Boats

Living by the River Thames can be interesting. You get to see all the commuter and tourist ferries, with the occassional Japanese tourists waving at you from afar. You also get to see the occasional sailboat and yacht.

This evening, I got home and came into the living room. Sui came back 5 minutes after and immediately rushed me to the window where we saw this strange sight!



Its not everyday that one sees a massive cruise liner sailing by his apartment. According to Sui, the HMS Belfast was towed past our place yesterday as well.

That would have been some sight! Now, I'm just waiting for a submarine to come round...

The Sun is Shining

Partly because I am feeling quite lazy, and also because I think this song is quite apt, I am simply going to post the verses of Bob Marley's "The Sun is Shining". Think it pretty much describes the weekend just passed!

sun is shining, the weather is sweet
make you want to move your dancing feet
to the rescue, here i am
want you to know, y'all, where i stand

when the morning gathers the rainbow
want you to know i'm a rainbow too
so, to the rescue here i am
want you to know just if you can
where i stand, know, know, know, know, know

Play this version by Finley Quaye while looking at the photos. Those of you whom I spent the weekend with will know what I mean. There is a wicked remix of Bob Marley's original playing on Capital FM at the moment, but I can't seem to locate the Youtube clip.



And the photos...

The Sun, Naps and BBQs

It was a long weekend this week, thanks to the May Day holiday. Having been relatively sedate over the past week, I thought I would make Saturday a bit of an exercise day. Nik and I took an early morning bike ride to Greenwich, but had to turn back as we got closer, as traffic had started to build up. After coming back, taking a long nap and bumming around the apartment, I ran out to the HM's place to pick her up for an hour's long run.

The exercise was all for a good cause, of course, as I felt no guilt at Oriental City that night, despite wolfing down my Mamak Mee Goreng, half of Jini's Asam Laksa, some of Niki's Beans and Minced Pork, as well as half of the HM's Tosai and Fish Curry!

As the sun was out, and everyone was in town we felt like we had no other alternative but to throw a BBQ! Having been craving a decent burger for about a month now, Jini and Yung's scotch beef burgers turned out to be a real treat! Check out the 1st photo - I never realised that I took my BBQs so seriously!










Of course, we were told midway through that we were, in fact, not allowed to hold BBQs on our private pier. To me, that was akin to building a racing track and telling Michael Schumacher that he couldn't drive on it! What is the point in having a fantastic pier overlooking the Thames and not be allowed to throw a BBQ in the sun??!! In any case, we at least had the defence of ignorance, and were able to have our first (and last) BBQ at our place.

Monday was spent walking to Covent Garden, where Nik and I met the HM and other friends for lunch at the Rock and Sole Plaice, which is supposed to be London's oldest Fish and Chips shop. It was pretty impressive - at least as impressive as deep fried fish can get! It's pretty clear that I really don't think too much of traditional British food.



We tried to catch the Banksy grafitti exhibition at Waterloo, but the queue to get into the tunnel was 1 and a half hours long! Obviously, everyone had ambitions of venting their artistic frustrations by engaging in a little spray painting.

And now it is 10pm on a Monday night! It is absolutely amazing how a long weekend can fly by like that. I still think that I havent slept enough even though I must have taken 6 hours worth of naps over the entire weekend! Sigh - back to the grind of work now...

Let it snow!

I was feeling good this weekend! I finally (let's hope I don't jinx it) recovered from being ill after 4 weeks, and I consequently did some exercise for the first time in 4 weeks!

After basketball on Saturday, Nik and I went to catch up with our old friends Chyi and Rachel, who is pregnant with her second kid! It was cool to catch up with Rach (who I have known since I was 10!) - we don't get to see her very often as parenting pretty takes up most of her days. We went for Greek food at good ol' Primrose Hill's Lemonia, where their famous mezes did not disappoint.

Rachel and I cracking up at some obscene pregnancy joke!


Nik and Chyi attempting to look dignified after eating all the taramasalata and calamari they could manage...


But more than anything else, it was the heavy snow on Sunday morning that really perked me up! I haven't seen such heavy snow since 06, where I was caught in the middle of a snow blizzard in Iceland. Check out how heavy it was:




Even my car was not spared!



So in such snowy circumstances, I insisted that we celebrate London being white and beautiful (for once) by going out for brunch. Hence, we picked Mel up and headed out to Oriental City where the Nasi Lemak and Black Pomfret was divine.

I hope it snows more this week. It would certainly make the week more tolerable!

Happy Easter!

It was Easter Weekend this weekend. This meant lots of Easter Eggs, but more importantly, it meant a 4 day weekend! In light of the circumstances, we felt like we had no choice but to hop on a plane somewhere and fly off into the night (quite literally)! As such, Nik, myself, the SSG and Chyi booked flights to Basel in Switzerland for the weekend.

But first things first - as our flight wasn't scheduled to leave until Friday night, this meant that we still had time for Easter lunch. Nik, Sui, Beth, the SSG and myself made a booking at Cantina Del Ponte, which is an Italian restaurant down by nearby Tower Bridge. What was absolutely incredible about the lunch was the fact that a 2 course meal was only 10 pounds! I personally found it amazing that a meal with an Oxtail Ravioli starter and a main course of Pan Fried Sea Bream could possibly cost a mere tenner in Central London! The restaurant was even kind enough to give us a candle to celebrate Sui's birthday!



Once lunch was done, it was time to make our way to the airport to catch our flight to Basel. London City Airport near Canary Wharf was fantastic - for one thing, it was only a 15 minute cab ride from our apartment. Plus, there were absolutely no queues at the check in counter. See how happy Chyi was!



Basel Airport was cool! It is apparently the only airport in the world where there are 2 exits leading to 2 different countries, namely Switzerland and France. Check it out!



We caught a really fast taxi (the cabbie was driving at about 120km/h on a small road!) to our hotel in central Basel, which we later discovered was smack in the middle of the Basle red-light district. Heh, check out the picture of the hotel and the corresponding shop round the corner:




Saturday morning was spent exploring the market square, where I had the best sausage that I have ever eaten. I suppose it helped that the stall we bought it from had a few awards hanging on the wall. Even one of the locals told us that the sausages from the stall were excellent!




After a brief walk, Jeff, who is now based in Basel, came to meet us. We crossed the Rhine over to the other side of Basel and then decided to head for a Swiss lunch. Unfortunately (and hilariously), while Jeff could tell us where the best Asian restaurants were, he was slightly ill-informed about the best places to get Swiss food!





We went to a small Swiss eatery where I ordered a portion of rosti, not realising that they would be serving me a Swiss mountain sized portion of the stuff. Don't get me wrong, I love rosti, but I do think that there is such a thing as too much potatoes at one sitting! At least we managed to order some food - it looked slightly uncertain at the beginning as we struggled to order through using over-the-top hand signals and broken German!

We had dinner at Movenpick, which held special memories for those of us who had lived in Singapore before. While I was incredibly tempted to order more rosti, I exercised discipline and ordered some fish stew instead. Nik and the SSG went for the Steak Tartare, while Chyi had a sausage and some rosti (again...).




The next day saw us head across the border to a quaint city called Colmar, which was located in the French region of Alsace. Check us out at the French side of the Basel train station and on the train:




Colmar itself was a charming medieval town, which was made even prettier by the light snowfall that went on throughout the day. Not only is the Alsace region famous for its wine, it apparently was also the region where Foie Gras originated from. Sounded like a perfect formula for us - good food and drink set against a pretty backdrop.








Colmar was essentially the last stop on our quick weekend getaway, as we immediately hopped onto a taxi to the airport once we got back to Basel. On this note, I leave you with pictures that I thought really captured the spirit of the weekend!





One last thing - the last picture above is of these amazing macaroons that we discovered in Basel. We got them from a Swiss chocolatier called Sprungli. Click here to find out more! Trust me - its worth getting some next time you are in Switzerland...

The Bear - An Endangered Species Needing Protection...

Couldn't resist posting this pic which I stumbled across (courtesy of the FT.com).

Bye Bye Bear

Following my post just 3 days ago on Friday, Bear Stearns has been sold for the princely sum of $2 per share! Yes, that is not a mistake - one of the US' largest investment banks and broker-dealers has been sold for $2 per share, which is someway off its $84 valuation last Wednesday. I'm pretty sure that alot of analysts in the City are wondering how a blue chip company can shave off so much value in the space of 4-5 days!

Want another more incredible fact? The price of $2 represents just 1.25% of its "pre-subprime" high of $159 in April last year! Take a look at this chart that I got a screen capture of (courtesy of Reuters):



I just feel sorry for Joe Lewis, the UK billionaire investor who amassed close to a 10% holding in Bear after its 2 hedge funds collapsed last year. I remember that some pockets of the City at the time believed that the firm was ripe for a takeover, especially since the Banking sector was going through a consolidation round. I remembered thinking to myself that it may have been worth buying some shares. The speculators were at least correct on 1 point - i.e. that Bear was taken over. What no one expected was the incredible cut-throat price of the deal!

Rumour has it that Joe Lewis divested his holdings on Friday while there was still some value left! I hope that this is true for his sake - otherwise he would have seen about a billion dollars wiped off the face value of his assets! Considering that his net worth is about $2.5 billion, such an amount would indeed represent a very hard sucker punch...

To commemorate this sad farewell to one of Wall Street's venerable institutions, I attach this Youtube clip: