Finally I got my credit card today. after a whole 1.5 months of dilly-dallying and missing card.
For the last week and the next 2 coming up, I'll be at client's place at Hersham. I've never walked so much in my entire working life as i did for the last week! The client's office is 20min walking distance away from the train station. It's not bad if u take a walk in the morning when the weather is good. But it's certainly not fun when you have to rush for the train which comes only every 30min! Like Tues when I went to send Huishi off at Gatwick Airport, I practically ran half the way to catch the train! With my laptop in my big backpack some more.. it was certainly not fun.. :( 2 more weeks of walking like this. But I enjoy taking the train. Absolutely not crowded like the tube, and it's comfortable.
Anyway, the last week had been quite a bad one for England. So many places were flooded. Its really quite sad to know that people's homes had been destroyed, and that they are running in dangers of being infected with diseases. And, I'm actually in the same country as them now. Just that London is safe from the floods, for now maybe? And the sun is shining high up now as I'm typing away.
The other day I went to Tesco for groceries, walked past the bottled water section, and 3/4 of the section was empty. Seeing that, reminded me of the shortage of fresh water situation at the flooded towns. Maybe people had been stocking up in case the floods hit london? In the end I also picked up 2 bottles of 1.25 litres Vittel mineral water to buy and store at home just in case.
Watching Transformers later with Jianyi and Melvin. And then cooking curry at home for dinner for everyone..
2 more weeks before my flight to Lyon to meet joanna, nicole, jason and james! Yay!!!
Today at client's place, one of my colleague was eating biscuits.. and i was very disturbed by it. coz she practically break the biscuits into half before eating, and the crumbs are all over the table! I glanced over at her a few times.. and she suddenly asked "is everything ok?" and tried to shift her stuff abit. coz it was abit cramped at the table.. then i suddenly quite paiseh and said "Yeah, ok.." ! but still, i can't really concentrate at what i was doing, and was thinking of the crumbs on the table..
Well, i can get very disturbed when I see food, gravy or crumps drip or drop all over the place. I muz clean / wipe it the moment i see it. I just cannot let it go.. is this a case of 洁癖???
Today was the first time I stepped into a bar after the smoke-ban came into effect in UK from 1 July 2007. It feels good.
Had dinner at Moby Dick.. the pub just downstairs from my place. I rem the last time we went there to have a drink, the smell inside was terrible! and we had to settle outside.. This time, i sat inside, and free from the smoke which was outside this time! haha..
So glad england's gone smoke-free. Sg also right? Yay!
For the last week, I needed to travel around 1hr 20min (single trip) everyday to get to my client's place in St. Albans. Bus/walk 10min, tube 22min, train 30min, walk to client's place 5min and all the miscellaneous waiting time and queueing time to buy train tix etc.. Seems like a long time to travel.. but somehow, time always pass very fast. maybe coz i read newspapers, read book, people watch on the way.. just realised that during my time here, i have never fallen asleep on the tube/train/bus before! why huh? i also dunno.. haha.. last time i used to fall asleep on the mrt..
it will be another 3 more weeks of travelling like this as I move on to another client in Hersham, before I go to Southern France for my holiday! looking forward to meeting up with my cousin, aunt and baby nephew! yay!
The other day, was having a conversation with my associate, which gave me abit of a shock:
A: Why not stay longer and get a PR or British passport? H: Nah, I'll be going home in the end. Sg passport is not bad (Previously, we had another conversation with our mgr who had a passport from Country Z.. and he has to obtain a visa in order to do most of his travelling. Very ma fan to hold the passport from Country Z)
A: Yeah, dont mean that Sg passport is bad. Just that having a British passport can guarantee that the Government will take care of you when you are old and sick. You basically dont have to worry about anything when you are old. The govt will give u a house, a car, and engage pple to take care of you when you are sick and immovable etc.
A: You don't actually have to work and pay the taxes here. You can live anywhere else. But when you fall sick, you just need to fly back here to seek free treatment.
OMG! Is that really the case? This is a young man of 25 yrs of age talking. and he is already thinking of asking the govt to take care of him when he is old and sickly? We went on for a good 10 min debating about this topic. Like, where does the money come from? Won't the Govt collapse one day? etc etc...
I realise we have really been brought up in different cultures. (As I'm typing this, FM100.3 is playing "We are One United People" by Sun Yan Zi) We have never been taught to rely on the government to take care of us. We have been taught to work hard so that you can buy a house, buy a car, and provide for your old age in the ever-increasing medical costs society. Like what my dad says, we cannnot afford to fall sick..
Is it really such a good idea that the Government will care for you when you are old? Hmm.. sounds attractive right? No need to worry that you will die from falling sick and being pennyless. But is it really such a good idea? I doubt it. There must be the cons... There is no free lunch in this world. so should I still try for a British passport? nah.. I'm still happy with my red one now! :)) haha..
You know it when: 1. You do not need a jacket whenever you go out anymore. 2. You start to perspire after 3 minutes of walking. 3. You on the fan during the day. 4. You can't wait to have a glass of ice-cold water 5. You hate doing the ironing because it gives off too much heat.
Yeah, summer is here.
Had steamboat at Liping's house warming yesterday. 2nd time having steamboat in London. 1st without having to go to Billingsgate, and having no fresh fish to eat. Only prawns from Asda supermarket.
Her flat is nice. It's so super near to my area. Separated only by the River Thames. So near, yet so far. We need to take around 35min to get home, when swimming across the Thames will take me probably only 10min?
Anyways, took some nice pics of the sunset from her place.
For the last 3 days, I had training at Watford. Yesterday and today were the best! we finished at around 330pm! Super shiok.. caught the 3.46pm train back to London Euston and reached around 4.06pm. Hee..
Then today me and Irene went shopping at Green Park / Picadilly area. We were just walking around Regent Street and we discovered a place like back street alleys where there were alot of small small shops.
(Some pictures of the shopping place - I quite like this place. It's basically a small built-up area with small shops and a cafe)
Hmm.. it is supposed to be the summer sale now. But, the things are still so ex! So I never buy anything at all!
Oh, we passed by an ice-cream stall, and I decided to buy an ice-cream coz the ice-cream looked yummy. Never asked the price coz I thot it wont be too ex, and it turned out to be £3!!!! Faint.... Then we realised there is actually a tiny menu at the back which we missed seeing... Next time, always remember to ask the price before buying anything!
It is really not often that you can finish work (or training) so early, have nothing to do, and go shop and do dinner. Good life.. too bad the shops close at 6pm. So not much to do after dinner at Chinatown, except to shop at chinatown supermarkets.. hee.. Plan for tomorrow (if we finish early) is to find a place and sit down for coffee and read our books. haha..
Yesterday was a sporty sunday in London (UK, more specifically). There was the Tour de France, Wimbledon and F1 Grand Prix all happening at the same time.
We started with watching live action of the Tour de France from 5min where we stay at 10am. We went down at 10am to get a good place to catch the action. And after waiting for like 1 hr, finally the cyclists appeared and zoomed past us in like 2min. Gosh! I was so busy trying to take a good photograph that I did not savour the feeling of the cyclists zooming past! :( It happened so fast.
Then we went back home and followed the action from the tv. From then on, it's tv switching between Tour de France, F1 and Wimbledon! Haha.. Tour de France really feel so slow when you switch over from the vroooommm of the F1 cars. But it's really an experience.. to be able to catch the atmosphere of Tour de France and Wimbledon of course! Too bad the F1 tickets are too ex at £99, and at a super ulu and faraway place called Silverstone. Else I may have made a dash for it too! Kimi won!
Anyways.. no more sports to watch from today onwards. Back to tv.. haha.. went for training at Watford today. Super boring.... half the time I was day-dreaming (basically just stoning with a blank mind) and not absorbing anything at all! :( This is bad. I should start to pay attention from tomorrow onwards! Training ended at 415pm :) Which was good! And then I found some time to go to Rotherhithe Library to make a library card and borrow some books. Time to start doing some reading. Been spending alot of time on tv and internet.. no reading! That's bad. The library was really small. And the adult section was really small too. But it's sufficient for me alread. Quite well stocked with travel guides and fiction books by some of the familiar authors which I know. And the books are all quite new too!
Haha.. the thing I was not quite used to was that the library system is also by the date-chop system.. Not quite sure if u all still rem when was the last time u went to a library, and they have this piece of paper on the first page where the librarian will stamp the due date on the book? Ya it's like that here! And there are no book drops. So you can only return the books when the library is open, which is 4 days in a week only..
Summer is here! After weeks of grey clouds and rain, finally the sun is out. Yesterday was the only day that Wimbledon did not get disrupted by rain. Today was the second day.
It feels good having the sun shine into my room. Although its hot, but at least it doesn't feel so gloomy and sad.
Yesterday I tried making meat balls. It's not bad! Very simple to make.
I went to Wimbledon yesterday! I was really so happy. Having seen the matches from tv for the past few years, I am finally at SW19 personally!
See the queue? We left house at around 550am and got there at 7am. I was so worried that we won't be able to get tickets to centre court. But we got the queue number 296! Woo! Pray hard.. coz there are 250 tickets available for centre court, court 1 and court 2 respectively.. so need to pray that there are at least 50 pple infront who doesn't want to buy the tix for centre court.
Finally at around 8am, we were given the blue wrist bands above for centre court. Means we got the tickets!! Yay! Costs £62 (approx. S$186) for each tix. Very ex right? I have never paid so much for a ticket before. The most i paid before was S$169 for sun yanzi concert tix last time.
(Justine Henin - Current World No. 1! - Didn't know I was so lucky to catch her walking around. She did not have any match for today)
(Jankovic in practise session)
(Inside Centre Court!)
We watched 1 set of Ana Ivanovic, match between Amelie Mauresmo and Nicole Vaidisova, 1 set of Roddick and Maria vs Venus till the score of 30-15 only.. And in all, there were 7 times where the rain fell. Out of which, there were 4 times where the play was interrupted and the courts were covered.
(Taking a pic with all the former champions)
(Clear blue sky, but not for long.........)
The London weather is really crazy. It can be clear blue sky 1 minute, and then dark grey clouds the next, and heavy showers following that. and clear blue sky again after 10min of rain.
(Ana Ivanovic on the left)
(Amelie Mauresmo and Nicole Vaidisova coming out after a rain break. I was sitting 10 rows from the front!)
(Centre Court with the covers on for rain)
The crowd was quite funny. As the crowd was bored, and we wanted to chase the rain and cloud away, we did this:
Actually this is not so funny. the funnier one is wave created with umbrellas. That one is really funny.. but i dunno why I just can't get the clip to be loaded up onto youtube, despite trying for the last 3 days! :(
(Me and hui shi)
(Andy Roddick)
The only match that we watched in full was the match between Vaidisova and Mauresmo. Mauresmo was the fav to win. But Vaidisova played really well, and she won! I was cheering for her.. hee.. coz not really a fan of Mauresmo. It was exciting.. but the men's match was even more exciting! But i only watched the first set. Because due to rain delay, the officials decided to change the 3rd match at centre court between sharapova and venus williams to Court 3!! Hmph!!! One of my main intention was to watch this match and they changed to court 3?! Where people who only pay for ground pass of £16 can watch also lor...... so I cheong out to court 3 after 1 set of roddick's match to go catch a glimpse of sharapova and williams.
I managed to get a good standing spot, thinking that when sharapova comes to my side to serve, I can have a good view.
(Maria sharapova vs Venus williams)
But, before she switched side, it rained! :( the score was 30-15 in venus' favour.
(Court 3 and other outside courts with the covers on)
It was so chaotic when it rained. The rain for that time was the heaviest. And alot of people left. But, we stayed on after a steward told us that rain is expected to stop after 20min. Have Faith. This was a phrase which we kept telling ourselves. Have Faith. So we stayed. And the rain did stop! Centre Court resumed play. But we were at Court 3. Because we managed to get a seat in Court 3 and didn't wanna give that up because court 3 was unreserved while we have a reserved seat at Centre Court. The covers came off. But the court was too wet. And then it rained again! Sigh.. so all play on outside courts were finally suspended for the day. Sianz.......... score was 30-15 :(
The times of waiting for the rain to go away was really sad. It's just waiting and waiting. And we hanged on.. Have Faith. We decided to give up totally only when it was announced that all play for the day is suspended. Sigh.. so that marks the end of my Wimbledon adventure.
(Sun set at Clapham Junction train station)
(Some momento - the yellow bino was a free gift when we bought newspapers at 45p; the tennis ball was one of the practise balls used by Jankovic.. we stole it! haha.. and stickers to show that we queued for Wimbledon 2007; my blue wrist band and tix to centre court)
But I'll definitely be back. The rain will not deter me.. Quite sad though.. Everyone was saying there had never been anything like that (the rain) in Wimbledon's history. But like what Sharapova said, "The rain comes with Wimbledon. I mean, some years are going to be better than others. Unfortunately, this was a year where there was more rain than others. But, I mean, it's bound to happen sometime. It can only get better from this year, right?"
Right. At least I managed to catch some exciting matches and enjoyed myself! Yay!!!
1 week to the 2nd anniversary of the 7/7 London bombing incident, and the terrorists have striked again. Piccadilly and Glasgow Airport. Back home, we used to think that this kind of thing will never happen to us. But now here, we have to think twice.
Yesterday on my way home, I noticed that there was suddenly more policemen patrolling at the Euston train station. Due to the early morning incident at Piccadilly, I'm sure.
Don't worry, I'm safe. Been at home the whole day hoping to catch some action of Wimbledon. But the rain spoiled it. Although Sharapova did manage to play in between the rain and win her match.
"Hope the rain did not spoil your day. Well, it didn't. It merely ruined it. " - quote from one of the BBC guys on a Wimbledon tv telecast. I actually laughed when I saw the expression on the guy's face.
