the thing about winter is dryness. the dryness in the air, the cracked lips, the cracked heel, the flaking of one’s skin, the brittle curl of one’s hair ends. it’s miserable. the only upside is suddenly, it’s not so bad to be gorging on chips, fried chicken or mash potatoe. (oops, did i just reveal my daily diet or what?!)

what winter is good for is probably staying in, eating (Already mentioned), reading and lamenting.

The Wire has a big NYE party tonite - hopefully it will be a smashing indie night. Funny thing is: I go to these indie nights in SG and i know all the songs, and that makes me feel very smart about myself. and who doesnt enjoy feeling smart?! At least, my 1000 CD collection has been put to good use. Now in the UK, every party, coffeeshop, cafe, mall plays great music and i know maybe 20% of the tunes playing. And that makes me very very scared. Cos, that means i got to have at least another 4000 CDs to get back up to a 100% knowledge score. hahaha…note to self: add cd investment expense to financial plan. There are loads of CD sales here at HMV and VIrgin - you can get back copies of Leonard Cohen, The Smiths, The Verve, Nik Kershaw for like 1 pound. The thing about buying old is that it is always a "nice to have" and many other "now must haves" take precedent.

Being the savvy shopper that I am, i have finally taken the branded plunge and bought me my first pair of Prada shoes. C’est Bon Marche! Yes, pls applaude - the feeling is of an estatic high, scenes of wow flash in my head. It’s like "Wow, is THAT Prada you are wearing??" (Yes, very Will & Grace or slightly Legally Blonde) but nonetheless, we cannot help these graphically enticing and self-congratulatory scenes. Illusions of grandeur!

it’s new years eve and i should get about drafting up my resolutions. Hiaks! But I am pleased to say that i met 70% of my resolutions this year, save for "losing weight" (outright flout) and exercise everyday (measy). ah well…i keep telling myself - 1 yr in france on bread and cheese, surely i will become svelt and thin, like most french women or at least, become smelly from cheese??!

What is it about sales and shopping? The uncullable urge to spend…I finally have a pair of lovely Prada shoes to call my very own. My first Pradas - c’est bonne marche!…wait till I move up the pecking order and get me a pair of Jimmy Choos or Ferragamos - I will be unstoppable!

The post-christmas sales here are alluring. All the current fashions, with petite sizes (HA, moi is petite in UK! There is a God!!) available and up to 70% off. On my wish and hope list: Panasonic Lumix cam (half price! even cheaper than SG), Burberry’s green leather bag, Adidas Pacemakers remakes, with micropacer attached! Lee X-trim jeans (love love love).

finally had some time to look at my pix from Venice. Alas, my trusty cam turned untrusty when it’s battery failed (thought stuff like that only happened to Apple iPods). For those of u out there who own ipods, i am sure battery drains, insensitive keypads etc etc plague your ipods. Alas, I also own a pair of ipod, which I have come to rely on but also detest - it’s a tenacious relationship. So, i missed on pictures of Rome, but i m sure the world has already seen great pictures of Rome, so my pictures would not add any value. But anyways, my pictures from venice wouldn’t change the world either but I am still posting them anyways - the vanity of humanity!

In case folks think that Venice is a love-love amoure-type city. think again! Some pretty sad images abound. These horsies - kept behind bars in conditions more inhumane than ever! captain oats and princess sparkle would not have approved.

The poor dollies - hung out to dry like rats! They even painted pretend smiles on them! Gasp! I was sadly, unable to fess out their names - they would not share. I think there would be serious repercussions if the secret got out.

This dude obviously misbehaved and got his skull cracked good. I am sure nazis of yesteryear would understand the poignancy. also, could be a victim of PAP slaugter and dead from big-headedness.

On the christmas dinner menu:

- pasta with pesto sauce, fried in generous amounts of olive oil and garlic. very plain but yummy as a starter dish. thanks to the yummilicious pesto sauce we bought in rome. pasta is topped over with rocket salad

- side dish of grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, carrots and zucchini (my fave) all in a special balsamic vinegrette to die for. served on a bed of rocket (my fave too!)

- main dish is a roll of gammon (ham) from M&S. yummy! only costs 5 pounds and comes garnished with rolled bacon over the pork. Roasted that in the oven for 70minutes and voila - out comes the main course.

all this served with a bottle of very cheap and extremly yucky tasting sparkling wine (no thanks to Nick who refuses to invest in a bottle opener - leaving us with cheap bubblies to handle. this one had a plastic cap….aigh aigh aigh)

Tomorrow - boxing day sales start. we have our eye on a 30" SONY LCD screen. Original price at 1,200 pounds but it goes for 200 pounds tomorrow! unbelievable. that means, waking up at 6am and rushing to the store to queue up. at least i know in my heart that it was not for something lame like a Hello Kitty cat. (ok, one has to be careful on the net these days, may start getting flamed by incensed hello kitty fans and they hex my site or something)…more importantly, will fcuk do further price reductions? ah…i love the modern life.

It’s christmas day and it’s quiet, dead quiet…everywhere. No snow sighting yet but apparantly we may see snow on Tuesday.

Another exciting factoid…the same defense and military technology used to protect US against bombs and missiles is used to track….SANTA. check it: http://www.noradsanta.org/en/how_we_do_it.php NORAD announces every year when Santa is spotted all around the world and of course…Rudolf’s nose emits an infra-red burst, much like a missile (?!) which makes Santa spottable. 912 million folks dialled into this site so far, cant be wrong.

I thought Santa was a Coca-cola creation based on Saint Nicholas - was i wrong?!

and now…for some marks & sparks cereals…woo hoo!

One giant Blackened spice burger later…with fat freshly deep fried fries, topped up with mozarella cheese, scallions (fancy name for spring onions) and mayo later - I am one satisfied pussy. If you are ever in leeds, head down to Oracle (by The Calls) and try out their gourmet burgers…yummy yummy!

4 hours and 45 min more to Christmas! Merry Christmas to the world…God Jul! And if you have the time…take out Cathay Dennis’s "Too many walls" and start singing the chorus. Guaranteed party kicker. but no…mariah carey is disallowed - too inspirational.

ho ho ho…Nick said we are supposed to head out to some chi-chi gourmet burger joint by the waterfront later. that means…tah-dah…cereals for christmas eve breakfast Ah well…thank god for Marks & Sparks cereals - they are seriously addictive. If you ever get the chance…Triple Chocolate flavour with real milk chocs and chocs bars all mixed in with flaky oat bits. Add a dash of milk and voila, it is a dessert. The 16g of fat is totally worth it!

Spent the whole of last night listening to cheesy 80’s pop songs - it was like a revival in our bedroom. Ce ce peniston, Human League, A-ha, Everything but the girl….and not forgetting Belinda Carlisle (Go-go’s GO!).

where is the world going to be at midnight tonight? Drinking, partying or simply reading a book at home. I feel torn - both sound good…however, there is a indie rock nite at The Wire, so maybe I will shelve that for some kick-ass Libertines, Strokes, Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand

peace out.

I have had 1 week post Italy to lament and collect my thoughts…Venice and Rome, 2 places that are so vastly different - minus the base taste of pizza neopolitania or margherita, which ever you prefer.

first stop: Venice. We flew there from liverpool (John Lennon airport - ka-ching to Yoko and Julian for royalties) on our 10 pounds ryanair flight…yipee! Anyhoos, Venice is beautiful, as people have mentioned so many times. The little canals, the gondolas and the little stripy-men who row boats and yes…the kissing couples. there are loads of them. something about venezia evokes a spirit of love and romance. either that, or it is the masques that get people excited. thing is: venice is totally for tourists. by 10pm, the streets are vacated and there are no real italians around. The restaurant waiters are a mishmash of chinese, filippino and indian help that are the only ones willing to work. Most italians reside in the industrial town of Mestre - where cars are actually allowed on the roads (nope, no trafficis allowed on venice island). The main island is dead expensive, so we stayed on Lido - where, excitingly for me, is where the annual Venice Film Festival is held! So what if it was a hicky, surburbian area - stars have walked Via Santa Maria Elizabeth. So yeah! There’s a nice beach at Lido - very quiet in winter, and probably packed full in the summer…it’s really pretty.

Venice is a place of stories and legends. Actually, the whole of italy is - we passed by a masque shop that supplied the masques for Kubrick’s "Eyes Wide Open" and saw the mask that Tom wore to the orgy. I even got to try on some masks. The sales folks were super helpful and they knew ALL about face shapes, I was promptly told which masks suited my face and which didnt. Sadly, all the ones I liked were off-limits. Damn!

Took an overnight train to Rome - to be cheap and save on lodging. Turned out to be a disasterous mistake - the train was full for the first 3 hours and we had these 2 mongolians (i think) or some weird natives from China who kept talking and eating throughout the night - i was so realized when they got off at 3am in the morning. Note to self: to never sit with peasents, they were talking OVER some guy sitting in the middle of them - how exasperating (they got off at Bologna, so if u ever see 2 weird looking chatterish dudes, it’s gotta be the same pair - look for weird bowl-shaped haircuts).

Rome hit me in a strange way. It’s like a city that is messy, dirty but full of history, story and flavour. What struck me immediately was how huge everything was - the obelisks, the buildigs, the huge roman columns. I was in awe. Food was better too - right from the start. We had our first meal at….MacDonalds - it was the first MacD’s to open in Italy and it’s like a musemum! well, i am kidding, it’s just huge with lots of kids, teens making out and stern looking parents We made our rounds to the various sights - Trevi, Spanish steps…but what really got me was The Vatican. I really fell in love with it. It made me feel so small and sent back years of guilt and need for redemption for falling on the wayside of my Catholic faith. It’s amazing to see how Christianity was borne out of numerous pagan faiths (from Eyptian, Arabic, Mesopotamian…). Everything from crowns to "Christmas day" were pagan symbols. And Jesus was born in 4BC - we got the Julian calender all wrong, so technically, its 2009 this year, not 2005.

"All roads lead to Rome" turned out to be technically true. In ancient times, all roads stretching from Mediterrainean to Britain - there were little markers that would literally state the distance to Rome - the capital of the world. But not just to Rome, it would be exactly to the step, leading to Rome’s Roman Forums - the political heart of the Roman empire. The vastness of the roman conquer is shocking - makes me want to rewatch Troy and Gladiator just for the historical bits Ok, i concede, i like muscle men… Anyhoos, other interesting factoids i learnt were Romans were extremely advanced and invented cement - which till today allows us to raise buildings at high speeds with low cost, these romans are so smart Also, to get their togos clean of stains, they used urine…urine was such an important commodity that the king put a tax on it! Beyond weird is the roman lifestyle of partying, drinking and eating…till they vomitted and would still continue one to do so after. Each dinner meal would last 6 hours long with people heading occasionally to the vomitorium to do their business and come back to party. I can’t imagine what it was like living in ancient rome - holidays for 123 days a year (weekends not included) - working only 1 day a week, free everything. The gladiator shows were really put up to entertain the bored. Slaves did everything so Romans didn’t have to lift a finger, what a fascinating life. the only trade-off would be to have zero rights as a roman woman and only living to 45 years old

another highlight - finding Yukihiro Fukutomi’s new Equality album at a cool concept store in Rome - TAD! Ace! also got me a limited edition Ferrari-red Poloroid cam…hey hey hey…

And note, hostel accomodations in Rome and italy in general are grim grim grim. steel your heart…