A foody weekend

So I came back from Edinburgh this morning on a 7.20am flight and until now am still thinking of the nice and wonderful array of food I had over the weekend.

After the terrible 'Tigerlily' experience in that posh restaurant on Friday night, we decided the following night we would cook something ourselves and have a nice evening in. Yours truly, is quite an invalid at the moment, suffering from a foot condition called 'Plantar Fasciitis.' Basically, it's tissue damage to the right heel and I can't walk very fast or very far and have to take it easy (hence, the new shoes and all that). So we did lots of walking on Friday, and also on the Saturday day time, so by the time we made our way back to the flat on Saturday evening from Princess Street, I was limping (ding happily called me 'disabled'). My foot was aching and throbbing, but the best thing about it was that because of that, I didn't have to get involved with dinner preparation. In fact, I was being served quite well, water being brought to me, food being brought to me on demand and I was beginning to think I should perhaps move to Edinburgh permanently, haha !! So when dinner of wonton noodles with wonton, chinese mushroom and pak choi was served to me, I couldn't help but take a picture of it because it was absolutely delicious and scrumptious !!


This was then followed by more greengages, and nectarines and cherries.

Oh I forgot to mention, we went for sushi on Saturday afternoon, and I had eel with rice for the first time and it was absolutely delish. And ding ordered Dark Dragon Roll, also with eel and they weren't bad either. Got picture to show you.


The green bit on top is avocado with a dollop of mayo and teeny tiny roe. Sushi is actually quite filling. Ding and I shared a portion of eel and rice, and also a portion of this dark dragon roll, which is about 4 pieces each and we were stuffed.

It was a shame that although I was there for the beginning of the famous Fringe Festival of Edinburgh, I didn't get to see any parade or shows. To be fair, we did browse through the catalogue and almost went to see a dance show but we didn't in the end because 1.my foot was killing me 2.it was raining, the perfect excuse to stay indoors and watch movies, back to back.

Anyhooo, overall it was a fantastic weekend and not only did I get to catch up with my mate ding, I made new friends as well that I hope to see again quite soon.

Oh yeah, I've got a picture of me blogging from my friend's new netbook as well, what a biatch (Fely that goes to you too, haha).


Can you see the touchpad? There's an up-down arrow on the touchpad that allows you to scroll up and down the screen easily and it's a really, really handy feature on a touchpad.

Hmmmmmmm...... (do I really need one though?)

Blogging from Edinburgh

It was a mad, mad day which started at 4.45am when I had to wake up to be at the airport for my 6.45am flight from Bournemouth to Edinburgh. Steve had to wake up at the same time and drove me to the airport, bless his cotton.

So I got down from the plane at Edinburgh airport and started snapping pictures of EVERYTHING just to show my friends on Facebook and ended up queueing at the wrong queue for the wrong bus *DUH*.

I was finally directed to the right stop, waiting for the right number bus after much palavar...

The bus came, I got on without any further incident and then comes the part of WHICH STOP SHOULD I GET DOWN AT?

My best mate and I had carefully 'engineered' this plan, where I would ring her upon leaving the airport, and then ring her again when the bus passes by ASDA (I know, ingenius)... and then she would start walking to the bus stop and then I would see her standing at the bus stop and I would somehow see her from a mile ahead, press the bell and get off. Simple? No.

So I thought to be safe (in case she somehow doesn't get to the stop before the bus gets there), I told the nice driver to let me know when my stop would be.

The whole way, I was craning my neck, spotting my 'landmarks' and making my calls to alert my mate and then as I had anticipated, when the nice driver told me to get off at the stop, my friend was no where to be seen !!! Cheeky monkey !!!

Anyway she came two seconds after that and we started walking back to her flat, which was conveniently situated right in the city centre of Edinburgh.

It's truly amazing that although we haven't seen each other for 4 years, as soon as we started catching up and talking about old times, it was as if we've seen each other only last week. The only annoying bit of it is that I have ballooned up to the size of a baboon and she is still the same as ever, a stick insect.

Ding, my best mate, was a secondary school friend and we went through a lot in high school together, even after high school for a brief period of time we were in college together before I got accepted into MPIK. So, we go way back and it was really wonderful to be seeing each other again and do nothing but chat.

Obviously it would seem silly not to venture out and do a bit of sight seeing of the city centre now that I've come all the way here so we went out to Rose Street and had lovely mussels in Mussels Inn (where else?). It was absolutely yummilicious and delicious. We both love seafood so we were appreciating each other's mussels cooked in different flavours. I had the mussels cooked in Thai broth and she had hers Moroccan. Very, very spicy but she thoroughly enjoyed hers.



In the evening, it was one of her work colleague's birthday so we went to a posh restaurant called 'Tigerlily' for a meal to help celebrate her birthday, joint by my best mate's flatmate. The decor inside was very nice and the people drinking cocktail at the bar were all dressed to the nines. I was in my scruffy jeans as usual and did feel just a teeny bit conscious about not dressing up.

Dinner was a bit disappointing as I had to send my food back (first time was undercooked, and when it came back it was overcooked).... So I had a word with them and managed to get my main course taken off the bill (but poor me I only ate half of it coz I couldn't stomach overcooked rice noodles that taste like a lump of mash) so I went home almost empty stomached and had to munch on bread when I got back to her flat. Anyone who's had the experience of dining with me more than once is familiar with my 'amazing' luck of always getting badly prepared food and having to send food back into the kitchen. Seriously I am not being picky but it's just extremely bad luck that everytime I dine out, there is almost always something wrong with my food. Bizarre. Absolutely mind boggling.

By the way, am blogging from a netbook that my friend's just bought herself yesterday and it is absolutely amazing !! Fely I am so envious of you!! I might have to get myself one of these babies. Have got the netbook on a cushion on me lap and it's brillllll-iant !!

Hmmmmmmm..... (yearning....)

One of my random travel stories

Doria said she's keen to read about my travel stories so here it is. I remember one particularly interesting one...

Since our flight back to the UK departed from Singapore, we decided to stay one night in Singapore and get a bite-size taster of Singapoean food and lifestyle. So the quickest way to do this we decided was to visit Little India and China town. Not sure if there's such a thing as Malay town but we didn't have time for it anyway because arriving at Singapore at 9am, we managed to have a swim in the hotel pool (Steve insisted), explore Little India, have lunch at Chinatown, have dessert and some rest in a mall near the hotel and visit the Night Safari !! All crammed into one day...

So while we were in Little India, it was nice to see familiar shops selling garlands, accessories, punjabi suits, saris and all sorts. One particular stall that caught my attention was a lady sitting at a desk drawing some henna patterns on a customer's left arm. I was very intrigued and stood there watching. And Steve said to me, 'Why don't you try it?'. And I started getting really excited about it and the next thing I know, I am sat at the desk and the nice lady has started creating patterns on the back of my left arm. Steve even managed to take a short video of it and it looked fascinating how she was drawing the patterns while she's chatting away to nearby friends.

(unfortunately the video refused to load even after the 100th attempt so i've given up for now but i shall try again in future)

And the picture below shows the finished product. Very very nice!!


Of course after that I had to 'protect' my hand and avoid from bumping into people in the crowd in order to 'preserve' the longevity of the henna on my hand. And when it finally dried a few hours later, the top crust came off, leaving behind a light brown/orange henna pattern on my hand which lasted for almost a week and each time I looked at it, it reminded me of my really nice holiday :)