Monday 28 July 2008

Pictures!

Okay, so I don't have pictures of myself in kimono anytime recently, but I thought I'd post up a few pictures from our trip to Barcelona :) Enjoy!

The parents at the market in Barcelona:
Family photo at La Sagrada Familia:
Ling and Pot at the Torres vineyard:
Parents and Patty at the Torres vineyard, looking at grapes:


*sleeps*

It's been approximately three and a half weeks since I came home, and also since I last blogged.

I don't know if I should say that I'm busy or not, because I spend most of my time either sleeping, eating, reading or learning to drive. At first, I really wasn't too keen on that last activity, but once I got used to it, it's alright, I guess. Nowadays, I spend most of my time waiting for the instructor to call me to tell me when my next lesson will be. In the meantime, I think I ought to do my coursework and dissertation research and study for my upcoming resit exams.

I actually have just returned from Penang. My sister's friend was getting married and she was invited to the wedding dinner last night, so on Friday night, we took a drive up to Penang (about 3 and a half hours door-to-door, in my estimation). Our cousins, the Loke family, including Su Yen's husband and kids, went as well, and we all drove together and had a late night dinner of nasi kandar on Friday night. Yum! It was good!

On Saturday, we woke up early to eat char kuay teow in some place my cousin's colleague recommended (actually, Su Yen, her husband and Rommel -Pot- all work for my mom. About 2/3rds of my mom's office consists of family memners!). It was alright. Very plain, small and expensive for what it was. I didn't finish it because kuay teow are rice noodles and those fill me up reaaaaally fast. The soya bean milk was really nice though!

I think we went to some shop to buy Chinese cookies and sesame oil, but I can't remember. I do know we bought cookies and sesame oil at some point in the day, though!

Anyhow, after that, we went to Queensway Mall for Ling to look for a yarn shop. We ended up spending RM475 on yarn! Well, at least they were nice ones and brands/varieties that aren't available in KL.

Since our tummies had had a rest, we went to eat assam laksa at another place in town. I'm not really an assam laksa fan, so I just took a bit of soup and enjoyed my sugar cane juice. I missed sugar cane juice in London! While walking back to the car after that meal, we stopped by a stall to have a few durians. That was good stuff!

The Loke family and our family were supposed to split up after that to return to our hotels, but since we were near Penang Hill, which has a strawberry farm I wanted to have a look-see, we drove to the furnicular station, but it was closed, so we decided to head towards this bakery (Jenny's) that sells really really good chocolate cakes. Everytime my mum goes to Penang, she always buys at least 10 cakes for the family and for friends.

Unfortunately, the map we had wasn't very detailed about the small roads or if a road was one-way or not, so we made many many rounds before we finally found the shop. We checked to see if it would be open today (Sunday) and bought a chocolate brownie cake back to the hotel because I'd been craving for something sickeningly sweet the whole week.

We finally returned to the hotel, and Ling, Patty and Pot went to play around by the beach and in the sea while I was supposed to take a nap (but ended up reading in the end). Ling and Pot went for the wedding dinner later that night, while Patty and I had room service for dinner and Patty slept while I read a bit more.

This morning, we were supposed to wake up at 8-something to go paragliding, but we all ended up waking up at 11am! I'm not sure why no one heard any of the alarms we set (o_O"). Patty did manage to go paragliding in the end, though, and Ling and I relaxed on the hammocks for a bit before we checked out and went to Balik Pulau for a visit with Sister Bernadine, went to the cake shop to buy cakes, then drove home with a lunch stop at Tambun along the way (eurgh, fly land. Don't go there to eat. It used to be good, but now there are so many flies it just puts you off the food).

Did I mention that we had a nice room? Sure, it was really old, but very spacious, and clean, and the view was really really great! When you first walk in the door, you enter a sitting room with a sofa, coffee table, TV, fridge and double doors to the veranda. A door on your right takes you to the bedroom where there are 2 king-sized beds, a TV, a cupboard, a chest of drawers, a desk and a make-up table with a really old-school looking-glass! The sliding doors to the left take you out onto the veranda, while the stained glass double doors on the right lead to the really big bathroom with two sinks, a bath tub, a toilet and a shower. Very nice bathroom.

The veranda was my favourite part! There was a corner with recliners, a day-bed which was very clean and comfy, and another corner with a table and matching chairs. All around it were shutters which open to a perfect view of the garden below (and all the hammocks!) and the beach. It was really nice to open the shutters, sit on the day-bed and read (or knit, in my sister's case). Very peaceful, very relaxing.

Okay, okay, I've yammered on for long enough. I really ought to post pictures, and I do have pictures of Bon Odori somewhere, but they might be in my sister's laptop and not in mine. I'll have a look through Facebook and see if my sister posted them or not.

Turrah!


Thursday 3 July 2008

*tired*

To continue from where I left off last time...

On Friday, we went to Covent Garden to get our phone lines done and ended up getting a new line. I'll be terminating my current line soon, so if we talk more frequently than once a year, expect a text message from me about my new number!

After that, we went to Chinatown to buy a takeaway lunch of duck rice and Misato's tori karaage and gyuudon (yum!) :) When we'd finished eating lunch, we went to Stansted airport and checked in for our flight to Lourdes.

Please allow me to bitch about the flight now.

We were delayed two hours. TWO HOURS! It was because there were alot of wheelchair people on the flight, so it took them a long time to get all the people on the plane itself. Once we finally got onto the plane, it was really hot and smelled like piss. Eww. The take off was rather unstable, and the landing was obscenely scary - we hit the runway at a much higher speed than was normal!! I'm sure it was still an acceptable speed, but seriously, even though I've been on a plane at least twice a year since I was 5 years old, at least 6 times a year now that I'm older, that was my first time at a landing where it was so fast at the time of landing!

Anyway, we got to Lourdes (south of France) really late that night, but the hotel kept a cold platter for us. I quite enjoyed some of the meats and all the salad, except maybe the grated carrots. Unfortunately, it gave Pot, Patty, Ling and me diarrhoea the next day >.o

I don't really remember what happened exactly, but we went for Mass everyday, went for the Torchlight Procession and the Blessed Sacrement Procession, and the Jubilee Walk. We went to a cafe behind the hotel pretty much everyday too. All the vendors were very nice and friendly! I like French people hehe.

We came back to London on Monday. Went out for dinner in Chinatown - had roast duck at Four Seasons. Good food. On Tuesday, Ling and I went to school to print out some stuff, and visit her yarn shop while the others went to Harrods. We met up again at Richoux for lunch, then Pa and Patty went home. Ma, Ling, Pot and I went to Top Shop for a while, where I bought this really cute vintage-looking pink dress. Then we went to Covent Garden for a few minutes, walked to Belgo's for an early dinner then watched Chicago, which was really just down the road from Belgo's.

Chicago was good! Quite amusing, really. I don't think Ma liked the jazzy singing, though. I was really REALLY irritated with the girls behind us - loud, annoying, screamed at very song, and rendered me half deaf in both ears for a day. The ringing in my ears didn't stop till I somehow managed to fall asleep.

Today, we went to Selfridges, had Carluccio's for lunch, then went to Madame Tussaud's. Joyce came down from Oxford to spend the day with us! Yay! Hehehe, still as odd and funny as usual.

I'm tired. We're flying home tomorrow. I'll be staying home the whole day to pack (although I'm pretty much done) and clean up the flat before we go home. Tata, I'm gonna go sleep now!