CNY 2014

Finally essay free for the rest of the academic year and after next week, I will be on to my last block of placements for 3rd year, time really flies. 6 months has past since arriving in UK and in another 5 months time, I will be back home! This also means exams are coming soon...need.to.buck.up.

Chinese New Year was the beginning of Feb, this is my first CNY away from home? Even so, it wasn't short of celebrations and activities, I had my fair share of steamboat, lou hei and meeting up with friends except no collection of red packets..haha.

The first day of CNY was spent with the arrival of Tifanny who came down from Notts, feeling touched by the fact that she travelled alone for like 5-6 hrs just to spend the weekends with us..awww. Sadly couldn't show her much of Soton, because honestly speaking, there isn't much to do here. So we had steamboat on the 2nd day and gosh, we overestimated the amount of food we could eat...

doesn't seem alot for 4 people..

this is probably the most important dish for steamboat, at least for me.

advertising for Stella Artois cidre..haha. Still prefer pear over apple.

Our humble steamboat pot which is actually a rice cooker. Soup was cooked from scratched which basically comprised of chicken carcass and dried scallops.

that was our humble steamboat meal though we were all freaking full after that but definitely satisfied! Great food, great weather for steamboat, great drinks and most importantly, great company!

初三:

Touring Soton city center

on above bar street

not exactly a nice view but just had to take a picture of it.

Ikea was our lunch stop for the day

And that marked the end of the first weekend of CNY, nothing exciting. The following weekend, we headed out to Reading to visit Zoe!

初九:

Sushimania for lunch 

Not a very good picture but look at those sushi! Totally sushi deprived.

It was half price that day so everything was pretty worth it.

Sashimi was fresh but pricing wise, obviously cannot compare to back home.

Supposedly SLICED beef udon but the meat was so thick, not impressed by the entire dish. The soup base tasted more of msg and the udon noodles just didn't have the right texture. Note to self: do not try udon in any uk jap restaurant.

Jane and Zoe, our fab host for the trip, thank you for bringing us around and for crashing in your room! :)

Can't remember what sushi is this but it was not bad.

A always must try in every jap restaurant, soft shell crab temaki. Not the best I have had.

Overall, the sushi was not bad but the udon noodle soup wasn't up to standard. I heard that their dons are not bad so might try that next time if I visit the restaurant again. Reasonable pricing if there is half price..haha.

Headed to a famous cafe in Reading for some coffee - Workhouse Coffee. Had a cup of latte and although I am no expert in tasting coffee, this cup of latte was quite to my liking. The coffee was not very strong and it was smooth to drink, not a fan of sharp and strong coffee..so this was good.

Flooding in Reading..when will the rainy weather ever stop?

 We had potluck dinner in the night with her other housemates and here are all the contributions:

Stir fry kimchi chicken.

To die for assam fish by Zoe.

Stir fry veggie.

 

Our contribution of pork ribs and mushroom stew which turned out pretty salty because I smartly added too much soy sauce.

Here you go, presenting out home cooked cny dinner!

That was it from Reading, was a really short trip, only stayed over for 1 night. Had lou hei on the last day of CNY but the photos are in my phone which I am too lazy to upload here, maybe some day..haha. So yeah, this was CNY in UK, simple and content. :)

xoxo

Travelogue: New Year's in Scotland

As much as I should be busy writing my case essay assignment right now, my brain is so tired from clinic this morning. Currently contemplating whether to gym later but I have a strong feeling I will end up not going since I am so tired and it is gonna be a long day at hospital tomorrow. Somehow wishing I have more time for gym or even better, wishing that the gym is next to my house, I will probably go everyday...hahaha..really.

Enough of blabbering and get to the point of this post which is part 2 of my travelogue to scotland over the 2 weeks of Christmas and New Year's holidays. Glasgow was our first out of 3 stops in scotland which was pretty short.

Roaming the streets of the city centre with pretty lights above

one of the bridges in glasgow

this view was taken at the top of glasgow university. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum looking pretty at night!

inside glasgow university compound..so quiet and spooky. I think Glasgow university has one of the nicest campus I have seen so far. The buildings look like those in Harry Potter, in fact I think there was one scene which was filmed there.

with eevon, my fellow ex-cheermate. Initially thought she would be travelling during that time and wouldn't be in Glasgow but figured the day before leaving Glasgow that she was back. Thus, only managed to meet up with her for a short while in the morning before heading off to Edinburgh. Would have been nice if we could have spent more time though..

Didn't get to do much in Glasgow really, just a little bit of sight seeing here and there. Next destination was Edinburgh where we stayed for about 3-4 days through New Year as well. As it was kind of a last minute planning, we didn't manage to get accommodation in Edinburgh city itself and had to stay outside which wasn't that cheap even and the travelling was just inconvenient. December probably wasn't the best time for touring Edinburgh, especially also because of the Hogmanay party(Edinburgh's New Year party).

rain, rain and more rain. Was greeted by a wet weather which lasted through the entire trip but thankfully stopped during Hogmanay.

Visited the National Museum to seek shelter..haha. It was massively huge, comprising of 7 levels? But the most interesting section was probably the technology area as you can see above. This robot was designed to pick up blocks of alphabet letters and spell your name out.

Nice interior designing of the museum.

Went to collect our tickets to the party after that..more details about the party below..

One of our junior studying in Edinburgh brought us around the next day and the first stop was KOREAN FOOD (in caps to emphasize my love for korean food basically). The restaurant is called Kim's Mini Meals, it is pretty small but the food is dae bak!

Ordered kimchi jjigae

Beef bulgogi

If I am not wrong, this is five grain rice? It was superb, and I had like approximately 3 bowls of it...haha

Dolsot Galbi (Marinated Pork Ribs served in a stone pot), one of their signature dishes and a definite must try if you visit the restaurant. You also have the option of choosing the level of spiciness, which we opt for mild since one of us didn't have a high tolerance to spiciness. 

It was definitely an extremely satisfying meal, probably the most satisfying one in our entire trip. Would definitely want to go back there one day. 

Did a walk around the university area after that..

depressing winter where the sun sets at 3pm plus.

can't remember what this cathedral is called, there were quite a few that we saw..

for people living in denial..

would have loved to try this if I wasn't on a budget trip.

on top of the hill where Edinburgh castle is situated.

Say hi to Edinburgh castle! Maybe someday when I earn my own money, I will pay to go in..someday..

When there is food, there is always desserts. Visited an Italian restaurant for ice cream. The flavours they offered were really interesting and of course tasted great.

With another batchmate from msia, vui. Don't have a group photo with the rest of them..realise that I am always lacking group photos. This was taken just before the countdown party.

Nope, this is not the midnight fireworks, this was at 8 I think. So apparently, they set off fireworks starting from 8pm hourly till midnight. I did manage to capture shots of the next few hours but they didn't turn up well.

The streets that were looking not very crowded at that time.

There were a few stages at various areas. Initially we went to some live band stage which bore us out and ended up at the DJ stage which wasn't any better.

finally the countdown came..

and the highlight of the night! Ushering in the new year with fireworks.

That was Hogmanay party, not very exciting or interesting to be honest. Probably not something worth my 20pounds..unless they play better music..

Dundee was our last destination for the trip. If you are wondering why Dundee, I have no ideas why either. Quite a number of our previous batchmates are there, so meeting up was good, that is one main point. Another would be because we have no where else to visit..we wanted to go further up to Aberdeen but it was too expensive so this is as far as we could go..

The weather was pretty mean to us that day, gracing us with strong wind and rain. Nevertheless, we still manage to reach Broughty Ferry.

Broughty Castle which has been converted into some art gallery.

Was thankful that the weather and rain cleared up a lot through mid day despite the wind still being really strong. However it was so difficult to find food around the area, I think we took like 1 hour just to source for proper food but ended up with bar food.

That is pretty much it of my entire Christmas/ New Year travelogue. Not very fascinating or interesting. Actually kind of regret not doing proper research before embarking on the trip. But then again, towards the end of the trip, I was down with a flu and really bad sore throat and both of us were exhausted from travelling even without doing much productive sightseeing. Trying to think back to my most productive trips I have done thus far, would probably be the trip to Taiwan back in 2009. Travelled with my girlfriends from college, the four of us. We were just out of college on a 9 month break before entering University and were on temporary jobs for the first half of the year to fund our trip. I remember us planning and generating a proper detailed itinerary for the whole of 9 days that we were there. We literally woke up at 6am everyday and reach back around 12 am or so..haha, it was crazy. Hoping we could do a vacation soon, grad trip to korea maybe? I would probably be the most broke since majority of them have already started working. :( 

Shall end of here and take a nap first. 

Till then,

xoxo