autumn

 

was walking home from a boozy brunch in the 'hood when i chanced upon this pretty sight. there's no real point to it, really, except to say that introverted as i can be, it's nice to be selectively social. hadn't seen this bunch since summer ball at the natural history museum, and that night at maddox, so we were long overdue for a catch up.

waffles

craved waffles one weekend. tell a lie, craved pancakes but was averse to having to queue. figured i'd chance kings road instead and found these at wanted*man. it was roasting inside - greenhouse effect with blazing sun and glass frontage so not somewhere to linger. but the sourdough waffles were light and crispy, not at all stodgy like they too often tend to be. the peanut creme and jam was a fancy spin on PB&J and being partial to sweet/salty, i thought it went very well together. tried their roiboos latte too which was interesting but gimme matcha latte any time.

shashuka eggs

i relish lazy saturdays when i don't set an alarm and wake whenever i feel like. something tells me it's a luxury i might not enjoy in the months to come ;) but for now, i'll take it! and greedily at that. wanted to change things up a little and eschewed the weekly pligrimage to hally's. truth be told, i woke too late to avoid the queue and didn't fancy having to wait for a table. went the other way and thought to try henry root instead. now i should've known better than to think it'd be fairly priced and my eggs (a brunch item) were £14 (!!!). crass as it is to talk about money, i unfortunately had committed by going in and sitting down before perusing the menu. rookie mistake. wasn't feeling particularly spendy and could've done the sensible thing and gone for the bottomless brunch (£30 for brunch item and limitless bubbles) but hm, responsible mother-to-be thought to abstain. darn. because £14 for eggs and peppers, yummy as they were, is a little hard to swallow. 

but i did have the place to myself for the most part and got some light reading done so that was somewhat redemptive although i made a mental note to check price before entry in future.

hally's

i probably spend more time and money at hally's than i care to admit, especially because they're clever and constantly update the menu so my need for novelty is satisfied and there's often something new i want to try. have brought friends in town, friends from outta town, family etc there but also enjoy going on my own for some head space and time to decompress with a trashy magazine. would never buy grazia but am more than happy to read if it's in front of me teehee. and they've recently changed their matcha latte recipe to not have sugar so i'm an even happier camper. used to need to go to LPQ for my unsweetened matcha latte fix but now it's at hally's too!

on my most recent visit i'd the corn fritters which were delightfully light, with poached eggs, bacon and tomato jam. absolutely delish and i'm such a glut i wanted seconds but managed to restrain myself, just.

weekend in london

i've clinical supervision on friday which means an extra early start. supervisor is stickler for punctuality (rightly so!) and i grew up in a family where 5min early is late. so i got to work early enough to stop for a bacon and egg sandwich en route. at times like this i miss the north east. why is a bap so hard to find??? i just wanted a bacon roll :( but ended up with bacon and egg in crusty bread.

had a hankering for dimsum after work and chanced a place in the city. usually try my darndest to avoid corporate types, having tapped out of that world five year ago but alas my desire for congee was too strong. found ourselves at liverpool street and while everyone else was drinking beer and basking in summer sunshine, i was determined to have my dimsum fix. hit and miss and wouldn't recommend because it's middle-eastern owned and far from authentic but the restaurant was pumping. the party of four at the table next to us kept having whiskey cokes which i found hilarious because i fail to understand cocktails / mixers at a chinese resto. granted, it's not really a chinese resto but pseudo-chinese. all i could think of was if i'd an extra £40 to blow, i'd get the lobster noodles in claypot.

lazy saturday at my local for matcha latte and rosti. didn't have rosti in wengen despite making a mental note to have it and was only too pleased to see it on the ever changing menu.

the weather was good and the markets were calling so traversed london (literally) to broadway market. took a slightly different route (tell a lie, took the tube and bus having sold the car in january) and passed the korean coffee / street food place. despite having just had brunch, i'd never say no to fried glass noodles and chicken wings. then continued to broadway for more food and meandering walks by the canal.

back home Y rang asking if she could come hang for a bit because she'd gotten locked out! well, yes!!!! spontaneous drop ins are the best and it was so good to see her. we've been friends since we were three, rode on the same school bus and went to the same schools till we were 16. our families have travelled together (brunei, bangkok) and then she joined me in valencia on my grad trip v1 on the harrowing night we stupidly left a party late and got flashed on our way to my friend's. i joined her fam for her graduation. this, naturally, triggered massive uni envy. hm in fact it was her brother who planted the thought of going to medsch where i did and i'm so glad that's where i went. she's incredibly low maintenance, we see each other a couple of times a year (when i'm in singers / she's in london) and despite her being jetlagged she very sweetly obliged my pasta craving and we'd a fashionably late home made pasta dins. 

had brunch for the second consecutive day at my local and this time tried their avocado donuts with tomato jam. seemingly strange combination but worked really well :)

back to london

 

and all too soon it was back to london. fell back into the cycle of thai takeaway (pad thai!) and then scrambled eggs at LPQ / hally's for breakfast. it was nice to have a few lazy mornings to settle back into things before graduation and grad trip v2 with my folks.

 

was also wondering why it was so cold in summer and first order of business was to buy trousers because my summer daisy dukes that had served well in the far east just weren't cutting it anymore!

and there was also the night we went a little crazy after dins at the home club (?) and found ourselves at maddox...

b

the b never fails to attract a crowd and boy was it busy on a pre-christmas weekend. seems like everyone went from christmas shopping to needing a winter warmer! find the door bs kinda haughty, presuming only there for drinks as who'd be so stupid as to think they could waltz in without a lunch reso :P it's as if they derive some pleasure from smugly turning people away. but hah wouldn't eat there (food's not great) and was just after mulled wine that wasn't in a styrofoam cup (the mulled wine at the pseudo christmas market was all in disposable cups...) so that suited just fine.

warmed up then ducked indoors to avoid the rain and chanced upon this sweet little deal. lindisfarne oysters going for £1 a pop (when it's usually £2.50!!!) even with my abysmal grasp of numbers i knew it was a good deal. tried not to fall for their loss-leader trap and got the house white and nothing else. win big lose small?

have also passed a furniture shop with alarming regularity but failed to venture in to their cafe. it reminded me of cafe string in stockholm where the furniture is for sale. clever tactic but pity the flat white came as a cappucino but was too tired to send it back and left it undrunk. need to get better at polite, constructive feedback. find i'm too shy / apologetic to be any good at it. probably why commercial litigation wasn't for me :P

coastal drives

it was early afternoon by the time the mister coaxed me out of the hotel and am i glad he did. see, i'm a really boring person and was perfectly content reading vogue from the shady cabana. but the mister is inquisitive and wanted to see more of the island. in retrospect it was a good call because the island has a rugged charm and faded elegance to it, and lovely as the hotel was, i would not have had the best seafood stew ever had we not ventured to banyalbufar. the towns have such curious names and i had trouble remembering them so must've told the poor front of house back at the hotel the world's worst story when she asked if we got up to much that day. 'oh ! it was really nice, we drove to, um, the town that's, uh, a distance away? and had lunch overlooking the sea at, uh, c'an something?' unintentionally vague because that really wasn't saying anything at all because all restaurants are c'an something or other. and it could've been any town with coastal views because it is a small island! 

urns out it was banyalbufar (she guessed correctly! clever lady!) and the bubbly proprietress took an instant adoration to the mister, grabbing his face with both hands and promising him the best seat in the house. no complaints there :) towards the end she warmed to me too and started calling me guapa, which was cute because i wasn't feeling left out at all.

the windy roads didn't disappoint! and the mister was determined to catch the sunset on the western most part of the island. the sun set really quickly and we stopped for roadside beer before heading back in the dark.

beach day

i've been banging on about long hours on paeds but one of the things i used to do when younger but less inclined to now is sleep till past noon. self-indulgent as it may sound, sleeping beyond my natural waking time (sadly pre-7am) leaves me like 'a bear with a sore head'. what a quaint saying, one i was introduced to recently when being a child and refusing to go to bed. might've tried to sleep in last weekend by snoozing till lunch time but regretted that heavy headed feeling that sadly lingered the rest of the day. once bitten, twice shy. so this morning it was up and at 'em bright and early, albeit more by circumstance than by choice. in fact, was so early the beach shack wasn't open and was forced to go the scenic route to the coast, meandering through town and getting a grand tour of the council estates where service users past and present lived. it was slightly foggy over the water which gave the place an ephemeral feel before drying up by breakfast time. 

was the first wave into the cafe and had a massive omelette with a crusty roll. romanced a muffin for after but was wordlessly chastised for being greedy and decided to unleash my sugar gremlin later in the day. am somewhat nostalgic about the coast and one of my happiest memories in recent times is having fish and chips there on my last day of third year. had been in NYC till the day before exams, back to sit exams, found out i'd passed and thus vindicated prior hedonism and was looking forward to a lovely long summer break ahead of me. it's such a clear memory and i remember it in vivid detail, definitely a happy place to re-visit when the going gets tough.

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).

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.

isabella

had important guests in town who wanted to visit isabella plantation for sentimental reasons. apparently it was there that they were held up for over an hour while i napped at 14 months old. such love, not wanting to wake the sleeping child. little wonder i'm still bad (good?) about sleep and am nothing but grumpy when roused. they were hankering for flowercam (is there such a thing?) to see the condition of the flowers before going to the plantation. sort of like the live cams trained on ski slopes so one can see skiing conditions. didn't have the heart to tell them that the best time was mid-may, and in fact met someone at dinner the night before who'd gone three weeks ago and saw the flowers at their prime. so we were a few weeks late (or 11 months early) and the rhodies were half strewn on the floor. but on the plus side the plantation was empty and we'd it all to ourselves. 

felt like such a responsible adult, mind. had them round for super early home-cooked dinner on friday, put them to bed, then went to C's new sloane square nest (baby due any week now!) for a sophisticated italian dinner. what's it about the italians who do everything better?! the yummiest bruschetta to start (fresh, sweet tomatoes and basil, creamy tuna with capers, avo with feta) a mountain of the best ham (lovingly hand carried back from her last trip to milan before baby) and the most gorgeous main of rigatoni sicilian-style. washed everything down with a sublime brunello and had ice cream at the end. felt so grown up and stayed till about one before responsibly going home and straight to bed, up bright and early for the isabella plantation jaunt. and as all good richmond visits include a petersham pilgrimage, after our fill of flowers we had coffee and scones at petersham nursery before crawling through the city (darn you, london traffic!) for japanese lunch.

morning commute

there's a hopper going between the different sites but i take the bus for the double decker seats. how else does one get a birds eye view (almost!) of london in the spring ? :) and blue skies! and blossoms! and me wanting to jump off the bus at every cute cafe stop but then remembering there are clinics to get to on the other end. so one weekend i went pseudo-adventuring, trying to find the cafes i passed en route. not as easy as it sounds as i had to re-trace the bus route (and it's a long one!) but success! and i think i've found a new go-to neighbourhood breakfast place. inordinate number of men without wedding rings and children. either giving mama a break or it's the weekly divorced dad access. joked with a friend that up north it's like all access meetings are doomed to happen at maccas, but at least here the cafe serves healthier fare?

early bird

 

really shouldn't be complaining about long hours but adding 15min tube + 5min walk to my previous morning commute of 15min walk is taking its toll. appreciate how ridiculous it is to be whinging about a 40min commute in central london so shall just keep quiet now. and if i was particularly desperate i could always take the bus instead of walking 20min to the tube because with the student travelcard it's not like i'm saving anything by walking. but enjoy the walk most mornings, gets the circulation going and gives me some much needed exercise because i resolutely refuse to do anything else after being on my feet for most of the day. 

with this newfound, re-adjusted body clock, i sprung awake on sunday and couldn't get back to sleep so decided to be strategic and head to granger&co at notting hill. used to go with house guests (because the flight from sg arrives at 0555h, which means said guests would land on my doorstep by 7am...) but since discovering something better in the 'hood, we've not looked back. but thought to give granger another chance, seeing how if we weren't there by 9 (that's the inflection point, folks!) there'd be a queue. and we're too cool to queue unless it's kanada-ya. as an aside, that's probably the only thing i'd willingly jump in line for at this point. not bone daddies, not burger&lobster. so we went to granger and had a nice breakfast. company was great but i much prefer our local (where the inflection point is 930 so there's the extra 30min zz). to be fair, having watched notting hill the night before i was being a little suggestible by wanting to head that way. and notting hill, while pretty, is way to WASP-y for me. funny how almost every uhmurikan wants to live there after the film (who can blame them!) but the odd mix of council housing amidst these fancy period properties means that nice cars don't stay nice very long. in fact, being even more suggestible was watching notting hill because we'd brunch with lovely italian friends at manu*ka in fulham, where hugh*grant frequents. granger's pretty, love the gold and green accents, and the coffee's good but the menu's quite limited. i'm not a fan of corn fritters and was craving pancakes (?) which they didn't have. actually, might've been craving something else that wouldn't have been too out of place on a breakfast menu but they didn't have it. mumble grumble. swung by daylesford to pick up sundries (tea, softener) but the mister wouldn't let me buy more bubbly :(

24h in manchester

the mister was hanging out with al gore in NYC so i went to manchester on a whim. not the most obvious of choices but hey the draw of marx and engel and lure of random european architectural influences was a compelling reason. sentient that we're not going to be in the UK indefinitely (have a rant about that will save it for the end of the post!) and thought to see more of this lovely country while i can. it was the manchester derby weekend so i was lucky the hotel prices hadn't skyrocketed. would usually have slept on a friend's sofa but thought to be indulgent hehe. there's something very empowering about solo travel, about exploring a city on your own. had sweet friends who met me on sunday and were aghast that i'd been wandering around the night before (we happened to all be at the mall, surprise surprise) but they're a lovely couple in the throes of LDR. he's up to visit and having been there, done that and gotten all possessive when the mister was in town (or i was visiting the mister) i thought better of imposing on their bubble. maybe that's just me being presumptuous that everyone thinks like me when they're probably infinitely more mature and gracious. M's one of my oldest friends (we've swum together since we were 3+!) and we had the pleasure of meeting up in the amalfi coast over easter. this was a bonus, and they're in london next weekend too! 

it's been some time since i've gone any where on my own (not since NYC to buy my wedding dress easter 2012) and it was a refreshing change to be selfish and self-indulgent. my inner el cheapo even relented and didn't mind £7.50 for the ferris wheel! and took a ton of selfies while at it haha. china town was another surprise - great wall was a chance find and i had la mian! what was even better was that there was no MSG (yay!!!) and it wasn't oily. chinese restaurant jackpot...

 

how i knew about home*sweet*home in the northern quarter was from some insta lurking. in fact that's how i knew M was in mcr visiting L so had to have waffles with scrambled eggs, blueberries and bacon too. absolutely yums when drowned in maple syrup :)

and another photo of the ferris wheel against the blue skies.

 

and the uk*border*agency rant as promised - it's no secret that i hate the hassle and suspicion i get every time i clear customs. it's as if the border agency presumes that i want to overstay in their country. no, actually, i'm from a first world nation when yours is comparatively third world, i feel like telling them. but that's just asking to be detained / deported. the medsch doesn't make it any easier with weekly scan ins to assure them i'm not moonlighting in a chinese restaurant. in addition to singers trumping the uk in terms of GDP per capita and life expectancy (slide borrowed from a labour*leader), the mister was just contact traced for TB because a co-worker he spent a week at court huddled up next to and getting coughed all over just tested positive. WELL DONE, LONDON. need we look any further for proof of third-world-ness? not feeling the love. and we got this startling text re: being contact traced and needing tests a few hours after the mister had an episode of night sweats. i was laughing at first (haha, night sweats, do you have tb, haha) but was not laughing when we got the tb text later in the day.