We Heart London (Part 1)

Here are some pictures we took while in London...

We woke up every morning to this...

Miss Chatterbox sittin' pretty at Helene Darroze, the Connaught Hotel.

Miss Chatterbox did 'incognito' very well

Amuse-bouche

It's butter!!!  The server slicing some salted and unsalted butter for every table.

Apparently Miss Chatterbox was fascinated by the butter.

Salted and Unsalted Butter

Foie-Gras and Truffle Emulsion

Can't beat THAT table manner!

Chocolate Ganache--OMG this was so yummy!

Lemon Pannacotta

Miss Chatterbox and Sweaty: Ladies Who Lunched! LOL

Miss Chatterbox at Hamley's Toy Store

Shopping for candies...

I want candy!!!

A cup bowl of cappuccino at Harrod's

Map of Harrods - we could really get lost in there

Our hotel, Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park

London Eye and House of Parliament

By the River Thames

London Eye and Tower of London Pier

Navy War Ship at the Thames

Oo warning!  Why did this remind me of a certain someone? ;)

I think Mr. LA would fit here nicely, don't cha think? lol

Tower of London

The Queen's Robe-Maker at Saville Row

Saville Row, famous for its tailors.

Miss Chatterbox knackered... at the end of the day

Slow Motion People

Have you ever woken up in the morning, feeling like it's gonna be a good day, everything's gonna be alright, and then BAM! you got hit by slow-motion people, and then it's pretty much f*cked-up for the rest of the day?

Well, if you haven't, effin' lucky you, because I have.  Several days ago, for example.

4:15 am: woke up, surprisingly cheerful considering I've got to catch a red-eye flight at 7:25am later that day.

5:05 am: checked-out of the hotel, luggage set inside the trunk, rental car waiting in front of the lobby.  Right on schedule.

5:28 am: arrived at the airport.  Now looking for the spot designated for rental car returns.

5:37 am: circled the departure entry twice, got lost once, but finally found the spot.  No biggie.

5:42 am: on my way to claim the tax refund, luggage on the cart.

5:55 am: tax refund took longer than expected, but luckily there was no queue.  Silently blamed the slight delay on the officer who handled my forms, and now on my way to the ticket counter.

6:00 am: jeez, of course the counter had to be at the end of the terminal of all places.

6:02 am: arrived at the ticket counter.  3 counters open, 8 people in front of me including children.  Cool.  This wouldn't take long.

6:10 am: why the line's still not moving?  I counted, still 8 people in front of me including children.  Hmm...

6:13 am: hadn't moved an inch.  8 slightly miffed (or was it just me?) people including whiny (again, could be just me) children in front of me.

6:13 am - 6:40 am: busy glaring, fuming, and (mentally) reciting all kinds of expletives found in the Sweaty's Very Own Dictionary at the staff behind the counters as the result of the following observation:

Staff A: in which she stared at the computer screen for a few minutes without typing.

Staff B: in which she won the award for the slowest-writing-ever September 2011 award.

Staff C: in which she seemed more engrossed talking on the phone than printing the already printed boarding passes (they were sticking out, all ready to be ripped off the dang machine).

Staff A: in which she had just started typing with her two pointer fingers.

Staff B: in which she took her time chatting with Staff A in between writing veeery slowly.

Staff C: in which she finally took the gawddang boarding pass out of the machine.

Staff A: in which she gently peeled the stickers one minute at a time, and applied it carefully on the four luggage that were on the belt.

Staff B: in which she momentarily closed her counter to do a bathroom check.

Staff C: in which she chatted up her client of the moment.

Staff A: in which she tried to move the luggage off her belt manually (did the machine break or somethin'?)

Staff B: in which she had just returned to the counter and now just staring at Staff A trying to move the luggage off the belt.

Staff C: in which she was tearing some boarding passes and throwing them into the trash bin.

Staff A: in which she was back to chatting up with Staff B while working on something in the computer.

Staff B: in which she giggled at something Staff A was saying.

Staff C: in which she left her counter to check with her supervisor.

Daggggggg Nabb Itt!  Seriously, could they be anymore s-l-o-w-e-r???

6:48 am: boarding pass finally in hand.  Fast-walking to the immigration counter.

6:54 am: (huffin' and puffin') passport stamped, now walking to my designated gate.

7:01 am: (half-runnin') still on the way to my designated gate.

7:05 am: (sweat drippin') what the f*ck?!?  Still 5 more gates to go???

7:09 am: (armpits wet) f*ck, f*ck, f*ck...

7:13 am: (armpits flooding) F*CCCCCCKKKK

7:20 am: (definitely not a pretty sight) finally seated inside the plane.

Needless to say, by then I was no longer feelin' like it was gonna be a good day.  Kill-maim-destroy was more like it. 

Now, back to the slow-motion people working at the check-in counter.  What in Sam Hill was wrong with these slow-motion people?!?  And why were they even employed IN AN AIRPORT of all places???  Helloooo??? Anybody working at the HRD there?

How could it be not part of their training, to be aware that whenever there was a long queue, it's an indication that either you're short of manpower, or you're just too slow.  And when you're slow, please, don't even think about chatting with your colleagues while you're working.  Trust me, you couldn't afford to!  And there's really no need to spend one minute for every sticker you peeled.  It's a luggage, for gawd sakes. Not a bloody scrapbook. 

Note: This post was entered in lovelinks #23. For the next four weeks, lovelinks is offering the chance to be featured in The Bloggess sidebar for one month. Click here for the chance to win a slot in The Bloggess sidebar for a month sponsored by freefringes.com

Dear Sir/Madam: F#@& YOU!

Update:  May 31st, 2011.  I just read this post again for the first time after I wrote it, and boy, was this a real piece of crap writing.  My only excuse was that I was in so much pain, it rendered my writing ability to equal that of a fifteen ten year-old.

Below is a real copy of the letter of complaint I sent to my hotel last night.  For my friends out there who are wondering where the heck I've been, this post might shade some light.  *Names had been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals.


May 18th, 2011

LETTER OF COMPLAINT

Dear Sir/Madam:

My name is Do Sweat the Small Stuff*, and I am currently staying in room 1425 and 801 (under the reservation names of Mother Sweat* and Hubby Sweat* in Le Parker Pucker Meridien). Our family are in NYC for our nephew’s graduation, and our reservations are from May 11th until May 24th.

I would like to file a series of complaints regarding the following matters that occurred during the past few days of my stay at your hotel:

• On May 14th morning, I suffered severe pains on my right-hand side upper quadrant of the abdomen as well as high fever. We asked for the hotel to contact the hotel’s affiliated doctor, which took more than one hour.
• The doctor didn’t come, but the assistant physician did. Her diagnosis was: Cholelithiasis, or gall bladder stone, and prescribed me medications
• When my mother called the hotel to request for a water-boiler and ice, to provide compress to my right side, the hotel flat-out told us that we would need to be charged $7++ for those. What arrived were a small thermos filled with hot water, and a bucket of ice. We asked for *water boiler*, not a thermos. 
• On May 14th approximately 6:20 pm, the pain became excruciating, so I asked for my mother to take me to the nearest hospital. Ambulance service was very expensive, and so I thought I would take the taxi instead.
• By this point it was already difficult for me to get up, not to mention walk. 
• Downstairs, we saw a long line of people waiting for the taxi. One of my nephews who came to help me, quickly asked the doorman who was hailing for cabs at the time, if we could get a priority this one time, as I was really sick and in pain, and we needed to go to the hospital quickly.
• The doorman took one look at me, who was leaning on my mother, cringing in pain, and told us “NO.” Then he turned his back on us and resumed whatever he’s doing at the time.
• My nephew then ran to the reception to ask for help. A man from the front desk hesitantly followed my nephew outside to talk to the doorman. They both looked me up and down, and then… nothing. The man went back inside, the doorman resumed hailing cabs, neither one gave me the time of day.
• By now about 15-18 minutes had gone by, and finally my nephew went back in to ask for help again. This time, a different man (from the two previous ones) went along with him and asked me, “Ma’am you need to go to the hospital?” DUH. I was there for the past 20 minutes obviously in so much pain, my nephew had approached two hotel staffs who didn’t give a damn, and now the question? I told him, “Yes, I am in severe pain now because I think I have kidney stones.”
• This man then went out, talked to the first doorman, which was probably when they decided perhaps they should take me seriously and that I wasn’t kidding or anything. I hurt me to even take a breath, and it was crystal clear that I was in so much pain, and what?!? They thought I was kidding or something? Those twenty over minutes could mean life and death, and there they were, just robotically doing their jobs as if they didn’t even want to do it in the first place.
• I was admitted to St. Luke’s Roosevelt hospital ER, and after 6.5 hours of evaluations, tests, and check-ups, I was diagnosed with pyelonephritis, or kidney infection.  The option was given to me on whether or not I would like to stay in the hospital (on a stiff stretcher, next to an unstable overdosed woman who kept on rambling) or return to the hotel. Since there were not much they can do about the pain, I would just have to continue taking the medications until it all cleared out. It was a no-brainer, of course I chose to return to the hotel.
• It was 1:15am by the time I got back from the hospital. My nephew quickly ran in to ask the hotel for a wheelchair. I was still in so much pain and could not walk. It took him over 15 minutes to finally locate a staff who brought out the wheelchair—and even then, only stood by and watched, as my mother and my nephew tried to carry and help me into the wheelchair. He didn’t offer us any assistance whatsoever.
• I was glad to finally reached my hotel room at last, when—guess what—the keys to the room (both of them) didn’t work. We didn’t put the keys where they would be de-magnetized or anything; in fact the two keys were stored differently: one inside my bag, and the other inside my mother’s. My mother quickly went back downstairs to get a new set of keys. There really shouldn’t be any good reason for my keys not to work, it was the 15th and were to check out on the 24th, so there really should be no excuse for them to turn off the activations on our keys.
• 15 long and painful minutes later (the angle of the wheelchair was not supportive of my current condition), my mother returned, accompanied by a hotel staff, who unbelievably had not trusted her enough to give her a new set of room keys even though she had her ID with her (and who had obviously forgotten that about 15 minutes ago we passed the front desk, me slumped in the wheelchair in pain). When they arrived, I was half unconscious, sitting on my wheelchair in front of my hotel room; my nephew was jamming the key into the key hold in frustration. That moment must have been when the hotel staff was *finally* aware of the urgency of the situation, because he immediately opened the room door for us and said he would be back with a new set of keys.
• That night my mother called the hotel for a water boiler and ice to compress me with, and guess what? Again they sent a small water kettle and a bucket of ice with a $7 tag on them.
• Fast forward to May 19th, I was *still* in pain (after two more visits to the doctor). As I were still having chills, it’s really a treat to drink something cold. But we didn’t want to keep being charged for an additional $7++ for a bucket of ice, so what my mother did was to remove the contents of the hotel mini bar fridge, and replaced them with the stuff that we bought at a nearby pharmacy. Turned out that the fridge was electronically set so that every time we remove something from it, we got charged. 
• My mother then called the hotel again, and asked if they could somehow turned off the system just until I feel better. We weren’t eating or drinking anything out of the mini bar. Come on, in my current condition, when would I find the time to cheat the hotel? The answer back from the hotel was that, “no there’s nothing we can do about it. If you need to use a fridge, we can rent it out… for an additional $40++ per day.”
• I have reached the limit of my patience. I am not staying in some dingy, unknown accommodation. I am staying at Le Parker Pucker Meridien, which is not a cheap hotel. I came here expecting a certain standard of service that is above average. What I’ve experienced is not only that your hotel service does not meet my standards, but it is also way below what is humane.
• With the exception of the housekeeping maids, who were sometimes helpful and tried in their own ways to make my stay at the hotel a little bearable, there was NO single staff that extends their hands to assist me. And mind you, my mother is old; yet they’ve seen her countless of times trying to support me while I walked, leaving her struggling as well, without so much of an offer to help.

I must say that your hotel staff dickheads (excluding the room maids) and your hotel services are abominable. And that is an understatement. Those precious minutes of waiting and your staffs’ inefficiencies could really mean life or death for someone who’s ill. And the way you run your hotel, everything and everybody functioning like a robot, dehumanized your customers, whom you should be catering to.
I will never recommend Le Parker Pucker Meridien to any of my acquaintances. And I will make sure that your lack of sensitivity to your clients’ needs would be known to the public at large. I do not appreciate how badly I have been treated by your staff during the past few days. It is my hope that no one else suffers from the same treatment at least until your management decides to take some action about it.

Sincerely,
Do Sweat the Small Stuff (Room 1425 and 803)

What the *toot* am I doing, blogging?

I've got like 15 minutes before my flight to New York city, and guess what I'm doing?  Yep, I blog!  And that's after finding out at the last minute that I read my ticket wrongly... what I thought was departure at 5:50am turned out to be 5:50pm.  Smart, I know.  So you can imagine all the rough and tumble packing I did when I realized I only got about 3 hours before I had to leave to the airport.  You see, I'm going on a month-long trip to NYC, then Paris, then Cannes, and then back to Paris.  Not easy for an OCD like me... just the thought of packing was already enough to make me sort of $#!^ in my pants.

Anyhoo, gotta run to the gate now.  Will be back when I reach NYC.  My only hope at the moment is to have an eye-candy of a man sitting next to me.  That has never happened by the way.  Dear God, there's always a first time, right?

Day 1-3 of my Hong Kong Trip

Day 1: ate kung pao snake for dinner
Day 2: fell off the boat while riding in wooden sampan across the harbor; made headlines in China Post.
Day 3: ran the Hong Kong marathon and finished 8th.

JUST KIDDING...

Been in Hong Kong for three days and am having a guilt trip over not doing anything more cultured than shopping and eating.  My greatest adventure so far was figuring out how to walk from the Landmark building back to my hotel in one hour (the locals usually managed it in 5 minutes).

Was planning on taking my camera with me, but always decided at the last minute that adding one more thing to my handbag was too much of a hassle.

And here I thought I was gonna be the next Ian Wright...