Beautiful London Day

Taking a break from working in my comfortable hotel room at Knightsbridge Hotel to post a few pics I took on the beautiful run I had in Hyde Park (one of these days, I'll go horseback riding through the park instead). When London is rainy or overcast, it's as though a dreary pall has set over the entire city. Some cities, like Paris, are perfectly fine, even slightly romantic, when it's rainy, but London is just gloomy. Yesterday was one of those glorious days in London though. The sun was out, the skies blue and the leaves were turning a golden shade. LS and EN made fun of my duck pictures, but I remarked that in Hong Kong, the only ducks I get to see are roasted. I passed by Serpentine Gallery, but wasn't tempted to go in because they are currently showing the same Matthew Barney exhibition that I saw at SF MoMA a little over a year ago. Speaking of exhibitions, I'm hoping I'll be able to squeeze some time to go check out the Turner Prize Retrospective at Tate Britain (until 6 January 2008), the First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army (until 6 April 2008) and Crafting Beauty in Modern Japan (until 21 October 2007), both at British Museum.




Had a great dinner at One-O-One last night. Instead of the usual starter, main, dessert dinner, I ended up ordering 4 small plates, two cold and two hot. All were excellent, but my favourite was the white sturgeon caviar served atop smoked Norwegian Arctic Char. LS loved the Tsarkaya oysters. A dark chocolate dessert, which was served with a salt caramel ice cream and bits of honeycomb, was just the perfect finish when combined with a huge single shot of Macallan. If it had been a Hong Kong serving, their single would be the equivalent of a quadruple; the waiters were very amused by my expression of shock.

London: 35 Under 35

Arrived in London yesterday morning to beautiful, sunny, cool weather. I love getting into Heathrow at 5:30am, no long immigration queues. I was already checking into the Courthouse Kempinski before 7am (love the location of the hotel -- Le Pain Quotidien with free wifi is just next door, Liberty and Starbucks is right across the street, Apple Shop is just around the corner on Regent Street as are the shops of Conduit Street). Of course, no rooms were available, so I dropped off my bags and headed across the street to the Starbucks, which was already open and has T-Mobile wifi (I had already bought a pass on the ride into town on Heathrow Express). I just wish cities would hurry up and set up citywide wifi. It is such a pain to have to sign-on and off different wifi networks at different locations, paying for multiple passes.

On this trip, I was the guest of World Business, organizers of a global 35 Under 35 list, and Shell, the event sponsor. World Business and a panel of international judges had chosen to highlight the accomplishments of 35 women, under the age of 35, from a pool of nominations. The resulting list, which includes myself, is very diverse, both in terms geography and fields. Over cocktails and dinner, I met a Russian banker who focuses on making small loans to SMEs, a Colombian promoter of "green" gold and platinum mining practices and products, an American social entrepreneur working with women in Darfur and Rwanda among many other fascinating women doing meaningful work, each trying to bring about positive change in some way.

London Update

Spent the weekend in London and the last few days in NYC.

In London, I ate mainly British food in Chelsea's Gastropubs (since I was staying at EH's just around the corner from Sloane Square) at The Ebury, Galvin for Sunday Brunch, Tom's Kitchen and breakfast at the very cool and recently-opened Napket (loved their slogan, "Snob Food", their selection of bread loaves of which I had a slice of the fig, rocket and cheddar loaf, as well as the iPod minis at the table with personal headsets so you can choose your own music). Saw the Gilbert & George Major Exhibition at Tate Modern, which was excellent, especially the audio guide with video clips of Gilbert & George discussing their art. It made a lot of sense to see this show in London, which places their artworks in the context in which they were created. I had a coffee at Sloane Square Hotel's Brasserie. If I hadn't been staying with EH, I might have checked out Sloane Square Hotel, which just opened last October and is in a fabulous location without London's fabulously high rates (online rates until the end of Feb 2007 started from GBP125). All this aside, one of the things I love most about travelling is catching up with old friends and the opportunity to meet all sorts of interesting people. In London, through AL, I met the Chairman of Farlows, an old English fishing and field sports shop, and the COO of San Francisco-based brand consultancy The 2M Group. One never know where chance meetings might lead...