In a way, it’s good not having wifi.

I’m now at a huge villa in Mallorca with Piers and his family, and we’re here till Saturday or Sunday, I’m not too sure.

I would be completely disconnected for a week except, somehow, my unlimited Internet on my prepaid UK Blackberry SIM card seems to extend to Europe (it worked in Paris, too).

But doing online activities on a stupid tiny Blackberry is annoying, so I have been limiting my Internet usage, the result of which is that I have a frail excuse to ignore my blog.

I’ve had two glorious days of doing what I love best (relaxing with my iPad) in front of the most magnificent view I’ve been faced with.

I can’t do photos now but our villa overlooks the great Mediterranean Sea, although we’re separated by a tiny forested area. Surrounding us all around are gentle mountains against an endless expanse of clear blue sky.

Days are scorching hot but breezy (therefore very comfortable on the balconies under the shade) and nights are cool.

It’s a most incredible location to have a holiday and the company is really great. Piers’ family makes great meals and everyone is fun to be around with thanks to the well-known English wit and humour that, till now, I have only experienced on books and TV.

I probably won’t blog again till we get wifi, but I will tweet, so please follow me on Twitter (@sheylara) for updates.

I have to go now. They’re playing dominos and I’m missing the lesson!

As they say in Spain, ciao!

Piers and I must be the only two people in the world who go on holidays without a clue as to our itinerary.

We do have a sketchy idea:

1. Palma – 3 days
2. Drive to another part of Mallorca – 3 days
3. Join his family at holiday villa – 7 days
4. Drive to yet another area – 2 days

The thing is, we’re leaving for our second leg tomorrow and we still don’t know where we’re going. We have no hotel bookings. Ditto our final two days.

The marina opposite our hotel.

Also, we spent two days in Palma roaming aimlessly without any plans what to see, where to go, what to eat. We must have walked 10 km yesterday.

Well, there was my unexpected bikini incident which gave us something to do the first day — search for a replacement bikini — so that was possibly fortunate.

I think it’s in our genes. We love travelling but neither of us could be bothered to do the research.

Palma de Mallorca Cathedral, famous giant Gothic cathedral

I take back what I said about it being fortunate that I forgot to bring my bikinis. It took us about three hours before we found one. That’s because all the boutiques and shops are now selling autumn fashion.

We finally found a lingerie and swimsuit shop and I got my bikini but I don’t really like it. I got it because I was dying for a swim. The summer weather here is as hot as Singapore on her hottest day, which is already bad enough, but if you’ve been walking nonstop for three hours, you really want a swim.

Never mind the last time you actually dipped in the pool was 11 years ago.

I’m not joking. I have not been in sea waters or a swimming pool for 11 years because of my aversion to sun and swimsuits. I’m working on dropping that aversion; life is short; although it might become shorter if you get skin cancer.

I also need a bikini so I can wear my new beach clothes — those that look indecent if you wear them on their own but cease to be if you have a bikini underneath.

Here’s a photo of me in my bikini. Sorry, that’s all I can do. I don’t want to be doing a bikini photoshoot with people at the pool possibly watching!

Besides, I really don’t like this bikini.

Okay, enough about bikinis.

Here are some photos of our hotel, the Melia Palas Atenea. It’s beside a marina rather than a beach, but it’s near the Palma town centre, so that was kind of the point.

It’s a pretty nice hotel, I think four-star, good service and surrounded by cafes and restaurants. There’s a seriously long street between the marina and hotel and that’s just all restaurants, cafes and bars, with a few gift shops and a mini mart.

And there’s free wifi at some of the cafes, so you don’t have to pay the crazy hotel wifi charges.

It’s a bit of a walk to the town centre, maybe 20 minutes, but exercise is always good. (Sunblock is also a great idea.)

I wore a maxi dress on our first full day here. I thought it would be cool enough. I underestimated the weather and overestimated the coolness of my dress. I think shorts and singlets would be the best things to wear if you’re going to be walking around sightseeing the whole day.

Okay, then. Just a few more photos then I’m going to have to call it a day. I’m not sure where we’re going to go after this. Maybe to the pool again.

At a square around the town centre. Tourists and shoppers watching a street performance.

The performance. I had to stop and watch because the music was really good. I bought their CD for 10€.

Lots of horse “taxi” touts. Kinda like trishaws in Singapore, except without the techno lights and music.

View from the Palma de Mallorca Cathedral.

No idea what this is. Didn’t see any signs explaining it.

Okay, that’s all for today. I’ll do food another day. My first impression, though, is that the Spanish must really, I mean REALLY, love their salt and sugar. But I need to do more field research before I can safely report my findings.

Will be back when I can find free wifi again!

I wonder how many bedsheets were sacrificed in the making of this party.

But part of the fun of a costume party is preparing the costume.

While Piers was reluctant to prepare any costume at all, stating his preference to turn up in jeans and tee to his parents’ annual themed garden party, he kindly took me shopping at two costume shops and one craft shop so I could sort out his costume while he made pained faces at me.

My costume was easy. Women’s fashion boasts all kinds of funny dresses inspired by every culture and sub-culture under the sun, so all I had to do was order a dress and some accessories online.

We couldn’t find the look I wanted for Piers in fancy dress costume shops so we had to make his outfit.

The theme of the party was Up Pompeii, inspired by a 1970s British sitcom (and movies) of the same name. The show is set in ancient Pompeii, the famous Roman city that was swallowed by a massive volcano eruption almost 2,000 years ago.

(The show is set before the catastrophe, of course.)

Wiki Pompeii if you want to read about the city that disappeared in a flash and then got accidentally rediscovered hundreds of years later. It’s very interesting.

So, anyway, I wanted Piers to go as Nausius, one of the main characters in the show. He’s the pure, virginal son of a senator. Every episode, he has a crush on a different woman and writes very bad poetry for them.

Nausius’ tunic is very short but Piers simply refused to wear a mini skirt, resolutely resisting my usually compelling power of persuasion, so I had to make it longer.

Turned out to be a good idea because, as it was, Piers had a lot of trouble maintaining his modesty while seated, having had no prior experience at wearing a skirt.

His tunic is made by cutting up a bedsheet and sewing up the sides. His cape is a piece of red cloth safety-pinned to the shoulders. His circlet is hard gold foil wrapped around an aluminium strip and his sandals are bought from the costume shop. I didn’t have enough time to make wrist cuffs for him.

In the picture above, you can see Mount Vesuvius, the volcano that ate the city. Haha.

Piers’ parents host a themed garden party every summer for all the neighbours on the street. (Last year’s theme was ‘Allo ‘Allo!) A bunch of neighbours would come help decorate the place and everyone would attend the party dressed according to theme.

I had looked forward to attending this year’s party since I found out about it in February. But I didn’t realise they made such efforts to dress up the scenery. I was flabbergasted when I arrived and saw what they had done to the garden, which usually has nothing in it but grass.

The party started in the patio at the back of the house. We could see it happening as we drove up to the house and parked on the road outside the driveway.

We were only about 10 minutes late but there were already loads of people gathered around the patio enjoying drinks and chats.

We received a very grand reception. I loved it!

Piers’ sisters, Lisa and Charlotte, were dressed as Vestal Virgins, with Charlotte being the renegade virgin because she was obviously pregnant.

Charlotte with her puppy Ringo on a leash.

Lisa with dad, Peter.

Everyone had such amazing costumes I felt like I was on a movie set and the actors were gathered around having a break.

Piper (Piers’ mum) on the right.

Lovely couple Humfrey and Charlotte.

Me and Piers.

After an hour or so, the party proceded to the garden for more Roman revelling.

Bread, cheese, grapes and wine had been prepared and people were welcome to sit anywhere they liked to eat, drink and make merry.

The garden looked amazing when it was populated by all the Roman revellers.

After enough of revelling, we were all entertained by a play performed by a motley group that included Piers’ parents.

It was hilarious. The script was written by one of the neighbours and none of the actors had seen it. They were briefed on their parts just 10 minutes before the play and they had to read off the only script held by the writer, who was playing the key role of Lurcio the slave.

It was performed at the patio between the garden and the house, where Mount Vesuvius was. At the end of it, Vesuvius erupted and we saw baby fireworks shooting out of it.

Unfortunately, I haven’t got any photos of the performance because I was videotaping the whole thing. I won’t upload that video because it’s like half an hour in length.

However, here’s a short video of Piers’ sisters making an entrance as the party’s official Vestal Virgins.

(In case the video embedding is not working, please click here to watch the video.)

After the show, it was time for games.

There was hardly a dull moment at the party.

There weren’t many children, about six or seven, but there were enough volunteers for an egg race and a sack race. It was so cute!

I thought that was the end of it but then the call came for adult volunteers.

There were going to be several adult races, including a sack race, water race and relay race.

Piers ran off to hide while volunteers were being gathered.

I ran off to look for him. Without success.

But I came back out shortly after to take photographs. I think I’m generally more useful as a photographer than a sack race contestant.

In the midst of crazy partying, a few neighbours separately took me aside to assure me that English people are not normally that barmy.

Not that they needed to do that. They didn’t know that Insanity is my middle name.

Okay, not really. But I do enjoy the occasional insane activity. The party was unquestionably fun and spontaneous and that’s always good.

I still can’t believe they do this every year. It’s such a lot of hard work organising a party like that, not to mention the cleaning up afterwards. And it’s so amazing that people are sporting enough to dress up in costumes.

I’m already looking forward to next year’s party! I hear they’re considering Fawlty Towers (also a British sitcom) as the theme.

I’ll have to hatch up a new scheme to put Piers in another costume.

Okay, a few more photos before I scram.

There you go.

I shall now quote Lurcio in Up Pompeii, who claims that Cleopatra said these last words to Mark Anthony:

“If you liked it, tell your friends!”

Saluté!

I want to have a duckling for my birthday!

I was just surfing the net when I came across this picture of a baby mallard. Isn’t it the cutest duckling you’ve ever seen?

So want a pet duckling!

But then I’d need a house to go with it. =(

I had a pet duckling a long time ago. A school friend knew a farmer who was giving them away and she scored one for me. I kept it in my HDB flat.

It was so very cute, one of those yellow ones, but it made a righteous din. It honked nonstop in the middle of the night until the neighbours complained.

I had to give it back before the week was over.

I’ve always liked ducks, especially ducklings. I don’t like them as food so much, cos their meat is tough. So I will not be plagued with guilt when I have them as pets.

Until I do have a pet duckling, though, I have to satisfy my anatidae nurturing impulse by feeding the waterfowl at Poole Park. It’s possibly my favourite activity in England, right next to watching an entire season of 24 within 27 hours.

In Poole Park, you can find mallards, Canada geese and swans. The mallards are the shyest of the lot, prefering to keep a distance. But the geese and swans will come right up to you to beg for food.

The geese are the most shameless and I was so thrilled to be mobbed by them.

But when I looked at my photos on my laptop later, I saw a sign which neither Piers nor I saw when we were at the park, because it is so damned tiny.

This is the magnified version:

“Please don’t feed Canada geese,” it says.

There are many signs like this one spread around the ponds and lakes at the park, but they might as well not be there because no one can read them unless they’re using binoculars.

To illustrate just how small they are, here’s a perspective photo:

See the little sign in the middle of the water with a silly bird standing on it?

So there I was, happy feeding the geese with bagels and bread, oblivious to the miniscule sign placed three metres away that only Superman can read.

I found out later that parks discourage the feeding of Canada geese because these migratory birds cause overcrowding and pollution, and when people feed them, it makes them overstay.

Some parks also discourage feeding any waterfowl at all because bread isn’t so good for them and excess food causes pollution and spread of diseases.

Poole Park does allow people to feed the ducks, swans and fish; they sell food for those.

Yeah, that’s a railway station, lol. You can pay about £2 to ride on a little train around the park. The trains have cute names like Desmond the Diesel Engine and George the Steam Train.

Anyway, since I have already fed the geese, here are the photos!

I didn’t feed a lot because we only had three slices of bread and one bagel.

Piers said we could only use leftover bread that was going to expire or had just expired because that’s what everyone does.

I ignored him and took our last fresh bagel, figuring that it was just one piece, so he shouldn’t mind too much.

It was disappointing how the geese chomped everything up so quickly I had nothing left for the swans and ducks.

So, the next day, I made Piers buy a whole loaf of bread just to feed the swans with. It was going to be my last fun activity before flying back to Singapore. (He refused to buy bagels for them.)

We went back to Poole Park the day before I left England.

I was conscious about not feeding the geese, so we went to Swan Lake, where there were only swans.

I offered the entire loaf to a curious swan to see what would happen. It tried to peck at it but, of course, the loaf was too big, lol.

I had to tear out strips to feed it. Long strips, because the swans would get really excited and overshoot their aim, ending up eating my fingers as well as the bread.

After a while, a few more swans came to join in the feast and Piers took over feeding duty.

He likes throwing the bread at them to see if they can catch it.

We didn’t feed them too much. Piers said the swans shouldn’t eat too much junk food, which is what bread is for them. They’re really supposed to eat grains or vegetables, which is what we’ll bring the next time.

We walked away to feed other swans at the other side of the lake but our swans started following us!

They seemed to like the bread very much. Each time a swan got one piece, it would dunk it in the water to make it soggy and gross before eating it up.

There weren’t many swans out that day. After a while, we decided to walk to other ponds and lakes in the park to find more waterfowl to feed.

Piers looked really funny holding the half-eaten loaf of bread as we walked around, lol.

I slyly took a photo of him when he went to get my coat from the car. Haha.

I tried to feed some mallards next but it’s so hard to get them to take food out your hands. They’re so suspicious! I was lucky this one even allowed me to get so close to it.

Suddenly, a group of Cananda geese swam to us from the other side of the pond. They jumped out, walked towards us and tried to get at our bread!

We had to say, “You can’t have any, sorry!” and walk away.

It was really quite sad.

The problem was that the geese were everywhere in the park (except Swan Lake) so it was hard to feed anything without them trying to crash the party.

But then we found a group of teenage geese and couldn’t resist feeding them. They kept following us!

We only gave them a bit!

Anyway, it was hard to find anything else to feed since the ducks were shy and the geese were so aggressively greedy.

We had to go back to Swan Lake to finish using up the bread.

The swans welcomed us very warmly.

So did the seagulls!

There was suddenly a whole mob of them, flying overhead, swooping down to steal the bread we tossed at the swans.

It was crazy. I was afraid of being shat on, lol!

Didn’t happen, luckily.

I got shat on by a pigeon one day when Piers and I were at the town centre on the way to dinner.

Fortunately not on my head, but on my coat sleeve. I used up half a packet of wet wipes to get it off and then sent the coat off to the dry cleaners.

I only like waterfowl. Don’t like birds so much.

Ducklings! =D

I was quite surprised to find Bournemouth so cosmopolitan. We have easy access any kind of cuisine we want, many within walking distance, some a short drive away.

I’m so happy that Piers lives here because it is a very nice place to live in, being a beach resort town as well as a regional business centre. In a survey done in 2007, Bournemouth residents were found to be the happiest people in Britain.

Before coming here, I had thought I would be eating English food maybe 80% of the time. It turns out that we’re eating English food less than 10% of the time, mainly because English food is served in pubs and Piers doesn’t like going to pubs much because they can get pretty noisy.

And also because there’s so many other kinds of food to choose. Here’s a look at some of the “foreign” foods we’ve eaten recently.

Japanese

Nippon Inn
124 Charminster Road, Bournemouth, Dorset BH8 8UT

The food in Nippon Inn is decent. I’m not blown away but I might go there again if taken by a Japanese food craving. The service is really pleasant; we had two friendly and cute Japanese girls serving us.

Piers’ ramen was tasty but it was mostly chicken stock and soy sauce. The tofu salad was really nice but that was largely to do with the sesame dressing which I think you can buy at the supermarket.

My sushi just passed the mark of edible because the tobiko sushi tasted a bit funny, like, I can’t describe it, it was all at once sweet, sour and salty.

I think, mostly, I was impressed by the cute origami that came with our bill.

Spanish

Tapas Plus
53 Bourne Avenue, Bournemouth, Dorset BH2 6DW

Tapas is a special cuisine of appetisers originating in Spain. It’s like a culture, spending hours in a restaurant, chatting with your friends, drinking wine and munching away on assorted appetisers until you’re full or tired. You don’t order any main courses.

I like this kind of meal, almost like going to a buffet where you get to eat many kinds of food in one sitting.

I like Tapas Plus mainly because of the garlic prawns. Not only is the marinade tasty (although too oily), some of the prawns are stuffed full of ebiko (prawn roe). Piers will not touch the roe, which is lucky for me cos I get them all! Bwahahaha. Tastiest prawns I ever had, although a bit small.

Other than that, I find the other tapas dishes just okay. Some are downright bland and boring while others are tasty enough but not anything I would crave.

Still, I quite enjoy going there for a meal with Piers. We’ve gone there twice, both times when we had two hours to kill before a movie.

Greek

Romanzo Greek Taverna
87 Poole Road, Bournemouth BH4 9BB

This little Greek restaurant has a very homely feel with friendly service but I didn’t enjoy the main courses so much. The appetisers were great, though, so I would recommend ordering a selection of starters and skipping the mains, tapas style.

We had garlic prawns and garlic mushrooms for starters. They were excellent, tasting exactly the way garlic prawns and garlic mushrooms should taste.

For my main, I had a leg of lamb and Piers had some sort of stewed pork with rice. They looked pretty good but were quite bland in taste, with the meat being overcooked and dry.

Italian

Prezzo
58 Westover Road, Bournemouth, Dorset, BH1 2BZ

Prezzo is a huge chain of Italian restaurants in the UK and the price is quite cheap for the standard of food (and the decor and ambience), with the main courses averaging £10 each.

Piers really enjoyed his spicy beef pizza. One of the most enjoyable pizzas he’s had, apparently. I found it a bit bland but then I only had a very small sampling. He said there were bits that were really tasty, and every bite was kind of different.

I was in a healthy mood that night, so ordered a pollo al funghi (chargrilled chicken breast with field mushrooms and baby spinach in a marsala wine sauce). The wine sauce was really tasty so that even though my chicken breast was overcooked and dry, I enjoyed my meal very much and would order the meal again.

Okay, that’s quite enough food for today.

More cuisines coming up soon!