F & M

AK is not one to plan our trips abroad - he leaves these things to me - where to go, what to do, where to stay and eat, etc. Oh, he'll chip in with the odd "Do we really need our own villa?" or "We should explore China next year", and of course gasp at the rates of my desired hotel every once in a while, but most of the time, he goes along with my whims and fancies.

This time I got lucky. Since he was exploring London with a colleague two weeks before we met up there, this time he had an idea of where he wanted to take me in our limited time in London - a place he knew I'd go absolutely bonkers in given my love for food markets and such - one of my favourite things to do in any foreign place is visit the food markets, or even just regular supermarkets to check out the fresh produce and conveniences on offer. I've brought back French pate, German dried pork belly, wines, polenta, Ritter Sport chocolates, even cat food from abroad.

Despite my online orders arriving safely at AK's hotel, I was a little disappointed at not being able to visit Harvey Nichols as we wanted to reduce our travel time as much as possible, and I had made Anthropologie my top priority in London. Luckily Forntnum and Mason's was just a few blocks away. Happily, the visit there well made up for not making to Harvey Nicks. I went a little nuts there, and of course wished we had more money and luggage space to cart back it all.

Handmade marshmallows - plain vanilla, rose, strawberry.



Skull and ghost candies for Halloween.






Honeycomb and chutneys and crabapple jellies.





Stilton in clay jars.






Garlic-infused olive oil.




Lovely assortment of baked goods.






We spent a good two hours there and would have stayed for scones and clotted cream if time permitted. We also carted back lots of tea for our families back home in their lovely silver and turqoise tins. Love :)

It's all in the details - The Kiasu Traveller

The more vacations I take it seems, the more and more obsessive I get about planning every last detail.

I guess the habit first started out during our first trip to Europe - to Paris and Rome. We stayed in some flea-ridden hotel in Paris I picked out at the last minute and then something better in Rome (The Beehive - book the double room if you can. I loved this little place - clean, beautifully appointed, and its location right opposite the main train/bus station), but still, we shared a dorm with a couple other people, and generally did not enjoy the best the cities had to offer. Sure, I had read a ton of tips online before going - the best 3-day itinerary, how to save money by surviving on crepes and kebabs in Paris, which city pass we should get (just the metro ones IMHO, there are only so many museums one can stomach in 3 days), cautionary tales of child pickpockets when lining up to enter The Vatican...but I realised soon after that we somewhat missed some of the very essence of where we were going - Paris especially. Why oh why did I not go to Laduree??

There was our trip to Singapore and Universal Studios, where we regretted not getting the express pass and ended up having to queue for everything in the crazy heat.

And the last trip to India, out of fear of being stranded in the middle of nowhere helpless, the real planner/obsessive in me came unleashed. I booked our train tickets online waaayyyyy in advance (First Class, I might add. Doesn't cost much - and totally worth the money). I read and read BOTH Lonely Planet and Rough Guide books, mapped out our itineraries, even took down notes from TripAdvisor on where to seek out the best wood print fabrics (Anokhi hands down, by the way - for the workmanship, quality and styling) and good restaurants. I fretted about not being able to book my favoured hotel (also courtesy of TripAdvisor - and all the excellent reviers are true by the way), finally managing to confirm our reservations after changing a couple of dates. I booked, cancelled, rebooked, cancelled again and re-re-booked our train tickets from Delhi to Agra to Delhi again, to Jaipur. I printed out our hotel reservations, our train and plane tickets and filed them in a plastic binder to tote to India.

Now that I am fortunate enough to be able to pay Europe another visit, I am even more determined to make the most of all my time there. This time we are going to Seville, capital of Andalusia (Southern Spain I guess) and Venezia. Oh, and we're going to spend a night and half a day in London before taking off.

So here's what I came up with:

1) I've already placed my online order with Harvey Nichols for my hot chocolate, Mariage Freres tea and yellow tea submarine, having them delivered to AK's hotel. Tip for serial shoppers with friends who travel to places you can't - big department stores in the UK and the US most often have online purchasing and can deliver to your friend's hotel - just get your pal to tell the front desk to look out for it. Harvey Nicks sent me endless updates on the status of my orders - packed, despatched, delivered and signed for. I chose the 1-day delivery which cost slightly more than the normal 3 - 5 day one, and they were true to their promise.

2) Since we have so little time in London, I narrowed my itinerary down to only one must-visit, and a few options. Now of course I booked my hotel in London already, strategically situated near the Liverpool St. Station, the central London station where the Stansted Express train stops at. We will be departing from Stansted Airport to Seville, so it makes sense to live nearby the station so we can check out in the morning, leave our luggage at the hotel, go shopping and have lunch, then come back to the hotel to get our luggage and depart straight to the airport instead of dragging the bags through a couple of interchanges. The London Tube is infamous for its stations not being pedestrian/travel/disabled friendly, so I decided to take no chances.
Now if I had to choose one place in London I had to go to, it would be the Anthropologie store in Regent Street, so I mapped out our route there to and from Liverpool St.! Crucial to avoid wastage of my precious shopping time. Oh, what do want to buy? Six of these, two in green and four clear ones :).

3) The last time we were in Barcelona we both felt that we had a bit too much time to spend there. So this time in Seville I booked us a day trip to nearby Cordoba, where we'll visit the Mezquita Mosque and walk the old city. Turns out most of Seville's attractions (The Cathedral, the Alcazar) are closed on Mondays anyway so it would be a perfect time for a day trip to another Southern Spanish town. I booked our tickets via the Rail Europe website, which was easier to navigate than the Spanish national train service, Renfe's.

4) I also checked out happennings in Seville. With the Euro being at its all time low against our currency, I thought that this is as good a time as any to indulge in something that we wouldn't normally do - catch a football match, some kind of seasonal performance. Turns out the famed Cirque du Soleil is in Seville, and ending on our first day there! Guess it was meant to be. So I booked us tickets and printed out the map to the venue.

5) I also booked our seats for a flamenco performance. Would've booked us tickets to see a bullfight too but they're not fighting in Seville in October :( Oh well, moral dilemma resolved.
Update: Turns out advance booking (at least a day in advance) is a must for the top-rated shows! We tried to get into another performance nearer to our B & B and it was all fully booked two hours before the show, so thank goodness for the one I booked online.

6) Phew, am not done. I read that Venice can be really overcrowded with tourists and long lines to enter the attractions are more common than not. So I bought us Museum Passes from veniceconnected. This way I save 2 Euros per person, and won't have to line up for tickets nor for entry. Score. I was sorely tempted to get vaporetto and bus passes as well, but am not sure if we will really need them and at 40 Euros per pass, best to get there first and assess the situation first. (Update: Unless your hotel is really far away in Cannaregio, or you have issues climbing stairs/walking, or lugging a ton of stuff, I'd say you don't need it. The city is small enough. We stayed near the Accademia and had no trouble trekking every day to St. Mark's Square and Rialto areas to shop/see/eat. Plus the vaporetto's are really slow, up to the point of being annoying. I much prefer trekking on foot to my own pace.)

And of course, naturally I printed out all our Ryanair boarding passes, hotel bookings, etc. Now that's just being responsible.

Adieu Steve Jobs

I don't know why, the news has affected me more than I expected.

I was talking to my Dad over the phone about this, and he said. "Pity, he won't be able to enjoy his retirement."

Thing is, I think he didn't have to have a retirement to enjoy his life. He was doing what he loved, he got excited every day and he enjoyed every moment of what he did, as it was evident to see.

Listening to his 2005 Stanford commencement speech, he followed his heart and his head (his parents couldn't afford his expensive college fees, so he dropped out and started a company out of their garage instead), office politics of the worst kind - maybe even betrayal (the CEO he brought in to lead Apple ousted him out of the company), and through it all, the love for what he did kept him going, reaching the heights greater and greater.

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

London Shopping List

My excitement is quickly building up in anticipation of joining AK in Europe! Despite all the bleargh stuff happenning at work (the only way I know how to describe it all now), it's not every day, month or year that we get to travel like this. So I say f*** you to all that is wrong with my life right now and roll right on over to happier stuff.

Like couch surfing research on how to make the most of our half day in London before jetting off to Seville and then Venice. Am also thinking of a day trip to Córdoba when we are in Seville, to see the Alcazar, the Great Mosque of Córdoba and all the Moorish architechture I can take in.

Being from Penang, I do appreciate beautiful buildings. I might not be able to pull a Ted Mosby but I do try to distinguish between Gothic, Renaissance and Art Noveau best I can. I take in all that I can - the stained glass windows, the gargoyles, the signages, the cobblestone streets. This is also why I love Penang, and fell in love with the Cordoba district of Mumbai. I never realised it until I looked through all my vacation photos and realised that in addition to food (and shopping, might as well just admit it), I am a (European) architecture buff. Feel free to guffaw now.

On we go, back to the delicously frivolous.

The last time we were in London I managed to get to Harrods and its famed food halls. Not as great as I expected, and the prices were, well beyond me. I didn;t even buy an Ispahan macaron (5 bloody pounds a piece)

This time I have been checking out Harvey Nichols. They also have a pretty famed food market which I am dying to check out.

Meanwhile I have of course already checked out the goodies on their website. Ansd here's what I have my eye on so far:




Harvey Nichols Chocolate Drink Caddy. I fell in love with this the moment I saw it in ELE Singapore magazine a few years ago. Just look at that adorable label. Our tropical weather might not be all that condusive for a mug of thick hot chocolate with peppermint marshmallows and a slug of brandy/whiskey/Bailey's, but I sure can whip one up for snuggling under a blanket on a rainy day. And I'll hand down the tin to my kids, I promise!






Mariage Freres Green Tea from Provence. Super posh. Knowing me I probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between this and other supposedly more inferior stuff. But again, I am a total sucker for such gorgeous packaging. Gotta have it!







And this one is just too cute to let slip. Yellow submarine tea infuser. I want I want I want!

With the exchange rate less wince-inducing, Christmas coming soon, the fact I need as many pick me ups as I can get, it might be another year or two before I visit London again...and many other perfectly rational reasons :)....I am definitely going to get my hands on these. Now the only question is whether to buy them online and have them delivered to AK first, or pay a visit and decide then....

Our Boo

So AK is now in the UK, and will be there for the next two weeks until I get to join him. Then we're off to Seville and Venice.

In the meantime Boo Boo and I are holding down the fort. Here are some snaps from the weeks past.

I know I've said it many many times, and he can be very very naughty/infuriating/irritating, but I'll say it again. I will forever be thankful for the fateful day that AK took matters into his own hands (I was offshore) and decided that he was ours (or we were his). He has been an endless source of laughter, joy, amusement and the recipient of so much love from the both of us.

Busying himself checking everything out while I spring clean.




And making a right nuinsance of himself, wrestling with, of all things, my British pounds and managing to do good damage to a 5-pound note before I wrestled it out of him. I know I should have probably put down the camera, but I reckon this shot was worth it :)



Reaaaaching for his ball under the woven chest in the living room.



Fast asleep, without a single care in the world, because he knows he's safe, that he is loved.

Ode to The Beautiful Game

I love football.

Love the passion of the fans, love how the modern game has become something so much more than a mere sport, that it has come to become somewhat of a replacement or perhaps, more fittingly, a symbol of centuries-old serfdom rivalries, taking the place of skirmishes of old.

How the Barcelona club de futbol symbolises the still-simmering defiance, and very much the independence, of the proud Catalans and their disdain for Madrid. And their city rivals Espanyol have come to represent its authority. And all those cracking derbies, be it they at Merseyside (Liverpool and Everton), North London (Arsenal and Tottenham) and of course, the two giants of Manchester, one a half-century old legacy still going on, with a venue sometimes dubbed the Theatre of Dreams, against perhaps the ultimate poster child of the capitalism of the modern game, the new money of City in pale blue. And speaking of venues, how can one not be drawn by names like the Stadium of Light, by the Camp Nou, the Vincente Calderon, and the Santiago Bernebeu? (Of course it helps that I am now ploughing through the Dance of Dragons by George R.R. Martin, and the wars of medieval kingdoms, their seats of rule - Winterfell, Dragonstone, Riverrun and Storm's End, Volantis, Valyria, Meereen, anyone??)

The unpredicability of the game, the fact that one can never know what is going to happen, cannot be denied either. I mean, who would expect that after the first few rounds at the Champions League, the underdog Turkish club Trabzonspor to top a group that includes Inter Milan, the mighty Inter that won the treble just over a year ago, and the champions of France, Lille? Especially since Trabzonspor was not supposed to even be in the CL in the first place, just pulled up to replace the Turkish league toppers, suspended over match-fixing investigations. Or that the powerful Manchester United, who recently steamrolled Arsenal 8-2 and Chelsea 3-1 over the past weeks, would be held back by Swiss club Basel? And of course by next week it could all switch up again.

There are many reasons why football is so loved by all. The mystery of 22 men chasing one ball. You never know what will happen. This is a game where the small, physically unimposing can impose upon giants. Witness Spain and Holland in the 2010 World Cup Final? Or Barcelona FC and AC Milan? Where a little Argentinian who was rejected by initial scouts in his own country for being too small, who suffered from a growth hormone deficiency and had to inject himself with hormones to ensure he continued to grow as a child, has become the world's best player? Try that with basketball, or rugby will you? :) It is, as it is called, the beautiful game.