^^: May 2014

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Swedish Cafes

Swedish food is really quite pricey here, and I didn't want to break the momentum of preparing my own meals. Hence I actually hardly ever eat out. If I counted the number of times, it might just take two hands to count them (maybe three, at most).

I met up with Sanna (my Swedish friend) earlier last week at Vette Katten. It's quite a traditional Swedish cafe, and its customers are mainly retirees/older women come here for fika.

Sanna got me a princess cake as a belated birthday cake. Sweden has three main pastries - cinnamon buns, semlars (almond cream bun), and princess cakes. In my opinion, this is the best of the three :). So I'm really glad that Sanna introduced me to it, even though I've already been here for four months :P.

It's a cream cake, with a raspberry base, and wrapped with a marzipan cum sugar layer. It doesn't have the strong marzipan taste though, which is good.

We just sat in the cafe and talked and ate. From Sanna's childhood home, to my trips, and what she plans to do in the years to come. It's interesting how she keeps her options open for the future - job, family, where to go/live etc, as compared to how I already perceive what I'm going to be doing.

Also, I need to take more photos WITH Sanna. Don't seem to have much of a habit to take photos with people heh.

Monday, May 19, 2014

London Day 4 - Because Harry Potter needs a Part 2

Just as how Deathly Hallows was split into 2 parts, my visit shall be in 2 parts.

Got a cup of butterbeer because this is one of the 2 (soon to be 3 if you count Japan) places in the world where you can find butterbeer. The other being in Orlando Florida, which I'm not going to go to soon enough. Basically it tastes like root beer macciato (vanilla cream with a bit of butter, like in Gongcha). It was really quite nice after all that walking around inside the first part of the studios. We took 3 hours just for the first part, although the tour guide said that the average time people take for the WHOLE thing was 3 hours.

Standing on the bones of my father

A little bit of an anticlimax there, but we had tea in before Tom Riddle's grave. Joven bought us cupcakes from Hummingbird bakery the day before and they were really OHSOGOOD.

Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard

Knight to E5

Turns out that Buckbeak is real! The animatronics team actually made a hippogriff that could move!

Diagon Alley

Well before any CGI or filming could be done, they had artists to 'design' the concepts of the movie. There were walls of these paintings and you could see how the concepts progressed, which is really cool.

Durmstrang ship, but not a real ship. So was the Beaubaton carriage

Hogwarts in the day

Hogwarts at night.

Sadly, Hogwarts wasn't a real castle.

In total, there were about 4000 people involved in the production of the 8 movies, and each and every one of them has their name written on Ollivander's wand box in this room. It's crazy just to see how much effort went into the movies, and it's no wonder the credits of each movie is so so longggg.

Emma Watson

Tom Felton

At night, we rushed back to get our luggage, have dinner, and catch the Phantom of the Opera. Luckily we arrived 5 minutes before the play started, which gave us just about enough time to deposit our bags in a room before catching the play.

Phantom was awesome in so many ways, even though I was slightly disappointed that the Phantom wasn't Geronimo Rauch. No matter, Scott Davies was splendid anyway. The band was very very tight. The sets were bigger and better than I had expected heh. It's no wonder it's still a favourite after so many years.

Well that's the end of London. We caught a bus to the airport to catch a flight the next morning, slept over in the airport (which sucks as usual. I hate sleeping over in airports), and got back to Stockholm because I had class and we needed a pit stop before Paris.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

4 months

There is some truth in saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder. It has been exactly 4 months since I've left Singapore, and there's a large part of me that wishes that I'm back home now.

I do enjoy my time here, but really, this isn't my life. Singapore is home. Home will always take up an irreplaceable part of my life, which is why it's so hard to ignore for such a long time.

Why did I extend my stay?

Saturday, May 17, 2014

London Day 4- EXCITEZZZZZ

LET ME BEGIN BY SAYING THAT DAY 4 WAS THE BEST DAY OF ALL MY DAYS OF TRAVELLING

HARRY POTTER STUDIOSSSS!!!

Going to HP studios was like rekindling all the feels from my childhood and teenage years really, not that they were very long ago. But Harry Potter has been in my live for more than 10 years. I've read all the books, and watched the movies a gazillion times (Part 1 & 2 more than 10 times each, definitely). I even remember memorising some of the lines in some of the movies :P. Ok, quite the HP geek.

I have so much that I would like to remember this, so there's got to be more than one post for this trip :P

Ooooh look at Draco and Harry when they were still cute ^^. Draco was my eye candy in the first 2 movies

Cupboard under the stairs

OOH WE'RE GOING TO ENTER HOGWARTS

WELCOME TO HOGWARTS!!

Hufflepuff, the loser house

The only reason why Ravenclaw was not a loser house as well was because of Cedric Diggory. The second costume on the right was worn by the actor before he decided to sparkle with orange eyes.

The most favourited, GRYFFINDORRR. Check out the left most costume - which was what 11 year old Daniel Radcliffe wore!! Hmm, he didn't grow much, did he?

And now my house, because I'm not a muggle nor a mudblood, SLYTHERINNNN

Tom Felton's costume is on the right -steals a sample of his DNA to clone him-

The Yule Ball!

The ceiling wasn't real :(. I always thought and hoped that the castle was a real castle, and that I could visit it someday. Oh well, I've come close enough.