beloved bel

Merry Christmas!   Hope you had a good one.  We are just back from Stuttgart in Germany, spending yet another lovely Christmas with our German family which I will blog about next :) The week leading up to Christmas, work was pretty quiet as many people were on their holidays.  I decided to work throughout except for the two bank holidays which was pretty nice.  Honestly you don't work too much during this season and I spent quite a few days working from home. Rachel's Christmas tree by her fireplace Rachel kindly invited us over for a Christmas dinner at her place together with a few other friends.  When we arrived, we saw a police car parked outside her house and a few policemen talking with two guy friends whom we recognised from a distance.  So strange, we thought.  What's going on?  Turns out that Rachel's elderly neighbour right across her house had been burgled.  Oh gosh!  The policemen were asking people if they saw anything but of course none of us incl

Ever since The Shard opened fully, I've been meaning to go to one of the restaurants and admire the surrounding views.  I mean it is such a majestic skyscraper standing up so beautifully at London Bridge.  The name Shard because the building looks like it is made up of a few shards of glass pieced together. In fact the top of the building looks "unfinished" to some.  Most of the restaurants and bar are on the 32nd and 33rd storey whereas guess what, Shangri-la hotel owns the top floors (202 rooms in total) so you can imagine waking up on top of the world. I was secretly hoping the hubby to suggest a meal in the skies sometime, but alas the wait was ahem a bit longer than expected so I took things into my own hands ;) I was "researching" the restaurants and saw that Hutong, the Chinese restaurant was doing a deal will early January.  In fact the 4 course deal was really reasonably priced and my heart skipped a beat.  I think it is time for us to dine at

Whenever we visit a Korean restaurant we will order our two main staples - beef bulgogi and kimchi stew with pork and tofu.  In cold weather such as now, slurping on a bowl of steaming hot kimchi soup to go along with rice is oh so uplifting.  Love it! Two Saturdays ago I realise I could try cooking the kimchi stew at home - should not be too easy I think?  We went to the Asian supermarket near us and I managed to get the ingredients I needed.  I referred to this website: http://norecipes.com/recipe/kimchi-jjigae  because I like the idea of marinating the pork beforehand.  There are many variations available online. The main ingredients are: sliced pork, tofu ,  Doenjang (Korean bean paste), Gochujang (Korean chilli paste), and of course kimchi (doh but of course).  Based on the ingredients I could get from the Asian supermarket, I had to tweak the recipe a little. Top: Doenjang (bean paste) and bottom: Gochujang (chilli paste), both came in cute plastic tubs Kimchi Jjigae

There are lots of volunteer opportunities going on at work especially this time of the year and I love we get so many options to help the community.  (I volunteered for a kid' sports day event earlier this year and that was an eye opener :) I was exhausted after that event.) Every Christmas our bank partners with this children's charity and sponsors many toys to children from under privileged homes, to give them a toy as a present which they would not otherwise receive.  This year the team decided to introduce Toy Dash, which is to go out and buy as many toys as possible, for all age groups.  Think: Supermarket Dash.  Ah, shopping.  This one I can do quite easily, I thought this task was designed for me!  Also, collectively, our team at work (about 12 of us) signed up with our assistant's help to wrap some of these presents so they can be given away, all wrapped up beautifully. Can I bring Bashful bunny home? Another team member heard I was signing up and decided t