It has been a very busy but fulfilling weekend for us.
First things first, the weather has been quite terrible of late. It has been raining with high winds plus the tube strike last week for 48h did not help at all. Everyone at work has been so mad with this tube strike. When it happened on Wednesday morning rush hour, my manager instead of taking his one hour journey, ended up taking 2h 45min. It was ridiculous and he was fuming mad when he came in. But what can we as commuters do? The Jubilee line had a reduced service which only worked for certain sections and only stopped at a few stations. Fortunately we are now on the train line and so it didn't affect us. Guess what, this tube strike is happening again this coming week for another 48h! I look at how people here moan and cope with it, it makes me thankful of our MRT back home, and also how much I hear about Singaporeans complain when the MRT breaks down for a few hours. This is so much worse.
Friday night I organised a CNY dinner with some Asian friends from church at Grand Imperial which is becoming one of our favourite Chinese restaurants here in London. There were 8 of us in total and I have to admit we splurged out on this meal. I pre-ordered a yu-sheng (in a nutshell, it is a raw fish salad which we need to toss as high as possible and recite out auspicious words at the same time, only for CNY) and then Lawrence and K both went a bit gaga over the menu, ordering a fresh steamed fish, two peking ducks, a whole chicken, tofu, 2 vegetable dishes… Doris and Thean were commenting 8 people consuming 3 birds (ducks plus chicken) which works out…. haha basically a lot of food per person. And still we ended off by ordering their tang yuan (glutinous rice balls in a spicy ginger soup, so yummy). You can say we were rubbing our warm tummies in glee. Before K and I ran for the train. It really needs some taking used to, this train commute. Off peak hours there are only 2 per hour, so yes if we had missed the 10.50pm train, the next one is at 11.20pm. (What are we gonna do waiting for 30min? God forbid…)
Saturday morning bright and early the bathroom contractor came by to fix the underfloor heating. It was raining again but we had grand plans for the day. We planned to visit Ikea (yay one of my fav places - I don't know what is so special and enchanting about this place. Maybe it's the meatballs.) Also to B&Q to return some stuff we bought incorrectly for the home. Lastly to end the day with a big bang, we were invited to a potluck party at Noelle's place - another CNY celebration!
We bought quite a few stuff from Ikea as expected. I have been really excited about our instalment of Come Dine with the Ong's and having just moved we only have 4 plates and 4 bowls. We needed more plates! And also more cutlery! This is another level of shopping now. We got a bedside table too. One because we figured there isn't enough space to put two so let's get one first. We were in Ikea in Kent, and about 5pm we left to go home to drop off the stuff, before running for the train to Noelle's place all the way in the west. It felt like we were on the Amazing Race. We arrived into a sea of red - most people were wearing red and most people also had finished eating. Lots.of.food. And lots.of.people. Once people settled down after dinner, obviously the most favourite activity started - poker. K is one of their social poker players and he was hoping he could win enough money for us to take a cab home later that night. haha. (No, it didn't happen.)
You can imagine how tired we were when we finally reached home at 12.30am.
Sunday we hosted lunch to the same group of friends whom we had steamboat dinner with last weekend. We had Jixian, Rongxuan and Lawrence visit us - our first visitors ever!! I cooked Hainanese chicken rice for everyone which was well received. And finishing off with K's favourite Mandarin cheesecake. We hanged out and chatted, had snacks and then I served tea, and watched a bit of the winter Olympics, and more chats. We always would ask RX how life as a doctor is like, the kind of patients she sees, and interestingly she said she "used to wear contact lenses". We probed further and she said she know contact lenses are ok for us, but because she sees such a skewed population everyday on eye infections and extreme cases too, she can't help but stop wearing them herself. Same goes for Lasik too. I am always in awe of her profession and love listening to her stories. They all left at 5.20pm because Lawrence wanted to catch the 5.30pm train. haha always catching the train from now on…
Before they left, I asked if the guys can help us hang up our huge mirror above our fireplace.
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| Love how the blooming yellow daffodils match with the mandarin oranges we have on our dining table |
First things first, the weather has been quite terrible of late. It has been raining with high winds plus the tube strike last week for 48h did not help at all. Everyone at work has been so mad with this tube strike. When it happened on Wednesday morning rush hour, my manager instead of taking his one hour journey, ended up taking 2h 45min. It was ridiculous and he was fuming mad when he came in. But what can we as commuters do? The Jubilee line had a reduced service which only worked for certain sections and only stopped at a few stations. Fortunately we are now on the train line and so it didn't affect us. Guess what, this tube strike is happening again this coming week for another 48h! I look at how people here moan and cope with it, it makes me thankful of our MRT back home, and also how much I hear about Singaporeans complain when the MRT breaks down for a few hours. This is so much worse.
Friday night I organised a CNY dinner with some Asian friends from church at Grand Imperial which is becoming one of our favourite Chinese restaurants here in London. There were 8 of us in total and I have to admit we splurged out on this meal. I pre-ordered a yu-sheng (in a nutshell, it is a raw fish salad which we need to toss as high as possible and recite out auspicious words at the same time, only for CNY) and then Lawrence and K both went a bit gaga over the menu, ordering a fresh steamed fish, two peking ducks, a whole chicken, tofu, 2 vegetable dishes… Doris and Thean were commenting 8 people consuming 3 birds (ducks plus chicken) which works out…. haha basically a lot of food per person. And still we ended off by ordering their tang yuan (glutinous rice balls in a spicy ginger soup, so yummy). You can say we were rubbing our warm tummies in glee. Before K and I ran for the train. It really needs some taking used to, this train commute. Off peak hours there are only 2 per hour, so yes if we had missed the 10.50pm train, the next one is at 11.20pm. (What are we gonna do waiting for 30min? God forbid…)
 |
| Our special pre-ordered yu-sheng, a typical CNY dish for Singaporeans and Malaysians |
Saturday morning bright and early the bathroom contractor came by to fix the underfloor heating. It was raining again but we had grand plans for the day. We planned to visit Ikea (yay one of my fav places - I don't know what is so special and enchanting about this place. Maybe it's the meatballs.) Also to B&Q to return some stuff we bought incorrectly for the home. Lastly to end the day with a big bang, we were invited to a potluck party at Noelle's place - another CNY celebration!
We bought quite a few stuff from Ikea as expected. I have been really excited about our instalment of Come Dine with the Ong's and having just moved we only have 4 plates and 4 bowls. We needed more plates! And also more cutlery! This is another level of shopping now. We got a bedside table too. One because we figured there isn't enough space to put two so let's get one first. We were in Ikea in Kent, and about 5pm we left to go home to drop off the stuff, before running for the train to Noelle's place all the way in the west. It felt like we were on the Amazing Race. We arrived into a sea of red - most people were wearing red and most people also had finished eating. Lots.of.food. And lots.of.people. Once people settled down after dinner, obviously the most favourite activity started - poker. K is one of their social poker players and he was hoping he could win enough money for us to take a cab home later that night. haha. (No, it didn't happen.)
You can imagine how tired we were when we finally reached home at 12.30am.
 |
| Fixing the bedside table on Sunday morning |
Sunday we hosted lunch to the same group of friends whom we had steamboat dinner with last weekend. We had Jixian, Rongxuan and Lawrence visit us - our first visitors ever!! I cooked Hainanese chicken rice for everyone which was well received. And finishing off with K's favourite Mandarin cheesecake. We hanged out and chatted, had snacks and then I served tea, and watched a bit of the winter Olympics, and more chats. We always would ask RX how life as a doctor is like, the kind of patients she sees, and interestingly she said she "used to wear contact lenses". We probed further and she said she know contact lenses are ok for us, but because she sees such a skewed population everyday on eye infections and extreme cases too, she can't help but stop wearing them herself. Same goes for Lasik too. I am always in awe of her profession and love listening to her stories. They all left at 5.20pm because Lawrence wanted to catch the 5.30pm train. haha always catching the train from now on…
Before they left, I asked if the guys can help us hang up our huge mirror above our fireplace.
 |
| Looks much better now :) |
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