Pictures of my room, and some food I tried/ate in the UK

The view out of my temporary room. My permanent room wasn't ready yet, so I was given a room on the 9th floor.


My new room


The corner of the room where I have my bed and bookcase.


The view out of my new room. Its on the first floor (actually the 3rd), but its not too noisy. And I don't need to climb too many flights of stairs.


Ok,now for some of the food I've tried.

On Day 2 for lunch, I had some guo tiao at China town. It cost me like 4 pounds, and as you can see, it doesn't look very good. The taste was nothing spectacular too. Those who're still in Singapore, be grateful!


Day 2's dinner. Or part of it anyway. Flatmate's mom cooked some rice and offered us some. Not to sound ungrateful, but it looked better than it tasted.


Baku teh and noodles we cooked for dinner. To be frank, this looked better than it tasted too. The meat was pretty good though.


Some fish and chips I had at covent garden market. This was better than Long John Silver's, but that's not saying much actually. Honestly, this one looked better than it tasted too.




Beef Burger at LSE sports grounds at Berrylands late afternoon today. It was fantastic! The beef patty was so thick and juicy. Finally, one food item that tasted better than it photographed.


Second part of my dinner: soup and bread. The soup was really good- it was hot and thick.


And finally, apple cider. It was my first time trying it. I liked it at first, but it got sickening after a while

First Day in London

The view from the plane, before take off. It wasn't a very comfortable plane ride, but I tried my best to sleep. There was a lovely old British lady flying back to the UK from Australia and we talked a bit.

I arrived at Heathrow at 6 am, and I managed to clear customs and get my baggage relatively quickly. By 6.50 I was at the tube station waiting for the tube. I'm actually moderately proud of myself for figuring out how to take the tube to Holborn station and then how to walk to my residence, thereby saving the 30 or so pounds a taxi would have taken. 

The interior of the train. The train was nearly empty at Heathrow, but soon filled up.


Me on the train,looking slightly dazed. I was actually quite tired, but didn't dare to sleep, after hearing all the stories of the UK being less safe,and of things being stolen from unsuspecting tourists. So I had to stay awake to 'jaga' my stuff.

After getting only slightly directionally challenged, I got to my accommodation relatively safe and sound. I say relatively because, the tube stairs were a bitch. I had to carry my friggin 30+ kg of luggage down this horrendous flight of stairs. Finally at the last 10-15 steps or so,some one took pity on me and helped to carry it down the rest of the way. My biceps are still complaining now.

After checking in, I managed to get the internet working. I then:

1.went to the bank to get my ATM card

2. go down to Oasis sports centre to check out the gym, swimming pool and other facilities

3. went to carphone warehouse to enquire about getting a phone

4. After that, I took the tube to check out the rink. Enquired about lessons and talked with some peope about skating, the coaches there, the sessions etcetcetc.

5. Then I walked to the skate shop and got fitted for my boots and blades. I got my new pair of skates!!!

6. While waiting for the blades to be fitted to the boots, I walked down the streets past Bayswater station. There were lots of interesting shops.

I know some of my friends (ahem ahem) have been very interested as to the 'eye candy' in the UK. I am lols. There are there are. But I forgot to bring my camera out when I was walking around. (And besides, I'm not that despo)

But I do have pics of even better eye candy! (For me,at least). My new skates!

Going to be freezing my ass off

Just realized that the temperature in London now is 10-18 degrees celcius. Thats bloody cold!

I made cheesecake!

Successfully, and it was my first time ever baking a cheesecake! It is/was good. And I have pictures =)

Here's the cheesecake in its tin, with a section cut off. I used a tin instead of those panfoil or sth thingys that you are supposed to use for cheesecakes cos I didn't want to buy one when I'm going to be leaving in a week or so. Anyway, it turned out all right.



Cutting the cheesecake....

And tadah! Lovely slices on a plate. You can see my eager brother already reaching for one.




Actually I was a bit worried about the cake turning out badly, it being my first try and all. And to compound matters, I was pouring the cream cheese mixture halfway when the phone rang- it was my father calling- of all times. What does he want? He wants me to turn on skype? OH no. So I stop pouring the mixture, so the pan's like half full with this gloppy mixture, rush to turn the computer on, and realize that the mixture's a bit lumpy. Ok turn on the machine again. rush to computer. Oh dad, you can just talk to gramps for a while. I have a vim (very important mission) now in the background. I'm making cheesecake!

Ok. Anyway,
since the shop only stocked cream cheese in 2kg units, that was what I bought. So I have a surfeit of cream cheese, which means I will be like baking every other day this week. So judo juniors! (all of you lurking and not commenting), you can expect cheese cake some day this week when I pop down to visit and say bye. I'm planning on baking oreo cheese cake and toblerone cheese cake. It be good!

Pilobolus

Just watch! This is great!

It sucks to be sick on planes

I'm back in Singapore, but unfortunately, with a bout of what I would classify as, maybe moderate, food poisoning. And I can tell you,the plane ride was sheer torture.

Why moderate? Because its moderate in comparison to the last time I got food poisoning, which was when my mother was away in China and I ate some chicken pie that had been left in the fridge for too long. Then, I woke up at 5 in the morning, and from then till 1pm, puked three times accompanied with acute stomach ache. The amazing thing about that episode though was, I did not cancel my skating lesson. So at 3 pm, I dragged myself out of the house, walked to the MRT station, took the train to Jurong East, and went for my skating lesson.

This time, on the day of my flight, I woke up not feeling well. It must have been the beef and tomoto noodles I foolishly decided to try. The stomach did not hurt as much as last time though. What I did not expect nor realize was that I was slowly getting a fever. I mean I passed through the temperature checks at the Hong Kong check point perfectly well.

But as the flight progessed, I got colder and colder. Even though I was wearing my thick grey jacked and had the airline blanket tucked right up till my ears. And besides the cold, my eyes ached, and the seat seemed to be slanted too far back and the space was too cramped. So all I could do was obsessively monitor the flight path, and endure till the journey was over.
It sucks to fly while sick indeed.

Do British tabloids have too much time to spare?

Posh's Footsie Index: Or how much her heels cost per inch

The daily mail spent an entire article analyzing how much Victoria Beckham aka Posh Spice, spends per inch of heels. They compiled 11 rows of the above close-ups of shoes she wore on various occasions. They found out the brand of each pair of shoes. They found the cost of each pair, the height of the heels, and divided the cost by the height to find the price-per-inch, or PPI as they call it. Too much time, no?

PS: Of course, this means I confess to reading this daily time wasting gossip about celebrities. I mean, its pretty good brainless fun. Hehe.
Here's the article

'Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated'

I've always found this phrase amusing- theres just a certain ironic wit to it.
Edit: No wonder! I've found that it was Mark Twain who first said it.

Here's an interesting instance

Found on wikipedia:
Jonathan Agnew: in January 2007, this alumnus of Cambridge University heard that his death had recently been reported in the Trinity Record (presumably a newsletter of Trinity College, Cambridge). He contacted the Record saying he had apparently also been removed from its mailing list, and requested a copy of the obituary so he could check and if necessary correct it.

And here's what was published in the newsletter:
Exaggerated Reports
of My Death

Philosophy is supposed to reconcile us to death, and even
to reported death. It is nice to confirm that it can indeed
do so. This message was sent in January to the Trinity
Record by Moral Scientist Jonathan Agnew (1960).

Subject: Exaggerated reports of my death

To the Editor of the Trinity Record

Dear Sir,
I have been informed that the latest issue of the Trinity
Record reports that I died last August. I am unable to
verify this information directly since, with a certain
internal consistency, you are no longer sending me a copy
of the Record. I am pleased to tell you (and I hope that
you will be pleased to learn) that I am alive and well and
assure you that, within the limits of my powers, I will
inform you if the situation changes. I should be most
grateful if you would publish a correction before reality
catches up with your report and send me a copy of the
latest issue of the Record so that I can read and, if
necessary, correct my obituary. Without parapsychological
means, I remain a devoted reader of your Record and give
you my permission to publish this email.

Yours faithfully, Jonathan Agnew

Here's a few more amusing incidents:

• Dick Cheney (US Vice-President) in the CNN.com incident. The draft obituary, which had been based on the Queen Mother's, described Cheney as 'Queen Consort' and the 'UK's favorite grandmother'.
• Rex Alston (sports commentator, journalist and sportsman): when The Times updated its internal obituary file for him in 1985, it was accidentally published as an obituary. Alston remarried the following year (aged 85), thus having the unusual distinction of having his marriage announced in The Times after his obituary. He lived until 1994.
• Daphne Banks, a resident of Cambridgeshire, UK, was declared dead on New Year's Day, 1996. However, while she lay in a mortuary an undertaker noticed a vein twitching in her leg, followed by breathing and snoring. (wth? I'm sure!)She recovered in hospital. Local authorities and Mrs Banks' family refused to name the doctor who had declared her dead; her local GP would not comment, citing patient confidentiality.

Frozen Grand Central

This is absolutely cool, and the reactions of the NYC communters are hilarous. This is seriously good- these are seasoned commuters who don't notice crap- you know, the ones that tut if you walk like a milisecond slower than usual- and they were TOTALLY bewildered.



I know something similar happened in Singapore recently, but check out the poses in the videos! There were some really good ones.

Moving on, moving on

Yea. The very lesson after I wrote (typed) the previous post, my instructor moved on to new things. *looks a bit sheepish*

I'm in China now and will be back in Spore end July

Unfortunately, this means that I will have to miss the Judo team prelims and finals as I will still be in China at that time. All the best to those participating though! Good luck!

And now, an update on what I've been doing in China:

Skating
Thats basically the bulk of what I've been doing now so far. Shen zhen is an ice skating haven, with three rinks in relatively close proximity- large, not very crowded rinks some more. Having grown acccustomed to super crowded fuji ice palace, the rinks are fantastic here.

The coaches are top notch too, all former national team competitiors. The bad thing though, is that my previous coach was not as careful as he should be in teaching me my basics, so now I'm back to working on basics again- forward and backwards crossovers. There were so many things I didn't realize I had to do. I'm also a bit impatient with myself. I mean, how long does it usually take to get backward crossovers working properly? It seems as if I've been doing them for forever, and I KNOW I'm still not gettting them right. Argh.

Skating takes up like about 8 hours each day, including transport, time I spend slacking, plus lunch.

Shopping/exploring
If I have free time and energy after skating, which is not a lot, I explore a bit, do grocery shopping as I'm now responsible for cooking the meals.

Oh, and I'm like single-handedly bringing down the style quotient in Shen Zhen, China. Here, most people take the effort to dress up properly. Not Singapore- T shirt and jeans= properly, properly.

I mean, its like 80% of the girls/women are wearing high heels? Don't their feet get tired? And they wear nice dresses or slacks. I hardly ever see any one wearing jeans even. And me? I'm usually in a T-shirt and trackpants, since thats what I've brought to and bought in China. And birkenstocks. I wore FBTs out once, and kept on feeling like people were staring at me- I was literally the only one wearing shorts that day in the area.

Watching TV
Watching sports on HD TV is fantastic! Need I say more?
Oh, and I watched the Fed-Nadal final at Wimbledon. So heartbreaking!

Yea, basically, I'm slacking and I'm enjoying it.

This is a dream come true

I'm giving my piano teacher a heart attack

As my judo mates will all attest, how well I do differs vastly from day to day, and it appears that this fluctuating performance has been carried over to my piano as well.

To paraphrase a friend of mine, 'how well Jingyi plays is never fixed. It seems to depend on how she feels when she wakes up in the morning, what she had for breakfast, her mood at that particular moment..'

Well, I wasn't feeling very 'on' when I went for my practice session on the exam piano on Friday, and I completely BOMBED it. I made every mistake in the book. My piano teacher was horrified, and rightly so. I was demoralized too, and I didn't even feel like practicing when I got home. So Saturday, Sunday and Monday went by without me touching the piano properly. Tuesday morning, I panicked, practiced for 2 hours, and with coffee boosting me, performed miles better than I did on Friday.

What can I say? I just wasn't feelin it on Friday.

I am suffeirng. Oh! How much I'm suffering from...

Ipod withdrawal.

Yes, that shiny sparkly red was necessary to express the depths of my torment. Because my lovely (Oh, shall I compare thee to a summer's day?) ipod has officially given up on me. I suppose I shouldn't blame it, since I was the one that (accidentally) soaked it in contact lens fluid, and since that day I should have known that its time was limited. I should, but I didn't.

And the big problem is, I dare not buy another Ipod! At least, not until the big Apple developer conference- WWDC is over. Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war- I must resist the temptations of the gleaming new ipods in the apple store. And how will I survive? How like a winter my ipod's absence has been. What dark days will these be- without any music or podcasts to accompany my travels?!

Note: try to spot all the mangled Shakespeare references that I've put in. And bah, the first one's easy easy easy.

Moving on, I thereby resolve not to be 'slower than molasses'. I went to the library today and realized that there was a skating competition going on, so I went up to take a look. And I finally realized what the people in the forums were complaining about when they derided some skaters for a lack of speed. Seriously, cute as some of these kids may be, watching them inch their way across the ice can be painful at times. Now I know what I need to work on-- I bet I'm guilty of the same thing myself. So I'll resolve to work on my speed, and not subject any unsuspecting eyes to 'turtling' or 'trundling' or even 'crawling' across the ice.

I'm watching 'Sex and the City' tomorrow. Glorious glorious days =)

Bliss

What could be better than lazing half asleep at 11am on a Wednesday morning, doing nothing but listening to the sound of the rain?

All I wanna do is: Skate my lil heart out!

skate skate skate skate skate

Yes, ice skate, even though yesterday's pactice left me with 'lovely' bruises on my knees.
Here, have a look:



Yea, that was because I fell forward on my knees three times during the session. I was practicing backward crossovers (and on that note, I think I've got them, but we'll see what my instructor says today) and I would be going pretty well I would lose focus or sort of blank out. So I would be leaning and trying to move, while my legs were still crossed together. You know what happens next. *bish* then *OWWWww*

Actually the first fall was pretty ok. I was like, OK, lets get up and try again.
The second fall- 'Owwwwww', then I sort of hobbled and jumped around half heartedly on one foot before making (hobbling) my way back to the rink seats and nursing my sore knee.

But despite all that, I'm ready to go for my lesson today. As I said, all I want to do now, is to skate and skate and skate my heart out.

LSE!

This morning, I just had a hunch about UCAS, so without checking my email or anything, I logged in to UCAS track. And what did I find?

"Congratulations! Your place at London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London) (L72) to study Government and Economics (LL12) has been confirmed."

Yay!

New Hairstyle- photos

Hi Carmen! You wanted to see my new hairstyle? Well here it is. Its blurry though-- i set the camera to timer and apparently it didn't focus well. But its clear enough to get an idea of my hairstyle I suppose.

Random, random

Well, heres a report of how things are going so far

Work:
is going better. Relations better with colleagues + I get to write a bit more. Seriously, its a waste of brain power transcribing interviews that are shit boring

Driving:
Getting better too. Buckled down and both basic theory and final theory were finished chop chop. Not that I studied much, but I was ridiculously determined, and had a good idea of how much leeway I had before I failed the test. Driving on the road is going on well too. Instructors are complimenting me on how fast I learn Ha! This is a girl who managed to drive a toy car into the sea, for goodness sake!

Judo:
NUS training has stopped. Wails. I'm going to get flabby. Not that I'm not already flabby already. Sigh.

Ohters:
Met Ms Tay at West Mall today. Was so fun talking to her!
Qin Pei, Rui Yan, Shi Jia, Adeline, Rannald-- When are all of you free?!

How to make hairstyle changes

STEP ONE:
Decide what hairstyle you want.

For me, the decision process was extremely simple.
JY: I'm sick of my hair, I want a change! Shall I chop it all off? AH, I know, I'll perm it. Or should I...
MOTHER: I beg you, reconsider! Your hair is perfectly all right as it is. Remember when you had that horrible perm in primary two that made you look like your head was exploding?
JY: OK, thats settled. I shall curl my hair

STEP TWO:
Go to the hairdressers. And sit there for a very long time.

Of course, giving precise instructions is of paramount importance. Here, I give the extremely excellent example of how I bugged (the hell out of) my hairdresser. Be extremely clear as to what you want.
Of course, I was an absolutely horrible (and boring) conversationalist, but hey, you've got nothing better to do in a hair salon anyway, right?

So, I'm lying down on this strange chair that vibrates (perhaps it was intended to be a massage chair??) while the hairdresser washes my hair.
JY: so yea, I was really sick of my hair and I want a change
Hairdresser: er hm
JY: Yea, so can I have curls that are not too big, but not too small either?
Hairdresser: hm. ok.
JY: Yea, I don't want it to wear off in like 3 months. But the curls can't be too tight ok?
Hairdresser: grunts
JY: I want curls that are just nice. Is there such a thing as curls that are not too loose and not too tight, and are just right?
Hairdresser: erm. yea.
JY: Ok, so you know I want curls like...
(I'm pretty sure you get the idea)

STEP 3:
Sit at the hairdressers for a very long time.

Useful tips include:
try not to fall asleep-- looking and thinking nasty thoughts about the people sitting beside you is quite a good tactic. Or you can try eleevesdroping on their conversations. That works too.

try not to be scared of the machines. I mean, there's this weird flying saucer thing that emits heat as it spins over your head. And another one where tentacles are attached to your hair and begin to heat up-- that thing could have worked pretty effectively as an instrument in my book. Yea. But its a tad difficult to perm one's hair if one doesn't even dare to let heat emitting machines near one's head.

AND,
thats how my hair went from this:



to this: