london journeys, part two

Day 2
so the riverside sojourn continues and honestly, i kinda fell in love with london at that point. everything was so.. romantic and just artsy and bohemian. lol



architecture heaven


prerequisite artsy dock-shot


i wouldn't mind a stroll down here everyday


tamesa oxo for our dinner! kinda pricey but omg... they serve THE BEST CREME BRULEE EVER. forget about madeleine's chocolate creme brulee, here they serve apricot creme brulee which honestly, was heavenly.


us rushing across to head toward covent garden for a night of ballet! haha.. honestly i was impressed. the ballet WAS good. and yeah 'sleeping beauty' got ian pretty sleepy as well.. lol


intermission time


the theatre is pretty grand.. something that looked like it was plucked out the phantom of the opera.


so after some great ballet, we headed back to the hostel where i had a most interesting conversation with my roommates, niall and marcellus. basically, a singaporean, an irish and a argentine talking about stuff from art to photography so the best city in the world and the worst. niall was just completely dismayed to be in london due to the horrid weather especially after vacationing in nice whereas I was just coming out one of the most beautiful walks in london. so yeah.. fun times. =)

haha.. this is going so slowly, but im gonna go sleep. nitez!

blogging about london, part one

london was a blast! here's a shout out to weihan, ziyang, ben, xiuf, lipen, william and so on so forth who were so welcoming and 'educational' in telling me where to go.

the trip honestly turned out more fun than expected and london just makes me wish I had chosen imperial to study in. lol.. i'm such a city kid.

day1 - south kensington - v&a, natural history museum, covent garden, riverside

day1 was pretty much a bummer because i was shagged out by no only the time diff and also because airindia has pretty much killed 80% of my brain cells by switching off the bloody ventilation for half of the flight. meaning it was as hot and stuff as India for half of the flight. wasn't too pleased.

well aniwez, we didn't want to waste the afternoon away, so we traipsed down to v&a for some modern art infusion.



entering via the subway entrance


when you have that as your centerpiece, you scream modern.


view from above


spot me? this was the balcony that allowed us to see the casting courts, which contained amazing reproductions of stuff like trajan's column, to david, to the school of athens. it's quite amazing seeing all of them in one same room.


this is really pretty amazing


view from outside. if you notice a difference in picture quality, YESS.. it's because i'm ripping off from brenda's photo collection, which is so uber good. haha

next up was natural history museum, where honestly i was so wiped out i was searching more for benches to rest and sleep rather than at exhibits


after night at the museum, nat history museums will never be the same again


this was the jewel gallery. pretty amazing shit here, but i was too comatose to enjoy.


i was in this slanted-shot and back-of-scuplture mood whilst taking photos.

we then traipsed to harrods before i left the motley crew to go find weihan. who hasn't really changed. haha. aniwez, he brought me to my favourite place in london - covent garden, where the bohemian spirit commingled with this sense of extravagance, where you had glitzy shopping boutiques right next to west end theatres with pret a mangers and street performances thrown in as well. uber cool.

day 2- sensing my enthusiam for covent garden, it's not surprising the next day i dragged everyone down to covent garden for more. =) well, not before a brief detour to bayswater for the legendary duck rice. well, it was good. haha... i think my tongue has been too exposed to good food that legendary is rarely part of my food vocabulary.



glancing at the royal ballet theatre brochure to decide what to watch. we actually headed to book tickets for sleeping beauty that night. the dancing was so amazing. both the male and female leads were just amazing.


then upon my suggestion we headed down to tate modern. when i say headed, it means we spent 3 - 4 hours detouring round trafalgar square, bankside, crossing the bridges, taking tons of pictures and yeah, reaching tate modern when it was about to close.



i thought u only saw such things in france


EMO SHOT! haha.. i couldn't resist. stupid henry spoilt the first shot though


the riverside is seriously awesome


EMO SHOT NO. 2! This place just screamed bohemian with the run-down brick wall facade and scribblings of the various muses of arts and culture.


true to form, we decided to head to this tamesa oxo place for dinner, which not only offered delish food, but a smashing view of the river thames. more of it later.


tamesa oxo in daylight


FINALLY, tate modern. this was the turbine room, which somehow reminded me of a concentration camp with the dark imposing steel columns and general starkness.


me foooling around with the crack on the floor in the turbine room


tate modern is my favourite museum in london. =)


more soon.. i guess, when more photos are up.

memories of NYC

wow.. time really flies, as I am clutching my jackets and figuring out what jeans to bring to London for spring break i kinda reminisce the awesome winter break i had traipsing round orlando, NYC and van.

Didn't really have high hopes since
a) I wasn't a disney person as sheryl put it, and well, I kinda went more for the rides.. which made me utter "dis..appointing at ever turn"..

b) NYC was dead. to. me. having been there 4 times or more and just having been to ever single free destination that was around, I was getting sick of it.

c) Van wasn't particularly appealing either. lol.

but hey! i guess going with low expectations helped out ALOT. I thoroughly enjoyed myself in all phases of the trip and yeah.. it was a blast.

NYC revealed herself much more to me thanks to cw guiding us around for 'photo assignments' as well as introducing great food places from momofuku (yummy tsukemen and overrated BBQ pork bun -_-), to the home-reminding nonya, to that quirky japanese restaurant where we over-ordered like crazy, then chilling at joints like brgr (ironic that we didn't even TRY their burger), as well as jamba juice (where i prompty took at dump at their toilets after drinking so much juice.. ok u didn't need to know that)

not forgetting the places, and even the gem of a hotel i found. gerswhin hotel was uber-kitsch and just a nice find, so well-located near to the flatiron district that shopping was literally a stone throw's away. we pushed some wierd cube at k-town in the middle of the night (instigated by cw), went shopping at every single possible shopping place, hit greenwich village (i still cannot pronounce that word) and quarreling with cw over which movie to watch at that meteorically expensive theatres at Times Square (i wanted to watch National Treasure 2 and he insisted on Sweeney Todd.. and we ended up watching the disaster of Beowulf-3D which honestly.. sucked.)

oh oh! and i think i went on a realty-tv contestant spotting streak (think linken's gonna think i'm a complete pathetic sod but hehe.. who cares).. saw Malan from PR3 shopping at Marc Ecko and then saw Neil from SYTYCD2 (i think) at the theatres queueing for.. Sweeney Todd. haha.. i think i'm wasting my memory on utterly useless stuff.

so yeah, i actually miss NYC.. glad to be able to spend half a day there before I head to yet another metropolis called london. =).. wish me luck!

games night and post-party fun

games night came and went amidst yet another week of frantic scrambling to finish work and prelims alike. honestly not doing too well and getting too stressed over it, but well, i think i needa chill. lol.

well, had my usual dose of tennis and snowboarding to keep me happy, though snowboarding on friday was a commingled mess of abject misery + pain as well as exhilration. pain because i didn't wear a beanie and scarf which meant that when i sped down the hill, snow and cold sleet smacked and slapped my face so hard I had troubled speaking coherently upon finishing the black slopes. thank goodness for my ski goggles. we 'tried' going down hercules, apparently the toughest black slope that greek peak could offer, and honestly, when i reached the edge of the 'cliff', i just sat down and pretty much panicked the same way i did at odessey. then i pushed myself off, starting sliding down the slop on my butt, and laughed all the way down this way. this was so reminiscent of our kiddie slides just much bigger, much steeper and much more fun... lol.. yeah, so i didn't actually manage to go down hercules. oh well.

aniwez, so saturday was games night, started off slow, but as critical mass of people came, things were pretty fun, i skipped dota to play a game of bang! in which i had to battle the combined wits of 3 outlaws intent on killing the sheriff who couldn't quite protect himself and with a vice who was sheryl. nuff' said. lol.

too bad it had to end at 11, but it was pretty obvious that various groups were still intent on playing. headed back with the 909 gang, not before stopping for bubble tea in the middle of the cold night and also talking alot of crap.. lol. spent nearly 4 hours playing citadels (or.. in the case of me and zee, we spent 4 hours trying to explain and progress the game). it was pretty interesting. we had gamers like joshua and joel who were reading every single rule within the book to find out winning strats, we had guojian and cheewei who were more intent on being kings/architects and then exclaiming about them.. lol..

i must says it was fun, different kinds of fun with different groups.. which to me.. was real cool. haha.. will quite obviously miss such times when the semester ends and u guys have to leave.. lol.. oh wellz