28 dec

another big shopping day! went to quite a few places today~ first went to bond street (orchard road equivalent of london) and walked around. decided that even the cheapest t shirt without prints (from topman) costs too much (£5) so ended up not buying anything.. next decided to go to hamley's (7 floors: largest toy store in the world!) to have a look around. wanted to buy this cool guitar figurine that moves.. but didnt in the end cos it was too troublesome to assemble. finally went for the harrods sale! its a very attracive sale~ spent close to £100 there.. =.= but was rather worth it. shall not divulge too much what i bought :)

27 dec

traditional fish and chips! harddock fish~ with a generous serving of fries

in front of some giant horse fountain
in front of the gate in chinatown
boxing day sales mania in london! it's bloody packed at oxord street. bought a pair of blak jeans from topman. was tempted to buy more from these shops but the labels all say made in thailand or made in china. doesnt make too much sense to pay for the inerent export costs when i'm going to shop till i drop in thailand over the following week~ had some nice hand made noodles at a hong kong restaurant for dinner!

23 & 24 & 25 & 26 dec

did not even go out one bit. most shops were closed over the christmas weekend. we needed to recharge our strength after going out continuously for 10 days.. had a lot of fun experimenting with different dishes at home though~

22 dec

went to windsor castle today! that's another destination off my travel wish list! too bad the great fog that has descended over the past few days made it difficult to appreciate the exterior of the castle in its full grandeur. the inside of the castle was spectacular! bought a book to remember to sights i had seen.

21 dec

been travelling long hours these 2 days. went oxford. going windsor tomorrow. not much time to blog. will write again after windsor

19 & 20 dec

19 dec
bought a box of doughnuts at harrods! yummy looking? can get sugar rushed to death.. met hongking for a little chat as he stopped over at london after a (turmultous) holiday. turns out that we made a bad decision to take the bus and he missed his connecting natex bus to bath by 1 min.. :( dinner was at garfunkel's. had this beefwatched les miserables at queen's theatre at night! it lived up to its name as london's most popular musical. was so amazing!

20 dec

18 dec

today we went to the monument! climbed a hellish 311 steps to the top (me knees!) but the view was rather rewarding~ then we searched for lunch along the streets of london bridge (nope it hasn't fallen down) :P. we finally found lunch in a fantastic kebab restaurant near the underground station.. notice some food seems missing from my dish.. tts cos i've already eaten about a third of the dish before i remembered to take the photo! the brits really serve monsterous portions for meals. after that we walked past the royal exchange, the equivalent of mini-ngee-ann-city housing lots of luxury shopping outlets like chanel and tiffany's! if only we had such beautifully designed shopping centres.. :) finally we went to the imperial war museum. the exhibits there mainly covered the wars in the 20th century. a lot of history coming to life there, saw lots of sad anecdotes, and the jewish holocaust section made me rather sad that such a war against humanity happened. didnt manage to see the whole exhibit due to time constraints, so will be returning tomorrow to view the remaining exhibits~

17 dec

sunday's the day of markets! today we went to camden market slightly to the north of london! it's london's version (though much, much to the power of 10 smaller) of chatuchak market, fused with lots of punk culture. its like the average price is £12 per not-so-high-quality-you'll-find-every-other-shop-selling-this-same-shirt or £20 for 2. talk about benchmark pricing hor.. imagine they are the equivalent of the 129B t-shirts in thailand! can buy so much more there! needless to say i end up coming back from the market empty handed (except for a french dictionary) which was pretty unusual for a shopaholic..

overall the market was rather disappointing, since firstly a lot of things they sell were overpriced-due-to-exchange-rates clothes. the souveniers were stamped all over with the irritating made-in-china insignias. i started lamenting over how the french has art nouveau and the germans have ornate woodcraft to sell the the world, but british markets are overrun by chinese food sellers, indian souvenier stalls and punk fake hashish/weed/whatever-the-drug shops. i did try to get a london policeman look from one of the shops selling those hats.. kinda reminds me of the mr. bean episode where he gets tricked by kids wearing these hats. :)

at night we went to oxford street to walk around the shopping malls! due to some strange sunday trading laws, all shops must open late and close early on sunday (what's the rationale?!) so we had to stop shopping at 7pm. saw a tammy (nyp? =.=) stall.. maybe this makes me look like i'm the male lead in the tammy video? (ya rite..) as we were walking i bought a bottle of mineral water for £1. i was commenting on how i can get the same thing in thailand for 7B. kiat reasoned that in UK, where people earn £2000 a month, a bottle of water costs £1. in singapore people earn SGD2000 a month, so 1 bottle would cost around SGD1. so if thai bottled water costs 7B, the thai's average salary would be around 14,000B. which is rather true! that leads me to derive Sing Yong's Law of Average Salary To Price Of Mineral Water Ratio, where the average income of a city dweller is about 2000 times of a bottle of mineral water found in a convenience stall.

16 dec

went to the town of greenwich today! main attractions of the place are the christmas market, the royal maritime museum and the royal observatory.

had an (authentic?) chocolate brownie cake at the christmas market for only £1.60! and the flower shop was damn colourful! can feel the overall mood of christmas..


the greenwich meridian is the place where the whole world derives their time! i'm standing at the prime meridian, meaning its longitude 0'0'00 on the map. the musuem gave a very valuable lesson on the history of time keeping. :) had a very good lunch of brown meat and vegetables!

did some groceries at ASDA (some Walmart subsidary). found a £1 coin in a cart and a can of sardines on the road outside.. whee! haha. cooked beef lagsane for dinner.. wasn't too bad, but the pasta seems a bit hard. (its always damn hard to cook the pasta!!)

15 dec

breakfast was spaghetti bolognaise (which i cooked and successfully browned the meat as the instructions on the sauce bottle specified) :) pro looking hor?

most of the morning was spent lazing around due to jet lag adjustment and yesterday's tiring recee. afternoon was spent in tower of london. the mechanisms of the tower are damn impressive! had the chance to see the raising of the bridge to let a ship go through at 4.15pm.

in the evening we went to harrod's to window shop. i was like getting the "child in a big toy store" syndome again. i wish that i can shop at harrod's one day and not having to worry about multiplying by 3 to convert. so many cute bear bears!

13 & 14 dec

13 dec

transiting in bangkok suvarnabhumi airport for 6 hours.. spent most of the time reading! they even have laptop points for people to plug in and surf wirelessly (which i shamelessly used to charge my dying N73..) most of the shops there are huge with many sales assistants but have not that many customers..



14 dec

kiatc met suggested cooking fried rice for a start! this is officially my first cooking attempt ever! *so proud of myself* didn't taste that bad although we did forget to add in the salt to the rice. had to re-pan and add the salt to the mix. not too bad for a debut i guess.. haha

went to leicester square to walk around in the afternoon. was awed by the sheer number of shops in the area! the shop that particularly caught my attention was a spirits shop. the picture is like a quarter of their display window. there is probay enough booze inside to kill half of london's population.. there isn't a brand of hard liqeur that cannot be found inside! also walked past soho with all the tacky shops..

next we went to the trocadero and picadilly circus. there was a small funfair there. saw a man win a big reindeer softtoy by hooping 2 basketballs! then we went to trafalgar square where lord nelson stands proudly above a large pillar, surrounded by 4 giant lions. for dinner we had a (disasterous) fish and chips from a cheap (and lousy) "food court" on top of a pasar malam near covent gardens. did a hell lot of walking today to recee. returned to the house with leg aches! was so looking forward to sleeping after one long day..

many many christmas gifts!

its christmas! aka shopping season. after 2 gruelling years of NS, i've decided to reward myself (compliments frm my dad) ! :) (partially also to beat the GST increase next year)

my shopping list this year end..
nokia N73 (bought!)
40" SAMSUNG LCD TV (bought!)
80GB black iPod (nxt week!)
a 320GB internal harddisk (nxt week!)
a new 7.0++ megapixel camera (looking around!)

mon dieu! i'm so excited this christmas!
:) :)

sInG