On the road again

For the past two months, I've kept my suitcases in storage, my passport in my bedside table and myself off of airplanes. Having spent most of April - early June living out of a suitcase and constantly flying around Europe and back to Canada, I was keen to stay put in London for the summer.

That's all about to change in a few weeks. My old goal of seeing a new city every month? It's back on baby.

A few months ago, I booked Seville for the August bank holiday. A few days ago, I booked a trip to Dublin in October.

August will also bring a long weekend in Paris with my mother, which I'm hugely excited about. I can't wait to introduce my ever-stylish and always chic mother to the city of style and chicness. I can only hope that in my sixties I can pull off the same effortless elegance that she does on a daily basis.

my flattie and I are culinary geniuses

When I was back in Guyana, I met the lovely Talia who wowed us with her own culinary genius by preparing edible meals from the horrible food supply we were given during our backpacking trips. She was able to throw together multi-course meals from tins of spam, a bag of rice, soy sauce and a wok. It was like watching MacGyver in the kitchen.

On Friday Suey and I discovered that our stove was broken.

As we are not only both keen chefs, but also the owner of two, yes TWO cookbooks, this was nothing short of a tragedy.

But we are culinary geniuses and were able to improvise two incredibly delicious meals using only our cunning talents and a working oven. And lots of pesto. Pesto, it seems, is the magic ingredient.

Saturday morning brunch was spiced potato wedges and a baked frittata with pesto, aged chedder and fresh basil leaves.

Tonight was baked chicken breasts with pesto, garlic and cherry tomatoes.

The great Talia would be proud :)

losing my festival virginity

Ben & Jerry's Sundae Festival was gentle.

There was barely a line up to get in. Not the hordes of crowds I had been expecting. Inside there were food tents, ice cream tents, a kids play area, a toe-war play area (don't ask), guys running around in boxer briefs with "Hugs are free" written on their lovely 8-pack abs, a host of prams and crawling babies, sunbathing people, a live band, enthusiastic air guitar performers and ice cream.

Oh, the ice cream. It was hard decided which flavours to tackle first. Like a pro though, I ate the ice cream and discarded the cone.

"It takes up too much room" I declared to Suey.

Still, I was only able to manage three cones and an ice cream sandwich.

Why Mahler?

I was at Waterstone's the other day killing some time before meeting with friends when I came across this book:



I've performed one Mahler piece in my entire lifetime. It was the Adagietto from Mahler's Symphony No. 5. It's his probably his most famous, if not most recognizable work.

When I played it under the formidable and hilarious Paul McCulloch back in high school, I distinctly remember him telling us that we couldn't play the piece properly until we had experienced war, famine, death, despair.* Needless to say, I'm sure most of us spoiled private school brats had no idea how to play Mahler, but we managed to limp through that performance without embarrassing ourselves too badly.

Lebrecht speaks of Mahler's ability to ease the pain of death and heal emotional wounds. He speaks of Mahler's symphonies being played on the death bed and world leaders altering their self-perception upon witnessing his performances. He says that Mahler is the soundtrack to our lives.

To be honest, it sounds a bit far-fetched to me. But then again, what do I know? I'm just a girl who has a playlist on her iPod titled 'soundtrack to my life' that's littered with Metric, Muse and now a litte Mahler.

* Paul, apologies if I've completely misquoted you :) But you're definitely formidable and hilarious, even when you were calling us meatball heads and stopping us mid-performance because we all lost our places

loving the old spice

On the twitter-sphere, there's been much talk (or tweets) surrounding the new old spice viral campaign.

I finally got around to checking it out while at work today. It was my break from working incredibly hard for the last few hours. Because in no way would I be procrastinating. Not. At. All.

Anyway, brilliant campaign by Old Spice. And I have no idea how the actor kept a straight face for each of those 180+ personalised YouTube video responses.

Check it out if you have a few spare minutes. Or, just watch one of my favourites below...

i scream, you scream, we all scream for....

Free Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream!!!!

mmmmm....

This Sunday, I'll be losing my festival virginity to the Ben & Jerry's Sundae Festival in Clapham Common.

A whole 8 hours of live music, chilling hopefully under the sun with my friends and free ice cream. Lots of it. Chunky Monkey, Phish Food, Cherry Garcia... my stomach is growling and my mouth is watering in anticipation.

only 6 more days.

Steaksauce!

My closest guy friends are obsessed with the hit sitcom, 'How I Met Your Mother'. They regularly reference and quote specific episodes, they have 'Suit Up' sundays and generally use Barney as a shining example of how to pick up women. (I have yet to see it work)

Steak Sauce is one of their favourites. Calling one thing/person/situation/etc 'steaksauce' means that it is beyond awesome. It is more than legend - wait for it - ary.

So it's only fitting that dinner on Friday was deemed a 'steaksauce', as we were all treated to an amazing steak dinner at Le Relais de Venise by Jess' parents who were in town for the weekend.

Vegetarians would hate this restaurant as there's no choice. You sit down (after queuing up outside)and the waitress asks you how you like your steak. Other than the wine list and dessert, there's no other scope for choice. They bring you a salad with slices of fresh baguette. Then you get your first serving of steak frites, followed by a "refill" of more steak frites. And finally you choose your dessert and after polishing off your last profiterole (and in my case, licking off every last bit of chocolate sauce from the plate), the bill is paid and you stagger outside completely satiated, to pure looks of hatred and envy from those still waiting outside to get in.