christmas

my first christmas spent in london. and now i understand how serious london-ers take their christmas.

christmas in london is like chinese new year in singapore, but worse. all the shops will be closed (supermarkets, macdonalds, restaurants etc), save a few arab/chinese convenience stores. now here's the kicker. transportation will be down. which means that if you want to go anywhere on christmas, and you don't own a car, you can only choose between walking or cabbing (of which the latter is dem expensive). the whole town is dead, like 'i am legend' (okay i exaggerate). but supposing during this period you run out of critical supplies (like toilet paper), good luck.

fortunately i stocked up sufficiently prior to this city-wide shutdown. christmas eve was spent cooking dinner at pembridge hall with the chem eng exchange people. we had quite a spread; fried beef mince, warm potato salad, vegetable fritters, grilled chicken wings, fried mixed vegetables and rice with egg tarts and a chocolate cake for dessert. of course we drank a little whiskey after dinner, but not to the extent of people becoming drunk unlike our earlier two gatherings. though i must admit it was more amusing when people got drunk.

christmas was spent cooking dinner (again) at my hall with kay wee, wanying and her friends. once again the spread was good; we had roasted chicken, warm potato salad, fried mushrooms, cocktail sausages and bacon and potato wedges with brownie and ice cream for dessert. we drank a little apple cider during dinner, and it was yummy. it's like sparkling apple juice with abit of alcohol. can hardly taste the alcohol though, which makes it much easier to swallow. hope they sell something similar back in SG.

thanks to the christmas festivities, i'm becoming as chubby as santa. though one good thing that came out from it was that i probably practised quite alot of cooking. never mind. tomorrow i'll be heading for a 12 day trip to italy/spain. new year's will be spent somewhere in florence. hopefully i'm able to lose some weight from hiking around, though i'm seriously not looking forward to sleeping outside the rome ciampino airport while waiting for the flight to barcelona.