July 4th weekend!!

Yay! I got Monday off for July 4th weekend.. nothing like celebrating America's Independence in England!!

Yeah right. Sadly no long weekend for me. No hot dogs, no bbqs, no parades, no fireworks. So do people take Monday off too for 4 day weekend?

Although, there is the England Football Match vs. Portugal to look forward too. Go England!

Brit-a-fino

Thanks to Chicachan, I finally met a Filipino with a british accent. Sweet. Listening to him speak, I tried really hard to record his voice in my head. I think I need to hang out with him more so I can talk like him. =)

Over dinner he started to speak Tagalog and I freaked out because a fob accent came out of his mouth too! So cool.

Now I need to meet a female version.

Pimms and Primrose

Finally enjoyed my first beautiful weekend in London by sipping a glass of Pimms on top of Primrose hill. Primrose Hill overlooks central London and chllin on top and reading a book was a good way to enjoy the beautiful weather and enjoy my first glass of Pimms.

Just like sipping afternoon tea, drinking Pimms is another British thing I wanted to experience. Pimms is regarded as a summer drink amongst the British and has an important place in popular drinking culture. I'm all about immersing myself in drinking culture as my slowly growing beer belly can attest.

Pimms was invented in the 1840s by James Pimm, who was the owner of a bar in London and created this mix to aid in digestion. I have heard and read about Pimms before, so it was time to satisfy my curiosity. After having a few glasses, I interpreted it as British Sangria. Mainly because its a fruity drink with a bunch of crap left over that you poke at once your done drinking it. Crap = cucumbers, lemons, limes, strawberries, mint leaves. But the difference between Pims and real Sangria is that after a few glasses of Pimms I wasn't falling over in a drunken stupor or yelling my enduring love for one of my ex-girlfriends as I'm famous for doing so when I'm drunk. No, in fact, I didn't feel like it was very alcoholic at all. Perhaps this is a good thing.

Roadtrip!

I know this is non-London or Europe related.. but blogworthy I guess since people have been asking about "Philly."

Yes, we did get to see Philly as I mentioned in my earlier posts. It was probably the most spontaneous roadtrip I've ever been on. Primarily because we didn't decide to go to Philly until all of us were sitting in the car figuring out what we should do. Seizing the day, without any prior directions or plans, we decided to make it out to Philly leaving DC in the early afternoon! You would think careful planning would be needed, but the best roadtrips are the ones that aren't planned! Just get in the car and go!


I must say roadtrips are the best time to bond with people. And I'm glad we went since I got to bond with my cousins and sis. Very memorable indeed. We did have the Philly Cheesesteak at Ishkabibble which is known to be the favourite for the locals. I promised pics for readers that happen to love food. So here they are!



The Philly Cheesesteak was so good. What was interesting for me was that the bread that it came with was so really tasty. Its not something I notice usually when having a cheesesteak, but this time it made a difference! I'm proud to say that I did finish the whole thing! Who knows when I was going to have the chance to eat another one! Last time I checked there weren't many places selling Philly Cheesesteaks here!

We did end up spending about 6 hours in Philly walking up and down South Street then making it to the steps where Rocky ran up in his movie. We all took turns pretending we were Rocky by running up the steps!

I did have "a fix" again. It was nice but wish it lasted longer.

High Five!!

I love watching sports with a big crowd of people. It could be at the actual stadium or even at a neighborhood bar. I remember watching the likes of the Cubs in the Playoffs in Wrigleyville or watching the Illini make a run at the NCAA Tournament at a neighborhood bar. Everyone is cheering for the same team and its so much fun.

Well, yesterday was my first time watching a Football (Soccer) Game at a pub. I went out with my English coworkers to watch the World Cup game - England v. Sweden at a nearby pub.

I must say, it was a lot of fun. It didn't start off that great since the pub we went to had problems with their digital feed! We all ended up leaving the pub to go to another!

The funny part that I experienced the whole night was when England finally went up 1-0 with Joe Cole's amazing goal from 35 yards out!

The pub went crazy.. Everyone was screaming and jumping up and down. Pretty interesting sight with the stereotype of Brits being reserved!

I rejoiced with the first goal as well and was cheering loudly alongside my coworkers!

But then I experienced an awkward moment.

Upon celebration it was very natural for me to get my "High Five" Hand all ready to make contact with another "High Five" Hand. I got my hand all ready, and smiled and look around anxiously to make contact with another Brit to celebrate with a traditional High Five! My hand was half way up to make contact with another awaiting hand, but it never happened. I felt like a complete idiot! =) I scanned the pub to see if anyone else was giving each other high fives..nope.. no one else. No high five's anywhere!!

So I turned my high five hand and turned it to a fist and pumped into the air in celebration to hide my awkwardness. =)

As the game played on I even asked my coworker if anyone gave high five's to each other.. he laughed at me in amusement. Apparently not. Perhaps its an American thing.

In any case, once England scored its second goal, a header by Gerrard, that same coworker called out my name, and with his hand extended in the air, we gave each other a high five!

Yeah!! Good times!!

I'm getting World Cup fever! USA v. Ghana tomorrow and England v. Ecuador on Sunday!

Time Flies When you are Having Fun

My visit back to the States happened so quickly. For some reason time goes by so much faster when I'm back in the States than it does here in the UK. Maybe the saying "Time Flies when you are having fun." has some truth to it.

First, apologies for not meeting up with some of you! Maybe it was bad planning on my part, or poor communication but I simply ran out of time. The first few days were dedicated to family and then I was out of town for the next three, which technically left 3-4 days of social free time! But to those who I did see, nice seeing you guys again. It was nice catching up.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I love my friends and family back home. Maybe its because I've known most of you all my life and have that "chemistry", but its been tough finding that "kind" of friendship here in the UK and have the ability to "be myself" around people. I think that once I do find that "kind" of friendship here maybe the saying "Time Flies when you are having fun." will hold true here as well.

Dropping by..

In the interest of my devoted blog readers, I wanted to make a few quick observations. (And pls. forgive me for my random streams of thought)

My appreciation of family and friends became more evident this weekend with the many festivities leading to my sister's graduation from nursing school. I'm so proud of my sister's accomplishment! She's going to help save lives!

Laughter
My sister and I are very similar when it comes to our sense of humour. I spent a lot of time hanging out with her friends this weekend and I found that my set and her set of friends are very similar! That same goofy, corny, self-deprecating, off the wall, sense of humour I know and love are truly evident in her circle of friends so I fit right in. Then I realized that this is the type of "group" of people I need to meet in London. They've got to exist somewhere!

Food Portions
Bigger here definitely. Its really something I'm not used to. I've gone to different restaurants since coming back and every meal I've ordered had a large amount of food!

Obesity
With the size of food portions that are served as I've stated, I can only imagine the extent of the problem. I've really noticed that there ARE a lot of more overweight people here!

East Coast
Piano Bar in Georgetown with a drunk scary guy coming up to us with the opening line... "Are you guys from Japan?" then proceeds to put his arm around my shoulder...not sure a Brit would ever do that!

Tomorrow - (the 13th) should be an interesting. Will I have a taste of the Philly Cheesesteak????

Pub Planning

So I was having a drinks with a couple of coworkers and we were talking about all the trips we've taken so far and trips we want to take in the future. Then Amsterdam came up and how good of a time it was.

All of a sudden this whole idea of flying to Amsterdam that same night came up. Perhaps it was then few pints we had and the whole spontaneity of it all, but we were all determined to leave that weekend.

We looked at all the possibilities. Leaving that Friday night or leaving early Saturday morning. Then we found it. $35 (excluding taxes and fees of course!) round trip leaving Sat morning and coming back Monday morning. Would we buy it?

Why not!

I got to see/do things I didn't see the first couple of times I went which is always a good thing. There were also things I got to see/do again this third time which is always a good thing as well!

The most painful bit was waking up 4:30AM to catch a flight back to London Monday morning to go straight to work.

With this being my third visit, I'd say I still enjoyed the second visit rather than the third. But the fact that it was planned all last minute after a few pints makes it that much more memorable.

Movie Marathon

Friends back home know what this is. It’s the art of hopping theater to theater at your local AMC or Lowes. Not that I’ve done it before, I’m just giving it a nice definition. =)

Anyway, if I were to take place in this activity, I think it would be so much easier to do back home. Why? Well mainly because each theater in America has this nice LED sign in front of it telling you critical information such as:

1. The name of the movie
2. The time its showing

So after the first movie you watch you can walk around and see if there is a movie you are interested in and maybe “stop in” for a quick preview. Not that you would watch the whole movie or anything. =)

So after paying about 13 quid (about 22 dollars) to see one movie (X-Men 3) with a coworker, we decided to justify the price we paid and try to catch a “quick preview” of Mission Impossible 3.

The problem: No LED signs. There were about 5 different floors in the movie theater each showing different movies. And you can’t tell what theater number a movie is playing in unless you have a ticket. This poses significant problems if you so choose to “preview” a certain movie.

The strategy: walk around aimlessly and follow people to see what theater they are going to. That’s the only way to find out if another movie is starting soon. We also guessed that the older movies would be playing in the lower floors since most of the people that entered the theater proceeded upstairs to what we believed were the more recent films.

Using this deductive reasoning and a careful eye we followed a crowd of people to one of the theaters. We looked all shady standing around having no purpose but to sneak in another theater. The funny thing about this is that you don’t know what movie is showing until about a half hour of commercials and movie trailers.

The biggest fear was that it would be the same movie we had just seen. But I noticed it had a different set of movie trailers so it looked promising.

Waiting patiently, the movie finally started. Yes, we were right! Out of all the movies and theaters we had guessed correctly!

Did we pay another 13 quid because we snuck in another theater to watch a movie? Sure. Of course we did. About $45 to watch 2 movies? Who wouldn’t? =)