An overdue new year wishes

Hello everyone. It's well overdue but a belated Happy New Year to all and to all a good year!

Sorry for the absence but I sort of lost my blogging mojo for a bit after that long and exhaustive Christmas post. There has been a fair bit on my mind lately that came to a head since the 2008 rolled into place.

Being in a new country and starting everything from scratch is not as easy as everyone makes it out to be. We're knee deep at the moment looking for new employment and a place to call home. It's sort of a catch 22 - work and home. If you're not employed by the time you find a nice new pad, you're faced with the likelihood of having to dish out a minimum of 3 months deposit. If you 'are' employed before you find a new pad, then you find that you don't have any or enough time to find a place good enough to call home. Ahh how it sucks. I haven't had to go through unemployment and look for a home since 2002. =(

Anyway, please forgive the rant. Normal transmissions will resume soon. I do have lots of backlogged posts to share, like our trips to Luxembourg and Bremen, a tale about the chocolate creme de pot recipe that I made as part of our christmas lunch feast, muffins and loads more.

For now, I'd like to share with you some images from new years eve in London. From our "pre-new year" drinks at the Pizza Express in Lambeth (because our initial plan to queue up at Waggamama for a late dinner was foiled by crowd controllers who closed off access to South Bank at 7:30)....

to Waterloo Bridge where we waited, some-what patiently in the drizzling rain with hundreds of other Londoners for the new year to roll in.

We reminisced about how quick the year went by. The new friends that we've made and the old friends that we've caught up with again. The trips that we've been to and reminisced about our favourite singers and bands of the past like NKOTB, Backstreet Boys and Westlife.. amongst the many that we imitated and their hits that we sung to whilst keeping ourselves occupied until... 3 mins to midnight...

and before we knew it, the crowd was already counting down the seconds left of 2007.....28, 27, 26, 25....

10...

...3, 2, 1 and we all roared.. Happy New Year!!

and before we knew it, the fireworks displayed started to disappear and slowly became invisible because of the thick smoke that resulted from the rain drizzles touching the sparks from the fireworks display... and so because there was nothing else to see (although we could still hear the fireworks going off behind the smoke), we gave ourselves a pat on the back, a kiss on the cheek and then we all headed home...

I hope you all had a memorable new years eve celebration as we did and I wish you loads of yummy goodness and all the very best for 2008. =)

Cheers!