A friend recently asked me for tips on things to do on his short holiday in London. This is a list, in no particular order, of what I, and not necessarily anyone else, would do if I had a few days to spend in London on a holiday:

• Grab a sandwich from either Marks & Spencers or Pret a Manger and have lunch in one of London’s numerous parks (my favourite is Regent’s Park, in the northern end where it’s a little more “wild”)
• Visit some, not just one, of London’s many museums - the ones I would definitely go to are the National Gallery, Tate Modern, and the British Museum (I’m only attracted to the architecture since I’m not one for antiquities). The Courtauld Gallery sometimes houses very interesting temporary exhibitions but its main collection also contains some precious impressionists which I love.
• Watch an opera performed by the English National Opera. Productions are generally good, if not very good. Best of all they have cheap day tickets in the balcony going for only GBP3 each - that can’t be beat!
• Drop by some of London’s bookshops. My favourites are the Borders on Oxford Street, Waterstone’s on Gower Street, a large remainders bookshop close to Wagamama on Streatham Street. And no - I do not like the mega Waterstone’s in Picadilly. It’s too big, too cold and too impersonal.
• Make a day trip to either Cambridge or Oxford - Cambridge is better for most tourists, but I, of course, would go to Oxford.
• Spend Sunday morning at the Camden market(s).
• Watch a play - any play!
• Walk along the South Bank in the evening and watch the sun set on London’s skyline.
• Go to not one, but several, concerts, and by this I mean classical music. London has some of the best concert halls in the world and my favourite is the Royal Festival Hall located in the South Bank. The Barbican houses the world-famous London Symphony Orchestra but the building really does not appeal to me much in so many ways. However, the Barbican also houses the Royal Shakespeare Company, so a trip is still requisite to enjoy some of the best arts performances on offer in London.
• Drop by my old alma mater.
• Go crazy in Lush.
• Drop by the great classical music section in HMV near Oxford Circus.
• Spend an afternoon, an evening, in fact, a whole day in Soho, in particular, Old Compton Street. Have a cup of coffee, watch the world go by, shop for porn, buy the latest skimpiest fashion, let your hair down, dress, don’t dress - because really darling, no one cares. Or at least they pretend not to!
• Walk around Covent Garden and drop-in the myriad of shops in the area.

MORE TO COME

Posted on March 31st, 2003 by jl
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Gosh - I haven’t really blogged to this one, have I?

Well… the one thing that irked me today was my friends. Desmond is apparently now in Europe. He was in Paris for work and then travelled to London for a bit of a break with Mel - but of course, I only found out about it when he SMSed me a brief birthday message. Wai Chiew will also be travelling to London and Europe, but only in May. However, he bought his ticket a couple of weeks back at the MATTA Fair, but again, I only heard about it today when I had to call him for some info. Don’t know where Chiew Weng is, but neither him nor Wai Chiew said anything about my birthday. Which further implies that no one organised anything for my birthday unlike the string of elaborate celebrations the last couple of years for everyone else…

Just before anyone accuses me of being petty, I would like to add that I finally spoke to Choong How over the telephone yesterday and it was such a pleasant, cordial and enjoyable conversation between friends which was such a contrast to the one I had with Wai Chiew today. He took advantage of the phone call to ask me for travel tips and after a while the fact came out that he was more interested in being able to boast that he (would have) had travelled to more destinations than to be able to say that he had seen more of, and know more intimately, a selected few cities. Which actually shouldn’t have surprised me, after all, this is the person who calls the address where he spends 8 hours a day “home” and also the person who is on a competitive race of one up-manship with both himself and his imaginary challengers. In short, not quite out of character for him, which in the end is pretty sad, if not apalling.

Posted on March 30th, 2003 by jl
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Who would ever have thought that a camp queen like me would learn the technicalities of setting up a mini-network at home and to establish a connection between a really old PC running on a first generation Pentium 200MHz and Windows 95 with an internet broadband provider via a DSL modem. This not forgetting my success with my homepage and the blog. Now, if this is a whole lot of goobledy-gook jargon to you, that’s how far I’ve come…! Of course, again, this is in no small part thanks to Shahada’s continued advice, due to my constant nagging!

This has been a lovely weekend, apart from feeling a little unwell. The headache has gone but my eyeballs were still throbbing until just about an hour ago. Thankfully Andrew’s been very well behaved. We didn’t do much - just stayed at home. Mike called to wished me a Happy Birthday today and we had a lovely chat. Choong How and I also spoke on the phone yesterday - I’m hoping to make a trip to Singapore to see him sometime soon. Pretty uneventful weekend really. But nice.

Posted on March 30th, 2003 by jl
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I had a lovely day yesterday, with just a couple of exceptions. Spent the morning on the internet (thankfully, Streamyx, my broadband provider, was almost back to normal). Then went out for lunch at 1Utama (a local shopping centre), walked around a bit before being bothered by the lounder than necessary music in the background and the reverberating voices/noises on the harsh stone/marble walls and walkways (these are typical trademarks of Malaysia shopping centres). Of course, once I arrived home I had a slowly developing headache which was fortunately just about under control for the rest of the day.

After a short rest and some telly, left the house again for dinner and theatre with Andrew. We watched a Malaysian play, Spilt Gravy on Rice, which had received numerous accolades. It was an enjoyable evening, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend, or not recommend, the play. I’m beginning to think that there is a stereotype of the Malaysian play and this was one of it - cheap and obvious jibes and jokes, appeal to monologue narratives, use of not always succesful artifices to get the story moving, rather obvious critique of Malaysian society and government (in attempt to emulate Chechov or Solzhenitsyn) which then descends into somewhat patronising moral philosophising. Other than that the performances were good, I’d even say very good at places. The characters were well developed, although selected scenes could have been removed with no damage to either substance or story.

We both arrived home just after midnight and went straight to bed. I thought I was developing a cold towards the end of the evening, but I seem to be alright this morning, although my eye-muscles still seem to be “aching”. I’m not discounting feeling worse this afternoon, especially since it’s house-cleaning day, but only time will tell…

Posted on March 29th, 2003 by jl
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Another day, another year older. Ah well…

I must admit, I am getting a pyschological shock, if slight, of now being 31. No more twenty-something. No more 30, which is a nice round number. But 31.

More than that, crossing this rubicon seems to me to imply a maturity of some sort which I very much doubt I have attained. I mean… shouldn’t I be married? Shouldn’t I already have a couple of kids in tow? What about loans and mortgages?

Instead, I’m still floating in an early-mid-life crisis - my career’s going nowhere fast. I don’t quite know what I want in my life, let alone what to do with myself. I can’t quite see where I will be/should be/want to be in 5 years time. All I am doing is living day-to-day. Being contented. And just existing.

Should that be enough?

Posted on March 28th, 2003 by jl
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