Happy Easter everyone, hope you are enjoying this long weekend.
A bit slow on updates here as life has been very busy. We are doing some major house renovations at the moment so we are living in a construction site (pretty much), although the builders have tried their best to leave the house as liveable as possible. Our kitchen is gone now so having meals is a bit challenging these days. (We bought our first - yes, first - microwave two weeks ago in anticipation of the loss of a cooking facility!) And then there is much packing to be done. Oh don't even remind me... it's a massive project so until things stabilise I will blog more about it. It's all umm.. very exciting yet very stressful as you can imagine. Living outside our comfort zone at the moment!
On a happier note, I have some Spring pics to share.
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| We took a walk in a park a few Saturdays ago and saw flowers blooming |
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| A beautiful magnolia tree |
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We were in Kingston two Saturdays ago and this beautiful Jo Malone shop stopped me in my tracks.
How cute is this lil thing! |
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| Our own cherry blossom in our garden. Always such a joy to see these beautiful white flowers every Spring |
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| The pink hyacinths and the red tulips I planted last November did bloom! So exciting! |
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| Another pic of the tulips |
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| And of course not forgetting the British yellow daffodil |
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| We tried to take a selfie in front of our cherry tree |
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| And soon the flowers will drop and seeds will grow into cherries |
Two Fridays ago was a day of beautiful sunshine and I managed to knock off at 5ish. I called K to say I was on my way home and he suggested taking a walk at Greenwich Park to take advantage of the evening warmth. That sounds like a pretty good idea, romantic too if you ask me, and so yes we arranged to meet at Cutty Sark. I had some fruits with me whilst he brought some crisps. We sat on our picnic mat and started our pre dinner snack of crisps and fruits. (I know I mentioned a walk in the park but really, it was a sit-down in the park lol). We decided to be impromptu that evening and not even care about when dinner would be or what we would be eating. Within 20min the sunshine retreated and the wind blew. Ooh it's turned chilly! Perhaps we sat there for only 30min but that was actually a nice break from the normal evening nights so I was pretty happy.
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| The view walking into Greenwich Park. Gorgeous. |
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The night before we went to Greenwich Park I was out for dinner with an ex-colleague and also a dear friend, Kat. Kathryn and I go a long way back, in fact way before I came over to London. Our friendship is now in it's 10th year. Back in the day, she started working at JPM and had a work trip to Singapore. Like how we always extend our warm hospitality to overseas visitors to our office, a few of us brought Kat out for dinner (twice I think) and apparently our warmth blew her away, till this day. We brought her to Jumbo seafood and ate crabs (the proper way, i.e. with hands) the night she was due to fly back to London - she said she boarded the plane smelling of garlic and spices on her fingers lol.
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| We still talk about that crabby night till this day |
When I transferred over to the London office, it was that coincidental that we were in the same team in Emerging Markets. We sat next to each other and she introduced me to some British lingo and the British culture (what's a Sunday roast? How does posh English sound like? Or what about the cockney accent?). She found it strange that we Singaporeans don't drink as much as them, whilst I found it strange to hear her say things like "oh I just want to go out and get really drunk tonight". (But why would you want to get really drunk?) She would always ask "where are you travelling to again for this weekend, Bel?" Ah those were the days, we giggled so much at work it was like we were back at school.
Don't get me wrong. We worked really hard too. Kat is probably one of the most dedicated colleagues I've ever had. Us girls went through some thick and thin together in the course of our work- one very unforgettable day when we were working out how much our trader has made for a certain trade he did (still remember it was a Total Return Swap - oh god don't even ask me what it is now) and because the notional was in millions (I remember lots of zeros in my calculator), any small variation to the P&L components resulted in big swings. We started at 9am that day and worked tirelessly throughout that day, skipping lunch even. I think we annoyed the hell out of the trader that day because 6pm came and we still had no idea what to tell him. He was getting impatient and we were getting desperate. Our manager was on holiday and we had to call him but obviously it was pretty hard to help via the phone. I think that fateful day in 2009 brought us closer together (and clearly away from the trader!). Even though I've left JPM, we still keep in touch. Not frequently but perhaps a meal once every 4-6 months. She's a busy mom of two now and lives far away from me so meeting up is not that easy. For dinner that night, she ordered two drinks to go with whereas I had one, and we had a laugh again about how she always drinks more than me. I don't think this fact will ever change.
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