Posted by Maggie
Hello readers,
I hope you're all well. I certainly am. London's been experiencing some very fine weather lately. Sun's out almost everyday! (I know, shocking!) I'll be heading to the park to do some reading later on today, after meeting some of my friends for lunch at the Greenwich market and hitting the gym.
I'm currently going to this amazing gym in Canary Wharf and I've introduced it to pretty much all my friends. Alisa - my flatmate and I are going to the gym together during the weekends (we're on the weekends package). Our aim is to get a fab bod by the time summer comes and we'll be wearing cute dresses, bikinis and flip-flops. Our ritual at the gym starts off like this:
1. Stretch and make complete fools out of ourselves.
2. Cardio-related activities such as steps, running and rowing as we watch people scratch their heads, trying to figure out their next move climbing up the artificial rock wall. It's quite amusing really.
3. Join a yoga/pilates class and resist laughing out loud during the lesson.
4. Muscles-toning machines like the rotary torso, abdominal exercises and lat pulldown. You'll almost always see a macho man pushing himself way past his limit. This makes me nervous especially when they're bench pressing and it looks as though the bar will suffocate the man to death.
5. Badminton/Swim. Some kind of sports.
6. Shower then sauna and steam room! The best part of our ritual!
So there you go. We're definitely trying to lead a healthy lifestyle. I hope you're doing the same!
Now, I just remembered - my half-term break adventures. I haven't shared that with all of you yet! Let's get started then. During the 5-days half-term break in late Feb, I took a short trip travelling to different cities in England. First, I went up to Stoke-on-Trent, an industrial city up north in the Midlands to visit some of my friends at Keele University. I missed my train twice! In the end, I begged the kind Indian man at the ticket office to not charge me penalties with the limited amount of money I had brought with me. He asked me to pray for him in return. And I did that night.
When I got off the platform at Stoke, my friends (Y, D and A) were there and we took the bus back to Keele Uni. Note: Oyster is useless here. I stayed at my friend - Y's place while I was there. That night, A made some chicken curry with spagetthi, a first for me. It wasn't that bad really. But now, I understand what a hassle it is having to cook for yourself after a long day at the uni. You just want to stir up something quickly and eat it instantly. And this is bad! Because you start losing perspective of what a healthy diet should be, only caring about the convenience of preparing your meals. I told the boys that they should start integrating more veg in their diets.
After our late night supper, we chilled in the common room where I met Y's flatmates. My other friend, D and I started jamming together. (Him on the acoustic guitar, me singing). I tried to play some basic songs with basic chords with the likes of Jason Mraz and Robbie Williams. Then, D performed the acoustic version of "American Boy" and we filmed it (with me in the background, complementing his vocals). Next thing we know, it's already 1am so everyone scurried off and in my case, went up to the co-ed bathroom to take a shower. This is where it gets interesting...
I was so paranoid the whole entire time. I kept checking to see if the lock on my cubicle is locked or not. Then, when I got out, wrapped in my towel, and was brushing my teeth by the sink, some guy walked in and I completely freaked out (only in my mind of course). We just acknowledged each other and kept going on with our business. Now, I'm really starting to appreciate my en-suite accomodation at Bellerbys. I can't imagine sharing bathrooms with someone else, especially guys. Boy, I feel bad for the girls living there.
The next day, Y showed me around the university and took me to the uni's library so I could work on my essay for a writing competition that I signed up for while he went to his lecture. It's a writing competition organised by Christi Corpus College at Cambridge and the category I chose was psychology and sociology. After a few hours of complete devotion to Facebook, I started writing my first draft. But 5 minutes later, Y came looking for me in the library. He's done with his lecture so we went to the Students Union hall and bought some beef burgers. We ate them sitting on a tiny hill, overlooking an artificial lake the uni built. It was just so relaxing and peaceful.
When we finished, we took a walk around the uni and I saw some really old buildings with very traditional interior design. I also spotted some English gardens. In the afternoon, I went with Y to his foreign policies lecture. Most students looked bored when I entered the hall. They had notepads on their laps and chatted with each other whilst waiting for the professor to put on the Powerpoint slides. It was a lecture about ideologies. I found it really fascinating as I took notes with much fervour.
After the lecture, we had tea at one of the cafes on campus. I was so hungry, I finished an entire muffin in less than a minute. What can I say, I'm still a growing child. Y had to go work on some group project so I just took my time, exploring the campus and worked on my essay. Y gave me his username and password so I could log onto his account and work. At one point, I needed to print some articles so I started pulling out my wallet. Then, I realised the printing fees were charged to Y's account automatically! Oh well, my bad. I told Y about it but he said it's alright so I basically freeloaded on printing articles (I printed more afterwards). What a sweet system though.
That night, we took the bus down to the city and ate Pakistani food. It was apparently, the best in town. I had chicken jalfrezzi (the spiciest kind of curry) with garlic nans (Indian flatbread - they're a bit like pita) and drank mango lassi (a mango-yoghurt blended drink). Darn, it was such a good meal. We even made some friends there. The man who served us food, I can't recall his name but I remember calling him uncle ("cha-cha" in Urdu - a word a friend of mine back in Malaysia taught me) and he told me that I was "such a charming girl". Totally made my night.
Anyway, D told me there's this thing called Bar Crawl happening in town that night where everyone gets dressed up and go barhopping. Too bad I didn't have a costume with me and all the costume stores were closed. Otherwise, I would've been partying all night. What a shame. On our way home, we met a drunken dude. He told us he had upsetted his girlfriend and wanted to make it up to her by singing her a cheesy love song. He asked us what song he should sing. We gave him a few suggestions. In the end, he settled on "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston. He thanked us and left a few stops before us. It was a rather uneventful night but we talked and just hung out back in Y's flat and I learned a couple of new songs on the guitar.
The following day, a Friday, we woke up at 9 in the morning and made breakfast. D and A were over. Y and I were about to go Manchester so we said our goodbyes and left, slightly later than we planned. We almost missed our train to the big M. Thanks to D, he called a cabbie for us so we made it to the station just right on time. We were jumping with excitement when we arrived in Manchester! My other friend - M, was supposed to meet us there. He lives in the big M and even has his own apartment and ride. We met him outside the station with his friends and all of us introduced each other and as my stomach was grumbling again, we went to Bella Italia to grab some lunch.
After lunch, we walked around town, took loads of photos and basically, tried to absorb as much "Manchester essence" as I can. We went back to M's place afterwards to relax. We were going to Leeds that night. Once M finished packing, we left without any haste and picked up some of his friends and were on our way to Leeds.
Then the funniest thing ever happened. We were driving at the opposite direction for one whole hour before anybody realises it! There was a road sign that said something about "Birmingham" and I thought, isn't Birmingham back down south..? Everyone laughed hysterically and we tried to find an exit on the highway to turn right back. We stayed at the Hilton hotel in Leeds. That night, we went to Nando's for dinner. It was so satisfying. Yum. Then, we went to a pub and drank and danced. It's a real joy to hang around M and his buddies cause they just crack me up. After "pubbing", we went to this new bar M's friend's friend opened and had free blue cocktails. They looked so beautiful. It was a moroccan-inspired bar and everyone just lounged about on the cushions and pillows. Twas a fun night.
On Saturday, we woke up at about 10 in the morning (I was so surprised) and checked out the city centre of Leeds. It's a pretty awesome city I must say. It's a bit like London, a bit like Brighton and a bit like Manchester. They've got all the essentials (Starbucks, Topshop etc) and they've got some local, small-town joints as well. It was a sunny morning and we had such a swell time just walking around and about. I also took tons of pictures. It's quite a photogenic city. Some buildings were pretty dirty (hence, they're old) but in general, it's a good city to take pictures. After our mindless wanderings, we decided to drive back down to Manchester. On our way back, we stopped for food at this American restaurant. We ate more grilled burgers and fries while colouring. (Yes, they gave us some pencil crayons to draw). You don't want to know what the boys came up with. A few hours of real crappy traffic later, we're finally back in the city. Y had other plans so he went out with his other friends while I was stuck with M and his camp humour.
That night, M and I went to M's friend's girlfriend's birthday shindig. We had a pre-drinking sesh and played Wii tennis. I totally owned at that game! They're all such lovely people. Then, we went to an extremely packed bar where I could barely move an inch and finally found a seat in the basement. The boys were getting the drinks. We hung around for 10 minutes or so just mingling and being merry then we left for this other bar down the street. This one's much better - more spacious and filled with even better looking people. We found a table for the 8 of us and stayed for at least half an hour. The drinks kept right on flowing. Everyone was just having such a great time. But it still wasn't enough - so we went to this club called Birdcage. It's enormous and filled with people. Eventually, we found ourselves a safe-looking spot and settled there. We danced to the kitschy pop songs of Katy Perry and Girls Aloud while downing even more drinks. It was definitely a night to remember.
After all this awesome shebang, we were famished and some of us frankly, drunk. So we decided to go to this after-clubbing Kebab place to eat. It was almost 3am by now. Some of the girls were tired so most of them went home while M, two of his pals and I stayed back to order second round. Once our tummies gave us the red light, we called it a night. The next morning, we had brunch at this new cafe called Gabrielle's just down the block from where M lives. Y joined us and we talked about the night before. (We had more fun!). M drove us back down to Birmingham after brunch (he's got a place down there as well and he needed to check up on it), and we took a short walk around the city. Not for long though cause Y and I had to catch a train back to Stoke. So we bid our farewells at the train station and thanked M for showing us a great time in the big M.
Y went back to Keele while I caught another train back to London. The original plan was to get back to Keele and gather the rest of my belongings since I didn't bring all of them up to Manchester and Leeds. But I didn't have much time to spare until the next arrival of the train back to Euston London so I just told Y to give them back to me whenever he's down in London. All in all, it was a great trip and the company alone, was more than enough.
Love from London.
xoxo
