Update City, Part Four: Celebrating February

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Seeing as China is hosting this year's summer Olympics, and London the next (2012), Mayor Ken Livingstone wanted to pump up Chinese New Year Celebrations this Year of the Rat. Unfortunately, that meant that everyone and his dog (rat?) were out, and this is all I could see of the parade...
Three hours later, when we finally made it to Chinatown (it usually takes about 15 minutes on foot on a regular day) we got a little bit of food in our system... but to get this street stall food, we basically had to push and shove, which meant that all five of us took little bites from one Oyster pancake...
However, it was quite exciting to see Chinatown all dolled up in lanterns - even if it did take hours to push through the crowds!
And whaddaya know, they even had fireworks during the day! A definite first! Unfortunately, with the crowds (and the daylight) we only saw this:
... it was more of an acoustic show.

And speaking of acoustic shows... Valentine's Day was a musical one this year. We headed to a club near Kilburn station called the Luminaire, for a Valentine's gig featuring the Heartstrings http://www.theheartstrings.com/ (how Valentine's appropriate!)

The first 25 singles got in for a reduced cover price, and the first 25 hand-holding couples got in for free! Plus, if you kissed each other and declared your love for one another, you got two free "buy one, get one free" drinks tickets!

Unfortunately, the only beer on that you could get with the ticket was Foster's, so we had to pre-medicate with some real beer (Cronenberg). Result: well... I think these pictures will give you an idea...

(Genie is wearing her beer goggles)

(This is what she saw with her beer goggles on)

(Team X-pat)

Okay - updates are OVER, friends. If you want more updates, keep commenting so I know you are reading! And Happy Valentine's Day to our friends at home, in Japan, in the States, in Dubai, and wherever else you may be!

Update City, Part Three: Playing Host

Come one, come all to visit us in London! Only two have been brave enough to take us up on this offer so far... but I am hoping to entice you on the Raw Banana walking tour bus with this posting. We not only provide your transportation (telling you to bring good walking shoes) and take you to the best [read: cheapest] places to eat, we also add historical commentary to the tour. Here is a just a taste of what we can provide.

Rob's sister, Kathryn, and her boyfriend Andre had a 9-hour stop-over London on their way to Dubai. So, we were up for 5:30, and on our way to the airport by 6:00 (what service!). Although it was an earlier than usual start to the day, it was a great way to sight-see. No other tourists were up and at it at 7am on a Wednesday, so we got in a whole day's worth of sight-seeing in just one morning!

9:00
Fill on a good breakfast and get ready to tackle Green Park, Buckingham Palace, and St. James' Park. The Queen was home that day, as indicated by the Union Jack flying at the Palace. (Interesting historical fact Number one.)

9:30
Walk past No.10 Downing Street, old Scotland Yard, various legal buildings, watch teenaged French students do mortifyingly embarassing things to the Horse guards, and make it to Big Ben in time to hear it strike 10:00! Interesting Historical fact number two: the Houses of Parliament (just to the right in the picture below) are the buildings on the HP sauce label. (You don't get that kind of commentary on the double-decker bus tour, even if they do provide the tour in eight languages...)

10:20
Buy a ticket for the London Eye the world's largest observation wheel. Watch a little kid in the queue pretend to bean a wax statue of Pierce Brosnan (as James Bond) in the goolies. Laugh at the dad, but inside, quietly worry for the future of Britain's children (not only because of the child's violent tendencies, but also because all men of Pierce Brosnan height are at risk of losing child-bearing potential from this young lad).

Intersting fact Number Three: Did you know that the wheel is designed so that if it ever falls over, the pods will pop off of the wheel and float along the surface of the Thames? (These are just small samples of the kinds of amazing knowledge we can share about London - you will come away chock-a-bloc with good stuff like this!)

The Weston "children" on the London Eye

Not only is the London Eye a great way to see all of the sights of London in one go - you also can take family photos (see above) and you get to watch London's anti-terrorism in action! Before you enter the pod, a guard will ask you if you are carrying scissors in your purse. Anti-terrorism! In action! ... Maybe they should have been more concerned about the briefcase-toting, uber-serious gentleman who arrived with no friends or family, didn't take a single picture during the whole ride, smile, or comment on the sights, but who just stared at the ground, as if searching for a person on the run.

Speaking of searching the ground...

11:30
Go to the Tate Modern museum, and stare at a giant crack in the floor and debate about whether or not it is "art", and how the heck they made a big crack in the floor! Get utterly lost in the maze of escalators which skip floors.

12:30
Head over The Wobbly Bridge with hundreds of joggers, and take a gander at St. Paul's Cathedral before hopping on the tube to Covent Garden, where we can eat lunch and begin to watch a street performer, but leave because he has spent more than 30 minutes just trying to get people to form a neat circle around his space, and hasn't done anything interesting the whole time.
2:30
Meet old friends, because everyone knows someone in London (Andre's someone was his childhood friend Richard, who came up from Brighton!) and spend a couple of hours in a pub drinking beer and demanding scientific knowledge of British beer from the barmen. Interesting fact Number Four: Beers like Guiness and Caffrey's get their disctinctive thick, foamy head from a particular tip on the beer tap. It is a tiny, fine-meshed tip, which causes the beer to come out extra foamy. Wait a few minutes for the beer to settle, and enjoy!

5:30
Say goodbye at Piccadilly Circus, a single train away from Heathrow Airport. For a little extra, we can arrange a little bit of "adventure" like forgetting your passport in our bag, so that we chase you in the next train to the airport, only to find out you didn't need that passport anyway... something like that.

So what do you think - sightseeing, good company, and "Interesting Facts". What more could you ask for? Who's next??

Thanks for coming, Kathryn and Andre!
(06 Feb, 2008: Statue of Eros at Piccadilly Circus)

Update City, Part Two: Score One for Football!

Every other week, I come home from work to find the tube station packed to the gills with people donning red scarves and smelling of beer and fried food, on their way to an Arsenal football match at the nearby Emirates Stadium.

On these days, I am bumped along with the crowd out toward the street, where we are all directed across the roads by the oodles of police on every corner who are out, no doubt, to keep the hooliganism to a minimum and the drunken fans from running out into traffic whenever there is a small gap in cars (as is the usual practice of crossing roads in London).

Usually, I try and avoid the vomiters and head directly for home, but on January 23rd, I donned my own red scarf and joined the beer-swilling crowd, thanks to Robert's godfather, Allan, who procured three tickets to an Arsenal vs. Newcastle game!

Those of you who have known me since my youth, and have maybe even joined me [read: put up with my whining and complaining] at live sporting events in the past may be wondering how I fared at an English football match. Well, friends, here are the reasons why this was the best sporting event I have ever attended:

1) We arrived at the Emirates Stadium to find that it is new, shiny, organized, large, and there isn't a bad seat in the house!

...we could clearly see our home team, Arsenal (above, in red) kicking the pants off of Newcastle (in black). Plus, the seats were really comfortable!

2) To combat hooliganism, the away fans are all seated in one area, and beer is not allowed in the stands (you must consume it in the concessions area). This stops the fist-fights, but still gets the fans "relaxed" enough to:

a) shout at the players to shoot (even when they are nowhere near the goal)
b) sing songs of support for Arsenal ("We love you Arsenal... you know we do-oo!")
c) sing songs to slag rival teams ("If you ain't Tottenham, stand up!")
d) call the refs dirty names (my favourite was a young Asian woman's grovelly and heartfelt "the ref's a F*&%-ing donkey!")
e) keep the tourists generally entertained with shenanigans

3) It was a good game. You can see the tense expectation on Robert's face.

4) We won! Arsenal: 3, Newcastle: nil.

I completely recommend attending a game at the Emirates Stadium. When you go, give us a call, and we'll join you! And next time, we may even buy the self-produced CD from the guy who mixed all of the Arsenal songs on his home keyboard for our listening pleasure ;)

Thank you, Allan, for our English football initiation!

Update City, Part One: Spain

Allright, allright, Valentine's Day has passed and I haven't even posted pictures from Christmas yet... I'm sorry!! (A combination of busy-ness, laziness, and general avoidance of the computer outside of work hours has contributed to my poor blogging record.)

So for those of you e-mailing me to update the ol' bloggerino, here is the first in a series of snapshots of what has happened in the past two months, illustrated with (appropriately)... snapshots.

Here is the first shot: Nana and me in Downtown Madrid! Nana was an excellent tour guide. She showed us all sorts of things in Madrid. Here is what we saw:

1. Calamari Sandwiches: Deep-fried squid, covered in salt and squished into a buttered white roll. Mmmmmmmmm... grease, salt and butter... Madrid is delicious!

2. Spanish lunches: Lunch is the biggest meal in Spain. Restaurants often have a set lunch (called a "menu") which offers three courses. This is the second course of one of the best meals I've ever eaten. An entire fish. After this course, we ate fried milk for dessert. Yum!

3. Paella: Jose gave us a lesson in how to make seafood paella. Now we can bring Spain home with us!

4. Spanish sweets: We took a day-trip to Segovia, home to (a gorgeous cathedral and the castle of King Alfonso VI, a real Roman aqueduct... and) these sweeties!

5. Christmas Sweets: Spanish grocery stores sell large platters of traditional Spanish sweets to ensure a Feliz Navidad!

We certainly enjoyed our trip to Spain. Thank you, Nana y Jose! Next time, maybe we'll even step away from the table long enough to see some sights! Or, we could move to Madrid and teach useful English phrases like...

How to Have a “Christmas Adventure!”™

How to Have a “Christmas Adventure!”™
A Step-by-Step, Easy to Follow Guide to “Adventure”
(Guaranteed tears and frustration, or your money back!)

Are you one of those people who spend Christmas bored at home in front of hours upon hours of the same Christmas movies and programs you have watched since you were in utero? Or perhaps you spend every Christmas at grandma’s house, with your hand up the backside of a turkey? Enough of those boring, routine Christmases! It’s time for a “Christmas Adventure! “™

Just follow these four preparatory steps (and then thirty more “Travel” steps) and you will be having your very own “Christmas Adventure!” ™

All you need for this “Christmas Adventure!” ™ is the following:

• a large suitcase packed to the brim with clothing and heavy presents
• your passports and money in the currency of your destination
• mobile phone
• plenty of anticipation and excitement
• **a flight to an exotic destination on the busiest travel day of the year – Christmas Eve
• gracious and expectant hosts awaiting your arrival in the exotic destination

**Note: ensure that your E-mail confirmation of this flight is printed off, and most importantly, that it tells you to go to the wrong terminal. This is key. Without this crucial error, your trip will run smoothly and then how will you be able to call your vacation an “adventure” ™?

Once you have gathered the above, you are ready for:

Pre-travel preparation

1) Buy cheap flight tickets online. This ensures that there is no human involved in the process who might double-check to ensure your flight information is correct.

2) Trust that the information you have received from the online travel agency is correct.

3) Make reasonable, yet inconvenient requests to your gracious hosts, such as “we are vegetarian, although we eat some fish, please don’t cook meat for us”, and “we are highly allergic to your pet of choice”. Perhaps you have two broken legs and require wheelchair access to their stair-only building, or you have joined a cult which requires you to sing “You are My Sunshine, My only Sunshine” every morning at the break of dawn.

4) Ensure that you have chosen hosts who will go out of their way to bend to your inconvenient requests and plan weeks ahead for a seafood extravaganza Christmas dinner and put their cat hair-ridden guest bed in storage, change the curtains, vacuum every corner of the house, and buy a new futon mattress for you to sleep on.

Finished? Allright! Now we can move onto the exciting part:

Travelling

1) Wake up at an ungodly hour on Christmas Eve morning (say, 4:50am) so that you can do some last-minute carry-on packing, eat a good breakfast, have a shower, and put on make-up before you leave for the airport. Push your partner out of bed 15 minutes before you need to leave, as he is not “a morning person”.

2) Get onto public transport (say, the Piccadilly Line of the London Underground system) and actually get a seat because it’s so early.

3) En route, ensure that an extremely smelly person sits next to you. For example, an unfortunate homeless man who has obviously not bathed in weeks and who is carrying a plastic grocery bag with foul-smelling leftovers of a turkey dinner from a charitable shelter or someone’s trash. Get him to open this bag and eat the rotting bird while you feel, all at once, sympathy for the homeless man, anger at the government for not providing enough social assistance, and utter and complete nausea. But don’t move, because that’s rude. For best results, ask him to join your journey early on, so you can really savour your nausea.

4) Get off at the terminal indicated on your E-mail confirmation. This is crucial. Even though you notice on the “Which Terminal should I go to?” sign that your destination city is not mentioned, recall that sometimes flights are routed from unexpected terminals due to high volume. Trust that if you end up at the wrong terminal, that the staff will assist you in getting to the correct terminal.

5) Arrive outside of the terminal, and wonder why there are large tents full of people, and a huge line-up at the door. Figure out that they are all people whose flights have been cancelled due to fog – they are being asked to wait outside in the cold so that the terminal does not get too crowded.

6) Finally make it to the door, only to have the staff member checking people’s flights tell you that you are at the wrong terminal. Make sure he is unable to tell you how to get to the correct terminal.

7) Make sure it will take you a long time to get from the incorrect terminal to the correct terminal. For instance, you could make it so all but one elevator in the terminal have been closed down and are guarded by security. Also, you could make sure that even when you get the train to the appropriate terminal, the walk from the train to the actual terminal building is exceptionally far. If you are really in for “adventure” ™, you can try and have it so that the signs in the correct terminal are unclear and lead you to the domestic check-in rather than international desks.

8) Finally find the self-check-in kiosks of your airline. By this time, you should be frustrated and really relieved to have found the kiosks. You should have approximately 30 minutes before your flight departs. This way, when you check-in, the kiosk computer will inform you that check-in for your flight has timed out and that you should seek assistance from a member of staff.

9) At this point, you will not realize how bad the situation is. Instead, your heart will fill with hope that once you find a member of staff, they will be helpful and do whatever they can to help you get onto your flight.

10) If you have followed the “Pre-travel Preparations” correctly, you will be flying on the busiest day of the year and there will be no members of staff visible amongst the crowds. As a strategy to attract the attention of a concerned member of staff, rush around frantically and look upset. Surely they are on the lookout for flustered travelers to help. When you do find a member of staff, look at them with the puppiest of puppy-dog eyes you can muster, and speak only between exaggerated pants so that they can see you have been frantically rushing around. Mention that it is not your fault that you are too late to check-in.

11) The member of staff will be surly and unhelpful. They will tell you there is nothing you can do except re-book your flight. They will tell you to join a line for the ticket desk and point in the general direction of the ticket desk.

12) It is important at this point that you fill your heart with hope that the ticketing agent will still be able to get you on the flight (after all, it’s not your fault!) This is in order to heighten your sense of disappointment (and “adventure!” ™ later on.

13) Join the queue. Make sure you mistakenly join the “Executive and Business Class” queue and are kicked out by the security guard, who takes one look at your get-up and concludes that you could not possibly have afforded Business Class tickets. He will point you to the line for economy class.

14) Look at the line and feel your heart plummet and squash as it hits the bottom of your stomach. If you have properly “filled your heart with hope” as outlined in Step 12, you should actually feel the moment of impact.

15) Walk towards the end of the queue. Keep walking… keep walking. Realize that after the first corner, there is still a line-up of people. Begin to panic – there is no way you will make this flight.

16) Turn the next corner and wail “Oh no!” and cover your mouth in surprise. Keep walking… keep walking.

17) Turn the third corner and feel your face scrunch up as you begin to cry. There is no way you are getting on a plane today. In fact, the whole trip looks like it might be off. Think of the money you have spent on the tickets, of the holidays you have booked off of work, of your gracious hosts who have vacuumed and cleaned for days, and who have spent a good deal of time and money preparing for your arrival. Hold the hand of your patient and calm partner who will tell you that everything will be allright. Keep walking… keep walking.

18) Walk to the “arrivals” area of the next terminal. This is where the line ends. You will be crying nice and hard by now, your face red and flushed. There are a few others in the line who are crying, but most look at you with disgust. (“Look at the rest of us, we’ve been here for hours already”, their looks of disgust say.) Your partner’s look says he is concerned for your mental health. He will insist that everything will be okay and that you should both join the line.

19) Get out your mobile phone and call your hosts who will be leaving soon to pick you up from the airport. For some extra “adventure” ™ points, make sure to mis-dial, then phone home and wake up your groggy flatmate and ask him to find the correct phone number and country code. Ask him to call your gracious hosts and explain the situation. He will sound like crap and will not quite understand you because it’s still only 7:30 on Christmas Eve.

20) Text your best friend to tell her what has happened. Get a sympathetic text back – she is heading home from her boyfriend’s house to volunteer at a shelter for men like the one you encountered on the tube. Feel guilty that you are upset for missing your flight to an exotic locale when there are others who cannot afford to eat and your friends are spending their holidays volunteering their time to help them. Then, find out that everyone surrounding you is in the line because their flights have been cancelled, and feel even more guilty.

21) Realize now that if you wait all day and into the evening in this queue, you may not make it home by the last train or get a flight the next day, which means you could be stuck at the airport for the 24th, 25th and not be able to leave until the 26th, as all public transport shuts down on the 25th. Stop feeling guilty and resume feeling sorry for yourself.

22) Wait for 3 hours or so, slowly shuffling forward in the line and accepting the chocolate treats, water bottles and sandwiches the airline company is providing. Clearly, it is going to be a long wait.

23) Get a call from your best friend who says she is still on the train, but can buy a ticket online from home once she gets there. A light bulb should go off in your brain at this point, because there are internet kiosks at the airport – you can buy a new ticket! If your heart properly plummeted into the pit of your stomach, as outlined in Step 14, you will now feel it fluttering just above your belly button, and the hope which gushed out of your heart as it hit rock-bottom will now enter it again, but this time in small, anticipatory drips from your bloodstream…

24) Send your ever-patient and calm partner to the internet kiosk while you wait in the line. While he is gone, a representative from the airline will arrive at your section of the queue. He will carry a megaphone and announce to everyone that there are no flights left at all for the 24th or 25th. He will urge all residents of your country (country, not city!) to go home and call the airline company from the comfort of your home. He will make definitive announcements such as, “You will not make it to your destination in time for Christmas!”

25) The line will break-up, and your partner will still not have come back. Just as you begin to panic (the once-orderly line is turning into a chaotic crowd – how will you find one another?) you spot your partner’s head amongst the frustrated travelers.

26) Push your way back into the terminal and run to the closest internet kiosk. There will be others who have had the same idea as you had, so keep your elbows out and be prepared to fight for a computer.

27) Using another internet travel agency, find a flight leaving on Boxing Day, and pay three times as much as your original flight ticket. For another bonus “adventure™ point”, buy an indirect route to and from your destination, tripling your travel time.

28) Go home defeated for the day, but relieved that you have salvaged (you hope!) your vacation somewhat.

29) Rush to the grocery stores before they close for Christmas, and instead of the meal your gracious hosts have prepared for you:

eat a pre-prepared, frozen pizza.

30) On Boxing Day, arrive four hours early for your flight - being sure to have triple-checked the departure terminal and having packed so you have only carry-on luggage. You have had enough “adventure” ™ for one holiday, now you can sit back and enjoy an entirely smooth vacation!

It's a small, small, small, small world!

Before I get on to the meat of this posting, I just wanted to update friends and family about my job. I did write a posting earlier railing on about how little I do at work, and how I was amazed at the different, let's call them "work output expectations" in an office job versus teaching. After this posting, I got many e-mails and telephone calls asking me how my job was and was I still staring blankly into space on most days... well, let me put your worries to rest - I am a busy bee now, and instead of supporting three divisions/departments, I am now supporting seven (okay, okay, so one of them is only a one-person department. Fine... six.) So worry not, friends and family - I am not sitting idly, staring at the second-hand as it tick-tocks away. I am actually quite busy and running around the office. And the people I work with are so nice, that I enjoy going to work. Even if the work is not too mentally invigorating - at least I have nice company while I do it. ;)

And to top it off - we had a lovely company Christmas party (dinner and dance). Open bar, flowing champagne, little bowls of creamy food, and a dance floor of perfect slipperiness (it allowed me to totally bust a move in shoes that are otherwise impossible to walk in). We had a great time.

We even dressed up!

You get the general idea --- shmancy!

So have I put your minds at ease? Hana = busy. Not to worry.

Allright, now that I have cleared that up, now I can tell you the real story. I will preface the story by warning you that it does go back some years... but I need to take you back and tell you this story in chronological order. So sit tight - it will make sense why I'm telling you this story now - you just have to read it right to the end.

About 5 years ago, when Rob and I still lived in Japan (and before we were even together, I think!) we went out with a group of friends to a club in Osaka. We danced until the wee hours and then caught the last train home to my friend Nana's house in a small town called Gojo, in the south part of Nara prefecture. Gojo is the last stop on the last train running from Osaka to southern Nara, and it's special in that when you get on in Osaka, you have to sit in the appropriate coach, as about halfway through the voyage, the train splits; one half goes north to Kyoto, and one half goes south, to Nara. We arrived at about 2:30am in Gojo, the last stop at the very south end of the line, when we notice another group of foreigners get off the train as well. Well - at the time, my friend Nana (Asian-American) and another girl (an Asian-New Zealander) were the only foreigners in the town, so to see a group of white girls at 2:30am was quite a sight. Obviously, they didn't know where they were, and as we had suspected, they had got onto the wrong coach. Instead of heading north to Kyoto, they ended up with us in what was essentially the middle of nowhere.

It was lucky that they took exactly the same train as we did, and stayed on the train until the very last stop - or they might have been stuck out in the cold, sleeping at a train station! But through complete chance, they were on OUR train and got off at OUR stop... so they came back to Nana's house, and we all spent the night there, snuggled up all together so we could fit. And funny enough, two of the girls were Canadian, and one was even from Vancouver! What a small world, we thought. Fancy running into another Vancouverite in such a remote place in the middle of the night! And on top of that, she taught in southern Kyoto, very close to where my grandparents lived. What were the chances? (Are you calculating them...?)

Flash forward to the winter of 2005 - two years ago - at my former boss' house-warming party in East Vancouver. As I have a habit of being perpetually on time, I was there about an hour and a half before anyone else showed up... except for another friend of my boss, who was a teacher in Richmond. And hey - wouldn't you know it, I was teaching in Richmond at the time as well (supply teaching). What a coincidence! And hey - we had both taught in Japan on the JET program at roughly the same time. Another coincidence... but not SO strange, as there are many teachers in Vancouver who have done the same. But wait... we taught in a similar area of Japan as well - she even taught very near to where my grandparents lived. Ummm... wait a minute.

"This is going to sound like a really strange question," I asked, "but while you were living in Japan, did you ever take the last train home from Osaka and get stranded in a remote town and have to stay with a Japanese-American girl and a bunch of her friends?"

YES. It was HER! The same Vancouverite from that night almost three years prior! Now.. what are the chances of that?? We laughed to think that we could meet again on the other side of the world, and ended the night jokingly with, "We don't need your number, I'm sure we'll see you again on the other side of the world!"

Are you getting where this story is going?...

So last Thursday, we went to go and see my friend Alexia's band play at a pub near Kings Cross Station. And while standing at the bar, speaking to Lex's boyfriend and his friend, a random Canadian girl walks up to me and asks me, "Sorry, but are you Canadian from Vancouver? Is your name Hana?"

I know what you're thinking... impossible! She is pulling my leg! Well... at least it's not your finger... and no, I'm not pulling anything! This was the same girl. We HAD met on the other side of the world!! So just to prove that it's not a lie, here is a picture with her and her husband.

Convinced that this could not be mere coincidence, we have finally exchanged numbers and e-mail addresses, and plan to meet deliberately next time. :) The world is definitely a small place.

And another good thing about that night...The Heartstrings (http://www.theheartstrings.com/) . They are really fun to watch. And, as all good bands do, they have a trumpet and glockenspiels! (Lex gets to play the glock!...and keyboard and percussion and vocals... but the glock is the coolest!!)

They will be playing again in the new year, so keep checking their website if you are in the London area. Or even if you're not - they have some tracks up to listen to, and it's just a cool website.

Nothing beats a glockenspiel.

Life (and friends) in London

Welcome to Finsbury Park, London - home to:

- the Arsenal Football Club and the Emirates Stadium (where you can find some of the highest payed athletes in the world)
- North London Central Mosque (notorious for it's connections to Sheikh Abu Hamza, the one-eyed, hook-handed cleric allegedly linked to the 9/11 bombings)
- the "crazy CD-lady" who wears old T-shirts, spandex, and stands on the corner with her walkman and headphones, singing (guessing from her wardrobe - you can't tell what she's actually singing) along to what we can only imagine to be mid-'80's favourites

... and us!

From left: Rob, Machiko, Hana, and Stu

It was lucky for us that we found Machiko, who is just as serious and mature as we are - otherwise we wouldn't be able to invite over our friends....

wait... maybe that's why we met

Ben at Portobello Road

Nicola in South Bromley

and Jon (and his new baby!) at Spitalfields Market...

But in all seriousness, it's lovely to be here with such lovely flatmates. Just to give you a taste of what it's like to live in our house, here is the menu from last week:

Monday: Asian Noodle Salad with miso soup
Tuesday: Roasted winter vegetables and rice
Wednesday: Stuffed peppers and squash soup
Thursday: Eggplant Parmigiana (at Rachel and Howie's house!) and to-die-for chocolate cake
Friday: Corn Chowder and wholemeal buns
Saturday: Quesedillas with home-made Pico de Gallo salsa and guacamole
Sunday: Margherita pizza and tomato and fresh mozzarella salad, followed by Ginger cake!

mmmmm.... anyone want to come and visit?

So even though there is random yelling in the courtyard behind our house, our whole kitchen/living room shakes when the people upstairs do their laundry, the neighbours downstairs have a band who rehearses from midnight to 2am on Wednesdays and sometimes we come home to find large piles of poo on the sidewalk in front of our house... we are eating well! And did you know that today, October 28th is National Pudding Day in the UK? A day where the nation eats dessert...

...all I can say to that is

Happy National Pudding Day!