final splurge for the year

No, not plastic surgery (I wish! I wan a hidung tinggi, keke)

I probably shouldn't after my recent financial hemorrhage, but I need this because I'm starting work on Monday and my hair look half decent.

More importantly, I really shouldn't because.... announcement coming soon ^__^

London 2010: Shopping, dinner

Oxford Street is a shopping street in central London and is probably the best place to head to, for moi at least. It has 3 H&M stores! Three, tiga, san! There could be more though.

Oxford Street starts from the Tottenham Court Rd tube station all the way to Mable Arch tube station. I only got as far as Oxford Circus tube station and that's only halfway. Wish I could've shopped more but my bags were getting really heavy and I promised I would be back round 5pm so we could head out to dinner. In fact I was already running late but I know by now things happen when there's H&M, heh.

Anyway, guess where my hosts took me?


#1. Is it who you think it is? Yes, it's Jamie of Jamie Oliver! I have a couple of his cook books so I guess you can call me a fan.

The place is cozy and super crowded. We didn't make a reservation so we hung out at the bar a bit, chit chatting and taking pictures while waiting for a table. London has a lot of these Michelin star celebrity chef restaurants and Jamie's Italian is one of the more affordable ones. According to Dav, one of the must-try is Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck, where a full dinner course will set you back by at least £180 and you have to make a reservation months in advance.


#2. We had some lovely scallop and squid ink pasta, carbonara with some fat spaghetti, fried squids AND truffle fries. I've heard of truffles a lot and this is the first time I tried anything with truffles in/on it. With all hubbub surrounding truffles, I expected it to blow me away at first bite but I find myself struggling to figure out what they're supposed to taste like. Inferior taste buds, wattudu.


#3. Picture with my hosts, Dav and Steph :)

It was a good dinner. It's kinda like a farewell dinner for me as I'll be flying off tomorrow. Sobs~~ can't believe my holiday is coming to an end already.

Thanks guys, for taking care of me. Love you much!


#4. My haul for the day. The green bag has all the foodstuff from Marks & Spencer, a pile of clothes from H&M and cheap books from Waterstones.

London 2010: Rained-in day

For some reason, wherever I go, lousy weather follows. When I left London for Paris, London was sunny with a cool breeze. When I got into town on Thursday night, the weather was mild enough for me to walk around in just a sweater and windbreaker. Yesterday somehow, when I decided to go walking about town, it rained. And it rained the whole day.

So I went to the National Gallery. There's a free one-hour guided tour but I got bored after 10 minutes. I got myself an audio guide and saw Renoir's The Umbrellas, Seurat's Bathers at Asnières, Van Gogh's Sunflowers, Botticelli's Venus and Mars, van Eyck's The Arnolfini Portrait, one of Monet's not so famous Water Lily and a couple of Degas. The collection's not huge but there are some really good ones. I now have a new-found appreciation for pointillism, first developed by Seurat. It's a very beautiful technique.

The shop at the gallery has some pretty unique memorabilia items along with books on artists and their art. I really love the umbrellas with art prints but they're expensive at 25 pounds for one. Maybe when I'm richer, haha. What I did get was an owl for The BF's friend, coz his wife collects them. I think it's a Christmas trimming.



I had purchased a dinner and show package for Wicked last night. Dinner was a two course at a very nice hotel about 5 blocks away from the Apollo Victoria. It's supposed to start at 6pm but I conveniently didn't read that part and was sort of preoccupied with spending more money at H&M. As a result, I only got to the restaurant at 7pm and wolfed everything down in 15 minutes. It was a nice dinner but I would've enjoyed it more if I don't swallow without chewing. So many tragedies related to H&M, haha.



I absolutely adore Wicked! It's funny and Defying Gravity is so so good. Wicked is a prequel to The Wizard of Oz and it puts a new twist to what came to be in the story. The set looks amazing! I'm so happy :)

Paris 2010: Montmartre

I stayed at the delightful Plug Inn Hostel in Montmartre. It's clean, comes with breakfast and free wifi, which is more than enough for me.

Montmartre is a large hill in Paris's 18th arrondissement. It is said the name Montmartre originated from Mont des Martyrs (Mount of Martyrs). There was once an abbot called Saint-Denis who went around preaching the Christian faith to the Gallo-Romans. He was decapitated for that, on the hilltop in 250 AD. He didn't died immediately, as one would expect, but went on to collect his head and carried it all the way to the fontaine Saint-Denis, descended the north slope, and fell down dead! A church was then built in the place formerly called Mont de Mars, which name was then changed to Mont des Martyrs.

Frankly, I didn't do a lot of research before coming here. I just wanted to pop by Paris for a bit since I'm in London, and someone said Montmartre is a nice place. There's a famous Basilica of Sacre-Coeur, one of the must-see in Paris. I decided to walk there and it was a nice surprise when I saw this...


#1. Cobbled streets and a quaint flight of stairs all the way up the hill! Feels so Paris, you know what I mean?


#2. Basilica Sacre-Coeur, about 10-15 minutes walk from the hostel.






#3. Panoramic view of Paris from Sacre-Coeur.

At the bottom of the hill is Boulevard de Clichy, full of kebab shops (cheapest thing to eat around here, as I discovered) and bars and sex shops. Well, it's not all that surprising if you remember that Moulin Rouge is just around the corner. Quartier Pigalle is actually a red light district area; imagine peep shows and pimps. In the day time though, the area looks like a charming village in the olden days and doesn't feel unsafe. You can also find tourist-centric products, like magnets, chopping boards and mugs, all printed with the landmarks in Paris if you're interested in those kind of knick knacks.


#4. Candy store.


#5. So mind boggling. I don't even know what some of them are.


#6. Such beautiful blooms at a florist on the walk to the Metro. There's a Chinese takeaway shop nearby, and I'm starting to miss eating rice.

The rest of my day was spent shopping. There's no need for me to tell you what I bought or how much I spent, but one thing I have to tell you is that VAT refund in Paris is not as good compared to other European countries.

Paris 2010: The city of Paris

So here I am in Paree, the city of love!

The Eurostar is certainly a comfortable and convenient way to get to Paris. It leaves central London from King’s Cross / St. Pancras to Gare du Nord in central Paris. It’s not the cheapest way to get to Paris (fares are cheaper if purchased at least 2 months before) but it’s comfortable and the quickest. Check-in is 30 minutes before the train departs although it’s advisable to be there about an hour before as the customs queue can get quite busy.


#1. St Pancras station, home to Eurostar

I bought a Standard Premier pass, which comes with breakfast, from the Eurostar website here. You get to choose your exact seat (remember to watch out for the direction the seat faces) and the power socket (either UK or European) on the seat. The rail pass costs me £142 (about RM715). Again, if I had planned my trip in advance, it could've been cheaper. Read up The Man in Seat Sixty-One for more info.


#2. My breakfast

I have booked the next 3 nights accommodation at the Plug Inn Hostel, which is just a skip and a hop from the Moulin Rouge.


#3. Le Moulin Rouge

However, navigating my way here from Gare du Nord was a painful ordeal. It's true that the French doesn't like speaking English.

London 2010: Diwali in the city

We spent the entire morning making breakfast (roesti with oven baked bangers) and watching Zoolander. I haven’t seen it before because it was banned in good ol’ Malaysia, which I don’t understand why, because it was thigh-slapping feet-stomping hilarious! OK, maybe I do know. In the show, our PM is a cina ah-pek. So unthinkable hor? The gahmen takes things too seriously sometimes..mehh.

Yesterday the clock was turned back one hour. I didn't know that all digital clocks will adjust automatically. A brother of my friend’s, whom I met for dinner later, forgot about this and was rushing coz he thought he was late, haha. Used to happen to me in Ozzie too.

Anyway, since Deepavali is just around the corner and because there's a huge population of Indians in the UK, it was fitting that there's a Deepavali festival in Trafalgar Square. We were there because Dav secretly wanna be an Indian, according to Steph.


#1. Some bhangra dance happening, I think.


#2. Indian sweets given out at the festival.

The festival is not just a cultural showcase of some sort. It is significant to Londoners. Do you know that the national dish of UK is actually tikka masala? That's how in love they are with Indian food.

In every city, you can always find a small community of likes converging in a particular suburb. That would naturally be the best place for "local" cuisine. In UK, the Indian community more or less converged in East Ham and that was where we went for dinner. There’s even 2 Indian temples there.


#3. Dinner was at Chennai Dosa and I ordered a Butter Panner Masala with chapatti. It was really really good albeit just a tad on the salty side.

My friend's brother, who I mentioned earlier, just moved to London from Luxembourg, and one of the things he had to do at work was attend an orientation on “Living in UK”. In the class, he was taught that it takes a longx6 time for the British people to warm up to you. If you’re lucky, you’d get invited to someone’s home for dinner in 6 months. The British people do not criticize you directly, instead opting to drop hints or beating around the bush (I wonder if they do the same when praising you?). If I kena something like that from a British boss, sure die coz I'm a failure at reading between the lines.

Oh and then, while walking to the train station after dinner, I saw the green laser beam from Greenwich. Yayy! Another item struck off the list :)