Cotswold Falconry

A day in the Cotswolds, learning interesting facts on birds of prey, being birds that hunt for food primarily on the wing, using their keen vision. Most these birds glide across the sky using aerodynamics rather than flapping their wings which made it quite spectacular to watch from the ground as they soar 20metres up to the sky.

Chester

Chester has the reputation of being the "English medieval city par excellence", much of the architecture of central Chester looks medieval and some of it is. But by far the greatest part of it, including most of the black-and-white buildings, is Victorian, a result of what Pevsner termed the "black-and-white revival". The city's central shopping area includes its unique Rows or galleries (two levels of shops) which date from medieval times and are believed to include the oldest shop front in England. The Rows are unique in Britain. They consist of buildings with shops or dwellings on the lowest two storeys. The shops or dwellings on the ground floor are often lower than the street and are entered by steps, which sometimes lead to a crypt-like vault. Those on the first floor are entered behind a continuous walkway, often with a sloping shelf between the walkway and the railings overlooking the street.

Some cute animals from Chester Zoo :)

Polo & Prom

Busy weekend indeedy. We left the newly opened Buddha Bar early in order to be in full form for the polo the following morning. But gave in to the temptation of watching Why Why Love to the early hours of Saturday. The NG cuts are so hilarious!

I can see why people say polo is an addictive sport, when I become rich and famous I will be looking to have my own farm and my own polo ponies! We learnt the basic tatics, and it was not for long until we mounted our own ponies and played games of chukkas. It was all very slow game, as the ponies strolled the grounds and us attempting to reach for the all too small 3 inch ball with our polo sticks. Love my pony, named Taxi!

Evening was spent eating at Matsuri and clubbing at Aura, a very cool club!

Sunday was devoted to watching Lang Lang and Mark Yu at the BBC Prom. I can't belive I cried at the end...tears just started streaming down my face. But I thought he was brilliant, maybe with bit exaggerated emotions, but very entertaining two and a half hours indeed.

Innocent Fete & Redbull Air Race

Saturday was the weather for smoothie binging! We even had a sneaky preview for the new recipe to come - some mixture of nettle, spinach, kiwi and banana.
Looks like innocent is also trying to take tropicana's market share by producing orange juice, which was also our litre of suvenior given to us on our departure.
Managed to win a book of postcard from the lonely planet stand, by putting three landmarks correctly onto the European map. Carman came close to the free present too but had decided to dismiss my suggestion of Czech Republic, which was amazingly correct! I cannot believe I actually remembered the place!

So many cute babies all over the park - shame i can't have one with blonde hair and blue eyes...ai...
The fete was a perfect starting point for testing my new canon 450D! Loving my new toy!

Red bull air race was adrenaline-rushing-amazing! Wish I could be tailing the planes flying between pylons. You can still have plenty of fun not knowing a thing of what is going on and how the point scoring works. My camera lense looked positively weak against other one metre long ones, but I am content for now~~yayyy loving the new camera :D

Ascot!

A super sunny and super hot day at the race course! I managed to win the first race by betting a grand total of two pounds on Humungous, at the odds of 7 to 1! With no prior racing knowledge the decision is simply made upon the jockey's kit colour - which was very much in season!
Boxi and her friend was on a massive winning streak - by placing two pounds on a 50 to 1 horse that managed to beat 26 other horses they managed to get over 100 quid!! I can see why if someone has no self control can end up betting their entire savings on this adrenaline rushing activity.
So tired...from having on 4 hours of sleep from previous night. This is going to be short blog. Fun weekend indeed!

Henley Music Festival

Going back to Henley with Andy certainly brings back nostalgics, after all it was where I used to go with her for exeat weekends!
Literally 10 years later, we return to Henley (having nearly missed the train, running bare footed through paddington) for the music festival.
Slightly disappointed by the supposedly 3 star Michelin food, we nevertheless indulged ourselves in the lovely Lauren Perrier honey champagne, ultra brute and new world red.
Mrs Guo has such a wonderful character, and it is definitely a different experience to be amongst the top classes of Taiwanese people. Everywhere I look I can identify Marc Jacob, Fendi handbags, Chanel and Dior earrings. Everyone seems to have some form of tie with either the ex president or the current president. It is definitely a different world to what I am used to.
Haley Westenra is my new love! At the age of 21 she sings amazingly, and to be pitch perfect means she doesn't sing a note out of tune! Will definitely look into her albums at some point. She is apparently top selling young artist in Japan, a quick wiki-ing shows she has also released a single in Japanese...that should be quite interesting.
One thing I have noticed - nevermind how strong an artist has during their colloquial speech, when it comes to singing they lose all accents previously owned and just sing with proper English - why is that??

Butterfly House

Such a busy weekend!
First of all, in denial of one's age, we decided to visit the Butterfly House outside the Natural History Museum. Built for age 3+, one must first walk through this giant tent made in the shape of a caterpillar into an artificial maze made out of posters. Reading fun facts on butterflies (catipillars have 4000 muscles comopared to human of 629) we collected stamps along our way until the entrace of this greenhouse.
Having marched into this not-so-large green house it was a truely pleasant suprise to see so many different types of tropical butterflies flying around. There were giant moths the size of my palm! Got very snappy happy taking pictures of the butterflies, and nearly beaten up this foreign kid who was trying to kick and stamp the butterflies on the ground. Talking about ill education of children. I would so have had a word with the parents if only they could understand English and what I was muttering.
Being London Architectural Month we quickly went to the V&A and saw Zara Hadid's chandelier, the beautiful herbiscus in full bloom and was unfortunately short of time to see the China Deisgn Now exhibition.
So want to be a designer!!

Working hard, and no travel :(

My travel guide has been abandoned for such a long while. Partially due to laziness and partially due to lack of travelling.

The speed of ticking the countries travelled off the list has slowed with study and work but alas, don't despair as I reangle my travelling guide to more UK based adventures. Hopefully we will not lose too much glamour compared to previous. Let's wait and see.

So, how am I going to catch up on the previous year lost...haha, the lazy way ofcourse. See below snippets of excellence :)

May bank holiday at tate modern
Saw this picture in a story book once, general concensus is that such thing does not exsist. And behold, that after when I went for a stroll look what I found...
Below zero ice bar with yummy vodka mixer
Cans festival
Henry Moore at Kew Gardens

Fancy waking up first thing in the morning, trying to cross the first road of the day without getting run over and coming across a giant evil hand perched on top of the building on the road opposite. You think I am talking fiction, well look at that!

Brighton

After 10 days and 10 sleepless nights of slaving over financial maths, derivatives & options, accounting, regulatory markets, economics, asset management and equity research, I am finally free from my engagement and free to PARTY!!
This working style is definitely in sync with my motto - work hard and play harder! Straight after the exam comes the pub drinks on Monday, London city orientation and Tower 42 on Tuesday, birthday party on Wednesday, Paintballing on Thursday and Graduate drinks on Friday.

And then comes Saturday - instead of getting a good rest - we went to Brighton! It was a beautiful day, and even though everyone got up at 8am it was just nice to get out of the city and be at the seaside before midday. The sunny day really cheered us up, and with a stunning local tourguide we managed to visit the royal pavilion, brighton pier AND shopped for two pairs of shoes at the Laines before eating at Moshi Moshi, voted top 50 Japanese restaurants in UK. Such a relaxing day~~~I love brighton!

Stonehenge & Bath - A Day at Leisure

Today is a gift - that's why it's called the PRESENT ^_^