My food adventure through London-town was almost over, but I had one final stop that I had been seriously looking forward to for weeks already. As soon as my friend posted a list of top places to eat sushi in London (yes, she works for BuzzFeed and has a blue tick on Twitter and real followers on Facebook – #claimtofame), I insisted we go to the one that instantly caught my eye: Sake no Hana.
The Japanese sister to its Cantonese counterpart, Hakkasan, which ended up being my favourite dim sum place in London (I had previously blogged about this but the post was among those lost by Servage), Sake no Hana also comes with a set menu that is terrific value for money. I was dead excited to try it.
This one, I had been determined to blog about properly.
At one point, the tagline for my site was “this is not a food blog, but most of it is about food”. I think at one point, I might give up on pretending it’s not a food blog and just turn it into one. Until then, I will continue to stubbornly insist it’s simply a personal blog because sometimes I buy expensive shoes and write about them.
Still, everyone’s talking about Halloween and here I am posting about food. Really, I haven’t changed, lol! Ah well, I can’t help it if I just so happen to eat a lot and thoroughly enjoy doing it.
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” – Virginia Woolf. I guess I need some other excuse because lately I have dined embarrassingly well.
Back in July, I went back to the UK on a half-business, half-personal trip. The primary purpose was to spend time back at our London HQ office for a week, but I was able to extend my stay, giving me more time to get to know new colleagues but also visit my family and attend a friend’s wedding.
I spent about 2 weeks in London in total, during which time I more or less met up with different friends every day (night). When catching up after work, there is only one rightful place to do it: over dinner. Sorry for the terrible photo quality in some of these; I only had my iPhone 5S and was much more excited about the idea of stuffing food into my stomach than photographing it to perfection #glutton #fat #sorrynotsorry.
I don’t know how I still end up surprised that time flies, but it truly still surprises me. It’s already been a week since I visited LA and that was indeed a blessed trip.
I have a lot of photos to sort through and share, so I’d like to give them their own rightfully deserved dedicated posts. But this one will be dedicated to reflections.
At one point I’ll do something more fun like a restaurant review, or take some posey photos of myself dressed slightly more presentable and call it a fashion post, but these days I’ve just been going home and vegging out in pyjamas with junk food and Gilmore Girls. Except for Wednesday evenings – that’s reserved for cell group :)
Anyways, today I ended up at the Apple Store in Grand Central Station after work (explanation to come at a later date) and since I am walking everywhere these days, Google Maps told me to walk along the waterfront back home.
That’s when I realised… I actually live in a really pretty area. I took these photos on the way back:
(I took these photos on my iPhone and ran them through Google Photo editor so they look fancypants and pretty. I did not do this for the rest of the photos in this post, also taken on iPhone. It takes too long and I’m lazy sleepy.)
It’s been exactly 2 weeks today since I moved to New York from my home in beautiful, sunny LA. So far it’s everything I imagined it to be: horrible weather, cramped, expensive, dirty and smelly, but hey, praise God I’m not comfortable here otherwise I’d lose sight of what He sent me for/has planned here for me right? :)
Actually my situation isn’t bad at all. My room is massive by New York standards, it’s in Manhattan and I’m only a 13-17min walk from my office depending on footwear (+5-10mins for coffee). The office is located between the Empire State Building and the Flat Iron Building, more or less. My housemate is super nice and I pretty much have the apartment to myself 90% of the time.
My entire transition has been nothing short of miraculously smooth. Within a day I’d already unpacked, decided on a local church (Redeemer – Tim Keller’s church) recommended to me by brothers & sisters at CBCWLA and signed up for a cell group. Within a week, I’d already met and made friends with one of the cell group co-leaders (who, crazily, is high school friends with one of my CBCWLA worship leaders) and one of the other members, met a bunch of other brothers & sisters at Redeemer and signed up to serve at the church.
Within 2 weeks, I’ve already made some friends outside of church, wandered around Manhattan from east to west, found some cool coffee joints (yet to find one that blows me away though), gone clothes/shoes shopping (and returned with a massive haul that made my mum proud) and cooked at least 6 meals for myself (and sometimes for my housemate too.)
That said, it doesn’t change the fact that I miss LA like crazy. My apartment smells like cat (less so now that I’ve slowly but surely been giving it a deep clean), the weather here has been getting me sick (seriously it’s more temperamental than a woman’s mood on her period, pretty much like London weather) and you literally cannot walk five blocks without finding rows of garbage along the pavement.
