Sunday, March 21, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
takin' one for the team
one thing that seems to be a global characteristic of my company is the love of ping pong doubles tournaments. cincinnati ripped the idea off of san francisco, and london has now ripped it off of both of them. or maybe london was first. who knows.
at any rate, i signed up to play not because i'm good but because ping pong is loads of fun. and anyway, Stiner and i held our own in the cincinnati tournament last year!
the tourney officially began last week and my partner Ross and i have been half heartedly practicing for the last few days. this little event is a BFD in our office, hence, when it came time for our match today, we had an audience waiting to watch. our opponents were known to be pretty talented, and everyone was expecting my team to lose hands down.
suckers.
first game was indeed a loss. however, Ross and i started getting it together in the second game and were making a small comeback. and then...i heard a noise.
my go-to, had-it-since-i-was-22 denim skirt just could not handle all the lunging and the modest slit in the front gave out. i looked down just in time to see another two inches of leg appear. of course our audience and the opposing team noticed. what to do but laugh and keep playing!
except every time i went for the ball, the slit got a bit longer. in my defence, i was wearing black leggings so there really was nothing to see. however, we were all cracking up and it became an unwritten rule that i couldn't bend over anymore. God only knew what would happen to the poor skirt.
three games and about six inches later, Ross and i beat those trash talking boys! no one could believe it, least of all our opponents, but they hugged us anyway. i tried to do damage control (luckily the match was at 5 pm):
binder clips, as seen on the runway in london fashion week
however, when i moved, the clips popped off. my boss suggested that maybe i put on my running clothes in advance of leaving for niketown. good call. no way am i throwing this bad boy out though. no. i'm saving this and framing it. maybe i'll wear it every match for good luck!
kidding. i think. ;-)
at any rate, i signed up to play not because i'm good but because ping pong is loads of fun. and anyway, Stiner and i held our own in the cincinnati tournament last year!
the tourney officially began last week and my partner Ross and i have been half heartedly practicing for the last few days. this little event is a BFD in our office, hence, when it came time for our match today, we had an audience waiting to watch. our opponents were known to be pretty talented, and everyone was expecting my team to lose hands down.
suckers.
first game was indeed a loss. however, Ross and i started getting it together in the second game and were making a small comeback. and then...i heard a noise.
my go-to, had-it-since-i-was-22 denim skirt just could not handle all the lunging and the modest slit in the front gave out. i looked down just in time to see another two inches of leg appear. of course our audience and the opposing team noticed. what to do but laugh and keep playing!
except every time i went for the ball, the slit got a bit longer. in my defence, i was wearing black leggings so there really was nothing to see. however, we were all cracking up and it became an unwritten rule that i couldn't bend over anymore. God only knew what would happen to the poor skirt.
three games and about six inches later, Ross and i beat those trash talking boys! no one could believe it, least of all our opponents, but they hugged us anyway. i tried to do damage control (luckily the match was at 5 pm):
binder clips, as seen on the runway in london fashion week
however, when i moved, the clips popped off. my boss suggested that maybe i put on my running clothes in advance of leaving for niketown. good call. no way am i throwing this bad boy out though. no. i'm saving this and framing it. maybe i'll wear it every match for good luck!
kidding. i think. ;-)
Friday, February 26, 2010
surprise me
one of my favorite things that i've found in the UK are kinder surprise eggs. i know they have these in other countries but i never saw them in the states, so to ME the ability to have as many eggs as i want is another novelty of living in england. (as an aside, my pal Adam finds it hilarious that americans refer to this country as england)
anywho. when Beth and I were leaving Malta she wanted something sweet in the airport and so i bought a family pack of surprise eggs (duty free = big ass packages). it was a looney tunes themed pack, which meant i got a tasmanian devil in my first egg. i saved the rest and forgot about the last egg until the other day.
the possibilities always seem endless just before you unwrap one of these bad boys...
the tasmanian devil in the other egg was cute but useless, so imagine my utter surprise (ha) and delight when i unwrapped this little guy:
it's a squirt gun! a tiny, adorable, unexpected squirt gun. entertaining AND functional. it really doesn't take much to make me happy.
Monday, February 15, 2010
day 3, st. paul's bay
so, we had big plans to go to gozo on monday. however, we realized during our romantic valentine's dinner that our "relaxing" vacation had mostly been spent running all over the island. we decided to lay low and try to stop spending money, which meant we'd be spending the day in st. paul's bay, partly because we wanted to see where st. paul had shipwrecked but mostly because we could get the bus there for only 54 cents (vs. a cab to st. julian's for 20 euros).
the bus to st. paul's was a little complicated.
the one we thought we could catch right outside our hotel only runs every few hours apparently. our friend the concierge (who knew us well by this point) gave Beth directions through attard to get to another bus stop where we could get a direct route to st. paul's and avoid the nightmare that was the bus terminal in valletta.
thanks goodness for Beth. dude had given her a blurry, illegible map, a few scribblings that barely made sense, and a pat on the head. if i were leading the way we would have spent SIX HOURS trying to find the bus. luckily Beth has a better sense of direction. we found the bus, figured out which side of the street was headed north, and away we went. except i ended up sitting right next to the big open space where the door should have been and had to hang on for dear life. :-)
we had pretty amazing weather as we set out...sunny, not too windy, perfect. having no map, we disembarked from the dusty bus in st. paul's and basically tooled around until we found the ocean. wandering aimlessly with a purpose at its best!
highlights from our little excursion:
i don't care how dirty your horse is, you must find somewhere else to wash him.
grab your girl and your briefcase and RUN.
cool.
all the homes had religious icons outside their front doors.
pretty.
cocktail hour(s) by the sea.
life. is. good.
the bus to st. paul's was a little complicated.
the one we thought we could catch right outside our hotel only runs every few hours apparently. our friend the concierge (who knew us well by this point) gave Beth directions through attard to get to another bus stop where we could get a direct route to st. paul's and avoid the nightmare that was the bus terminal in valletta.
thanks goodness for Beth. dude had given her a blurry, illegible map, a few scribblings that barely made sense, and a pat on the head. if i were leading the way we would have spent SIX HOURS trying to find the bus. luckily Beth has a better sense of direction. we found the bus, figured out which side of the street was headed north, and away we went. except i ended up sitting right next to the big open space where the door should have been and had to hang on for dear life. :-)
we had pretty amazing weather as we set out...sunny, not too windy, perfect. having no map, we disembarked from the dusty bus in st. paul's and basically tooled around until we found the ocean. wandering aimlessly with a purpose at its best!
highlights from our little excursion:
i don't care how dirty your horse is, you must find somewhere else to wash him.
grab your girl and your briefcase and RUN.
cool.
all the homes had religious icons outside their front doors.
pretty.
cocktail hour(s) by the sea.
life. is. good.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
day 2 karnival, malta style
We woke up this morning to rain, boo! I had been planning to run, so rain wasn't ideal, but it was actually warm enough that things worked out ok. I loaded up my pockets with my room key, a 20 for cab fare (just in case) and 50 cents for bus fare (just in case). I was able to get about 40 hilly minutes in, and best of all, the locals all said "good morning" without me even prompting them! I love this place.
After our workouts, Beth and I returned to Melita (there really was nowhere else to eat lunch) where we noticed for the second day that many children were running around in costume. Our waiter explained that it was Karnival weekend and part of the custom is to dress up. He also said that there were lots of activities going on in Valletta, the capital, to celebrate. We had been planning to go to Mdina but figured we should check out the festival, so we hopped on the bus in search of an authentic Maltese experience.
The bus ride was interesting.
People of all ages were getting on in all sorts of crazy costumes. One guy had on an outfit that reminded me of Transformers and the thing was so wide he barely fit on the bus. I wanted to take his picture but I wasn't sure how polite that would be. However, there were plenty of photo ops once we got to Valletta!
All of the floats had dancers and loud pop music playing. We weren't quite sure what the theme was?
Cute little guy in costume
Statue of Liberty - symbol of freedom AND corndogs
The view from Valletta. Amazing.
The Apostle Paul was shipwrecked here in 60 AD. This is one of the many churches named in his honor, decked out for Karnival.
Seaside restaurant in Valletta
The parade
Nothing to do with Karnival, just funny :0
While Karnival was super interesting, it was also exhausting (and noisy). We headed back to the hotel around 4 pm because we had spa appointments! I'm not normally a spa kind of girl, but we decided to get facials since they were really cheap (compared to London prices). I wasn't sure what to expect...turned out to be pretty relaxing. I actually fell asleep during part of it, ha.
Afterwards, we went to our room to clean up and get dressed for dinner in St. Julian's Bay. We had to make a booking, because as at least 6 people reminded us, it was Valentine's Day. Valentine's doesn't really interest me (the idea of forced romance makes me want to hyperventilate into a paper bag), but we played along and got really dressed up, drank the silly pink cocktails (hey, they were free), and enjoyed a fixed three-course menu consisting of:
- antipasti
- some sort of pasta that i swear tasted exactly like pasta fazool with different noodles. i HATED this dish as a child (i actually cringed when i saw the navy beans soaking on the counter the morning before my dad fixed this), but i don't mind it now! odd.
- meat. there was a pork thing with tomato sauce, which was great, some kind of meatloaf with a lemon flavor, also really good, and what i think was beef? i don't know, it was a lot of meat. :-)
- cheesecake with pomegranates. this was so good that i accidentally ate the pomegranate stem in my quest to get in every last bit of cake. oops.
We had to take a cab back to our hotel since there was no direct bus, and our cab driver was excellent! He was excited to learn we were American and chatted for the entire 20-minute ride. Such a sweetie. The people here are amazing...
After our workouts, Beth and I returned to Melita (there really was nowhere else to eat lunch) where we noticed for the second day that many children were running around in costume. Our waiter explained that it was Karnival weekend and part of the custom is to dress up. He also said that there were lots of activities going on in Valletta, the capital, to celebrate. We had been planning to go to Mdina but figured we should check out the festival, so we hopped on the bus in search of an authentic Maltese experience.
The bus ride was interesting.
People of all ages were getting on in all sorts of crazy costumes. One guy had on an outfit that reminded me of Transformers and the thing was so wide he barely fit on the bus. I wanted to take his picture but I wasn't sure how polite that would be. However, there were plenty of photo ops once we got to Valletta!
All of the floats had dancers and loud pop music playing. We weren't quite sure what the theme was?
Cute little guy in costume
Statue of Liberty - symbol of freedom AND corndogs
The view from Valletta. Amazing.
The Apostle Paul was shipwrecked here in 60 AD. This is one of the many churches named in his honor, decked out for Karnival.
Seaside restaurant in Valletta
The parade
Nothing to do with Karnival, just funny :0
While Karnival was super interesting, it was also exhausting (and noisy). We headed back to the hotel around 4 pm because we had spa appointments! I'm not normally a spa kind of girl, but we decided to get facials since they were really cheap (compared to London prices). I wasn't sure what to expect...turned out to be pretty relaxing. I actually fell asleep during part of it, ha.
Afterwards, we went to our room to clean up and get dressed for dinner in St. Julian's Bay. We had to make a booking, because as at least 6 people reminded us, it was Valentine's Day. Valentine's doesn't really interest me (the idea of forced romance makes me want to hyperventilate into a paper bag), but we played along and got really dressed up, drank the silly pink cocktails (hey, they were free), and enjoyed a fixed three-course menu consisting of:
- antipasti
- some sort of pasta that i swear tasted exactly like pasta fazool with different noodles. i HATED this dish as a child (i actually cringed when i saw the navy beans soaking on the counter the morning before my dad fixed this), but i don't mind it now! odd.
- meat. there was a pork thing with tomato sauce, which was great, some kind of meatloaf with a lemon flavor, also really good, and what i think was beef? i don't know, it was a lot of meat. :-)
- cheesecake with pomegranates. this was so good that i accidentally ate the pomegranate stem in my quest to get in every last bit of cake. oops.
We had to take a cab back to our hotel since there was no direct bus, and our cab driver was excellent! He was excited to learn we were American and chatted for the entire 20-minute ride. Such a sweetie. The people here are amazing...
Saturday, February 13, 2010
day 1 exploring! lunch, the bus, and dingli cliffs
After a long day/night of traveling adventures, Beth and I were pretty hungry, thus, finding food was our first order of business in Malta. The hotel we were staying in was kind of fancy and didn't appear to offer anything of the lunchtime variety. The neighborhood we were staying in was fairly residential...
A bike rack shaped like a bike :-)
fabulous wayfinding - triq means "street" from what i could tell
...but there was a cute restaurant called the Melita around the corner. Score! One thing we noticed straight away was that there are stray cats EVERYWHERE in Malta. This one climbed into the tree above our heads, stalking some poor bird or something:
We ignored the cat(s) and focused on more important things, such as lunch. A favorite Maltese snack is called pastizzi, which involves layers of buttery phylo dough and your choice of either ricotta or mushy pea filling. Guess what I chose!
Even though I went with cheese, the whole mushy pea factor points to an interesting factoid (according to me) about Malta, which is that it is really a fusion of many different cultures:
- British (used to be a colony I think?) - the plugs are British, they drive on the other side of the road, they have mushy peas, put corn on odd things (like salad), and the red phone booths are all over the place.
- Italian/Mediterranean - lots of olive oil and Italian-type food dominated most menus (fine by me!). Italian was also prevalent in the language, for instance, "thank you" in Maltese is "grazzi"...just a different spelling of gratzi!
- Moroccan - this was less noticeable, but there was definitely Moroccan flair in some of the buildings we saw and maybe in the Maltese words I couldn't pronounce.
One other thing Malta shares in common with Britain are the zany buses. Except Malta buses are way zanier than London ones. The drivers pimp them out like they are taxi cabs, and despite the fact that some of them are pimped out kinda dirty, they all have religious memorabilia hanging somewhere or other:
Check out the Holy Family above the driver. Cool.
Thanks to my almost four months in the UK, I am no longer afraid of buses, so Beth and I looked at our map, figured out which bus went to Dingli Cliffs (#81 if you really must know), dug .47 euros out of our wallets, and were on our way!
Dingli Cliffs was something that my friend Cush, who is Maltese, recommended we check out. The whole island is really rocky and the cliffs promised some good hiking. They didn't disappoint.
Hiking around all afternoon is thirsty work, so we headed back to the hotel. We were a bit chilly (Malta is only about 55 degrees this time of year and WINDY), so we ordered some Irish hot chocolate to warm ourselves. As we sipped, we noticed that we were in a proper cocktail lounge and decided to make it our mission to find a "signature drink". (don't judge! i was on vacation!)
my first manhattan. not bad, but probably not my signature...
Eventually we decided dinner might be in order, so we went back to the Melita for some grub. In our defense, there really were no restaurants around besides this one and we were exhausted, having been up since 4 am. However, we had the best food! Salad with fresh octopus, pizza with Italian salami and rocket, and a Maltese cake for dessert. Heaven. We finished our meal, grabbed another drink in the hotel bar, and called it a night around 11. I'm gettin' old. :-)
Runner's World makes a nice coaster for my Johnnie Walker
A bike rack shaped like a bike :-)
fabulous wayfinding - triq means "street" from what i could tell
...but there was a cute restaurant called the Melita around the corner. Score! One thing we noticed straight away was that there are stray cats EVERYWHERE in Malta. This one climbed into the tree above our heads, stalking some poor bird or something:
We ignored the cat(s) and focused on more important things, such as lunch. A favorite Maltese snack is called pastizzi, which involves layers of buttery phylo dough and your choice of either ricotta or mushy pea filling. Guess what I chose!
Even though I went with cheese, the whole mushy pea factor points to an interesting factoid (according to me) about Malta, which is that it is really a fusion of many different cultures:
- British (used to be a colony I think?) - the plugs are British, they drive on the other side of the road, they have mushy peas, put corn on odd things (like salad), and the red phone booths are all over the place.
- Italian/Mediterranean - lots of olive oil and Italian-type food dominated most menus (fine by me!). Italian was also prevalent in the language, for instance, "thank you" in Maltese is "grazzi"...just a different spelling of gratzi!
- Moroccan - this was less noticeable, but there was definitely Moroccan flair in some of the buildings we saw and maybe in the Maltese words I couldn't pronounce.
One other thing Malta shares in common with Britain are the zany buses. Except Malta buses are way zanier than London ones. The drivers pimp them out like they are taxi cabs, and despite the fact that some of them are pimped out kinda dirty, they all have religious memorabilia hanging somewhere or other:
Check out the Holy Family above the driver. Cool.
Thanks to my almost four months in the UK, I am no longer afraid of buses, so Beth and I looked at our map, figured out which bus went to Dingli Cliffs (#81 if you really must know), dug .47 euros out of our wallets, and were on our way!
Dingli Cliffs was something that my friend Cush, who is Maltese, recommended we check out. The whole island is really rocky and the cliffs promised some good hiking. They didn't disappoint.
Hiking around all afternoon is thirsty work, so we headed back to the hotel. We were a bit chilly (Malta is only about 55 degrees this time of year and WINDY), so we ordered some Irish hot chocolate to warm ourselves. As we sipped, we noticed that we were in a proper cocktail lounge and decided to make it our mission to find a "signature drink". (don't judge! i was on vacation!)
my first manhattan. not bad, but probably not my signature...
Eventually we decided dinner might be in order, so we went back to the Melita for some grub. In our defense, there really were no restaurants around besides this one and we were exhausted, having been up since 4 am. However, we had the best food! Salad with fresh octopus, pizza with Italian salami and rocket, and a Maltese cake for dessert. Heaven. We finished our meal, grabbed another drink in the hotel bar, and called it a night around 11. I'm gettin' old. :-)
Runner's World makes a nice coaster for my Johnnie Walker
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