Michelle is in London town and we arranged to meet up last Saturday. I suggested since Christmas is around the corner, we should find every opportunity to soak in the Christmas cheer. I found a carols singalong concert at the Royal Albert Hall and she readily agreed. Poor K just gets pulled into stuff like that haha but he is very easy-going so all 3 of us met for brunch at South Kensington before making our way to the venue.
It's so nice to see Mich here. We, together with Cindy were from the same FYP group in uni (back in the day, I would always remember us having a slow start in our thesis paper before one day our tutor heaved a sigh of relief saying finally we have achieved a "quantum leap". Lol. Somehow these 2 words just stayed in my mind).
We always laugh saying Michelle sees me more in London than Cindy in Singapore. I guess everyone has their own busy schedules and somehow Mich has this affinity with London having visited quite a few times in the past few years.
I suggested going to Le Pain Quotidian for brunch. We managed to get a corner table after waiting in the queue for some time.
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| With our hot breakfast - omelette with salmon and mushrooms |
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| "Hi Cin!" |
After brunch we walked about 10min to the Royal Albert Hall.
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| Pardon my wind swept hair. Why nobody told me about my hair I didn't know! |
We went into the Royal Albert Hall which is always looking so grand and awesome. However we had a slight problem. When I was sourcing for tickets, all seats were sold out and so I bought us the gallery aka standing tickets. Not ideal because we had to stand throughout the concert but oh well, beggars can't be choosers. I heard good reviews from a friend who went last year. We went to the top floor overlooking the filled hall and it was pretty awesome looking down.
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| Atop the hall in the gallery - in our standing positions |
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| Pretty awesome view of a filled RAH |
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| Time to start singing |
The conductor of the orchestra doubled as the emcee (leading everyone in songs and carols) and at times he played the piano too (so versatile, man of many talents). There was a singer called Laura who performed two or three solo songs before leading all of us in carols. There was also a full choir on stage. A few moments I felt like I was in church singing during praise and worship, and then I was brought back to reality looking at the conductor and the orchestra playing.
The atmosphere we wanted was definitely in the air. We saw people wearing their knitted Christmas jumpers; we saw others wearing Christmassy headbands with flickering lights; some waved their light sticks according to the beats in unison, whilst others simply stood up and danced to the upbeat carols. Drinking is permitted in the hall so you could see people having a beer in one hand either grooving to the music or singing along.
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| C'mon everybody let's sing Silent Night |
The only thing was… we wished we had a seat each. We were pretty tired out after standing for 2h. But then if we compare ourselves to the white haired grandma standing up beside us throughout the concert, well… it's almost wrong to even say out the word "tired".
Counting down now… a week more to go! I am seriously loving all the Christmas carols being played on the radio stations now.
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