Went to London for the 2nd time and I still quite like the city. Big but not overtly crowded. It's going to be a long haul (and really difficult for me to talk about everything we did cos we spent 5 days in London which is a bit long for a 2nd visit especially). So I won't talk too much about the finer details...

In a nutshell going back to London was a rush of nostalgia to me. Seeing Big Ben, the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace etc etc all over again served to remind me strongly of the humanities trip I went on in J1. Its doing the small little things that I did back then again that put a smile on my face. Crossing the millenium bridge after coming out of Tate Modern puzzled (I saw a mirror mounted on canvas that was declared art and am still internally debating what constitutes art in my head), and coming to the exact same cafeteria I went to with a friend for lunch one summer afternoon in London, finding that it's still there.

Going to Covent Garden, looking at the Walt Disney shop and remembering with fondness how my friends and myself rushed in squealing in adoration for our favourite dolls. Entering Tube Trains and recalling how all of us slept, exhausted from the day's events on the trains.

I caught a musical whilst I was there too; the only other musical I caught the last time I was there was the Lion King, which was very beautiful set wise and prop wise, but perhaps the story had been played over and over again; I didn't find it very refreshing. This time though I caught 'Wicked', the musical, which was sort of a spinoff from The Wizard of Oz, something like a prequel, depicting how the Wicked Witch of the West (East?) and Good Witch of the North (or South?) came about. And through it we find that the wicked witch wasn't really that wicked after all. Anyway, great set, great music, great acting, great story. 

Another highlight of the trip perhaps (quite ironically) was Singapore Day 2009. It wasn't initially on the agenda when I decided to travel to London, but upon learning that there was a cheap flight to and from London during that period, we decided why not? So off to Singapore Day @ Hampton Court palace we went, and it was (surprisingly) quite a blast. And oh, look, how sweet of them to bring in the ERP as our entrance gate; what fond memories we have... heheheh. Oh yes, it even beeps every few seconds.

I never thought that I'd be impressed with local entertainment, but I was. They brought in the best of Singapore I think, with the likes of Dim Sum Dollies, Hossan Leong, Jack Neo+Mark Lee +Henry Thia, and mrbrown. Funny how the entertainment was all satirizing Singapore's idiosyncracies when the whole point of SG day is to woo back overseas SGporeans but I guess that's how it works - reverse psychology maybe? Hard sell would've backfired really badly. 

Anyway, the point here is that I was sitting on the grass patch lapping up live entertainment and eating SG food (for free, all the charkwayteow and hokkien mee and chilli crab and bak kut teh. makansutra-stamp-of-approval somemore.) And for the first time in 5 months I understood most of the references and jokes entertainers were making. And all the hokkien they were spewing unabashedly in London, no less. Can you imagine? Strings and strings of hokkien phrases blasting out loud where the Queen's English dominates, and on palace grounds! hahaha. How irreverent can they get :)

Food is truly where the heart is where Singaporeans are concerned. They brought in all the famous hawker stalls; I managed to eat Casuarina Roti Prata (YES! satisfied those cravings finally), Bak Kut Teh, Char Kway Teow, Hokkien Mee, Bubur Hitam, Butterfly/Ham Chim Peng. Well I was actually craving for Casuarina Roti Prata since the early part of exchange and when I finally got to eat it, I actually ran up to the Roti Prata Uncle, pounded my fists on the table in excitement and loudly declared, "UNCLE, I've been waiting for this for FOUR MONTHS!", half expecting an equally enthusiastic reply. Something along the lines of, "WAH, you came all the way?!" Now that I look back, it was really embarrassing. Because his actual reaction was kinda lukewarm. He was like, "oh really? Then we came especially for you." Talk about losing face. And you could see the queues snaking within 10 minutes of the start of the event. Damn Kiasu as usual, but who am I to judge? Oh and yeah, they brought in Old Chang Kee Curry Puffs :) 

And finally, I could communicate with ease as compared to other countries I'd visited, and it didn't feel so much like a holiday because things didn't feel foreign enough. Because for once I actually understood what I was buying/eating/seeing. 

So that was London, revisited :) In 5 days.