Solidifying my insides and learning to trust myself.  That means no more shifting the blame for decisions made or decisions floated upon.  On the path to discovering my place in a world with options.  And thankfully so.  Time waits not for those who don’t drink tea, sadly.   

Missed my flight, scare the shit out of clem and vivpoo, hopped onto the next one.  get held up in heathrow by fog in amsterdam and so does yuen, at gatwick.get to our boat and went out for a delicious meal at rembrandt square, in a bar hidden away from the main square, served up some gorgeous and interesting mix of dutch and world fusion food.  Seafood bisque with wasabe cream went together awesomely, my moroccan tajine was absolutely fabulous, so was yu-yu’s steak, clem’s surprise dish of the day,  and viv’s whatever food she had that i’ve forgotten.  muscat was great, and so were the brown sugar lollipops, until i got to the liquid centre which i swear was pure ammonium!  Vile! 

 Szmululewicz Cafe- Restaurant 

Bakkersstraat 12 (bij het Rembrandtplein)

Tel: 020-620 28 22

www.szmulewicz.nl

Went to barney’s coffeeshop, with the awesome paintings and crazy music videos… and then to Escape, a really SHIT club, in the search of some trance.  Found alot of funky house and alot of bad dressers, and a strange guy who said my hair was lovely when I was at my 3-day crisis point.   dirt rules.  Saturday - Albert Cuypmarkt, best!  esp at the end of the market, the frites shop.  heaven!  Buy chocs, figs, lychees, freshly made caramelley waffle biscuit things, Sunday picnic on the canal tour boat, trying not to fall asleep…anne frank’s house, and dinner at another local hideohut, where viv had pancakes and i had apple juice and a sandwich.   It was a breakfasty sort of dinner!  Back to London for a quiet but lovely Christmas with Beth, Aunty Thomas, Del and Viv.   (ps. Ken Livingstone, you’re a total ass for stopping all forms of public transport on Xmas day.  get off your planet and onto this one, beeyatch!) 

Thurs
Junior Doc’s Christmas Party at Res 12! Mulled wine, too many mince pies, and an insane playlist!

Fri
normal work day on 2 hours’ sleep and lots of tea.
Sat
on-call 8-8pm –>train to london –> cargo with the crew! Tinseltown after, as usual :)
Sun
Brunch at S&M cafe, Spitalfields. Bricklane Sunday market roaming!

Back to the hospital, leave for Amsterdam with Vivpoo, Yu-yu and Clem on Fri, and then its Xmas!

Blimey. Merry Xmas everyone!

Fri
Revisiting the 90s with yu yu and yu tube til birds start chirping.
Sat
Brunch with new kid on the bloc Tom
Bumping into Nigel while tucking into a Raclette.Bumpling into Adrian while meandering the mean streets of Borough Market, had a speedy geek sesh on cameras, split.
Shakespeare’s globe theatre free of charge. quick tip: feign innocence!
Walked along the river to ogle at the crack in the floor of the tate. Culprit: A columbian artist Doris Salcedo. Title: Shibboleth.

Steal a peek of St Paul’s interior. (the bits you don’t have to pay for)
hard drive data recovery/daylight robbery at tott ct road. They tell me my external HDD is 90% gone. I die a little bit inside.
Traipsing all of London’s Zara and Reiss branches via London’s backstreets in the search of the perfect coat. The search continues.
Milkshake and Orange juice to recharge and refuel.
Daytona and Time crisis at the Troc!
/end marathon at Trafalgar Square.
A proud moment in history: All this walking in heels! And, i think i got skinny.

muppet moments: pouring coffee into my bag. getting a huge piece of carpet stuck onto my shoe.

Royston Tan’s 4:30 at the ICA with Robin
Retro bar, Charing X. A well hidden bar with a difference! I liked that they played Morrissey. It was sprawled with magazines such as “boys” and other LGB paraphernalia.
Shoreditch’s Kick Bar/Trafik/Tinseltown with yu yu, G, Smiley, Yosh and Lex for a liver training regime. Fun with squirty mayo bottles at Tinseltown, at the expense of G’s face. Haha!

Sun
heathrow airport. parents touch down from Frankfurt after an hour’s delay due to strong winds. I ring them saying i’m in town, sorry can’t make it to the airport to pick them up. I get major stick frm mum and she hangs up on me. And i wait at the arrival gates,they spot me straight away and we burst out in laughter. Haha!! This is for the 293845 times they’ve pranked me. The expression on their faces - priceless!
Rent-a-car to Four seasons duck at Bayswater.
Driving, Stepdad falling asleep at the wheel, driving on the shoulder at 30mph/swerving/etc!!! Got lost, got on the right track, fluked it abit, got to Gizzlingham.

So freakin knackered and wide awake at 5am. what the freakin f***.

Just the solution to an ever-merging string of weekends - a chronicle, so no one weekend is forgotten by the brain of Cheryl (that’s me, by the way), stuffed so full of knowlege, wisdom and processing power that mere logging of events has to forgivably take a back seat. Let’s just say I support the efficient use of technology and processor units-of-operation.

Since this is going to be a long entry I expect thine eyes to glaze across the following passage without taking any notice and in that knowlege I shall rest assured my narcissistic journal writing be mostly private.
+++

Pizza making with Yu yu!
Yu yu decides to make pizza after a hard week at work. Abstentees: Beth and Gareth. All the week’s stresses have been released into the dough and it has been kneaded to a silken pulp. Rise, o fair dollop, in the privacy of the boiler cupboard. Roll. We then offloaded the entire kitchen fridge onto these glorious dough dishes, and baked the hell out of them. My super thin pizza rises exponentially due to the overzealous addition of those cute little yeast granules by an overzealous pizza pusher.

Lord of the rings. I found the entire fellowship of the ring an epic (beautifully filmed) comedy, due to the fact that I’d watched this

before ever watching any cinematised Tolkien. Agad, a trilogy of Elijah’s Wood venturing into the buttcrack of doom to destroy the ring. Ouch.

Oriental City, Edgeware. Ian introduces me to Oriental city, a place I should have long visited. We join David and Brian for a feast at the food court, where I had Chai Dau Kway (Fried carrot cake with egg and Chai por) which was gorgeous but slightly salty. A thick Chendol (Coconut milk with starch noodles and palm sugar) to wash it down with. They say, your most sinful dish should be breakfast. So it was! I was one bean sprout away from regurgitating onto my new aquaintences.

Irish Andy and Anita’s birthday at a new cocktail bar by the name of Hidden Julep, at London Bridge. Present: Beth, Tom, Yu yu, Angela, Kevin, Rishi, Bivu and a heap of familiar names and faces from the GKT massive. I trigger happy with my XA1 that i “want to run a roll of film through before ebaying it off”. The outcome of triggering happy shall be shared with you as soon as I de-idiotise myself. More later. Idiocy of such magnitude deserves its own blog entry. The joint birthday party was great fun, especially so after four vodka martinis, when house music became less of an issue with my house-averse self. Twirl.

Before crashing out at Yu’s, finish off the gorgeous Beef rendang from the makcik at O-city. 101% mindblowing flavour!

Singapore short films, curated by Boo Jun Feng, at the Singapore High Commission. It was an interesting showcase of eight short films, and a great opportunity to contemplate the growing attention that Singaporean film is receiving from the rest of the world. I support! I especially liked Zo Gang by Jacen Tan and The Mole, by Victric Thng which everyone agreed was very Tim Burton.

After some chilling with Angela, Tom and Yu we decide to leave him to his new (gorgeous!) guitar and head our seperate ways. Tom to Warwick, Angela to East Dulwich, and myself to Gillingham. Rain.

Derik charts the trip on googlemaps!

by AHTZAZ HASSAN

Cheryl laying into the susan girl’s yearbook entry and the people on the next table laughing

Misbah explaining the logbook page, “it’s meant to be funny”

Learning that when moroccans get together they like to clap

That random girl saying to assad and me “u guys don’t look like doctors”

My getting ready to grab misbah’s ass just in case we bumped into her high wyc friends again

Nabeela not knowing how to get to her own house

Misbah not letting me drive above 25mph

Assad trying to convert cheryl, “u know you’ll go to hell right?”

You guys taking photos in the back and me trying to work out where the hell all these speed cameras were

The chindian going all training day on my paki ass and getting her boys to do me in as I was leaving the estate

Good times

Have fun at ur graduation ball tonight, congratulations again doctors!

by ASSAD PASHA

so much fun without any drugs in sight (maybe sheesha)- i had a good time u lot…

highlights: cheryl running bak to sheesha spot 2 finish the last drop of tea & nabeela about to pee herself laughing;

misbah bumpin into her high wyc rudie-hijabi mate resulting in me “havin to” slap cheryl’s chindian-ass like she was a secretary in the 70s (& later telling her to watch out 4 hellfire!!) & “showing love” to nabs 4 “tha greater good”;

the special-guest appearance by that hijabi girl who’s name we still dont kno;

misbah explaining her yearbook log book page to ahtzy (who didnt hav a clue);

cheryl demonstrating unbelievably sharp sarcasm after I cussed (anutha) lame-ass arab waiter (loudly apparently?)

cheryl wondering if that geek susan thought her yearbook entries were being marked!;

ahtzy & me with a combined age of approx. 100 (& an IQ just under) failing to work out 8+12.50;

playing muscial chairs about 20 times.