Berkshire Weekend (Day 1)

I’ve never been to Bracknell and this is my inaugural trip all because of visiting Soomi, Joerg and Ivy, who lives in London now. The planned visit was actually to attend their joint-birthday. It was scheduled to be a week earlier but due to many hiccups that Dave and me had during those weeks, we cannot make it and therefore, they had them postponed to the 29th.

We traveled past midnight on Friday, and drove for 3 hours before arriving at Soomi’s place.The journey was long, quiet and dark along the motorway of M4. We drove past Bristol, Bridgewater and areas of Avon county towards Berkshire. The only thing that accompany our nights is our infrequent chats, and hip-hop music to keep the driver awake.

Their house. Crowthorne Lodge

Thank God Dave was fit to take night journeys as he was trained to do so. I lay flat nearly fell asleep but the loud music kept me awake. I’d felt is unfair to have Dave do all the driving without any company. Ira lay flat much earlier as she just instantly fall asleep after the first hour in the journey.

We arrived at 3.30am, awaking the couple who were already sound asleep. Joerg awaken and get the doors for us with his scruffy hair. Soomi followed suit and organised our room for us. Everything was prepared – the bed, duvet and even central heating. The bed was aligned parallel from one another thus filling the floor of the room.

To Peel Centre Sainsbury’s

Our conversations doesn’t last as everyone was very tired. Bid goodnight to the Wolfs and we fast hittin’ the sack as the next morning we got activities to do!

The next morning we woke up at 10.30am with me being the last to leave the room for a shower. Everyone was in the hurry to go shopping, so I haven’t got time to take a shower. Just do some simple washing up and off we go to Peel Centre Sainsbury’s as the Wolf’s would like to shop for some stuff.

Dave being the gentlemen accompanied the ladies to shopping with the cart while me and Joerg hangout in Starbucks for a chat and coffee. We left soon afterwards not more than an hour. It was quick as Soomi wanted to get home quick to prepare lunch.

Now. Stay down & listen to what mommy hafta say.

Ah, suhweet. Where’s Soomi?

The yummy of all yummies.

Slurrp…

Complements to her.

Stoned.

Haste

Bon ape-tits

Its hot!

Ivy and CJ soon followed up. Arriving by train from London, they walked to Soomi’s place just right on time for lunch. Our lunch was simple with salad, spaghetti and meat ball casserole, cake and tell ya what, the casserole was damn awesome. The girls were presented with their pressies and we make them open them and also wearing them (some silly birthday badge). Did abit of camwhoring and Soomi decided to bring us around the town centre. Joerg was left behind as he wasn’t well.

Proud bugger

Another proud bugger

Cake time.

Too ill to drink

So off we went walking through public footpaths to the town centre. The journey is like walking in the park as we stroll, there were not much of the noise of bustling vehicles and pandemonium. All the way was shady trees, clean air and minimal sunlight. We were so eager to see how their high street looks like. Any fun or not?

Ayy, don’t take shots of my teeth la..!

We were just doing what was told.

Bracknell: The town centre

To be honest, Bracknell was just another Plymouth for me. The town is rather concentrated with some lanes of high street here and there, with escalators all over the place to add to the ‘cool’ factor. Sounds (looks) daft, but I never see that many escalators for such a small area! There were reasonably many Chinese owned shops and Chinese seem to own part of the high street too. Nothing much to see apart from some live teen dance studio on some first floor of the shop lot for you to admire their moves.

Brack’s high streets

Ladies love these

Well, I wasn’t really in the mood of shopping as that wasn’t the main reason of being down here. Therefore the high street doesn’t impress me either. It was just a series of lanes with shops and bustling crowds that was typical scene of a British high street. We wonder about and ended up in a leisure centre where arcade games, pool table and bowling alley was available. They guys played some dancing game and arcade game, while I played a shooting game pairing up with Dave and that’s it. Then we switched over to play bowling but the queue was too long. As we reached the till, the member of staff told us to come back another hour or two. Sensing boredom we immediately find another alternative – playing pool of course. Strange about this leisure centre of this scale, as only 3 pool tables available.

To the leisure centre

At least they did played some games

Since pool tables are insufficient, member of public keep ‘bidding’ to use our table next by placing their coins on our table expecting us to leave after each game. We didn’t took notice (at least we pretended) about the table bid so we just proceeded game after game until they got fed up and took back their coins. As long we are paying for the game, no one can boss us around about who’s gonna take over the table next.

Show ya skillz

Heck, Ivy played better than most of us.

At times we do attract crowd mainly because Dave was the only Caucasian in our bunch (Joerg should come & save him!) or maybe our bunch are the only yellow skinned bunch in the whole building with the weirdest antics.

Last minute shop

Soon the skies turn dark and we knew we had to leave. While walking back we stopped in few shops for the guys to get some last minute stuff before the late nite drinking session. Soomi had some drink before that and the funny thing is, she almost lead us to the wrong way home as she was a little tipsy and confused herself. We eventually reached home despite the madness of almost getting lost.

The ladies, oh?

The guys – a British, Indonesian, Malaysian & a German

Back home everyone chilled and take their showers as we are going to the Horse & Groom Pub (Harvester’s) in Bagshot Road, near the roundabout. It was around 15minutes walk from Soomi’s place. Since we had made a reservation earlier so we shan’t worry about getting a table.

Not binging yet

My trademark macro.

As soon as we entered we were left at the lounge to help ourselves with some drinks as our booked table was being prepared. We waited for nearly half an hour before being showed to our table. Despite the long wait for the table, the service was excellent. The member of staffs are very friendly that leaves us no room at all to be pour critics on them.

Still waiting…

Too much food to feed on. All of them were excellent good quality food. I had some sides, main and dessert. Can’t resist the temptation as a result of very marketable menu that they had.

My coleslaw…this one is awesome.

Galore and abundance!

The time elapsed too fast for us to realise as we were busy socialising. Very much to our surprise, we are one of the few tables left as all other smaller tables surrounding us have all left. I kindly asked the waitress when was their closing time. She said it was 10pm. As I stole a glance at my mobile phone time, I already knew we stole their time. It was 20mins past closing time and we were still there. Soon we said ‘no’ to any other offers from the waitress, in split seconds the bill was already on full display at our table.

The patrons

My jelly as dessert

We took our time paying and exited the premise heading home. The walk was slow phased as everyone was so stuffed. When we reached home, everyone just drop on their knees resting on the floor. Everyone was really lazying, until past midnight Dave suggested we played some game and drink as he was unhappy about the beers that he have bought haven’t been ‘utilized’ for good use. We came out with a card game where the starter of the game specify a condition that the player can be punished if he or she ‘fulfilled’ that condition. So the aim of the game is NOT to fulfill that condition!

The potential drunkards

Keen players

Already drunk. Ira is the scapegoat of the game

CJ cant take it anymore

We played the game till 6am drinking. IT eventually became abit bingy as beers run out, red wine came to the rescue. We made each other eat hideous stuff like burnt-out crisp on the candle light, chocolate bar in the wine, and soaked crisps in the beer. Eventually everyone spilled the beans out making confessions that we never knew or heard before (I wouldn’t reveal here of course!).

Everyone hit the sack straight after that as it was almost dawn.

(Continue in Part 2)