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I feel very frazzled again today. I can't wait for this ill feeling to be over, seriously.

Ah Wiki

"A ramekin or ramequin is a small glazed ceramic or glass serving bowl used for the preparation and serving of various food dishes. The word is from French (as ramequin), and before that Middle Dutch and Middle Low German – see ramekin for details. They make good ashtrays."

In other news, I look forward to making some chocolately goodness for Ching's surprise birthday tomorrow *beams*

Bah, football

Today while googling the address of a friend's house to go to his housewarming party, I stumbled upon the Emirates Stadium which is, contrary to rational and sane thought, not actually in UAE.

This would explain why someone I knew could hop from the Emirates Stadium, to London in less than a day. That and he's not as woefully indulgent and a spendthrift as I originally thought - to hop from London to UAE just for a silly football match.

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I feel a bit anxious today again, for some unfathomable reason.

I hope the trip to Angel dissipates this feeling a little.

Strange Little Interactions

Prompted by more Bailey ice cream cravings, I set off today after my lessons in LSE (the last one of which was actually quite enjoyable and engaging) to look for a pint - Tesco's only mind you since they have the £2.50 offer (God I love Tesco).

I walked down Fleet Street, half people watching, half admiring the scenery of old city London. I saw lots of lawyers as I bypassed the Royal Court of Justice, and random other office workers taking breaks in small eateries lining Fleet Street. The old city area of London is really quite pretty. However as I turned right on Farringdon Road, the area started to look crappy. Suddenly there was graffiti all over, abandoned office buildings, broken glass and a noticeable absence of any human traffic whatsoever. Right. It was really something like 10m from Fleet Street that everything changed. I suppose such is the ratty tatty nature of London which has really shit and really nice areas in pockets all over the place.

So anyway I went to the Tesco Express at Farringdon, since the one at Fleet Street did not have Bailey's flavour. To my disappointment, the Farringdon one didn't either. I settled for Vanilla, but I still felt quite unhappy as it wouldn't really quench my craving per se. Deciding to be indulgent because I felt a little unhappy about class today (like nervousspeedtalking my way through self-introductions in class and generally being totally social awkward), I wanted to get a Cosmo magazine (laugh, but there is nothing more relaxing than reading fluff - I usually prefer The Sun, but I already bought a copy of that earlier this week). This month however, Cosmo comes with free nail polish. I wanted to get the neutral colour, not some garish pink thing that they also had but the neutral was all out. I settled on some black thing instead, which I imagine would come in handy for halloween.

At the counter, now brooding about how there was no nice nail polish option and no Bailey's ice cream, I saw that Cadbury Roses were on sale for half price. Now this sounds silly but many years ago (1997 to be exact), I went on a tour with my Mama and Yeh Yeh to New Zealand. A goat tried to eat my gloves and someone's dad in the tour group ran around chasing all us children with his 'dragon breath' (condensation from the cold). On the tour bus, there was a box of chocolates and I had one, which happened to be a Cadbury Rose. I remember liking it very very much, and it remained in my consciousness since. Now after 13 years of thinking about that choccy I had in NZ, I decided to buy a box and relieve that time.

As I turned onto Greville Street to walk back, I bit into a random one, caramel. The caramel taste soon became infused with disappointment. It was not as awesome as I remembered it to be. I consoled myself thinking that they were cheap, and I could feed it to Jason, Jon Kong and Steph Yuen who were coming over tomorrow. Or my roommates. Just as I was thinking of ways to finish the lot (I'm not a big chocolate eater), a laughing man called out to me from a car, "Lots of Cadbury Roses are bad for you!"

I felt quite amused and went up to the car and said that they were on offer from Tesco, half price. Then he asked me if I was American (this seems to be a common trend, no idea why) and I replied that I was Singaporean. Then I asked if he wanted one, and he said, "Sure!". So I gave him one and went on my way.

For some reason, that random little interaction cheered me up more than any other self-indulgent item I tried to purchase today.

A good destressor

I made a lovely meal tonight, in exchange for the stress of today. It was extremely om nom nom-able.

Shaken, and stirred

Today I spent approximately 10-15 minutes inside the Holborn Sainsbury. Inside, I helped a little old Chinese lady pick a box of cookies from the top shelf, walked around an aisle because a handicapped lady in a wheelchair was blocking me and debated whether I should satisfy my Bailey's ice cream urge. However just as I was settling the bought items into my bags, I notice policemen outside, all on the High Holborn end, cordoning off the road.

I went out, and heard a man in the crowd say that they found a suspicious package. Indeed, I saw a cardboard box on the ground, about 20 metres away. Policemen were going about from building to building to evacuate people. An American girl came up to me and we spoke a little, said she was supposed to walk that-a-way, but couldn't any more. Then, I left.

As I walked further and further, the gravity of the situation hit me. As I walked from what was effectively the epicentre of shit, I saw that more and more police cars were arriving from the initial one or two, to what must be like a third of the entire police force in London. Holborn's Red Lion Square area was slowly being closed off, policemen were shouting in an attempt of crowd control trying to make cars go away from the site. More and more emergency vehicles were rushing to the scene, and slowly, a massive jam of confused and angry drivers were building up.

Then I came to Gray's Inn Road, almost 1km from the actual site. It was in the process of being closed off too. It seemed the lock down was spreading, radial-like. The fear, struck me. The thoughts of, "God this would never happen in Singapore" kept running through my head. This was for the first time, a very real and very acute fear of the world outside me. Of the terrible terrible things we do to each other, and the fear of such depths.

Now here in my room, the safety of a place I call home, I can still hear the road outside. I can hear the emergency vehicles rush past, I can hear the horns of frustrated drivers. I feel my heart race and a part of me shrink inside. I still feel like eating Bailey's ice cream.

It's getting colder

Today was the first day I wore my Ugg(ly) boots, to send Daryl to Chancery Lane tube station from my place. Winter is coming :/

I had a backache earlier, from sitting about all day

I have gone a bit stir-crazy from not leaving the house today as a result of being a sloth. Here's a dreamy/hipsterish/over exposed but still pretty shot of my newest acquisition, a pot of pink heather from Angel's Chapel Market, sitting on my window ledge.

In other news, I booked tickets today for the London Film Festival *beams*. At least I did something remotely exciting today, besides fighting with my washing machine again.

I'm a Methodist, please go away

I just opened the door, in my pyjamas, to 2 Jehovahs Witnesses. I opened the door because I thought the knocking was Chen trying to play the fool, as usual. What got to me was, HOW DID THEY GET IN HERE? Then I figured out someone in the block was probably a friend of their's and let them in, pfft.

I feel like such a resident of London now.

Inside and Out

For the past few nights, my dreams have been plagued with visions that make me feel anxious. Last night I dreamt of leaving my family to go to London again. The night before (and most interestingly in view of the recent allegations against a principal) I dreamt I was been the victim of a paedophile, a recognisable face, in one of that principal's old staff.

I pray for better dreams every night.

I'm getting a backache from lugging things about town

So the past few days have been spent visting friend's spanking new places. I've seen Chai/Chen/Ruben/Hardeep's place, which had a very excellent new bathroom and er, not much else to shout about. Then there was Chris Rowley who I followed back to his pad along Grey's Inn Road (about a 5 minute walk away) which is really quite nice but doesn't have a dining table. Today, I went to Aneesh's place which is INSANELY NICE. The bathroom is like a 5 star hotel's bathroom and they have new leather couches and all. Drool. The only thing not so awesome was the fact that Aneesh's room is probably the size of Harry Potter's room in the Dursley household. Apparently it used to be a storage closet... that is somehow prettier than the rest of my new apartment.

Oh well. Give some, take some. My flat might not be very nice or very pretty, but it's functional. There is an electric heater with hot water on demand (definitely beating Passfield and their boiler's roulette like game of hotcoldhotcold water), a dining table, and all the things I need to keep me happy at a bare minimum. I could probably use a shoe rack though, perhaps I should get one from Argos. The floor's a little cold, but it's not dodgily carpeted. The desk is old and the drawers look like something my grandfather bought when he set up his first printing business in Singapore in 1960s, but it's nice and big. Plus since all the furniture is so old, there is no way I can be accused of making scratch marks or damaging any of the furniture any further.

I guess I like my place-ish. Now if only I could stop accumulating so much shit, which clogs up the room, and then I'd be happy.

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The past week has also seen to some burst of West End activity. Last Thursday I saw Avenue Q with Dexter and Jon Kong, and today I watched Deathtrap with Aneesh and Nikki. Both were excellent and worth every bit of the £20/£25 I forked out. Avenue Q was a bit dodgy though since I noticed the audience did not laugh very much. Instead Jon, Dexter and I were laughing like mad, joined by the (rather obnoxious) group of extremely Singaporean Singaporeans. The Brits on the other hand, remained stoic. I suppose the usual time of In-Your-Face humour was lost on them. Pity.

Today was Deathtrap, which was really one of the best plays I've seen in a while. Sorry Singapore, after seeing The Lady from Dubuque and Blackbird, I have come to the conclusion that you are a long way from West End standards. Deathtrap cemented this idea in my mind, perhaps permanently. Well acted, with lots of twists and turns and sudden surprises, it was excellent from start to finish. Just when things started to look dull, something shocking would happen, giving one a fright. I jumped and grabbed Aneesh at least twice in shock. Lovely, lovely black comedy.

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Today I had lunch with Swan Yee at Cam Phat, a Vietnamese restaurant opposite Rasa Sayang in Chinatown. We wanted to order individual bowls of pho, and share a starter of spring rolls. When the waiter came to take our order, he said we weren't allowed to mix the lunch special menu (with £5.50 pho) and the normal menu (which had the spring rolls). If we wanted to order spring rolls, we would have to pay 50p more each for our pho, THEN get the ability to order spring rolls. This made absolutely no sense.

First off, the lunch special menu merely listed dishes from the normal menu at 50p less. The dishes were not different in any way, and the pricing is obviously meant to draw in the lunchtime crowd.

Secondly, it was not a set menu. They were merely individual portions of noodles.

Thirdly, by not allowing people to mix meals and trying to charge them 50p more for ordering extra food that they had to pay for anyway, they just took away all incentive to order more food.

I pointed this out to the waiter, but he just repeated monotonously that we only have to pay 50p more each for the privilege of getting to order spring rolls. I told him it was logically unsound. He ignored me. God, how the hell are these people still in business?

THE ARCADE FIRE IS COMING OMG

Apparently a few days ago a Singaporean girl was killed in a hit and run accident in London. Today, skyping with my mother for the first time since I've gotten back (for I've managed to set up the internet account only yesterday evening), she was asking me to take precautions, so I very nicely asked her if I should stop crossing roads. On the walk to school later, I balanced briefly on the edge of the pavement as there was a massive puddle in the middle as a car whizzed by the empty road (Chancery Lane on a weekend). I thought about what would happen if I got hit by a car at that very moment. The headlines would read: Girl laughs at mother's advice, gets hit by car anyway. Will now turn into that girl that parents tell their children about to get them to behave.

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Today I took a bus from the Royal Courts of Justice, outside Clement House, to Angel for grocery shopping. To my delight there was a nice busting market there selling fruits (vegetables I'm not too sure about) for insanely cheap prices. £1 for 2 pounds of pink lady apples! I ended up buying my fresh produce from there, then waddling over to Sainsbury to get meat and stuff. I was so overloaded by the time I was done with my marketing. I've hopefully, bought enough meat to last me for the entire week.

Also, the market stall holders were the nicest service people I've run into all week. God does this city have an unusually high percentage of nasty service staff.

The house is nicely cleaned up, and I've pretty much gotten settled into my house/surroundings. Now, for 2nd year to start. My timetable already looks like shite.