really testing the limits of my shoes. Let's hope they hold out and remain water proof!


6 of us went for Four Seasons duck today for dinner. It was really quite good. Very different from the roast duck that I usually get (and do not like). The meat was soft and the skin rather crispy and nicely flavoured. I ate it up, fat and all as that was what I was paying for. But I think I'll walk it off in a few days. And anyway I'm beginning to exercise, so no problemo ;P The gravy that was served together went excellently with it.

Besides duck, we had 罗汉斋，calamari and a chicken dish. All the dishes were good. pw was thoroughly contented after dinner! heh.

The Delicate Art

Londoners should take a month out and travel to NUS to observe bus 95 and 96 just before and just after lecture hours. Or any of the internal shuttle buses. It is my sincere belief that they have yet to master the fine art of packing themselves into an already packed bus. It doesn't help that that bus driver just will not allow anyone to stand near the front door, because of regulations.

Basically there is a lot of frustration and angst all around! Tsk tsk. Maybe they just resent being pressed up against one another. But then, there is also THAT much space in the bus right. So.


On another note, the London cyclists are doing very well. They all follow several rules that protect themselves and other road users:

1) Wearing reflective strips/vests
2) Wearing helmets
3) Having blinking lights on the bicycle; some even have them on their bag straps
4) Giving hand signals
5) Following traffic rules

The reflective strips/vests and blinking lights really do a lot to improve the cyclists' visibility to motorists. That, I think, is very important, since London traffic is such a maze!

Dinner, milk-thieves and Hailstones

Dinner on Wednesday was a cheery affair. Peiwen unleashed her herbs and cooked 六味汤 for us. It took her 2 hours at the stove babying 9 drumsticks in 2 pots. I contributed by slicing up a mountain of baby cabbage (and in the process generated many red shreds of IKEA cutting board) and cooking them till soft. Or as soft as I could get them.

Dinner is served!




After the main courses, we ate grapes (that Lian Dee bought) and oranges (that pw wanted to get rid of) and chocolates (that I saved! the minibites! XD). When we were done, Lian Dee said, "这样才像样!" Heh, yes, she's getting sick of lousy Brit hall food.


Someone's been drinking my milk! Not just once, mind you. At least twice. The first time I thought I was mistaken. But this morning I made a note of the milk level and then checked it during dinner. It was definitely lower. The bottle certainly didn't drink it!

Having a thief around is quite terrible. People are also losing crockery. It's really bizarre. Hallo, if you borrow stuff, at least have to decency to ask and then wash and return right. Don't pile them up in your room and take a new one everytime. How rude.


On a totally unrelated note, I experienced HAILSTONES today! How exciting is that I ask you! One moment it was pattering raindrops and the next it was ice chips! pw realised it first when she felt pain when the stones hit her. Then she grabbed my hand and we ran for the bus stop. The hailstones were small, thankfully, less than 1 cm across. It stopped stoning (haha) after a while and reverted to rain. That put an end to our plans to go Chinatown. So we caught RV1 home. THEN, the sun came out and it became brilliantly bright. Talk about unpredictable weather!

Anyway it was a good decision to come home. Because although the sun came out, the wind was still up and it was rather cold. pw's down with flu already, she doesn't need more aggravation.

On the way back, we saw Starbucks giving out free coffee at London Bridge. This man strapped a tank of coffee to his back and there was a hose connected to the tank to pipe coffee out. It was rather interesting to watch!


On yet another unrelated note, the queue outside the Dungeon is really nuts. Is it that good? Maybe it's just the holidays.

Weekend News

I got ambushed coming out of the shower! It was only supposed to be a surprise Knock-Knock-Open-Room-Door-"Wah, Happy Bday!" thing, but my good timing in having a shower resulted in greater amusement all around.


And this was after "Prize Presentation"! Heh. There was M&S Irish Cream Liquer Mini Rolls, a bootiful pendant from Camden Market, a CD of fq's singing and piano-playing and a card signed by my floormates. Very very happy!


Yummy!

So presently my food stash stands as such:






Ok I digress. Next up HC Night!



We were scared of the cold lar. Hence the jeans. Haha. And i was in sport shoes. Practical considerations you see. Hurhur.






It was basically like a mini prom thing. There was also the pre-requisite videos, singing of hc songs and mass dance. Not bad la, quite a pleasant evening. That there was a lot of chocolate along the way helped *grin*

Happy Birthday to Me!

I'm 22 today!

Yet another significant day of my life spent away from home. It's been a quiet day so far. Woke up early to write my essay, had a nice talk with Peter over lunch, ironed my dress and lazed around. I wanted to go disturb pw but her floor door is very unfortunately (fortunately from her pov, i guess, heh) locked at this point in time.

I went down to look into my mailbox instead and found the security guard ranting at a drunk homeless man sleeping at the lobby. He must have followed a student in. But why the guard only noticed him now I don't know.

Greeting count: 5!

Eating out!

Went for dinner at 海外天 at Chinatown yesterday. Was supposed to eat dim sum but we got there too late. But the food was still good!

Before:



After:



And then we went for ice-cream! The pictures speak for themselves.

Before:



And after!



I was a very happy girl. Haha.
But this sort of thing won't happen that often ok. Really.

Power Failure

Yet another hitch in my life at Wolfson. Heh.

It occurred just when we were starting to cook dinner. The rice was on the stove, merrily cooking away while the pile of cut cauliflower and carrots was just ready for the pot. I don't know whether it was me, but it went dark just when I was turning on the stove for the veggie.

Everyone was stunned for a sec, then Jemane went to open the door to check if the corridor had light. So we found out only the kitchen was affected. We were all worried about the freezer and I was particularly traumatised by the half-cooked rice. All of us went out to the corridor after Jemane discovered there was a fuse box near the ceilling (and he could reach it without climbing onto anything!). But then none of the switches were down and turning the one dial didn't help. We gave up.

pw and I shifted all our stuff down to her kitchen. Then I went to inform the security guard. Then we resumed cooking, eating and cleaning on the 11th floor.

Fortunately, when we went back to deposit our cookware, the electricity was back.

So our meat won't rot and our hot cross buns are still happily frozen. *grin*

Portobello Market

Portobello Market





pw, ld, doreen (ld's friend), bb and I went to Portobello Market yesterday. bb was our tour guide again. Before embarking on our tour, we were taken to this Chinese restaurant to have lunch. I explicitly asked for hot food. Hot food is very important now that it is winter! For 5.50 I had an enormous plate of rice and 3 types of topping. It was very filling and I was very happy.

Then we started walking. Portobello is essentially a second hand antique market. So there were many stalls selling vintage jewellery, intricate magnifying glasses with ivory handles, old cameras, watches, sextants (instruments for navigation on the seas) and loads of other interesting things. There is also a food section where prices for fresh fruits, vegetables and pastry drop like crazy at 5pm when they close shop. bb and doreen got big juicy seedless grapes for half the price you get at Sainsbury (the local supermart).

Some stuff along the way:







I debated long and hard over some interesting socks/stockings but I didn't get them in the end.

At the Highland Shop (sells Scottish things), pw, bb and I went mad and did weird things. See if you can see what is wrong! Haha.







And here's bb at a stupefied moment. I can blackmail him with this 10 years down the road. Haha.

Warning: Verbal Diarrhoea ahead

Ok, it's time for the mega post of the week! Now haven't all of you been waiting with bated breath! *shameless laugh*

Reunion Dinner

This was a grand affair, at least cooking and preparation-wise, though the results certainly didn't look it. Heh. pw and I went up to the Oriental City at Colindale (all the way in zone 4!) to get the ingredients first before meeting fq after her frisbee session. Then off we trooped to her place to unleash our culinary prowess.

We planned to cook 4 dishes to feed 5 people. So pw set to work preparing the soup and her favourite meatballs. I was supposed to cook the Chinese Cabbage and the seafood japalang because I have no speciality to speak of. After 2 over hours of labour in the sub-zero kitchen (ok, maybe not sub-zero, but it was pretty cold), this was the result:



And here's a close up of the dishes I made:





I think our dishes went down quite well with all those present. They certainly ate everything up and didn't die of food poisoning later. Heh. The greatest irony of the night was that tofu that pw used in the soup came from good ol' Singapore! Ach. It was manufactured in Senoko South (so near my place!) and then flown all the way to the UK. Tsk tsk luxury tofu.

Here's a lousy photo of the group at reunion dinner. I haven't got the good ones from pw yet. From left to right: Chris (fq's M'sian-HK-Australian frisbee friend), bb (my crazy friend), fq (whom I have seen more in this one month than the past 3 years), moi and pw on the floor.



After dinner, we talked, ate junk food, washed up, watched weird flash videos, took turns to bathe, talked stuff, (Chris went to sleep), called home, (fq went to bed), played cards and then all went to sleep.

New Year

The next day, pw and I went to Trafalgar Square and Chinatown to join the rest of the UK in CNY celebrations. There was a large performance a la River Hongbao and there was to be a parade and fireworks. We only caught the performance though, because we were in the wrong place at the wrong time.









After a while I started sneaking photos of couples and kids in my vicinty and paying less attention to the stage. Haha, I like the couple picture cos it looks very sweet. As in this little spot of sweetness in the sea of people.





After the performance we went off for a spot of food in Burger King and then we got back. So that's that, my first CNY overseas.

The Rest of the Week

For the rest of the week, nothing very much happened. We went to school and did normal things.

On Thursday, we waddled to Chinatown to get my phonecard. We went to look around in a supermarket and I succumbed to temptation to buy Wang Wang Xue Bing. Haha I will savour it slowly. On the way home though, we spied a shop selling Chinese pastry and yet again we succumbed. This one was pretty quick. We saw the shop, looked at the prices, went in and decided. pw got walnut cookie and sesame ball; I got Old Wife's Biscuit. Haha, I like.

On Friday, pw, ld and I went to fq's church for her youth fellowship CNY gathering. It was potluck and there was loads of good food. fq made black glutinious rice dessert. And there was cha shao and there was this nice oven-cooked chicken and five-spice salmon (this combi is rather interesting, yes) and a very nice mixed veggie dish. And there was a ton of very nice chocolates! Marks and Spencer Mini Chocolate Rolls... yum.. And orange cordial and sprite is a very good combi. Very.

Choto Matte Kudasai

have been trying to do a bit of reading this few nights, so i won't be blogging till sunday. then i'll do a mega-post about reunion dinner, cny and the rest of it.

hang on!