first hotpot of the season

the weather is turning and not like i needed an excuse to do hotpot ! steamboat, shabu shabu, call it what you will. tried to explain it as 'chinese fondue' (ugh, why isn't fondue 'swiss steamboat'?!) but didn't really need much explaining as G&T are incredible foodies. in our pre-medicine lives, G has multiple degrees and was an engineer/quantity surveyor while T taught english in korea and japan. in fact, his palate is more azn than mine, and his spice tolerance puts me to shame. 

i'm a sentimental sap and it's been about four years since we first met as not-so-fresh freshies. it's been a busy start to final year but incredible to still have them. will be the first to admit i'm only tolerable in small doses, hence sustaining relatively long-term friendships is such a bonus!). we're all over the place, T is an hour's drive away, G lives locally but is at a hospital further out and i keep quiet about being a 5min walk from my base. can't get over the spontaneity of this evening - G and i had been planning a girly night in after a long labour ward shift (her) and a whole day of neonates (me). T had been talking about visiting us at some point before christmas but who'd have known the stars would align for a cheeky school night dins! thought it a long shot but sounded him out and he was up for the drive in (and back :(). whoop :) 

the last time the three of us were same place same time was for general medical council registration before summer! before elective! and i hate to think how it'll be some time yet before we meet again. before i get all melodramatic, medsch's been good in a large part thanks to the both of them always being there to talk me off the ledge, to know they've got my back and are always just an anguished text away.

wild sheep chase

am always up for a bit of weekend adventuring and jumped at the chance to go a'exploring. did want to sleep in too, especially with the clocks going backwards hehe so planned for a relatively late (read: civilised) start. there was a patient tip off about a stately home with walled garden and i was the incompetent navigator who cannot read a map. went way off course (GPS doesnt' work in the country, i'm afraid, and the OS map was wonderful, pity i couldn't make sense of it!) but turned that to our advantage by going trainspotting before re-routing. i mean, who even has an OS map nowadays? nerd alert... did eventually make it to stately home but alas the entry fee was prohibitive and i'm way too cheap to spend £12 on entry, much rather eat my £££ instead of paying to get in only to spend more money at the cafe. it was also rammed at 3pm and uh if it gets dark at 4pm i'm not gonna get much outta the visit, no? did get a little hangry and set off in search of sustenance. there was talk of a cute village farm shop but not much of a recollection, apart from it being near a roundabout. which obviously led to a grand tour of the neighbouring villages but eventually made it in time for last order for sunday dinners, and sort of got quarantined in the late lunch section, separated from all the tea sipping ladies in the parlour. oops.

trainspotting was fun, didn't see a train, was too cold and miserable haha but with views like that, who's complaining.

frieze

am far from cultured and am scared to purport to be. but was at our usual hole in the wall japanese one night when the proprietor who's since become a friend rather conspiratorially asked if we'd like to go to the frieze. capable of feigning a vague interest in art sale, jumped at the chance because they were the good tickets and i'm a cheap date that way. wasn't disappointed, but ended up enjoying people watching more than the actual art because the crowd was so hip they hurt, all artsy types dressed to the nines and making fashion statements left right and centre, if you get what i mean. 

am also a big fan of petersham nurseries and they'd a pop up so after a quick recce round the exhibition, we settled down at the cafe and drank till dinner time. more degenerate than classy! funny story there - dear friend we were meeting for brunch the next day happened to be at the frieze on a partially-successful second date so it was handy being nearby as her get-outta-jail excuse, albeit one she didn't need to deploy. 

paeds

paeds has been a busy rotation and reinforces my view on children. not a fan but for some reason they take to me. which's great because it makes life just that bit easier when there are 15h days to look forward to. when the going gets tough, i remind myself that the alternative i.e. a 15h day at a law firm is way worse, and i signed up for this. which is always a mood lifter because, really, i told myself once upon a time that if i was going to be awake at 5am and running on little to no sleep, i better be trying to save a life. 

it's not been vaguely as heroic i make it sound in my head but paed a&e has been exhilarating and exhausting in equal part. really enjoyed my time on NICU/PICU at great*ormond earlier this year and to be back in acute paeds has been fun. maintain that i'm better with sick babies than well ones, although my very fertile friends don't seem to mind. it's far from original to whinge that it's the parents who put me off paeds and to stay well clear of the potential GMC minefield that is the lovely topic of patient confidentiality, i think being a parent can bring out the worst in people and i've met some real monsters of late. parenthood seems to lends itself quite conveniently to an unprecedented sense of entitlement and of course most of them mean well and have their child's best interest at heart. but honestly? insisting your child has (insert dreaded childhood illness) when they don't and throwing hissy fits at the medical team is really in nobody's best interests. of course these are the very same parents who don't need any encouragement later selling some twisted story to the dailym*il. 

but hey, what do i know. parents, ugh.

rant aside, enjoying getting stuck in and being part of the a&e team, clerking patients and presenting during senior review, formulating management plans etc. feels like being a real doctor, much like how it was in primary care when i did parallel surgeries and literally ran my own clinic, with supervisor popping in to approve / overhaul my plans at the end of each consult. baby steps but do feel i'm inching towards the finish line :)

neighbours

now i've very little to say publicly about the country across the causeway but they do cook excellent food. there's always been a little m-restaurant hidey hole near my flat and deprived, homesick students used to frequent it for nasi lemak. it's since been renamed and possibly rebranded because it purports to be a fusion-bistro now, all very nouveau cuisine-esque but hey, as long as it serves up butter squid that looks like that, gives me my student discount and warms the belly, who am i to complain.

quite embarrassingly did take away from there two days in a row over the weekend, possibly burning through our unborn children's inheritance because, gosh, for a low key low rent sort of place they charge a pretty penny! and why twice in as many days? because the mister was having none of the fancy schmancy this amazing city has to offer. oh bless my chinaman-at-heart. met wilson from miri at the restaurant (he's an urban planning undergrad) and proceeded to score (i hope) brownie points by pointing out that my husband's 'from kuching' (he isn't, but whenever i try to play up the maraysian connection it irks him so i persist teehee).

tea and sympathy

it's like that HIMYM episode 'autumn of breakups'. love my girlfriends to bits and try to give as good as i get. they're always just a text away and there have been more times than i care to admit when i've gone running to them for a shoulder to cry on. thankful most times it's just me 'having kittens' over something small and insignificant, sparing the mister who would be in the middle of a big meeting that i don't want to distract him from. also i think the sort of things that stress girls out are different from what stress boys? like i'd tell the mister something and he'd be nonplussed but i'd tell a girlfriend who'd proceed to sympathy freak-out with me, you know? 

anyhoos it was time to pay that back over the last few days with a couple of girlfriends going through rough patches. without going into the gory details, i'm amazed at how some men can be so thick, to not realise what a catch they have, to not value and cherish said catch and instead behave in completely irredeemable ways!!! like 'you've gotta be kidding if you think you're ever going to come back from saying something like that!" and i'm pleased i've girlfriends who don't put up with nonsense because they've more pride than to take it if someone is being unkind to them. fundamental, isn't it? but easier said than done. break ups are best amicable and in person, something akin to 'have a nice life' over text just shows what a degenerate someone is. i told the mister about that and he said it was a break up text but it was my turn to be too thick to realise it was. also think break ups aren't always sad - like instead of tea and sympathy it was actually liberation and we were celebrating her newfound freedom and release. but they're not always clean breaks, are they.

boozy brunch

blessed to have good friends in londontown, fellow sg transplants who have found their way over about the same time we did. well, M, anyway :) K is an old friend and part of the inner circ in sg, have fond memories of him counting teeth (literally) in the law library while i was in the throes of first year, and he's been a constant part of our life. one of the few friends who came all the way to iceland to be with us as we tied the knot. the mister and i both tried to claim his as 'ours' but he remained in joint custody. so needless to say we were thrilled when he moved to london to do a masters in orthodontics, super accelerated after having worked in sg for a year (?) when most of his classmates had years of experience under their dental scrubs. and the irony is despite living in the same city, we're hardly around at the same time.  

it was great to pencil in date a few weeks in advance and finally catch up at the very ambitious time of 11am on a sunday. the two singletons obviously having much wilder saturday nights than we did! our first choice only opened at noon so we went where M hosted her birthday brunch and were really impressed. M has amazing taste so it's no surprise there. lovely interiors, felt like a grown up NY apartment which was probably the aesthetic they were going for, and excellent food. we were too early for the sunday roast but too hungry to wait so settled for the next greasiest thing on the menu (steak and eggs!). 

funny story there - K's came with two sunny side ups as per menu instructions but the mister and i had one each! asked the waitress whether we'd angered her / the chef in some way (haha) or just not been charming enough because K has his way with women when he turns it on. we did eventually get our eggs (hmph!) then they'd the cheek to charge (???!) so we quibbled that, and M's side of bacon never arrived but we were charged for that too. always check your bill, people! and then it took a good 20min to get the corrected bill and the card machine almost never arrived. little things like that i felt they could be better about, and slightly snotty service like the bartender (i think he was!) sniffing, 'i don't take orders, let me get a waiter' which really wasn't nice. and the wine was rubbish but that's K's fault for being a cheapo alkie and wanting the cheapest white. ugh. now i've nothing against cheap but it has to be good value and this wasn't.

m&s

how inviting is that bed display? made me want to dive bomb off the escalator and probably would've if the mister hadn't restrained me.

chai

am a big fan of masala chai and was lucky to stumble upon this little hidey hole tea shop that serves the best masala chai out of india. and believe you me, i've tried it in as many places as possible! also begs the question why i've not been back since end of first year exams. knowing my luck it's probably from a pre-mix but i'm enamoured by it all the same. met a girlfriend for coffee (well, tea) and she happened to bring her boif cos the rugby was in town, and the mister was at a pub nearby watching the game so when her boif left the mister came by and we sort of swapped one for the other without really getting a girly chinwag in. but no complaints because, really, men! can't live with them can't live without :) they're a lovely pair and we'd a fun time together in singers over summer while they were traipsing the region. always somewhat disconcerting when my worlds collide, like when my uk friends find themselves in singers. maybe that's the beauty of a double life that straddles two continents but i'm still trying to get my head round it.

b

had been before with a friend but left unimpressed and didn't think to return. not a reflection on the company, at all, who was ever delightful. so it's been literally a year since and thought to give it another chance as the weather was nice and as the days grow shorter there isn't much time left for roof terraces. shared four starters and split a rib eye for our main. the italian cheapie wine was surprisingly tasty and bang for buck, although i only got a small glass. that's the bad thing about me and red meat, desperately need to wash it down with a hearty red. i mean, if one's being liberal with carcinogens might's well go the whole hog :P

planning ahead

 

so i'm a little parsimonious when it comes to oven usage, as if it's hard-wired in me. the mister occasionally teases me about having a poverty mindset, like i need to be more comfortable spending. baby steps and i'll get there but for now when i use the oven for one thing, it better be rammed full of other things and multi-purpose it to an inch of its existence. which's probably how i ended up with enough roasted veg to feed the 5000. roasted a chicken that was meant to be a week's worth of packed lunches and threw in the veg, before realising at the end of it that i had insufficient storage and fridge space for the rest of it. oops! thought to blitz the veg to make a thick roasted veg soup and it turned out better than expected. roasted carrots, celery and sweet peppers. that's going to make things interesting at lunch when i'm picking at dry chicken breasts :( 

fajitas

mondays aren't as hard as they were when i worked in a law firm. and i maintain that if mondays are consistently hard / blue-sy then one's in the wrong line. easy for me to say and don't mean to be smug about it but it's true! don't like waking early but once i get going, it's pretty exciting. another week, another adventure. thrilled to be where i want to be, doing what i want to do and feel incredibly fortunate to have that sort of job satisfaction. would recommend it to anyone, any time. but there are days when it's tiring, it's so human to be tired, isn't it. and it was lovely to be able to go round C's for fajitas. we joked that it was a cultural experience, and maybe it was. my first fajitas (deprived, i know!) and hopefully not the last.

sunday strolling

it's been pretty full on the last few weeks but did manage to squeeze in a stroll. one of the areas i want to be better in is exercise and discipline, something i was quite enthusiastic about after hepatology placement at st mary's earlier this year. the consultants were advising all their patients in fatty liver clinic to do 30min brisk exercise 5 times a week and yes while i like to think i'm far from fatty liver (hoho, one never knows!) it's a good rule of thumb. also met a senior reg with three young children who's working and doing her masters (!!!) who told me she gets an hour of exercise in every day if not she'd go crazy. now if someone like that who's juggling so many balls can find time to exercise, i've no excuses. again, easier said than done, but baby steps and i find brisk walking helps. it's nothing earth shattering but incorporating exercise into my daily routine seems easier than carving out time to pound the pavement. so i walk everywhere as far as possible. couldn't believe it when i could walk to work at the marsden for a few months this year, and then i got lazy and bought a travelcard for the other postings that were slightly further afield (GOS and st mary's) but oh well! 

there were cute stone lions by this that i took for my dear friend C who's just birthed the sweetest little spirit named leo

and some autumn colours - yaY!

indian summer

it's been one of the wettest summers and i feel like such a local obsessing over the weather. hadn't realised just how weather-dependent my mood and activities have become. am often reminded of the nice italian man at the deli down the road who told me not to stress about things beyond my control. easier said than done! love the cows (coos) on the moor and even though the poop everywhere and get in my way it feels like i'm the one imposing on their land. the swans are cute too and i find it adorable how they bury their heads in their feathers and sleep on dry land.

that's the bridge to the moor and i feel a sense of schaudenfreude every time i look over to the motorway and clock the traffic jam, when i'm on foot and not stuck behind a row of cars. 

ferry fun

it'd been a rough week. then again, the weeks usually are. started GP rotation and was feeling overwhelmed and out of my depth. nothing to do with the practice, that's been nothing but warm and welcoming, with great mentors who encourage and are patient with me and my multiple shortcomings. but it's first day (week?) jitters and i was being weaksauce. had anticipated more sociable hours after coming from women's health but oh no, ended up doing longer hours in GPland (?!). can't complain really because been fortunate to luck out with a practice near home and not spending hours commuting like friends who've found themselves assigned to practices in the middle of nowhere. and while it's a big-ish practice, it feels like one big happy family with each partner bringing something different to the table. great array of styles etc and their combined life experience is truly fascinating. that's something one of them shared about a vocation like medicine - it's not about age but what one has done before and what one brings with them. lots of honest, open bants and i appreciate the frankness and humility. they very quickly sussed out that i'd done something before and treated me like an equal from the get go, talking about family and relationships, the demands of the job and other fascinatingly grown up conversation that i've not always had. sometimes i don't like saying i'm older etc because expectations increase and i feel i disappoint people by not being as smart as they assume i'd be, but this was different and fun and i really like my temporary GP family.

but it was a long week and i needed a pick me up. actually, i always need a pick me up haha. there's a handy little ferry (random! i know!) and at the end of said ferry is a row of curry shops called curry mile. now i don't know about you but perfect autumn day, salty sea air and a curry to top it all is sort of my idea of sheer indulgence. was like a kid in a candyshoppe on the ferry because i like boats and all things nautical, islander heritage never far away haha, and just scampered to the top deck in wide eyed wonder. too easily pleased :)

weekend breather

stumbled upon this cute little cafe and went twice in as many days. sometimes the need for novelty is less and i'm happy with repeats while other times i'm adamant about not going back because the world is so big and there's so much else to see. it had cute fixtures like cinema seats in place of chairs and fairy lights, which i'm partial to. also conveniently located next to an oxfam where i spied these framed prints going for £5 each. i liked the one of the girly about to hurl herself off the rocks. no suicidal ideation here, no worries, but it reminded me of sappho and the island of lesbos. again, no homosexual ideation nor homophobia here...

there was also a lovely cow on the moor when i went for a walk and it got bit too close for comfort! sad when the cows go though because one just knows they're headed to the big burger heaven in the sky. then again, they're happy healthy and free range on the moor so it's cold comfort that they had a good life and were well treated. had an interesting discussion about animal rearing with one of the consultant obstetricians who has lots of birds at home. he's growing turkeys for christmas and was telling me how he kills them. fascinating stuff and the registrar and i were intrigued by the various egg selling regulations in place, how he's lost many a chicken to the fox and remains sympathetic to them. says they probably kill more than they need to store for winter but get disturbed halfway so looks like they massacre for fun but actually misunderstood and interrupted before able to complete their tasks. makes for a fun morning on call in the doctors' office!

made a batch of broccoli soup that looked like oscar the grouch had a blender accident. 

and more evening strolls to look at the swans because i was in a reflective mood and needing to post-process after work.

providore

it's more famous for its coffee? or so i was told when we went by ages ago in the afternoon for a cuppa. was a little apprehensive about brunch as it seemed too hipster a menu for my liking. recommendation from one of the mister's londoner friends (haha funny how i refuse to identify as such!) but thought to go with an open mind because i'm really at risk of becoming a boring old stick in the mud. had hard-to-please guests with us so i was a little nervous that they'd not like it. also because they'd expressly expressed a preference for sunday roast but the mister and i were being unobliging. there's only so much bossiness one can take, you know? thankful the mister had the foresight to book because the place was packed and we smugly made our way upstairs to the section with tablecloths. said guests have a way of checking their brains at the door and asking me to order for them, not that i mind because my inner control freak not-so-secretly loves being given free rein. so i ordered what i thought they'd like, and they did. the turkish eggs were yummy, as was the chorizo hash (?) mash? can't remember. photographed well, if i may say so myself. pretty efficient service, clearly wanting to turn the tables over and there was a long queue so not the most relaxing of meals but hey.

already at marylebone, we worked off brunch (haha, who are we kidding) by walking to primrose hill. did take forever with guests stopping at every shop along marylebone high street and believe you me there were plenty. then may have been some stamping of feet and gnashing of teeth but we did make it up the hill, unlike the grand old duke of york, and rewarded ourselves with crepes and coffee at the bottom.