The one annoying thing about England is that the English don’t follow their own rules of English here.

Place names have ridiculous pronunciations that don’t sound like they’re spelled.

For example, Bournemouth is pronounced “bon-mirth”.

Salisbury is “souls-bri”.

Reading is “red-ding”.

Worcester is “woo-ster”.

Greenwich is “gren-ich”.

How annoying is that?!

They must all really enjoy having a private laugh when foreigners come here and say all the names wrongly (or, correctly wrongly).

So, I was complaining to Piers about this, telling him how annoying his country was. And all he said was, “It’s our language. We can do whatever we want with it!”

Annoying right?!

Shortly after we had this conversation, I shattered my iPhone. The next day, he sent me an MSN.

“Hey, let’s go to Southampton this Saturday. They’ve got an Apple Genius Bar there we could have your phone looked at.”

Aside from being excited about that, I was immediately suspicious.

I texted back: “Is Southampton pronounced wrongly, too?”

“Of course not!” he defended, “It’s pronounced “sooth-ham-teen” just like it looks!”

And that was just so insanely ridiculous I almost believed him. It’s England we’re talking about, after all!

But I also remembered Piers is a joker who can’t be taken seriously half the time, so I was rightly suspicious.

It turns out of course he was really joking and it’s just pronounced Southampton. Stupid Brit!

Anyway, to Southampton we went and the Apple Genius Bar we entered.

I had an image in my mind of geeks wearing lab coats behind a pristine white counter, tapping furiously at their shiny Macbooks and sipping strange-coloured liquids out of test tubes.

I was, not surprisingly, wrong.

The Genius Bar is just a plain old counter at one end of a regular-looking Apple Retail Store, manned by geeky-looking dudes dressed in Persian blue t-shirts. (Persian being a shade of blue and not a style.)

I didn’t get my iPhone fixed because it was too expensive. The only option given me was they take my phone and give me a new one, and I pay £139 (S$285).

Crazy!!

I think I’ll just use my Blackberry in the meantime and wait for the iPhone 5.

So our 45-minute drive to Southampton turned out to be a bit in vain.

Luckily, I discovered through googling that Southampton is home to the longest surviving stretch of medieval walls in England.

Although I’m sure Piers didn’t consider that lucky, being compelled to follow me around the city to look at more archaic war-torn walls, like we haven’t already seen enough of them in the last month.

Well, it was either look at walls or go shopping. Nothing much else to do in Southampton.

At the end of a row of malls and shops, you can see Bargate, the main entrance to the old walled town of Southampton.

It was so exciting walking towards it, wondering what I would find beyond the majestic stone entrance.

Therefore, it was very disappointing to see a stupid Asian noodle bar plonked right in front of it.

What was the meaning of a dumb noodle stall being set right in front of a grand old medieval gateway?!

Going through the gateway was also a bit blah, because it’s just a small walk through some arches and then you’re standing inside a modernish town that boasts a giant red truck selling raw meat.

You turn around to look back at the gateway from which you had come through and you see a big white truck parked by it, determined to ruin your photo.

Disconcerting.

Although Southampton didn’t turn out to be quite the medieval city I wish it could have been, I saw enough medieval buildings and crumbly walls to keep me happy.

It did amuse me somewhat to see how the city council had tried to preserve as much old architecture as possible while building modern new ones around the ruins.

It’s like walking into a movie set where members of the design team have been given full rein to build whatever the hell they felt like building in each of their allocated slots, and they all have different ideas what era is the best.

A few authentic Tudor houses still exist. I find them really cute, with their rough-cut wooden beams showing through the outer walls.

That last one is the Tudor House Museum, which is closed for renovations until the summer. So very annoying because I really want to see it!

There are a few more museums in Southampton that are in business, but they close at 4 pm every day. We went a bit too late, so there was nothing we could do except walk around the town and be happy with just seeing buildings and walls as dusk fell around us.

Another city/town conquered!

I wonder how many more crumbly stone walls in England I can persuade Piers to take me to see before he serves me an eviction notice.

Let’s see.

Today’s food post deserves an entry all by itself because it’s a whole cultural experience.

And because of the cute dogs.

I still feel like I’m living in the movies or something whenever I join Piers’ family for a meal. (Three times, so far.) The way they do things here is so different from how we do things in Singapore, but yet so familiar because I’ve seen it all in movies or read it in books.

To experience it is so surreal.

Peter and Piper (Piers’ parents) served Sunday Roast yesterday. Sunday Roast is a traditional thing English people do for lunch on Sundays. They either cook it or eat it in a pub or restaurant.

It looks really grand to me. Takes a lot of time and hard work to prepare, I’m sure. But Piers says it’s pretty common and they used to do it almost every Sunday when he was a kid. I think they only do it now when either or both his sisters are in town.

The table was already all set by the time I arrived. Most of the food was still in the oven or stove, being cooked, almost done. Wine is served as that’s being waited out.

That’s something I find very delightfully foreign. In Singapore, we don’t drink wine at lunch. Most of the time, we don’t even drink it at dinner.

I probably drink wine, like, once a year or once every two years in Singapore. Here, I’m drinking it almost every day cos it goes well with food and cos it’s so cheap. I think I’ll miss this when I’m home.

Piers busy watching soccer at this moment.

While lunch was being prepared in the kitchen, we played with the dogs in the sitting room. Piers’ sister and her boyfriend, Charlotte and Humfrey, have brought their cute Ringo.

Ringo is the cutest, sweetest, loveliest dachshund (aka sausage dog) I’ve seen. He’s so tiny and playful and has the shiniest coat of black. The last time he came, Basil kept wanting to eat him, so they weren’t allowed in the same room all day.

But, yesterday, Basil suddenly became the sweetest host, ever, wanting to play and not showing any sign of aggression. But Ringo would occasionally snarl at him, so they were allowed to be together but under very close supervision.

Photos!

Lunch time, next!

Our lunch was roast pork with apple sauce and stuffing, which I discover from Wikipedia is the traditional way roast pork is eaten here.

The apple sauce we had was made from apples grown in the family’s very own garden. How cool is that?

Here’s the apple tree. (Well, it’s winter, so doesn’t look much of anything now.)

It’s apparently a cooking apple tree, not an eating apple tree. I learnt for the first time yesterday that there are distinctions. This tree only produces apples that are meant for cooking. I suppose you could eat them if you were in danger of starvation but they’d be hard and sour.

Anyway, the roast with the apple sauce was great! Peter makes a really awesome gravy which goes well with everything, the roast and potatoes and vegetables.

Everyone gets some roast on their plates and helps themselves to the vegetables on the table. Then gravy and salt and pepper are thrown on.

This was one of those surreal moments for me.

You know in American or British movies when you see a family eating a meal and people are always going, “Pass the salt” or “Pass the potatoes, please”?

That’s always been fiction to me.

I suppose English people reading this are going to think I’m nuts because this is probably an everyday thing for them. But, in Singapore, we never have to pass anything. Everything is already where it should be. If it’s a big feast on a big table, there’d be a Lazy Susan so you can just get your own thing.

Even if any food needs passing because it’s too far away, we usually don’t ask. We just wait for someone to randomly pass a plate around. Or you might just try to reach across the table, then someone would take pity on you and get it for you.

Okay, I know it’s a small, stupid difference. But hearing people say “pass the gravy” in real life makes me think of the movies, which makes it all weird.

Anyway, after much passing around, about five minutes or so, we each have a plateful of everything we want. There would be second or third servings for the hungrier, but that would be later.

Sunday Roast is a lovely experience.

The conversation at the table is relaxed and humorous. Anecdotes are shared and banter exchanged. Some old music is playing in the background, something from the 1930s, maybe. Wine is free-flowing and the conversation never stops.

Then, after everyone’s had enough to eat, the leftovers are cleared and the dessert brought out.

Piper had made a very yummy apple tart. Yes, made from the apples from the cooking apple tree. I love eating dessert in England because just about everything is eaten with cream and I so love cream.

After lunch, we played with the dogs again and took them out for a walk around the neighbourhood. It was so cold yesterday (around 4°C) but very sunny and not too windy.

Ringo is so cute when he toddles along on those short little legs!

I had a really great time yesterday, although Piers still would not stop worrying about me feeling shy about spending a day with his family.

But I suspect he’s really more worried about the fact that, at each gathering, someone would end up telling me something about his childhood, like of him doing something naughty or other, and you’d see him trying very hard not to cringe and die.

It’s so funny.

I do look forward to the next time.

I must be honest and say that I think there’s no better food to be had in the world than in Singapore (and Malaysia). I mean, in terms of variety and taste.

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy the food anywhere else in the world; I really do enjoy eating in England.

It’s just that there’s something very special about chwee kueh and laksa and chicken rice and chilli crab. And economical bee hoon, lol. The food in Singapore is something that you never want to be too far from.

So the irony is that I’m eating a lot better here. I’m fattening up a bit, even. I wake up in the morning eager for breakfast, count the minutes till lunch, and salivate at the thought of a nice dinner at a nice restaurant.

In between that, I’m snacking on Twiglets, one of the best snacks ever.

The seasoning tastes a bit like Bovril, although more bitter and without the beefy taste. But it’s so good when combined with the crunchy wholegrain stuff inside.

It’s goes very well with red wine. Something Piers taught me. It seemed a bit silly to me initially to have cheap supermarket snacks with red wine, but it turned out to be so good.

Speaking of which, Piers also taught me to eat toasted English wholemeal muffins with Bovril. It was almost shocking how good it was.

I never usually like anything wholemeal, thinking of it as health food that I occasionally put up with to make myself feel better psychologically. So when Piers first suggested this to me, I was thinking, “Yeah, okay, I suppose Bovril with anything will be good.”

But it blew my mind how tasty it was, the subtle sweetness of the muffin complementing the tangy saltiness of the Bovril so perfectly. I couldn’t even taste any wholemeal.

You have to toast the muffin so it’s crispy on the outside but still soft and fluffy on the inside. Makes your taste buds explode!

It doesn’t cost a lot to keep me happily fed in England!

But operating on normal human hours and eating regular meals is really wreaking havoc on my body. I know it’s supposed to be healthy but I’m getting fat!

Really have to do something about that soon!

Before I think of something, though, let me just do a quick gallery of food photos I haven’t yet posted on my blog. Let’s look at some of the stuff I’ve been eating in the last month here.

Big Mac

Sorry, I really can’t help the fact that Big Macs are one of my favourite things to eat in the world.

My first time to McDonald’s here was with Piers. He complained to me how Big Macs in England are horrible because they don’t line up the buns and ingredients properly so the burger is a huge mess. In the same breath, he praised Singapore Big Macs for being perfectly made.

That was a puzzling moment because the Big Mac I was looking at was nice and neat, while I always remember Singapore ones as being messy and all over the place.

Definitely, the ones here taste better. Buns are more crispy and there’s less sauce, which actually allows you to taste the meat better.

Beach breakfast

I had eggs benedict at a beach restaurant called Urban Reef at Bournemouth Beach. That’s poached eggs with muffin, spinach, mushroom and Hollandaise sauce. It was so delicious I didn’t need ketchup or chilli sauce, which I usually like to eat with my eggs. Mushroom was very juicy! =)

Breakfasts in England are quite typical, I guess. You’d have something like that or a full English breakfast (with eggs, bacon, toast, sausages, etc).

Ploughman’s lunch

This is supposedly a cultural icon in England, available in pubs. You get ingredients of a sandwich and you have to make it yourself.

The sandwich itself was normal. Just normal ham and normal bread and normal butter. But what made the dish special for me was the Branston Pickle, which is the black gunky stuff you see in the picture. It’s really purplish in real life. Just a bad picture.

It’s a variety of diced veges pickled in a special sauce. Tastes really good. Sour and tangy and sweet. Adds so much flavour to a normal sandwich!

Korean food

There’s a small Korean restaurant in Bournemouth called Happy House. The food is of quite high quality, comparable to the good Korean restaurants in Singapore. One of my favourite Korean dishes is kimchi stew and this place makes it really well. One of the best I’ve had, in fact. So hard to find good kimchi stew, even in Korea!

Mexican food

My first dinner in London, I picked this Mexican restaurant cos it looked warm and cosy, even though I’m not a fan of Mexican food.

The food turned out to be mediocre but I didn’t mind so much. I do have a tendency to pick the wrong places for food just based on how it looks. But I did enjoy the ambience a lot and I feel that kind of makes up for it.

There are so many restaurants in England that have really warm, cosy, romantic ambiences you just feel so compelled to walk into them and sit down for a meal. Often, though, the food is just between mediocre and not bad.

But, like I said, I don’t really mind. I really love dining out. Whether the food is great or not, it’s a fun, social thing and like a mini adventure for me to look at the menu and cboose food and wine, then anticipate the arrival of my food.

Of course, eating home is nice, too, even if it’s not as glamorous. Especially if someone cooks for you and his cooking is so very tasty.

Yup. Enjoying eating in England very much.

More food reports coming up in Part 2!

So OMG.

I was invited to dinner at a restaurant with Piers and his parents last night because it was his dad’s birthday.

Then, just hours before dinner, Piers suddenly MSNed me from work and said, “OMG my sister and her daughter are in town tonight so dinner will be at my parents’.”

So the event became just a bit more nerve-wracking for me.

But then, nobody’s ever died from having dinner with someone else’s family in their home, so I was able to be reasonably relaxed about it, only tearing out two handfuls of hair as opposed to, say, every last strand.

Then.

We arrived and discovered that the whole family clan was there, including grandmother and aunts and all. There were, like, 12 people in total.

So OMG?

Quite lucky I didn’t know that before dinner or I would be bald now. The last-minute discovery left me with no time to worry my hair off my scalp since it’s probably not very polite to dehair oneself while at someone’s birthday party.

So I did the next best thing I could do at that given situation: Enjoy myself.

It was very friendly and casual, really. Piers’ mum and dad were at the kitchen finishing up with dinner preparations while people streamed in, wished his dad a happy birthday, then stood around the kitchen to sip champagne and chat and, at times, get in the way.

Very warm and relaxed atmosphere.

Piers’ mum (Piper) prepares chipolatas for appetisers while Piers helps spoon out the English mustard.

Piers and his sister, Lisa.

Lisa and her daughter, Freya, and their dog, Herbie.

The lovely dinner spread.

Dinner was buffet style. We piled what we wanted onto our plates and sat eating in the sitting room (with a log fire).

Piper (that’s Piers’ mum) tells me it’s called a Fork Supper because you put your dinner on your lap and eat it with a fork. Something like that, I think.

I thought that was fun but Piers insisted on not following the rules so he got out some little tables for us to place our plates on. So naughty!

Well, okay, grandma had a little table too, so I suppose that’s okay.

Here’s a picture of Grandma Lily with her food, and Herbie the dog looking hopefully at her. On the armchair is Candy (Piers’ aunt) and at the fireplace is Basil the dog. The two dogs are brothers but live apart because they fight.

Grandma Lily is so cute. She asked Piers if I was from China and he said no, I’m from Singapore. At that point, I overheard their conversation and went over to join them.

Lily then looked at me and said, “Oh, I’m very glad you’re not from China because they only allow you to have one child there.”

Lily is 87.

I think Piers was a bit mortified by that conversation. You could see his face going “OMG”. So funny!

Anyway, Herbie didn’t get any scraps from grandma, so he came over to look mournfully at Lisa, who was sitting beside me.

My food. I had two servings!

It was quite amazing, really, being able to experience firsthand an English family doing their English thing. I don’t know if all English families are like that, but Piers’ folks are warm and friendly and humorous, often joking around and teasing one another.

Piers’ other sister wasn’t able to make it last night, so he put on a video of her with her new sausage dog, Ringo.

Ringo is so very, very cute! Oh, I have some photos of him from when Charlotte came to town some weeks ago. She lives in London.

Sorry, not very good photos.

Anyway, so, Ringo was on TV, bounding around in cute puppy fashion, when Herbie suddenly went ballistic.

He leapt towards the TV and started barking and snarling on the screen. He was all angry and jumpy and I thought he was going to leap at the TV. But he didn’t get a chance to because he got restrained and told off shortly after.

Then it was time for the birthday cake and dessert.

The cake is a special cake from a secret recipe supposedly handed down through the generations in Piers’ family. It’s called Queen Mary’s Cake because it was once made for Queen Mary. (I think it’s the Queen Mary who became queen in 1910 when she married King George V.)

The ingredients include dark chocolate, eggs (loads of it), cream, sugar and melted butter. It’s apparently very hard to make because there’s a special process, so you probably can’t make it even if you had the recipe.

Quite delicious but the chocolate layer is very sweet so I can’t have too much of it.

I suppose the next part is the same as anywhere else in the world. The birthday cake is lit, everyone sings the birthday song as the cake is brought into the room where the birthday person is, then the candle is blown and cake is served!

Freya readies the birthday cake.

Taking the cake into the room.

So, the first thing that the birthday boy did when the cake entered the room was to get his camera, lol. He was taking pictures of his cake even while his birthday song was being sung to him. So funny!

That’s Piers’ father, Peter, the birthday boy.

Peter holding his birthday candles.

Peter with his sister, Toni, and Basil in the middle

Yes. Piers’ dad is Peter and his mum is Piper. How cute is that! =)

We also had meringues. So nice! I’ve never had them before. They taste so good with cream and strawberries and raspberries.

I was so very full at the end of it.

After dinner, it was just relaxing by the fire, chatting, sipping wine or coffee or tea, although Piers and I didn’t stay for that. He was so worried that I’d be traumatised walking into a huge English family where I hardly knew anyone, so he dragged me out the house right after I’d stuffed myself sick with birthday cake and meringues.

Quite silly of him, really. I had a lot of fun and would have enjoyed staying. But it was nice of him to be so thoughtful. ;)

Anyway, I think I need to start skipping meals soon to balance my calories. I do very much want to be still recognisable when I return to Singapore. And able to immediately attack all the Singapore food I’m missing.

Oh, well, no Singapore food here, so I’ll do an England food post soon!

I am certifiably one of the world’s biggest klutzes, so mishaps never shock me.

You get desensitised after stubbing your toe for the nth time or after offering your 99th porcelain plate to the kitchen floor gods.

But shattering my iPhone 4 certainly stunned me.

I’d always thought the iPhone 4 was invulnerable. Invincible.

I’d dropped it enough times in the last seven or eight months, sometimes quite violently, with hardly a scratch to show for it.

So my mind wasn’t able to absorb this.

It had mysteriously flown out of my hand right onto the granite pavement, facedown.

I remember when I picked it up and turned it over, my mind blanked for long seconds, my brow furrowed in puzzlement, as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

The next thought that came to my mind was, “Wow.”

And then, “OMG.”

Miraculously, the phone still works. The touchscreen still works. I can continue using it with just a small risk of scratching my cheeks or fingers bloody on the shattered edges.

Hasn’t happened yet, but I won’t press my luck cos I know my klutz blood will find a way for another incident to happen.

I’ll try not to use it till I can get it fixed or replaced.

In the meantime, I still have my Blackberry.

I am a bit mortified to admit that I only just got my prepaid data sim card for my BB yesterday. After a month of being in England. After a month of being mobile internetless!

(My iPhone had shattered about an hour after I got the card. Perfect timing.)

You see, I had tried to get a prepaid card for my iPhone 4 when I arrived in England last month, but they don’t have prepaid microsims here, yet, so I just gave up on having mobile broadband. I figured I was on holiday, anyway, no need for 24/7 push e-mail.

Because I seldom use my Blackberry nowadays (it just sits there collecting dust), I didn’t think about getting a data card for it.

Well, I thought about it a few days ago when I decided to extend my stay in England (yet again, I know). I’m going to be here till April and I guess I can’t stand being mobile internetless for too long.

So I finally got it yesterday.

Cost me £10 (S$20) for the card, with 300 free texts and unlimited Internet for a month, and £5 worth of calls. Something like that. It’s a bit confusing all the price plans and top-ups and freebies.

But I’m all set. So very useful to have an extra phone.

My broken iPhone doesn’t even really bother me that much. Piers says he will drive me to Southampton this Saturday where they have an Apple Retail Store Genius Bar.

Hopefully, the replacement screen won’t cost hundreds like everyone on the Internet is saying.

If it does, I might just keep it as it is. Buff the sharp edges a bit. I might look very cool using a shattered iPhone 4, you think?