6 笼

Hullooooo! Farmer Saggs here, still feverishly trying to plough through my untended, overgrown field of backdated blog entries.

On Friday, we ventured to the Docklands. Despite our 2 years here, I've only been to that part of London on one other occasion - dinner at Royal China with Val & family. That was a good meal, by the way. Canary Wharf is a business/shopping district in eastish London. The area is distinctly set apart from the rest of London by the beetling skyscrapers that shape its skyline. Housing there is popular with Asians and is pretty pricey, especially those that have an unobstructed view of the River Thames.

Canary Wharf at night

We were there to meet Joanne who'd kindly offered to show us around Canary Wharf's 4 adjoining shopping malls (Cabot Place, Canada Place, Jubilee Place and Churchill Place). Somewhat similar to Suntec City's adjoining towers.

We accompanied her as she trawled the shops in search for 2 black workpants - casting an eye this way and that, making mental notes of the shops as we went along. Jo successfully snagged 2 sleek workpants at NEXT. And after a cursory look around Monsoon and Gap, we headed for the DLR station to catch a train to Cross Harbour for dim sum at the floating restaurant, The Lotus.

Now here's an interesting nugget of info about this restaurant for those living in the UK. I've been told it serves bigger portions to Chinese who are conversant in either Cantonese/Mandarin. Apparently 'foreigners' (non-chinese or non-chinese speaking folk) are served 'foreigner' portions - small platters of food placed on plate warmers. But order fluently in Chinese with the waitstaff and voilà, you'll see your food portions dished out on large serving plates. Sans the plate warmers though, but who cares?

Lunch was good, especially the beef brisket and fish maw. The perrenial dim sum favourites, siew mai and ha gao, weren't too bad either but I didn't care much for the char siew cheong fun. Loved the sambal kang kong though. It wasn't spicy enough for my fiery palate but was extremely tasty. An hour and a half later, we rolled our distended tummies out of the restaurant, took a short walk around Cross Harbour, grabbed a train back to Canary Wharf for a quick cuppa at Starbucks, bought cupcakes from Waitrose, then headed home before the rush hour crowd came out in full force. Phew!

Alright, ditty update!

"On the sixth day of termbreak, my mama gave to me - 6 笼s of dimsum, 5 min waaaaaalk! 4 new experiences, 3 turkish delights, 2 summery dresses, and a choc-caterpillar from Marks&Sparks!"

This hopeless ditty lyricist is going on a short hiatus. We're off to Ireland today so there'll be no more singin' till I return! Have yourselves a good weekend, everyone!