Dambound again

Ah ah, one more workday and I am off to The Dam again! No weddings or work meetings this time, just a lazy weekend in good old Amsterdam. Staying with Vicky and Craig, ladies who....lunch on Saturday followed by dinner with the folks and beers in De Pijp and a Bakkerswinkel brunch on Sunday. I sincerely hope next week won't be busy workwise as I will need to recover big time.

To fully prepare myself for all this hardship, I will sprint out of the office at 5pm to get to the spa for a facial and massage. Then foodshopping for the English friends I am staying with this weekend. Then nothing. A whole lot of it.

Not so clever

Just like part of me refuses to grow up, part of me refuses to accept summer is well and truly over. Hence me leaving the house this morning with bare feet in ballerina shoes. Cold!!

Fashionorexic

The fashionorexic is hot in London. I'd be a lousy fashionorexic. I love fashion, but love food even more. A fashionorexic will happily eat two minute noodles for weeks to be able to buy Anya Hindmarch's latest bag or a pair of must have Louboutins. So I'd be a crap fashionorexic. But if the papers are to be believed, an increasing number of young women finds it easier to go without proper food than to give up on the lastest fashion. I do wonder though if these birds realise that missing out on loads of important nutrients will give them pale skin, crap hair and low energy. Not sure a Chanel dress will look so good on them a few weeks into their diets...

Sinterklaas

A sweet gift from a sweet friend. The two biggest chocolate letters I have ever seen. That will get me through the short and cold days up to Sinterklaas. Thanks Rishma!

Poppy time

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead.

Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

(by John McCrae, May 1915)

New friends

When I came to London, my friend Zoe moved here with me. I have a couple of Australian friends here who I met in Sri Lanka, an English friend who moved back here from the Dam and I made a Dutch friend via a blog. And that was fine. I have enough friends in Amsterdam, enough in London and don't necessarily need the sometimes ridiculously busy social life I had in the Dam. Decided I couldn't be bothered to put effort into making new friends and rather spend my time chatting to old friends.

New Yorker Heather joined our team a month ago and asked if I wanted to go for dinner shortly after that. And that turned into a frequent thing. When she, english colleague Viv and I went for dinner last week, Heather invited an Australian colleague to come along too. And when Heather, she and I decided to meet for dinner tonight, the aussie brought another friend.

And so I found myself in a Thai restaurant with a Vietnamese New Yorker, a Vietnamese born Melbournian and a Thai born, kiwi bred Chinese whose family moved to Melbourne in his teens. The melting pot that is London. I just love it. And some new friends are worth the effort!

Commonwealth Club

Clubs are not something I am used to so much. Or rather, clubs in Amsterdam are rather different from clubs in the English sense. The Amsterdam ones tend to be called Club Prive or Club Ramona or something. The only two proper clubs I can think of are De Industrieele Club and De Kring, and as I am neither a top business/government exec nor an artist, I haven't been to either.

London is full of clubs, and one of them is the Commonwealth Club. My mate Zoe works for the Royal Commonwealth Society, who run the club, and use the profits for their charity work. Last night we met at the Club for dinner. Nice food, a beautiful restaurant, and a beautiful location: Northumberland Avenue. As I mentioned to Zoe, I will be more than happy to sponsor the charity more often by eating in this lovely place!

On the topic of Commonwealth countries: try and come up with all 53. We didn't get any further than 40. Way too many tiny islands in there!

Amazing

What a fantastic trip. Such a beautiful place. We walked, and talked, and ate our body weights in sea food. Beautiful local wine, way too tasty cointreau coffees. My legs hurt like hell from the gazillion steps we walked, but god was it worth it. Even the 100+ steps to my hotel room were rewarded with the most beautful sea view. The few days feel like a week. Three high light photos are below, Flickr tells the rest of the story.

This weekend

- The company of two English and two American 'Amsterdammers'

- Loads of nice food and nice wine

- A B&B and a little hotel with seaview balconies

- Hours of hiking

- Many megabites of photos

- Two two hour BA flights

- One leaning tower (and no, I am not going to Bedum!)

- Two one hour train rides

I have been looking forward to this weekend since July. Three nights only but I expect it to feel like a holiday. Cinque Terre, here I come!

Mid year

In an organisation like ours, there is a constant flow of appraisals on projects, deliverables et cetera. All of this comes together in an informal 'mid year' and a formal 'year end appraisal'. Today I had my mid year, three months into being here. Not that UK years have six months as opposed to twelve, but the appraisal year ends in March, hence the mid year being now.

I so wasn't looking forward to this. Don't think things are going too well, haven't been in a comfort zone in months and am not really feeling to happy about the work I do. Luckily the boss had a different view. My attitude rocks, I fit well in the team and overall he is just very happy to have my on board. The fact that his quality standards are a bit higher than mine is a very fair point so will improve on that. Big relief overall. Have been worrying for nothing, seriously wouldn't have been surprised if he suggested sending me back to the Netherlands. Stupid how my brain works....

Christmas

Christmas doesn't really do it for me. Too much food, too much tv, too much of much. And as my work doesn't really permit long holidays outside July/August or the Christmas period, I always escape the European winter for a few weeks in that period. Which means I have had many a great Thai or Australian christmas in recent years. Christmasses that involved nothing more than a curry in a plastic chair at the beach restaurant on Koh Samet or a picknick on Coogee Beach (with the exception of x-mas '06 that I spent with my mate Emily and about 40 of her relo's).

What I love however, is the whole x-mas build up. And London is the best place for this I think. That said, they do start a bit early. Where the americans wait for Halloween and Thanksgiving to be over, and the dutch don't really start after Sinterklaas, the poms start their x-mas season in October. At restaurants you will see the christmas dinners advertised, the supermarkets already stock christmas chocolate and the many card shops have christmas cards on sale already. When I passed Trafalgar Square on Thursday, the carols were being advertised, two months in advance. And I must confess, I slowly start getting into the mood. So far I have only looked at places to listen to the carols, but Handel's Messiah in Royal Albert Hall has been booked. And I have to admit, shamefully, that I also bought my christmas cards last week. But that is it for now. It is still 17 degrees and sunny, so no more chrissy until the days go shorter and the weather gets gloomier.

Pilates

Man, this better be good for you, it is such hard work! I feel like a wuss when looking at the two 60+ women who usually come to class. But slowly and steadily the exercises get easier. I bought a cheapo pilates dvd to do exercises at home too to speed up the process. It is very rewarding if things I thought I couldn't do are finally mastered. Like today, the star (on photo). Not every time I tried, as going from press up into this position requires slightly more core balance than I often have, but it worked a couple of times. The next challenge: sideways plank. And please please please let teacher Paul not resign. He is bloody awesome. Need him on my journey to fit bottomed girl!

Lovely day

My day off started with doing useful stuff. Catch up with the boss by phone, a run, cleaning the apartment, laundry, admin. Nothing exciting. When done, I gave Lynne a call and we agreed to meet at The Old Ship in Hammersmith to enjoy some riverfront wines in the sun. It was such a beautiful day, that we decided to take the bub and ourselves for a walk along the river to Westminster to take the tubes home. We did get all the way up to Putney, but found ourselves in a Thai resto in Shepherd's Bush with hubby and mate a few hours later. And now? Now I just want to sleep after all those hours outdoors and all that food. Zzzzzzzzz.

Change of plans

My hols were planned in July: couple of days in good old Bangkok, then off to Laos for two weeks. Then I found out good friends Scott and Anso from Melbourne were arriving in Bangkok on the 31st of December. How could I pass the change to spend NYE with them? So I decided to stay in BKK a bit longer, which leaves less time for Laos. And Laos deserves proper time. Fairly randomly I decided to give Hong Kong a go instead. When I mentioned that in my Facebook status so many people recommended it, that I have now booked. Will be in Hong Kong for 8 nights in January. Flight with Emirates, hotel with roof top pool on Hong Kong Island and loads of tips from friends and ex-locals on what to do. Less than three months away now, woohoo!

Shows

Ever since I saw 'Zeldzaam' aged 13 or so, I have loved musicals. In Holland I saw Les Mis twice, loved Aida, went to see Saturday Night Fever as my musical teacher had the lead role, and saw Miss Saigon. All fine and well, once I got used to the songs in Dutch. But London is just a different league. Before I moved here I saw Bombay Dreams on the day my nan had died, which made it hugely emotional and even more memorable. I also saw Chicago and We Will Rock You. All by myself, was generally here to see friends who weren't into that thing. Whenever I have friends in town myself however, I love it when they suggest to see a show. With Canadian Danielle I saw Wicked, with Italian Marianna I saw Les Mis, and Thursday I will go see Avenue Q with American colleague Heather. Don't think my Dutch friends are too keen on seeing shows... Avenue Q didn't appeal to me at first, but friends who saw it were raving about it, so I'm sure I'll love it too. It seems to be Muppets meets Sesame Street for adults. Update on Friday!

Tired body

My body is tired today. Not so strange, looking back at all the exercise I did this week. Steps class on Tuesday, 3k run on Thursday, 700m swim on Friday, pilates on Saturday and aerobics this morning. My ribcage and abs are so tight it ain't funny. A sixpack must be developing underneath the excess kilos. It's great to see my body changing and getting stronger. I know I had two options when I came to London: live a really healthy lifestyle with loads of sports and limited calories, or do the full-on expat thing and drink and party like mad. So far, I am glad I chose the former. Not only is it healthier and does my body look better, it also saves me a hell of a lot of money, that goes straight into my clothing budget. To the extent that I just bought a Nicole Farhi alpaca (lama-like animal) wool cardi. Elena can rest assured though. No new shoes since I last saw you!

Nice hot lattes

For almost three long months we tried. Sometimes it worked, very often we were just incompatible. My expectations just weren't met and I ended up unsatisfied well too often. Just too impredictable. So what does one do? Replacement is the only way. Despite its fancy SMEG label my mike just left me with burned milk and cold dishes. A new one was quickly ordered on Amazon. Black and shiny, it could have been a welcome addition to my kitchen. Had it worked. But it didn't. And 55 quid and 23 liters is a bit much for a clock, which was all it was. So Thursday night I went online, told Amazon I wanted to send it back and have it replaced. This morning the concierge knocked on the window, pointing at a big blue bag. My new microwave. Gotta love english customer service. And damn, those two lattes this morning were great. Silly, how a functioning mike can make one so happy!

He's quick, he's red, he speaks like Father Ted!

An opening goal by my fav dutch player. Keane's first for the reds and Stevie G's 100th. How f-ing cool! And at the same time one of these night's I'd have loved to be in Dan Murphy's with my mate Sat. But you can't have it all. And thank god for Facebook!