a day by the beach

bought a day pass to get to the city from the airport and figured we may as well make a day trip to the beach while we had it. funny story - so near yet so far. always known it's there, even been to the 'hood a few times for to visit a patient but never got so far as to the water. props to my fantastic friends who gave me the low down on how to get there and what to do. would've been so lost without their tips! 

the first thing we did was to eschew the village chippy and re-fuel at the best pub. scampi, chips and peas for GBP1.99?! are you kidding meee??? what i love about this place is just how warm and welcoming the locals are. the three and a half men at the next table were quick to engage us in some intellectual banter, and sweet talked me into teaching their eight year old some chinese. smart kid could already write 1-10 and soon figured out how to go from 1-100. they were friendly without being intrusive, and the moment our food arrived, they left us to it. people aren't this nice to me when i'm on my own haha. it has to be the manfriend's countenance!

went exploring on full bellies and soon found ourselves at the coolest beach bar. we braved the winds and sat on the terrace with cupcakes and hot chocolate, watching the lone surfer try to stand up, and the dogs chasing balls in the sand.

now the dust has settled

it's back to work. was rushing to meet a deadline but thankfully didn't take as long as anticipated. i hate last nights. it's always so anti-climatic. like everything i'd been looking for was over, just like that. having spent a good 2+ years of our 4.5 together apart, you get used to the separation. it's feast/famine, really. i don't see him for weeks, and then suddenly i've him all to myself for a few days. if nothing else, it's taught me to be present, to be 100% there mentally when we're finally at the same place at the same time. and i appreciate every moment. there's no taking him for granted because time with him is paramount and everything else takes a back seat. it's not as if when we're apart life is all that unbearable. far from! was recruited for a random study a few weeks ago and one of the questions was "on a scale of 0-100, how happy are you?" my 95 surprised even myself, and i realised that he nudges that 95 to 100.

getting back into the swing of things after that untimely self-declared holiday. unsurprisingly, also in need of a good detox, having eaten waayyy too much for my own good and downing a bottle of wine with every meal. while i'm mega grateful to have been spared the usual squalor of student living, i'm starting to feel the effects of the binge. easily ate what i usually do in a day just for breakfast. and carbo-loaded at lunch and dinner. we had bottles of bubbly and red every night and my liver needs a break.

thank God i'll see him in exactly a month over easter break, and he relocates for good in april. can't wait to kiss long distance goodbye. 

in the spirit of eating, drinking and making merry, will post daily about how we spent his flying visit. do check back if you'd like to see :)

organised

 

(via weheartit)

in eager anticipation of the manfriend's visit, i've sent him a wishlist of every single cafe and restaurant i'd like to go to when he's here. and one of the manfriend's many strengths is his supreme organisational skills. should've known that he already had a list of his own and when our lists combined, wow wee, gastronomical highlights of this not-so-small city. excited to eat my way through with him. somehow cafes aren't half as fun with anyone else and if i'd a penny for every time i passed something and wished he was with me right then and there so we could stop for some tea and cake, i'd be shopping at waitrose instead of tesco's...

he'll book one or two restaurants, but freestyle the rest. much as i enjoy the delicious anticipation of a good meal, don't want to swing the extreme and be hampered by reservations. we've a nice little routine worked out. he catches up on his zz while i'm in class but we'll spend every meal time together. it tickles me how despite the 8h time difference, we still go to bed at the same time. go figure. and despite knowing when his last day at the firm is, this is one sheep they're not putting in the pasture just yet. growl. have also made a list of things to see around the city together and to his delight, many of them involve being outside. side effect of that persistent wilderness bug i can't seem to shake. looking forward to walking the bridges, ambling around a moor or two and making the most of the many many parks. 

most excitedly, we'll be revising our guest list and sending out the beyoootifulll save the date his sister (lawyer-turned-graphic designer teehee) created for us. many posts ago, i said that he's doing everything for the wedding. and truly he has, going so far as to pick my shoes, leaving me with just the dress. ooh! pressure! cannot possibly mess up the one thing he's entrusted me now, can i. he does involve me and update me (i'm cc-ed on all the emails and boy were there a flurry!) but i'm so glad to be able to relinquish control of the wedding to the classiest person i know, with the most impeccable taste. possibly the only person on earth i trust more than i trust myself :) without going into too much detail, his new job meant that we'd to shift some dates around and find a new venue for our young people 'do. with just 3 months to go, this might've caused lesser mortal to shake in their shoes. but oh no, not the manfriend. undaunted, he did some research, found the perfect venue (EGGCITES!!!) and deftly bumped off a pre-existing booking. don't worry, no one was harmed in the process but it just made me go whoaaa at his negotiation skills, and a little weak at the knees. mad props to mr. makes-it-happen! and, he scored even more points for artfully evading a dongdongqiang kuching wedding. because, really, with three weddings in the pipeline, we didn't need a fourth.

ok! enough wedding fever and myboyfriendisbetterthanyours-talk. am refusing to think about how i'm going to spend the rest of my life paying for this. can just about picture it now.

"honey, i'm not (insert household chore). i planned the wedding, remember..."

this would also be an appropriate juncture to go on a week's hiatus. in lock down mode and won't be blogging till he goes home :(

really stupid things i occasionally do

i'm a self-confessed junk food addict. and i thought it was bad in singapore where i'd guzzle roller coaster rings, cheezels and cheese twisties with reckless abandon. don't get me started on super rings (oh those radioactively orange loops of yore) or keropok. when i went back to uni, i thought, "great. clean slate. no junk. my body is a temple...". this worked for all of three days, before i discovered the beauty of hula hoops (roller coaster rings incarnate) and quavers. did not help that i've a vending machine 50m from my front door. in stockholm it was a pizza shack. now, it's a cafe (with the most decadent chocolate cake...) and a vending machine. sigh. the fates conspire against me :(

to exacerbate matters, i realised that pound*land sells quavers for a quid. 7 bags of crunchy goodness for a quid?! my inner auntie was thrilled. little did i know that once i bought that first family pack, there was no turning back. what was initially intended for a week (hah! as if i'd self-restraint sufficient for a pack a day) disappeared before my very eyes in the matter of minutes. there you go folks, a whopping 7x88kcal in one sitting. incidentally, 800% my recommended daily salt intake and let's not venture into how much fat is in that. this, i confess with great shame, happened on more than one occasion. 

one fine day (actually, yesterday) i learnt that [Na+] (salt concentration, for the un-sciencey among you) controls the volume of water in our body. true enough, after my quaver binge (also as recent as yesterday :/) i drank so much water that i weighed 2kg heavier this morning, complete with quaver baby and popeye arms. am horrified by this revelation and have decided to cut additional salt out of my diet. thank goodness even with white coat hypertension, my bp just about hits 95/65mmHg. which also draws me to conclude that dietary salt intake has little bearing on blood pressure. in fact, over here, no one really knows the correlation between salt and blood pressure, or so it seems. have long been resigned to the fact that i might not have the fastest metabolic rate but i'm incredibly grateful for perfect eyesight (parents say i don't study enough), naturally straight teeth (score! no metal mouth) and low blood pressure + heart rate (50bpm ^^). win big, lose small? great if i were ever in a famine, not so great when there's a wedding dress to fit in a mere three months. butbutbut positive thinking, yo. even as i struggle into my skinnies.

that's specific

one of the funnier searches i've seen!

if you missed it, the post in question is over here.

industry

buckled down this weekend to get some work out of the way in anticipation of the manfriend's visit. not going to bore you with the inane details but it just occurred to me that i spent a good 15 (wo)man hours on a piddly 1250 word research essay. yeah. not my most efficient of moments. medical research is so much harder than legal research :( thankfully, the papers are a lot shorter, averaging 7 pages apiece? teehee. and oh joy! there's a 5000 word whopper of report to write on our year long study. mumble grumble. the good news? i'm almost done with both (they're only due in a month anyway), which heralds the end of the first year written assignments, leaving just the OSCE and finals in late may. time is passing so quickly it scares me. done with first year of medsch? already? didn't i just get here?! 

had a quiet weekend in but with some bright spots! can't go wrong with a big (personal) bowl of chiggen wings and soggy fries at the local. plus a surprise visitor landed on my doorstep this afternoon like a breath of fresh air, just as i was about to start speaking to my laptop in menacing tones... drinking hot chocolate like water because i'm constantly reminded that the brain is an obligate glucose user. or so i justify my binge anyway.

one last push tonight to finish the assignments and it's home free into a switched off week. 

routine

one of the funny things about cooking for myself is that i'm quite happy to eat the same thing day in and day out for about a fortnight. and then i go off it. appreciate structure and routine, and little daily rituals to look forward to. like breakfast! i go to bed dreaming about my breakfast. is that so wrong? most times, it involves lots of peanut butter and chocolate. not the healthiest start to the day, but hey, sugar rush in the morning coaxes me out of the duvet. just re-discovered rice. have been off rice (jiak kantang to the highest order) but we just acquired a tiny rice cooker that i feel compelled to use. so it's been rice for lunch and dinner and lunch for the next week :) also feel compelled to use the blender that kind family friends gifted me with when i first got to london, so i've been blitzing all manner of vegetables to make pureed soups, much to my flatmates chagrin. sounds like a pneumatic drill in the kitchen but hey, i do it in the early afternoon, keep the blitzing to the minimum and am relatively considerate. if we were to split hairs, i'd argue that there is only ever about 2 x 5s blitzes. which is more than i can say about their parties...

hate to attribute it to age but i've been sleeping earlier and rising earlier. enjoy a slow start where i can take my time. so different from autumn term when i'd roll out of bed at half 8 and into the lecture theatre by 9. now i've got a nice little morning routine down pat, with a good 10minutes on my fit roller to roll out those aching shoulders from my inflatable mattress of dubious origin. i also have time to drink a windowsill cooled cup of tea, compared to when i'd make tea with half a cup of hot water followed by a blast of icy cold water so i could down it while rushing to uni.

i have the same sandwich from the deli every day (tuna melt, if you'd to know) and chase it with filter coffee. coffee is also a recently acquired taste, and it's largely because i'm peer pressured into drinking. usually, there's chocolate at the end of lunch but lately i find it gives me a horrible sugar crash just before my 3pm lecture. dinner is an omelette with a generous amount of cheddar cheese. gosh, i live on cheese here, going so far as to dump it into my soups. would be completely insatiated if i'd to subsist of vegetables alone. so much for being voluntarily vegan. have flatmates who aren't capable of keeping the fridge closed so i dare not have meat in the flat. it's a pain to prepare and clean up after, anyway, so i make do with eating as much meat as i can when i eat out.

spend wayyy too much time on google reader, and watching telly. embarrassingly addicted to coach trip and take me out, interspersed with big bang theory and how i met your mother reruns. i do study now and then but this is starting very strangely to feel like exchange all over again, when it really should not. having worked before, class 9am-5pm is practically a half day in comparison and i find i've oodles and oodles of time on my hands after school. there's so much time, and so little that really needs to be done. actively involved in three co-curricular activities and already spend a weekend or two away each month with wilderness*medicine. the other two do take up time but somehow there's still time left over. yay to what feels very much like a second childhood :)

cairngorms winter trip part 4

had an early start on sunday with some teaching then a scenario challenge! were dropped in the middle of a parking lot and had to navigate our way to our casualties. and boy, were they in big trouble with massive injuries after falling from trees.

S' happy dance after we fixed our casualties. oh if only it were that formulaic in real life :)

had to drive home all too soon but i'm already looking forward to the next weekend away :)

cairngorms winter trip part 3

had time to kill so we made a pitstop at the hilton pub because that's how wilderness*medics roll ;) after a quick drink, we visited the cairngorms mountain rescue centre where we learnt, among other things, that they were sponsored by the local brewery. and the local beer had the funniest name...

cairngorms winter trip part 2

after our lunch stop by the emerald lake, it was up up and away! we walked to the peak of sighiforgettthename which was 810m above sea level and a 14km walk in total. such an endorphin rush at the peak after hours of walking uphill...

cairngorms winter trip part 1

had the most wonderful weekend in the cairngorms. each time i return on a greater wilderness high than the last. quite amazing that the committee outdoes itself with each successive trip :) thank god for a warm winter. was secretly pleased that the north was not as bitterly cold as i'd anticipated. was toasty in my bunk, snug as a bug in a rug. the victorian villa was sheer luxury with its hot power showers. made my weekend! got my am/pm shower and was one very happy camper. the banter was, as usual, riveting and i've yet to come across another bunch of people as warm, inclusive and interesting as the wildernessmedics :) such a good call to join WM. 

left friday pm, stopped at a local chippy (my favourite!) en route for a greasy dinner. had chips, cheese and beans, the thought of which makes my mouth water even now :( "checked in" our victorian villa, on the nassim road of aviemore no less (!!!) and slept so well in the clean, crisp sheets. here's a photo of our villa in the day. villa photo credits to dan the official WM photographer. check out those blue skies!

day 1 - loch morelich

will continue the photo posts with how the fog came in fast and furious tomorrow ;)

last year

i pulled an all-nighter over valentine's day. i say this without any malice or regret. don't believe in vday, don't practice it either and there was work to be done. simple as that. but what i did enjoy was dinner with the manfriend. we were working at the same firm then and despite our general "no lunching" policy (more about that later!), we did manage to have the odd dinner or two together. and valentine's so happened to be one of them. we ambled down to l'operetta, one of our favourite places. rocked up so late that we didn't have appetite nor time for the elaborate set dinner but the a la carte pizza i ordered arrived in a heart shape. remember grumbling that it was smaller than if it had been round then having a good laugh about the cheesiness of the situation. the manfriend is one for elaborate, over the top romantic gestures, just not when everyone and their mother is being lomantic too. after dinner, it was back to the office but stolen minutes in between were nice. i call these our "bookmark dinners", for obvious reasons.

and about our loose "no lunching" policy, we didn't want to be that couple who's joint at the hip, each subsumed by the other. we agreed that lunch time was for friends, and dinner was for lovers. big believers in actively maintaining friendships and lunch was the catch up i'd look forward to every day. it's not like we went out of our way to avoid each other, it just so happened that we'd lunch with other people. so in the six months we were colleagues, we'd lunch together all of two times; once with friends and once when it was just us. this emotional low-maintenance is something that's served us well all these months long distance. 

that said, can't wait till he visits next week :)

why i requested graduate housing

despite being a graduate student, i was flatly denied graduate housing because i'm not old enough. apparently having a first degree counts for nothing in housingofficeland. sucked it up and living with five fresh(wo)men. shall leave the horror that is to your imagination. my room's great and the best in the building, if you ask me. optimum level - not too much of a walk up but still a safe distance from the drunken pedestrains who pass on the pavement. have the luxury of two windows and another in my en suite. but my flatmates... let's just say we co-exist at the best of times.

anyway, the funniest thing happened in the kitchen tonight.

white british flatmate #1: do any of you have any ethnicity in your blood?

white british flatmate #2: yeah! my mom's catholic!

do i really have to explain this to you? there are so many things wrong with that conversation i don't know where to begin.

allow me to add that white british flatmate #3 has a self-declared "international palate" for the sole reason that she drowns everything in sweet chilli sauce.

welcome to my world.

defensive mask-ing

ok so maybe i'm making a bigger deal out of this but have my masks at the ready for sunday night when we come back from the cairngorms. relieved it's not going to be too sunny out there - could've sworn i sprouted more freckles in swaledale :( a little apprehensive about the long drive. the roads have been crazy slippy of late and i learnt about black ice this morning, the hard way.

not such a rare breed after all

have the privilege of knowing a few doctors with law degrees. i.e they did their MBBS first and then an LLB/JD (in three years) a few years after. they're a wonderful bunch and i'm so glad to have gotten to know them just before leaving for the uk myself. even one of my closest friends here, a long-time family friend, is seriously considering doing a law degree after graduating from medsch this year. what i'd yet to come across, however, was someone else who had done law first and then a medical degree. 

turns out i didn't have to look very far. it was on one of the wilderness trips where i first met the lovely C from the year above, who had studied land economy at cambridge, went on to be a big four consultant and then came to medsch. and she in turn told me about a certain M who had done law, worked as a lawyer for a few years, before switching paths. but it was only a few trips later where i finally met M when his methodological, meticulous sandwich-making gave him away as a former solicitor. 

and M summed up why medicine so beautifully i cannot but help share.

"on a single day medicine popped into my head. i can't pretend it was a long held ambition; but it seemed to make sense as a high powered, demanding career, but with the strong people contact element missing from law." 

granted, M was a high-flying magic circle corporate lawyer inundated by paperwork of the same sort. quite possibly my idea of not-how-i-want-to-live. the rest of M's email is equally articulate and beautifully written but i'm afraid that's for the reserve.

whew

took a few days but they're finally opening up :) feel a wee cheated though! thought i bought stargazers. regular lilies remind me of funerals :( 

in unrelated news, i learnt that the uni owns a "victorian villa" in the cairngorms so we will not be sleeping in tents. this important bit of information brings me immense release. had no clue the uni was so old, and endowed. now i'm hoping said villa has hot running water and power showers because there is no way i'm going to dry shampoo my hair two days in a row, nor have a wet wipe wipe down in lieu of a bath.

in even more unrelated news, let's just say i love OSCEs and how it's possibly my favourite exam on earth. nothing like dispensing pretend medicine and playing along with the actors. had the cheekiest 27 year old male for the respiratory exam. think i blushed when i asked him to remove his shirt. and again when i had to put my hands all over his chest. ok, that's not why i enjoy OSCEs... but it was such a breeze and it makes me feel all tingly and, "YES THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO DO FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!!!" taking a patient history was awesome! again, it felt like i could do keep at it all day every day. and venepuncture went well! have since overcome my fear of needles :) seeing how this is the closest we get to being doctors at this stage, every little bit of confirmation / reaffirmation is good.

enjoying the present (and prospect of wednesday - done with classes at 1pm!) and looking forward to wilderness weekends away and the manfriend's visit. counting downnnn :)

still long D

with the other love of my life. too bad she can't move too :(

long D

besides myself with excitement that my birthday present will be on a plane to me!

hadn't realised that we've had the good fortune of seeing each other every month since dec 2011. had a month together mid-dec to mid-jan, he'll be up for a week over my birthday and come march i'm home for a fortnight. and, the best part is, in april... he relocates to london for good!

it's been so hard keeping it on the down low. we found out in early january and since then, all i've wanted to do was tell the whole world that it's byebye long distance and hello same postal code. having spent more than half of the (almost) five years we've been going out on separate continents, it's high time to kiss the LDR goodbye. 

plus his new job is only his dream job. yeah. no biggie. just so happens that he's being paid to do exactly what he's always wanted to do. didn't think an opportunity this golden would ever come along but wow. amen to supernatural acceleration and providence, an overnight answer to many months of prayer. amazing how things can change in an instant when you least expect it, truly "exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think" (ephesians 3:20) thank you God.

new year, new home base :)

for all of maybe 12 hours

we had snow. or frost that settled. well, it's all melted now. whew :) not a fan of snow and whoop whoop for temperatures above zero. it's the 15th day of chinese new year tomorrow so what's an overseas chinese to do but gather with fellow overseas chinese over pizza delivery and vino. not the most traditional of dinners but omgosh it's been too long since i last had pizza.

a little silly

but what if my stargazers don't bloom before i leave for the cairngorms?! :( 

anticipating that i'd soon run out of hat luck (wilderness trips are oversubscribed so they draw names from a hat, or so the story goes...) i bought the stargazers to brighten my room. they last about a fortnight and i wasn't sure if i'd be going away for the weekend. well the good news is i am! and the bad news is i'll miss 3 days of stargazer beautes. ok, so it is really silly to be held hostage by some bloomin' flowers but i paid for them and i feel compelled to maximise my utility.

and true to my napoleon complex (yes yes, the perils of not even hitting the 1.6m mark) i once again overestimated my hardiness. the warm kit list for the trip is already sending shivers down my spine. it calls for a sleeping mat and a thick sleeping bag, which implies sleeping on the ground in sub-zero temperatures. for two nights. oh joy.

redemption!

so i went on a bit about how my self-esteem took a beating after two failed cakes in rapid succession. the very same cake i'd said was dummy proof. should've known better than to tempt fate haha.

another birthday rolled round and this time, armed with 10m (yep, hardcore that way) of greaseproof paper i thought enough time had lapsed to give it another shot.

this time, i had ample vanilla frosting at the ready to patch up any baking boo boos. 

relieved it turned out presentable, and later tonight we'll find out if it's palatable as well. fingers crosssed!

trial run with the candles

then safe in recycled cookie tin for the walk

such a cliche but baking makes me happy :)

buds

while it's not getting any warmer, the days sure are getting longer. was pleasantly surprised it was still light out when i walked home at 5pm yesterday. and today, there were pale blue skies at 4ish and i couldn't help but stop and snap these pink blossoms on the way.

on a not entirely unrelated note, the flower vendors out of hibernation and i bought a bunch of stargazers from my regular shop. fresh flowers for my room are an indulgent reminder that i am, after all, an adult. despite being generally careful with the weekly expenditure (hey, the more money i save, the more wilderness trips i can go on!) i succumb every few weeks or so flowers to brighten up the space. winter was good for my bloom dependency, but now it looks like spring is on its way!