Café treats at the Haga Christmas market, 2009

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Haga Christmas market, 2009 Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, Gothenburg Sweden

Café assortments are quite fantastic at the Haga Christmas market, Gothenburg, Sweden.
Photo for CMC © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro Nilsson 2009

We were much earlier this year to the Haga Christmas market than previous years, where it seems too, that I favour strolling the old streets of Haga in the same furry hat!

I believe most Christmas markets begin in western Sweden thereabouts on the 28th of November, and I generally appreciated just a smidgen more daylight time than if we were to go Christmas marketing just three weeks on in December.

Chocolate at Haga julmarknad 2009

Handmade chocolates and liquour chocolate balls.

Walking down the street, it became apparent that this year at Haga was mostly about café treats! Even before the extensive renovations to this area during the 1970s, Haga was known for its restaurants. Today, the entire street is punctuated with good coffee places, where I personally bear one or two cafés in mind when headed this way.
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Portobello Road, London

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Portobello Road, London, Kevin Dominic Cordeiro Photography

Portobello Road, London
Photo for CMC © Kevin D. Cordeiro 2009

It’s like visiting old friends, when walking down Portobello Road. The sights and sounds of the street market, the second hand shops and the antiques trade, visited by both Londoners and tourists alike, make you feel at home, right through the heart of Notting Hill.

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3 travel secrets…

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I’ve been nominated by Erica Johansson who writes at Travel Blissful, to do a Tripbase blog tag for 3 travel secrets of mine – Thank You, Erica!

There are innumerble places of interest to visit when travelling, so in that sense, I would rather that each traveller unravels their own secret places of wonder, be it a state of art museum in a metropolitan state or enjoying a quiet dinner in the backstreets of Florence.

My travel recommendations in this post has to do with the practicalities of travelling in itself…

Secret 1

Norwegian Forest Cat, drinking from tap, Sweden

Drink plenty of water!
Photo for CMC © Jan-Erik Nilsson, Cheryl M. Cordeiro-Nilsson 2009

Long haul flights are not always the most comfortable if you’re not flying Business or First Class. What I’ve found most useful is to have my own bottled water with me, so that I have instant access to water, without having to call for it. I even tend to drink more than necessary when on long flights because of the dehydrating cabin air.
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Natural History Museum, London

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Natural History Museum 4 London, Kevin Dominic Cordeiro Photography

Natural History Museum, London
Photo for CMC © Kevin D. Cordeiro 2009

If London’s Natural History Museum is on your list of places of interest to visit, then set aside the better part of a day to do this – preferably on a full stomach too – because you could easily spend hours touring not only its exhibition wings, but its surrounding compounds on the outside of this Gibbs and Canning building.

London Natural History Museum, Kevin Dominic Cordeiro Photography

One of three large museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London, along with the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Victorian architecture of this museum is strikingly majestic in contrast to its neighbours.

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The London Eye

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The London Eye 1, Kevin Dominic Cordeiro Photography

The London Eye
Photo for CMC © Kevin D. Cordeiro 2009

Tourism has gone global, and it seems that almost every major city in the world – from Berlin to Beijing, Singapore to Melbourne – has its own gigantic ferris wheel as part of its tourist attractions. There are plans for one to be built in Gothenburg, but as Swedish consensus go, the idea is popular with the politicians but not with the majority of the population.

When I read what Sir Richard Rogers (winner of the 2007 Pritzker Architecture Prize) said about the Eye:

The Eye has done for London what the Eiffel Tower did for Paris, which is to give it a symbol and to let people climb above the city and look back down on it. Not just specialists or rich people, but everybody. That’s the beauty of it: it is public and accessible, and it is in a great position at the heart of London.

I was sceptical and had several questions – what type of symbol was it for the British peope? Was it considered an architectural eyesore on the Southern Bank of the River Thames? And was it indeed in a “great position at the heart of London”? Since there isn’t much to view by the Thames, especially at low tide.

The Merlin Entertainments London Eye, the Millennium Wheel, Kevin Dominic Cordeiro Photography

The London Eye has been around since 2000 (Singapore opened its Flyer in 2008) and having observed its workings for some time, I think it possesses one of the prettier designs for this type of city attractions. It’s thin, thread-like spokes look impossibly delicate from afar.

And I think I could agree after all, that it does offer people a different perspective of London. The view of the city, from atop the wheel, is quite spectacular!

That many think it a phenomena is also confirmed by the number of visitors The Eye gets in a year. Being one of London’s top tourist attractions, and having won more than 75 awards since it’s opening in 2000.

Above all, it took a team of hundreds of people from 5 different countries, to make this project a reality. So, more than serving its purpose of letting people look down into the city, the structure symbolizes the reality of the global organization of workforces and what can be accomplished in today’s interconnected world.

London Red

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London guards

London Guards
Photo for CMC © Kevin D. Cordeiro 2009

I was about seventeen the first time I visited London, and even then, the one distinguishing colour that, from then on, brought associations for me about the city was red.

It seemed a distinct, just a hint, darker shade of fire engine red that echoed throughout the city, whether on the uniforms of the Guards, or at bus-stops, the Underground, restaurants and pubs…

London double decker bus, Kevin Dominic Cordeiro Photography

London pub and restaurant, Kevin Dominic Cordeiro Photography

London sign Blackfriars Bridge, Kevin Dominic Cordeiro photography

London, Portobellow Road, Kevin Dominic Cordeiro Photography

Big Ben London by night, Kevin Dominic Cordeiro Photography

By night.

A vibrant red that for me, has become the heartbeat of the city, a reminder of the day gone by and a reassurance for the day to come, of knowing that the city though quieter by night, is only in temporary slumber.

Gothenburg’s Chocolate and Délicatesse Festival, 2009

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Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, Chocolate Fair 2009, Gothenburg, Sweden

At the chocolate fair, with some of the best nougat in hand.
Photo for CMC © Jan-Erik Nilsson, Cheryl Marie Cordeiro-Nilsson 2009

If there was anything that could make me get out of bed early on a rainy Saturday morning, this would be it – Gothenburg’s Chocolate and Délicatesse Festival 2009!

It was not just the thought of free chocolate samples at this event that spurred me into action on this soggy morning, but of living and breathing the life and sharing the space of chocolate connoisseurs, even for a few hours, made my day.

Upon arrival at the Göteborgs City Museum, where the event was held, I realized that Swedes loved their chocolates. Almost half of the city of Gothenburg thought the same as I – to get in first – where not even wind and rain would keep them away from this divine manna. The queue to the entrance ran almost 200m, right past Tyska Kyrkan, the German Church that stood beside this museum, touching the tip of Gustaf Adolfs Torg along Norra Hamngatan.

Göteborgs choklad och delikatess festival 2009

The crowd.

The event hall that spanned one and a half floors of the museum, seemed stiflingly inadequate and compact for this event. Cold and near freezing outdoors, the crowd turned warm very quickly when indoors. Still, having grown up tropical, I was surprised to see some people literally turning to ice-cream eating to keep cool, the queue to the lone ice-cream vendor rivaling the queues of the more attractive chocolate stalls.

Baileys truffle, Gothenburg chocolate and delicatess festival 2009

Truffles in all forms imaginable. Anyone for a Bailey’s?
at Jeanna Kanold who together with her four daughters are Flickorna Kanold (The Kanold Girls)

The most spectacular view at the event was the vast exhibit of chocolate truffles. The stalls had bite-sized morsels so colourful, the candied sight simply took your breath away! I found myself standing in front of Kanolds for example, just absorbing the artistry of work, and whatever fillings of the truffle seemed secondary; after all, truffles have been around since 1895 (created by M. Dufour in France) and are more or less made with a ganache center coated in chocolate or cocoa powder that is usually spherical, conical, square or curved shape. But soon, the taste test came along and the perspective is shifted when you begin to decide which of these precious heaven-filled small packages you’d like to bring home, the ones with cream, caramel, nuts, berries, nougat, fudge, toffee, mint, liquor etc. The choice to make was mind-boggling!
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Doktorspromotion 2009, University of Gothenburg

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Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, Doktorspromovering 2009, PhD graduation ceremony, University of Gothenburg, Svenska Mässan

On stage, halfway through the ceremony. I’m seated third row from the back, in a white dress. Deans and faculty leaders of the University of Gothenburg (GU) are seated at the front of the stage, in the respective faculty colours and gowns.
Photo for CMC © Jan-Erik Nilsson, David Neikter Nilsson, Anders Lindström 2009

The 30th of October, 2009 was the University of Gothenburg’s annual prize giving and doctoral awards ceremony and gala event. It was wonderful to have these grey autumn days lit by people dressed up in formal attire, tailcoats mandatory for all men receiving awards that evening, and all women in long dresses or ball gowns. Everyone looked smart and regal.

For this event, I wore the full length, white crochet dress that my mother had made for me more than a decade ago. It was meant for my college prom night, so I was 18 years old when I wore this dress the first time.
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In The New Eurasian, Singapore, Oct-Dec 2009

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Cheryl Marie Cordeiro in The New Eurasian Oct-Dec 2009

In The New Eurasian, October to December 2009.

Cheryl_Marie_Cordeiro_TNE1

The New Eurasian: People

A truly multi-cultural perspective

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, former beauty queen, and current academic – has this year graduated with a PhD from the University of Gothenberg in Sweden with a thesis that compares the management styles between her adopted country, Sweden, where she is a PR, and her native Singapore.

“I came to notice that there were many foreigners coming to Singapore to set up and run Asian market head offices. Among those were many Swedish organisations. Based on Singapore’s financial and economic strength, it was apparent that these foreign companies were part of what made Singapore a successful business hub,” she said.

Her curiosity led her to get in touch with businessman Jan-Erik Nilsson, who lived in Sweden. As one of the founders of the East-Indiaman Gotheborg III ship project, it was Jan-Erik who encouraged her research plans. In 2002, she left Singapore for Sweden to begin her doctoral studies. Four years later, she and Jan-Erik married.

The talented Eurasian has a BA (Hons) from the National University of Singapore and graduated in 2000 with two separate masters degrees: an MA in English Language from NUS and an MSc in Information Studies from Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

As if she wasn’t busy enough with her studies during her undergrad days, she also took time to represent Singapore at the International Miss Universe Pageant in Trinidad and Tobago in 1999. Around that time, she also appeared as an actress in the MediaCorp TV’s series Brand New Towkay. But her passion for academic research never waned, and she returned to academia.

She hopes her thesis Swedish management in Singapore: a discourse analysis study will help Swedish executives doing business in Singapore to better understand the culture here and will also “show how different cultural backgrounds can make or break any cross-national deal, however brilliant things look on paper”.

As well as her academic life Cheryl, who speaks Swedish and Mandarin in addition to English, keeps a fusion blog on her Northern European experiences, writing on fashion, food, travel and lifestyle.

———oOo———

Thank you, to the Eurasian Association of Singapore, for a wonderful write-up and an update on Eurasians around the world. The October to December 2009 issue of The New Eurasian is out, and personally, I’m already looking forward to the New Year’s Eve Maquerade Soiree! For more information on October to December’s upcoming events, please visit the EA’s website.

Kanelbullens Dag, Cinnamon Rolls Day 2009

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Cinnamon rolls, kanelbullar, with custard and sugar pearls

Two different sorts from the batch this year – with and without custard.
Photos © Jan-Erik Nilsson for CMC, 2009

This year, Kanelbullens Dag that falls every 4th of October in Sweden, is proving to be extremely windy and rainy along the Swedish West Coast – which makes it the perfect weather to snuggle up to the warmth of some cinnamon rolls to celebrate its day.

Custard filled cinnamon rolls, kanelbulle

The custard filled cinnamon rolls, sitting in the corner of the baking tin before baking.

We decided in this batch, to make custard filled cinnamon rolls, which added a little variation to the standard pearl sugar drizzled version. I’ve always been fond of cinnamon rolls, having first been introduced to them in Singapore actually. About a decade ago, Singapore had a chain of small bakeries selling cinnamon rolls, filled with caramelized almonds, pecans, walnuts and even ones that were chocolate glazed! It was a fantastic variety of cinnamon rolls! I was quite saddened to find that they’ve all but disappeared these days, because I did have my favourite cinnamon rolls from their outlets and would buy a few whenever I came across their bakery down town.

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