Kotki Dwa's Late Lunch

It is nice going to quirky intimate gigs with a twist, which is what I got up to during the week.

A uni mate and I decided to catch up and go to a gig in Old Street at The Arts & Music Project, where the event was called Late Lunch - Kotki Dwa's Album launch. 

Not only there was good music being played, in the grungy venue, but there was also experimental food for everyone to try. I missed one course where there was bread with spread that glowed under UV Light, but didn't miss the sausage worms in the cumber decorated basket or the light liquid lunch, consisting of watery tomato soup with nutmeg & something else

I kind of forgot Kotki Dwa was my friend's band, electro happy music, very him ^.^ always optimistic and puts a smile on your face

Good music & good fun food always brings the like minded people together. In this case, it brought quite a few of my uni mates together, was really lovely catching up with them & reminded me of the times of Uni & where we had the movement that was the "Yellow Revolution", where all art specialisms got together and collaborated on projects.

Hence the style of the Band's music videos being very animated, as they were made by a few uni friends who specialised in graphic, animation/ illustration

It was a really fun evening where there was even a raffle where the winner won a bottle of bacon flavoured vodka.... I would be intrigued to taste what that would have been like. I think I remember on Jonathan Ross' show he had a bottle. However it did take 4 goes of the raffle to finally find a winner, haha! 

Good Times ^.^

Distant Worlds Final Fantasy

Well instead of the traditional trip pit somewhere to watch the fireworks in Bonfire Night, I decided to head down to Albert Hall to watch a concert. 

I nearly forgot I had these tickets as I brought them so long ago, thinking it will be something pretty interesting to watch.

So Distant Worlds finally came to London to perform at a perfect venue to. Consisting of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Voices performing music from the Final Fantasy games. 

It was just very beautiful as the first song played with the harp, was quite emotional. They also had screens either side showing clips of the games; it was interesting to see how much the game has evolved since 1987.

I was happy we had pretty decent seats in the upper circle for £25, netter than £10-15 for the gallery where it's standing! 

The crowd were definitely a mix of a few kiddies to adults, there were some serious fanatics at the show, you could tell their look - computer geek chic to people making effort dressing up as their favourite characters, bit of an Anime convention with music!

It was great to see the Japanese composer Nobuo Uematsu attending this concert in his Japanese head scarf, tabi socks & sandals, was so cute!Then at the encore, he joined the choir to sing Sephora

I will say my favourite games were VIII, XI and X because of the story lines, but the music I loved is mainly from X ^.^

The visuals of the game were interesting with the scenes of live game play, mini story clips and of the drawn illustrations of the character on watercolour, was simply beautiful. It made me remember when I was a kid I used to love drawing characters; makes me want to het back into drawing! 

I was happy they played this song, was so beautiful and emotional ^.^

Billingsgate Fish Market

November time, waking up at 3.30am with some friends to leave the house just past 4am, still dark outside As British Summer time has ended. Why are we up and out the house so early? A trip to Billingsgate Market of course!!

I've heard my friends mention about this place is great to buy fresh seafood cheap; businesses get their stock from here and it's been a place I've wanted to visit since being in London, as I'm quite the foodie and enjoy seafood, however getting there has always been the challenge as well as getting up so early in the morning, though people have suggested me heading there after clubbing... NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!!(O_o) 

Fortunately I managed to tag along with friends to the Market as they needed to venture to buy for a Hot Pot session. 

So from SW to E as Billingsgate is based in the Docklands, with an extra pair of hands to Carry the seafood -^.^-

I couldn't believe when we arrived to the Market before 5am there were already quite a lot of cars and buyers. A lot of seafood - fish, lobster, crabs, squid and molluscs. 

Interestingly quite a lot of stalls were selling oysters, must be in season ^.^ we ended up buying a large box of about 25 oysters for £15, not too bad, trouble was shucking them! 

There was so many different prawns of shapes and size, mussels for ￡5 for 2kg amazing!!

Def need a car to get there, might bus will just be LONG! Was great to check this place out. I couldn't believe as we were leaving the place, the car park was so full！

A great place for seafood lovers -^.^-

Madrid food porn

As promised, I finally upload the food porn from the trip to Madrid ^.^

I will admit it's so strange having dinner over there about 9pm onwards, really wasn't use to it!

Traditional Spanish dish of Oxtail in a tomato based sauce, was very nice and tender

forgotten the name of this pastry, Spanish enjoy sweet treats for breakfast, must be an influence from the French

Top left, Seafood paella (was a bit salty >.<) Top Right, Spaghetti, bottom, tuna salad with white asparagus, Asparagus wasn't so nice, think it was canned 

Smoked or dry cured ham

amazing yoghurt with many healthy toppings!! ^.^ 

This place was such a good find by my friends and I as we were walking up and away from the Cathedral up towards Plaza de Mayor. It was a food mecca, many stalls selling different tapas, fruit, sweets and seafood was amazing!

Cheese!

Mini burgers, were very nice but a bit too herby for our taste

Some reason in for breakfast, they really like their egg, ham, cheese sandwich with the bread cut out to see the egg, very quirky!

They say Churros is a traditional Spanish breakfast, but I find it's too deep fried for my liking 

Madrid

A few
girlfriends and me decided to go on a weekend holiday to catch some autumn sun,
so we decided Madrid.

This is
actually the first tine I've ever been to Spain - Spanish islands don't count.
We were staying at a very Central location at Alonso Martinez, many things were
in walking distance so didn't require the Metro as much. 

The hotel
was very modern, having laptop, iPod dock & shower with 3 shower functions
but annoying it didn't have the basics of a kettle with free tea & coffee,
even though I don't drink it, it's the principle!

I was not
surprised this 4* Hotel didn’t have a phone in the bathroom as my friend was
telling me I need to look out for one, I really don’t believe why hotels would
put a phone in the bathroom, is it really necessary?

The museums were not bad, Del Prado reminded me of London's National Gallery- a lot of classic oil paintings all religious; interesting to see but wasn't my cup of tea. The Sofia however reminded me of the V&A as there was modern art from Dali and Picasso in the permanent collections, and I really loved the building itself made of glass & steel, the third floor with the terrace had such a lovely view of Madrid 




Going to
Ventas to see the famous Bullring was a good trip, shame we missed the last
fight before the end of season, which was the day before, but it was a
fascinating building to see and in Madrid hear history of. The largest park in
Madrid, the Retrio was a lovely stroll, passing people jogging, stunning scultptures
including statues in fountains. We also saw a man on roller-skates dancing
around was pretty funny! We also hired a rowing boat on the lake, was a 
very
good laugh in the sun; 45min for under €4 a boat pretty good (^.^)

We checked
out the typical Spanish touristy things - flamenco dancing at Casa Platas,
though we were expecting the more extravagant dressing and less acoustic
singing, it was so chilled we were falling asleep! Unfortunately this is not
worth the €32 we paid.


What threw
us off was by the markets, in this park/ square area there a crowds of people
trading card! All kinds as well, from Pokemon, Football even Hello Kitty, to me
it’s a very 90s Retro hobby, but these people were serious with their Yellow
Pages sized books of card collections! 
The
Botanical gardens were a nice trip for €2.50 but need to be in the right season
as the flowers were dying, vegetables were ready to be harvested unless you
fancied seeing some cactus :p

In La
Latina, which is quite a trendy spot for the locals for drinking in the
evening, but also good for The Sunday Flea Market. It was a good trip to look
around selling allsorts of touristy things like t-shirts, bags, jewelry, random
trinkets and bric and brac but there were also a few places that sold antiques
too!



So many things accomplished on the trip, the long weekend
was long enough for it ^.^ 
Will do a Madrid Food Porn post too!! -^.^-

Sorry the Text layout is so crap, I am not technical enough to work how how to lay it out nicely! >.<"


  

Fun of a night with a bit of fancy dress

My friend roped me to go along with her to an end of Season Dragon boating party; twist was it was fancy dress & the theme was "Back in Time" Last weekend (been slow on the blogging especially photo uploading! >.<¨)


Sometimes I really hate fancy  dress theme parties, because the themes are usually unimaginative, and tacky like Angels & Devils, Back to School, Playboy Bunnies - themes I really hate & would throw up over. 

It's also a shame that not all would dress up or would do a half arsed effort towards it.


With "Back in Time" I thought ok, can work with this as it's so broad, I wanted to keep it simple but effective; and of course use my creativity &; styling skills ^.^


So I decided to do an 80s feel with David Bowie as the muse- Bright colours especially with the make up & accessories -^.^-


My friend was having a lot of fun applying the bright make up on herself as it's so out of her comfort zone. Sometimes it's fun to experiment


I was impressed with how some people made effort with their looks though 30% of the crowd were dressed normal, though when the people dressed up, they made effort, particularly loved Adam & Eve in their flesh colour costumes with leaves covering the appropriate places!

Beyonce's fashion Label

To be honest I'm not that fussed about when celebrities decide to dip their hands into working in fashion. Was a bit sceptical when the Beckhams headed that way and have done well for themselves.

But I recently decided to pop into Selfridges with my friends before heading to the cinema, and right in front of us was the area with Beyonce's new fashion range, "House of Dereon" 

I thought ok quite a fair few viscose jersey pieces in the collection, nice shapes, print not bad, price started from £60 I suppose if you love It then it's ok for affordable celebrity fashion labels. 

However the thing that threw me off particularly making the garments really not worth that amount of money, is the quality!! Ok so I'm a garment tech, of course I would spot these flaws, but my friend she could spot how bad the quality was - uncut overlocking, loose uncut threads, the metal labels hanging off it was really poor make, probably from China. 

It is such a real shame to get garments looking like that. I did have a conversation with my senior about quality of clothes going to the high street; to be honest the cost of making the dockets and fabrics is getting higher now, and to be honest the consumer will just mainly care about how it will look on them and not nit pick about the type of fabric or workmanship, unless it was expensive labels from the high end fashion, then you'll give a damn especially for the amount you're paying for it

You can check out the other pieces of clothing she has on the below link

http://www.houseofdereon.com/home.html