10 DEC 09

Thursday

I confided to a friend about fears of my blagging inadequacies over a (fully paid for) coffee this afternoon. She cheered me up no end by reminding me of travelling blags we’d shared together over the years. The most successful being an evening at the Singapore Hard Rock Café. We’d only popped in to look at the guitars, but several hours later and the four of us had consumed the equivalent of over a hundred pounds worth of free drinks, and I’d sung my favourite U2 song on stage with the band that happened to be playing. The drinks came about after the bar staff discovered we could speak Bahasa Malaysia with them. The singing came about after the discovery that we weren’t paying for our drinks. Sadly, speaking Malay probably won’t help my blagging this week.

The postman delivered two small parcels whilst I was out. The first was a pretty dull, free, book entitled ‘Britain without the European Union’. The second was a waterproof book courtesy of another online offer, and is far more entertaining than the first. The author’s descriptive powers kept me amused for the rest of the afternoon. A quick example:
“I turned into a buxom nurse from a Benny Hill sketch. My breasts became two tethered zeppelins. My belly, a giant jellyfish”, Kathy Lette, ‘All Steamed Up’.
Priceless.

31 MAR 09

We're back in the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf to escape the midday sun. Today the internet connection is actually working, unlike last time where I trawled the coffee shops in search of a link to the world wide web before deciding I'd be better off giving up.

We went out for Chloe's birthday last night. The Loft was covered in post-it notes and pink balloons which we blew up in Francoise's car on the way. It was all a bit of a mad rush as Min and I decided to try and make a birthday cake in the afternoon at Francoise's house. Poor Francoise was trying to get some work done so we moved the baking session to Marc's where we attempted to whip cream. Somehow we overwhipped it and ended up with a curdled mess, which Min tried to rescue by adding more fresh cream. Isabelle and Elie walked in as we were staring hopelessly at our yellow lumps floating in runny white goo and my patience with our inability to make a cake from a box was running thin. She suggested we started again with the cream whipping, and we eventually managed to make a passable excuse for a birthday cake! It received mixed reviews, from a polite 'that's very nice' to 'Eew, it's horrible' from Elie. Thanks mate.

It was really nice to see all of our KK friends together, so thanks for turning out last night guys!

We're back to the jungle again tomorrow...

Rachel

P.S. Milena sent me the U2 album in the posta nd it arrived yesterday!!! I'm very excited but not had a chance to listen to it yet! Thanks so much!!!!!

24 FEB 08

Mum and Dad should be a considerable way towards London now. I was a little concerned that we weren't going to catch our own flight yesterday evening. We'd been ushered into the departures lounge where a soundproof, glass wall separates those waiting to board and those lurking in the corridor, like my parents. For some reason we thought it would be possible to continue our conversation through the wall using a combination of mobile phone screens, waving arms about and mouthing words at each other. We were so carried away trying to work out what they were saying that a glance behind us showed an empty departure lounge, so we made a dash for the plane before they decided we'd taken too long!

We spent the last couple of days of their trip in Singapore. We visited Chinatown and Little India, the zoo and the night safari and the Hard Rock Cafe.

The night safari was brilliant; it's like going to the zoo after hours when the animals are generally unaware of your presence. Of course, this depends on whether you're being loud and annoying or not, which rather a lot of visitors didn't quite seem to grasp. When we managed to lose the noisy people we saw the most interesting things, our favourites of which were the flying squirrel 'flying' from tree to tree in its enclosure and the beautiful clouded leopard. The leopard was nowhere to be seen, but a little patience and an absense of shouting tourists led to watching him stalk around his dimly lit enclosure.The Hard Rock Cafe was also a place to be remembered. The first visit was only intended so that I could visit the gift shop in search of a particular U2 t-shirt and have a browse of the memorabilia inside. It resulted in us staying all evening to watch a live band perform classic rock covers. 'Thanks' to Chloe and Dad I ended up singing a U2 song with them, which was a lot of fun but very strange as the band were so professional sounding and I felt like a real stage invader! Anyway, the manager seemed quite happy with it and our drinks were on the house!
Now we're back in Sabah to concentrate on the orangutans again...