KL

summer time is wedding time and once back in singers, i hunkered down to my elective before realising that NGO work meant i'd to work weekends too. tell a lie, the NGO was great and non pushy / demanding but i was so keen i just didn't want to stop doing work for them. ended up biting off more than i could chew and over-committing, then not wanting to drop all the balls worked harder than i'd in some time. to which my darling sister commented that she's never seen me so busy, not even when i was a pupil. why, thanks.... but overtime was a means to an end and i managed to take work to KL (augh, oh no, morphing into one of those martyrs who humblebrags about work!!!) to attend a dear friend's wedding. was flattered to be one of two (!!!) friends at the wedding, because it was a small family affair. hopping across the causeway to KL also was an excuse to visit J and A. we met in stockholm in 2009 (!!!) and have had almost annual check ins, with J and her family graciously hosting me in aix over two summers, A and J hosting me in perth, they came to singers for our wedding celebration, A was in london last winter and they were coming to singers J's folks the week after. delighted to have had more time with them this summer and ever grateful for friends and friendships that grow with me. 

they knew all the good local haunts and i'm well impressed by their culinary sense of adventure. much braver than i'll ever be if the roles were reversed. they also very very kindly put me up in a swish hotel (!!!) because they wouldnt' hear of me crashing on their sofa. absolutely unnecessary but much appreciated and i did end up spending lots of time on their sofa, just not actually sleeping! 

cracking view from their apartment by day and by night

indulgence at the mandarin oriental. big fish in not so small pond! that tuna did not die in vain.

LA

 

lovely to build up to the wedding with a week of beautiful drives. the venue was stunning and our gracious host had arranged for us to stay at the beverly*hills hotel. have a friend who'd been previously and alleged that it was infamous for illicit liaisons! suppose this was back in the day before cheating websites etc became mainstream. so said friend spent a night there with his wife and realised after checking out that he'd left something behind. as he was driving, his wife rang the hotel but they denied he ever stayed there. then he rang and they still refused to give away any information. so it was only when he turned the car round and drove all the way back to the hotel that he was able to retrieve his lost item. now i'm more curious about what this item was! but so seriously do they take privacy (confidentiality) that i made a mental note to recommend it to people needing cover. oh! no photos allowed either! sign saying no piccie by the pool etc. i'm more afraid of my stretch marks being immortalised on social media but hey, suppose it could always be evidence for naming a co-defendant in a matrimonial hearing....

on that note - the wedding! beautiful set up in the nearby greystone (?) manor. all very english! vows and reception on day 1, followed by wedding dinner at the b*hill hotel ballroom the next day.

watching the sun set over LA while secondhand smoking on the terrace was the perfect end to the evening.

yosemite

felt it was a little over-ambitious to head inland from the coast but was overruled. not a huge fan of the outdoors but wilderness medicine has changed me so yosemite did not prove as unattractive as it might've a few years ago. i also have wilderness medicine, well, medicine in general, to thank for quickly diagnosing lyme disease. what a walking cliche, right? when one spies an MCQ question that talks about yosemite, the answer is always lyme disease. in fact, when i told medic friends that i was going to / had just been to yosemite, the inevitable question was did you get lyme disease? and the unfortunate answer was yes. wish i was making it up but despite adequate cover and bite protection, a deer tick managed to make its way to me. 

and while i was initially laughing at the bite, a facetime consultation proved otherwise and was told in no uncertain terms to get the appropriate antibiotics stat. was in denial that night but come morning the tell-tale bulls eye pattern developed and i'd to eat my words (and pop those pills). thankful to travel with a pharmacy but do think, again, uhmurikan paranoia would've made it easy to obtain abx over the counter if necessary. dodged a bullet there and early identification and treatment is really the best management. funny story - marked the erythema (redness and swelling) with a pen and used it as an excuse to prance around in daisy dukes, only to have people say it was a  cool tat. thaaanks. was also mistaken for a minor on the plane ride home (LA to tokyo) but i blame the lack of clothing and general calafare attitude.

was yosemite worth the lyme disease? maybe. it was pretty but trees and more trees did get boring after a while.

cottage was pretty sweet though!

monterey breakfast

hot crumpets slathered with butter and jam, hot breakfast egg souffle (casserole?) of cheese and yummy goodness and not having to be sociable by sitting with the cool kids in the big dining room. al fresco breakfast? winning. just lacking bubbles to turn the OJ into a mimosa.

monterey

carmel by the sea is famous because clint eastwood used to be mayor, and there's an old car show every summer. we didn't see either. but there's a book with 1001 things to do before you die and while i dislike prescriptive things that make me FOMO for not ticking off items on that list, this was a pretty solid recommendation. the b&b was charming and the nice man let us stick our noses into all the rooms before the other guests checked in. teehee! be still my beating heart. also thought it funny to leave england and then stay in an english-styled b&b. just saying. novelty lost on me! 

it was all wonderfully civilised and at 3pm (4pm?) there was complimentary tea in the lounge with free flow local wines and port, freshly baked cookies, cheese, crackers and dips. highlight of the stay! tough fight with the well appointed rooms, and the hot breakfast the next morning.

big sur

so this post isn't really about big sur but about the tree house we stayed in. 

i mean, with blues and views like that, who would ever want to leave. although we did go to the nepenthe for dins on the recommendation of a nice lady in the deli queue. stopped for breakfast soon after leaving frisco (cannot go far on empty stomach!) and uhmurikans, god bless them, don't stop talking. must've had "friendly tourist" scrawled across my forehead and my morning face didn't put her off. she asked lots of questions (where you from, what do you do, where are you going, oh you must definitely go to...) and twisted my arm into going to nepenthe. realise that's just the culture and tried not to get overly affronted. turned out, nepenthe had rave reviews and was actually excellent because lovely as the treehouse was, the food was exorbitantly priced. they also did stock the inroom fridge with tons of local food products like hummus and flatbreads and cheese and dips and dried fruit and milk and chocolate so really could've subsisted on fridge freebies but was itchy to drive and explore the great beyond. so nepenthe it was. waited half hour for table but nursed drinks and soaked in the beauty of the mountain range. forgot how massive uhmurikan portions were and struggled to finish it ! first world problems.

frisco and big sur

there was some flight drama that i don't really want to re-live, suffice to say that booking a transatlantic flight during a harried lunch break on a busy acute medical unit was not my brightest of moves. thankfully, minimal damage done and after exhausting my powers of persuasion, managed to wrangle an acceptable compromise. one-stop flight changed to direct flight and credit for my next visit stateside. hm. could be worse! when i landed in frisco, went straight to the airport hotel and walk along the beach to clear my head. 

set off bright and early the next day and took the coastal drive south. big sur was beautiful, to say the least, and the wonders of social media is realising that an old friend was in the area (ok, 6h away in venice beach) but we penciled in breakfast at the beverly hills hotel for after the wedding. score! yay for friends who reach out and make time to be present.

crash landing to reality

oh, hello. thanks for stopping by. have been admittedly errant in not updating this little space. it's been a busy summer and it's been nice to take a step back and let life sweep me away. melodrama aside, fortunate to have spent time in both homes (london and singers) and quite accidentally circumnavigate the globe. was in london for the first half of my elective and singers for the rest of it. and in a vain attempt to console myself that unlike my less encumbered classmates who were spending their electives sipping rum on the beach in aruba, i thought i'd squeeze in some travel. a family friend was tying the knot in beverly hills and that was all the excuse i needed to hop over to the west coast. flew from london to frisco then roadtripped down the coast (big sur oi oi!) before breaking inland to yosemite, because, well, why not then back out to the coast towards LA (and beverly hills). had a funny moment at immigration when filling in the form and realising i knew the postcode (zip code haha) for the beverly hills hotel. grew up in the '90s, guilty as charged. although a much older friend also knew the post code so i think someone's development was arrested but let's not point fingers now. 

after the wedding, flew east and over to singers via tokyo before going from singers to london at the tail end of my pseudo summer break. round the world in (not quite) 80 days!

have been posting sporadically on fb, more for my benefit and memory than anything else (contrary to popular belief, the highlight reel that is fb is ALL FILTERED AND FOR SHOW). so no, real life is far from as glamorous or glossy as it may seem. bumped into K a few days ago, on a day where i was organising my closet by colour, and reminded her that hermetic days where i regress into OCDed strangeling is as representative of this funny existence as the holidaying may be. will be posting photos and thoughts over the next few days. in desperate need of post-processing as i started final year (!!!) last week and feel i can't quite move on mentally and ready myself for the onslaught that is finals prep if i haven't categorised the simmering maelstrom of thoughts and feels from the blissful interim between third and final year. fourth year, oh ya, was truly get out of jail. 

so do check back if you'd like to read :) thanks for hanging around and bearing with me while i made repeated forays into the real world X