Two men in deep conversation, head towards the cafe, swing the glass door open and stride in. One has a dark blue coat and a purple, red and green bow, clung tightly around his neck while the other wears a white shirt with thick pink stripes, and on top of it, an ordinary black coat. The one with a long nose and white hair, glasses perch at the bridge of his protruding breathing organ, looks like a professor from a blockbuster. Because movies have painted portraits of eccentric professors to be such while in reality, he could be a scriptwriter, an interior designer, a librarian or a bank clerk.

The cafe, sterile and cold, dressed in a minimalist design, has an even colder personality behind the counter. Her hellos are crisp and her reluctant smile adds no warmth to the frozen atmosphere. Her eyes does not meet theirs as she asks them for their order. The sleek walls, lighted up by light boxes, gleams in the black, pink and silver interior. Typically, such establishment will thrive in superstar cosmopolitans like Tokyo, Hong Kong or Canary Wharf-where bankers and solicitors congregate and negotiate, where black folders get slapped on the silver steel table tops and then be taken away after a series a firm handshakes. It is a meeting point for people who has no preference of the atmosphere where they dine. The place is merely functional. Who cares whether the waitress smiles at you when the business deal is sealed? They have more important things in mind.

You won’t find the creative, zany, flashers and exhibitors here. You won’t find the nostalgic, the melancholic and the dreamers either. The intense feelers, the compassionate healers and clairvoyants avoid cafes like this like bad karma, because there is no place for passion nor empathy.

Creative kids building a Picasso masterpiece in Hyde Park

I’ve come to enjoy London and its peculiarities. It is an amazingly massive city with much to offer-it has every option available for everyone who seeks it. If you’re a struggling musician, you’ll have no qualms looking up pubs that organizes open mic sessions so that you’ll have 5 minutes of spotlight which could lead to a big break or you could be a Bulgarian musician, hoping to earn that scholarship from Goldsmith’s college while working two jobs to support your tuition fees. Everyone has a story.

Sometimes, I see the patrons of LEON, the café that I work in, and I wonder about their backgrounds, the relationship they have with the ones dining with them (often a clashing difference) and their stories. Their foreign tongues and strange credit cards tell me that are not British-so what are they doing in London? Are they like me, who couldn’t get a working holiday visa for anywhere else but for the UK? Do they harbour dreams to make it big in London? Did they think it’s a city paved in gold, a land of freedom, hope and opportunities? Are they merely on their vacation?

Anyway, I spoke to Ulpu the other day-what brought her to London. It was Muse, apparently. Yes, the band. Ulpu’s a very quiet girl from Finland but she dresses in the loudest and most garish colours. Sometimes she turns up at work in hot pink stockings, sometimes a lime green ones. Her crazy, unruly dyed bright orange is held back by a neon blue headband- a stark difference against her pale, creamy skin. When she was in high school, it wasn’t that good for her. She was a social outcast and she didn’t enjoy mixing with her mainstream classmates. She doesn’t drink and she doesn’t enjoy being with pissed people. And then she got interested in Muse. She enjoyed their music so much that she started stalking the virtual world for any information about them. And in time, as she became a permanent resident in some forums, she made some good friends who loved Muse just as much.

And then they decided to move to London, where they feel that their passion and enthusiasm are more accepted. They’re free to love and worship who they want. Nobody think they’re crazy. In fact, London loves those who are a wee bit kooky.

Ulpu has attended at least six Muse’s concerts-all over Europe. She remembered one of the most significant moments was when her friends and her, held a banner that read, “We wouldn’t have met if not for you”…and as she said that to me, her eyes teared in nostalgia.

She has no ideas for the future but at the moment, she’s content being in London. “People here don’t judge you as much,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll ever be going back to Finland.”

Perhaps my taste buds have gotten a little more finicky about how I like my Malaysian or even Pan-Asian food but even the best restaurants, proudly carrying rave reviews by Time Out, Zagat and The Guardian, have failed my expectations. Being a Malaysian, food is really a simple affair really. The eating process is without frills. I don’t need to be entertained or amused. I just want my tongue to be tantalized. Make a plate of char kuey teow, savoury and well-oiled, salted accordingly, will put a very happy smile on my face. I don’t care if the portions are too small or the restaurant’s deco isn’t exquisite or charming enough-those are secondary. But dish out an over-sweetened one while claiming your restaurant to be the best in London is outlandish, wrong and a terrible sin.

That’s why, I was sorely disappointed by Cha Cha Moon (Ganton Street) after turning up with deep hunger but leaving with an empty stomach. They can’t even spice up the food properly. I ordered a Penang Prawn Noodle dish and I think I was served something that looked like ramen, drenched in sweet orange sauce, topped with a handful of bean sprouts and prawns. You should see my face; it was a face twisted in horror.

I thought Nick claimed, you can everything in the UK! So why can’t I get even a close to authentic char kuey teow, chai tao kuey or prawn noodles?!?!?!

Oh dio, ma che schivo!

This is bliss. These few moments of pure rest, of not working, of not having to anticipate what someone who intends to dine in Leon wants, of not having to grab a lemon, ginger and mint quencher from the frozen shelves with grace and of not having to ask, “What would you like?”. Almost every week, I have a two days off (decision not up to me, unfortunately) but for the past few weeks, the two days that were supposed to be a ‘me’ time were dedicated to someone else. There was Cory, my first CS guest from US (but living in Bonn, Germany) and there was Adam, a mate of mine that I met in Myanmar while I was volunteering there. In fact, it was him who hosted me in his and Zeya’s apartment for the two months that I was there. I spent a crazy 30 hours in Glasgow, catching up with Adam before he had to return to California, 2 days after. It wasn’t that I really minded, after all, it was all good fun and tremendously exciting, since the prospect of working is less appealing but having used every ounce of my muscle while working, sometimes all I want to do is just crash and chill. Or just spend my time doing nothing.

For the past few days, I had craved for a good mug of hot chocolate, which the best is to be found at Apostrophe Café. It has several branches around Central London and I stumbled to it accidentally after Michael and I passed by the one on Great Eastern Rd, East London, and he remarked with great enthusiasm that it serves melted hot chocolate! Just the way I liked it, after having tasted something like that in a bar in Genoa. After work, last Sunday, Musty and I hungrily seek out the one on Regent Street. As I brought the mug of steaming chocolate to my mouth, and allowed the chocolate to slowly flow from my tongue and through my throat, I thought I’d die in ecstasy. Musty must have rolled his eyes at some point, watching me swoon over a cuppa, but he did enjoy it very much as well.

The initial plan was to have a repeat experience, to treat myself to one on the recent Monday but my lunch with Noel had me pigging out on Nando’s peri-peri chicken instead. After lunch, I ordered a Milano Hot Chocolate at Café Nero but it paled by comparison. It was just cream, chocolate powder and hot water.

So my craving got more intense, built up after a week of deprivation.

Hence, now, parked on a wooden bench in Apostrophe Café, Baker Street, I write this blog, with my heart and mind at ease. A Granta’s Book of Travel by my side, my Moleskin journal on top of it, my Macbook whirring softly and the nasty wind outside-this could very well be a picture of paradise. All mine.