So one week has passed. Most of it has been spent eating and sitting at home with my laptop looking for good bargains on eBay or Amazon.

"What, no sightseeing or exploring etc etc bla bla bla?? What a waste of a holiday!"

Well the thing is, I'm staying at my sister's house which isn't exactly the nearest to Central London where all the happening things happen; the local equivalent would be something like from Kajang to KL, give or take about 10km. As for public transport, instead of RM2 think more like £2 per bus/train trip. Also the last time I came to these areas about 2 years ago, I pretty much saw everything I wanted to see then. And yes there have been gigs which I've been wanting to catch but the cover charges here put even places like Groove Junction to shame. Fancy Benny Golson live at Ronnie Scott's? Only £20*, please.

But then, it's Benny Golson after all. And it's the famous Ronnie Scott's after all... But in the end, my kiamsiap-ness won and my £20 stayed in my wallet.

*not taking into account service charges, drinks, snacks, and exchange rate of £1=RM5.80

That aside, the weather has been really nice, just the occasional shower now and then. The temperature is around 20-22ºC, it's like having perma-aircon. So finally I got out of the house on Thursday to take a trip down to London and visit:


The Royal Academy of Music! Apparently they had a free clarinet masterclass by the famous Andrew Marriner, who is the LSO Principal and son of the even more famous Sir Neville Marriner. Being the typical kiamsiap and kiasu Malaysian, of course I had to check it out, and of course I did not bring my clarinet or prepare anything to play. Long live kiasu-ness. It was still a good experience though, I picked up a lot just listening to his comments. For a free event, the turnout was a grand total of less than 10 people, with only 3 clarinetists performing, all of them Academy students. Apparently I'm not the only kiasu clarinetist around.

****

Speaking of kiasu, I didn't want to play because I knew it wouldn't be the best performance so does that count as kiasu? Discuss.

****

I have also been eating lots of good food, which makes a welcome change from the 2am teh-o-ais limau and roti bakar opposite Heritage condo. Everything here is just so good to eat - when you don't have time to cook a proper hot meal, you take out the ham, cheese and bread and make sandwiches. Mind you even the cheapest ham here makes our stuff taste like pink plastic. And if you don't have time for that either, you pop a frozen pizza from the supermarket into the oven, which looks something like this:


Yes it tastes as good as it looks. Can you imagine a Tesco frozen pizza putting Pizza Hut and Dominos to shame?

Back home, we have Hartz etc eat-all-you-want buffets, here the angmohs have eat-all-you-want Chinese buffets. Lunch at £4.99 per person only! Of course my mum and I had to try it, so we went on Friday. The food looked something like this and kinda reminded me of MPYO meals at Permata.



This is 'Malaysian Samosa'!!!!

For angmoh-styled fast food, it wasn't all that bad considering the price, but my mum thought she could do better, so on Sunday we had Malaysian Chinese lunch at home, angmoh style.


My mum was right.



Two more weeks to go.




****




Someone is 20.