One Perfect Summer Sunday

My regular routine on Sundays is to visit the Fitness First gym at London Bridge, exercise for about an hour and half, before showering and grabbing a worthy lunch at my favorite lunch spot nearby. MoreLondon - the perfect, perfect, lunching haven for me for the past half year with a marvellous, marvellous view of the grand Tower Bridge.

Behold!


Yesterday was an uncharacteristic warm, sunny day for London. I bought my yummilicious British Mustard Honey Chicken Pasta, a bottle of freshly pressed grape and raspberry juice, 3 cups of my currently-obsessed-with jelly and a large cold samosa from Marks and Spencers. Huge lunch, it was.

I had the pleasure of Belinda for company and she arrived 15 minutes later, after I have been thoroughly grilled by the cheery sunshine.

Me and my favorite lemonade jelly


Us and the Tower Bridge on a fine, fine day!


Since Belinda was such a darling for packing the picnic blanket, we decided to venture nearer to Potter's Field to utilise it.

Don't mind my auntie-looking gym backpack.


We laid the blanket on a suitable patch of grass, with first-class view of the Tower Bridge. It was a surreal experience, lying down on the grass, chatting and looking at the landmark.



I'm one happy camper, for sure!


Ah, summers. :)

The Squirrel Never Sleeps

"The Squirrel Never Sleeps" is a phrase coined by Felix in an attempt to dream of a code word for something. Or, he might be trying to indicate subtlely how complicated an instruction is.

Last night, I was giving him directions to a particular Newton bus stop.

Me: When you come out of the MRT barriers, you will need to turn left.
Felix: Uh huh.
Me: Go up the escalator.
Felix: Uh huh.
Me: You will see a bus stop on your left.
Felix: Okay.
Me: THAT is NOT the bus stop. You will need to look right and see a pavement cutting through...
Felix: Wah lao!
Me: Yes, you will see the pavement cutting through the grass.
Felix: Why did you mention the bus stop, if it's not the bus stop?!!!
Me: That's because it's the first thing you see when you get up and you are bound to mistake it for it!
Felix: ARGH! So complicated!
Me: But it's not the bus stop. You have to walk the pavement towards the big busy road called Bukit Timah Road!
Felix: Yes, and then I will see an old man with a walking stick.
Me: ...
Felix: And I will say to him "The Squirrel Never Sleeps."
Me: ...
Felix: And he will say "The Hamster is Hungry." and points the way to me.

Technology Awe

I figure myself as a sort of technology-savvy person, being able to adapt to technology and gadgets fairly quickly. However, customer service and support for technology is another matter. I either don't use them or never really had a good experiencee with them.

Today, I had to install a university-licensed SPSS Statistical Analysis software on to my laptop. (I am going to get to install SPSS Textual Analysis software as well and I am sooooooooooooo excited about that. Okay, sue me, I am a data analysis geek.) Installation is usually a fairly uncomplicated procedure but university-licensed software can be tricky. After some troublesome and complicated IT-support matters at NUS where I was based for 8 years, I was naturally anticipating that the IT support in the RHUL would be worse.

I called the IT Service Desk and a support officer identifying himself as Matthew responded. I explained to him my inability to install the software and expected him to ask me to come down to the Computer Center. Instead, he sent me an email to click on a link.

Me: Oh! Something is installing.
Matthew: Yep, just run it.
Me: ... (gets bored and started randomly moving my mouse)
Matthew: Erm, excuse me, could you stop moving your mouse?
Me: Huh? What? Erm, why? *Surprised he could see that I was doing so*
Matthew: Yeah, I'm trying to see what's wrong with your computer now.
Me: Huh. You mean you are remotely accessing my computer??!
Matther: Er, yeah? *in a duh-sort of voice*

Luckily, only my mum was chatting with me on MSN and she didn't have a funky nickname. Yeah, so with that remote livehelp, I didn't even have to explain much! He accessed my computer, figured out the problems and got them all sorted out.

Now, is this cool or what?

I've got mail!

This morning, while I was buried in papers on my bed, I drowsily received an SMS saying a parcel has been delivered. The text message referred to me as 'Felix' and the real McCoy insisted I go down to the porter to check it out.

Coincidently, I have been anticipating an assortment of parcels and mail. I love UK for its online shopping and the huge, huge variety of goods. Don't even get me started on Tesco. I love shopping for groceries at Tesco! It is exactly how supermarkets should be. Supermarkets in Singapore have a long, long way to catch up. Tesco itself deserves an entire blog post on itself.

Yeah, so back to the story, I drowsily made my way down and greeted the porter. There are usually two Caucasian porters whom I am friendly with, including this dusty-hair mustached bloke.

Me: Hi, I'm from Flat 10.03 and I have a text message informing I have a parcel.
Bloke: Indeed! You have flowers sent for you!

Instead of a bouquet, I stared incredulously at this huge, tall box about a meter tall. Together with the rest of my parcels (books from Amazon - my entertainment, yay!), I dragged this humongous parcel back up to the apartment.

Wala - the huge-ass parcel


Flo and Betty were both curiously intrigued and impressed by the sheer size of the box. The bouquet of roses were rather huge too and so beautiful in their deep shades of crimson.





Thank you, honey! I love you, too!