Posts filed under 'Photos'
last weekend was my all-white weekend — i wore all-white outfits for three days in a row just cos i felt like it.
#1 Friday -
white pleated skirt worn as dress – Reiss, London
faux crocskin clutch – Jaspal, Bangkok
matte silver heels – Enzo Angiolini
#2 Saturday -
white tank top – MNG
white high waist shorts – Agnes B
white shirt with ribbon collar, tucked in – Zara
white bag – Michael Kors
silver zip-up heels – Pedro
#3 Sunday –
white cotton bubble dress – Stradivarius, Barcelona
leather half-caged shoes – Pedro
leather + canvas satchel – Far East Plaza, Singapore
bangles – gifts from friends
hahaha i know this shot is so unglam — i was getting sien of posing for pictures — but i thought it looked quite funny, so here it is anyway :P
white’s my favorite color to dress in and play with. most days i like to wear simple white tops and jazz them up with scarves or jewelry, and each time i go shopping for bags, i always gravitate towards the white ones even though they get dirty so easily. i don’t, however, have nearly enough pairs of white shoes — but despite my severe lack of white footwear, i’ve been chosen as one of the Darlie White Bloggers.
and so this post is about the White Date Contest that Darlie is organizing. it’s a girls-only game (sorry guys! no luxury bag for you!) that simulates the steps to getting ready for a date — such as choosing a dress, getting your hair done, and putting on make-up. this game is played entirely online, either on their website or on Facebook.
there are 7 tasks to be completed over a 14-day span, and every day a new task will be opened up to you. to win the competition and the All Shiny White Girl title, all 7 tasks must be completed. points are awarded for creativity, and bonus points can be won if the Special Tasks are completed.
great prizes are up for grabs – the All Shiny White Girl herself stands to win a white luxury bag that is worth up to RM 5,000. totally my kind of prize! the bag i would pick if i won:
the white quilted Chanel classic :)
other prizes up for grabs are:
white iPhones, white Sony VAIOs and white Sony MP3 Players
so what are these tasks that have to be compeleted? the one that has to be done everyday is virtually brushing your virtual teeth!
then you choose a lovely white dress befitting of your white date, and upload the photo onto their website. i am torn between:
1. a simple white tube dress from Shoshanna, with a felt bow belt
2. a wispy Jill Stuart empire dress
3. chic and neat ruched dress – another Jill Stuart but from an older collection
4. and how could i not pick a dress from my favorite designer? this is a gorgeous toga-inspired dress by Oscar de la Renta.
once you’re chosen a lovely white dress for your date and uploaded it to the White website, you have to complete tasks such as putting on a virtual facial mask and virtually painting your nails from the array on the website. i’m not much of a nail art fan, so i’d most likely choose the nude pink design called Excuse My French.
next, you do your hair! since this is all virtual, i’m going to make-believe and pretend that i have my long hair back, and have it in loose curls!
in 2006, when i was 18 and happy :) this was at a Halloween party, and i went as an angel. all white! here’s me with Yugi, my match made in heaven:
sigh my long hair!
the next task is to pick a pair of white shoes to complement the dress! normally i don’t think the color of the shoes should be that of the dress, but i think i can make an exception for a White Date :) i’d pick this white and matte silver pair from Ferragamo – it’d go with any of the four dresses that I chose above.
almost done :) i have a couple of steps that have yet to be opened up to me, but they look like make-up steps so that shouldn’t be too difficult. in real life, if i went on a White Date, this is probably what i would wear:
#4 White Date outfit –
white dress with layered ruffles – Zara
silver timepiece locket – Portobello Market, London
off-white hard leather bag – Furla
white slingbacks – Pedder Red
this is easily one of the easiest online contests out there. if you’re anything like me and the other White Bloggers who spend a lot of time looking at fashion online, then this is a shoo-in for you. so don’t wait too long to join! the White Date Contest ends on the 14th of September 2009.
August 16th, 2009
i’m one exam away from being done with my finals!!!!!! so i’m taking a break from the books and the stale smog of the library to celebrate. 3 exams and 3 final papers down, just one more exam to go. and then i’ll be done — done with freshman year, done with feeling completely helpless, done with feeling like i want to yank all my hair out in fistfuls. after a year here, i can sincerely say that i underestimated how tough college would be. by MILES. i guess till today i can’t quite believe how little slacking one is allowed to do here. i’m really looking forward to going home over the summer and just staring at the ceiling every day to recover from the trauma of the past academic year. i know it sounds like i’m exaggerating but i’m really not.
i crawled out of my room after a particularly brutal final today to see that one of my floormates had already packed all of her stuff into storage bins. then i felt sad. i felt sad that i hadn’t spoken to her properly in such a long time, and that now i only have less than 3 days to do so because she moves out on thursday. i felt sad that i’d spent my whole freshman year worrying worrying and worrying about how i absolutely must get a 4.0, and feeling guilty each time i took a weekend off or spent the afternoon sleeping in. sigh. surely this must not be what college is about. i’m doing it all wrong, aren’t i? people always say that they wish they could re-do their freshman year. me too.
things i took for granted this year:
1. new york city
i spent so much time exploring the city in my first semester, and i loved doing that so much, but then this semester i just stopped doing it completely. i only went downtown whenever i needed to get something done or buy something important. i haven’t even been to chinatown since i came back to the city after winter break, and i love chinatown. i used to feel so thrilled walking down the aisles of the small asian marts, marveling at the fact that i could get marmite, milo, vitagen, 100 plus, xo sauce, sugus and double decker prawn crackers here. i especially liked walking past someone on the streets of chinatown and unexpectedly hearing the malaysian/singaporean accent. all this inquisitiveness, i left behind a long time ago. now i hesitate at the thought of going downtown.
greenwich, near NYU
a fabric store in chinatown. i love fabric stores. i could spend all day just poking around and choosing fabric that i will never buy
2. extra curriculars
i had a lot of fun my first semester when i was running around trying out as many clubs and societies as i could. then i realized how much i’d been slacking and dropped every single one of my ECA’s this semester so i could focus on my grades again. college-bound kids reading this, i dont expect you to be as stupid as me, but if ever tempted to be, please dont ever do what i did. i feel like my second semester here has been so miserable because i just didnt have the time to do the things i loved and missed doing. when i come back next year, i’m pursuing them all again. i dont care if that means i take less subjects; i simply have to do something i love or i will go crazy.
DDR club!!! i thought i was good until i joined this club…… some of this guys are inSANEly good.
3. my floormates
everyone who comes to visit my floor tells me that it’s oddly staid and quiet, and i dont actually disagree. for some reason (actually i know why but cannot say wtf) our floor isnt as integrated as the others. the other day when our RA gave us the year-end speech, some of my floormates remarked that we’ve never had so many people in our floor lounge since the first week of college, when we had that first introductory floor meeting. and it’s true… that night i saw some floormates that i hadn’t seen all semester. i regret not saying hi even then, and not having made the initiative to barge into the lives of the quieter people on the floor. like i said, i only have three days left, and after this we’re all going our separate ways and are bound to drift apart over the next three years in college. it’s a sad thought. i regret taking so lightly the (few) open doors on the floor… next year when i move into EC i know that there are going to be even less doors open. i’m going to miss so much just being able to pad barefoot down into my floormates’ rooms and just sit around being emo, or crying, or whining about stupid homework, or shoving smelly malaysian sambal in their faces, and talking about red furry handcuffs… :)
hahaha this picture cracks me up every time i look at it
this is S, who covered himself in whipped cream just for the heck of it. and then started rolling around the floor and hugging everyone. i have the most delicious pictures of him in his tightie whities all smothered in cream…
4. schoolwork
okay this is so weird but i wish i’d enjoyed my schoolwork a lot more. believe it or not, when i was all bright-eyed and loving all the things i was learning in my first semester, my grades took a huge hit because i was being so flighty. when i sat down and started getting serious about things, i really hated everything i had to do, but my grades got so much better. it’s ironic and it sucks. i’ve had the opportunity to read so many great books for my lit courses over the year, but because i was conscious of the fact that i had to study those books, i just couldnt enjoy the texts as much as i did when i read them for leisure. and italian… i loved the language and got so much satisfaction from the learning, but i was so shocked when i got an A-. it’s the same with econ, which i love, and am actually good at. sigh. i dont even know what to say. even if i get all A’s this semester, i’m not going to be the happiest clam — it’s been the driest and most wearisome process of learning, ever.
5. handsomenick, mandapandatan and jacqueline
nick and amanda are the two other malaysian undergrads here, and jacqueline is in the general studies school. we all actually barely see each other, and i keep reminding myself to call them out for dinner sometime, but it never happens because i’m a terrible person like that. i only met jacqueline when i first got here, and even though we took econ and did ballroom for a semester together, we STILL HAVENT GONE TO HAVE DINNER EVEN ONCE. JACQUELINE IF YOU ARE READING THIS IT IS TIME FOR US TO FINALLY HANG OUT. /agitated. haih. okay let me tell you something cute about mandapandatan — she likes to eat but every time she eats she’ll complain that she’s fat, which she’s not, and she’ll start eating carrot sticks. and one time she was complaining about how her grades were so bad la, this la that la, she’s going to get kicked out of her scholarship program la; then when someone asked her, “oh did you get a B or something?”, she shifted uncomfortably and said “no la… not that bad la..” WTF. and everyone should meet handsomenick and see how handsome he is. he looks like a skinny chinese version of Paris. as in Paris of Troy.
mandapandatan and her carrot sticks
6. the scholars program
i’m in it but i dont do anything about it. i dont even hang out with the other scholars or take up the internship opportunities that are offered. idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot.
7. college events
ann coulter came to our school last week and i didnt go because i procrastinated on getting tickets and then they were sold out :( same thing happens for lots of other speaker events… i keep thinking that i’ll have time to go get tickets but that’s never true. ahh college has been a time of many missed opportunities. so many things happen here that sometimes it gets a little overwhelming.
J dressed as a robot during one of those college event nights. hahaha, j j j j j j.
this is O Night at the library — where the school marching band barges into the library’s main reading room at the stroke of midnight on the night before the first finals, and starts playing loud music just to disturb people. they stand on tables and crack some jokes as well. hilarity. last night was Primal Scream night, where the students go outside and screammmmmmm away their exams frustrations on the Sunday of finals week. Primal Scream night is also Pillow Fight night.
8. the ninja poster in my floormate’s room
each time i see it, i laugh. i shoulda invaded his room a lot more just for the free laughs. and the free chocolate — he has this humongous stash of chocolate in his room cos his mom is afraid he’s going to starve. his stash is bigger than any girls’ stash. srsly.
9. things i get in the mail
earlier in the school year, i started a blog category to document all the cool and random stuff that people send me in the mail, but because i blog so rarely now, there’s this huge backlog of What I Got In The Mail that i never did blog about. i have a whole drawer full of cards from such wonderful people that i always meant to blog about but just didn’t; and worse, i have a whole stack of cards that i bought to send back out to these people but didn’t either. i’m sorry :( do you guys hate me :( please dont think i’m ungrateful… i really do appreciate the time you guys took to write me a card. it always cheers me up so when i get a postcard or a letter in the mail. okay i swear i’m going to sit down and send out all those cards when i finish my finals on thursday.
10. being in the northeast
since being here, i’ve only ever visited two other schools — penn and yale, and that’s not even to meet any of my friends. kehrol goes down to princeton like every other week or something, and i keep telling myself i’ll join her one of these weekends… but many weekends have passed and now summer is already here. wtf. why am i like this. why am i so lazy. OMG it’s just occurred to me that i’ve never even been to swarthmore to see andrew. good effin’ … and next year he’s not even going to be here anymore!!! okay now i’m panicking. i think next year i’m going to make it a point to spend some time at schools other than my own. sigh. will you guys welcome me with open arms =(
11. the singaporeans
there are so many of them here!!! i really enjoy talking to them, because all (well, most) of them still have their singaporean accent, and i can lah, mah, and whatlahyou with them unabashedly. it’s greeeeeat. they make me miss home a little less.
P, R and R. they are all super adorable :)
C and his lousily-made popiah. he’s a real cool guy — one of those who’s graduating after just 3 years (instead of 4). i’m really jealous because he got a job offer at HK and he’s going to live there for an indefinite period of time :( hong kong…..
12. campus
it seems to me that all i ever do is run through campus cos i’m late. i barely ever stop to soak in anything. see these pictures that i took? i hurriedly took them and then ran straight for class. this has to change. the few afternoons i spent out on the grass tanning and reading this spring were probably the only times i’d stopped to properly spend some time being one with my college.
13. my room
here is the picture that i promised 50000 centuries ago. i meant to go around my room taking pictures of things and blogging about the stories behind each thing… but … i just didnt. okay i’m beginning to see a running theme here. ANYWAY, this is my room. right now it smells like bananas and there are papers all over the floor from studying for my finals.
14. love
:)
P/S: can someone explain to me how i can maintain the picture quality (esp the saturation) when i export pictures out of iPhoto? everytime i export pictures they turn out so drab… yet i still need the picture size to be less than 50kb :|
May 12th, 2009
as i ascended the stairs hurriedly, late as always, i heard the sound of laughter leaping forth from the open doors. it was a brief symphony that rose and ricocheted into the hallway, swirling up into the ceiling, striking my heart suddenly. oh my, i turned around and smiled. doesn’t that sound so adult? we’re all adults now… in that suspended moment there on the stairs, i felt like Mrs. Darling, hand in hand with Mr. Darling, leaving behind Wendy, John and Michael to tend to some party that was unwritten about because it was so adult and had no place amongst mermaids and red indians. this is that party; this is that grown-upness that for so long i had only looked at the knees of. only my parents and their friends used to laugh like that. what happened to the interstice? this feels like a second adolescence, and we’re all on this uncomfortable, taut brink of madness that we don’t quite know how to manipulate yet.
**
and then there was: silicon valley! tube top! boris yeltsin! cheesecake! very famous actress! we tumbled over each other like dominoes as we raced against time. did you know i wished you were there? we would have giggled together at how cute the techy boys were (the key above control!), and shared occasional secret nods. nevertheless, it was one of those milky, sleepy nights. curling up in bed with andrew was nice for however long it lasted, and infinitely a better way to spend an hour than taking drunken pictures of ourselves in lingerie out in the hallway. our dreams are made out of real things, like a shoebox of photographs with sepia-toned loving / love is the answer. dancing to barbie girl with queen suet was, of course, a big naive bubble of layan diri laughs, as was singing off-key to jiwang songs. i keep thinking we’re all 18, but we’re not, and we’re quite old, our lives all sewn in with respective traumas, unfulfilled goals, unrequited love, struggles, archenemies, unfinished papers and indecision. these things orbit our heads like weary moons still, but it’s nice to know that collectively we can dust these things away. it’s a good kind of peer pressure.
**
imperceptibly, one of the organizers winced as the sound system died again and that dull clicking sound in the audio resurfaced in 10 second intervals, and she quietly looked to the side of the room for help. i can never refrain myself from studying an event’s organization; i always have to look at the hardware they use, the size of the canopies, the catering company and florists, the corporate sponsors, the division of labor, the type of cloth, the type of paper, the fonts, the crowd management — vestiges of being in love with event management during high school and college days, i suppose — but most of all, i like to look at the organizers. so as we all sat there with that 10-second clicking sound hitting the thick air over and over again, i marveled at how calm the organizers were. they were so held together. if this tech disaster had happened to me, i would have been angry and flustered, at nothing or anything at all, and i would have been the last thing from calm, and it would have shown. where do people find calm? is there an oasis that you will hit if you tunnel deep enough into yourself, or do you have to be born with it?
**
it was quick and rough. the lobster fried rice was delicious.
**
okay lahhhh some pictures of the weekend at Yale before you folks accuse me of not blogging ‘properly’ :P most photos are from Carol:
#1 a disheveled me and emoyoon with hummingbird cupcakes!!! which, btw, i’ve actually grown quite sick of :|
#2 me and queen suet! i’m trying to think of a funny thing that she said that weekend (cos she said many funny things) but i dont remember any now…
#3 jeremy -_-
#4 nick -_-
#5 a more handsome nick!! mwaks.
#6 chern han looking hamsap
#7 we sang random malay songs like setia, kau ilhamku and belaian jiwa!! so nostalgic…
#8 joe doing his thing on the guitar
#9 with joe. so this guy writes poetry, sings, plays guitar, is studying philosophy… i mean srsly!
#10 DOM <3
#11 hahaha i just had to put up this pic of andrew. he’s not actually sneezing… he’s making his stupid malaysian food orgasm face -_-
#12 the crowd during a panel session. wish you were here, chen chow!!
#13 we made jeremy turn to the side and take a picture with us cos his profile looks so much like wai kin! except not really la in this picture.
#14 hahaha damn stoopid this two. this is their attempt at imitating the Twilight poster shot
#15 i love you <3
April 29th, 2009
thank you to those who wrote kind comments in the previous post or sent me such lovely emails :) i really appreciate the time you guys took to comfort me or to leave me a little bit of your stories. the primary purpose of that post was closure, and i believe i’ve finally found that now within myself, with Martian, and with all else. and having achieved that, i want to close this chapter of my life. i thank all of you for your kind comments, but i really am so done with all this baggage. right now i just want to chase that bit of happy. happy that is found in things like:
#1 cupcakes! these are my favorite red velvet cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery in London, and they truly are the best cupcakes in the world. you think Magnolia is good? nothing in New York compares to this. absolutely nothing. these came with much love all the way from across the Atlantic, on an almost-missed flight, and really brightened up my week. i finished them all the first night they got here, and now i regret not making them last :(
#2 emily coming from the UK to stay, though i dont have any pictures of us :( actually, i barely saw her while she was here cos i was so busy with deadlines. wtf. she went out shopping one day and then couldnt come back into my dorm room cos i’d crashed after finishing all my work and didnt pick up her calls… so she had to go and stay with her other friend. yes i am the worst host in the history of the universe. /ashamed
#3 SPRING IS HERE. I LOVE THE WARMTH AND THE SUN.
it’s even warm enough to sit out in the grass now. i spent a delicious afternoon yesterday catnapping in the sun and getting a bit of color back into my pallid post-winter skin. it’s so good to be able to wear shorts again.
#4 Friday Me-Days. last friday was the first friday in the semester that i actually didnt have anything to do, papers to finish or people to meet. of the nine fridays this semester, i’ve spent three of those out of town, and the remaining six agonizing over work that just never seems to diminish… so it was absolutely lovely to have a nice spring friday all to myself to poke around the city. i used to have such frequent Friday Me-Days during my first few months in NY, but ah, how times have changed :) i have, quite tragically, become one of those college students obsessed with obtaining a 4.0. nevertheless i had the best friday i’ve had in a long time, exploring Hell’s Kitchen and having a quiet brunch by myself with a good book <3
at Good Enough To Eat, my favorite breakfast place near college!
Good Enough To Eat is really into cow motifs. the cuteness!
an anti-doormat at a card boutique in Hell’s Kitch
#5 The Strand, a huge secondhand bookstore in Union Square, and one of my favorite places in New York. i can spend hours in there just reading. spent half a day there last week reading a volume of Virginia Woolf’s letters, random cookbooks and travel stories, perched on a ladder in a quiet corner of the bookstore. the smell of crusty paper remained in my hair hours after i’d left. bliss.
#6 prawn mee. even if it’s americanized. it’s STILL PRAWN MEE.
#7 awesome things in the mail :) truly AWESOME things. i know i’ve been neglecting my What I Got In The Mail category… but one day very soon, i will put up all the pictures of the beautiful cards and gifts that you guys have sent me over the 8 months that i’ve been here. y’all have no idea how much i appreciate these things and the thought that comes with them. miraculously, i always find something in the mail whenever pangs of homesickness and sadness hit me hardest. sigh. and then i am happy again because i am reminded what’s most important. some sneak peeks:
yes i really did get this in the mail… haha.
#8 Food Expo. omg yesterday we had this Food Expo in our dining hall where random food n beverage companies set up stalls to give out free stuff during brunch hours. i wanted to kick myself SO HARD for having eaten breakfast and thus couldnt really eat much more. BUT THEN… i got a free sample bottle of what is now my new favorite tea — this brand of fruity tea called Guayaki. the passionfruit flavor is yums.
#9 umbrellas. when i first arrived in the city and was constantly getting rained on, carol sent me the cutest stripey umbrella in the mail. last week i took it out during a rainy night and accidentally left it at a bar :( went back the next day to get it but it was no longer there. sigh. as commemoration, here are some pictures of me, the lovely carol, and our umbrellas, meant to be put up a long time ago, from a day that carol and i traipsed down to Chinatown in search of bak kwa and hokkien mee:
#10 one of those days where everything is just perfect. oh and canceled meetings on sleepy afternoons :)
April 3rd, 2009
so i am back in New York, thrown once again into this metropolitan maelstrom of instability, surliness and frost. i’ve been sleeping my days away, much like i slept my days away in London, but for different reasons both times — there, i was exhausted; here, i am hiding. i have nothing to speak of my return here. these days all i’m concerned about is how i’m going to get the shards of heart out of the carpet.
but enough mournful talk. let’s talk about London and how i love everything about it. so i’ve always had great expectations of London, expectations that are swollen with stories and imagery from some of my favorite books in the world. i close my eyes and i can see London… where the afternoons are filled with the treacle tarts, gollywogs, tea cakes and morning mist dresses of Enid Blyton. come nightfall, the evenings are attended to by the grown-ups of J.M Barrie who tuck their children into bed with bedtime stories and then slip out of the house — the men in tailcoats and their wives in white satin gloves — into the foggy streets of nighttime London. not far away, the pretentious laughter of Oscar Wilde’s corrupt and cunning haut monde ring loudly in the air! the rich make merry while Dickens’ young boys dart in and out of the cobblestone alleys, leaving behind them the sooty trails of innocence. and then i play with the word ’sixpence’ on my tongue. how many Willy Wonka bars can sixpence buy? will i find out when i get to London, i wondered when the plane swept smoothly off the tarmac at JFK one month ago. will i see old men smoking tobacco out of pipes? does the old curiosity shop really exist?
i have since discovered that London is actually far more than my imagination can take me to. at first i worried that i would be expecting too much of a city i’d never even been to, that i was furnishing it with all these overdressed ideals and ultimately destroying my own utopia… but now that i have come and gone, there is truly nowhere else that i would rather be. i think i left my soul in London. or at least, a hemisphere of it. this may sound hasty, but in London, i felt like i truly belonged. i’ve missed that feeling. i wore it like a second skin back home in Malaysia, but 4 months of being in NYC has completely sapped me of any such peace. no one ever truly belongs in a place like New York.
and contrary to forewarning, i did not hate London weather. in fact, i quite loved it – sissy sprinkles, puddles, clouds and all. all the grey brought out a kind of melancholy in me that was actually healthy. it encouraged me to think, which is something i haven’t had the opportunity to guiltlessly immerse myself in for awhile. there were days when i would oversleep and wake up to a 4pm setting sun, and i’d just lay in bed, smell the sheets and smile. walking down Marylebone High underneath the oyster-coloured skies was the most cathartic thing i did for myself. in London, i felt at home.
also, English people are as kind as i thought they would be. sure, there are the gruff ones, but mostly, everyone is… soft. kind. sympathetic. the women really do have kisses hidden in the corner of their mouths, and even the youngest of men have twinkles in their eyes. coming from New York to a place like London is quite like stepping into the warm and floury embrace of a jolly and portly grandmother. in New York, you are just a passing face; in London, people take the time to check out what you’re wearing. god, in comparison NYC is so bad for the soul, isn’t it? how does one feel human here? sigh. sigh sigh sigh.
some places in London that i went to and really liked:
1. Portobello Market
possibly my favorite place in all of London. Portobello Market is a long street market along Portobello Road in Notting Hill (!) that is open from 8am to 6pm on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. i’m not sure what it’s like there on the weekdays, but the market is absolutely bustling on Saturdays, an atmosphere that i absolutely loved. Portobello Market houses stalls and stalls of antiques, curios, independent designs, handicrafts, vintage clothes, bags and shoes, old cameras and jewelry, secondhand books… and just about any kind of bric-a-brac you’re looking for.
a shop in Portobello Market selling all kinds of doorknobs *___*
an enclave selling mostly vintage jewelry and secondhand books
pocket watches on necklaces
i love this place :) i could spend a whole day just sifting through all the beautiful things here.
2. Camden Town
thronged by London’s younger set, Camden Town is garish and brash, but never boring. there is a largely punk rock, emo-kid, gypsy vibe about Camden that is immediately apparent from the wild harajuku-ish merchandise that is both sold and paraded around the area, and also the dudes pushing marijuana on the sidewalk :P slightly dodgy zone, but definitely cool in its own way. there are several markets along the streets of Camden Town, but the best one is Camden Lock. everything else is kinda Petaling Streetish, but Camden Lock is a larger market within a courtyard that vends the artier stuff, mostly handicrafts and trinkets. there are also lots of new age shops in Camden Lock, with palm readers and the like!
the punk / emo-goth / lolita-esque clothes for sale
a little part of Camden Lock
3. Marylebone High Street
Marylebone High Street is the main artery of the little shopping district of Marylebone, and while the High Street is the street i like the most (it’s the most concentrated), the other smaller streets that girdle it are definitely worth checking out as well. the shopping here is demure and sophisticated, with the bigger brands giving way to the smaller independent labels. my favorite shops on the street: Mascaro the shoe shop which has gorgeous shoes (they also carry stock from Pretty Ballerinas, which makes ballet flats that are to die for…!!), Daunt the bookstore, and the Oxfam secondhand bookstore at which i spent too many an hour reading books that i should have just bought for 1-2 pounds.
Daunt Bookstore
the Oxfam secondhand bookstore
4. Regent’s Park
a huge, beautiful park in the heart of London that draws you in even in the winter. such a romantic place to be in when the sun is setting. also ducks galore, which always makes me happy :) apparently there’s a rose garden in here too, but of course none of them were in bloom when i was there.
5. Tate Museum of Modern Art
i love this museum right down to its secret enclosed spaces and the graffiti on the back of the doors in the women’s bathroom stalls. definitely a must visit in London, if you’re into art galleries.
one piece from the famed water lily series by Monet
this was my favorite display at the Tate. the artist worked as a maid at a hotel for a period of time, and while she was there, she took photos of the belongings and rooms of the hotel’s various customers each day of their stay, and also kept a journal describing the belongings and state of the rooms as they changed each day. she went through their luggage, passports, trash can even! she then documented her findings and turned it into art. ah. satisfies the voyeur in us :P the people in the photo are clamoring around just one of about eight or nine pieces.
graffiti on the bathroom door
6. Borough Market
greek desserts
Alvo thinks that Borough Market is an authentic British culinary experience, and i quite agree. Borough Market is a roomy food market in Southwark that sells all sorts of international gourmet food under one roof. foodstuff purveyed: freshly baked bread, imported herbs and spices, gourmet sausages, exotic meats like ostrich and pheasant, burgers, cured meats, sandwiches, falafel, chocolates, candy, mulled wine and a whole smorgasbord of other delectable things. the various vendors here make for good lunch stops. while i didnt venture to sample any exotic meat, i must say i had a very good steak in red wine sauce sandwich from a stall somewhere in the bowels of Borough Market. also had this hot scallop with a bacon and bean sprout mix which is purportedly a favorite at the market. both stalls shouldnt be too hard to find if you’re going to be poking around :)
a delicious chorizo sandwich
7. Oxford & Bond Street
i didnt explore either street as much as i would have liked to, but apparently it’s the only place Azlan ever stops by when he comes to London, so i suppose that must count for something :P it’s good shopping la i suppose. Bond Street is also where the almighty Selfridges is, which for some reason is a huge favorite not just with the Londoners, but also the rest of the world. if one more person tells me that Selfridges is their favorite mall in the world, i will scream. why? what’s so cool about Selfridges? it’s just like Metrojaya but with bigger labels… i must be missing something :\
8. Carnaby Street
i LOVE! it’s another one of those shopping districts; quite like Marylebone High Street, but younger and more contemporary.
9. Soho / Leicester Square / Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus
the Soho / Leicester Sq / Piccadilly Circus area is a lively and spirited junction that teems with good restaurants, pubs, bars and clubs. it’s also where Chinatown is, as well as many West End theaters. Covent Garden, a large touristy courtyard housing some rather interesting toy shops, is also nearby. i mostly descended upon and departed quickly from this area whenever i had to meet someone there, but i’m certain that some idle hours spent traversing the area would uncover gems here and there. nevertheless, i quite like the area — it’s convenient, diverse and effervescent.
entrance to Chinatown
a little carnival in Leicester Square
——-
i left London with a heavy heart, but writing this post has made me miss it even more :(
January 25th, 2009
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