miss_yasmina

we had our graduation exhibition show here in brick lane’s truman brewery, in june/july 2000. there’s a great place for cream cheese bagels down the road, and after the show usually everyone went out for a curry on brick lane. it was a great time, spending our last days together as students.

i love all the little shops there, selling absolutely everything. a few designers have started their shops also around truman brewery and they have beautiful pieces for sale.

i usually make a day trip out of it: first design museum then the tate modern. :)

... and i could see the tourists trying to a Beatle cover, and one of their friends standing on the curb to take their photo. this scene always made me smile. :)

the general NW6 area is really nice, with the proximity of saatchi gallery, swiss cottage and maida vale quite convenient.

my southern friends who are southern born and bred can’t understand why i love grits so much… i just overdose on them. i first discovered grits on a roadside highway diner. oh so good… and southern food is just so yumm…

i keep hoping my office would send me over to georgia again for a business trip to their atlanta branch, but no such luck so far. :(

this is probably my favorite island in indo.
i stayed in a place north of palangkaraya, called
rungan sari. i want to live there!

it’s so quiet and peaceful and close to nature.
yet, jakarta and other big cities can easily be
reached by daily 1-hour flights. joy.

let’s all move to kalimantan.

i travelled alone to tunisia in 2001, around the time of 9/11. the general population is friendly, and helpful and more liberal than their surrounding muslim neighbors like algeria and libya.

lovely, quiet beaches. i went in september to avoid the heatwave (it was still a good 28-30C then) and the hordes of tourists. i spoke enough french to get around, and i was under the impression that not a lot of people speak english.

the medina in tunis is definitely worth a visit. people and travelbooks warned me not to eat streetfood but i ate at the street stalls and in the medina anyway and it was delicious! no stomach complaints afterwards either.

too many english tourists, ugh. being drunk and loud, and well, being english i guess. even the local cafes have changed their menus to english pub foods like steak and kidney pie and roast dinner. try and find a quiet private villa somewhere to avoid them, they stay in resorts mostly.

no offense to the english, some of my best friends are english, it’s just that english tourists show the worst of behaviours whenever they’re abroad… :(

personally, i prefer the northern portuguese beaches, between oporto and nazarre.

but i haven’t been to primrose hill very often even though i lived in highgate and fortune green area for some years. when i was a student my friends used to call me posh when they discovered i liked going to primrose hill so i kinda stopped going (shouldn’t listen so much to my friends back then)

now i want to go back with my husband and kiss him in the park there, hehe…

... and i would look forward so much to a visit to my parents’ house. they lived in belem, a nice upscale neighborhood near the centro cultural de belem, with a fab view of the rio tejo from the bedroom balconies…

i love popping down to the pasteis de belem to drink coffee and snack on pasteis de nata, custard tarts, yummm… great food, the young people are hip and beautiful and friendly, great place for going out on the town (sometimes dodgy cab drivers though).

my dad dared me to kneel my way across the courtyard at fatima but i only made it halfway through before my knees got really chaffed.

can get quite busy and touristy but nice place to walk around.