:: footprintsallover ::

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

London 2012 Part Three

Happy mid-week! As I'm blogging this entry, it dawned upon me that it will be the boss's last day in the office tomorrow, as he will be heading back to LDN (after staying in Asia for 2 years) to take up an extended role. Leaving drinks tml night and we planned to get him drunk, so he can sleep his way through his flight on Friday morning, lol! Hopefully, I won't have to nurse another hangover on Friday.

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Read P1 & P2 here.

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We travelled to Cambridge, around 80km north of LDN, for a 3D2N sales conference.

I love being in the countryside, away from the tall buildings and be closer to nature. This is something that you can't experience in Singapore :(

We checked into a nice boutique hotel, The Varsity Hotel & Spa, located on the edge of the picturesque River Cam in the heart of Cambridge. Old school keys for the room :)

When I entered the room, I was delighted to see the old English cottage charm that the hotel has retained, especially love the wall-paper!

They even have a chest of drawers available for you to put your clothes. I can totally imagine myself staying here for a very long time.

Comes equipped with coffee & tea.

Our T-shirt & Welcome note placed in each room.

The view from my window ... I'm loving this place already :)

They even provide complimentary walking tours every Saturday at 2pm, lead by one of their experienced guides, taking guests on a tour of the historic sites of central Cambridge. So, take advantage of this if you're heading for a trip there!

The Varsity Hotel & Spa

Thompson's Lane (Off Bridge Street)

Cambridge CB5 8AQ

United Kingdom

Tel:+44 0 1223 30 60 30

Email: info@thevarsityhotel.co.uk

A change of clothes, before heading downstairs for buffet lunch.

Lunch consisted of sandwiches, wraps, salads and whats-not. The raspberry cheesecake dessert certainly tops my list of must-have desserts!

After a hearty lunch, we attended the first part of the conference ~ where we reviewed on our performance from the past year and the objective for the year ahead, as well as the product road-map. It was certainly good exposure for all of us, as we get first-hand information from the relevant department heads, allowing us to brainstorm on how we can introduce all these new functionalities to our clients.

We had a private room @ St John's College, but before that, drinks/catch up session at the reception area. When it was time for dinner, we were ushered into the room & boy, it felt like having dinner @ Hogwats! 4 rows of table were placed horizontally with a long table that joined all the tables at the end. The bosses sat at the end, just like how the head-masters sat in the movie :)

I found my place-card at the 1st table, but we didn't have a table tagged to the table, lol! Each table consisted of a good mixture of people from the 3 teams (AM, Product & Sales) across the different offices, so as to interact better with one another.

Graduation hats, which we all had to wear :)

Time to start off the 3-course meal that was prepared for us.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Jumbo Seafood @ East Coast

Met up with the Uni gang last Friday for dinner. As we enjoyed our experience at Jumbo Seafood (East Coast) during CNY, we decided to head back again with the Uni friends. As usual, the place was crowded on Fridays & we were shown upstairs for our table. They gave us a big table (for 10) even though there were only 6 of us.

Brought along my fave bottle of Riseling and Boss EK forgot to bring his red-wine contribution! So we had to settle for one bottle of wine & I wanted to ban him from drinking as punishment, lol!

Loving my whites more than ever :)

Scallop wrapped with yam ring, served with traditional sweet "ngoh hiang" sauce. Highly recommended!

Salted egg coated with succulent prawns, gave off a hint of spice & sweetness ~ not the best dish on the table.

You-tiao stuffed with cuttlefish paste, coated with sesame seeds. This was deep-fried to a perfect crisp & served with sweet peanut prawn paste. In fact, dipping this into their chilli paste makes this an addictive dish as well.

Seafood fried rice which wasn't anything fantastic, ordinary at its best.

Kenneth wanted to order satay & EK chided him for wanting to order satay @ a chinese restaurant. The irony is ... EK went on and ordered mee goreng, lol! This was the star dish so far, with the right flavours packed into a single dish :)

The arrival of the highlight for the night! Advertisement shoot, endorsed by dear Kenneth :)

The must-order chilli crab ~ stir-fried in rich savoury chilli gravy & served best with deep-fried man tous. It could be a bad day in the kitchen, for this didn't taste as good as the first time we came. Kinda disappointing as I had high expectations it :(

Buttery cream crabs for Yaozu, as he can't take too spicy stuff.

Pris "photo-bombing" in the pic while the 2 guys were totally oblivious to it.

Boss EK & his lady boss :p

with the ever accommodating Yaozu :) Interested parties can always drop me a liner!

How can I forget my dearest, right?

with the gossip-buddy, lol! We are still waiting for the new member to join the group .... Kenneth, you should know what to do, haha!

A side note: EPS parking is now implemented at the carpark, with per-minute charging (as of 20th March 2013)

Jumbo Seafood @ East Coast Park

Blk 1206, East Coast Parkway #01-07/08

East Coast Seafood Centre

Singapore 449883

Tel: 6442 3435

Monday, March 25, 2013

Forty Hands and Ben & Jerry's

While sorting out files on my laptop (over the weekend), I was surprised to see a folder "Pics from Pus Pus", which contained pics that we took when we first bought the camera. Boy, there were a lot of pictures inside the folder, so here I am starting on my 1st entry for the week. Also, to get me distracted on packing my bags for KL tomorrow. A lazy Sunday afternoon hangout with the Uni gang @ a cafe which I've been wanting to check out - Forty Hands! In case you're wondering why the pictures in this post look different from the rest, these pictures were taken a long time ago when we first bought Pus Pus. While the pictures looked OK on-screen, the dimensions looked kinda weird when putting in on the blog. It took me quite a while to figure this out, given that I usually blog way behind time.

A sunny day out @ Yong Siak Street. This old neighbourhood exudes a certain charm that you can't find in the other new estates.

Bright cheery colours welcomed us as soon as we came out of the car!

The place was extremely packed even though it was nearly 1pm! We had to search high and low for a table of 5.

Leecher entertaining himself while waiting for the rest to come.

Old-school milk tins used to contain sugar. I'm a sucker for all things that reminds me of my schooling days, lol!

With the help of the store's assistant, we managed to grab a table in the backyard of the shop. They even put a "Reserved" sign on the table. The backyard was very cramped, with no aircon, which didn't make our stay enjoyable given that the weather was rather humid.

Trying out different modes of the new camera while waiting for the guys to place their orders.

Coffee VS Tea, which would you prefer?

Love birds, lol!

Kenneth being solo today - why nv bring GF out?

Leecher be his substitute then, lol!

The food were all served in old-school looking dishes - scoring average on presentation & food, but achieved high marks for the nostalgic feel. It was said that Forty hands served one of the best coffee around ~ I'm not a coffee lover, but those around me did not heap praises either. As for me, I'll say skip the brunch and head here just for pastry, like their signature ta sau bao (which was sold out!)

Forty Hands
78 Yong Siak Street, #01-12
Singapore 163078
Closed on Mondays

Deep in discussion on where we should head next. We all wanted to escape the scorching sun, but the guys spent a long time discussing where to go next, lol! Sometimes guys are more troublesome than girls.