Miss you, you miss...

Ahhh how I miss certain things from home... I decided to make a list of what they were to weigh up if it was really all that bad living without them for six months:

• Unsweetened soya milk (everything here is full of sugar)
• Green & Blacks, though was sent some recently so kinda ok
• A friend in a stripy jumper and flat cap
• Houmous, yeah baby, the Greeks have yet to make it to my neighbourhood
• Oat cakes - I actually paid S$6.50 for some recently, that's the same price as two chicken dinners
• Being able to walk for more than five minutes without being drowned in sweat and ready to sit down
• A duvet to sleep under (way too hot)
• You
• Ballet, I miss it so much!
• My bike, especially the basket.

That's pretty much it, so not going too badly. I think I'll survive!

Aussie Archtitecture

Turn a corner in this great Australian city, and your eyes will no doubt great something of brilliant man-made beauty... the photos don't do justice to the city holding this year's Commenwealth games next month, but you get the idea...

This silver cubist form holds the state art collection... not quite as impressive as the Tate Modern, but then I'm probably biased!

A big artichoke? Or something more ephemeral?

Blogiversary

I'd like to coin a new word... 'blogiversary'. Today it's almost exactly one year since my first posting on this blog... The idea came one weekend when I was away with some friends, and I resolved to write something, anything slightly creative, every day. After a tenative start and some re-assessing throughout, here I am, a year later loving every minute of it. So if you're reading this thanks for your kind words and your time, it makes me smile when I hear that people are enjoying reading my reflections...

Talking of reflections, here's one of me in Federation Square, Melbourne...

How's the pressure m'am?

Now that I lay my little head in a country where the bus fare to work costs 34p and a great meal costs less than £1, there’s a little more room for ‘luxuries’. Feeling like a Stepford Wife I guiltily enjoyed a pedicure after work last week, the first in my 26 and a bit years on this green earth. Sitting reading Asian woman’s magazines with my feet in a rose petal bubble bath, I was temporarily transported into someone else’s life. I tried to imagine what it would be like not to work, but to have all day every day to entertain myself as a lady of leisure. Every weekend I wish that there was an extra life, and I love a holiday as much as the next person, but I really don’t know what I’d do to pass the time… there’s only so much lunching and pampering one can stand. Anyhow, I digress. I left 45minutes later leaving a gorgeous pile of dead skin on the floor that looked rather like desiccated coconut. My toenails are sporting a very fetching shade of pale green, and my heels are soft as a cushion.

So toenails all sparkly, I was feeling slightly too excited for my own good when myself and two friends decided to book into the 'Javanese Massage Hut' at the end of my road for a one hour 'full body' massage. I've had a 'full body' before, so thought I knew what to expect. I'm pretty o-fey with being almost entirely naked in front of a complete stranger, and anyway, there were going to be two friends lying next to me. So in we go, laughing hysterically at the paper knickers and loving the smell of the herbal oils. What none of us were prepared for though was the Javanese definition of 'full body'. I know there are men reading this so I won't elaborate, but let's just say there was touching in places I wasn't expecting...

Places I've been to, tra la la...

Now that I've seen a bit more of the world, here's a map showing the countries I've visited... it's a pitiful 8% of the world, but I'm hoping to add a few more over the next few months...

G'day!

My gorgeous friend Graham once went out with an Austrian girl who used to complain that everyone's view of her home country was based solely on The Sound Of Music. I remember thinking this was quite funny, and then realising in horror that my view of Austria really was based on the singing Von Trapp family! I was ashamed and tried to rectify the situation with a quick google search and a vow never to be in the same narrow-minded place again.

This morning as I woke to the sun stretching his fingers through an unfamiliar window, I heard the sound of a small animal screaching outside... My brain works on go-slow at that time of the morning but today the realisation I was 'down under' kinda hit me at top speed. (I'm the furthest away from home I've ever been in my entire 26 and a bit years of existence, yet everything feels normal. Anyway, I digress.) The lady I was staying with had told me that the screaching sound was the noise of 'little possums' (said in a Dame Edna-esque voice!) outside. "Do you know about possums?" she asked? "Oh yeah," I said. "Hannah from Neighbours adopted one once..." Arrrggghhh!! I suddenly realised that my view of Australia was based almost wholly on a bad tv soap... Must be more cultured and wise. Must be more cultured and wise...

Internet Junkie

Do you find your life incredibly liberated by, yet stupidly restrained by the internet? Take this week, I have a ‘to do’ list that’s a fairly impressive length, and more than half of the stuff on there requires surfing before I can smugly draw a tick in the little box I draw next to each item. It’s not that I mind, in fact I really love looking stuff up online, it avoids travel agents, going to the train station, speaking to real people about my bank account, but it’s also really anti-social. I figure I could spend two evenings this week and still not get all the stuff I want done finished. Hmmm. What to do? I could always get up really early, go to Starbucks and connect to wi-fi and drink cappuccino, but hang on, I’m walking the dog, and if I were to get up any earlier I’m sure my legs and arms will fall off before I even made it into the shower, they’re so heavy early in the morning! Well, maybe I’ll just relax and hang loose and look forward to the weekend in Australia before I tick all the boxes…

Monkey monkey

Well here's a picture of a monkey made of pink flowers hugging a post in a shopping centre... now you don't see that very day, do you?! I think this particular monkey had something to do with Chinese New Year, but you can't be too sure.

Anyway, the exciting news is that I'm off to Melbourne tomorrow! Can hardly contain my excitement, I'm sure I'll be awake all night with excitement. Speaking of being awake all night, I have been having trouble sleeping due to being woken up by by a fat cockroach running across my floor two nights running.... and you thought you were jealous of the tropical climate!

Loving Life

I’ve just had the most lovely weekend ever… sometimes life is so good that I can’t quite believe it, if I shut my eyes I almost believe it won’t be there when I open them again. I’ve been here for just over a month and things are getting more familiar… I have a routine, (including walking the aforementioned pooch), and have established a couple of favourite lunch places, as well as a much longer list of things I’d really rather not ever eat again in this life… I’ve gone swimming loads, loving the warmth of the water and the sun on wet skin, and have developed the habit of carrying my bikini around with me on the off chance I’ll be invited somewhere with a pool (happens quite often!) The lifestyle here is certainly one I could get used to. I miss my friends and family from home, and the Tate Modern (!) but apart from that I’m happy. Love it! As my gorgeous friend Tana would say!

More tea?

My landlady is a top cook, she thinks nothing of whipping up four dishes for dinner in half an hour, all with ingredients I haven’t even seen before, let alone tasted… so you can imagine the fear when she asked me to teach her ‘British cooking’. Now, us Brits now that while we can all whip up an Uncle Ben’s sweet and sour or a thai curry with ready made paste, it’s another thing to be Delia Smith with the old beef and Yorkshires… Rather than starting with something complicated I suggested scones, even though they’re really a bit boring and don’t take much effort to do. She absolutely loved it! We made about 80 on the table in the garden, no joke, flour everywhere and the smell of baking competing with next door’s fried bee hoon. Hilariously we then sat down to a cream tea with Earl Grey and jam and cream… it was ace. I thought the English cream tea was all over until I found that while I was out the following day, her and her husband set up a table in front of a row of sunflowers in the garden. They brought out the best china and set up the scones on a cake stand, donned their best clothes and took photos of themselves eating the scones!! Don’t you just love it! I was glad to be of service to the Chinese community. In return I learnt how to make wantons, be warned, they look easy but mine tasted of glue.

Pix at last...

Can you believe it! I’ve finally managed to get a laptop which means I can download my photos and make you all envious of blue skies (except when it’s raining), lying by the pool all weekend and eating unidentifiable food.. talking of which, here’s a few pix of Chinatown at Chinese New Year including some of the ‘delicacies’ that are eaten/endured at this time of year. The green pear shaped things are pomelos, kinda like a big sweet grapefruit, and the stuff hanging up is Chinese sausage ... yum.

Rain

So what’s new? It’s getting hotter here… the rain has stepped up in defense of the rising temperatures too. I don’t think I can ever call the trickling from the sky that we get in England rain again. Walk one metre in Singapore’s afternoon monsoon and your clothes become part of you cos they’re so stuck to your skin. Hmmm. I’ve learnt that forgetting your umbrella is the equivalent of social suicide. If it’s raining you’re basically stuck where you are until it stops.. fine if the storm lasts ten minutes, but not so funny if it pours for an hour. Catching a cab in the rain is also a feat similar to not falling off the luge in the winter Olympics.

Koala

Just got back from a hot weekend in Kuala Lumpur. I'm still not completely set-up computer-wise, so you'll have to imagine the photo of me at the Petronas towers... KL was cool. I hadn't realised how this tiny island can start to feel a bit claustrophobic... everything here is squeaky clean (I saw a man cleaning the road signs the other day), and I was desperate for a bit of raw reality. So I set off with my toothbrush, sunscreen, bikini (well a girl can dream!) and hopes for a change of scenery and the 'real' Asia. The bus journey takes five hours and was better than any I've ever taken in the UK, this was no National Express. The seats were huge and reclined, we were served lunch and snacks of watermelon and red bean dumplings at various stages along the way and best of all the journey actually took the time it said it would.

Highlights of KL included:

- buying a pair of really nice sandals for less than 4 pounds
- eating chey keow in Chinatown just next to a lady killing frogs by whacking them on the head with a hammer (hang on, that shouldn't be in the highlights section, you call yourself an editor?!)
- sleeping for a really long time in a king size bed (yes on my own!)
- watching or should I say listening to the lion dance for Chinese New Year as it went through Starbucks to bring 'luck and prosperity'

Walkies

Do you ever find yourself in a comedy situation and wonder how you got there? This seems to happen to me more regularly than I consider funny, but hey, makes life more interesting. I asked myself this exact question this morning as I was dragging a very old dog through a park at 7.30 am. Now, for those of you who know me, even a little bit, you'll know that Jules + early morning = bad idea. Most of my good friends have learned not to even try to engage me in conversation until I've been up for at least three quarters of an hour. I'm grumpy in the morning, I know it and I don't pretend to be otherwise. Also, I don't really like dogs. (I was going to say I 'hate' them, but I think hate is a very strong word. A friend of mine tells her kids to say something isn't their 'cup of tea' as it's more polite... so to clarify, dog's aren't my cuppa of choice.) So when my new neighbour asked if I'd mind walking her old boxer dog while she's on holiday, I said yes. What was I thinking?! I can only assume that the rational part of my brain was otherwise engaged in watching a gekko or something. So, for the next two weeks the girl with clothes hastily thrown on, pulling an old dog through Cheng Seung past the ladies doing tai chi is (unfortunately), me.