This morning's cab ride

Had a crazy cab ride this morning. I was hoping to catch the 7:27 from Bourne End but found myself being educated about skin cancer instead. Apparently, my cabbie, Sally, survived it twice. Hollywood more or less stuck with the reserved, tight-lipped stereotype of the English. They haven't met Sally, obviously...or heard her describe how she watched as the doctor put a scalpel to her face.

Did you know that...
...there are 40 types of skin cancer?
...a lot of them can be superficial (meaning, it just sits on your skin and spread increasingly in area, not in depth)? These can be extracted by surgery quite easily and you're (almost always) good as new.
...you should watch your moles? Especially if they're raised, have gone black and/or edges have become faded or faint. If they start getting inflamed on the edges, go to the doctor quick. According to Sally, it's a sign that the mole has started going into your skin.

So, I missed my train and held up training for 2 other participants for more than 15 minutes (I know...yaiks!). It gave me time to jot this down, though... and do an impromptu inventory of my moles. Time well spent, if you ask me. Slather on that sunscreen!

Food...

Physalis. Thats was the name of a pack of fruits for sale in our local Tesco that caught my eyes. A small but sweet and tasty fruit that, a long time ago, my playmates and I would find in abundance in the the perimeter of local um, pigpens. A fruit that I have not seen eversince I moved to Manila for school and work. And now, thousands of miles from home, I am holding a bunch of them "glossy, sweet and spicy berries. try dipping in chocolate for a touch of decadence". Hmmm. Buying them for a few pence was very cheap for the memories. Albiet, the pigpen was not exactly the "chocoloate for a touch of decadence" that I remembered.

...

Last weekend, freefall and I went to London for some Filipino food auction that aims to raise scholarship funds. An interesting twist is that there was an adobo cooking competition and I was one of three judges. One entry tried to be posh by incorporating white wine in their adobo. But of course, the traditional entry with simple toyo-suka-paminta carried the day.

After the foodfest, some of us decided to have a walk in the park and ended up in a dessert place that offered very good cheesecakes and tiramisus. £1.50 each. Good conversation with new found friends. It was wonderful.

Ahh, the simple pleasures...

Happy Easter!

We just had a 4-day weekend break from Good Friday to Easter Monday. It's the longest series of bank holidays in the UK so we decided not to let it pass especially since the BBC forecasted good weather. Well, if the BBC said so...

The holiday place of choice is the city of Bath in Somerset. I've been there once and was quite excited to go back to get to know the city better. We had great fun looking at old buildings, searching for restaurants tucked in corners, walking the city streets and mainly sleeping in the park hehehe.

We did have some great eats:

Sally Lunn Buns - operating in the reported oldest house in Bath, this place is basically famous for its bread. I did not actually get what's so special about its taste, but I did find the story of Sally Lunn's name quite amusing. Apparently, she was a French woman who migrated to Bath. Back in France, her trade was to sell light and dark bread which she called "Sun and Moon". Naturally, when she tried to carry on selling in Bath, she marketed the breads the same way, by shouting "Soleil et Lune" (soo-ley e loon). So people thought her name was Sally Lunn! Nutter.. Hahaha!

The Old Green Tree pub - real nice pub. smallish, cozy. Jack tried the milk stout -- dark beer to, like Guiness

The Wife of Bath resto - named after a character in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, it is a brilliant hole in the wall type of resto. The kind that will make you extremely proud of yourself if you discovered it all on your own. Kaso kami ni-research namin hehe. Super sarap ng lamb shank dito!

The Walrus and the Carpenter cafe - reminded me so much of a university cafe with all the posters and friendly staff who look like students. Go for the beefburgers and you'll never go wrong. Just now, I've realized that our waitress was one of the owners. Real nice girl, told us that the place is named after the Lewis Carroll poem.

The highlight of our holiday was a 2-hr stint at the new-ish Thermae Bath Spa. It's supposed to be the modern Roman Bath, which was a tall order, in my opinion. It did good, though. Despite getting the basic package for 20 quid, we were treated to 4 steam rooms, a heated pool in the basement and a gorgeous rooftop pool overlooking the city centre at the, well, rooftop. If you find yourself in Bath, you'll be kicking yourself if you didn't go. Bliss...

Sabi ko nga kay Pargad, pag yumaman ako, mukhang magandang magtayo nito sa Laguna ;)

For Easter service, we attended the one in Bath Abbey (para libre kami sa entrance hahaha! That was a joke, I think.)

Bean's Holiday and our night out

My friend Cherry decided to hold an advanced celebration of her birthday by inviting a few friends for a movie and coffee. We saw Mr. Bean's Holiday since she wanted to watch something brainless and, of course, the movie rose to the occasion. :) Rowan Atkinson's comedic timing is a classic and having the movie set mostly in France gave a peek at the French countryside and the Riviera. Ah, c'est tres tres magnifique!

Cherry, Jack and I decided to meet up a couple of hours earlier to have dinner and catch up in this wonderful Thai resto we found just a couple of hundred yards to the left of Odeon cinema near High St. Kensington. We had stir-fry, sweet and sour and curry dishes, yummy treats all! Call me stereotypical, but nothings beats a good main dish eaten with fried rice.

Though the movie was for cheap laughs, the company was heaps better. They were a bunch of very interesting characters, none of which I would mind seeing again mainly because they graciously laugh at my lame jokes (I'll never forget it *sniff*). I think the coolest conversation topic was about the metal music scene which definitely perked Jack up since he was a metal fan back in the early 90's. This then resulted to a music download spree til the wee hours of Sunday morning and my iPod being infiltrated by Queensryche, Metallic and others.

Overall, it was good fun. Thanks again for the invite Cher!

First and Second Life

It's my first day at work after a two-week absence due to chicken pox.

It's currently 2:19 in the afternoon and I have a headache. It's probably due to staring at a monitor and doing one single task for the past couple of hours.

Must..concentrate.. must..not..fall..asleep..

Dang I miss my siestas.

It's scary how your brain shifts to low-batt mode after going on a holiday from work. Surely if you stay away long enough it'll grind to a complete stop? Must keep on exercising the old girl, lest I go batty. There goes my future great scientific contribution to mankind. :))

**********************

I'm trying to go to bed early, from Sunday to Thursday, from this week onwards hoping that it will help me get up early. My target time is 11pm. So far, here's how I did:

Week 1 : Mar 25 - 29
Sun - 10:00 went to bed at 10 but tossed and turned til 1:30am I think
Mon - 11:40 er, got caught up in Second Life. Met a guy from Holland in a beach resort.. It was quite nice actually. Name of the place is Golden Sands. I'll definitely go back.

Is there a doctor in the house?

When I came over to the UK, one of the things that I found highly unusual was the national health system. In the Philippines, and even Singapore, I was used to being able to walk into a hospital or a clinic and request to be seen by a doctor. Not in the UK, apparently. To be seen by a doctor in a hospital, one has to:

1. Register with a surgery house (clinic).
2. Set appointment for preliminary check-up. For me, this was four days after I registered.
3. Set another appointment to either see a doctor or a practice nurse. This was another week of waiting.

Only when your GP feels that you need specialist help, will you be directed to go to the hospital.

WHEW! It took me 2 weeks to see a GP. Something I could've done in 2-4 hours in Manila or SG. You can just imagine my bewilderment on what the fuss was all about.

I do realize that it is important for a doctor to have a patient's complete medical history before treatment but I sincerely believe this is a bit overkill.

Also, my surgery has this annoying rule of only being able to set an appointment the morning of the day you want to be seen. Now, I think that is totally absurd, given the fact that they seem to be driven by appointments. Arrgh!!

Taking out a private plan is starting to look reeaally good..

Downtime

I've been down with the chicken pox for the past two weeks. I know, I know, I'm too old to have chicken pox and I'm not supposed to scratch 'em. (But it's sooo ITCHY!!) So that means I am left to my own devices for over ten days.

So what have I been doing?

1. I spend most of my time online, watching movies, clips, etc. on peekvid.com (yes, it's back up) and youtube.com. I am amazed on the time I spend on these things. I suppose I should be regretful because it is not exactly time well spent, is it? But, I'm not. Chicken pox gave me the license not to care. To be extravagant with my time.. to bum around. Bliss..

2. I did not do a single housechore. Not one, even though I'm feeling ok, just spotty. Haha!
I even let P do the cooking. Sama ko 'no? Abusado ba?

3. Nothing much! Oh, I did finish a book. Other than that, nothing much!

I'm going back to work next week.. it must end sometime.