"Be prepared for model elephants in London, as over 250 of the giant beasts invade the capital’s streets in a huge public art exhibition aiming to raise money for elephants throughout the world. The model elephants in London are part of the Elephant Parade, organised by the Elephant Family charity that have set up similar events throughout the world in an effort to raise awareness of the plight that faces many of our big-eared friends."

=)

And I have yet to use one more visit to this place...weeee

LONDON’S NEWEST 5* LUXURY HEALTH & FITNESS CLUB ·         Complimentary towels, luxury products

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Taken on my phone camera from one of my site visits...as well as I finally saw the ocean in the UK at last in my last cycle run. We were out east right up to Southend on Sea. So reminds me of NZ except that they have beach huts over here which is quite nifty to dump your clothes before heading out.

Work load UP, training load UP, eating UP. Hardly have time to be online lately but all is good.

And I still manage to squeeze time to make chocolate truffles! heh.Will post about that later...

It's similar to NZ's women's expo but different in a way that the people here display different products...but all for the main objective(s) :)

Held at Earl's Court 2 building, this expo is happening starting today till the weekend. I wanted to go last year but couldn't get tickets. As well as me being super stingy, I manage to get them for £5 instead of the usual £15 if I go today.


It was quite a great night as it wasn't too crowded either.


There were different type of stores but all divided to sections mainly broken into career and motivation, beauty, pamper, active and not forgetting food..in which I hung around that area more often for the free samples :P. There were also places to hear motivational talks, how to lose weight talks, and a cooking show area too. It wasn't super huge, it was just enough to cover for 2 hours unless you're willing to line up for a cheap massage or pedicure.


I shall not bore you on the amount of things I found from but there were 3 highlights from the shows. One being this Awesome Monitor where it can monitor 5 things: Calories intake and eaten, how many steps you take (pedometer), how much you sweat and how you sleep. It even knows when you wake up in the middle of the night! Very good technology since it was long applied in the hospital and is now commercialised.

Another cool thing from the show was how food was made gluten free, oil free and organic. Love the pure chocolate samples, the muesli, the seed snacks (they've produce apricot kernel that tastes ultimately delicious as a snack) and they have also got lactose free milk! Yumm.

Last but not least, there were quite cool nifty kitchenware in which I so wish I could buy such as a blender and stove in one. It's pretty much a blender, but has a heat feature. Gosh, tefal was there and a kitchen and knife company were there too.

As the weather brightens up at last!

Work load shot up to the roof last week but I'm not complaining at all, as well as been keeping up with training with extra precaution since I feel my old injuries are coming back.

Spent almost the entire Saturday doing the 40mile bike run as we didn't know the route well and we were doing it in a group, hence waiting up for others to catch up. It was amazing just to run through the country side getting fresh air, passing through farm lands, mansions, cottages, and bare fields for a change. Things like that is just worth getting up early for.

But yes, I had a klutz moment where I swore I slammed both brakes when the lady in front of me slowed down but somehow my bike just flipped over and I fell straight to the ground with my chin ><. Thank GOD for the jacket collar that I landed on, if not I'd be bleeding really really badly. Oh and yes, the bike was fairly new as it was bought the night before. But hey, I love it because it's so much lighter. Yay.


Anyway, it was then off to a Turkish restaurant for dinner where we went to Sofra to try out. T'was really good as my dish came with small portions of everything. Check out here for more of my reviews bout the restaurant.

And it has actually begun awhile back but thought I'd write something to give you a 'taste' of the life in a day of HG! Last week was supposedly Week 12 out of Week 21 of my 'training' programme to end of April, so yeah...here goes:

• Lunchtime - Boot camp aka Circuit training (press ups, sit ups, squats etc)
• After work - Spins for 45minutes, stretch 15 minutes

• Lunchtime - Spins (my fav killer instructor)

• Lunchtime - Circuits again
• After work - Spins (my fav killer instructor, don't know how he can do it)

• Lunchtime - BREAK, sauunnnaaaa weeeeee

• Lunchtime - tone (like aerobics classes but using weights)

• Woke up at 8am to make an appointment with Fitness First for spin classes
• Spin classes at 9am
• Abworkout from 9.45am to 10am
• Wanted to cycle out but it started raining, so I did an hour on the bicycle machine (ho hum so boring)

• I went into another Fitness First gym wanting to go for Boot Camp and wanting to cycle but the weather was just crap again.
• Did something like Taibo instead for an hour
• An hour on the cross trainer to kill time before Spins
• Spins for 45 minutes, then ab workout for another 15 minutes
• Started at 11.30am, finished by 2.30pm knackered
• Came straight home to bake and decorate for cupcake competition

First training on the road this Saturday! 30mile bike run, am excited :)

It was one of those weekends where you just don't want to go outside.

Wind blowing up at about the miles per hour in which you get blown off if you open up your umbrella, in fact even if you didn't open your umbrella up, you get blown away...

Rain pouring in and out, puddles, damp, cold. At times like this I am usually at home either on my laptop or in the kitchen coming up with some special recipe infused or making something from the internet.

But my childhood friend aka next door neighbour was here and was in London over the weekend. I took the opportunity to bring her out to my favourite markets.

So this was the attempted itenary or the previous itenary seeing that the weekend has passed already:

Went to try out spanish tapas food at La Tasca. Yuuuummm, we then headed out to capture a few nice night photo around Westminister area (where Big Ben is). First time I actually was up close to the London Eye. Took really cool pics. Check this one out ;)


Slept in (yahoo!) and didn't wake up till lunch time. When I peaked out of the window, it was pouring and the wind was blowing like craaaazzieee so we took our sweet time leaving. We headed out to the tube, only to find that the station we want to get off was closed! So we had to stop one stop before (where we started heading to the retail shops and had coffee at Starbucks). We only had like half an hour before we arrived and saw Portobello market lol. But yea, it was all good since the shops CY liked didn't close till later.

We went back to the restaurant to grab our forgotten umbrella, only to take a line which didn't pass through Kings Cross! So we had to bus back. We were home early as I needed and early start the next day.

Went to Liverpool Street station, whereby I showed CY 3 different markets in that area. Had my yummy Rainforest Roti Wrap and finally bought this dress I have been eyeing for since last year but didn't bother to buy it because it was £45! That designer was vietnamese though although his clothes looked Japanese to me. I sort of baked some banana cake and sold it at a friend's stall.

Sent CY off in the afternoon, came home and clean the place up before I headed back to the market again to see how things are. Manage to get nice deals at the food stalls towards the end of the day hehe. But gosh, I spent quite abit over the weekend and it has been awhile.

Tonight (Tuesday) am heading to watch a show called Dirty Dancing with my galfriends :). Will write about it next!

Short and sweet re-cap:

• Came straight home, iced my cupcakes went out to Zebrano. Took nice Xmas photos of Carnaby Street. Different one from last year :)

• Went to have supper at our good ole 1997 and came home at 4.30am

• Only woke up in the afternoon, played badminton till 5pm
• Had lasagna before heading out for an engagement party somewhere in Portobello area
• Came home, started writing up my blog entry

• Slept for 10 hours =)
• Walked all the way to Camden to check out a Warehouse looking shop and got carried away in shopping. Bought myself a pair of flats for 75% off (not gona tell you the price :P)
• Headed back for grocery shopping but I bought another dress on the way haha
• Pop by one of the bakery stores that was selling off their sweets and sandwhiches for cheap. Got myself a nice fruit tart (YUM) for 50p and shared it with D.
  
• Came home and we had yummy tortelleni pasta for dinner.
  

Nope, no costume party or nothing. It's not that I didn't want to get involved but dressing up in funny costumes in the cold weather ain't my cup of tea. Yes, I really dislike dressing up against the cold weather. Perhaps I need a new wadrobe (HINT). But hey, all I need is just to snuggle up in bed reading or writing or watching with a cup of tea or hot chocolate by my side. Peaceful. Or maybe I'm growing 'old' lol.

Anyway, weekend was packed with FOOD again. Haha, can't run away from it and it sticks by my side when the cold and dark weather kicks in. There was a last minute gathering occasion and so I took the opportunity to make something again and I made Kuih Serimuka for the first time as well as to get rid of the pandan leaves that is taking up alotta space in the freezer. I too decided to practice on my 'photography' skillz.

Apparently food photos are the hardest of them all so if you master this, you can master anything. Cheh wah. Here's my 'attempt'. I briefly read on some tips online and see how it worked. More info here on my experiences making this Kuih.


Was also focusing alot on my cupcakes for Monday. My first batch sunk, which made my hard sunk 10x more. Sigh, it tasted good regardless so I'm gald I didn't have to throw it away. So I decided to try them again. I know, more you make mistakes, more you learn. But I did feel like I went round in circles by not following instructions but then again, it does clarify things much more just like life. Can't be too perfect, have to try something you don't want to in order to know what you want to do in life. Heh.

Anyway, Friday night was serimuka, sat day was cupcakes and Saturday evening was gathering at friend's place. Ate lotsa KFC and carrot cupcakes made by a friend and played Wii. Coming home was quite scary as I was surrounded by people all dressed up in costumes. Feels really eerie as everyone is hiding their identity that night, brings a good chance for someone to take the advantage and do something evil. Either that, I am getting paranoid these days of watching too much tv and movies.

Sunday was cupcakes again and headed out to dinner at the York & Albany (one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurant) with my group of girlfriends. Thoroughly enjoyed the experience even walk to the restaurant as it was a whole different atmosphere altogether as you get off the touristy streets.I bumped into an organic shop where they sold proper organic fruits and veges. The apples were 3 times larger than normal and the chocolate bars were way cheaper than anywhere else I found. Apparently celebreties hang out in this area too since it's very close to Regent's Park (one of the largest in London town).

Hey ho! In this times of keeping low and quiet, not much highlight has been happening besides shopping for gifts, checking out the markets (in which I went to the same one again and again) and setting up my other blog. Am contemplating on whether to combine them....as it does gets tough when it comes to traveling and having 'food' involved.

Hmm...anyway, am perfecting the other blog regardless. As well as that one is more publicized and this is rather for family and updating about my trips = ). I will try with 2 blogs regardless and perhaps link the both of them in a way so that my blog snippits could perhaps be 'summarised' instead (i.e. if you want to find out more, 'click here' or something like that).

Weekend has come and gone, here's what I have been up to:

Went out and met up with friends and made a quick decision to go watch a movie with them. We ate at one of our usual restaurants where we keep ordering the same meal that is not on the menu list. It had like 8 chinese words for the dish so I keep forgetting the name of the dish. But the dish consisted of fried rice, topped with the 'ying yong' sauce and pork ribs covered in curry powder. Mmm, nice to have for winter. Went to watch 'Couples Retreat' after that and I find the show quite nice in the sense of reminding married couples who are on the verge of breaking down what love is again.

I couldn't sleep last night so I went home and did some decoration on the lemon cake...only to suffer abit from 'writer's block' haha. I bought a few decorative ingredients and asked myself 'if I only had these to create something wonderful, what would I do?'. But it turned out great at the end. See here for the results :)

Woke up rather late, contemplated to check out the Farmer's market (they have a few branches) and see whether we could set up a cupcake stall, only to receive an email today that they don't do that but more on 'cakes' instead. Guess cupcakes may be abit commercialised? Before you know it, it was time to come home, shower and change for yummy dinner tonight. We had lovely 3 course meal at Pearl set up by a celebrity chef called Jun Tanaka. Friend's birthday and she was his fan hehe.


We went to a place called Buddha Bar after that (apparently celebrities come here alot) which was decent but they didn't allow the cake to be cut and distributed =(  . Oh well. I went home early anyway to recover from the late night before.

Woke up really late today bout lunchtime, so I just went up the road to shop for groceries at the usual Sainsbury, passing by Chapel market before coming back and realising it's time to leave the house if I were to walk to the badminton hall (which I did). Played a friendly league in which I wasn't mentally into the competition mode until the last 2 games (in which I won haha). Came back and overdone my hip flexes. Again. Gosh, the old habits just don't die!

And yes, it is really getting colder over here. Thermals are out, heaters are on. I wake up to a cold studio as the heater doesn't have a timer function which sucks! Nevertheless, am awaiting for a nice portable heater coming...soon...

And so I went to check out what this cupcake competition is about after being told by a friend while I was selling cupcakes at BrickLane. The theme this round was 'booze' and you only needed to pay 5 to get in with free tea and not forgetting tasting all the cupcake entries of course. A great value for dinner, heh. And after having them, we judge on which ones were the top 3.

I must say, the hardest bit was judging and tasting ALL the cupcakes! I really loved 6 of them and have to keep thinking bout judging them according to theme rather than taste. Haha. Met a couple of ladies who were from Japan and China and so I joined them so that I don't have to eat all the cupcakes myself. We teamed up to get all the cupcakes.


Had to leave before the prizes was given out but I was happy to meet the organiser in person and she told me next month's theme is spice. First thing on my mind is 'chai'. So yeah, I am inspired to participate the next competition :)

I walked all the way home just to get rid of all the sugar I ate and have been doing that more and more often lately before the weather gets darker by the day. It feels wonderful to enjoy the cooler breeze and familiarise the city more. And everywhere I go, I tend to see or spot nice restaurants with great deals and never knew how close they were!

In this quiet period, I thought I take the initiative to explore London. So last Saturday, after a lovely pancake and sausage breakfast, I headed to Portobello Market. Am growing fonder of the markets these days rather than the retail area because of the originality of what people produce at the market and I find them intriguing.

Initially, I was suppose to 'scout' for the next cupcake stall. So I walked the entire street. And to my suprise, there wasn't any except for a proper one called the hummingbird bakery, where it was jam packed with a long queues. So I went in to check out the cakes and the prices. I really wondered what it was that made it so popular, when I thought to myself that I can make those these days. I have to admit that their marketing, packaging and the whole brand does look very attractive. And of course I am using their ingredients too hehe.