A new blog has been born

Head right on over to Ian 'n Chunnie.

Its Done!

The trip is planned!

There's also a new blog to go with it. :-)

http://www.christmas-in-north-america.blogspot.com

Rumours of a new trip!

I have been hearing rumours of a new Christmas skiing trip! Participants such as The Hengster, The Chunster, JayDee, BUG and Mr.U have been suggested though i think Mr.U is more doubtful than the rest. Possible destinations include Tahoe and Whistler have been suggested in a new 'Christmas-in-the-Rockies' episode of this blog.

As the excitement continues to mount i will keep all the avid readers of this blog updated.

Bye Sister!

We drove to Milan today to just roam around, and drop sister off at the airport as she heads back to London. Oh how sad i am to see her go... ;-)

Yesterday, i forgot to mention that we had dinner with dad's friend Simone (pronounced seh-moan-eh). He is strangely similar similar to Chunnie on the edible-food-list front. He apparently only eats about 10% of vegetables, so we had to cook a little separate portion of lentils for him that didn't have any onions. Though at the same time we left in the carrots since those are part of the small set of edible vegetables. Though to our dismay, we noticed that he did not eat them and his reason for not doing so is that they were over-cooked. I find it strange that he managed to find an excuse not to eat them at the same time it is heart-warming since it reminds me of Chunnie. :-)

Well, My holiday trip in Europe is over soon since tomorrow i'm going to be flying back to Singapore. It was fun while it lasted...

Television day

So Chistmas is over, the snow had turned into rain and there isn't much to do here, so... I have resumed watching television... There's no sports to watch so i have 'The Practise', 'The West Wing', 'er', 'Sex and The City', 'Friends', 'Ally Mcbeal' and a few others... and most of them are on DVD because dad seems to be collecting series... it is really awesome not having to wait one week to watch the next episodes.

And so my relaxing holiday in the italian countryside continues...

Merry (White) Christmas!!!

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Originally uploaded by ianhall.

It's Christmas!! And despite there being no sign of snow yesterday, we woke up to find a dusting of snow. Yay!

No time to blog now, must open prezzies...

Twas the night before christmas...

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Originally uploaded by ianhall.

So i arrived in Santa Christina (Italy) yesterday. Took a train to Stresa where i was met by both the father and the sister :-)

Here in the town they had a 'living nativity' meaning all the towns people dressed up pretending to be the way it was in ancient times when baby jesus was born, quite cute looking if you ask me.

For dinner, since we were up in the mountains, far from the sea, we ate dinner at a seafood restaurant. (Makes perfect sense right?)

I See The Sun :-D

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Originally uploaded by ianhall.

We woke up this morning and were pleasantly surprised to see that the blizzard had passed us by. The sun was blaring down and we again hit the slopes.

Funny how yesterday Chunnie kept saying, "its too steep, i'm scared" but today, in the sunlight, it was "i'm okay *smile*". It was a picture perfect day of sun and ski, with many stops for photos and just to admire the view. We went all over the mountain, only stopping for a sandwich at lunch.

As the shadows got longer we decided to make one last run up the mountain and so we took a cable car to the very top (2700m) and proceeded to ski down...

Little did we know that we had skied down the opposite side of the mountain to our resort, and when we reached the bottom we were told that the lifts were all closed and the we would have to take a 100 euro taxi ride back. But luckily Chunnie's smile charmed a frenchie to letting us ride the closed lifts back up and ski back to our resort in the dark. Lifts close at 4.30 but we got back at 5.30... Though a benefit of the dark was that i finally saw Chunnie "burn up the slopes" since as she was skiing along, she went over a stone that sent sparks into the night.

SKIING!!!!!!

YAHOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo......... *thud*

We finally HIT the slopes today ;-)

We picked up our skis and checked into our hostel. (We stayed the first night in a hotel) We ran through the check-in procedures with the cute french girl and only got lost and had to walk the long way around the building while lugging way too much baggage once!

As soon as we possibly could, we got to skiing. Our happy faces were met with frigid cold, violent wind and a blizzard of snow. Not what you could call excellent skiing conditions, but we tried.

Onward to France

Today the journey to our ski adventure begins. (Only after having eaten the sausages and other goodies that we bought from the market yesterday)

With our bellies full of fatty sausages (and some extras in our bags) we set off for London Luton airport with more than 2 hours spare time even after giving more than an hour for travel time. But yes, you guessed it. We met some lovely british traffic. It was so slow people were getting out to get refreshments from the boot of their cars. After spending almost the entire 2 hours allocated in the jam and posutlating about what it could be, it magically cleared... traffic (like women) will always confuse me. We ran like mad men/women through the airport and actually managed to get onto the plane on time.

Borough Market

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Originally uploaded by ianhall.

Went to Borough Market for lunch today with Sarah and JD. It appears that the two of them like many of the same things, including the exact same pork and stuffing sandwich. We ate some delicious burgers that are grilled... err fried in about a centimetre of oil, though that's probably what makes them taste so good. :-)

The evening consisted of more, (you guessed it) shopping. You know how Chunnie gets scared that she hasn't bought enough before we leave the country. We ARE leaving for La Plagne (the plank) tomorrow, and hopefully there is actually some snow to ski on.

The day after

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Originally uploaded by ianhall.

The 5 hour trek back to London on a megabus.com bus was made interesting only by the fact that the bus was just a regular double-decker bus. Since when are long-distance buses double decker?

However, once we arrived in London, we were greeted by my friendly sister Marisa (and her offer of nourishment). I'm quite shocked to say that it was a lovely dinner that was entirely (or so i am told) prepared by Marisa, together with some help from her kitchen minion Chunnie. The food was good and i can now safely say that Marisa is fully equipped to become a housewife. Sorry, is the more kosher term 'home-maker'? :-P

Anfield, Liverpool

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Originally uploaded by ianhall.

Our tickets were for section 202 in the Kop. From what seemed to originate from just behind us was some very loud signing that continued throughout the match. From "You'll Never Walk Alone" at the beginning of the first half to individual players names when they did something of note (like a shot on goal, or standing up to warm-up) there was quite an array of songs that were sung.

After a first half with not much to see (since liverpool were attacking the anfield road end at the other end of the pitch which is very small in the distance), the second half was a much more exciting affair. Liverpool were laying seige to the Portsmouth goal and with each chance the Kop rose in anticipation of a goal.

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Originally uploaded by ianhall.

In the 70th minute Steven Gerrard finally broke the deadlock from a freekick with an unstoppable drive into the top corner of the net. YAY! After that, liverpool continued to create chances, coming close but failing to score again. It was a perfect 90 minutes.

But alas... A football match consists of 90 minutes of regular time and a few minutes of stoppage time. And in the couple minutes Jerzy Dudek flapped at a cross and Lua Lua graciously accepted the pass and nodded the ball into the net for Portsmouth's 92nd minute equalizer. Boohoo.

Day 2...

Today, we went to Oxford Street to go shopping... *yawn*

A walking tour of London

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Originally uploaded by ianhall.

Today was spent walking around London visiting different places and viewing most of them from the outside. Our gracious tourguide was a certain Mr. Jonathan David Wong (JD) who's apartment we are staying at. We started from the apartment and headed to LSE, whose building's were marked with only a small black sign with "LSE", which if you weren't looking for it would be easily missed. From there we went to Covent Garden to be entertained by some buskers and attempt to browse the stalls through the throng of people. After this activity we stopped for lunch which happened to a huge potato smothered with melted cheese.

Feeling rejuvenate, we continued our stroll to The Thames across a certain cold and windy footbridge to the London Eye. From there we went to Big Ben and the parliament, Westminster Abby and St. James Park. The trek continued to Trafalgar square at which point we felt it necessary to stop for tea (2 hours of walking is a lot).

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Originally uploaded by ianhall.

In the afternoon, we headed to a pub to catch the Arsenal Vs Chelsea match on television. Something interesting to note is that despite Highbury being only about 5 miles away, the match (on TV) feels just the same as being 5000 miles away. Some other lessons learnt include the proper usage of the British term for referee: f***ing w***er. The match ended 2-2 and from the crowd reaction at goals, its evident that in Holborn, Arsenal fans outnumber Chelsea 10 to 1. But who likes those rich b***ards anyway?

Arrived in London

After a combined 17 hours of travelling from Singapore to Bangkok to London, we have finally touched down. It was a long and boring journey with the pathetic movies barely holding my attention. But once we arrived in London, we did what any self-respecting chinese traveller would do. We went to a chinese restaurant to eat cantonese roast duck for dinner. :-P Though i have to admit it WAS good.

Traveling with chunnie to cold climates, it is to be expected that you will get a few, "Ian i'm cold"s now and again. However, when it happened this time, i was truly shocked. Not only had we not left the airport yet, but we hadn't even left Bangkok yet. When she told me she was cold i looked over and saw her shivering because of the air conditioning. I looked around for a solution and suggested we sit by the window since there was some sun shining in that was sure to warm her up. But the shivering girl said that that was not an acceptable solution because, "I will get hot". Will anybody ever understand women?

And so it begins

And so it begins
Originally uploaded by ianhall.

It is the wee hours of saturday morning and i have finally finished
packing, a few minutes before i have to leave for the airport. As i
survey the bags, it is with a heavy heart that i say good buy to
Singapore. HEY! wait a minute. I'm not sad to leave!

ITS VACATION TIME! PAR-TAY!!!!

The next time you hear from me i'll be in London! Yay!

T-minus 2 days to departure

Here it comes... THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY! :-D

The bags are not packed. I'm not ready to go. In fact i'm just taking the bags out of the cupboard and onto the floor.

*phew* that was tiring, i suppose i'll finish packing tomorrow.