drinking on the job

it was a funny weekend - the mister had to work saturday but it was "fun" work, or so i tried convincing myself. without going into too much detail, he'd to scout for real estate and off we trooped in the company car all over the south, trying to sniff out the best deals and get a feel of the listings. of course, while he was hard at work taking notes, i'd be sunning myself by a roadside cafe having more than my share of bubbles :) how else to appease the reluctant wife who'd rather be chilling in chelsea...

wildernessing

it was only a matter of time before the wild got the better of me again. can't believe it's already been a year since the intro walk last year. also can't believe how fluke it was to have fallen in love with wilderness*medicine. maybe it's like any love in life - a complete accident and by the time you realise it, it's too late! oh but i'm being overly sentimental now. if i hadn't gone for freshers' fayre with J, and hadn't signed up at the wilderness booth because he did (yeah, i'm weak that way...) and never gone on that first walk... loathe to think of life without wilderness now. this city girl is completely changed, going so far as to have sacrificed my trusty hair-dryer (look ma, i can go on trips without my wella!) but i still need to shower twice a day, which has proved challenging when there's little to no running water in the rustic bunkhouses (or tents) we stay in.

i get ahead of myself. 

intro walk tomorrow and trip to bamburgh and holy island in a couple of weeks. how awesome is that! walking around holy island and up cheviot? someone sign me up alreadY!

kicking back

while i'm a huge fan of school, nothing beats friday and the sheer relief that washes over me. the ever-resourceful mister sussed out the chic-est japanese watering hole and we'd a wonderful dinner just a short drive from where we live. i'm loathe to call it date night (so cheesy) and as newlyweds with no kids on the horizon, every meal together is technically a date. so why state the obvious? nursed the junmai ginjo as slowly as my greed would let me, was so sake-happy by the second glass that i promptly forgot to take more photos of dinner.

changes

uni got a facelift over summer - it's good to be back :D

back on the toon

second year is off to a good start - in no small part because of the house warming / birthday bash T and i threw yesterday. we only started class proper yesterday too, but my timetable is looking goood :) back to the toon on sunday night (paid the price for being super-organised by arriving 4 days earlier than i really needed to!) but took my time settling down. moved out of halls (miss my en suite SO BAD!) and into a huge two bedder with T. what i lost in washroom convenience, i gained in proximity to medsch (literally 3min between locking our pernickity front door) and sitting down on the cushioned lecture seat. we are also 20m from the pub. maybe 19.5m, which may or may not be a good thing. so what did i do for four whole days before starting class? why, did what i could to make the flat more homely (photos later!) and baked up a storm. we missed two birthdays over summer, and D's wedding. kinda nice that out of our little grad group of 6ish (we've some drifters haha) three of the four girls are married, and the youngest is well on her way to having a ring put on it. ! i guess mrs > dr :)

so happy to finally have a place to call home in toon, and to enjoy the simple luxury of having friends over at whim. much as i liked my single en suite in halls, it wasn't conducive to having guests. but now, oh now, it's party central! friends have been coming over for lunch since term started (it's easier for me to come home than to go to the medsch cafeteria, believe it or not!) and we're more than happy to pass the tea / coffee pot round. planning the party was a great distraction from the impending beginning of second year and we went a little overboard with all the cakes. my sneaky friends also gifted me with an electric mixer for my birthday and i was more than happy make it work for its keep. good good fun! 5 cakes from scratch in a cranky gas oven - not for the faint hearted :)

on the menu was rendang with mashed potato (me), fried rice and fried plantains (T), the juiciest, tender-est roast chicken (G) and not one but three types of cake! we did a victoria sponge, banana loaf and sticky lemon loaf. can't get enough of my poundland loaf tins heh. the men brought bottles and bottles of wine and last minute i threw together a pitcher of iced berry tea that tasted almost like ribena if you ask me.

we'd a funny present opening moment when i told D part two of her present was on her way to her, without realising that amazon had over-performed and gotten it to her so fast the 'mysterious parcel' had actually freaked her out. D's really careful and didn't recognise the parcel sent from edinburgh at all so she cautiously brought it to costa, where her dashing mister opened in. we joked that if it had contained anthrax as feared, then all the people at costa would've died with them. as you might've guessed, starting the infectious diseases module later this year is going to be a ball...

and as if all that food and cake was not enough, we chased everything with pints at our local. the cost/benefit of living next to the pub :) may it be the first of many happy but not drunken nights. we're too old to be plastered. and there was 9am class.

chamonix

we woke up bright and early on sunday to beautiful blue skies and it felt like the perfect day to road trip to chamonix. we set off after a late breakfast (so much for bright and early haha) and breezed through the borders. having been to chamonix in winter over ten years ago, it was such a trip down memory lane, only this time it was all green grass, and, well, blue skies. 

 

geneva

realising that my seemingly endless summer was fast approaching an end, wanderlust once again got the better of us. so on the invitation of kind family friends, we hopped over to geneva for the weekend :)

our hosts stay near the lake and we spent saturday morning cycling to and around the lake. on the way, i saw this little sweetie with delusions of grandeur...

after a leisurely morning by the lake, we had a huge moroccan feast back at their house where the men really worked the lean mean grilling machine. after a siesta, we explored the city centre and saw the church of st. pierre, also home of calvin's chair. our hosts then gave us a tour of the UN buildings and we saw another chair, this time, the huge broken chair outside the UN HQ. little known fact: when we passed the ILO (international labour organisation), i learnt that my kongkong once went there to represent singers. looking at how our labour laws still need much work, i'm not sure whether it's something to be proud of or not.

after-party!

part vi: dance like there's no tomorrow

it's not a party without an after-party! the beauty of having the dinner at il lido was that we could turn the bar area into our own personal dance floor! wayne sandz, our multi-talented musician who went from playing smooth evergreens at lunch in a 3 pc set to jazz piano for our pre-dinner cocktails also doubled up as DJ. that man is incredible! and such energy, my goodness! he had a great feel for what would get our friends on their feet, not like the copious amounts of alcohol didn't help haha, and in no time we were boogeying like there was no tomorrow. wayne also brought all the DJ equipment,  lights and smoke machine... the works!

like a boss

just maybe the brainiest cutie (hellooo mr law clerk!) down undah

while everyone spent their precious saturday night with us (haha having worked before, i appreciate how awesome weekends are), team oz (pictured below rocking their blue steelz look sans JMak) came all the way from aix en provence, perth, brisbane and melbourne to be with us. who'd have thought that the wonderful friends i met stockholm three (!!!) years ago would be the very people at our wedding. yay for shrinking world and growing friendships.

and the ebullient (the best word i can think of!) miss A, of lavishley fame, working the dance floor :) she's one awesome party starter. just look at her!

and that brings us to the end of the wedding series. thanks for reading :) regular posting resumes tomorrow, with photos from a weekend getaway to geneva, one final hurrah before starting term.

dinner party

part v: dinner party

we deliberately chose a small ballroom so as to limit the size of our wedding celebration. we also had the luxury of a separate celebration for our friends. lunch was largely for family and our parents' friends, while dinner, oh dinner, was ours. we also did a straw poll among our <30 year old friends to ask if they'd prefer to join us for a sit down lunch or dinner and dancing. no prizes for guessing which they chose :) really glad to have had time with each group of guests and having two celebrations allowed us more time to focus on them. dinner went splendidly. il lido suggested a totally deluxe menu and we enjoyed it very much!

 

guess who dropped by all the way from D.C!

 my cousin, mr. august man, in action...

dr. koo reminding the mister to buy nothing less than 20pc chicken mcnuggets when i get the munchies. aww :)

"me? i'm not flirting!"