White Canary Wharf

Looked outside my window this evening and was quite surprised to see a "white Canary Wharf" and yes, looks like the Big Freeze is back in England! More snow and icy condition predicted for tomorrow and Friday and I hope my travel plans wouldn't be affected; I am all excited to go home! 

I am still looking for a job, a task that seemed almost impossible after my numerous attempts therefore I am still a full-time housewife. I started to realise why Mum used to complain about how difficult it is to cook everyday, thinking of what to cook and  trying to have a balanced variety and making sure we were happy and contented. There are some days where I struggle about simple questions like what do I pack for him to work? His lunch box. So, I looked up some recipes and tried a few dishes that I enjoy back at home and try to re-create some as I refuse to pay something ridiculous like 7 or 8 pounds minimum each for a simple dish like I tried cooking below. I must say they turned out quite good, quite pleased with my attempts and most importantly, the Boss (Laughton) was very pleased and kept telling me how good it tasted! 

 Fried egg tofu with minced meat

Stir fried brinjal with minced meat. We love brinjals so I am really pleased that I can do it at home and most importantly the cost factor! My favourite brinjal dish will still be the one from a restaurant in Serdang. Totally awesome!

One of my favourite childhood meals

Fresh sea bream; just simply seasoned with a bit of salt and wok-fried. It was very good, just like Mum used to fry fish for me and drizzle some soya sauce and I could eat it with a bowl of rice (or seconds haha). Never tried sea bream though but it was quite tasty. I ate whole of the fish to myself, would split it into two next time. 

My loyal companion: Macbook to watch my HK series while I enjoyed my lunch with a bowl of rice and watercress with dried scallops, red dates and pork soup. Beats any lunch deals in Waitrose or Boots!

Planning my food trip soon for next week!

Hello again! I was just browsing past some photos and these few ones caught my eyes and made me reminisce about my home town. I can feel myself starting the countdown again, only five days to go now! I do it quietly trying not to remind Laughton how bad he feels about not being able to join me to Malaysia again. We were so looking forward about this trip and celebrating Chinese New Year back at home but our hopes crushed after his silly employer just conveniently denied their promise to him. Totally upset, caused us plenty of inconveniences, time and of course money! This is another example of incidences that got me so angry and upset about how convenient some group of silly irresponsible people go about in doing their job, not bothered at all about other people's welfare. You wouldn't believe it, yes they just ignore his pleas and made it hell for him to re-schedule his holidays and he finally got it booked for August 2010 and woo-hoo I will be heading home again! No compensation or any apologetic gestures made at all to him, guess we've learnt our lesson this time. Something or some people just don't deserve a second chance do they?

A bowl of sui-kow, pork and shrimp dumplings to go with my wan tan noodles.  

Wan tan mee, with extra chilli.

A cup of milk tea to go with my breakfast. I cannot miss this!

Must have green chillies to go with my wan tan mee!

Risotto on a Saturday night

We were pleased when a good friend of ours, Andrew joined us for dinner last night in our flat. We had not had many guests over since we moved here honestly, Laughton is quite busy at work and I am usually trying to sort my stuff out and especially since I am going on a holiday next two weeks, we thought would be good to catch up since Andrew will be going home next month. 

I am hoping once things are better and more settled, we would be able to have more friends over to chill and hang out at our place soon. Anyway, we had a good night in and very pleased that he enjoyed dinner! I truly enjoyed Laughton's risotto from Jamie Oliver's recipe minus the radicchio, because we could not find any when we went out to do our grocery.

Risotto of smoky bacon, rosemary and red wine.

The chef of enjoying his risotto, a glass of rosé and us!

A king-tumeric affair..

Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia

A king-tumeric (Raja Kunyit in Malay, Mou San Wong in Chinese) affair. Hang on, I was referring to the King of Fruits- Durian Raja Kunyit. I was told that this specific breed is very superior in taste and price too; one of the prized varieties undoubtedly the pride of Pahang State (Malaysia consists of 13 states).

A good friend of mine, Chua he kept telling me about this particular type of durian and told me it's nothing like D24 (another type of durian), he said trust me, you will never eat that once you move on to this new one. I just smiled sarcastically and was thinking to myself how can great can it be?? Almost sounded too good to be true! Well he turned up one night and brought some durian for me and it was my last week in Malaysia before moving to England last year. It was similar to a leaving/goodbye gift I thought! Very unique especially turning up with durian. And it turned out certainly to be one of the best gifts ever! I ran into a pretty good streak that week after another buddy, Mark found out I was searching for durian raja kunyit and told me he would bring me some. Well, he struggled and only managed one raja kunyit, few D24s and a bagful of mangosteen and rambutans. They were the best mangosteen and rambutan I've ever had seriously! Turned out those fruits were harvested from his girlfriend's family orchard. Sweet!!! He just spoke to me few days ago to confirm my date and will try to get some stock for me if there's any. Definitely something for me to look forward other than waiting for e-mail replies/ phone calls from headhunters and miserable London!

Check this out. The king of fruits and The king of durians! Best of the best! Durian Raja Kunyit.

When its opened, I only got a few in there but trust me, its worth the money and the time. Super delicious. Heavenly!

My verdict: The best of the best durian ever! Look at the photo below, I am not joking, am I? The thick flesh was golden yellowish in colour with an extremely creamy texture and bitter-sweet tasting. It also comes usually with tiny seed, proper durian should taste like this anyway. Well, durian is an acquired taste. I love it!!! It's number one on my list of things to makan (eat) when I head to Malaysia next week!! Yes, I have told my friends (suppliers) my arrival dates and will be checking on them for my durian supply. I can't wait..

Dining at Jamie's Italian, Canary Wharf

January 24th, 2010

London certainly does take some time to get settling in to, it really does. Barely three weeks' since we moved here, I took the train back to Nottingham, just fed up and got quite lonely. He just started working, I wasn't quite used to being on my own almost the whole day. After almost a year mostly surrounded by my family members and friends, I was lost; I felt empty. Looking back, the one week in Nottingham did me some good. I enjoyed being in the company with my in-laws and it seemed fun with the noise and people I could talk to. Yeah, those who knows me probably will bet a fiver any time that it will be very challenging for me to keep quiet and not talk for say half an hour, an hour?? I am constantly talking, IM-ing, FB-ing, e-mailing, phone and texting! Again, it's been almost three weeks since I got back from Nottingham, I must say things are looking much better now, I am coping, dealing being with myself most of the time. The power of Internet. I could die if I had to live one day without it. It does make the world seemed flat. Nice.It's wonderful how my mum-in law understood how I could not live with my Macbook and the Internet. I remember the laptop failed on me barely on the first few days we moved to London and when she heard about it, she was like NOoooo!! Wendy will be devastated! Laughton was surprised, he was like huh, how would you know? And she said I use the laptop to connect with my family and friends back at home and every single day I was on it. I am really touched she understood me and what I was doing especially since I spend a lot of time in my bedroom behind the closed door haha. 

Anyway, it was very nice being able to spend some time with his family and they sent me back to London and  spent the weekend here. We had a pleasant meal that night, at a hit and miss curry house just down our flat and went to Jamie's Italian for lunch on the next day.

Pumpkin risotto. I enjoyed it, very nice flavour but the rice was a bit too al-dente for me.

Ann, me and my sausage parpadelle.

A new year 2010, a new beginning?

Pictured above taken from our balcony overlooking the Thames River and part of London's skyline. The semi-circle in the bright green light is actually the London Eye, kept changing colours when the countdown to 2010 began. Quite a view really, especially when it's all lit up. I guess I would feel extremely pleased and delighted with where we are based at currently, but there's just something missing I thought. A job perhaps? We just moved to our new place couple of days before the new year's, had a nice meal at home and had some quiet time in the flat and just watch the fireworks display along the river from our balcony. Quite spoilt for choices really, so many fireworks going on at the same time. 

Honestly, I have no answer, quite stressful for us trying to draw up plans and making decisions about our next move and jobs and so on. Seemed quite unsettled, really! I am trying to avoid being long-winded but to summarise, we sort of found out we made a wrong, not quite right and brilliant decision of moving over to London, worst bit is bad things just seemed to tail us endlessly. Leaving us both sitting here thinking what went wrong, but we were pretty sure this was the best option. Everyone seemed to think so anyway. I sit and stare out of my balcony and bedroom window frequent just looking out far and hoping I can see some hope, some hint that something good will work out eventually. I frequent have thoughts and start analysing our moves, anything else we can do, any other possible exit options for us and seems like no one can tell me what is right. Is it a wrong city, wrong industry/sector, wrong flat, wrong area, wrong timing??? I still don't know. Only time can tell.

Anyone made any lists or new year's resolution? I haven't done mine, just too many things to sort out, to list them all out, the thought of it scares me. I hope to find a job soon, something I would enjoy doing and feel more settled in London and have a clearer view of what lies ahead for both of us and finish off the second bit of our wedding which would be held in Malaysia sometime later this year, if all pulls through. Amazing, I have never applied for so many jobs before in my entire life, I probably clicked "Apply" for 30 times at least up till now. Just pray and hope for the best really, maybe our perseverance will somehow pay off eventually.

Wish me luck!

Cheers,
Wendy

What would it be like living in Mars?

Finally decided that I was not going to wait until I got the broadband set up for my Macbook to be up and running, just decided to update my blog. Yes, it's been almost eight weeks since we moved into our new place in Canary Wharf and still patiently waiting for BT to send someone to turn on the line so we can get the broadband company to test the speed and availability and send someone else to get our broadband up and running. It's is very frustrating to wait for everything when they take super long time to get executed in such a small country like England. Ever since I was a child, I used to have a great sense of admiration of England. To me, anything "England" was deemed far more superior than anything else from anywhere else. Right until the day I qualified as an accountant, it was a UK Degree & being registered with the UK Professional accounting body. Something inside me that had always wanted to embark a life, a career in England. Till four months ago, when I finally moved over to England, I got in touch with a lot of reality which was quite far off from my childhood expectations. My husband's a British you see, so matters and opinions get quite sensitive at times. I have to learn to adapt and I am struggling, I can't get used to the cold and miserable weather, underground in London, people in  London, just so many other things really. Past month we've been busy trying to settle in London and not much help when I faced with problems, nothing seem to work even my most reliable Macbook failed me. I end up complaining most days about how inefficient this place is, got me worried at one point that this country could be not much better than from where I came previously. How it is being run and managed was absolutely a joke! I kept asking myself what happened to one of the greatest country ever on Earth? 

Moaning and bags of complain will never help I know, I figured out once I get a job and be busy things will eventually improve and I would have settled in quite comfortably like the other 5 or 6 million Londoners here. Will I grow old and live my last days here in England or leave once we have sufficient funds back to Malaysia; move away to another country, I don't know. I wished I knew. Time will tell. 

I had a close friend once mentioned to me the weather in England- cold and miserable will kill me! I just laughed and told him off at that point in time. But now maybe I start to see what he actually meant. 

Life's been fairly predictable and within my control but not until recently where things seems to be in a huge whirlwind. My toughest challenge lies ahead of me now, I am trying to look for a job and this has been a painstaking process. Never thought applying for jobs can be that difficult, maybe because the only job I had to apply to was to my previous both firms and a couple before I got some offers. But now, been my second week and still nothing promising came back to me yet. Honestly I am very exhausted sending applications and the "Apply Now" button, patiently waiting for a mail or my phone to buzz. That's the other thing I find hard to grasp here, culture. People can be very misleading here I find, well maybe it's just me because I find it hard to understand what my husband is telling me at times! I am used to the culture back at home, where people are quite direct and open just get to the point but not here and I noticed the same in Bermuda too. I find it annoying because I am unable to gauge or tell what they are trying to convey me. Believe me, I am not kidding. Amazing how they can make it sound so positive even though when all hope is gone! I still prefer someone telling me that a cat is a cat and not something else. I have even gone to the point of asking some recruiters what they honestly think and what is going to turn out to and still no point blank answers. Many experiences I had came across and it can lead to unpleasant and embarrasing moments and can cause even more problems when the message is being misunderstood completely. Quite fed up of it really! Another thing I have to add to my list then. Honesty is scarce here. Many times I feel down and feel helpless and resort to thinking about possibility of relocating back to Malaysia. Again, would the grass be greener over the other end? I don't know. 

First picture: This is a rare sight for me really, being out and captured with the sun and finally making use of my Ray-bans which have been in the drawer since I arrived last October! It overlooks the Thames River and this was taken across the block of our flat.

Second & third picture: Night view of the Tower Bridge, one of London's most iconic landmark.

Till then, take care and Kong Hei Fatt Choy to all my families & friends!

Can't wait to go home next Fri!!

Cheers,
Wendy