beloved bel

Indeed I've stopped blogging since work started on Monday! haha no, not that I'm too busy at work.. people here value work life balance which is super nice la. My manager's a really nice English guy and other than that, the rest from my direct team are from all over the world! Let me recall.. 1 Irish, 1 Australian, 1 Indian, 1 Iranian, 1 Turkish, 1 Russian, 1 Australian and 1 Singaporean - me! Diversified eh? I dunno if our manager has any problems managing such a diverse team. Haven't really started on learning yet coz initial stage is always spent on setting up user account, systems access, etc. So cannot blog much about work so far.. Summary of our meals at a glance.. First day of work, Kathryn brought us out for lunch at this jap place called Itsu. It was nice to see her again since her last trip to SGP office. At night we met Grace for some Chinese food at Leicester Square - some Lobster noodles & yummy tofu. Plus complimentary red bean soup.. ahh the t...

Sounds like a depressing title, isn't it? haha anyways we wanted to do the touristy thing today- to walk down River Thames, see Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Westminister Abbey, Horse Guards, etc etc. Altho' we did, guess what? It really rained :( just like what the weather forecast said. Yes now I understand why weather is a big topic here coz it's just so unpredictable and it rains ever so often.. everyone here checks the weather forecast for the next few days (ask someone how's the weather on say, Tue, and am sure you get the answer almost immediately.) Most unfortunate, we only managed to see the Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, London Eye and that's pretty much about it coz the rain just spoilt everything! It's kinda hard to take pics holding an umbrella that has the wind trying to blow it away. above: the garden of some government building which we happened to walk into, lured in by the flowers. Despite the unfo...

It was the perfect day since we arrived in London because the weather was warm and sunny! Not that I love the sun a lot, but in this instance, it was a nice thing to have and somehow Londoners are all out in the streets and the whole atmosphere was very upbeat. Very nice. We started the day by going to Portobello Market, and Cynthia arranged to meet Grace there. It's very near Notting Hill area so we got a feel of the neighbourhood. Get ready for pics! Typical houses in Notting Hill, so nice!  Grace stays in a similar building, lucky girl. Portobello Market This market is a really nice place full of antiques and vintage stuff which are very interesting. We saw many vintage accessories, antique books, super old telephones (claimed to be in working condition), old vintage cameras, vintage signs, and I even saw newspapers dating back to 1945 during WWII (wanted very much to buy a copy haha. too amazed lah), and many many more. It was very crowded and there were many ...

Today is the second day of our house hunting, this time from Maida Vale, to Canada Water where there are more value-for-money houses. Theoretically in Singaporean terms, we are looking from Bukit Timah to say, Bishan area. Once again, 10 houses and we loved the first one we saw. Superb river view from the living room and the rooms but unfortunately the location wasn't great. It's a good 20min walk to the nearest tube station (and mind you, it's the angmoh fast speed of walking so we reckon we'd take abt 30min which.. isn't a good idea) Above: Houses in Maida Vale, where it exudes English charm, and where houses are much more expensive compared to Canada Water. The last apartment we saw at Water Gardens met all our expectations coz it's brand new, just a 5 min (!!) walk to the tube station, a huge Tesco next to the station, plus a shopping centre so all plus points for us. And... we got the apartment!! :D t's brand new, just built last Dec and we ...

You might be wondering how the service apartment looks so here are some pics! Pic above is the building which the flat is in; a nice English building with a pub called Three Lords on the ground floor, and which can get rather noisy at night. Spot the red window. That's our apartment! It is a small one living room + one double bedroom, a red and black scheme, brand new place. The bedroom View from the toilet - of course blinds are always down! The sofa area Our dining area, full of groceries.  Look at the 5 litre bottle of water we got from Tesco. We took turns to carry all the way from Canada Water.  Super tired after that! The kitchen where we try to do some cooking, mostly heating up pre packed food from the supermarket

We woke up on a better note, thank God. Enough rest and today we were supposed to go down HSBC to open our bank accounts. Since we woke up at 6am, we chatted with friends & family back home on MSN, had breakfast and then decided to take a walk around our area, and saw Tower of London and Tower Bridge. The last time I was here was 10 years ago so it's a good time to revisit again :) Tower Bridge as I know it Wind swept hair Alex at HSBC was a friendly girl and I can't believe it, we emerged as HSBC Premier Banking customers even tho' obviously we didn't qualify. We decided to take a walk down London Wall to look for our office location coz we don't wanna be late on Monday. Guess what the numbering of buildings are not in order! We walked up and down London Wall 4 times looking for #125 but somehow the street ended at #75, Deutsche Bank. We finally found it 1.5h later (!!), located perpendicular to the street we were walking up and do...