Another Chilled Out Sunday...

Woke up early this morning to do my time with the CFA books, so I could have a guilt free afternoon out with Craig and Danielle. Its amazing what a bit of sunshine can do to brighten one's mood out. All the pubs at Primrose Hill were packed to the brim today, with even the 1st floor of the Lansdowne packed to the brim with people. Efforts to find a table at the Princess of Wales also proved futile as everyone had piled into the pub to watch the resident jazz band play. We ended up at L'absinthe having French bistro food, which was decidedly very average.

Primrose Hill is always brilliant on a sunny day. Its one of those chilled out places where you dont actually feel as if you are in London, despite being so central. At one end, you have the famous Engineer, serving more upmarket gastro-pub food, and you have Lemonia at the other end of the "village" serving up the great Greek meze. And in between you have pubs like the Princess of Wales and the Lansdowne, where you may bump into celebs like Noel Gallagher, Gwenyth Paltrow and Kate Moss. A but further up North, you have Marine Ices, which in my opinion, serves the best ice cream in London (not to mention great Scampi Linguine as well) - they only pour about 1 bottle of rum in each tub of rum and raisin ice cream.

So post lunch, we decided to ditch plans to head to Hampstead Heath and just chill out at the Princess of Wales and enjoy the jazz band. I hadnt seen Danielle for about 6 months ever since she started her MBA, so it was a good chance for all 3 of us to catch up - discussing the defensive qualities of condom sales in an economic downturn, to the effects of 3D movie technology on the adult entertainment industry. OK OK, we did have a yarn over cleaner topics, but none as interesting as those 2. Heh!

The chilled out Sunday continued into the evening as I drove further up North to Stephen and Rachel's place for a home-cooked meal. Thanks to Stephen, I got a tasty "Slim Fast" type meal (gosh I need it, after my complete lack of exercise after busting my knee) of baked sea-bass, crushed potatoes, broccoli and steamed veggies. Exactly what I needed after a couple of heavier meals earlier this weekend.

I swear my god-daughter's vocab triples in size everytime I head up there, both in English AND Mandarin. At the rate she is going, the standard of her Mandarin is going to outstrip mine (not that it is terribly difficult to do so) by her 3rd birthday. Heh! It took her a while to warm up though. I suspect that she was a bit confused about the length of my hair - I really need a haircut you see. But gosh, once she did, she was on really good form, running and climbing all over the place. I even taught her how to do a "fist bump" so she could get an insight into street culture, just in case she wants to start wearing baggy jeans soon, and listen to some old school Tupac Shakur. By the end of the evening, she was doing the fist bump thing completely spontaneously. Heh, Im so proud...

So there we have it. Another weekend gone! Where do they go??!! The Lakers are playing the Magic on ESPN, and I am trying to decide whether I should watch Kobe Bryant score his usual 30+points (gosh, I miss playing sports) or do another hours of studying before hitting the sack. Hmmm....

Have a great week ahead everyone!

Painting Football...

The past month has been incredibly busy at work (sorry to those I owe emails to - I will reply very soon!), but while it has been intense, there have also been some pleasant treats as well on the work front.

First up, I had a breakfast meeting at the Royal Academy on Tuesday - while it is always nice to be fed well with Eggs Benedict, Eggs Florentine et al., the real attraction was the private viewing of the Van Gogh exhibition after the meeting. It was obviously an incentive to get people to make it in for 7.45am.

Now, I can count on one hand the number of art exhibitions I have been to - ummm, I think its only been 4? With 2 of them coming within the past 6 months? But this one was really cool. Firstly, there was something surreal about being in a hallway full of paintings worth millions and millions of dollars, surrounded by only about 6 other people. A large part of me was very tempted to start poking some of the paintings to test the sturdiness of the canvas....just because I could, I suppose...

But really, the works were beautiful. Im really no art expert, but I much preferred his early stuff where he used just pen and ink to create his works. From what I saw, it was a case of him learning the artist's craft and starting at the basic skill of drawing. From my simple mind, I simply thought that it was far more impressive to create the stuff that he did using a hard pen instead of a softer and more malleable brush. Take a look at Pollard Birches. Apparently, he struggled at first to master perspective in his drawings, claiming that it was a case of luck how the pieces turned out. I wouldnt have thunk it looking at these drawings.

Even the sketches that he did from time to time in his letters to his brother were impressive. Take a look at Pollard Willow sketched into this letter, with a bit more colour than his black/white/grey sketches.

I wasnt a huge fan of his coloured works - but then again, who cares what I think? I guess Ive just always been a more understated person myself. Take a look at Yellow House, which I think was painted when he became more obsessed with colours and colour theory.

Wheat Fields After the Rain was a sad one because it was completed just before he took his life in July 1890. I actually liked this one, though I found it tragic that he wasn't able to overcome his mental difficulties, even while in the peace of the French countryside. Apparently, he painted over 70 canvasses in the last 70 days of his life, all of which share the same soft colours and tones of Wheat Fields. To me, the painting shows me a man at peace, rather than a person in turmoil. What a shame...

The other treat came on a Thursday afternoon, when I got a call asking if I would like 2 tickets to watch Arsenal play Burnley at the Emirates. Hmmm, free tickets to watch the most entertaining team in the Premiership and a buffet lunch on offer - it really was very hard deciding whether to take up the tickets. So I dropped Agate an email and asked him whether he wanted to come along - sort of a pre-wedding present for him. It was my first time at the Emirates, so just going there on a sunny Saturday afternoon was a treat in itself.

But gosh, the corporate hospitality was fantastic. Ive been to Chelsea's Stamford Bridge before on corporate tickets, but the hospitality at the Emirates far outstripped Chelsea's. The restaurant was massive, with dedicated waiters and waitresses for each table. You got champagne or orange juice as you entered. And the buffet spread was massive - almost reminding me of the buffets that you get in Singapore. There was roast turkey, roast salmon, smoked salmon, prawns, different types of potatoes, and a massive dessert selection with bread and butter pudding, and many other different types of cake to finish everything off. We even had drinks laid on for us at our reserved table during half-time. I really could get used to living like this.

The game itself didnt disappoint. Arsenal, after all, ARE the most entertaining team to watch in England. The game kicked off with the crowd cheering for Aaron Ramsey, who suffered a horrific broken ankle last weekend (it was practically hanging off his leg). Cesc Fabregas (whom Lizzie claims she wanted to marry before she met Alex) was awarded the Premiership Player of the Month award for the 5th consecutive month! Yikes! He was up to his usual tricks and all of Arsenal's best moves were initiated by him. It really is quite incredible to see how calm and composed he is on the ball. He isnt the fastest player on the planet, but he always seems to know what he is going to do with the ball before he even receives it, whether it is a fancy flick or a simple pass pack to a teammate. Its a shame he injured his hamstring though because Arsenal suddenly were lacking imagination without him.

Of course, it didnt help that Nic Bendtner missed about 10 chances - many of which were when he had an open goal to shoot for, and all he had to do was push the ball in the right direction. It was hilarious when he came off, because the fans gave him a standing ovation as if he had scored a hattrick - heh, sometimes you really cant beat British humour. Aggers and I were joking with some of the fans that the Burnley goalkeeper looked like he had eaten too many pies - he was massive and not terribly fast or mobile. I remarked that they should schedule a halftime sideshow to see who would win a race from one end of the pitch to the other - Bendtner (who is really big and slow himself) or the Burnley goalie. Aggers remarked that the half-time break wasnt long enough for the both of them to finish the race - fair point.

Luckily though, even without Cesc, Arsenal had Theo Walcott on form, who was probably reeling from a less than inspired performance for England earlier in the week. And lets face it, this was Burnley after all, who came into the game just looking to waste time and finish with a draw. The Arsenal fans started singing "Who are you? Who are you?" everytime Burnley messed up or Arsenal scored - very funny. And there were other classics sung like "Stand up if you hate Tottenham". Arshavin came on towards the end (in his yellow boots) to add a bit of spark in the last 20 minutes. This was a bonus for me I reckon he is one of best players to watch - He did score the final goal to finish the game off. He was another one who looked so incredibly composed whenever he had the ball. Classic!

So in the end, it was another day in the office for Arsenal, and a trudge back to the tube station for us along with 65,000 other fans. Faced with the massive crowd, we gave up and walked in the other direction and found an Osteria / Coffee Bar (I dont drink and Aggers was still recovering from his messy stag-do last weekend), where we waited for the crowds to clear. We ended up spending a couple of hours gossiping and discussing why the USD and GBP are screwed, inflation will be rampant, why everyone should buy Astrazeneca, gold production profiles in African gold mines, and how we will both get rich from owning Canadian Junior Gold Mining Stocks. Anyone overhearing us would probably think that capitalism as we knew it was going to end, and that everyone should quit their jobs, buy agricultural land, become farmers and keep physical gold underneath their beds because fiat money is dying.

Heh, and on that note, I now need to get back to studying for CFA. ESPN is on TV, and Bayern Munich is drawing with Cologne. Would love to finish watching it but Analysis of Intercorporate Investments beckons. Joy.....

Hi Ho Hi Ho...

...It's off to work we go...using the tube again of course!

Having decided that spending 20 pounds on a cab into work was bleeding my wallet dry, I decided to brave the London Underground and the riots that plague the train platforms in the morning. It was an interesting experience. I end up having to wait for 3-5 trains to come and go because I simply am not able to squeeze onto the train, as one typically does in London - i.e. finding a small gap, and making it bigger by shoving your body in and making everyone else around you adjust. I managed to snap a photo after the 3rd train went by, and even caught a shot of a fellow commuter yawning from all the waiting...

Its fascinating to see how people react to my crutches. As far as the tube goes, having crutches dont seem to matter. Despite my disability, most people dont seem to want to give up their place in the queue to get onto the train. As a result, I find myself being bumped to one side as people try and push past me to get on. But once I get onto the train, someone always offers to give up their seat. There always seems to be an air of uncertainty amongst everyone sitting down, as if everyone was waiting to see if someone else would give up their seat. And then after a few seconds, someone will get up. Of course, you have those who blatantly try not to make eye contact with you - after all, it is harder to be a selfish bitch and remain seated if you make eye contact with someone, no?

But I never realised how quickly everyone moved until I was forced onto crutches and made to walk at half my normal pace. Or at least, I had completely forgotten how quickly I moved along with everyone else until my injury. Being forced to slow down has made me appreciate how pleasant a slower pace can be. There is something about walking / hobbling around slowly that makes you take in more of your surroundings. Of course, it can be infuriating a lot of the time because everyone is moving so much faster, and I am hobbling about at half my normal pace, expending twice the effort.

Had a belated birthday dinner at the Easton with Cait and Ee on Thursday to celebrate Cait's 3...I mean...21st birthday dinner. After almost 4 years of going to the Easton, I have yet to have a meal there that wasn't great! After a hard days work toiling in the mines, the self professed C.Y.T (for Cute Young Thing) decided that she needed a very masculine pint of Kronenberg and a massive T-Bone Steak to round off the day - Very manly. Alas, the waitress took her plate away before I could take a picture of the very-impressively cleaned bone that was left on the plate. Heh!

Friday saw me have some of the guys come round to mine for a night of KFC, booze (not for me of course), the Victoria's Secret 2009 fashion show and Russell Peters - Nice! I still have no idea how we managed to polish off 22 pieces of chicken, 10 portions of fries and gravy between 6 of us. I suspect that it was umm...Alessandro Ambrosio, Miranda Kerr and co. who helped us work up an appetite.

On that note, I'll leave you with some of the Angels as a nice way to round up the week. Sigh, some people say that Miranda and Adriana look girl-next-door. I'd love to know which neighbourhoods these people live at....

Chilled Out Sunday...

I'm headed back to work tomorrow, so I decided to go as far as West London this evening! Was tempted out of South-East London by Cait and Ee to meet them for drinks at the Mandelville Hotel! They had some pretty funky lighting effects going on at the bar...

We decided to go from posh West London drinks to gritty East London KFC afterwards, where Ee and Cait rather disappointingly ordered measly bits of Hot Wings and a Zinger Burger. Sigh, I say, if you want to do the whole KFC thing, you should just go for the classic Original Recipe Fried Chicken and Fries. Me? I had KFC vouchers in my car, so it turned out to be 4 pieces of chicken and 2 portions of chips because it was a one-for-one offer. 4 pieces of chicken later, and I am feeling slightly sick. Definitely cant wait to be cleared to start hitting the gym again. 2 months of inactivity have made me slightly heavier I think...

Oh, and I also caught Avatar this afternoon - it was wicked! Storyline was a bit disappointing (OK. I actually thought that there was no storyline), but to be honest, the storyline was quite irrelevant I thought. I actually thought that the movie was a cross between the storylines of Pocahontas (the love triangle, and the idea of a settler switching sides after falling in love with his cultural guide), any of Reymond E. Feist's novels (the concepts of being one with the forest and mind-linking with dragons) and Al Gore's An Incovenient Truth (the subtext of needing to be more appreciative of our natural environment).

But bah! The show could have been a romantic comedy, and the movie would still have been impressive because of the 3-D effects. Ok, maybe not a romantic comedy, but you catch my drift. Nonetheless, it was beautiful - the easiest 3 hour movie that I have sat through. Even Lord of the Rings left me slightly tired and wanting to stretch my legs towards the end. Even when nothing significant was happening on-screen, I was quite happy to just let my eyes wander and take in the landscape. Like I said, the storyline didn't really matter for a movie like this one...

So there we go, it's back to work tomorrow now, and back to the London grind...finally! =)

Out and About...Finally!

So I managed to get out a little bit over the past few days. I've never done very well at the staying at home bit, so I decided to try going without the painkiller meds and walking about a little.

Thursday saw Joii pop over to have lunch - we walked (I hobbled, of course) to the nearby farm round the corner (the Surrey Docks Farm: http://www.surreydocksfarm.org.uk/), where the cafe is supposed to be run by an ex sous-chef from the Ivy. To our chagrin, the cafe was closed! Nonetheless, it was kinda cool (and surreal) to be in a proper working farm with pigs (Joii was pretty terrified of the pigs as some of them were pretty huge!) - take a look below.

In the end, we couldn't find anything that was still open. So we ended up going to Burger King where I had a XXL Double Cheeseburger with Bacon. My appetite is a bit odd at the moment - most of the time, I cant really keep much down, so I end up eating just plain cereal and fruit. But then there are other times where I crave junk food with lots of salt - Burger King, fried chicken, french fries, etc.

But today was a big day for me - I finally left the confines of my neighbourhood and made it all the way to Tower Bridge where I met Anuj and Azeema for lunch. To humour Anuj (I was actually terrified of his aggressive Aryan tendencies), I agreed to meet them at Dim T, where I must stress that they do not serve REAL dim sum. Instead, its some kind of bastardised dim sum-ish type of food. Basically, everything pretty much looked like a modified siew mai. The closest analogy that I could think of was a Singaporean Ah Beng taking a bog standard Mitsubishi Lancer (or a Perodua Kancil in the case of Malaysians), and attaching a (far too) large exhaust pipe that makes too much noise, a massive spoiler, and flashing blue LED lights at the bottom of the car.

In this case, the restaurant took siew mai skin, and stuffed ingredients like spicy beef, peanuts, coriander....you get my drift right? There was absolutely no hint of the original siew mai ingredients like pork and prawns. In a weird way, if you closed your eyes, the food actually tasted good if you completely ignored that it wasnt really proper dim sum. I guess its the same if I saw a modified Mitsubishi Lancer - I would probably think it looked cool in a far-out, alternative reality kind of way, if I didnt know that it was actually a wannabe car. And wannabe, I suppose, is what Dim T was.

Nonetheless, the company was fantastic, the chat swell, the different types of Chinese Tea were great (just about the only authentic Chinese item on the menu), and the view of Tower Bridge was stunning. Pics of the happy couple (Awww moment on the way) and Tower Bridge are below:

And then this evening, I headed to Cafe East for Vietnamese Food with Xulin, Polin, Noel, Sam and Hoong Wei. Take a look at this funky picture of my favourite set of twins checking out the same menu:

After that, everyone came back to mine for fruit, oats, ice cream and cheesecake while we watched the 2009 Victoria's Secret catwalk show on my widescreen TV. Miranda Kerr, Adriana Lima and co. never looked better in their widescreen beauty. Only problem was that the show lasted for just 40 minutes! Yikes! Heh, Noel and I were tempted to let it repeat itself for 1 more viewing, but we decided in the end not to torture the rest. But bloody hell it was brilliant! Definitely need to watch it again with a few of the guys - with some Domino's pizza and beers to round it off. I've never been one to appreciate installation or abstract art, but...ummm...natural beauty is a different matter!

So there we have it! I finally made my way out of the apartment, and am gradually getting more confident in walking about. Now for my next challenge, I'll be trying to make it into work in one piece, and surviving the treacherous journey on the London Underground.

Wish me luck!

Drugs, DOH!

I woke up this morning and ordered a taxi to come pick me up for my 11am physiotherapy appointment. I rolled out of bed, hobbled to my phone and called the taxi company to book my cab to come pick me up at 10.15am . I then rushed desperately (the term "rush" is a relative term for me nowadays) to wash up, change and eat some cereal so I could top-up on my pain meds. Managed to do all this in 20 minutes before my taxi was due to arrive.

I then hobbled out of my apartment to the roadside and waited..and waited..and waited. Waited for 10 minutes and the cab never arrived. So I called the cab company up and asked what was happening:

Me: Hi, I ordered a taxi for 10.15am. It hasnt arrived yet - I was wondering whether it was on its way?

Cab Company Lady: Ummm, you actually ordered the taxi for 11.15am?

Right, I'm sure Confucius at some point philosophised that one needs to give the correct timing to the taxi company to ensure a prompt pick-up no? So the taxi eventually came to pick me up at 10.35am. I arrived at 11.15am, which left me a grand total of 15 minutes with the physio. This meant that these 15 minutes cost me the princely sum of 108 pounds, including taxi fare! Yikes - I swear there is a very strong inverse correlation between the swelling of my left leg and the size of my bank account at the moment...

As I hobbled into the examination room, completely drugged up and blur, Ciaran (my physio) took one look at me and said "And this is why you were given time off work". Heh! As soon as I hoisted myself up onto the table, I then realised that I had unwittingly put on a pair of odd socks - one black and one blue. Sigh. And for my next stoned incident at the physio, I proudly told Ciaran that I had an appointment scheduled with my surgeon on Wednesday, to which he looked at me with a very puzzled expression on his face and said "Are you sure? That sounds a bit too soon". So he calls the nurse on my behalf and is promptly told that my appointment is scheduled for next Friday instead. Sigh, why on earth do these nurses try and schedule appointments for me when I am under the influence of narcotics??!! It was never ever going to properly get through to me!

So the good news is that my movement and strength in the leg seem to be good. Only thing is that I have a numbness in the lower part of my leg, which is probably a result of a nerve having been accidentally clipped during surgery. Apparently, the numbness may or may not go away - oh well, its more like an irritation rather than a disability. Small price to pay.

After physio, I managed to hobble very slowly to St John's Wood High Street, where I decided to take in the St John's Wood air and have lunch at Cafe Rouge.

I found a table by the window and watched a lady try to parallel park her Porsche...really badly. After all that effort, her car was parked so far forward that her bonnet was almost touching the car in front of her. If my leg wasnt injured, I probably would have rushed out to offer to park the car for her - thats how frustrated I felt on her behalf. Its a shame when people drive such nice cars, and are unable to properly drive / park them. A bit like the rich kid in school who had the latest Air Jordan sneakers, but couldnt play basketball to save his life. Anyway, take a look at the car and her bad parking for yourself - the car should be half a metre further back... =)

OK, excitement over and after the woman parked her car, I ordered a salmon pasta for lunch. As soon as I gave my order, I thought to myself "Why the hell am I ordering pasta at a French cafe chain?" Its like going to Mcdonalds for breakfast and ordering Chinese porridge (Did any of you try the Chicken porridge that McDs were serving in Singapore a number of years ago for breakfast? It surprisingly wasnt that bad!). My only consolation was that there was Gruyere cheese melted on top of the pasta. Actually, come to think of it, Gruyere is actually a Swiss cheese, so the cheese fails in the nationality stakes as well. Never mind, at least it was tasty....

My cab driver came to pick me up after that and I spent the afternoon chatting (coherently enough, I hope) with people back home. So all in all, that was my day. Pretty foggy and drugged up. I actually sent out a fairly technical email to my boss at 7am this morning - I really hope that it made sense, and that I didn't ask him to invest in glass sliding doors with peepholes or something. Im pretty sure that I added a disclaimer that I was under the influence of drugs, so I should be covered! My previous life in law does come in handy sometimes....

Groceries Hurrah!

I ordered groceries online for the first time the other day. Quite swakoo - especially since Trish and Sandra have only been using Ocado for years!

But its pretty neat - you order on the internet, and they deliver it to you at the specified time. They even separate the groceries in different coloured plastic bags representing 3 categories - namely, those that need to be refrigerated; frozen; and those that just need to be placed in the cupboard. Amazing huh? They even gave me an instant refund for my eggs because 2 of them arrived slightly cracked. And they even threw in a free copy of the Times for good measure!

Its amazing what you discover when you are homebound....