Life Comments

My colleague went to a "wedding house party" where everybody dressed up in their old wedding dress (or the ones who could still fit in them did anyway), and brought along their wedding video to watch. From what I can gather, there couldn't have been too many invited as you physically can't fit more than a few meringue-bafoon style wedding dresses in a standard living room in London. (If you actually have a living room, that is.)

Somebody please shoot me if I ever end up like that.

In other news, I only just found out that "pants" in the UK does not mean the same thing as "trousers", but is used as a short form of the word "underpants" (or "underwear")..... Crap, NO WONDER every kid I see fervently protests whenever I ask them to "take off their pants" - they're probably thinking that I'm trying to molest them!


Cultural observation - Scottish people cannot talk fast because of their accent.

Think about it.

Random Shots of London

Day out in Greenwich (marking the last "warm" day for London 2007)

(Above: "Keep Fit and Cycle Day" - what Brazilian dancers have to do with it, I'm not entirely sure....)


(Marketing at the local Greenwich Markets where I ate a very substandard arancini.... Well, what do I expect after eating home made ones in Pompei I suppose....)

And then it was down to our local (and famous) flower market (scoring the undivided attention of numerous the flower sellers who were not use to seeing "Orientals" around....the incorrigible flirts! By flirts I mean them, not me! :p) before hitting Brick Lane for some Sunday morning browsing. Note that I still have not forgiven Indian people for stealing my identity..... (They're not asian, I'm asian! Being labelled "Oriental" just sounds strange.....)

Traisping in the North West of London (around Bakerloo)......

....where I stumbled across my mum's old music school. (The rhyming is really not intentional here!) It would figure that my mother would have lived out west instead of east (like me).

If my grandmother had it her way, I would have studied there. Aside the fact that I may never have been offered a place at the school, (you have to audition to get in, and I think you really have to be pretty damn good;) I found out from one of my cousin's friends who is studying music that the only way to get ahead in the classical music world is to sleep with the conductor. (*Deep breath* ARGH!!!!! CAN YOU IMAGINE ALL THE UNTHINKABLE THINGS I WOULD HAVE HAD TO DO?! I don't even want to comtemplate it....)

Below: Out and about with the London Blading Community..... http://www.lfns.co.uk/

This is officially the BEST I've done in London!!! They have this organised street blading thing on Sundays (appropriately) called the "Sunday Stroll". It starts out from Hyde Park at 2pm (weather permitting) with the route changing from week to week. Bladed 6 miles in total to Battersea via Chelsea and South Kensington. There's just something extremely liberating about blading on actual London main roads, and having marshalls bring traffic to a stand still for you. There were a few impatient motorists who started to blare their horns, and we had the marshalls cheerfully shout to us 250 street bladers, "Just smile and wave!" Thankfully, no falls - even when we were made to blade over cobblestones!

Panda-mania at Gloucester Road tube station...

Deer Spotting in Richmond.....

Boozing at the Gerkin

Catching up with M! Long time no see since 2005....

Out in Canary Wharf..... (I so hate my hair atm. Hair cut required NOW!!)

Wining and dining C out in Tower Hill...

Yet another pub with a dodgy name....

Conversation of the Day: Weddings

Conversation with the speechie on the bus (who is now officially scared of me).

P: I'm probably going to head home in January. My friend has just recently gotten engage so I'll be able to attend her engagement party and get married around the same time as well.

Me: Ah engagements..... Why is everybody getting engage?

P (in consoling mode): Don't worry, it's not as fantastic as it sounds.

Me: Well, actually, I meant it more on a "OMG why is everybody getting fricking engage" level.

P: Oh.

Riding the Short Bus Nominations

This post is in reference to my Short Bus t-shirt

http://closetblonde.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html

Nominee 1
The family who tried to train their naughty Rottweiler puppy with a star chart. As in, every time the puppy behaved, they awarded it with a star on a chart. They were really convinced that their technique would work, although the puppy hadn't received many stars. (They probably wanted to recycle the same resource for both their kid and the dog. I just hope the kid ends up accumulating more stars than the dog.)

Nominee 2
Granny turns to young boy (who is likely to go into a special school) and says,

"Oh, that's where your mummy and daddy met,"

Nominee 3
The mother teaching her little girl that a triangle was a square.

Downright Disturbing
Kiddie says to therapist, "My daddy has lots of credit cards with different people's names on them. He keeps them locked up in a box in the top cupboard."

The Wedding

Synposis: Braveheart invades foreign land to capture Asian bride.

The Extended Version
My sister had the most unconventional wedding. (Or should I say wedding ceremony - as she was already married when she walked down the aisle.)

The Venue: Thailand, at a boutique hotel by the sea. And no, we're not Thai. And neither is her husband who is in fact, Scottish (as we can all obviously see from the photos)....

(Above: The front view of our suite.)

The hotel was bew-ti-ful, although the experience was slightly marred when we returned to the suite after the reception, and found ourselves with one, large rat making itself at home to the chocolate and fruit in our room. We managed to trap the rat in the bathroom, called for the hotel staff, and had two men come running, armed with nothing but their bare hands. After about 10 minutes of pandemonium, the men came out of the bathroom victorious, with the large rat lying very still in a plastic bag. (Don't ask me how they managed to kill it. Maybe there's a special Thai way of doing it.) We spent the rest of the night going, "I wonder where else the rat went. Do you think it was on the bed?"

(Above from left to right: Sea view from the hotel's restaurant & hotel poolside.)

It was after that that we noticed that the hotel's brochure also mentioned something about the "friendly house geckos" that could found in the hotel rooms - apparently there to eat the mosquitos (or maybe it was more like they couldn't get rid of them, so they had to try and put a positive spin on their unsuccessful attempts with pest control...?).

(Above: Each room had these cute little water bowls outside the door. A lady would come around each morning to top up the bowl with fresh petals and water. I assumed that the water was there to wash our feet of sand before we entered our rooms - the idea taken up enthusiastically by everybody when I suggested it, although I did start to think twice and warned everyone that I was not to be held responsible if things started growing on people's feet....)

Three Words to Describe My Mum's Side of the Family: Poor time management. (Aside from my uncle that is, who is punctual to the very minute.) The wedding was supposed to start at 4:30pm with guest congregating at the small patch of beach at 4:15pm (which was literally right outside our suite). At 4:15pm, the marriage celebrant came knocking to politely remind us that wedding was supposed to start at 4:30pm.

"Yes, we know," I said speaking for everybody who were in the meantime running around like headless chickens, scrambling to get dressed in wedding clothes. My oldest cousin who was in one corner having a cat nap probably didn't add any confidence in what I was saying.

Outside we could hear ambient music being played - (what I would describe as Thai xylophone music) - which seemed to suspiciously get faster and faster as it approached 4:30pm. (Sorta like those computer games where the music starts getting faster and faster as you start to run out of time.) But as you can see, we all made it in good time with us sitting on (technically) the wrong side of the aisle -

Me: "Wait, isn't the bride's side supposed to sit on the left?"
Aunt (in hoarse whisper): "There's no groom side. If we all sit on the left, there will be nobody on the right."

(Above: Me and my lovely cousins. From left to right - JY, JW, JP and me. We girls some how unintentionally ended up coordinating with each other.)

JP (my youngest cousin in the above picture), almost didn't make it to the wedding in her dress as she picked up the wrong suitcase at the airport. (Picked up or was given the wrong suitcase - it's all debatable as my aunt's family were the last ones out of the plane and by that time, all the luggage had been taken off the carousel, with the identical looking bag in question being conveniently placed next to their other suitcase.) So convinced they were that it was correct bag, that when the combination to the suitcase refused to work - ("Hey, maybe we accidentally changed the combination lock,") - they got the hotel staff to cut the suitcase open. The first thing they saw was this gigantic pill box containing a mountain of pills - "Hypochondriac," my aunt muttered upon seeing the various different types of multi-vitamins and antihistamines - good thing JP's actual suitcase had a tag with her mobile number on it, otherwise the lady would have been well and truly freaked out about her missing pills.

Most Difficult: Walking on the beach in Jimmy Choos. Yes, the Jimmy Choos finally came out of the box - and probably at the wrong occasion. (Jimmy was not happy and shrieked abuse at me the whole entire afternoon.) We had been all assured that the wedding was not going to be one the beach - and then found out that it was - which meant all girls trying to walk unsuccessfully in stilletos in the sand. I ended up with bilateral leg cramps in my unsuccessful attempt to leap from the bamboo mat (serving as the "aisle") to my seat located in the sand.

Me (muttering): "I bet you anything that the photographer will be wanting us to climb those rocks for photos."

Sure enough, the shoes quickly came off.

And in the meantime, we managed to get some fabulous shots on top of the rocks. Unfortunately, with my sister's silly photographer completely missed out on that beautiful sunkissed glow as he was too busy taking photos somewhere else.

(Above: Cocktail dresses & champers on the rock.)

G. will be known forever more as "The Polish Guy" - the name given by JP as he is "tall and pole-like". The upside to all of this is that my sister's kiddies will be of average height. (Or so say the law of averages.....)

(Below: G. and the marriage celebrant who is incidentally not that short.)

Biggest Boo-Boo:
While writing out our wedding cards, my youngest cousin asked how to spell G's name. The following conversation was the transpire:

Me (confidently): "It's G-R-A-E-M-E"
JP: "Ok."
Aunt: "Are you sure? It thought it was spelt like GREY-HAM."
Me: Really....?

(Short pause.)

Me (voice becoming an octave higher): "REALLY?!!!! ARE YOU SURE?!"
JP: "Yeah, I think that's what it says in the ceremony booklet."
Me: "WHAT....?! Are you sure it's not spelt the Grammie way?"
JY: "Yeah, I think so."
Me: "OH NO!!!! You mean to say that I have been spelling his name incorrectly all this while? Why didn't somebody tell me?!?!!!"

(I'm not even going to mention about how I helpfully also instructed all my dad's friends in the UK with the incorrect spelling as well - there's sure to be more gifts coming across from the northern hemisphere with the word "Grammie" written on them.)

Me: "ARGH!!!! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO? I'VE ALREADY PUT HIS NAME IN MY CARD!"

JY: "I have blanko*. You want to borrow some?"

(Before anybody asks why my cousin would bring a pencil case on holiday, I have to point out that she was in the middle of her A level exams.)

*Note that "Blank-o" is what Singaporeans call white out (in reference to a popular brand name).

Me: "AARGH!!! I CAN'T JUST BLANK-O HIS NAME OUT ON A WEDDING CARD!"

Aunt (in the background): "Tee hee hee. If you blank-o his name, he'll wonder whether you've recycled a card from one of your sister's previous wedding and previous husbands."

Me: "OMG! What do I do?! Do I spell his name incorrectly on the envelope or do I spell it like how I've spelt it in the card?"

Aunty (continuing in the background): "He'll be wondering whether it was a John, or whether it was a Michael....."

It appeared my options were to:
1) White out his name and spell it correctly on both the envelope and card.
2) Spell his name incorrectly on both the envelope and the card (for consistency).
3) Spell his name correctly on the envelope and leave his name incorrect in the card (and then try to blame it on my jetlag).

I decided the lesser of evils would be to choose option no 3. and then hope for the best.

How to Do a "Thai" Wedding:

1. Walk down the aisle in a cheongsam

2. Have a Scottish husband (decked out in kilt) standing at the end of the "altar" in a scattering of orchids (in the shape of a heart).

3. Rings are exchanged....

Incidentally, G's wedding band didn't fit - me whispering to my aunt, "You see? It's a recycled wedding ring - just like my blanko-ed card." Har, har har.....

5. You have a Thai lady boy do some dancing for you while the celebratory champagne flows.

6. You have a tea ceremony and because you are a half-arsed Asian, you get it all wrong. ("You're supposed to serve the tea in the tray," my sister hissed through smiling clenched teeth - the obligatory expression needed for the photographs, of course. Your cousins are even more pathetic - and get it wrong even after watching you :p)

7. You take a few photos before the sun sets.

8. You get served cake and get confused when going to the toilet.

Okay, with the camera flash it is pretty obvious which sign is for the ladies and which is for the lady boys, but I can tell you that in the dim lighting, it took a while to figure things out. So much so when I returned a second time (for the purpose of just taking a photo of the toilet signs,) the waitress immediately thought I was confused and helpfully pointed out where to go. (I then really had no choice but to go into the toilets, as I didn't want to explain my reasons for going back to the toilets....)

Other shots from Thailand

(Above: "Monkey 1 and Monkey 2 scratch their heads unable to decide where to go next.")

The British invade Thailand.



(Below: Soap carvings found in abudance in all shopping areas of Thailand.)





(Above: A local fishes for cockles in the sea; me & S.)

Below: Buddha at the Big Buddha