Short post!
It snowed today. The weather people said it was the Antarctic wind… and that’s why everyone was cold today.
Took a short video from the office window. ^_^
Month: April 2016
Tiffany Bar (Korean Restaurant/Karaoke Bar) – London Vauxhall
I’m on a low-carb diet at the moment – it’s really agonising! My body feels like I’m depriving it of carbohydrates (not entirely, but I am). 😦 But before this treachery to myself, I had to try out a newish Korean restaurant / karaoke bar based in Vauxhall.
Must thank the person who commented earlier in the year about this place. Thank you!
Tiffany Bar has been opened for 3 months. It’s about a 30 minute walk from where I live and I thought I’ll try finding it… it’s actually not far from Kennington Station if you know the back passages, and it’s very close to Vauxhall Staion. Miss Pinky was a bit upset I didn’t invite her – BUT I’m sure she was in Scotland at the time. >_<"
As you go in, you’ll see some very fancy work… you wouldn’t think this was a karaoke bar at all, or even a restaurant even though it’s right in front of a set of traffic lights. The place is a little tiny but I think it can fit a few people in there. The karaoke rooms (as I was passing) looked big. I forgot to ask about the prices of the rooms – but you can hire them for 2 hours at a time… There’s a lot of Korean music and there are a LOT of other world music, European, Japanese, Chinese…. lots!
The menu looks quite small but the owner John said he can make things (Korean food) that’s not on the menu. I wonder if he’ll make fried chicken?! Probably not… I think I’ll have a kimchi chigae or black bean noodles of he’s able to provide. Yay!
The Hite beer here is the imported version… not the canned ones!
I had a lot to drink that evening. I was given a complimentary Korean seaweed soup. It’s a little salty, tastes a bit like miso soup but not entirely. Tastes quite good.
I ordered the bulgogi bibimbap, and I forgot to ask for a fried egg and spicy sauce!!! It was very filling. Lots of beef. Lots of veggie. I wanted more!! ^_^ John’s mum made this. Heheh.
Since I was there I ordered the fried prawns. I don’t usually see it served this way. It had a salty edge to it, and filled my stomach with joy.
What’s the equivalent in Korean to itadakimasu? Jal meokkesseumnida … such a mouthful to say!!
Well finally I finished. The owner served this tea beforehand, but left it to the end… Interesting tea. Tasted a bit like brown rice or a sort of barley tea, Hmm, very interesting. Wonder where I can buy this…
Total cost came to £18 (if I remember correctly… need to start writing down my spending spree!).
My geeky rating: 5/5 (just because the owner is such a nice person)
Good points:
– A place to sing karaoke!!
– Homemade style Korean food
– Not too pricey – but worth it if you live around the area… Vauxhall is an expensive place to live in. MI6 are around the corner don’t forget >.<""
– Quietly hidden but not hard to miss
– Lovely talkative owner – I think he is open to suggestions and lots of customers!
Bad points:
– Need more selections on the menu (I’m sure it will be big in the future)
Address: 353 Kennington Lane, Lambeth , SE11 5QY
Agege Bread Shop – London East Street Market
On one Friday after work, Mrs Hen went to East Street Market to buy her supply of African foods for the weekend and the week ahead. She wanted to show me a store that sold “African fast food”, basically the food you would see in an African home.
This store Agege Bread, I think, has been around for a year or so. The popular takeaway foods I believe are the African foods. Although one could cook these at home, some would prefer to buy it already cooked and ready to eat… Most of the African families I know can cook, so I’m quite lucky. ^_^
Mrs Hen said I should try out the pies, so I did… the chicken pie is not like the ones you see in Gregs, it’s stuffed with ground chicken meat, there’s no creamy sauce inside, so it’s all meatly packed.
The one thing I saw most people buy was this sweet bread. It’s not very, very sweet, but sweet enough. Mrs Hen suggested this should be ate at breakfast time, toasted, and served with scrambled eggs and fried plantain which is what I did (see below ^_^). This bread is also made without eggs, and surprisingly doesn’t mold that easily! Wow!
I also bought this fish pie, which was quite dry… it also tasted fishy… ¬_¬” Didn’t eat it… sorry…
Well, if you want to try this place out it’s not far, and it’s only in East Street Market!
Address: 42 East St, London SE17 2DN
Phone: 020 7701 4672
UK Junior Doctor’s Strike 2016
It’s been an awful year of bad weather (so far) and bad government press (so far) and majority of our Junior Doctors across the UK are on strike.
Well, it’s not surprising. But which side is not listening? Which side benefits more? The government or the doctors? It’s the first time in my lifetime I have seen so many strikes from one gigantic organisation in one year. Even the tube and bus drivers don’t strike this often!!
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| Outside King’s College Hospital, Camberwell, London |
What would happen if we do have a seven day service? It’s a bit unfair that the public don’t really have a say in this (that’s why I’m blogging about it). What can we do to help make the government listen to concerns across the board? Pay more taxes? 😦 Will increasing a junior doctor’s pay really mean they’ll have more money or would they be worse off? Or will the NHS just be paying for more foreign doctors? If this goes ahead, will the services go downhill and will the docs just quit to find another meaningless job? And what would it mean if we exit the EU?!!!
Argh, so many questions, no answers to the solutions… my brain is on meltdown mode. Frigging Conservatives!!! Get yourself sorted and make a solution, improve services, cut down on other things and stop using our taxes for your scandals. >_<"" And doctors, you need to find more facts about working standards, equality and fight till the end!!!
Next strike: 26th and 27th April (the fifth one)
Easter Weekend in Grondre, Wales – Day 2 & 3
My 700th post!! Woooow!!
Day 2
It was Easter Sunday, and I had a good nights sleep, we all seemed to have awakened at the same time although we all lost one hours sleep as the clocks went forward. 😦
I checked out the shower… it’s a dodgy caravan shower as you have to keep turning the knobs to get the right sort of heat otherwise it’s too cold. ¬_¬” Well the shower woke me up for sure!
Did we eat breakfast? I don’t remember… but Mr Sensible made me a dodgy coffee that morning and I remembered Miss Money, Mr Sensible and I ended up knitting or crocheting for some part of the morning… And as you can see, Miss Money’s short scarf became longer.
It was time to depart the caravan and explore a nearby town. We ended up in Saundersfoot. First stop was to find a parking space which we searched for a bit until a family drove off thankfully in a nearby parking lot…
Next stop was a sweet shop… apologies for the picture but the lads and Miss Money kind of pointed it out and I think that’s why they went in…. ¬_¬””””
We walked around looking for things to do and ended up in a nearby amusement park. We didn’t play…
Seaside looked a bit busy although it was a little windy, good weather than London!
We were obviously a little hungry and tried to find somewhere to eat… ended up in a local pub called The Hean Castle.
Mr Games ordered a hot chocolate… and he also decided to take a picture. LOL!!
Mr Games also had the battered mushrooms for starters…
Miss Money had the beef roast lunch.
I think Mr Games had the lasagna.
Mr Sensible also had a beef roast.
And I had the Guinness and Steak pie. Needed a bit of seasoning, but otherwise quite filling!!
Next was a walk along the beach, still windy at this point… it was a short walk in the sand…
We ended in one of the local sweet shops (we went in there twice!) called Chobbles. Definition of “chobble” is when you bite down something hard with your teeth… Chobbles is a traditional sweet shop and only exists in Pembrokeshire, Wales. The sweets are reasonably priced. 100g for 99p! They must make a lot of money… even their chocolates looked incredibly cute. ^_^
After getting a sugar high we walked around to see what else was opened… Miss Money had to pop to a loo so we ended up taking selfies. LOL! Can you see I’m wearing my new crochet hat. ^_^
After three hours in town, I can’t believe we spent three hours there, we returned back to the caravan… Mr Sensible said he was exhausted from driving so he took a nap… Mr Games also took a nap (he said half an hour but ended up sleeping for more than an hour). So Miss Money and I ended up watching TV with the subs on and I ended up playing Candy Crush (hey, I need to catch up. :p). It suddenly rained for about 10-15 minutes. Miss Money had suggested we go for a walk, luckily we didn’t go.
We were quite late going out for dinner, the local pub was filled with parents and children, so in the end we went into town. I couldn’t believe some of the shops were still opened on Easter Sunday!!
Mr Games and Mr Sensible ended up buying food from the local supermarket. Mr Games ate his sandwich or wrap before we got back into the car…
Miss Money and I went to the opposite kebab shop and bought food from there.
Here’s Mr Games playing hide and seek outside the kebab shop. Hahahahah.
Guess who bought faggots for dinner… Did you know that faggot means gay and I believe it’s an old English slang word for a whore/prostitute, but I could be wrong there.
Mr Sensible had the faggots and added peas on the side. Well, he is Welsh.
My kofte kebab looked a bit different to the London style. They were like big meatballs. I think I prefer the London style.
In the evening we ended up playing Uno, drinking lots of wine (I drank like a fish and started swearing >_<") and then we started playing charades (I hoped not to make a fool of myself whilst semi drunk).
So one of the slips was a TV show. Mr Games tried to act it out, but it was hard… in the end the show sounded like “Men-ty Floor”. Can you guess what the show is?
It was hard to sleep that evening. Storm Katie was pattering on the windows. I think we were quite lucky to have had the rain that evening. Apparently it was very bad in London. Should’ve slept on the couch…
End of Day 2.
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Day 3
On Easter Monday, we ended up leaving half an hour early when we originally said we would leave at 10am. Due to the weather Seven Bridges was closed for the morning… but thankfully it was opened when we almost got there. Miss Money was not happy that she couldn’t stay a bit longer… Thankfully we mostly cleared up the night before.
Bye bye caravan site!!
First pit stop there was nothing exciting there. Hi Minion, bye toys.
Still driving in Wales…
And I finally finished my 50g-ish ball of yarn which was supposed to make granny squares for Mrs Hen bag. The scarf is now a bit longer, so Miss Money better make good use of it!!!!
We finally entered the bridge… bye bye Wales…
And now entered England. Hello there!
Finally ended our journey in Central London around 3pm, cleaned the car and returned the keys.
Such a lovely weekend away from the city, no mobile internet signal (in the caravan) and just having lots of ordinary fun like the things we would have done in the old days before mobile technology existed in our lives.
End of Day 3.
Easter Weekend in Grondre, Wales – Day 1
Straight after the wedding (and before the BABYMETAL concert), it was another weekend away in Wales. This time there was no mountain climbing (hoorah), just a relaxing time there and back. Easter just happened to be on my birthday weekend… and to me this was a great way to celebrate! Out in the countryside and wilderness. ^_^
Thankfully Miss Pinky’s family gave me a lift home the night before, otherwise I don’t think I would have had a good night’s sleep… but in the end I did wake up early to eat breakfast and do last minute packing.
Started heading out to Waterloo to meet the others before 10am, but amazingly I bumped into Mr Games and Mr Sensible on the same bus! Hahahah. What a coincidence. ^_^ Then we saw Miss Money buy her breakfast from McDonald’s… We headed to the car rental and they gave us an orange jeep, unfortunately one of the tyres had an air pressure problem so we had to change cars. 😦 It was a nice jeep, but the other car had a bit more leg room. Oh well. Maybe next time.
The weekend was set for rain, rain and more rain. So we drove in the rain.
Miss Money said she was getting cold and didn’t bring a scarf or extra clothes. Didn’t she know it was going to rain? Yes, she did! Luckily I brought some yarn, which I was going to use to make Mrs Hen a bag for her birthday soon, but instead used the rest of it to make a short scarf… this was just the start of it after a 4 hour drive… tired!!
We were quite lucky that weekend as Mr Sensible’s grandparents own a caravan in a place called Grondre and there’s a caravan site there for holidaymakers… Took pictures of the bedrooms, they’re quite spacious for a large caravan we were in… The size of a small flat.
This was in the bathroom…
I think we were greeted with ok weather, the rain subsided and it was a little sunny that evening… Sheep were also nearby. Baaaaaa.
After resting a tiny bit we went out to eat and well, did a tiny exploration of the camp plus do some supermarket shopping in a not so nearby supermarket. Mr Sensible drove the wrong way. ¬_¬””
Thankfully Nisa Extra was still opened… because it was Easter weekend we were expecting the shops to close quite early. After shopping for the necessaries we headed back to unleash ourselves!
Here’s what a caravan site looks like from the middle of a road.
Now it was time to eat!! We went into the pub which is part of the holiday camp site. It seemed quiet for a Saturday, I guess people were avoiding the weather and cooking in their caravans… this was the food we had, none of us shared our food except the chips…
Mr Games had a pizza… It looks good… even the picture gives it a good honest look.
Miss Money had this Hawaii burger which looked a bit dry…
Mr Sensible had the steak and is currently on a low carb, gluten free diet… Don’t think he needs to go on a diet. He doesn’t need it!!!! :p
I stacked on protein and carbs. Not sure why I wanted a mixed grill… quite thankful it wasn’t too much, and at a reasonable price… (somehow I got a discount too). ^___^
After a loooong day, it was cold in the caravan (the heating was turned up high), we sat on the couch watching TV, knitting and teaching Miss Money to crochet. Hehehe. We became a crochet and knitting club!
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| Edited with PhotoScape |
It was time to go to bed around midnight… Goodnight… zzzzzz
End of Day 1.
BABYMETAL Concert 2016 (Japanese) @ Wembley SSE Arena
Woah. Get the Gothic Geek out for this special concert (on April 2nd). >_<" So before I post about my Easter Break in Wales, I think it would be best (and for the Metal-fans) to get this post out of the way!
The old geeky ears have come out to listen to some heavy metal (I’ll be back on to K-pop and all that soon).
BABYMETAL, if you didn’t know, is a Japanese girl band who sing and dance to a “softer” version of heavy metal music. Does that even make sense? I don’t know. Tried to explain it to Miss Vegan, and she kind of tried to get it into her head on what on Earth am I going to?! It’s J-pop (Japanese pop) mixed with heavy metal hence the name BABYMETAL! They came out in 2014 as a sub group to another J-pop girl band called Sakura Gakuin, who are still active.
The heavy metal band consists of three girls Su-metal (Suzuka Nakamoto), Yui-metal (Yui Mizuno) and Moa-metal (Moa Kikuchi). Not sure what got me into them. I think I was looking for gothic Japanese music as the Japanese girls and boys are really into Lolita style music. Listening to Die Milch at Hyper Japan got me into this stuff!
So I got to SSE Arena around 7.30pm. Lots of people were still making their way in, purchasing goods and just walking around taking pictures… By the time I got in and took my seat, the DJ before the show was half way through his show…
After the DJ, it felt like a long, long, looooong wait before BABYMETAL entered….
They started around 8.45pm, 15 minutes later than planned. 😦 But it was a great start to the show. (See my first video)
From here onwards I took a lot of pictures. I was quite a distance away, but managed some really good close up shots. I used my trusty small Sony G-compact camera (that has a 30x optical zoom – sorry geek moment!! >.<""). They did a lot of poses and stopped in between which made them great for picture taking!! Yaaaay!!!
They didn’t do a lot of costume changes which I think is a good thing… all the concerts I go to have LOOOTS of costume changes. >_< … anyway, hope all the fans are happy with these pictures and had enjoyed the night. I think they did… I sat next to a couple who could not stop laughing… and the other side a man who I think wanted to break loose… hahahahahaha, and next to him was a young boy who likes heavy metal… ¬_¬"… Seriously, who let that kid in?
Here is just one short video (without copyright issues!). Unfortunately 3 of my videos (now 4) were blocked by YouTube because of copyright issues… so if you know how I can bypass this, please let me know and I will gladly re-upload somewhere!
I had a fun night out on Saturday. Just seeing a wide range of ages liking Japanese cute heavy metal was awesome!
ありがとうございました！！ Thank you BABYMETAL!! (And copyright infringement f-ing sucks! – Geek-heavymetal has come out to speak!)
Official Website: http://www.babymetal.com/home/
Lloyds Bank Poster Ad – "He Said Yes"
Lloyds Bank!! Talk about controversial! But I believe it’s acceptable in this modern world to see such posters.
I’ve not really seen a gay poster advertising for a bank. I’m sure it won’t be the last either. But would you think this as gay? The guy might be saying “yes” to a mortgage or something… ¬_¬”” I dunno.
What do you think of Lloyds Bank’s move to produce this? Gay or not gay?
An African Affair @ Addington Palace
Have you ever wondered what an African wedding would be like in a palace? An English palace (really it’s a manor turned into palace)?
Well you’re about to find out in this post…
Miss Pinky’s cousin decided to get married on my birthday (Good Friday) this year. Was a tiny bit upset with that, but the groom and friends and my own colleagues said it will be fun to celebrate with a bunch of other people… I have a party, cake and will be surrounded by lots of people. Alright, they convinced me it would be a great day.
The day started EARLY, like 7am early. 😦 Whhhy!!! Ate breakfast and then had to do my makeup (gosh that took me ages, since I don’t normally wear makeup). I rushed to Miss Pinky’s (who was already at the venue from the night before), and everyone else was hardly ready! Miss Pinky, you said to get out by 9.30am… >_<"" No one was ready… so we left after 10.30am after knowing who was going into which car… Unfortunately our car was late for the ceremony due to a turned over truck in Tulse Hill and other unfortunate mis-directions… 😦 Oh well, Miss Pinky's cousin is a perfectionist. So she must start on time!
The ceremony was over an hour long, so I went around and took pictures. The golf part was just opposite, but I didn’t take a pic of that.
They finally came out, and there was more picture taking, small snacks and some cocktails, plus some light music. ^_^ There were around 600 guests invited, but don’t know how many people turned up.
After all that picture taking, Baby B and her cousin needed a nappy change, a feed and all of us actually needed a rest in between…
The rest of the celebrations took place in the tent where there were more speeches, dancing and gradually some food – thanks Miss Pinky for giving me a good selection! Mr Picky was obviously being picky and I took some of his food. Hahah.
Mr Picky had the cheek to ask me to get a dessert for him… I returned back with two platefuls! ^_^
It’s been an interesting wedding. In fact it’s a Sierra Leone and Nigerian wedding… A mixed African culture affair, but all went well!
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| Miss Pinky’s Cousin with her family |
Note for Miss Pinky and Mr Picky: Don’t hold a big wedding. I won’t be doing a speech if you do! :p
Anyway, if you want to hold a wedding in this palace, then check out their website. But make sure you’re out of there by 11pm!!
ZSL London Zoo – Land of the Lions (Private Viewing)
Wow!! I knew I had to get a full membership card this year for London Zoo. I wanted to make as many trips to the zoo instead of wasting time at home doing boring things like studying and watching dramas. This year I want to have fun!!!
Her Majesty, The Queen went to London Zoo on Thursday 17th to reopen the lion’s newly designed home and I had the opportunity as a full member to see this the day after. =^.^= Roar! Lucky I had the day off to visit.
I had the 12pm showing but got there just after 11am, so I had an hour to walk around…
I spent 45 minutes walking around and couldn’t wait any longer, so I went to the entrance, and they said we could queue as we can’t go in early. 😦
Finally we got to go in after a name check. And so I took a lot of pictures (as usual!).
I decided to go back to the upper deck to see if I can get a better view of the lionesses…
Then I turned around, and the male lion was out! Apparently to one of the workmen who was working on some poop display said it was the first time in a few months since he has come out to play. It also seemed that the lionesses wanted to get back to him. Looks like they don’t like being separated. He didn’t even come out for The Queen during the opening!! Wow!! Must be lucky!!!
It was time to head back out and go and hunt for food just like these macaques! >_<"
So happy the lions have a newly designed home. The previous one was a bit small for them to roam around.
It’s now opened to the public since March 25th, so happy visiting, hope they all give you a big rooooar!
A Simple Geeky Life 