Woo finally yesterday I had my first tennis session in London yesterday! Played with Liping and her fren, Kenneth. Both of them are good! It's been so many months since I last flexed my muscles haha..
It was really a different experience playing here. It felt good playing here, because we played from 730pm to 9pm and it was still bright. and the sun was not there at all so it's not glaring at you like in Singapore. So I ran for the balls alot and didn't feel so tired, nor did I perspire alot.
But the bad thing was that the wind was so super strong, it ended up very tough to play.. especially when the wind was against us!
Today, I decided to cook pasta. A very simple dish. Just pasta in olive oil and pepper.
It tasted not bad! haha.. and tried the new teriyaki sauce i bought from the Jap supermarket in Piccadilly Circus. The variety of foodstuff there is not bad. Quite a few things that I wanted to buy and try to cook. But I can't read the cooking instructions! It's all in jap!! Maybe I need to learn some jap alread.
Oh, on last sunday, we went to watch Swan Lake. This programme below cost me £6 and it was full of advertisements. Anyways, at least we understood the story after reading the programme. Otherwise I doubt we will understand because it's really just ballet and music.
My first encounter with Swan Lake was when I was in Pri. 5 when we played Swan Lake for our SYF competition. We got a Gold! What's new? haha.. my primary school band was a power band back then. Consecutive gold for many years. Hee..
The music is beautiful. I mean the music itself is good, but the orchestra was not so fantastic actually. They were not really playing together. Anyway, it was my first time watching a ballet, and I must say, we can't really appreciate the ballet.
(Inside the Royal Albert Hall)
But it was a wonderful experience. And it was my first time listening to the whole Swan Lake. I'm glad I went to attend the ballet :)
I'm so disappointed with the big sports shops in London. After my Teva sandals gone missing - I dunno why it's missing because I'm quite sure I packed it into my box for shipping personally.. and my sis also confirmed that it is nowhere in sight in my home in singapore. - Anyway.. so I decided to go shop around to get another pair. I cannot do without my Teva sandals! especially when summer is here! :(
But the so-called biggest sports shop in London don't even stock any Teva. and when I asked the store assistants, they gave me the "I have never heard of the brand Teva!" look... Hmm.. issit really that Teva is so unknown in UK? Even Decathlon doesn't stock it - I searched from their online store. Oh, and both stores also doesn't stock the latest Nike tennis shoes or Prince tennis rackets.. someone pls tell me where i can get all these!! :( I miss Queensway suddenly.
Girls out there reading my blog, Ms Sam sms me informing me about Nanyang celebrating her 90th birthday this year, and there is going to be this dinner at swissotel hotel convention centre i think. Actually if i'm around, I will want to go coz it's quite significant to Nanyang Girls. I still remember back in 1995 when we celebrated our 78th year, there was a Nanyang Night performance at Kallang Theatre. That was my first and ever time performing in Kallang Theatre. And guess what, they forced us to put makeup so that we will look nice under the lights. Luckily we were spared from the lipstick coz we had to use our lips to play the instruments.. hee... The 东方之珠 song which we sang was especially memorable :)
So, please organise something if you all are interested!
Today huili asked me to go read a post which she put up in March 2005 after we met up for dinner the day before. She wrote:
"Met Mun and HS for dinner. As the audit gang, our dinner was filled with convesation abt work n work n updates.
This is something I would miss if I were to go London. It's just irreplaceble."
Haha.. all 3 of us are in London now. :) and the audit gang had just increased in size. all of us here are in audit. more things to talk and bitch about liao... hahaha..
Today was a happy day. Met up with Shylene who came to London on holiday, and to my pleasant surprise, Priscilla packed me a big pack of cooking sauces and pastes etc from home and got Shylene to bring it over for me... I'm so touched!! Thanks Priscilla and Shylene!! You certainly know what i miss most! haha..
The things were quite heavy.. 3 bottles of saline, 2 bottles of ya kun kaya and the bag of food stuff.. and priscilla also got me something else:
haha.. I thought she was going to get me their new CD.. coz that was what I told her when she asked if I wanted anything from home for shylene to bring to me..
Then after saying bye to shylene, i took a 45min walk from covent garden to southwark tube station.. wanted to find the 381 bus stop from waterloo.. but can't find it. so gave up and took tube from southwark instead.
Some pictures along the way.
This is Queen Mary Glasgow. Not quite the original Queen Mary though.
View of Big Ben and London Eye from the Waterloo Bridge
View of Big Ben and London Eye from another angle
Hmm.. how come the london eye and big ben always seem to appear in my photos?
Today, or rather yesterday, 21 Jun, was the Summer solstice, whereby it is the longest day in London. a total of 17 hours of day light i think. Was so busy the last few days that I forgot about it totally. until i was reading the papers today, then realised.
It was also supposed to be 'Lights out London' in an energy-saving campaign. Supposedly many public buildings such as the Buckingham Palace, Canary Wharf and Gherkin etc will shut down all the lights from 9pm to 10pm. Actually something that I don't quite understand is that since the people here are so into energy saving, why are the skyscrapers at Canary Wharf always so brightly lid at night? To display the beautiful night view of London? Well, I don't believe that there are constantly people working in all 40 floors of the offices. Haha..
Glad it's friday again!! Next 2 weeks is going to be eventful coz it's Wimbledon! Still can't believe I'm here in London, and going to have a part in the event. hee.. Will Federer get his 5th consecutive Wimbledon title? We shall see! :)
Today after work, I took a walk from St James's Park to Westminster.
Front view of Westminster Abbey
Side entrance to the Abbey
View of Big Ben and the London Eye
Houses of Parliament
A statue of Mr Winston Churchill
There are really alot of nice, historical buildings in London. Although they look old (and some look dirty), but i still enjoy admiring them sometimes. There's always something different to look out for. Be it the architecture, the structure, the surroundings, the landscape etc etc..
Downing Street
But it's heavily guarded and barricaded.. no one can go in at all.. Wanted to continue to walk some more initially. But it started drizzling, raining.. and it puts me off because I do not want to risk my Ixus 65 in the rain! :(
Dinner today was something different.
My dinner! Baked salmon, potatoes and broccoli with hollandaise parsley sauce Hmm.. but didn't really like the hollandaise sauce.. next time I shall try some other sauces.. hee..
Was doing a Firm survey today and came across this question: "If you were not working within auditing, what would your dream job be?"
It got me thinking for a good 10 minutes, and I still had no answer for myself. The first thing that came to my mind was music composer / song writer. That will be a dream job! But, thinking of the prospects, practicality of the Singapore context and earning capacity, the dream faded away.
I decided to put down Investment Banker. This was a secret dream that I had when I was back in NJ. Me and a friend of mine, we had the same desire to work in a certain Bank. And he has achieved it already (but in another bigger Bank), whereas I’m still nowhere near this dream of mine. :(
Time to take a step back and think again. What’s the plan? Hmm..
Today had been a good day! Took the 8am train to Birmingham to watch the DFS Classics - Women's tennis.
2 of my favourite players are playing there now. Maria Sharapova and Jelena Jankovic. It was really a wonderful experience.
Sharapova starting her first match
Sharapova serving
Jankovic serving
Sharapova winning her 2nd match
I thin I'm really lucky. Was initially supposed to catch only the 2 semi-finals matches today.. but ended up watching 3, 2 of which are sharapova's and 1 is jankovic! As it rained very badly on Thursday and Friday, alot of matches were postponed till today. So in a way, I was very lucky to be able to catch 3 matches.. 赚到了 haha.. Although I didn't manage to catch any semi-finals. I believe they will be played tomorrow, just before the finals.. I predict it to be a Sharapova-Jankovic final. Hope that happens!
Sharapova signing autographs
Jankovic signing autographs
It was today that I really understand the defnition of "crazy weather". At 10am, it was bright and sunny. At 1130, it drizzled, and play was suspended for about 30min due to the rain. Then it was bright and sunny again, although it was overcast from time to time. Then during Jankovic's match, play was suspended again due to rain. This time was very serious. waited around 1hr i think.. didn't really keep track of the time though.. see all the umbrellas below.
The green thing on the right was the sheet to cover the grass to keep the court nice and dry. And after that, it was bright and sunny again. To the extent that I had to put my visor on!
I'm really happy today.. although this DFS classic is not a grand slam event, in fact it is quite small in scale. But nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the tennis. Oh, i even got an autograph from Maria Sharapova herself!!!
I only realised afterwards that I was so stupid because I placed the ticket in the wrong direction for her to sign :((
Next up for me is to catch a Manchester United match, and Roger Federer and Andy Roddick live in action. Hope it will be at Wimbledon which is starting in 1 week and 2 days time!
Today my department had a summer party, cruise cum bbq dinner on River Thames. It was my first time on a cruise on River Thames. Pretty exciting. But too bad didn't manage to take alot of nice photos because was "busy socialising".
This was the only pic I took.. of Albert Bridge. Abit regret.. I should have taken more pics!!
Well, I still dont really know my colleagues well. There's always new faces whenever we have any department outings / meetings. It doesn't help that my only 2 jobs since joining the Firm were with another department :(
Anyway, the food and drinks was good, and weather good (although abit of very light shower at times). But really got abit of tired talking. Always thinking hard of what to talk about. Talk about Travel? Talk about Singapore? Oh, heard 2 comments today about Singapore:
1. All the girls from Singapore are pretty. 2. All the toilets in Singapore are clean.
Haha.. how do u like the above?
Anyways, I left at half time. The boat stopped at 830pm after 2 hrs cruise, but the whole thing was supposed to end at 1030pm with the boat going on another 2 hrs cruise.
Oh, after I said bye to my colleague at the Festival pier, I noticed an Indian guy looking at us as we said bye. Then he approached me and asked if I'm Korean? I gave him a DUH look and walked away.. stoopid man with centre parting and the hair was pressed down flat.
Anyways, I took a short walk to Waterloo station. Didn't realise that there is such a nice part of London. Imagine along River Thames, strolling in very cool weather, having a meal, admiring the beautiful view of Big Ben and Houses of Parliament? Yeah you got it.
I suddenly made up my mind. I'm going to walk around London abit more. Hopefully starting from tommorrow.. and discover all the nice and chic places. So that my time in London won't just be around Piccadilly, Leicester Square, Chinatown, Bayswater etc...
And hopefully more time for myself. Taking a walk along River Thames will be a very good idea.
I think probably these are things I may never do alone in Singapore. Such as walking along the river, enjoying the scenery, or watching a movie (which I plan to, to watch Ocean's Thirteen coz no one else is interested), catching a match at wembley, taking a train to Birmingham to watch a tennis game etc etc..
Yeah I'm going to Birmingham on Sat! Around 1.5 hrs by train from London. 2 of my favourite ladies players are playing there. Sharapova and Jankovic. I'm going to watch the semis.. coz the chances of seeing both of them at semis is higher than finals. They will not be playing against each other at the semis though. If they meet, it will be the finals.
Weather prediction for Saturday is sunny. Yeah! Looking forward to my first tennis match in London. :)
Today something bad happened. Parts of a building, which was just 50m away from where I was working at, collapsed suddenly. We heard a loud bang, but we thought nothing of it. Only an hour later did we hear from our client that part of a building had collapsed. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6746017.stm
My first brush with an unfortunate event in London. Imagine the building was only 50m away from where I was. Scary..
I'm glad that there are currently no renovation undergoing in my client's office building. Hmm.. but my own office, the whole basement and ground level are undergoing serious renovation. :( That's bad..
Took like 30 min of my lunch time today to read some of my juniors' blogs.. realised that they too had their fair share of staying, working / studyin overseas.. Quite interesting.. didn't know so much had happened from 2004 - 2007! haha..
well, hope my own experience will be good. Imagine me in 2010 Jun 12, typing in www.ivikasky.blogspot.com, and reading through the past entries. I bet it will be so memories-filled.
Today over msn, a dear friend of mine commented i can write really long essays for my blog. I didn't realise that! okies.. next time I'll make sure i keep my blog short and sweet :) More photos and less words right? haha..
over the weekend, we did quite abit of cooking. Went to billingsgate market at 630am with huili to get fresh seafood. Fresh seafood is scarce in london. Hardly available, if not very expensive.
We bought prawns, squids, salmon and crabs. The crabs were the hardest to settle.
We didn't have the right instruments to tear the crab apart.. so we had to eat by poking the chopsticks into the claws, the meatiest part of the crab.. it was a tough ordeal i muz say.. first time I ate crab until so pathetic. haha..
The cereal prawns were not quite a success coz the oats we used were not quite the one. Online recipes said the best is Nestum by Nestle. But we can't get it here! anyways.. we have decided we shall just get my mum to buy the pre-pack from sg and send it to us! those are definitely nicer, although its very salty. We concluded that the best dish for the day was the fried man tou. Coz jian yi got the special method of cooking from one of the famous seafood restaurants in sg, and it turned out crispy on the outside, and soft and white on the inside.. haha.. although it was abit black on the outside too!
Then for lunch today, decided to try a new dish. Salad pasta. very simple dish actually.. just need to get a good salad sauce. we got honey mustard. not too bad, but it was abit plain.. need to put more salt next time..
Today we went to this Singapore/malaysia restaurant at Bayswater called Kiasu for dinner They sell all the local fare such as cai tow kway, char kway teow, hokkien mee etc.. imagine a plate of char kway teow costs £6 (approx. S$18!)
It is really a very Kiasu theme in the restaurant. Has got some cups on display with the Mr Kiasu man pictures, and some "kia" terms such as kia gui (scared of ghosts), kia pok kai (scared of being broke), kiasu (scared of second to none) on the wall. They had the translations on the wall too.. Hmm.. I thought kiasu is scared of losing?! haha..
We ordered ngor hiang, orh luak, char kway teow, hokkien mee and hor fun. The hor fun comes with the green chillies.. Hmm.. which occurred to me that I haven't had those green chillies in a long time.
We were so hungry that we grabbed the ngor hiang the moment it came, and forgot to take a pic of it! I would say the food is not too bad. My personal favourites are the hor fun (although I'm not a hor fun person) and the char kway teow. The 口感 of the hokkien mee is not bad. but the taste is still not quite the hokkien mee that we get at home.
After the dinner, we had a waffle ice-cream at Waffle Town / House or dunno what.
Well, although the waffle looks good, i think it's one of the worst waffles that I have ever had. It's not made fresh! :( Coz it tastes hard although it's warm..
oh, was playing around with my camera and decided to take the following pic:
Some of the collections from my travelling so far. Hope to add more to the collection :)
Today the Sky engineer came and installed the sky setup box for me. Wow i didn't expect to be such a big project. As there were no satellite dishes in my vicinity (which he said was unusual), he had to fix 1 up. And my, it was a 大工程. He had this ladder which could go super high.. and he climbed up and down so many times. first, he had to climb up to find The Spot for the signals to be received. Then, he had to climb up again to fix the dish, then up again to connect the cable.
Talking bout the cable, he had to drill a hole right from the inside of my flat to the outside wall, so that the cable could go out and be connected to the dish. 2 things struck me. (1) I didn't expect there to be so much involved to set up 1 sky tv. (2) I didn't inform my landlord! shucks..... when I see the hole, and when he was connecting the cable, and telephone line around the house, he had to put staplers into the wall to hold the cable and line.. shit more holes!!! i suddenly felt so sick..
Called my landlord immediately after the engineer left and told her the truth.. she seemed to be angry.. said I should have informed her before hand that i was going to do something to the wall. but, i totally didn't expect all that! I thought it was just like our good old starhub which my brother could set it up by himself without any dish or cabling around the house :(
Anyways.. i hope she won't be so angry and deduct my rental deposit for putting holes in her wall!
All that for just £15 a month to watch my sky tv! :( but at least I did get to watch my Grey's Anatomy season 3 and repeat of the ladies semi-finals for French Open today :)
This had been a rather uneventful week. It's just work and work. and tv and tv at home. Well, what to do? Not much of working late, and also nothing too spectacular to do after work. Well, I guess more time to plan travel? I have come to realise that just checking the prices of air tix, train tix can really take up alot of my time..
Had a chat with an ex-mgr from PwC today. Realised how the jtc job had gone so well this year. Happy for them. because last year was really painful, being the first year of audit. Well, it suddenly made me feel abit sad.. coz I kind of missed the times of auditing with a closed knitted team.. so far for the time here, i'm my own team. lowest life form, with another more senior AM and SM above me.
Tomorrow someone from Sky is coming to install my sky tv for me! Yay! hopefully I can catch some action of the French Open tomorrow. miss it so much.
My first time to watch a live soccer show in London!! and it was a visit to the new Wembley! Super excited!
It was a friendly match between England and Brazil. But alas, the match ended with a draw, although I thought England played well..
(The teams were walking out to sing the national anthems)
The match was a sold-out crowd. 88k people present at the stadium. Can imagine how crowded it was! but although it was very crowded, there was very good crowd control, and there were no pushing or squeezing at all. Everything was very orderly. Especially after the match, when we had to take the 10min walk to the Tube station. There were alot of mounted police, and there were no pushing or squeezing although it was super packed with people.
(Ronaldinho ready to take a free kick)
(Me, taken during half time.. hee.. i even wore a red top to suit the occasion!)
Finally I have some time to sit down and update my Austria trip. Went to Salzburg and Vienna on the last last weekend with shuwen. It wasa wonderful trip.. enjoyed myself very much, especially in Salzburg. and played with snow for the first time in my life. It was snowing, but the mountain was all covered with snow.
On the first day that we arrived at Salzburg, we went to visit the Ice caves at Eisriesenwelt . It's the biggest ice cave in the world.
This was taken on the way up to the ice caves. To get to the ice caves, we had to walk 20min up slope, take a cable car ride, and walk another 20 min up. Super tiring! but the view along the way was simply awesome!
This was taken in the ice cave. we were not supposed to take any pictures at all. But i really cannot resist the temptation! so i took a few secretly but without flash of course. I don't want the flash to spoil the ice. it's too precious.
it's cold inside the ice cave. but we have to walk 700 steps up and 700 steps down.. so u hardly feel the cold really! tiring, but it was really an enjoyable experience. :)
2nd day, we went for the famous Sound of Music tour. They brought us to many sights which were shown in the film. Such as the pavilion, the lake, the church where they got married, and others..
Very interesting. I've watched the show since I was young many years ago. Finally I had the chance to visit the beautiful Salzburg and revisit the sights. haha.. the amazing thing was that in Salzburg, there was actually 1 tv channel dedicated to showing the movie 24/7!
After the tour, we went to talk a walk around the Salzburg Old Town. Went up to the Hohensalzburg Fortress (the castle in the background in the photo below) and had a bird's eye view of the whole Salzburg town.
The 3rd day was the most exciting! We went up the snow mountain Gletscherplateau which was 2900m above sea level. It is actually a snow mountain where people can ski 12 months in the year. To get there, we had to take a train ride of around 1hr 40min to Zell am See, and a bus ride of 20min to reach the base of the mountain at Kaprun. Initially, we didn't plan to go up the mountain. we thought we were going to another place to see lakes and mountains etc. haha.. but i'm glad we went up to the mountain! my first time i see and play with snow!
The rides up and down the chairlift was fun too.. we took 2 times for one of the ride.. haha because we wanted to have a chance to take photos on each side.. the view was so beautiful from the top of the mountain! :)
After getting back to Salzburg, we made our way by train to Vienna. The train ride to Vienna was not as picturesque as the ride to Zell am See. No more of mountains and countryside. It's mainly of factories, houses, fields etc.
We didn't quite enjoy Vienna as much, mainly because Vienna was really a big city, with old buildings, museums, etc. We visited several of the famous sightseeing places, such as the Schloss Schonbrunn which was the Summer palace of the Habsburgs in the olden times. It's a huge palace with a huge garden, something like a mini Versailles. Click here for my Vienna photos!
A visit to Vienna is not a visit without attending one of the many concerts. Actually I wanted to go for a concert at the Musikverein, one of the top 10 concert halls in the world. But in the end, we bought tix on the streets to another concert. It was a small ensemble. 2 violins, 1 viola, 1 cello, 1 double bass, 1 pianist, 1 flautist, 1 clarinetist and 1 oboeist. Haha.. 1 of each! Well, the pieces they played were all familiar favourites. Mozart and Strauss.. and there were dancing and singing too.. enjoyable, but not quite the world class they claim to be! haha.. but in the end, I still went to Musikverein, home to the world famous Vienna Philharmonic, to take a picture :) The best thing is that when we were in Vienna, the Vienna Philharmonic was in Salzburg :((
It was overall a very enjoyable trip. Did many things, had good food, discovered a nice beer called Radler (beer with lemonade), went for a concert and had good weather, although it rained almost everyday at around 6pm. But at least we had 10 hrs of sunlight for sightseeing :) but well, the only suay thing was we kena caught for not paying for our metro ticket in Vienna. The fine was €62 per person! they simply refused to let us run away. Luckily we only had €35 on both of us, and they took everything!! Everything! So we were lucky to save €90 afterall! 上的山多终遇虎! Really very true for us.. haha.. next time muz rem to pay for your tickets wherever you go! :)
