I'm off!

So… after many months of slogging at work, the time has come to take a break. Perfect timing actually, since most of the clients are also having their holidays (although the mad rush to finish things up before I leave still takes place – sigh!). Anyway, come tomorrow, we will be free of the stress and madness of work. For 2 weeks, we can behave like we were while we were students (during holidays)… carefree...and blissful - the only worry is when the next meal is :)

Oh and the best (and worse actually) thing is - we will have no blackberry access! I think we might both suffer from withdrawal symptoms but well, we'll cope. Apparently, once we sail past the arctic circle, the ship can't get statellite signal anymore and so no more CNN or BBC etc. Not only will we have no bb access, we'll lose contact with the world.... sounds fun. I'm sure YL and I will continue our conversation on our future kid's names - this time it'll be girls!

Anyway, I'm signing off for the next 2 weeks. Take care y'all. I'll take lotsa pictures.

No fish!

So, another weekend has passed and now its already mid-week. Last weekend was pretty fun (except for certain bits of it). First, we went outlet shopping at Bicester Village. Shopping at Bicester Village has really changed recently. In the past, it was a nice a chill out little shopping area that had good bargains. Sales people were nice and patient and the whole atmostphere was relaxed. Nowadays, it seems that tour coaches regularly bring tourists (mostly Chinese nationals) and it's like the hordes have descended. It's crowded and bargains are snapped up almost immediately, sales people seem overworked and are grumpy. It hasn't gotten to pushing and shoving yet but it's no more fun shopping there. We bought a couple of items (YL got a windbreaker for the cruise this weekend) and that's about it. After that, we decided to scoot off to our favourite part of the country, the Cotswolds! This time we hit jackpot and found ourselves a nice bed and breakfast near Burford (www.caswell-house.co.uk). It was a quiet farmhouse manor that is recently refurbished. There's a moat around the manor (which to my disappointment, was not teeming with trouts as the Alistair Sawday guidebook described – apparently, they lost a few dozen of trouts in the floods last year). We had dinner at this place called the boot inn – had a nice yummy dinner. I had grilled goats cheese and belly pork while YL had squid ink spaghetti and roasted chicken breast.

The next day was fishing day – this is where the weekend took a turn for the worse. All was well until we realised that it was darn difficult to row the boat against the wind (and amazingly current) in the lake. We kept drifting to places that we didn't want to go. Anyway, in the process of trying to get to where we wanted, YL and I almost (and I really mean almost) capsized the stupid boat in the middle of the lake!!! We didn't get our balance right and the boat tipped over its side and water gushed into it. Its not that either of us don't know how to swim (ahem – I was a school swimmer ok, in the relay team somemore… but erm, long long time ago la), but all out things, blackberry, handphone, rod, books, etc. would have been wet! Fortunately, we managed to tip the boat back and our things were in bags (so they only got a bit wet). The only thing was our shoes and clothing were all drenched – completely drenched cos of the water. Oh – and on top of this, we dropped our oars in the commotion so we couldn't row back to the bank. We just drifted. Once we drifted back to the bank, we had to clean up etc. Anyway, we didn't catch any fish that day. I was casting for 8 ½ hours all over the lake and I didn't even get a single bite! Oh well, that's fishing – you win some you lose some.

This coming weekend will be swell – it'll be the start of our 12 night cruise. We're going with Alfred and Sally and we managed to get our rooms next to each other! YL is also thinking of getting spa treatments onboard!

Fine fine... No Elton.

I didn't think there will be such quick opposition to my ingenious idea of naming my son "Elton" – nice what… heh heh… actually the first person to oppose was YL. This was the conversation we had one our drive back from the concert:

Me: Phwoah, such a good concert. EJ is d*mn good at his singing and he's really talented la…
YL: Yah.
Me: I think I'm going to call my future son "Elton".
YL: Seow ah! NO.
Me: Well, no way is he going to be called "Christian" lor…
YL: I like "Christian". Isn't that a Christian name? "Christian"?
Me: No just because its called "Christian", it doesn't mean its a Christian name. I don't think anyone's name is "Christian" in the bible. Anyway Malcolm Chua is using "Christian" for his son's name…
YL: See, its nice… Anyway Mal is having a son? (she then veered off topic for a while).
Me: OK, why not we call our son "John" instead?
YL: Eeeee – NO.
Me: Hey! Jesus loved John very much ok!
YL: NO. I used to tease people with the name John. Sounds so ang mo.
Me: Well, its gotta be one of the 4 gospels and it doesn't help that you can only use 3 only (cannot use "Mark"). Haha… how about "Luke"?
YL: Huh – dun want Luke la.
Me: What's wrong with Luke?
YL: Sounds so old! What about "Matthew"?
Me: "Matthew" is nice. Matthew Tan… hmmm Ok "Matthew".
YL: Ok.
Me: Or how about "Paul"??
YL: NO…..
Me: "Bartholomew"?
YL: NO…
and the conversation goes on…

So that's where we got on our future son's name. Notice especially to my close relatives (especially those most likely to have another kid, ahem – Pammy) hahaha… dun steal "Matthew" huh. You can use "Christian" if you want!!! And quickly...

I think I'll name my future son Elton...

Last weekend was pretty fun. We started it on Friday by watching Dirty Dancing – which was fantastic. Its not a typical "musical" as the leads didn't do the singing but it was immensely entertaining (especially at the end). This ranks easily as one of the best musicals I've watched. On Saturday, we wanted to go out to the Cotswolds for a weekend away again but alas, all the b&bs were full. We were gutted but still made the most of it by going to our usual Cafe Japan for lunch and for a movie after that. Sunday though, was the highlight of the weekend – going to watch Elton John and band in an outdoor concert. We had fab front block seats, the weather was great and he's singing was excellent… there's nothing more to ask for really. Oh except for someone to smack that stupid idiot ang mo woman security guard who stopped me from brining in my camera because they looked too "professional". IDIOT – I was so excited to take some nice close up shots of EJ (I even told YL that with my zoom lens, I could even take pictures of his blackheads or pimples) Anyway, because we didn't bring our normal "non-professional" camera, we couldn't take any pictures at all!! Stupid rule really, made worse by everyone snapping away with their "non-professional" cameras while I just sat and watched. I could have gotten into an argument that the Nikon D80 was a amateur or at best "semi-professional" camera, but I thought it'll be pointless (tui niu dan qin). So unfortunately, no pics to post on this. There's was this period during the concert when the sun was setting when he sang the song "don't let the sun go down"… which was quite nice but the sun didn't really listen though… haha. Other hit songs he sang were "your song", "yellowbrick road", "honkey tonk man", "rocketman", "candle in the wind", "crocodile rock", "Daniel"…

So that's that… another quick weekend past. Next weekend will be great as it will be the buildup to our annual vacation. This time it'll be 2 weeks up the Artic Circle to the North Cape at the land of the midnight sun… I can't wait!!! (though I'm trying to block out of my mind the fact that there will be a closing taking place next week).

Elton John tickets...

Smashing! I've managed to get 2 fantastic Elton John tickets this weekend!!!

I wasted my evening so I wanna rant...

Gosh, I believe that last night I watched the worst movie (by a mile!!) of my entire life – The Forbidden Kingdom. I'm going to tell the story, but don't worry, its so bad that it won't spoil anything if you decide to go watch it. Basically, its about this Ang Mo boy who's fascinated with Kung Fu. While falling off the roof of a building, he was teleported to thousands of years before in an ancient mystical Chinese kingdom (where people could fly). In this mystical kingdom, the Jade Warlord has imprisoned the Monkey God in a jade statute and it is up to this ANG MO boy to bring him his magical staff to save him(why did the Director, out of everything in the world, choose an ang mo loser kid to save the monkey god??). Anyway, the knockout bit was that the Chinese ppl from ancient times could speak ENGLISH!!! And bad English at best… can you imagine Jackie Chan and Jet Li fighting Kung Fu going "Wow, mantis style, but can that fight against Tiger style??!!" – OK I admit, this show was targeted at the American market to bluff the stupid ang mos, but I really doubt they would find Chinese Kung Fu masters speaking English during ancient times authentic! Oh, and there's another character, xiao yan zhi (she calls herself "sparrow" in the movie) who speaks like Yoda… imagine a Chinese Kung Fu girl speaking english like Yoda! Oh, and at some bits, the director decided they can speak mandarin afterall, though most of them spoke English… Its like all these Chinese people were bilingual… I realised the bits where they spoke English were when the Ang Mo boy was around – so he could understand. Why in the world do they want to "force" his out-of-place character in the movie really baffles me.

Anyway, in the words of the Jade Warlord of the movie, this show was certainly "ex-cellent-teh". OK – rant over.

Weekend is coming soon. Tomorrow we are going to watch the musical – Dirty Dancing.... Oh and I've just confirmed our holiday cottage for Christmas! http://www.rhos-cottages.co.uk/betwsbach.htm

Eat and sleep and eat...

This weekend was boring… NO FISHING cos it kept raining. On Saturday, we went to the happening fish restaurant again (we are such creatures of habit) http://www.onemansfish.com/ and had a splendid meal. Yen-Ling and I had tuna steak tartar with oyster, mackerel with strange condiments, lamb and rabbit saddle and black pudding… yum. After that, we went to watch Chronicles of Narnia using our unlimited movies card. The show was really good and I liked the part when Aslan roared…. It reminded me of Kung Fu Hustle's "lion roar"… though I know they're not quite the same. Narnia was really much better than the first episode though I understood that it didn't quite follow the book (I never read it before so I don't really care.)

After the movie, we came home and YL whipped up a nice dinner. Before that however, both YL and I went a bit crazy with cleaning the flat. After a good hour or so, YL cooked teow chew porridge with let me see, fried long beans, luncheon meat omelette and black pepper beef. BTW, YL's cooking is very yummy.

On Sunday, we had lunch with Ruth at our favourite haunt, Cafe Japan. As usual, it never fails to live up to expectations. We were all so full from lunch that YL slept on the way back home (and for most of the afternoon). So there, we pretty much had an eat and sleep boring weekend. Oh, and the topic of having kids was raised again, but quickly swept under the carpet… still wanna play.

Sunflowers...

Shortly after Easter, Yen-Ling came home from work with a "grow your own sunflower" kit she bought from M&S. I think it was meant for kids (as there were stickers for you to stick on the flowerpot!). Anyway, she dutifully planted the sunflower seeds (and stuck the stickers on the flowerpot) and watered the plant everyday(!). 3 months later, they actually bloomed!!! I was really doubtful in the beginning but I must say her paitience has paid off... here are her sunflowers..

SPAIN - germany 1-0!!!!!!

This comes a little bit late but I have got to say it….. Hurray for SPAIN!!! It was a well deserved and sweet 1-0 victory against the irritating Germans. No, my £32.50 winnings had nothing to do with my glee, I've disliked the German football team (note, only the football team, I think German car-makers are great) since I was 12 years old when they won England in the semis and Argentina in the finals of the World Cup. Why do I support Argentina? Dunno… I liked Diego Maradona. Since then, I cheered for every team against Germany.

Last weekend was pretty eventful, we went to watch a musical called Wicked on Saturday. It was pretty entertaining, except that there were so many solo scenes and the songs weren't that catchy. We really enjoyed ourselves especially since we'd planned this like 4 months ago. Before the musical, YL and I went to this place called one-o-one for lunch. It was a fish restaurant and we had Norwegian king crab for our starter and Salmon for our main, both were washed down with a nice white. This was the most fantastic meal we had in a while and I think that it is gonna be a regular for us. We spent the next day with Adrian, Sharon and Lynette having dim sum in some unknown place (we walked from Church all the way to Chinatown and were starving by the time we got there! Adrian, who led the way, brought us through the sleazy part of Soho so he could "see how his businesses were doing" - geez). We had KFC for dinner (together with wine - strange combi right?) while watching the Euro 2008. I'm glad this weekend is approaching soon… we might make another trip to the countryside again but it depends on the weather – maybe we'll find another happening restaurant to go to again!