I used to go to this part of River Valley Road for swimming lessons when I was 9-11 years old; it was part of the compulsory sports programme (yup we got started on the whole "Yes! Lead a healthy life!" lifestyle early) that nearly everyone underwent and so we made our way to this swimming complex every week to learn how to swim. It was shut down ( Read more... )

I'm now back on the island home of Singapore and it's been a fast-paced past couple of months- settling down into home routines, life and Singaporean-food-Galore. I've entered the working world and god I really do miss London and university life and I miss the university library very much (yes, my inner book nerd is talking). But it's good to be ( Read more... )

This was really the holy grail of cafes that I never thought I'd get to visit before leaving the land of tea and scones last week. It has the most unusual name for well, anything. I did some research online as to why the cafe pays tribute to a woman called Tina-  it turns out that Tina is the name of a painting by an artist called J.H Lynch that ( Read more... )

After watching John Hughes' teenage flick 'The Breakfast Club' in 2009, I was extremely keen on trying out the Breakfast Club in Londontown after reading about it in TimeOut. I never got round to doing it until early August 2012 with my fellow history coursemate, Nisha- who said that she really liked the Breakfast Club and it was a fitting place to ( Read more... )

All's been quiet on the cafediary front- but we've hit the Big FIFTY (can't believe this blog's on its 50th chapter!!) and it's a milestone. To celebrate, I decided to check out Salt- or Salt Espresso Lunch & Tea to be precise- just off Holborn (34 Great Queen Street, WC2B 5AA) with Tomiko and my father, who was in town for a bit to celebrate my ( Read more... )

So 2012's been a rather quiet year because it's the FINAL stretch of uni for me and I haven't been really in-the-know on the cafe scene here (though I now am aware that Lantana's opening up a second shop soon and the good people of Notes, Music and Coffee have a shop in Covent Garden now). To start 2012's entries on a happy note, I celebrated my ( Read more... )

I have gone to several cafes with one of my best friends in London, Tomiko Newson- for the past two years, but I have never ever managed to blog about those cafes because my handy-dandy camera is never with me whenever we decide to just have cake and tea after classes. On the historic day of 29 December 2011, I happened to have my camera, and it ( Read more... )

So Cafediaries was pretty much on a hiatus for the last quarter of 2011 and being busy with school and life was not the best excuse to let the blog go into hibernation. Today however, (29 December 2011- two days before the end of the year!) was one heck of a day for me and I'm glad I got to hang out with close friends in two lovely places- all ( Read more... )

This is a bit of a break from the usual chapters of Cafe Diaries but I couldn't resist writing about this lovely book. I went to the London Review of Books Cake Shop today with two friends and copies of this beautiful book lay on the tables; we read through the whole book- every single page is so pretty and  I thought (finally, finally!) there's a ( Read more... )

So this summer's been actually been kind of a quiet period for Cafe Diaries- but Ethel and I were reunited and during our time as interns at ATE Pte Ltd (a lifestyle consultancy firm in sunny Singapore)- we did go to cafes in Singapore but we never had our cameras with us. One place we DID want to go together is Loysel's Toy- a cafe started by the ( Read more... )