On a cold rainy Sunday morning in London, I had a whole lot of catching up to do, spending time with a few Malaysian friends. The first was my cell member brother Jeremy who was in town for a day while traveling on a business trip. We met up for lunch at Chinatown, in a restaurant called the Four Seasons and had some amazing duck rice It was nice just to have a time to chat and catch up with him. After lunch, we went for coffee in Covent Garden and then shopped for a while. I bought a new pair of Jeans and Jem bought some shoes and some clothes, and he then headed off to the airport to catch his flight home.

I proceeded to walk around a little bit more and then headed to Dominion theater which is home to the Musical , “We Will Rock You”, but more importantly on Sundays, its the home of Hillsongs London. There I met up with the usual suspects Mel and Corny, but to my joy and surprise I also bumped into a fellow GTian, Elsie Ooi, who is here on business We then went for dinner at a Vietnamese place not far from the church.  also met another Malaysian student named Jason Kang, who went to a GT Secondary cell years ago. Ah, having friends in London rocks

The British Library (BL) is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is based in London and is one of the world’s largest research libraries, holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats; books, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings and much more. The Library’s collections include around 25 million books,[2] along with substantial additional collection of manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 300 BC.

As a legal deposit library, the BL receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, including all foreign books distributed in the UK. It also purchases many items which are only published outside Britain and Ireland. The British Library adds some 3 million items every year.

Met up with Tsze Yenn and she decided for us to go to the British Library to check out the old books they have in display. It was a very impressive collection of Bibles and old documents. I think the oldest copy of the Bible in any form of English is there, along with many other really old documents. Among them are some of William Shakespears work , Alice in Wonderland and some Beatles lyrics. If your into books it can be quite cool to see. Its just a few minutes walk from King’s Cross Staion. After the Library, we drank some coffee at Starbucks and talked Its great to spend time with old friends.

Its been years since I last saw my buddy Errol. In fact the last time I saw him was when he boarded the plane to Manitoba to finish his degree and the next day, I was off to Nova Scotia Canada. This was almost 13 years ago! He lives in Spain now, but was back in Malaysia for a short break. Didn’t manage to catch up with him there, but as he was in the region, we met up at Covent Garden, in some random Spanish restaurant to catch up on the good old days. Just the idea of meeting a long lost friend in London amazes me. The world has become a much smaller place hasn’t it?

What did I do on Sunday? I went to Hillsongs Church again, and meet up with two of my Malaysian friends here. Corny who I have not seen in years, one of my first College students when I first joined the youth ministry in Glad Tiddings, has since graduated and worked for many a year. He found out I was in London when he say my facebook status and insisted we met up. Funny thing is, he had been in the same places I had been at least twice in the last two weeks. He was at Hillsong church the first Sunday I was here, where I met up with Mel. He was also at the Arsenal vs Shefield United match last Tuesday. Haha. Anyways, we ate Tim Sum and talked and talked, then we went to drink coffee and talked more. On the way to coffee, I bumped into Kostos one of my office co-workers here in London, to the amazement of both Corny and Mel. And then as I went back, I bumped into Anand, yet another co-worker. Who says London is a big town!

I met Chrissy years ago when I worked in Hong Kong for a project for a previous company, and the last time I saw her was years ago, when she came to Malaysia for a holiday with her group of friends. She has since gotten married and lives in London, England with her hubby, and I was invited over for dinner at her place somwhere in Zone 2 of London. It was awesome fun just hanging out, checking out her wedding photos and catching up Its great to have friends everywhere.