16: the man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.

london was mightily fun, it was good to see all the people after so long! :D it was pretty rushed though, since my disney plans fell through quite late and i decided to venture on a trip to london all by myself.

.. okay not all by myself, only getting there was by myself. when i got there, xuanmoo was there waiting for me. YAY. (:

let’s start with that fateful friday. (warning: text heavy because not all images are in yet… i’ll post them up soon! (: )

DAY 0 (Friday):

i woke up early to get to the bus station, but with my terrible bus luck, of course my bus had to reach the stop late, and i couldn’t catch the connecting bus. so i had to walk dunno how many streets just to get to the ithaca bus station. but i got there eventually. met patty… but she wasn’t on the same bus as me ): so i had to endure the 5 hour bus ride alone!

i got to nyc safely, and i decided i wasn’t paying for the $13 shuttle, so i went on the subway and the airtrain (which cost like $7, which isn’t too cheap either. its like paying S$11 to get on public transport to get you to the airport…) but okay lah. cheaper than the shuttle right. :P

i got to the airport, and the idiot at the counter kept typing nj instead of ng so he couldn’t find me on the list. i noticed it but i thought he might be doing smth else, so i ignored it. till his colleague came over, saw him typing nJ instead of G and he finally found me on the passenger list. and he had the guts to tell me a ticket was needed. he was like: “did you receive any other ticket other than this one?” me: “no?” him: -peers at my eticket, reads, frowns- “see here, it says, this is your eticket, no other ticket is nee…” me: “…”

yah. so i finally got into the airport, and i was freaking paranoid :P but i got thru and all and they didn’t check my DS2019 at ALL so i was quite paranoid, what if they didn’t let me in the second time man :X but okay im back in the US so i guess that means smth huh. :P

yah. anyway, i got into the airport waiting area and ate my first macs in the US. the macs version of mushroom swiss. bk has no mushroom swiss :P it was HUGE. :X haha. :P then i entered the gate lah. and it was a hassle okaeee. cause the flight got delayed. for an hour. and i was BORED STIFF. urghs. ): <

so finally i get on the plane, and i sit next to this pretty asian girl, who’s asian-american. but well, she was nice and friendly. we mostly slept. no inflight entertainment. funky indian food though. i flew air india btw :P cause it was cheap. heh.

AND I GOT TO LONDON. AFTER HOURS AND HOURS OF TRAVELLING!! (ithaca to nyc: 5-6 hours, nyc-london: 6-7 hours)

yays. and xuanyou was waiting for me ’cause the flight got delayed terribly so.

DAY 1 (Saturday):

apparently i was a really lucky girl. usually one would take the tube down to heathrow airport and it’d take like 45 min from the main city area. but turns out the tube to the airport was down that day, and the usually 14pound airport service was then the substitute :D :D :D for free. :D HEHH. so i got a comfy 15 min ride to the city. lols.

first day, lemme see what did we do.. we got there. and then went to chieh hwee’s place to put down my stuff. after a long walk that is, from the tube station to her place. londoners walk alot, as i soon found out :X chieh hwee was still sleeping! that girl ah. :X haha.

so after we put down stuff, we went out in search of micky’s fish and chips, for lunch. we walked rounds and rounds but never found it. but like after we gave up, it appeared. thankfully. xuanyou and i were starving. :P hahas. but london fish and chips.. suck. :P even with the salt and vinegar, the chips were bland.

then changed $, and then xuanyou brought me to find nurul and he went off, chieh hwee also went off sometime then (:

yays so i met nurul! we went to this palestinian trade fair thingy going on. and there were loads of beautifully hand-made stuff there. but i didn’t get anything cause everything was so pricey. it was like when i landed in the US again, except even worse. :P but fun to look at anyway. so pretty!!

then, nurul and i headed to erm, oxford street, i think. memory’s failing me. we went to hamleys! hamley’s this HUGE HUGE toystore (bigger than the toysrus in nyc, i’ve found out :P) and we stared at pretty toys (so nolstalgic) for AGES and AGES. :D funness. there was this really cool harry potter section with real wands and all. each wand is like 25 pounds. i was so tempted to get a wand cause i know its even more ex in sg. i’ve seen them at esplanade. but no, i didn’t get anything in the end.

and then… we met up with zing (ala, jieying, not zing the exrg headprefect). and we made dinner. oh wait, before that we had YUMMY three pound belgian waffles with chocolate. but yumsss. it was the hard hard kind of waffle, i want waffles. :P yeah then nurul cooked and zing and i helped her. super good stuff. salmon and peppers. salmon was great. fannnntastic (:

and then zing and nurul were headed to watch a show at west end, so i met up with xuanyou again, who brought me on a walk around london. we saw the london chinatown, west end, big ben, thames, westminister abbey, london eye and lots of stuff. not in order of course, cause well, i can’t remember the order. but pretty pretty at night and my cam sucked so i didn’t take many photos :P

but we walked till super tired, so we decided to tube back to chieh hwee’s (: and we went to buy krispy kremes (!!!!!!! okay they have it here in the us too, only ithaca has none. none i’ve seen, and apparently i think, none in the city/town itself. i think next town, according to jm/the other guys). and i have krispy kreme luck. YAYS. cause we wanted to get a dozen original glazed. but they were sold out, so same price for a dozen ASSORTED glaze. how nice is that lah. sweet. krispy kremes rock btw. doughnut craving now.

then we headed to chieh’s and that concludes my first exciting day in london.

DAY 2 (Sunday):

Not very exciting. I spent most of the day in imperial college cause xuanyou and chieh hwee had rehearsals and couldn’t bring me around. and i was rather tired anw. i visited the national history museum in the day with nurul, who was going back edinburgh later. HUGE museum, pretty cool stuff, but i realise my museum stamina is pretty low. im not a huge museum person :X for a while, yes. but not for long.

so i went back to watch rehearsals. spent most of it sleeping, spent some of it getting to know people, and some of it hearing xuanyou rant about the tech pple at ic :P hahas. nothing too fun. koped their food also :X i feel bad.

at the perf though, i saw a TON of pple. this includes astee, who was alr there cause she’s IC singsoc, terence tay, way kaisiang (!), andre, vincent lam. i think i also saw michelle li (from rg), yunqin and some other pple i didn’t manage to say hi too. fuzzy memory. haha.

-okay this concludes part 1, will be back with more. getting bored of myself :P i’m excited. this means i can add a whole new category (: -