Mid-Twenties

It's been incredibly long since my last blog post. You all know how this works, very sorry for being too busy and not sorry because otherwise I will have nothing to blog about! HA

It has been over a YEAR since I moved to the UK and begun my humble life as a Revenue Analyst at Hilton. While work is fun, challenging, and incredibly rewarding, the question remains, is it worth it to be so far away from my friends and family?

I can't say yes with a straight face, but I can say I am grateful for all the opportunities I have had so far, from projects, to being a buddy (or mentor) to one of the new starts, to leading projects, and to now beginning commercial training to learn more about what our centre does from a more... dare I say it... commercial perspective! From being an absolute revenue and coding novice, I am glad to be where I am now.

On a more personal life level, some quick snippet updates over the last few months include... I went to Kew Gardens with Amelia, it was an expensive garden but I'm suck a sucker for beautiful plants, so it's ok. I also went to Cambridge and went on a Punting (boat) tour with 2 friends from work! I also visited the National British Museum, it was HUGE and we barely covered the entire museum in the 3 hours we there. Final quick highlight was Katie (from uni) and I went to St Alban's for a day tour and visited one of the oldest pubs in England! Might I say the fish and chips were pretty spot on!

And time for birthday weekend updates! So Tiffany and I did a birthday gift swap since our birthdays are 2 days apart! Tiffany got me the bowls, while Amelia got me the spoons and the sauce dish:

My bestie from home also got me this funkie item:

My home food life just got a ton more exciting! Thank you all!

On Saturday, Amelia, Shirley, Samir, and myself visited Primeur. Our beautiful lunch consisted of....

Mozzarella with marinated beet tips 
(misread beet as beef but it was still really good, tastes like red spinach)

Fennel Salami

Squid with Chorizo crumbs! (MMMM)

Pigs head + broccolini + mustard (awesome for of you who love fatty pork)

Ouglet (hanger steak) + roast potato + bernaise


Patridge with mash, red cabbage, and bacon!

All the food was incredible, highly recommended for sure! As if all that food wasn't enough, we travelled to Chinatown after for some Taiwanese fried chicken from Good Friend Chicken:

After all that food we browsed around central to do some window shopping, then proceeded to head to a Chinese supermarket to buy a ton of food items (including but not limited to food for dinner)! My freezer went from mostly empty to now filled with frozen fish balls, beef balls, siu mai, and dumplings! On Sunday, aka birthday day, Samir and I made omelette for Amelia and Shirley who stayed over! Then we rushed to the train station to meet up with Leanne to try out the ramen at Tonkotsu!

We met at the Notting Hill branch, where we ordered the Yuzu Lemonade (that was really nice and refreshing), Ebi Katsu, gyoza, and Tonkotsu Ramen!

The food was good and the service was good, but I don't think it was good enough for me to go back again on purpose. The hunt for great ramen in London continues! Thank you Leanne for walking around aimlessly with us through Notting Hill as we try to find somewhere for tea / coffee or somewhere to chill in the area.

The rest of my birthday was us walking around Westfields shopping centre to wait for the train back to Watford. Then had a few video calls with some awesome friends and my family! Overall, it has been a fairly chill weekend, which is hard to come by and much appreciated.

Special thanks to everyone at work for decorating my desk today back at work, see my awesome birthday throne (desk), hehehee!

Here's to another year of growing older and hopefully wiser! ♥

Listening to "Sora ni utaeba" by amazarashi
Images by Me