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 :)

holy island

went wilderness-ing a few years ago and dins at kate the wilderness queen's inspired to go all over again. wish weather had been better but grey skies are undeniably part of the english charm. makes for underwhelming travel photos and the like! the tidal crossing is a barrel of laughs because there's always one clown whose car washes out to sea. it's really not complicated but also not something i'd put past myself to do. climb to safety and wave fair chariot adieu? there's craster kippers near by, favourite fish from a shack, well, almost because i'm partial to the fried herrings by the ostermalmstorg tunnelbana in stockholm. point to this is that there's so much of northumberland to explore and enjoy. unbeknownst to me at the very same time A and P had ventured into the big bad woods of kielder so it was laughs all round when we convened at dins and they regaled me with tales of the wicker man proportion.

now i've waxed lyrical about them before and will do so again because my girl crush shows no sign of abating. am always drawn to strong women and these two are lovely beyond belief. am perfectly content to sit in their presence listening them to talk about work and life and everything in between that sort of pads the existence of an uber successful surgical registrar. have nothing but respect for them and remain in awe of how good they are at their jobs. that's one thing i strive for - not necessarily in a surgical specialty but i want to get very good at what i do. appreciate it's a hard field to be in, especially as a girl, but they more than hold their own against their male counterparts. male counterparts - are we really in 2015???

go ape!

while i don't make a point of setting about new year resolutions (bound to break them before day 1) i do try to find a theme for the year. often it's along the lines of 'be unflappable'. or 'try new things' (cliche) and better yet, 'overcome fear'. little did i know that go ape would sort of tick all three boxes. oh, as an aside, i'm trying to be more mindful this year and to multitask less. like less mindless eating (bad habit of stuffing my face with crisps and cake while watching netflix) and more home-cooking and taking the time to savour my food. go ape came about after i last hung out with A and R (who incidentally i'm eternally grateful to for introducing me to A!) and realised how much i liked being with them. and R suggested i join them for a day of organised fun in cambridge. didn't need to be asked twice! also, i really like camby and hadn't been since Y's graduation easter 2012 so was long over due for a visit. 

probably my fault for not doing due diligence. R made it sound so easy, casually climbing trees in cambridge, yeah i could do that. and A was quick to sweeten the deal with the promise of waffles before we set off climbing. IT WAS HARD and there were points where i was literally screaming. A's got all of it on video that i hope will never see the light of day. what was meant to be a 90min activity ended up taking closer to four hours, although as budgetking R said, we really got our money's worth. also, i hadn't realised it wouldn't actually be in cambridge but tetford. but never fear, there was space in the car for one more and A & R's friends were kind to let me hitch a ride.

at the end of it all i.e. after we were very embarrassingly asked to let the stag group of twelve overtake cos we were just too slow, we made a pit stop at maccas on the way back to camby (yay to 20pc mcnuggets and apple pies!) before having dinner at the smokehouse. now i've been to many smokehouses but this was one of the best. the southern fried chicken was so juicy, even the white meat wasn't dry! and the ribs perfect. drooling just thinking about it and would actually make the over hour long commute to cambridge just for a meal there.

drinking goggles

met Y's teammates for drinks at the local and had a laugh out loud night with much lost in translation. where shoe was mistaken for choux and we couldn't understand why their home made canoes wouldn't stay afloat. there was also the incident of the shrinking scottish hat, and whether brain cancer was something to worry about. (for the record, yes it is.)

punting

once again, Y's hustle scored us the best punting deal as she brushed off touts and made for the illegal punters with their bargain basement prices. my kinda girl! however, what you pay is what you get and we'd to make do with substandard story-telling which i made Y re-tell after the tour because she's so much better at it. i mean, the boatman couldn't even get who won the oxbridge boatrace right! and that's pretty elementary, my dear watson.

the orchard

after the dust had settled, Y sprung into tour guide mode and took me on a whirlwind tour of her adopted home. high on her list was her happy place, the orchard in grantchester, home to many a literary bright. it was as if time had stood still and but for my incoming whatsapps, i would've thought we'd returned to an era where rupert brooke was the coolest cat in town. there was a certain stillness to the gardens and the dappled light made for a picturesque tea of clotted cream and scones. funny story here. one of the qualities i admire most in Y (and believe you me, she has manY!) is her hustle. clever girl was the last one in the tea room just before they shut the doors at 5pm. in fact, they were almost shut in her face but she put her impeccable manners to good use and sweet talked the waitress into letting her in. score!

camby

would've lingered longer in the big apple, and even hopped across to DC, if Y wasn't graduating. but having penciled in the weekend since last year, i wasn't about to miss her third (and maybe not final) graduation for the all the sakura in the world. Y's one of my oldest friends, from back when her parents forgot to enrol her in pre-primary (gah! now you can guess her age!) and she ended up in my kindy class. we've been inseparable since, sharing the same school bus since primary school and traveling with our families in the holidays. in fact, it was quite a milestone when she joined me in valencia for a precious 48h during my otherwise solo graduation trip. our first time "away" without adults. also our first time getting flashed by a crazy with yellow fever. 

so returning the 48h favour was the least i could do with her all-important graduation. had a crazy drive down with her brother, D, who didn't save me from myself. which explains how i managed to scoff a dozen donuts single-handedly. while i would ordinarily balk at such excess, these weren't ordinary donuts and such indulgence is reserved for only krispykremes. we made it to camby in good time, and hit the ground running the next morning. 

how many doctors (and medical students) does it take to figure out a cowl?

batman!

senate house

king's chapel

masters peeps

my scruffy loafers had major shoe envy. 

i love that despite the 3 cambridge degrees each, they don't take themselves too seriously :)

more camby posts over the next few days. stay tuned for some punting and virginia woolf-ing...