London again for the third time and loving it!!! I never get bored in this city and there's always new things to do here. I have a colleague who's leaving Budapest for good and flying back home out of London. So I jumped at the opportunity to accompany her and also go back to London to visit my friends, especially since I had recently learnt that a friend whom I had not seen in a while was currently in London pursuing her masters.
Our first night in London, we arrived pretty late and after lugging my luggage and ALL of Aimee's luggage back to the hostel, we just took some time to grab a quick dinner before heading out to the Hyde Park Christmas Market. The Christmas market, which was based on a German theme was so much more bigger than the Budapest one and so much more fun... they had a carnival together with typical Christmas stalls and Food/Hot wine stalls, an ice skating rink and even a life band singing cheesy songs!!! There were heaps of people there walking around and it was great to just soak up the atmosphere there...

Rara... New Moon at Hyde Park :P

Christmas market!


The Natural History Museum and street lights on our way home. Our hostel was in quite a central area right next to the museums, so it was very handy for Museum visiting and also nearby shopping at Harrods :)

The next day, Aimee went on a free tour of the city while (as I had been on the free tour before) opted to go to Kensington palace in Hyde Park. I thought it ironic that despite my third time to London, I haven't been to any palaces within the city, whereas I have already seen Windsor and Warrick castle outside London. So off I went. I must say that we were quite lucky the entire weekend, had mostly lovely weather during the day....


Inside, they had a short exhibition on Diana (who was a residence here once upon a time) and her famous dresses...


Also: a short presentation on the life of a Debutane (the thing romance novels are made of). Of course they still exist today, but only to the select upper classes.... for gossip girl fans, you may know it as the cotillion....


Debutane dresses contributed by real life once a upon time Debutanes



Finally... the royal apartments, including the original bed that Queen Victoria slept in before being awoken one fine morning to hear that she was now the Queen of England.

The Royal Staircase.... and yes I got to walk on the same steps as royalty... :P


Queen Victoria's bedroom

Surprise of the day...I was just walking around Hyde Park minding my own business when I walked past the Royal Albert Hall and saw the poster below for a tennis competition... upon further investigation I realized that the tournament was for this weekend!!! So giddy with excitement, I went to the box office to check if there were still any tickets left for the night session and there was... .yoo hoo!!! Been so tennis deprived the whole year... it was an OMG moment for me...

Singles match photos

Double match pictures

My blurred (disappointing) picture with Mark Philippoussis... in my excitement I didn't realize the blurryness of my pic till I walked out and was like, "oh dear!" In any case, I still have his autograph to remember the event :P

So, we had the company Christmas party 2 weeks ago, but so many things have happened since then that I haven't had time to upload the pictures till now. Moving forward with my plans, I only just came back from another weekend trip to London (Pictures up soon and yes I love London heaps) and I finish up work in a week and a half.

I was definitely wary going to Christmas party. Having heard so many stories last year of people getting drunk and the amount of booze that was going to be there definitely needed some preparation (ie: Good night's rest the day prior). I must say that the organizers really did a good job in making the night pretty fun, first we had the "mo" competition. Every year, in an effort to raise money for prostate cancer, the guys in the company go without shaving for a whole month, and the company contributes a certain amount per day that a person doesn't shave. At the end of the month (ie: now), there is a competition among the guys to see who can have the best shaped moustache.... Dan won the prize last year, so it's no surprise that he won it again this year (Ryan was pretty upset :P). Other notable prizes given out (won by who got the most number of votes in the office) were to Ryan (for most likely to go to Hungarian prison), Phil (most likely to become a porn star in a Hungarian film), Dan (most likely to work for the BKV). For the ignorant, the BKV is the Hungarian public transport system. Jennifer won the award for having the most embarassing teaching stories ever.

We also had a christmas exchange gift, and we all piled our presents on table and people who rolled equal dices could pick out a present from a pile. I think I probably contributed the most practical present haha... toothpaste... won by someone, but stolen by someone else at the end of the night.... Everyone posing with their presents below...

Company toast to the 2nd birthday of Selti, and managing to survive the financial crisis and keeping all our jobs :)

Start of the drunken drinking: ran around snapping pictures with people before they got totally trashed...

Luckily I took a picture with my boss early on, so he still looks relatively sober here...

4 teachers, 4 different countries, possibly 4 different continents...

New Zealanders....check on expression on Ryan's face below...


Start of the display of drunken behaviour


Having a boat race, AIESEC style, Selti against non Selti... I got to be in charge of the boat race!!! Yay!!

Outside balcony for smokers...

I've got an incriminating pic in my camera!!

I spy some interesting hugging going on here.... :P

Second mystery catch for Sneha at Morrisons later...

Oh James.... what would A say? :P

Guess who's already buzzed...


Last snaps before leaving the office....

Living in Budapest, I think that I've been quite lucky to have made friends outside the comforts of the workplace/AIESEC circle. It provides a bit of variety in terms of my social life, and has been rather instrumental in influencing my experience of the city/country.
I do realise that part of the experience of living overseas is to meet new people and experience new cultures, but there is a time when meeting people overseas who are close to one's own culture is a comfort in itself. (Did I just make sense here?) Some people may argue that continued socialisation with the "same" people actually hinders one's experience and progress, but for me, these people have provided a strong social support link and has provided memorable experiences of my stay in Budapest. I do get very excited when I mention words such as "Tao Suan" and "Milo" overseas and there are people who understand what I'm saying!
The common link that I have with these dear friends is that we all happen to go to the one and only english mass in Pest. I met all these people in church and slowly built up strong friendships with them. All of us just happened to be in Budapest this year for different reasons and if I may say so...clicked coz of our common love of FOOD!!!! We could have so many discussions of what foods we missed back home and places to try and eat out at in Budapest. So desperate was our need to re-create a taste of home that this was what spurred Gina and I to venture into the mafia chinese market (which I've blogged about before) and explore the various stalls in order to find some authentic asian foods and ingredients to make dishes that we miss back home. (E.g: We literally jumped for joy when we found 油條).
With me as the exception, all my girlfriends have partners and as the guys have to work, we often met up for lunch together, chat, explore the city, gossip, talk about food :P. This is how we came up with the idea of having a gathering together and thus the idea of having a potluck! Everyone brought a dish(es) to the event along with their own drinks. It was a bit of a tricky situation trying to come up with a date, since it was nearing the end of the year and everyone had their own schedule, but we were finally able to, and it was a very fun evening!
There was so much food and everyone bought a bottle of wine (so lots of drinking involved) and afterwards Francis even set up a quiz game on his playstation, which I might add was the leading scorer when it ended, despite my single group status :P. I'm glad that we were able to have this gathering because as I write this post, David and Chelsia are preparing to return home to Malaysia, and for myself, I finish my work internship in Budapest in just 2 weeks time. One does wonder when I will next be able to see my friends again when I leave, that's the thing about living overseas. You make friends all over, but you have to work extra hard to keep these friendships! But I'm still very happy to have met everyone and *fingers crossed* we might be able to similar gathering like this one in the future, but in another country :)