English

Now I have to blog about this. I am increasingly finding it difficult, tiring and frustrating to speak in complete sentences (i.e. proper English). Hahaha....I find this actually quite funny because do you know how I get my release? I HAVE to meet up with Singaporeans/Malaysians to banter in Singapore English or else I'll go mad.

For example, 'Can ah?/cannot meh?' seems so much easier on the tongue than 'Would it be possible to...' Maybe I've been speaking terrible English all this while and no one dared to say a word to me (friends, this is the time to let me know), or I've never really been conscious of the way I speak. Even in Australia, I spent most of my time with Singaporeans/Malaysians so I wasn't particularly aware of my language. Now that I'm the only 'non-native' (my sister would roll her eyes at this) English speaker in the office, my spoken English does sound awfully bad in the sense that it doesn't seem 'correct' for some reason. Mind you, it's not the accent, but the sentence construction.

Another thing I realised - American words. I keep saying the word 'pants' when I mean trousers. Never ever use pants here when you mean trousers, because pants means underwear in this part of the world. Side-walk (Am) vs pavement. Thongs (Aus) vs flip-flops. You get the picture. And there is no 'flat white' (coffee) in this part of the world.

The supermarkets are quite quintessentially English sounding in my opinion: Waitrose, Marks and Spencers, Sainsbury('s?). The others are Tesco and Asda.

I've also been watching Gordon Ramsay's show on the TV - the 'F' word. It's great - I passed his restaurant Claridges in Mayfair and he's got a new pub in Limehouse which I want to go to at some stage.

Hmm...what else happened. Wimbeldon mens' final is over with Federer winning it for the fifth time. I'm off to a picnic jazz thingy on the 21st. I've booked tickets to see Harry Connick Jr perform at the Royal Albert Hall in November. Car bombs were found in Piccadilly Circus and Parklane two weeks ago. I still walked around the west end on the anniversary of the 7th July train bombings. My shipment from Singapore is going to be delivered on Thursday afternoon. I think I'm going to catch the Lion King &/or Phantom in one of the theatres here. I haven't seen a movie for ages, I think I'm going to catch one, but an adult ticket is prohibitively expensive (12 pounds in Leicester Square).

Hmm...what else...ah yes - pronouncing names of the places around here. How do you pronounce:

Southwark
Leicester Square
Grosvenor Place
Edgware Road
Westminster
Greenwich
Debenhams
Graham
Tottenham Court Road

I'll give you the answers in the next post!

Back on the internet!

Hi everyone! I'm finally back on the internet after being disconnected for one month! It took so long just to get the telephone line connected and an internet connection set up...but it's good to be back!

Le Tour de France held its prologue leg in London today. I went to Trafalgar Square and there were two huge screens set up where you could see the race going on, and I walked to Buckingham Palace which was part of the route and the picture on the left was taken just outside the palace.

The weather today was nice and warm, the sun was out and it was great to be able to walk around without an umbrella! Everyone was out - St James' Park was packed with people lying on the grass watching the Tour de France on the giant screens and catching some rays. This was such an improvement over my Wimbeldon washout. For those of you who don't know - I went to Wimbeldon last Saturday and it rained the whole time I was there and I didn't even see a single ball being played! All I saw was a plastic sheet over the grass and rain pelting down! I'm going to send in my ticket for a refund....

The Live Earth concert thing was also going on in Wembley stadium. I went to Southbank and walked along the river. Walked across the Millenium bridge thingy, took pictures at London Bridge (which is not Tower Bridge). Went to Borough Market to walk around, eat scallops, eat sausages and just browse. It's very much like Queen Victoria market in Melbourne - brings back good memories of my time in Melbourne. Then walked along The Strand to Covent Garden to browse again....lots of buskers out, and people lounging in the cafes.

Hope tomorrow's weather is going to be as good as today's!