Day out in London

Went down to London yesterday to meet an ex-university friend. We were originally planning to eat at Rasa Sayang restaurant in Chinatown but the streets in Chinatown were close as they were busy preparing the decorations for the official CNY celebration on Sunday. Thus, we moved location to Malaysia Kopitiam instead.

Through her, I found out that 2 of my ex-university friends, working in investment banking, have been made redundant and they were offered 6 months pay. Pretty generous, I must say, with the current economic crisis.

Then, met up with friends for dinner and an opera. We went to Asia de Cuba, a small restaurant at the St Martin's Lane Hotel, to try out their Bento Boxes. They were having their 10th year anniversary, thus offering their Bento Box meal for only 10 quid. Well, only one box was 10 quid. The others were priced higher.

20 pounds Bento Box - seared spiced tuna with avocado and wasabi, tempura shrimp with chilli mayonnaise, asia de cuba salad (curly endive, chayote, hearts of palm, banana, cashews, roquette, adicchio, sesame orange dressing) and shanghai noodles

10 pounds Bento Box - grilled salmon with wasabi sour cream, beef dumplings with plum sauce, thai salad (avocado, shredded coconut, orange segments and asian greens with hot and sour dressing) and havanna noodles

25 pounds Bento Box - tamarind chicken, asian pesto prawns, honey-run glazed roast of pork with sauteed shanghai bok choy, fried plantains and enoki mushrooms and coconut rice

The ambience was nice, but the food was definitely over-priced. I didn't particularly enjoyed it as it was too salty for my liking.

After the dinner, we proceeded next door to the English National Opera, at the London Coliseum, to watch the Magic Flute.

It was a nice opera, and the first opera that I have been that was sung in English, which surprised me at the start. I am used to watching the subtitles as previous operas have all been sung in Italian or German, but I didn't need to in this one.

And then, it was a rush to catch the train back as I had to work the next day. Sigh....