expedition kayaking

now i had the privilege of attending an all girls' school that believed in being well-groomed more than it believed in sending us to 'outward*bound school'. while other teenaged girls were doing night hikes and confidence jumps, we were schooled on etiquette, carriage and what colours would match our skin tone. looking at me, you can't tell, but i assure you my alma mater went to great lengths to see we were as presentable as possible. while i don't harbour taitai (lady of leisure) aspirations, secret or otherwise, i'm also hardly the outdoorsy type. regarding being a taitai, i really don't think i could take myself seriously if i dropped everything to be a wife. i mean, if there were children in the equation it's a fair point but to stop work just to look after my able-bodied spouse? no thanks. ohmy now how did this end up an anti-taitai rant? :)

anyhoos i was talking about kayaking. and how i've only ever kayaked once. in the maldives. in crystal clear calm water. this was a whole different kettle of fish ! the current was strong, the sun stronger and there were times when i think our guide feared our fledgling marriage wouldn't survive the kayak. but it was an epiphany, really, and i'm glad we did all five hours (!!!) of it. and when it was time for the boat to tow the kayaks back to shore, i was relieved we didn't have to paddle ourselves all that way back.

out of body

had the strangest experience at the baltra airport when we were leaving the galapagos for guayaquil. i saw the most gorgeous man walking out of the loo and my heart lurched. in the split-second it took to look him up and down, i realised it was the mister. how weird is that? like i checked my own husband out... haha so loser right, my pseudo-wandering eye wanders right back to where it should be. but it was a nice little bolt from the blue where i'm reminded that the mister is indeed a fine looking young man and hmm it keeps things exciting. this also just happened when his sister sent a photo to the family whatsapp and i was like 'dayum who's that good looking creature?' before my brain caught up with my hormones and i realised, again, it was the mister. these flu meds are really pulling a number on me...

but yay to being married to someone who's only gotten better looking with time, superficial as i may be, and here's to giving as good as you get. which's something i'm a firm believer of because... heyyy i've a young husband to look good for, i can't have a third slice of chocolate cake, thank you very much! part of me still pinches myself in disbelief that he picked me and he's mine forever and ever. yes, i gush and babble that way when giddy on promethazine*hydrochloride. oh the joys of being able to self-diagnose and medicate. 

more than once in the galapagos i'd help the mister get breakfast while he kept an office hour in the morning. when asked how i knew what he liked, i said smugly, "well we've been going out for almost 6 years, there's not much i don't know about him." only to have him leave stuff on his plate! pride before fall? and i realise a much humbler, and accurate answer would've been i still only know 80% of his preferences and we're both constantly changing. factor in how he's feeling in the morning and the odds of plating every thing he'd have picked for himself are quite slim.

camping on st. cristobal

a bit of house-keeping by way of introduction to our galapagos trip. the mister is planner supreme (i mean, he only planned and executed our three weddings, no big...) and once he set his heart on visiting the galapagos, i knew we'd be doing it the best possible way. now i'm not a fan of the outdoors, nor exertion, but i'm a fan of the mister and knew how much it meant to him. to his credit, he did warn me and give me plenty of chances to put my foot down, and he finally decided on this great little outfit that practiced 1) "leave no trace" 2) supports local enterprise. what that meant is that when we camped, there was no showers because we couldn't use soap on the island. every trace of waste water, right down to the bit you spit out after brushing your teeth) was bottled and removed from the island. we also had a local naturalist guide with us every where we went, used local charters and engaged only locals (captain, sailor, guide, crew) as we made our way through the archipelago. the only "non-local" but ecuadorian nevertheless was S our amazing guide. 

it was a mixed group to say the least. there were 6 new yorkers (80 year old granny, her three kids, her daughter's 9 year old and 12 year old), a mother-teen daughter pair from mineapolis and us. S basically had to simultaneousy manage guests from 5 decades (<10, 10-19, 20s, 40s and 80) and keep us all entertained. talk about multi-tasking! he did this with aplomb and i'm grateful for how he managed me and my aversion to the outdoors. incidentally, it was sort of how he handled the kiddies haha, constantly reassuring, encouraging me to "just give it a try" and allowing me an 'out' any time it proved too much. the 80 year old, by the way, is an elegant elegant parisian lady who moved to NYC in her 20s to work for the UN, married an american and has stayed on since. she's fit as a fiddle, putting me to shame on more than one occasion and exuding this old world glamour while the rest of us degenerated into a bug-bitten mess.

we spent the first two nights on a deserted beach at st. cristobal where only our outfit was allowed to camp. here's the mister carrying everything, taking photos after peeing next to a pelican in the morning, the campsite bathed in the soft morning light and breakfast being prepared by our ever-efficient campsite crew. the meals were amazing and they worked magic in the very basic kitchen.

guayaquil

after the nightmare iberian*air flight, we finally made it to guayaquil. it's not a pretty city, and our hotel warned us of the perils stepping out would put us in. it was as bad as not even being able to take a taxi that wasn't pre-ordered by the hotel. we thought it was just the hotel being, well, ameri*can and paranoid but we later heard from independent sources first-hand accounts of being car-jacked. hadn't heard of the city till we took off from madrid, and can't say i missed much by not knowing .did an obligatory city tour and was satisfied after two hours that we could safely bypass the rest of the city. nice hotel, albeit dated. felt like we were going back in time to the early 90s. 

against the hotel's manifesto, we headed out for a local brunch. our first meal (tell a lie but i guess argentinian steak in the hotel doesn't count!) was plantains with cheese, covered in deep fried pork and lard in what felt like adam*road hawker*centre. yumyum.

saw this little fella on the city tour, not to be confused with his aquatic cousin, the marine iguana endemic to the galapagos.

on the morning we linked up with the rest of the group and flew to st. cristobal in the galapagos, we'd a slab of crackling each (amazing buffet breakfast!) and knew straight away it was going to be a good day.

goodbye guayaquil, helloooo galapagos!

the horror that is i*berianair

so off we went from london to madrid and then onwards to guayaquil. considering how (relatively) little we paid for the flight, we should've seen this coming. 

1. delayed 2h from madrid to guayaquil because... GET THIS.. they forgot to CLOSE the (auxillary) door. thank goodness they realised this when we were JUST ABOUT to take off and had to back track up the runway, returning to the bay. 

2. completely bypassed quito! it worked for us (final destination guayaquil) and we were on time despite the delay leaving madrid but oh boy there were many unhappy passengers stranded in guayaquil for the night when the plane decided NOT to stopover at quito en route LIKE IT WAS SUPPOSED TO.

3. delayed another 2h when leaving guayaquil for madrid. the plane had come in from quito on time but we weren't allowed to board. saw the captain and crew strolling in about 30minutes after our scheduled departure, and took off late. there was no air con or ventilation on the plane for the first few hours either.

4. late arriving into madrid, almost missed our connection. turns out our connecting flight from madrid to london was similarly delayed so passengers like us could board. took off over an hour late, missed heathrow window, ended up circling FOREVER before we could land.

5. rubbish service - on the 12h flight from madrid to guayaquil the stewardesses were playing on their iPads instead of attending to passengers. same returning from guayaquil. when passengers were boarding, crew just hung around the galley, no help with bags whatsoever.

6. the selling point for our long haul flight was an 'individual front pocket'. i kid you not. by the time you're bragging about a seat pocket, something's seriously wrong.

give me singapore*air any time! we've traveled some pretty dubious airlines. from being told while mid-flight to move to the back of the plane on a malaysian*airlines flight to kunming to "balance" the plane, to air*italia delaying us for 6h in milan without explanation, this consistently disastrous iberian*air service takes the cake.

airline rant aside, the rest of the holiday was rather lovely. will post more tomorrow!

preparation

so the mister and i finally got round to going on honeymoon. we did go to the western fjords after our midsummer wedding last year but um 13h days where we're out at 5am does not a honeymoon make. come to think of it, neither does this 10 day boot camp with crazy amounts of kayaking, hiking, trekking, snorkeling and volcano walking. we did mini-moon in phuket shortly after our singers celebration but it took awhile to save up for this crazy crazy trip. also took awhile for the mister to get some time off work! but here we are and i'm so excited to be going to the galapagos. we're not glamping (boo!) but i hear the tent will be pitched for us. which means i don't have to put my newly acquired tent-pitching skills (learnt at wild*trials2012!) to the test. phew!

tea with M

M is a dear friend and LLM student in london. we met a couple of years ago in shanghai and have stayed in touch since, not realising that we'd both be in london at the same time at some point. i love these chance meetings that turn into something bigger. people argue that friendships are circumstantial and most times we're in touch with acquaintances who are conveniently located nearby. but i'm fortunate to have a couple of friends close by, and many more oceans away. thank goodness for whatsapp! and aren't low-maintenance friendships the best? i've a lovely friend, R, who on her own admission writes 200-300 christmas cards every year, and has for the last decade of so! now that is dedication and i'm so flattered to have found a place on her ever-growing christmas list. while i'm guilty of not being the most organised of correspondents but know that when we do meet up, we pick up from where we left off, wherever that may have been.

the home cooking continues but with vegetables this time!

you can almost say i was inspired by the supper club to actually get some cooking done at home :) and i also realised i can't possibly claim to be a responsible adult if my idea of cooking is zapping frozen lasagne. if i zapped home-made lasagne, well, there's a bit more self-respect in that. i'm also a big believer in having your cake and eating it (see tower of terror below). and even get a bit defensive when people presume that i am hand-less in the kitchen just because i used to be a (ugh) career woman. in fact, i don't like how 'career' comes before 'woman'. why can't i be a woman who works and also keeps house? it's funny how when people hear i'm a qualified lawyer in medical school, i'm automatically an over-achieving and un-marriable shrew till proven otherwise.

our tiny one-bedder is something i take pride in. keeping it clean, keeping the mister in clean, crease-free shirts and cooking our meals is a role that gives me great satisfaction. i've nothing but respect for homemakers who stay at home and do all that. power to you! but i'm at a stage where we've a small flat and no kids, leaving me with plenty of time on my hands. and what better time than now to expand my very limited repertoire? dinner parties are also this fantastically grown up concept for me, like you've really got to have your life together before you can have friends over. and honestly, it's so much more affordable than going to a restaurant. then again, the mister might change his mind after he sees this month's electricity bill. currently we can only fit people into our flat two at a time, sort of like a mini noah's ark, but you know, sometimes two friends with huge personalities is all you need. though it's even better when they come bringing enough dessert for an small nation!

happy 30th D!

i've lovely changmoh cousins who worked at pen*haligon's to put themselves through e*ton. i mean, how cool is that?! it also means one of them has a penchant for sloaney hangouts crawling with old e*tonians (ugh) but the other two are relatively unaffected. ok, make that the middle one who's relatively unaffected. and it was the middle one whose 30th we celebrated, albeit belatedly, with a fantastic evening at a japanese supper club. 

now we'd gone for the french supper club a month before and that's when i realised it was best enjoyed as a double date. who better to ask than my now 30 year old cousin and his gorgeous wife K. dinner was one of the best i've ever had and the three hours just flewww by. we also got talking to the foursome (also on a double date!) next to us and one of them, robbie, has the most amazing food blog that even tells you how to pimp frozen pizza. how cool is that! we enjoyed it so much that we're thinking of going back over summer but part of me wants to quit while we're ahead. give me a few months and my expectations will be so high :(

what the wind blew over

so in the previous post i talked about how T had come by for the weekend! one of the nicest things about being in london is how everyone and their mother seems to pass through. and we've friends in town literally every weekend. i'd last seen T when i was back in stockholm on my graduation trip but she's a sweetheart and we'd kept in touch through postcards and over fb. we were in the same discussion group in stockholm and spent many happy hours discussing swedish law along with the previous night's erasmus shenanigans... she hasn't changed one bit since we were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed undergrads but don't mess with this clever cookie. she's on track to becoming an administrative law judge (!!!) in austria and i'm so very proud of her. i mean, if i'm never going to be a judge, at least i can live vicariously through her. am also most touched that she resisted the siren call of the london shops and chose me over an afternoon of indulgence. the first thing she said when she stepped into the flat was how surreal it was because she's seen all the photos on fb and knew what it looked like before even being over. i tried to make scones to give her a right royal london welcome but that didn't go so well. so i made up for that with coffee and lots of sake, then we went to the diner for pineapple mojitos while waiting for her sister to join us for dinner. 

so, this is the cool part! T's sister is just about to graduate from lawsch and my sister just started lawsch. and the way T is with her sister reminds me so much of how i am with mine. there's just something about fellow big sisters that i identify with and like very much :)

smorgasboard with a side of stockholm nostalgia

the invite read:
Inspired by the golden age of 1950s air travel, ‘Mile High’ is their series of immersive dining events, which’ll take you on virtual city breaks to Gothenburg (in March), followed by Beirut, Sicily and Mozabique later on in the year.

You’ll be welcomed to the departure lounge (home to Mile High’s airborne DJ division) by air hostesses handing out ‘check in’ Campari cocktails and gourmet canapés, including fresh roe and dark rye sourdough served with “smoked reindeer”… Donner, probably.

Next - having bypassed the burden of actually having to fly anywhere - you’ll zip into an intimate dining room inspired by “the best of Swedish design”. 

Which may mean that you have to build your own chair.

Once there - while enjoying performances from Mile High’s cabin crew - you’ll enjoy a four-course feast from The Talent, which promises to include pan-fried scallops with puréed potato; crayfish and brown shrimp with smoked bacon and sour cream; chargrilled elk…. and liquorice meringue.

In summary, they'll be serving all sorts.

and with a copywriter that good, how could we say no? credit to our ever-resourceful, hyper-efficient lovely M who came, saw and conquered. well, the guest list at least. she got us tickets and i was psyched for our double date with which to start my easter break on a high.

was too engrossed in the conversation to take many photos and before i knew it, we were already on the smorgasboard. for those who've just started reading this little blog (hello there, sudden influx of readers on my unreliable stat counter!) i was on exchange in stockholm as an undergrad and left my heart in the city of dappled light. stockholm was (and still is!) a big part of my 20s and some of the closest friends i have now are friends i made there. in fact, there's definitely a swedish connection to most of the people i meet up with in london. from T who visited from austria last weekend, to bolognaise G who's finishing his masters' thesis here, to perth-born melbourne-based N who's specially coming by over our anniversary. self-confessed swedophile (?) that i am, i jump at anything 'swedish', except meatballs. despite mysterymeatballs being the name of my exchange blog that continued till final year of lawsch.

ironically i never made it to gothenburg while i was in stockholm -kicks self- but the pop up dinner was as close as i could get to sweden for now. we'd elk which i love but not had since our epic 9h swedish home-cooking dinner with C, a family friend's family friend. he very sweetly invited the mister and i to his for dinner. in fact, i think he went out of his way to gather a 'young people' group (comprising his ex wife's nephew and a friend's son) so we wouldn't feel out of place! isn't that kind? :) so we arrived at C's at 6pm and somehow stumbled out after, like, ten too many at 3am. thank goodness the t-bana (stockholm metro) is 24h on the weekend. if only the tube shared the same swedish efficiency :(

and M and her boyfriend are the warmest couple ever. who'd have thought that M and i would grow up on perpendicular streets to each other but only meet 15 years later in london! singapore is so small, and london is even smaller.

coffee with a side of steamer trunk

i often complain that singers is faddy, that london is faddier and every single hipster and their mother is off on the great coffee hunt, flitting from one single-roaster to the next in search of the holy grail of coffee. i don't like coffee fans who take themselves, or their coffee too seriously. it strikes me as pretentious and but maybe that's just me being sour grapes because i can't tell the difference between your fanciest single origin and nescafe 3-in-1. in fact, i'm not much of a coffee fan because i'm caffeine tolerant. a trait that left me high and dry as an undergrad because when most other people could power up with red bull or a cuppa, only abject fear and desperation would keep the zz monster away. and honestly, i don't think i've ever been so scared that sleep didn't prevail. but now i'm married to one of the aforementioned coffee aficionados (see, god has a sense of humour...) i do find myself going to cool little coffee hidey holes in spite of myself. and this was one of the better finds. but it's never coffee for me, always a hot chocklit with full fat milk because life's too short for skinny lattes :)

t*esco does it

there's been a lot in the press about tesco lately, what with the horse meat fiasco. if i were to weigh in, i don't see what the big deal is. if the packet says 13% beef and presumably 87% random stuff then it's really not misrepresentation if horse is part of the mystery meat / fillers. but what is nice about t*esco is the awesome meal deals they have. one day when i was feeling lazy, i picked up a starter, main, dessert AND A BOTTLE OF WINE for GBP10. the wine by itself retails for GBP8 so it was practically free. yes, i've arguably fallen for some very clever marketing but hey, marketing that throws in a bottle of montepulciano red? i'm down for it :)

the M word

there's an annual charity event that involves what the photo below captures. however, it's somewhat subversive and really not something i want popping up in a search*engine. another perk of living near the pub is not having to go far distances in the sub zero weather in a thin pair of scrubs. not wanting to be the old woman sitting by herself at the bar, i summoned J out of the throes of research paper-writing. and he obliged to meet me for a pint, but he. was. too. cool. for. scrubs. so guess who did end up looking old by proxy...?

the mister, he bakes!

it was the mister's turn to go on a baking spree last weekend and ohmyy he whipped up two dozen pita pockets in double quick time. which means we've been nibbling pita like there's no tomorrow. the organic hummus helps, and the OJ and fresh coffee (for him) all helps the bread go quicker. and pita on its own isn't a balanced diet so we usually throw in two soft boiled eggs, drizzled with truffle oil for good measure. monday morning, let's goooo!

comfort food

posted this on insta awhile back and F commented it seems to be something that 'overseas singaporeans' are always whipping up. seeing how it was a dear family friend, who's based in bristol herself, who first shared the recipe and so kindly sent me a 'starter kit' of the necessary ingredients, F might well be onto something there :) i suppose the sheer ease of making tauhuay (or soy bean pudding for those unfamiliar with it!) makes it a popular dish for overseas singaporeans to make. in less than half an hour, i was savouring the warm, comforting goodness and felt that i should've made more than one portion because i ended up devouring the mister's share before he even woke up. tell a lie, i did leave him one spoonful...

empire saturday

people often ask what we get up to on the weekends and i'm never able to come up with a short answer. and that's a good thing, i think! every weekend is different and i like how being footloose and fancy-free means we've the liberty to meet as many friends as we want to, or not at all. 

we'd a late start to the weekend, rolling out of bed in time for dinner (i know right!) and a little map reading situation that was entirely not my fault saw us at a completely different part of town than intended. thankfully, back up was close by and while we're loathe to do repeats, a spot of japanese did hit the, well, spot.

after a refined dinner, we went to watch my very talented little brother break dance his way to fame and fortune. well, not exactly but you get the picture. he's got a pretty fine day job so if the dancing doesn't work out, he's got options :P and i didn't manage to get an action shot (darn you slow iphone shutter!) but here's one of him on the rare occasion he's standing still.

after the concert - which made me nostalgic for the times i used to perform - we went for dinner round 2, a perfect reminder of why ballet wasn't for me. but that concert, oh, it threw me back to when i was in dance. ballet, tap, modern... to be honest, don't think i ever was very good at it but heyy i was willing. then there was rag as a fresher (mere shadow of what other people call 'cheerleading') and adult ballet / contemporary dance when i was in final year. good times, more happy memories than not, and it's a little known fact that the mister fell for me when i portrayed a desperate housewife at a fresher event. now let's just hope life doesn't imitate art.

and here's a bad photo of our very yummy hotdogs and sweet potato fries, washed down with a bottle of champers. i like how they roll!

sigur*ros

is just about our favourite band on earth. it's one of the first things the mister introduced me to when we first started seeing each other. he'd a thing for them, and for iceland, from the very beginning. since them, we've roadtripped around iceland twice and had sigur*ros on repeat while we did. through no magic or trickery of our own (i mean, hello, it's ipod shuffle!) our song started playing just as the mister popped the question two years ago, and last summer i walked down the aisle to the very same song. so you can imagine how when we finally watched them live in concert, and they played our song, how overwhelmed i was and how pinch-me-i-must-be-dreaming happy that this time we were playing for keeps.

my local

T was done with his research paper weeks before the rest of us were. this, of course, warranted a celebration and i managed to arm-twist him into going to my local. one of the perks of living 30m (i google mapped it!) from the pub is that i'm generally well-watered. but drinking alone is reserved for very specific occasions (like when i want some down time with a good magazine) and thankfully there's usually someone who's up for a pint or two. the mister says this photo of the local in daylight is very telling. but hey, don't blame me, blame the increasingly long day light hours ;)

burger*lobster

if you're the faddy type, you'd have heard about and possibly even been to burger*lobster. where it's GBP20 for a lobster, served with salad and fries. the burger costs the same so if you do go, please don't make the tragic mistake of ordering a burger. however, we finally made it to our little neighbourhood diner that serves all that, plus a margarita or beer, for GBP15. with way better service too! made friends with our lovely waiter and he comp-ed an extra margarita. woot! the way to my heart and to ensure my undying loyalty is clearly with free alcohol. that's precisely how the sneaky E  got me hooked on pollen*stsocial i.e. with bubbles the moment i waltzed in. disclaimer: it all sounds more glamorous than it really was in person :/

level up!

when i first invited A and R over for dinner, ever the considerate guest, A asked if there was any occasion. telling him it was a celebration of being alive (albeit true) was just too cheesy, so i went with "we're celebrating my new deep fryer". and that, my friends, is the unfortunate truth. so continuing on the birthday theme, my present to myself was a "cheap cheap" mini deep fryer i found on amazon. this is something i have yet to tell my healthy living parents so please be gentle and withhold judgment. 

it's easter break now and i've one glorious month to while away. last easter break (well last st paddy's to be precise) i was being kept awake by drunken revelers in a tiny 6 bed dorm in manhattan. this st paddy's i was feeling all grown-up with a spouse and a house, enjoying a very refined japanese supper club dinner with my charming changmoh cousin and his wife. what a difference a year makes!

to further cement this new-found status as capable young wife, i felt the need to learn to cook. and as a product of the internet generation, what better place to start than online. so i googled a few recipes, got the mister to drive me to the asian grocer's* and armed with hope and a freezer full of frozen lasagne (just in case!) i set about this latest domestic blitz. truth be told, i'd been mulling on the menu for almost a month now since i first sent out the invite and envisioning my little action plan as to what to cook and when. hey, when you're simultaneously prepping and cooking six dishes in the span of two hours, organisation is key! thought canto-style would be the most crowd-pleasing and thankfully our wonderful friends 1) ate lots 2) complimented loudly. behaviour that secures them an open invite to future 'dos. 

i attempted the list below, served with steamed rice. nothing fancy, no bells and whistles. really should have done a dry run because there was this heart-stopping moment** just before they arrived where i thought the said fryer was. not. working. turns out i was using it wrong and after jiggling it around a bit, it cranked into motion. disaster averted but oh so scary nevertheless.

so we had: 

steamed egg

salt & pepper chicken wings

beef stew

spare ribs with black bean sauce

sweet & sour pork

wonton soup

"lao ban" style tau huay and fresh fruit for dessert

and because their mamas taught them well, they came laden with cakes and sweet wine. be still, my sugar-craving heart. in fact, we were so full that they graciously left the goods behind and the cakes are now mine all mine for breakfast, lunch and dinner today :D

for the aspiring home cooks out there, the evening's cooking order was as follows.

1730h prep stew and marinate chicken wings, spare ribs, sweet sour pork

1800h put stew in oven for 2h, mix eggs for steaming, prepare tau huay, make sweet & sour sauce

twiddle thumbs till 1930h

1930h put egg dish and spare ribs (separately) in steamer and steam for half hour, steam rice too

1940h fry chicken wings

1950h fry battered pork in deep fryer then stir in sweet & sour sauce in frying pan

2000h pop frozen wontons into soup (boiled pork bones with dried shrimp earlier in the day) and simmer for 5mins 

(and bob's your uncle!***)

*funny story here, indulge my little brag! tried to buy beer for them boys but GOT CARDED. and because i'd run out of the house with just the mister's plastic, i had no ID. tried flashing my wedding band (hmm, maybe counter-productive) and insisting that i've been legal for longer than i care to admit but the cashier wouldn't budge. didn't know whether to laugh or cry but unabashedly thrilled i look underaged :D in fact, every time i'm NOT carded, a small part of me dies on the inside.

**yes i shouldn't joke about these things. but if that had happened (CHOY!) i would've been in good hands because incidentally, R is a totally bad*ass neurosurgeon who once casually CPR-ed a man back to life on the streets of london. no big, just your friendly neighbourhood doctor-man.

***cantonese as dinner might've been, anglophilic i still am

maturity

so my birthday came and went with barely a whimper. phew :) had a lovely dimsum lunch with the grads somewhat belatedly, what with us all having commitments of the family kind over the weekend. one of the nice things about being back in school is that my coursemates are in a similar place. some are married, others have children (!!!) and when it comes to weekends, everyone respects that everyone else has 101 things to do. things like hanging out with +1s who've been sorely neglected during the week...

what i'm trying to say is this would be so much harder if i didn't have this core group of wonderful wonderful people who know what it's like to be a graduate medic but don't take themselves too seriously. it's crazy how between the 6 of us we've already something like 10 degrees. #firstworldproblems, much?

and they surprised me with a lemon drizzle cake that T baked. the photo really doesn't do it justice but i'm tickled by how J manages to make a kawaii moment of everything. for a finnish army man who later taught english in japan before finding himself (and his medical tendencies), guess you can take a finn outta japan but the japan in the finn hangs around a bit longer.

spontaneous sundays

the sun came out and so did we! the mister and i excitedly brought our good white out without realising we couldn't drink in the park :( we were good and respected that rule and apart from the many many dogs that came charging at our little cheese platter, it was a good afternoon trying in vain to top up our tans.

on a roll

home made butternut squash and home made bun with home grown basil. oh so smug. but as always, pride before fall and halfway through i realised i'd also cooked, blended AND CONSUMED foil wrapper from the butter. oh the horror.

notting hill

we'd an atypically early breakfast with a dear friend who was passing through london. i'd the pleasure of meeting T 4 (!!!) summers ago when the mister had banished me from leuven. made the most of being based smack in the centre of europe to visit my cousin who was in dublin. and guess who was there the same weekend, fresh from a posting at the great ormond street hospital? T was ever-gallant and i still remember he bought a round of baby guinnesses when he saw me balk at the real guinness. +points in my book! we kept in touch and i'm amazed by how much he remembers of his month in singers when he doing a stint at K*K, right down to who we met at brunch (edinburgh medic) and where the mister hadn't joined us (reservist). minutiae that has long slipped through my sieve-like memory. this was also just before i left for stockholm and T brought me to a swedish embassy 'do and showed me my first midsommar celebration. yes i realise i've said about the same thing in an earlier post and there you go, evidence of my wonderful memory.

sent T to paddington after our aussie brekkie and then went back to notting hill for round two! the mister had some shopping to do and i entertained myself with selfies. mature...

and because it was my birthday the next day, the mister let me pick a present that i've had on high rotation since.

we also fell hook, line and sinker for some coconut water and only later realised our fridge stocked just bubbles, sake and coco. so much for growing up!

one of those days

and just the pick me up i needed.

sometimes it's hard to deal with the lack of visibility. i'm admittedly OCD and need to know what's going to happen and when. i mean, i can't even watch a movie without wiki-ing the plot first. spoiler alert, much! sometimes if it's a complicated movie i draw mind maps too so i can follow without being that moviegoer who asks 101 stupid questions during the show. so it's really only natural that i don't like (most) surprises. but since i started going out with the mister, i've become better with spontaneity. and he's probably the only person who manages to surprise the already ever-suspicious me. 

it was one of those weekends where the mister nudged me into being sociable and meeting new people. while i was initially uncomfortable when someone i'd just met persisted in stating the obvious, it got better as the evening wore on.

strawberry sponge

had some time on my hands and decided to modify the blueberry sponge recipe. strawberries were the natural, economical alternative and they seem to be in season! got a bit brave and tried to tweak the recipe as i went along. of course, i forgot to take notes and that's that - unreplicable :( but it was fun seeing how the sponge rose and semi-submerged the strawberries i'd painstakingly sliced and arranged. didn't halve the recipe this time and baked two massive cakes which went down too easily and were well-received, if i may say so myself :)

self-invite

was at covent garden with my sweet friend M and after a highly satisfying tea at la*duree, i must've been drunk on their special blend that i invited myself over to hers. dodgy as that may sound, M was ever indulgent and didn't mind me hanging at hers while our men were at work. yep, we're fun like that :) and it's a nice story, really, because when M was first accepted for her LLM, i commiserated with her housing woes. little did we know that she'd eventually be given accommodation and of the most luxurious sort! her 450sq ft studio is every student's dream... well, it'd definitely have been mine! and she's got a lovely view and almost 360degrees of huge windows with plenty of natural light. if you squint, you can even see the shard in the distance. what a gem of a place! and what a gem of a friend :)

"breakfast for dinner"

is one of our favourite things but this time we decided to shake things up and have "tea for dinner" instead. although in the UK, "tea" is used interchangeably with "supper" and "dinner" so it does get confusing at times. question of semantics aside, had booked afternoon tea in the city with a friend who's on a flying visit to london en route to geneva for a skiing holiday. can i say how envious i am?! we met five summers ago. the mister was in leuven studying for his final exams and had banished me to dublin where i visited my cousin. as luck would have it, all her friends descended on her at the same time. T was doing a month at great*ormond street and hopped across to dublin for the weekend. we got along great, and have since kept in touch although that's more to T's credit than mine. in fact, swedish-canadian T spent a month at k*k hospital in singers and introduced me to my first swedish midsommar, just before i left for stockholm on exchange. so much as i was looking forward to an elaborate english tea with T, we rescheduled for notting hill brunch. not one to let a hard-gotten reso slip through my fingers, i went nevertheless and the mister joined later. what made things more interesting was that i happened to get talking to the charming gentleman next to me, who turned out to be paddy*renouf. P was more than fascinating and the best accidental date i could ask for and my goodness i only wish i could be a fly on the wall during one of his private tours of london.

truffle gruyere and chorizo egg cup

spent a day up north last week and this little baby sure perked up my train ride :) while i'm not a creature of habit, neither am i big on rituals, it's nice to have a little train routine. it usually involves the biggest hot chocolate possible (because calories imbibed in transit don't count!) and trashy magazines because neither guilty pleasure is as enjoyable without the other. when i'm feeling particularly industrious, i do try to get some work done but more often than not i cherish the time to kick back and decompress.