Nice Day 1

Okay, for those who doesn't want to be home sick, this entry is safe and Malaysian food-free.

I went to Nice and Monaco for 3 days from the 10th till the 12th of June. I can use 3 words to describe the trip to Nice: Frying, Food and Football.

Day 1:

I had to catch a bus to airport at 5am for my flight at 6.50am. Reached Nice around 10.30am because the clock moves forward an hour in European countries. We were homeless for half a day cause we didn't book any hotels.

Hakuna Matata. Eat ice cream first.

What to do? Luckily the weather is hot enough to be spent outdoors.

Finally, we came across this really good deal, thanks to E. I think it came up to 20 euros a night.

Happy that we managed to get a roof over our heads and soft mattresses for our backs for 2 nights.

As a promotion, they even threw in a cat as our pet for 2 nights.

Off we went exploring the area.

I wonder do the fountains cool the place down a bit. It was so hot that we were seriously fried under the sun.

They walked to the left...

And walked to the right. I just stood there taking photos while waiting for them to make up their minds.

Most happening place where all the excitement, shops, food and people were - Old town.

Flowers at Flower Market which will turn into a night market and restaurants at night. There were wines, spices, preserved fruits, flowers, etc.

This particular shop sold a lot of cookies and chocolates. So, I decided to buy 5 pieces of cookies for the 5 of us to taste. The free sample of chocolate on the bottom right was really delicious.

Our system of cookies tasting was, each take a bite, then rotate anti-clockwise. Verdict: Looks delicious but doesn't taste as delicious as it looks. Last person had to finish whatever is left, so, if you're lucky, you'll get the smallest and tastiest piece.

Nice's version of Subway

We saw some interesting things on sale as well:

The last time I saw this was 10 years back in Sandakan. You get to measure the length of chain that you want and the shop keeper will add on the clasps for you.

Maybe that's the side effects from using it - Rape all.

We saw a shop selling Middle Eastern food as well.

A decided to buy 4 doughnut for us to share. 2 of each type.

The verdict:

One tasted like lime stone (batu kapur) and another one was seriously too sweet. We tried our best to pose as if they were really delicious, but reality is reality.

So delicious that even the lemon was worth eating

Best food we came across - the deep fried anchovies (ikan bilis). They're totally different from the Malaysian type as they were so juicy and soft. I think they fried them while they're fresh as opposed to the dried type in Malaysia.

Soon, we could feel that the guys were getting restless. Reason: they need their 1st dose of football for the day.

So, here we were, watching the 1st match of Eurocup of the day. They quieted the girls by buying us drinks.

We continued our sight-seeing when the match ended.

Palace of Justice

Soon, it was dinner time. We ate at one of the Restaurant offering a 3 course meal for 15 euros.

There were so many combinations to choose from.

However, the best combination went to mine:

My meal consisted of a free glass of alcohol (it tasted more like fruit juice), fried calamari rings, salmon with rice and for desserts, I had apple pie.

View of Flower market at night.

Then, it was time for the 2nd match. So, our last stop was at a cafe before retiring for the day.

The atmosphere was really intense.

The next day, we were off to Monaco. Get ready to be spoilt by loads of really beautiful sceneries.

Tagged

My friend, Sakura tagged me in her blog about 3 weeks ago and here I am replying it.

1. I love to SMILE
I think so. People do say I laugh too much sometimes. It's not a crime to smile and laugh too much, is it? So, smile more and infect more people.

2. I like to think.
I do take a long time to make up my mind most of the time, especially when it concerns buying something. It's just difficult trying to take into account the price, quality, ingredients used, whether it suits your needs most or not. There are also times when I make a decision on impulse but that rarely happens.

3. I love food and cooking.
I do love food and cooking. My love for food is all the time but cooking, it depends on whether am I cooking for the sake of filling my hungry stomach or when I'm having all the time in the world to create something delicious, or to cook for friends. I do believe that food brings everybody together. Food is also one of my weak point. I don't know how many times have I been trick to going to someone's house for dinner and end up having to do work.

4.I'm clumsy and careless.
Yes. I totally agree with this. I hate it sometimes but this is how I am.

5. I'm an observer and sometimes critical.
I think I'm always too blur to notice anything. So, don't blame me for not being sensitive.

6. I don't like to jump into conclusion.
Agree. I want to see with my own eyes before believing anything. But I have a tendency to assume something. You can ask YY to tell you the story about the 2 spoons and fish which happened back in college if she still remembers it.

7. I'm healthy concious.
I think I'm not that health concious but I do try to watch my weight, the types of food which I eat, the amount of time I spend sitting at home and not exercising, etc.

8. I'm independent person.
I wished I am. I depend a lot on friends while I'm away from home and my family when I'm back. I would really want to be a steady driver so that I can go to more places on my own but still I'm too scared to drive alone. So, aim for this summer is to master my driving skills!

I don't know who to tag. Maybe anyone who has read this post. Maybe now you all have a bit more insight of how I think about myself.

Exam de-stress or should it be adding stress?

Before I start on my story about what happened after I've officially finished my exam on the 9th of June, I just couldn't resist from blogging about the food I ate in the past 2 days in Malaysia. It's not much, but it is just for the sake of making a few people who decided not to come back this summer jealous. Hehehehe.

First food I ate was noodles in fish head sup. The big bowl on the left cost only RM10 and it was enough to fill 4 person up. Cheap and nice, that's what I call a good bargain. The shop is located in Kepong which is near my house. So, anyone wants to try, I can offer to bring you there provided that I remember how to get there.

This morning's breakfast was Wan Tan Mee (1 ton of noodles, just joking. It just sounds the same). It was only eating it that I realised how much I miss it. RM 3.60.

Lunch: Chap Choi Fan (Mixed dishes with rice). It's self service where you get to choose any dishes from about 50 choices. I took 3 dishes including Ku Lou Yok - the reddish looking meat (it's pork coated with flour and fried before stirring in the tomato sauce), mushrooms (mixture of black mushroom and golden needle mushroom) and small Kai Lan (my favourite local vegetable). RM3.50.

It was accompanied by a cup of Soya Bean. RM 1.20. Dinner was always home cooked meals by my parents. Hehe. I wanted to help them out but they said don't steal the work from retired people.

After straying from the main topic for so long. It finally starts now.

Right after I finished Osce, I met up with F to go to town to get birthday presents for 2 persons who were getting old. It is always difficult trying to get Birthday gifts for people and we were practically going round and round in circles around town. I'm so happy that both of them liked the presents we chose.

After spending about 3 hours, we finally got the presents sorted. Stopped by Zara Furniture and saw a few really cute things:

Lego cutleries. Quite innovative. It does make arranging cutleries in an organised manner easy.

Another version of the cute cutleries

The shape is the typical glass where they serve Chinese tea in but they're just in different colours.

After getting the presents, the next task was to give them to the 2 person before I leave for my trip and before they go back to Malaysia. We managed to catch hold of one of them in town and F trick the other one by using Osce tips as a bait.

Met T and one of the Birthday girl, GM in town and we decided to make Sushi for dinner. At that time, I still need to start packing for my trip to Nice the next morning and start packing to move my things into storage. Hmmmm, don't ask me how I manage to do everything including making Sushi that night but all I can say was, it was really stressful!

We took about 3 hours to make the Sushi but the wait was worth it.

The sweet egg rolls were too small for filling on top of sushi, so, we decided to let it take over the role of seaweed to hold the salmon in place.

GM made some Japanese - Chinese soup fusion. Sorry, I cannot remember the name of it.

Tadaa! The sushi which we made. T was the best Sushi roller among us. She can be qualified to work at a Sushi bar.

I reached home around 12.30am that night. My flight to Nice was at 6.50am so I had to leave around 4.30am. Plus, I haven't even started packing! I guess you all have come to the conclusion that I didn't sleep that night, which is very true. Usually after exams, people usually relax and just laze around to de-stress, but for me on the other hand, I was prancing around town, made sushi, rushing to pack for my 3 day trip to Nice and for storage, move my things into storage before finally flying back to Malaysia for summer. Phew, that's a hectic lifestyle but it was all worth it.

My next entry will be about Nice and Monaco. Till then, take care.

Liverpool One and Albert Dock

Finally, after 3 weeks of hiatus due to exams and travelling, I'm back!

This is my first time blogging from Malaysia. The differences are:

• it's 6 am in the morning and surprisingly I'm awake (due to jetlag)
• it's really warm even with the fan blowing at me at full blast
• I'm finding that breathing takes a bit more effort with the heavy moisture in the air
• mosquitoes flying around and knowing that I've been bitten as my legs are itching at the moment.

Phew, life as a blogger in Malaysia is not easy.

My entry today starts from 3rd of June, the day I finished my papers for the exams. We were supposed to start worrying about Osce but at that point, everyone's reaction was, 'Osce? What Osce?'

All of us were really low on fuel and high in hungry after torturing our poor brains with EMQs for 2 hours. So, first stop was of course to refill. We had lunch at Tokyou which was a Thai-Malaysian-Japanese fusion restaurant.

From Chinese stir fried noodles to Japanese fried seaweed. They were delicious! I really liked the seaweed as I was expecting it to be soft but turned out that it was crunchy.

I ordered Salmon in Teriyaki sauce which was served on sizzling hotplate. The presentation was impressive. I could barely see through my foggy glasses. They fried the salmon first before pouring the sauce over it.

It is always nice eating with so many people as I got to taste a variety of food as they didn't mind sharing.After a really nice meal, we set off for Liverpool One. For those who are interested in dining at Tokyou, it's very near Chinatown, on the row of shops just before the arch on Berry Street.

Liverpool One

It will be officially open in September 2008 but everyone is already hyped up with its soft opening. My friend who went a few days before told me that even people from Manchester came to check it out.I really liked the place. It grouped all the shops in one place. One thing about UK, the shops, no matter how new they are will always be similar as they are chain stores. So, the only 'new' shop we have is Debenhams first outlet in Liverpool city centre. Even that was a chain store. I saw a new Apple store coming up but the shop is still in renovation.

There's a shop where you can make your own teddy and dress it up in really cute clothes and accessories. They even have shoes, glasses and Disney costumes custom made for teddy bears only. The price however, were more expensive than human infant clothes. So, unless you have extra money to spare, these teddy bears are a luxury. There's a big Goofy figure at Disney store as well.

Liverpool One made Albert Dock more accessible now as it connected Albert Dock to Church Street. (I hope I'm right on this as I'm really bad with street names and navigation)

Albert Dock

Albert dock is always so serene and beautiful. I've been here so many times with friends who came to visit as it is a not-to-be-missed tourist spot. It was always me showing people around and the last time I played the role of a tourist was 3 years back. So, this time, we decided that as true students studying in Liverpool, we have to re-enforce our knowledge of Liverpool thus we became tourists again for the visit this time around.

The Giant anchor in front of Maritime museum. There are no limit to the number of poses for photos that we can come up with.

The different shops at Albert Dock. My friends went crazy at the sweets shop. There were just too many sweets to choose from. Too bad, I'm not a big fan of sweets.

Solution to over-sleeping. Get the biggest and loudest alarm clock!

I think they do try so hard to make Crocs more appealing but unsuccessful.

The pigeons here are so lazy! Too lazy to even stand properly.

Below are just crazy photos we took at the Riveside walk.

There's always a reason why we're not doing modelling.

From Charlie Angles, shadow play to being scolded by a tall person trying to look taller. We seriously let our creativity run wild.It's not Elvis but someone else. I've forgotten who.Don't even ask me what is that thing.
I think this may be the most normal looking photo out of the rest.

We looked like this at the end of the day. At least we managed to relax and took Osce off our minds for half a day. Back to exam stress again.